Feedback: Proposed Skill Changes that could Impact You

[Inks]

Please discuss the proposed changes here, not other changes you want. There are already subjects open for all the other things being talked about. Enforcer is a great and extremely deadly class already, and the throw is not hard to branch at all (i.e it branches pretty low). Also I hate the way you do (lol) after elves and crossbows. I like both these things.


Not being gdb poleese here but I just want whatever changes that are going to happen, happen so I can plan my next pc, hah. There is literally a subject for all the unrelated stuff open on the first page.

[Greve]

Honestly, I don't think the enforcer will be affected much. The big selling point of this class, aside from sap/backstab, is its lineup of all-master combat skills. Infiltrators don't even come close to competing for that. The gap in parry skill alone makes a seriously big difference. Enforcers (and the other heavy combat classes) also have better skillgain chances than the light combat classes which, on top of the higher starting levels, makes you a solid warrior way, way faster than an infiltrator.

The enforcer's crappy stealth is almost kind of irrelevant. There are two "types" of stealth:

1) Evading detection from people who are scanning. It's what you use to spy on people, to shadow people around, to rifle through backpacks in a tavern, etc. Obviously enforcers suck at this, just like raiders, so it's not something that you ever really think about. Playing an enforcer, you're never going to put yourself in a situation where you wonder if that guy can see you.

2) Using the binary hidden state to capitalize on the various bonuses you get from being hidden. I'm trying to be sufficiently vague here, but enforcers can become perfectly adequate at utilizing this aspect of stealth in the right environment. You're not gonna fool anyone with solid scan, but that doesn't matter if all you need is a five-second window of "are you currently hidden? If yes, win!"

But that's because enforcers have the combat skills that allow them to ignore #1. Infiltrators - and certainly miscreants - do not. They need to feel pretty confident that they won't get spotted because they can't make the big dick moves that a skilled enforcer can. Having a savage backstabbin' arm isn't always enough if you can't tussle with a couple of soldiers for fifteen seconds afterwards.

That said, I always felt that it was thematically off-putting that enforcers were the best at sap and backstab. While the skills are fundamentally similar, there are some key differences. I think enforcers should be the best at sap and infiltrators the best at backstab. Sap, for one thing, does not kill you outright, so someone using it will need to be able to hold their own for some time against potential attackers while they finish the job. Backstab is more of an actual killing move, and one that you often want to pair with poisons, for which the enforcer has no aptitude while the infiltrator does. It just seems more right in my book that enforcers are the ones who use sap while infiltrators are the ones who use backstab; but the fact that infiltrators aren't as good at it as assassins were is kind of a bummer. Doubly so when they're also not that good at stealth, scan, poisoning, and frankly almost everything else that comes with the assassin package.

In my experience, backstab is the less effective of the two ambush skills, except for the fact that sap ideally leaves you with an unconscious target who must subsequently be finished off while backstab ideally (but far less often) leaves you with a straight-up dead target. Backstab, even at its highest potential with all the bells and whistles, is by no means a consistent one-hit kill. Fully optimized sap is very much a consistent one-hit knockout, you just have to deal with the fact that the job isn't done yet after you've knocked them out--whether you meant to kill them or merely rob them.

So given that enforcers have the full lineup of warrior-level combat skills and a class-defining gotcha skill in sap, which infiltrators don't even master, and which is often more effective than backstab, I think enforcers are just fine. There's just that one can of worms where you're just about forced to give up your subclass because actually branching sap/backstab is effectively impossible for 98% of characters. That's a discussion we've had a number of times, though, and Brokkr has not been persuaded to see the problem with state of weapon skillgains, so maybe the need to spend your subclass on a skill that your main class technically already gets is simply the price you pay to play an enforcer. This, if anything, is why it's unpopular. It means you can't really play an enforcer/magicker or take any serious wilderness subclass. At the end of the day, sap is a little overpowered anyway and I don't know if it's good for the game to have these OHK skills in the first place.

[LindseyBalboa]

this is vaguely off topic but people keep saying enforcers have better backstab than infiltrator. both have master.

is this just people guessing, or do people have access to the code somehow, or did staff say this...?

[mansa]

this is vaguely off topic but people keep saying enforcers have better backstab than infiltrator. both have master.

is this just people guessing, or do people have access to the code somehow, or did staff say this...?

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,53783.msg1012985/topicseen.html#msg1012985

Second, as a skill moves away from the competency that is best at it (heavy combat for combat/weapon skills, heavy merchantile for crafting/barting type skills, mixed for survival skills) the maximum goes down (and generally the starting skill level to a certain base level).  So lets take piercing weapons, which is a skill that every class can obtain.  Heavy combat has the highest maximum skill level, at master, and have a higher starting skill level than any other competency classes have.  Light combat has the next highest maximum skill level at advanced, which is less than heavy combat have, and have the same starting skill level as every other class that obtains the skill excluding heavy combat obviously.  Mixed has the next highest maximum skill level at advanced, which is less than light combat.  Light merchantile has the next highest maximum skill level at journeyman, which is less than mixed.  Heavy merchantile has the lowest maximum skill level at journeyman, which is less than light merchantile.

[X-D]

While I agree with most of what Greve says on enforcer. We will not be agreeing on who should get what, It makes far more sense for Sap to be higher on the lower combat class. Backstab is FAR less dependable on the instant down but also is the skill MEANT for killing, While sap is not. And for some of us, the "finish the job part" Just means stealing that pack and keys and getting away.

[GetKanked]

I completely agree with Greve's commentary on Enforcer - numbers won't be affected at all.

At this point I think there's been a lot of good back and forth, I'm interested to see the changes happen (or not) as staff sees fit.  We'll just be retreading the same ground otherwise.

[Greve]

this is vaguely off topic but people keep saying enforcers have better backstab than infiltrator. both have master.

is this just people guessing, or do people have access to the code somehow, or did staff say this...?

Brokkr revealed that once--incidentally in a thread suggesting soldiers get master scan, with which most posters disagreed:

When looking at all this, it is useful to remember that raider maxed "master" archery is better than scout maxed "master" archery, and likewise scout "advanced" hide is better than raider "advanced" hide.

While it doesn't specifically mention backstab, the way the classes are designed makes it obvious that the same goes for that skill.

[Dresan]

Honestly, I don't think the enforcer will be affected much. The big selling point of this class, aside from sap/backstab, is its lineup of all-master combat skills.

Master sap and backstab are their only selling points when you compare it to a class like raider which also has master level combat skills including charge and archery.  The moment you add 1 karma to the mix, enforcers starts to look even worse.

A boosted infiltrator will probably cause the enforcer to become as popular as the infiltrator. And since the current numbers between enforcer and infiltrators are not that far off already ti could be argued its not a big change. 

I think the staff went overboarded when they added such a severe grind to backtab/sap which i feel are the only selling point of this class. Again, i know this is just my opinion, because I feel that the other bonuses the class gets in comparison to raider are just noob traps.

[Greve]

Master sap and backstab are their only selling points when you compare it to a class like raider which also has master level combat skills including charge and archery.  The moment you add 1 karma to the mix, enforcers starts to look even worse.

I don't know about that. The classes are clearly meant for different things. Yes, raider gets the complimentary package of wilderness skills (which mostly just means advanced ride, direction sense and climb; noone's ever going to pick raider for wilderness stealth, and if you care about shit like forage, you can do as you please), but... it doesn't get the "HAHA MANTISHEAD" skills. Is archery good when maxed? Of course it is. We all know. But not as hilariously insane as the two ambush skills, and furthermore, you don't run around inside the city shooting a bow because that's silly. What you do do inside a city is stealth around and knock fuckers out. That's what the enforcer is for. It's right there on the label. I think we all know by now. As I recently made a dodgy edit in my last post to imply, I think that's way stronger than it ought to be. While you occasionally hear of someone getting shot to shit in the desert, most meaningful play takes place in the cities, even in this day and age.

If anything, enforcers benefit more from karma subclasses than raiders do, if you discount the fact that enforcers almost can't take an elementalist subclass. With a karma subclass, enforcers get to start with backstab and poisoning and possibly - I don't really know - higher stealth caps (through slipknife/cutpurse/whatever?) than the class gets inherently. Meanwhile, the raider, which already has the wilderness basics covered, is more free to take a cheeky magic subclass. But there's no mundane subclass that makes you go "this is my jam!" for the raider, right? There's nothing in there that lets you bypass a stupid branching issue. Raiders start with their gotcha skill: archery. While elementalist subclasses are poweful, you don't necessarily want your character to be one of those.

Enforcers are, if we're being quite honest, meant for the 'rinth and similar environs. Let's be frank here. You play this class if you want to be the big badass who goes around turning the supposed might of the Guild (or its local equivalent) into reality. While you're not prohibited from using the class for other things, that's clearly what it's really meant for. Your city-stealth and almost-forced-to-be-mundane class is not going to sap mounted people in the desert or sell shirts in Luir's. We're talking about a class clearly meant for city play, with a predetermined bent towards the criminal spectrum. This makes sense, design-wise.

A boosted infiltrator will probably cause the enforcer to become as popular as the infiltrator. And since the current numbers between enforcer and infiltrators are not that far off already ti could be argued its not a big change.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Does "a boosted infiltrator" mean that it gets its stealth skills bumped, as per Brokkr's suggestion, or that it gets the highest possible backstab skill, as I suggested? In case of the former, I suspect that infiltrator will become the class of choice for those who wish to play a city-elf with respectable backstab, and the comparatively few who think that they can dabble in skullduggery with not-really-optimal backstab and no elven agility to skyrocket their stealth. In the latter case, it will become the first choice of anyone who wishes to play the archetypical cutthroat, regardless of race. It won't be any better than the assassin of old, though; and while there were some legendary ones, I think they were sufficiently far between not to worry about. Mainly because it's just really hard to make serious, game-hurting use of the ambush skills if you can't subsequently utilize master parry and whatnot to survive the attempt.

I think the staff went overboarded when they added such a severe grind to backtab/sap which i feel are the only selling point of this class. Again, i know this is just my opinion, because I feel that the other bonuses the class gets in comparison to raider are just noob traps.

I agree very much with that. It probably comes down to the fact that sap and backstab (but especially sap) are so comically powerful that there was a genuine concern about giving anyone easy access to the ambush skills. I consider it an oversight that you can circumvent the severe grind by simply taking one of several subclasses, some of which don't even require karma, but that is what it is. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be skills that could take someone from perfectly alive and in good health to dead and done in a literal instant, and in that same perfect game, there wouldn't be a command that removes you from combat in the room in a literal instant. It's just one of those things.

[Dar]

In all honesty. Gating anything behind 'grinding' is the wrong way to go.  Understandably some artificial task that delays the journey of a character from a harmless mewling to a scary badass is necessary.  But grinding as a concept is probably more harmful then beneficial to the game. In my opinion anyway.

[Dar]

I want elves to be significantly boosted personally. Switching miscreant stealth skills severely diminishes human and dwarf effectiveness, while elves can still pull it off due to their agility. I think that's a-okey.

[Greve]

The silly grind is a relic of the fact that combat skillgains are still gated exclusively behind having opponents dodge you, which largely stops happening after a certain point that far precedes the desired level. Staff has never shown a willingness to acknowledge that this is the case.

Elves are fine in a vacuum. They get absurd bonuses to stealth and associated skills. What scuttles the race is the fact that strength matters far too much in combat, so anytime it comes to blows, elven PCs just can't really compete. If your goal is to rob people in the Gaj, the race is fine. Anything more? Bah. If elven combat PCs were worth playing, we'd see more of them. As it stands, we see literally none. This relegates the race to mindless thievery, which most players find unsatisfying. Where are the deadly elves?

[GetKanked]

There is, almost always, at least an elf in the Byn.  And there are, generally, delf and celf combat types regularly.  People worry too much about being The Best, when generally 'good enough' is the actual mantra that matters in Armageddon.  Yes, you're going to run into someone who [sees through your stealth/ beats you in a fight / has more money than you] or whatever else, but that doesn't mean you're pointless.

[Greve]

But when it happens once every four months, it lends very little substance to the game.

[GetKanked]

It happens far, far, far mroe often than that.

[Dar]

I am of opinion that elven weakness in a fair fight is a very well known fact. Known to any elf that survived puberty. Which means if your elf is fighting fairly 1 vs 1, he is either significantly outmatching his opponent, or he doesn't deserve to procreate.

[Dresan]

Keeping it in the context of the conversation we are having on enforcers.

I think grinding weapon skills in the past worked because you could still learn from newbies or rats, not to mention certain agile critters. All that's changed now, so its not just about the grind, but about being being lucky enough to have opportunities to even get a chance to train. Needing to grind a skill is bad enough, but luck based grinding is even worse.

If you are a rinth based character, that could really be never with turn over rate and available npcs.

The idea that the class needs a subguild to get the class defining skills doesn't make sense and I think it should be looked at to see what could be done to improve the experience. Even if that means switching backstab/sap with infiltrator to better balance the over all classes.


Actually that might work:

• Enforcer switches backstab/sap skill values with infiltrator and the skills become starting skills on enforcer. Perhaps add watch or hunt to enforcers or gains low level poison skill
• Both Backstab/sap become gated behind parry or throw on infiltrators.
• Miscreant switches  poison with infiltrator. Perhaps also loses blowgun skill
• Miscreant switches steal with Pilfer

Without touching stealth levels all the classes look a lot better like this, low master backstab on an enforcer with high combat skills is no joke especially with them being starting skills, not to mention the best chance to survive failed attempts. Where as full backstab on infiltrator makes it a tempting choice and brings it a bit closer to old assassin despite a need to train a bit more then the enforcer, while its lower level stealth and combat potential keeps it in check. Meanwhile Miscreant keeps its superior stealth but loses some of its theft potential and some of its deadliness. 

[stoicreader]

This response is slightly outside the scope of this thread, so I might repost elsewhere.

There is a RULE when offering selections to someone: Only do it in "threes"

So you can choose archtype: Criminal, City, or Wilderness
Once you choose that you can pick class:
Merchant, survival, or combat

Having 5 (instead of three) means that in order to make a decision, you get hyper focused on the skills. And in my opinion, that's the wrong place for players to focus. It is best players focus on RP, not skills.  By focusing on RP, the players (particularly the new players), get aligned with the spirit of the game: And RP game, not a hack and slash.

Presently, our setup orients the new player into focusing on the wrong things and it causes the experienced player to select subclasses to Meta the skills, and have an advantage code wise, over newer players.

By going from 5 to 3 selections per no class sucks, all of them are bad-ass, and each player will enjoy increased utility and play-ability for their characters. I know you like your options, but suck it up butter cup, this is better for the game.

Combat type: great at combat, okay at survival, bad at craft skills.
Survival type: Okay at combat, good at survival, okay craft skills.
Merchant type: Bat at combat, okay at survival, great at craft skills.

Survival skills are: Sneak, hide, steal, pick, hunt, skin, forage, food grebbing, etc...

[Dresan]

This response is slightly outside the scope of this thread, so I might repost elsewhere.

Yes, please pose this somewhere else. The entire point of this thread is provide feedback to staff on coded changes to classes.

[ABoredLion]

I've talked a bit about this in the discord, but I don't know if you look over there for this sort of commentary. I don't want to read all seven pages of this, so excuse me if I rehash any points already made, or staff's position on this has diverged and the question has become something else.

I played constantly during the old days of full guilds, and was really disappointed by the change when you all worked together to separate them out into classes. I pay a lot of attention to the skill effects and try to infer what staff are going for when they make changes overall to skill levels or what is allowed within each class.

I'm mostly going to talk about stalker/infiltrator/raider in this case, as I have the most experience with these, and given the game is centered around a post-apocalyptic desert world, and surviving within that desert world, I suspect you will always see the majority of the playerbase playing these three. This is especially always going to be the case where any sorts of mages are concerned, as you already made the mages a subguild, and that means for any survival ability at all, they are forced to play in these without being willing to dedicate many hours each session for play to accommodate the demand of resources.

The change from the old guilds to these classes was a straight across nerf to both 'guilds' that had combat and stealth. Staff wanted to separate out ranger's maximum utility and also fantastic stealth/scan, on top of it's great combat skills. They also, in the process, wanted to separate assassin's high stealth/scan from its high damage dealing potential abilities. This might seem long winded, but it matters because looking at where we were is important as the game's setting has not massively changed, and much of the game is designed around these things.

For the sake of this argument I'm going to ignore any talk of 'starting point' changes of previous guilds/current classes, or the branching points, because neither bothered me in the old days, so they certainly aren't a 'beneficial change' to me now.

Stalker/Miscreant were the two new classes that essentially replaced the wilderness/city stealth-utility function of the old ranger/assassin. You took away two weapon types from the ranger stand-in, or forced players to go infiltrator and drop their stealth/scan. The loss from going miscreant compared to assassin was massive. The world hasn't changed overly much for requirements of a class to survive or do certain things in their given environment, but their skill set has.

Giving Infiltrator/Scout the high sneak is great for combat people. All this change is going to do is send people that way. The majority of your playerbase is playing a wilderness class. It's Armageddon. That's the world you live in, most people are going to play what makes sense ICly. So what happens when you inevitably force people to play scout more by giving them the max stealth? Now, all stalker has is more manipulation skills, and...scan? So few people are going to pick that in comparison to Scout that you'll just have this 'issue' all over again on the other end. Few people will be playing the builds with the needed scan (only stalker essentially) to scan-see the mass of scouts (not willing to deal with the loss of both stealth and combat to get it) that it creates a sort of feedback loop where more people play stealthies and get away with stuff.

If miscreants are an issue, because their combination of high stealth + manipulation, that's going to come down to a few things. Players should accept being stolen from at times. Not constantly, and not indefinitely as it may happen currently, but it can happen. Thieves should have actual danger of being caught even if they're a stupid high agility elf with high skill. There should be timers put in place to how fast you can attempt pick-pocketing. I don't know how you'd do it, but if a guy is sitting close to you and rifling through all of your things over and over, obviously that's bad. Address this on a player basis, not by attempting changes.

If your hope is to bring more people to playing infiltrator/scout instead of miscreant/stalker, while exchanging their stealth skills will do it, it won't fix a thing. It'll make people see even fewer stealth types doing stealthy things. More people will be complaining.

I don't agree with what you're attempting, but if you wanted that 'balance', you could take away maxed stalker/miscreant scan and give those to the one-up combat builds, but you're just going to essentially recreate the same issue. It will be to a lesser extent with the scan-flip though. At that point, the end result is still going to be no one's really playing those classes you nerfed, and you wind up with everyone playing infiltrator/scout.

It's a world thing. And considering some people come to the game to play stealthy fighters, the more you diminish these things, the more you lose them. I think it's better to stop nerfing classes because you don't want everyone playing them, and focus on how to make other classes better without impacting the popular class. Let people gravitate away for good reasons, not negative input.

Skills are not a 'resource' that staff need to be spare with. You have an infinite number in your bag of code. So, instead of 'taking' from anyone, why not just boost some classes or add skills to those that encourage more people to spread? This isn't some grand resource balancing act.

[mansa]

So,

Brokkr came into the Discord channel and made some announcements there.

See:
https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49825.msg1066051.html#msg1066051

Classes:
Heavy Combat:
Enforcer:
Reduced "proficiency" required to branch from Bash to Disarm

Raider:
Reduced "proficiency" required to branch from Kick to Disarm





Pilferer:
Steal - Master (high)
Hide - Master
Sneak - Master

Miscreant:
Steal - Master (low)

Infiltrator:
Backstab - Master (high)
Sneak - Ranger Cap
Hide - Ranger Cap

Scout:
Search - Master
Scan - Master
Sneak - Master (old Ranger Cap)
Hide - Master (old Ranger Cap)

Soldier:
Subdue - Master
Scan - Master



0 Karma Subclasses:
Bard: 
Scan - Master       (New Skill Added)

1 Karma Subclasses:
Wastelander:
Scan - Master       (New Skill Added)
Search - Advanced       (New Skill Added)

Rogue:
Search - Advanced       (New Skill Added)

MajorDomo:
Scan - Master       (New Skill Added)



I'll clean this up in a bit.

[Pariah]

Thank god he didn't nerf stalker.

That was all I was worried about was that stalker was gonna get the nerf hammer.

I'm totally cool with extra stuff being added to subguilds.  Some are a bit sparse and more flavor than substance.

[triste]

I am busy AF but will have my app skill picker thing updated by next weekend and post when done.

[najdorf]

A good strategy. Instead of reducing things (stealth), keeping them as is and raising its counter (scan).
Technically it is almost as same, but everyone is happier.

[Halaster]

I am busy AF but will have my app skill picker thing updated by next weekend and post when done.

Thank you!