The yin and yang of sparring/training now

[Eyeball]

list

Stack. Stack. Stack!

The event happens, it's popped off the stack, it's gone. The Staff push events onto the top of the stack (LIFO) or bottom (FIFO) as they please. So it's like a staff run event except that it is delayed from when they implement it.

[Greve]

You do realize this change is multiple years old at this point?

And even before that change, folks hit the plateau, which if anything shifted slightly upwards by this change.

So I am going to turn this around.  How do we give you what you want, but keep truly exceptional combat characters exceptional, where it isn't just a matter of putting in the time/effort to become exceptional, from a skill perspective?

Shift the plateau upwards. Currently it's at low/mid journeyman, depending a bit on your stats and whether or not you went out of your way to restrict offense gains (BTW, PLEASE FIX THAT LOOPHOLE). To me, "exceptional" does not mean vastly superior to everybody but rather just, you know, an edge. So why does the distance from plateau to max span easily half of the skill spectrum? Why isn't the plateau at, say, mid/late advanced? Why isn't <master> what's held as exceptional? Why is everything above "decent" exceptional? That's the whole crux of the issue: you want us to accept that everything above the plateau is "exceptional" and we're not supposed to care about it. But the plateau is too low. If you don't have some special trick or unusual privilege, like being clanned with a long-lived heavy-combat char with high agility who perfectly matches your playtimes and is willing to spar routinely, the point where you get stuck is so low that it's just... absurd. We're talking one skill level above where you start. That's when you begin to need special tricks or rare circumstances to continue gaining.

Olympic records are not 200% above the competitive standard. The best mathematicians are not 200% more knowledgeable than their colleagues. The strongest bodybuilders are not 200% stronger than the other professional bodybuilders. But the difference between someone who has a friend on Discord with a maxed out fighter and someone who doesn't ends up being in that magnitude. The plateau for ordinary play is so low that those who have access to tricks that surpass it can end up with master while others end up stuck at journeyman based on nothing other than that one arbitrary factor. The difference is just too big to expect everybody to accept getting stuck there. It would be much more palatable if it was high advanced vs. master instead of mid-journeyman vs. master. There aren't enough ways to become exceptional. Usually it's down to something completely random like playtimes and clan population, not the deeds of your character. It just doesn't reflect reality in any conceivable way, and it's extremely punitive to players.

Can you imagine a game where 99% of the playerbase is supposed to accept being stuck forever at journeyman sneak, or jewelrymaking? Scan? Anything except the one line of skills that has a whole category of classes and entire clans devoted to it? Clans that very much judge and reward you based on your coded skills. It doesn't reflect reality and it's bad for gameplay. I'm still waiting to hear what's actually good about that system. Why isn't master backstab exceptional in the eyes of the code, or lockpicking, or fireball? Why is this one line of skills - the "sparring skills" - so uniquely locked down behind insane levels of regulation and anti-player code? Why this misguided notion of exceptionalism that deviates from how life works? It's way easier and safer to train magic spells than swordsmanship!

I don't need to see <master> everywhere I look, but I certainly take issue with a PvP-heavy game that limits my combat potential to <journeyman> and effectively asks me to cheat to overcome it. All of us know that the things you have to do to get past the plateau are, in most cases (barring being blessed with the aforementioned long-lived agile sparring slave, improbable as it is), things we would literally get punished for if caught. Meanwhile, I can play a crafter, a pickpocket, an archer, a backstabber, literally anything but a heavy-combat class, and get to be "exceptional" at the skills that my chosen class revolves around through simply playing the game the way that makes sense for my character. This is not something you can ask me to accept as the best way for the game to be designed. It just doesn't pass the most basic tests.

If you want there to be a special level of exceptionalism that most players are prevented from reaching, make it follow the same rules that govern other cases of perilous exceptionalism: gate it behind karma instead of nebulous code that works some of the time, and punishes players when it does, but can be overcome if one is willing to weigh the benefits against potential punishment. I don't want to fight mantis in the dark or whatever, but I have never in years of play enjoyed the privilege of being clanned with someone who had really high combat skills and was actually willing to spar regularly, which is what it takes to do it legitimately. It's not something that can be held as an expectation. The game simply doesn't work that way. One of the most important aspects of Armageddon is the fact that you can accomplish things in a variety of ways as long as it makes relative sense, and this does not qualify. The hoops you have to jump through to surpass the combat plateau are just too weird and illogical, yet simultaneously trivial if you're just in the right place at the right time (with the right friends).

[oggotale]

Right now whats the chance of someone "average" in combat beating the best combatants, like approximately, no tricks.

I feel it's much closer to zero than it realistically should be.

Then again maybe having a lesser gap between the two would encourage too much risk-aversion on all sides.

[Eyeball]

Greve, here is what Brokkr posted about it:

Many games, if a PC can get to 100 skill in combat, NPCs can get to 150 or 200 in that thing.  That is not how it works here for some key skills. Instead of capping PCs at the 100 out of 200 mark, Arm has what you call the plateau.  The game as currently designed leaves the ability to get more skilled than that, but it becomes more similar to how games with open ended skills work, although instead of decreasing benefit over a steady skill gain rate Arm has taken the direction of making skill gains harder and harder to come by.

Arm could have taken the approach of capping skills below what they currently cap at for combat.  For 99%+ of characters, it would effectively be the same.  It would also mean that the effective skill learning life of a character was much shorter, which is not good in a game where some characters have 100+ DAYS of playtime.  You may throw rocks at the Arm design, but when you are doing so I see very little in the way of being on the same page as the gameworld goals.  Like making it so new characters see real progression, but 100+ Day characters likely still have some potential for progression, without letting them become game breakingly powerful?

[Gracchus]

The problem with that is, if we want to give endgame characters a sense of progression, why is it exclusively fighting skills which require such an inordinate, PITA and occasionally RP-breaking amount of time and effort to achieve mastery in, while what would realistically be far more difficult skills, like weaponsmithing, armormaking, jeweling, or uh, MAGIC can be mastered in a couple of hours. Plus, those skills offer you significantly more weight and power in the world than "swinging a sword good" actually does. Combat skills are good, yes. Good enough to gate them behind hours upon hours of grind? No.
Not to mention that the equalizers of poisons and stealth kills can render the absolutely inane grind that has to be done to master combat skills moot anyway.

[Riev]

Technically, some crafting skill do have an endgame.

You ever crafted a steel dagger? No? Then you haven't become a master weaponsmith, yet.

I'm totally fine that like 1/10 fighters ever becomes Meso-level ridiculous, but the other 9/10 better be dead from the risk it took to get there.

Combat, magick and stealth are the 3 big PvP trees (crafting and trading can be PvP, but economic PvP is a whole separate issue). Stealth consists of poisons and shadowy attacks that prey on people being unprepared. Magick consists of being prepared and ready for the fight ahead of you, knowing what to expect. Combat is about being ready for "just about anything" and either being able to fight it, disable it, or run from it.

But for some reason, combat FEELS like it requires 40days played with a lot of luck and playtimes with the 'right people', whereas the other 2 trees can be done 100% solo.

[rinthrat]

The problem with that is, if we want to give endgame characters a sense of progression, why is it exclusively fighting skills which require such an inordinate, PITA and occasionally RP-breaking amount of time and effort to achieve mastery in, while what would realistically be far more difficult skills, like weaponsmithing, armormaking, jeweling, or uh, MAGIC can be mastered in a couple of hours. Plus, those skills offer you significantly more weight and power in the world than "swinging a sword good" actually does. Combat skills are good, yes. Good enough to gate them behind hours upon hours of grind? No.
Not to mention that the equalizers of poisons and stealth kills can render the absolutely inane grind that has to be done to master combat skills moot anyway.

A couple of hours? What!?

Magick especially needs a very long and boring grind, too. Despite all the hate magickers get for "just spamcasting a couple of days and coming out as pk machines".

[Namino]

Greve, here is what Brokkr posted about it:

Many games, if a PC can get to 100 skill in combat, NPCs can get to 150 or 200 in that thing.  That is not how it works here for some key skills. Instead of capping PCs at the 100 out of 200 mark, Arm has what you call the plateau.  The game as currently designed leaves the ability to get more skilled than that, but it becomes more similar to how games with open ended skills work, although instead of decreasing benefit over a steady skill gain rate Arm has taken the direction of making skill gains harder and harder to come by.

Arm could have taken the approach of capping skills below what they currently cap at for combat.  For 99%+ of characters, it would effectively be the same.  It would also mean that the effective skill learning life of a character was much shorter, which is not good in a game where some characters have 100+ DAYS of playtime.  You may throw rocks at the Arm design, but when you are doing so I see very little in the way of being on the same page as the gameworld goals.  Like making it so new characters see real progression, but 100+ Day characters likely still have some potential for progression, without letting them become game breakingly powerful?

This is a derail so feel free to ignore it, but I categorically reject the idea that NPCs and PCs have to be on different scales or have different caps from one another in order to prevent PCs from running over the NPC environment. Speaking from experience, it is perfectly possible to have everyone on a level playing field while still keeping NPCs as a threat that challenges advanced players without instantly vaporizing new characters, while drawing from the same distribution of skills and stats as the player characters themselves.

The reason this happens in Armageddon is because DIKU is notoriously 'step-tiered' when it comes to advancement. On Monday, you're getting dunked by an NPC which is on a higher tier than you. Then you hit a breakpoint and draw level for a brief moment on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday you hit another breakpoint and that NPC never touches you again. It's the consequence of a jagged advancement rather than a smooth one and is an artifact in a game that was built before that sort of game development foundation was fleshed out.

[Armaddict]

I agree that sparring schedules in clans are uber-lame.  Sparring is an activity that is, frankly, boring the longer you stretch it out.

If someone has complaints about how much sparring it takes to master, I have no empathy.

If someone has complaints about a clan trying to force them to master things, I have so much empathy and encourage you to play indies or set your own terms upon hiring.  Most employers are in need of bodies enough that they'll listen to you and hear you when you say you don't like sparring that much.

[maxid]

list

Stack. Stack. Stack!

The event happens, it's popped off the stack, it's gone. The Staff push events onto the top of the stack (LIFO) or bottom (FIFO) as they please. So it's like a staff run event except that it is delayed from when they implement it.

You aren't going to change my mind by endlessly repeating your bad idea, we just disagree.  It's ok that we disagree.  I don't think a stack of 'you lose your boots' or 'a piece of scrap paper with a drawing on it appears' or whatever else could fit on those stacks add much.  You do.  We're allowed to disagree.

Also, actually mastering your magick takes for-fucking-ever.  Not as long as bludgeoning (master) but it takes a looooong time.  And it's even more boring than sparring.  And it's even riskier too.  Same with thievery/stealth skills.  The only thing without an endgame is crafting, which just gets spammed to (master) as fast as possible, granting a few people who app into Clans to make more money than god.

[Eyeball]

You aren't going to change my mind by endlessly repeating your bad idea, we just disagree.  It's ok that we disagree.  I don't think a stack of 'you lose your boots' or 'a piece of scrap paper with a drawing on it appears' or whatever else could fit on those stacks add much.  You do.  We're allowed to disagree.

I repeated myself in the hopes you would grasp the difference between a list and a stack.

So, given a choice of having the same old emptiness with the same old NPCs all of the time, and having that but with something unexpected occasionally happening, you'd choose the former.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The direction of development here has pointed away from exploration/achievement and toward social/killer for a long time now.

Yeah, we disagree.

[maxid]

You aren't going to change my mind by endlessly repeating your bad idea, we just disagree.  It's ok that we disagree.  I don't think a stack of 'you lose your boots' or 'a piece of scrap paper with a drawing on it appears' or whatever else could fit on those stacks add much.  You do.  We're allowed to disagree.

I repeated myself in the hopes you would grasp the difference between a list and a stack.

So, given a choice of having the same old emptiness with the same old NPCs all of the time, and having that but with something unexpected occasionally happening, you'd choose the former.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The direction of development here has pointed away from exploration/achievement and toward social/killer for a long time now.

Yeah, we disagree.

No need to be a dick.  Your stack idea is silly to me, and I don't believe it would add much because it would end up being just another list to maintain.  Your idea isn't half as clever as you believe it to be, and your smug 'heh, well the development is moving away from cool exploration' is neither useful nor accurate.  Let people have differing opinions.  There's no real need to respond to me any further.  I'm not going to be responding to you on this topic anymore either.  You're off topic anyway.

[Namino]

Y'all two.

[Greve]

I agree that sparring schedules in clans are uber-lame.  Sparring is an activity that is, frankly, boring the longer you stretch it out.

If someone has complaints about how much sparring it takes to master, I have no empathy.

If someone has complaints about a clan trying to force them to master things, I have so much empathy and encourage you to play indies or set your own terms upon hiring.  Most employers are in need of bodies enough that they'll listen to you and hear you when you say you don't like sparring that much.

It's not about how much sparring it takes, it's about the availability of it. You make a character and join a clan only to realize that there simply isn't anyone in that clan who's got high enough combat skills to get you anywhere beyond decent. That's what happens practically every time I've tried to play a heavy combat character. On its own, the time it takes to reach the upper end of the combat skill spectrum is not an issue at all, it's perfectly fine (maybe even too fast) if you have access to effective training. But in most cases you don't, and have no way to seek it out because it hinges entirely on the availability of characters with the right skills and the willingness/permission to spar with you on a regular basis, or the freedom to pursue what we've surely established to be twinky "PvE" playstyles that nobody actually likes to engage in.

I've never had a clan try to force me to master things, but it's a common occurrence for people to judge and reward characters based on coded skill. This is natural, it's not something that needs to be fixed because it's just the way human civilization works. The problem is that the "sparring skills" have that arbitrary roadblock where, through no fault of your own and often with no possible solution that you can personally pursue, you're just stuck forever at a level that's too low to be satisfactory, or to even make sense given how skills otherwise work in this game regarding things like branching and starting levels. Heavy combat classes start at apprentice weapons; getting stuck at journeyman after three days of play, and still having journeyman after 20d+ of frequent combat, is shit. It's an unacceptable feature.

[oggotale]

Bruhs what is all this about, do you guys not make friends IC or just have insane play hours?

Finding sparring buddies with similar skill shouldn't be a problem unless you have unusually high playtimes yea,
in so far as your playhours are X you're going to gain against other people you find with X, generally speaking.

By definition this seems like a problem that would affect players more the higher the higher their X is, if you can't find sparring buddies at your X, your X is high as fuck, it seems to me.

There might be a case to be made for rewarding the upper tail of playhours players, but whatever that case may be it still seems to be affecting the combat prowess of a small af set.

I like the normalising tendency of this system, seems more realistic and encourages grouping up (realistically the thing that is literally in humanoid DNA) even if the typical high-fantasy take is to have  dispropriately OPPP chars driving the story.

[Cerelum]

The problem I've noticed with "sparring buddies" is that I'll meet random dude b.

Random dude B will invite me to spar with him before I even remember his name.

1. That's fucking weird and super twinky.

2. I've killed people on accident sparring before, you think I'm gonna spar with some random dude I met in the bar?

[maxid]

The problem I've noticed with "sparring buddies" is that I'll meet random dude b.

Random dude B will invite me to spar with him before I even remember his name.

1. That's fucking weird and super twinky.

2. I've killed people on accident sparring before, you think I'm gonna spar with some random dude I met in the bar?

Agreed on both counts.  Gotta be the change you want to see, but in this case if you're lazy about it your character becomes a monster way way faster than someone playing 'right'.

[oggotale]

The problem I've noticed with "sparring buddies" is that I'll meet random dude b.

Random dude B will invite me to spar with him before I even remember his name.

1. That's fucking weird and super twinky.

2. I've killed people on accident sparring before, you think I'm gonna spar with some random dude I met in the bar?

I mean, I'm not advocating that, I always thought people kill and loot in those situations.
Well, I know how my next "merchant" is going to earn bank.

I'd assume the IC and part OOC tendency to profit counteracts the (very human) but mainly OOC temptation to twink here, we're not reaching a reasonable equilibrium wrt to sparring?

[Riev]

I think that's the crux of it, Oggo. Do you take up every IC chance to spar that you can, because OOCly you know there's no guarantee you'll find someone willing for another long span? Do you only spar with people in trusted environments?

Do you kill your sparring partners once they are useless to you, so that you are king?

[Greve]

Doesn't matter how many people you spar with if none of them can dodge you. You could spar five times a day and accomplish nothing. There's plenty of PCs who want to spar and almost none who can actually get you past the plateau, both because it's hard to do and because those who manage it tend not to want to spar with mediocre fighters anymore. Last time I was in the Byn, after just a couple of weeks the sergeant was the only one who could dodge me anymore but I managed to get them to spar with me a grand total of twice the entire time I was in the clan because everybody else wanted to do the same for the same reason. The entire clan's weapon skill progress was basically gated behind access to sparring with a single PC.

[Dar]

I really dont get it. If nobody can dodge no one, means they get consistently hit. If they get consistently hit, they defensive abilities get consistently better. If their defensive ability get consistently better, they eventually begin to dodge. No? Or are combat abilities get to a point where even a maxed out defense cannot allow the character to reliably dodge?

[Namino]

I really dont get it. If nobody can dodge no one, means they get consistently hit. If they get consistently hit, they defensive abilities get consistently better. If their defensive ability get consistently better, they eventually begin to dodge. No? Or are combat abilities get to a point where even a maxed out defense cannot allow the character to reliably dodge?

This was my experience, though it might be outdated. I found someone who was a no lifer like me and we never missed a training session together. I wouldn't say the dodges flowed like milk and honey but our growth was lock-stepped -- my defense waiting for his offense, then his offense waiting for my defense and vice versa over and over again. I branched advanced weaponry on my warrior against a fellow PC, who single-handedly took me from jman all the way to master.

The real victims were our clanmaters who had to watch us spar for 15-20 RL minutes because that's how long it took us to get sufficient training at the upper echelons.

[Greve]

I really dont get it. If nobody can dodge no one, means they get consistently hit. If they get consistently hit, they defensive abilities get consistently better. If their defensive ability get consistently better, they eventually begin to dodge. No? Or are combat abilities get to a point where even a maxed out defense cannot allow the character to reliably dodge?

While theoretically other clannies could increased their defense to the point where they can dodge you again, I've never had that happen. If someone already can't dodge you, the amount of defense they'd need to gain in order to be able to dodge you often enough to matter is so high that I have never seen anybody do that in the kind of timeframe where it helps you. Like maybe six months later they'll be good enough, but that's kind of pointless. If someone can't dodge you, them gaining five points of defense isn't enough. Going from zero dodges to one dodge every other spar isn't going to help you much. You need to miss several times per fight in order for the gains to be noticeable at all, or you need to somehow have the freedom to spar for IG hours in a row which no clan really facilitates.

Someone can be totally unable to dodge you but still avoid most of your attacks via parry and block. Seen that plenty of times. The PC who won the last public sparring tournament couldn't dodge the attacks of my 5-day fighter at all, but I could barely land a hit on him because he'd block and parry everything. He was a vastly superior fighter but the code didn't interpret him as worthwhile training for me because everything revolves exclusively around dodging. Being a plateaued fighter means you're a monster against animals because they can't parry and block, but against parry and shield use, you won't be particularly impressive if your progress stalled at journeyman level.

This is also why strength is so broken. Doesn't matter much against animals because they just stand there until dead, but since parry and shield use are so trivial to max out, you'll be up against that anytime you fight another PC. If you only land one hit in five, doing eight damage is pretty useless. The defensive power of master parry and shield use totally dwarfs the offensive power of journeyman weapons, yet that's usually the constituents of any given PC vs. PC fight. Just look at arena fights, they often go on and on for minutes and couldn't possibly have resulted in death if the fighters weren't prevented from escaping--unless high strength is involved, which as we all know completely turns combat balance on its head.

[Synthesis]

The other annoying thing about having to fail to improve is that people are always saying (IC), "Hurr-durr, why are you hunting that thing you know you can't kill 100% of the time?"

BECAUSE IF I DON'T LET IT KICK MY ASS, I LITERALLY WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO HUNT IT, EVER, AT ALL, NO MATTER WHAT

[John]

The code has been changed so there is always a chance you will be dodged. Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.