The yin and yang of sparring/training now

[Hauwke]

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 Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.

That is not entirely true. While yes, there is a chance to miss at all times, if your strength is high enough you only get like 5 swings against someone before they are either dead or running and that isn't enough attempts to proc that forced miss.

[Synthesis]

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 Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.

I haven't seen that play out in a way that would be in any way effective for training, to be honest.  Maybe it's rolling a natural 1 on a d100 or something? It's definitely not a d20.

[Cabooze]

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 Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.

It's more like a 1/500 chance

[Brokkr]

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 Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.

I haven't seen that play out in a way that would be in any way effective for training, to be honest.  Maybe it's rolling a natural 1 on a d100 or something? It's definitely not a d20.

I would disagree.

It was meant to address situations where folks had literally no chance to get a chance at learning, especially in clans where they were long lived.  Not to replace the most effective ways of training overall.

So for a 50 day character in a clan, yes, this could significantly change their effectiveness.

[Hauwke]

Oh for sure, it grants a chance to continue skilling up. 100%. It's just not a good chance, And it shouldn't be a good chance either. It's entirely unrelated to skill level, you shouldn't be missing every few swings against an entirely untrained opponent if you have been in the Byn with a Fighter for 30 IG years and hundreds of days played.

[Synthesis]

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 Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.

I haven't seen that play out in a way that would be in any way effective for training, to be honest.  Maybe it's rolling a natural 1 on a d100 or something? It's definitely not a d20.

I would disagree.

It was meant to address situations where folks had literally no chance to get a chance at learning, especially in clans where they were long lived.  Not to replace the most effective ways of training overall.

So for a 50 day character in a clan, yes, this could significantly change their effectiveness.

The definition of "significant change" with respect to "literally impossible" could cover a "significant range" of usefulness...beginning with "snowball's chance in hell."

[Greve]

I reckon if someone can only dodge you on that 1% chance or whatever it is, their defense is probably low compared to your offense and your chance to gain will be minimal/zero. Either way, it doesn't seem very impactful. Seems like it'll gain you one point per month if you're lucky. I mean, unless you're on some kind of absurd skillgrinding marathon, you don't actually swing your weapon that many times per day. It's not like the number is in the hundreds. To seriously get anything out of sparring, you need several dodges per spar/fight. One dodge every ten spars gets you basically nowhere.

The problem won't be fixed by these little fine-tuning adjustments. It needs a serious overhaul to combat skillgains. The reliance on dodges and the way your offense skill becomes your own enemy is what creates this whole issue, and since those things are neither good for gameplay nor anywhere close to realistic, I think it should be looked into properly. Right now, you can build an incredibly good foundation for your character's coded power by just using one of the several self-imposed methods, all of which are pretty egregiously twinky, to hinder your offense gains so that your other skills aren't held back by it. And then you catch up later with ease since offense is so simple to raise, which is why you get screwed over by it if you let it.

Every time you go to unarmed training or use an unfamiliar weapon, you probably gain a point in offense but without a corresponding gain in your main weapon skill, and that pushes the plateau for that skill down to a lower level. It's a game where the more experienced you are as a fighter, the harder it becomes to branch out to multiple weapon types. That's just the opposite of how reality works. Combat skillgains totally stop resembling real-life martial training around the halfway point.

[Armaddict]

Brief skills on.

Fixed.

[Synthesis]

Brief skills on.

Fixed.

Brief skills on don't work when you're trying to branch backstab on an enforcer.

Speaking of which...it's been a while since the new classes went in.  Has anyone actually managed to organically (no starting skill bumps, no subclass start) branch backstab on an enforcer yet?

[Armaddict]

Brief skills on.

Fixed.

Brief skills on don't work when you're trying to branch backstab on an enforcer.

Speaking of which...it's been a while since the new classes went in.  Has anyone actually managed to organically (no starting skill bumps, no subclass start) branch backstab on an enforcer yet?

Pretty sure it's been stated numerous times that such a goal was to be considered extremely hard to reach.  I think that pretty much says that reaching it through sparring/training is pretty in line with how it works currently.

[Synthesis]

Brief skills on.

Fixed.

Brief skills on don't work when you're trying to branch backstab on an enforcer.

Speaking of which...it's been a while since the new classes went in.  Has anyone actually managed to organically (no starting skill bumps, no subclass start) branch backstab on an enforcer yet?

Pretty sure it's been stated numerous times that such a goal was to be considered extremely hard to reach.  I think that pretty much says that reaching it through sparring/training is pretty in line with how it works currently.

I think the point of the entire thread is that it's not "extremely hard."  It's impossible unless you sell your soul to the powergaming gods and go out to do dumb shit.

[Greve]

If they don't understand that by now, they never will.

[Riev]

I think the point of the entire thread is that it's not "extremely hard."  It's impossible unless you sell your soul to the powergaming gods and go out to do dumb shit.

Its the "dumb shit" part that irks me the most. If you want to see progression on your combat character, you either have to move at a crawl and put yourself in immense Byn-Contract risk, or go do really stupid stuff to get your skills up. Even before we could see our skill levels, if you weren't being dodged, you were wasting your time. I don't even care if I branch, I want to make sure that the time I spend on this game is rewarding to me. Rewarding includes coded advancement or the perception of it.

[Armaddict]

So when you said:

I think the point of the entire thread is that it's not "extremely hard."  It's impossible unless you sell your soul to the powergaming gods and go out to do dumb shit.

...I went back to the beginning of the thread to see what its point was.

Seems the point wasn't that it's impossible to branch backstab on an enforcer, or even to get master skills.  It was the desire for sparring to be de-emphasized since the plateau of 'sparring ready advancement', even being higher than it was before, was just not that fun to push past.

As for stupid shit, I'm afraid that things like 'stilt lizard sparring' and such are not you being forced to do stupid shit.  It's a mechanic workaround to an intended problem.  You aren't forced into doing the mechanic workaround, you've just prioritized something so high that you're willing to do said things.  By that classification, 'stupid shit' will always be done the moment that it's found as another mechanic workaround to the same intended problem.

Every person who rolls an enforcer, or any heavy combat type, or any combat type whatsoever, has the intention and desire for them to become the best they can get to in said combat.  The whole point of rarity is that yes, dangerous shit will be required to actually get there.  In an utterly danger-deprived game and a moving goalpost of what is and isn't acceptable danger, I can understand more and more as a non-player why things had to be made around time-investment-barriers than other things.

As far as the -point of the thread- though, I agree that sparring-heavy clans could use a healthy dose of 'slow your roll' to let people do other more inspiring things that naturally channel danger, progression, excitement, and story into a single seam.

[Synthesis]

So when you said:

I think the point of the entire thread is that it's not "extremely hard."  It's impossible unless you sell your soul to the powergaming gods and go out to do dumb shit.

...I went back to the beginning of the thread to see what its point was.

Seems the point wasn't that it's impossible to branch backstab on an enforcer, or even to get master skills.  It was the desire for sparring to be de-emphasized since the plateau of 'sparring ready advancement', even being higher than it was before, was just not that fun to push past.

As for stupid shit, I'm afraid that things like 'stilt lizard sparring' and such are not you being forced to do stupid shit.  It's a mechanic workaround to an intended problem.  You aren't forced into doing the mechanic workaround, you've just prioritized something so high that you're willing to do said things.  By that classification, 'stupid shit' will always be done the moment that it's found as another mechanic workaround to the same intended problem.

Every person who rolls an enforcer, or any heavy combat type, or any combat type whatsoever, has the intention and desire for them to become the best they can get to in said combat.  The whole point of rarity is that yes, dangerous shit will be required to actually get there.  In an utterly danger-deprived game and a moving goalpost of what is and isn't acceptable danger, I can understand more and more as a non-player why things had to be made around time-investment-barriers than other things.

As far as the -point of the thread- though, I agree that sparring-heavy clans could use a healthy dose of 'slow your roll' to let people do other more inspiring things that naturally channel danger, progression, excitement, and story into a single seam.

Once again, you missed the point.

My point isn't about enforcers in particular.  Enforcers are an example of a general problem.  A problem which, clearly, the thread is about.

[Dar]

What would be a good alternative to the current system?

[Greve]

What would be a good alternative to the current system?

It's hard to come up with any exact solutions without looking at the game's code, but here are the main problems:

1) Getting your attacks dodged is the only way to gain. Blocks and parries do nothing at all

2) Almost nothing can dodge you once you hit the plateau, which occurs unreasonably early

3) Offense is your enemy because any points gained in offense are points you won't gain in weapon skills

4) Unlike all other skills, high levels of combat prowess are gated behind questionable ideals of "exceptionalism"

I could snap off easy-sounding "fixes" to all of that, but if it all changed at the same time, it would probably cause a bunch of problems. Based on my opinion on what's actually feasible, here's what I would see done:

Add blocks and parries to things that can raise skills, with a lower chance. We can keep the thing where your offense needs to be within x of their defense to gain, just so people don't max out on easy opponents. There's just no reason why only a dodge should work. This is the root of the whole problem.

If the above becomes reality, #2 is partially solved, but animals still tend to be really bad at dodging. This could do with a bump across the board. They don't necessarily need to dodge you all the way to master, but it's kind of silly how supposedly deadly wildlife becomes sitting ducks against any middling fighter. Feels more like fighting a walrus than a lion or dinosaur. And I would add something that makes fighting megafauna (meks, mets, etc.) effective for learning. It's silly that the most dangerous beasts are worst for skillgains.

Don't really know what to do with offense. There are so many problems with this skill. Sure, being great with a sword should mean you're also at least decent with an axe; but it shouldn't simultaneously make it way harder to get better with the axe. I liked it better the way it worked on Shadows of Isildur and its successors: offense is just half of your highest weapon skill, and is used when wielding a weapon whose skill you don't have or is lower than your offense value. Can still be used in scripts and skill checks. It'll then represent your general combat experience without interfering significantly with skill progression.

#4 is more of a cultural thing, but Armageddon needs to stop being so frightened of mundane combat. Swinging a sword accurately is very far down on the list of mechanics that facilitate playerkilling. It's just not that perilous to the game if characters can become skilled warriors through normal, realistic means. There's simply no need for these insanely strict regulations and hamfisted notions of exceptionalism.

It makes no sense to hold weapon skills to such a harsh standard that anything above journeyman can somehow be called exceptional, especially when this is applied to no other skills in the game. You can max out things like backstab, archery, poisoning and spells with ease and nobody bats an eye when someone masters literally every relevant skill on their sheet aside from the combat ones. Hell, that almost happens automatically if your character lives for any length of time. Would you say that there's a perilous excess of characters with maxed backstab murdering people left and right? Well, it's both far deadlier than master slashing and much, much easier to achieve. So why the stigma against weapon skills?

[Brytta Léofa]

At one extreme, you could have skills progress based on use (not failure) where the chance of increasing decreases exponentially as your skill increases:

   chance = exp(-current_skill/skillgain_constant)

where skillgain_constant can be tweaked per skill to make that skill advance slower or quicker.

That's giving you roughly the same exceptionality, where the gate is simply a nonlinear function of "number of days sparred." It's not amazingly good (yes, as described fighting chalton for 100 days will make you a master), but it's not the worst thing imaginable.

Probably some kind of hybrid between this and the difficulty-based (fail-based) system would be pretty good. To my brain it makes a lot of sense to make the exponential power dropoff explicit. (That we don't do this is why crafting skills are stupid easy to master.)

[mansa]

...
#4 is more of a cultural thing, but Armageddon needs to stop being so frightened of mundane combat. Swinging a sword accurately is very far down on the list of mechanics that facilitate playerkilling. It's just not that perilous to the game if characters can become skilled warriors through normal, realistic means. There's simply no need for these insanely strict regulations and hamfisted notions of exceptionalism.

It makes no sense to hold weapon skills to such a harsh standard that anything above journeyman can somehow be called exceptional, especially when this is applied to no other skills in the game. You can max out things like backstab, archery, poisoning and spells with ease and nobody bats an eye when someone masters literally every relevant skill on their sheet aside from the combat ones. Hell, that almost happens automatically if your character lives for any length of time. Would you say that there's a perilous excess of characters with maxed backstab murdering people left and right? Well, it's both far deadlier than master slashing and much, much easier to achieve. So why the stigma against weapon skills?

More and more I'm convinced that the weapon skills need to either have their prowess indicators removed or modify to be a different style of indicator, similar to shifting the 'appearance' of master down to advanced, and the advanced down to journeyman.

[John]

Based on proposed solutions, a lot of the playerbase would be happy if master was coded to appear at around the plateau and simply cap weapons skills a few points above the plateau.

Another solution is for players to stop obsessing over seeing master and being happy when they reach the point where they can kill all wildlife in sight. I doubt the vocal GDB posters will let that happen though.

[Eyeball]

More and more I'm convinced that the weapon skills need to either have their prowess indicators removed or modify to be a different style of indicator, similar to shifting the 'appearance' of master down to advanced, and the advanced down to journeyman.

Yeah, great, the Byn, Garrison etc. become clans where everyone is a "master" swordsman after a month. That won't satisfy anyone, it will just feel extremely phony and turn the spar, spar, spar schedule into even more drudgework with even the sense of hope gone.

All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?

[mansa]

All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?

Is the point to defeat all NPCs in the game?

[Eyeball]

All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?

Is the point to defeat all NPCs in the game?

Is the point to slog away in a repetitive schedule for nothing?

[mansa]

All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?

Is the point to defeat all NPCs in the game?

Is the point to slog away in a repetitive schedule for nothing?

What are you trying to accomplish?  What's the end state you're playing for?

[Eyeball]

All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?

Is the point to defeat all NPCs in the game?

Is the point to slog away in a repetitive schedule for nothing?

What are you trying to accomplish?  What's the end state you're playing for?

I'm not going to write a thesis. Bottom line: I want to have fun. Performing an enormously repetitive activity isn't fun after a while, and if there's not even a coded benefit to help with a character's goals, it doesn't help things to be fun later either.

EDIT: but here's one example. Let's say a character dreams of sailing the Silt Sea, but knows there are horrendous creatures there, and that to avoid falling off a skiff, it's necessary to take a certain step which inhibits the ability to defend oneself. Such a character will definitely want to toughen up sufficiently to face the challenge.