Skills should increase faster

[Classclown]

Given the average lifespan of pcs, it should take less time to skill up.
It shouldn't take more than an ig year for even a casual to max out their skills. All of them. Combat to Crafting and all between. You would still have to practice, just not as long.
Wouldn't that be more of a pk challenge, if everyone's skills are high? Armor and weapon choices, class/subclass bonuses would all matter more.

[Trevalyan]

Given the average lifespan of pcs, it should take less time to skill up.
It shouldn't take more than an ig year for even a casual to max out their skills. All of them. Combat to Crafting and all between. You would still have to practice, just not as long.
Wouldn't that be more of a pk challenge, if everyone's skills are high? Armor and weapon choices, class/subclass bonuses would all matter more.

I'd say you could manage to max out crafting skills inside a year, IF you have the resources to do so. As for maxing out combat, your character might never hit peak combat. Even if you spar constantly in your training schedule and train every single skill.

Besides which, I think most of the true PK challenge revolves around certain abilities and powers (like magic) that not all classes can access by definition.

[LindseyBalboa]

Given the average lifespan of pcs, it should take less time to skill up.
It shouldn't take more than an ig year for even a casual to max out their skills. All of them. Combat to Crafting and all between. You would still have to practice, just not as long.
Wouldn't that be more of a pk challenge, if everyone's skills are high? Armor and weapon choices, class/subclass bonuses would all matter more.

if anyone can easily achieve combat mastery in a short amount of time, to be competitive it becomes a requirement to achieve combat mastery in a short amount of time. a short amount of real life time invested is more easily rationalized as acceptable for play and there is less room for characters to deviate from that goal through death or distraction.

if achieving combat mastery takes the investment of a real life year, a range of skills are left represented even if every player on arm is attempting to achieve combat mastery. characters will die during the process, players will get bored and do other things, people training at different consistencies will find compounding differences in results as time goes on.


I'd like to suggest a system for off-screen training for combat characters.
I have absolutely no problem with making things easier for crafters in any way but I don't play them so it's not my conversation.

Universally award a certain number of combat fails (chances to skill up not guaranteed skill raises) per real life day to combat tier PCs.

- heavy combat gets more, medium less than heavy, light less than medium.
      -a good split feels like 20, 15, 10, leaving a heavy combat pc very likely to have gotten a skill raise that day.

- skill receiving fails should be selectable. if i designed it:
      -weapon skill + 2 combat skills: heavy,
      -weapon skill + 1 combat skill: medium,
      -weapon skill or combat skill: light.

- this would not affect skill timers; meaning a daily player could additionally log in and do their daily training and receive the same results they receive now.
      -or they could sit in a tavern because they got their 'morning training session' in already.

Off-screen training needs to balance two things:

- don't punish any players or leave them feeling punished by the changes

- be good for the game

I believe this satisfies both requirements.

[Night Queen]

I think this would probably kill the game, I've seen people complaining about it being quiet, while plot churns and storms around them, because they just don't log on much themselves - which is kinda sad. There's actually been a lot going on but these people just logged in at the wrong time.

A lot of it's about timing, and a lot of RP only happens by those special little chance encounters and coincidences, some of which wouldn't happen if people didn't have as much reason to go explore and do stuff. It'd just be dead air, people logging on now and then to update their skills, then heading to a tavern occasionally. I've seen MUDs that are not RP-focused that are like that, and they're very boring - great for casually doing stuff, sure! But completely bland, very little that goes on... I don't think most people would like the end result of going down that path. There's already a lot of MUDs that have done stuff like this and they are very dreary places... If Armageddon became just another MUSH it would be kind of a cultural vandalism when there's nothing really like it leaft. It's more a simulation of a real world than a soap opera, kinda.

- Discourages taking risks, discourages adventure, discourages the potential for those accidental fun stories that Armageddon shines on creating, that adventure and risk are important to help create

- Discourages exploring when you can get maxed out without leaving the designated cheese-eating room

- Increases the amount of people with maxed or a-few-steps-away-from-max skills from just idling, when an important part of the process that makes skills valuable is the chance to die while trying to get them - not just from combat, but also stuff like failing climb and how other skills force people into dangerous places or conflict - it means people can get their skills without the chance, like Brokkr said, to be able to kill them. It would be just awful cheese to have people hiding in their clan cocoons until they come out the wider world with everything boosted up... This is already a big problem with some types of sponsored roles!

- Devalues the characters that otherwise might stand out, reduces the dramatic feeling of the game, kills the atmosphere - the end result would be other MUDs that make it easy for everyone to get skills and everyone ends up gods and it's very boring... The challenge is part of the fun

 The unique stuff is what brings people back. The unique stuff is why this place still has regular 30+ players while every other RP mud is struggling, dying, or has moved away from RP entirely and doesn't resemble a realistic virtual world anymore at all, to just become stuff like suggested where everything is given out on a MUSH-like OOC basis instead of earned by the character's actions, which actually ironically turns it more into a skills-focused grind fest instead (I've tried both, and anyone that's tried the tabletop style online too knows that people start to just doing the minimum to get their points), just changing the way it's done, idle to victory, a suffocation of the game by pillows - The chance for dying or players to kill you is an IMPORTANT part of the excitement... Otherwise it's just another game it'd just be the same as the boring low-RP MUDs, and this game would LOSE players.

A few people said now don't change it, and I think that's because how it is is actually great: It's not made so no one dies, but that's kind of the point... It's what makes it an adventure when you know a character has survived the crazy stuff their friends fell to. I do think weapon skills seem to be so slow to be actually broken at high end but that can probably be made more reasonable without destroying the whole game world, as a few people said now, everything else seems to be pretty reasonable because it already got redone to make people start with a reasonable skill boost already



The biggest argument against this is you can't die while you are logged out, so there's no reason why combat skills should be going up while someone is logged out, since the one thing that makes it fair on everyone is you get the same chances per hour as everyone else
- incentivizing staying logged out adds a lot of dark patterns that encourage bad behavior (and the best thing with this stuff is to try from the offset have it so that code encourages RP

Staff probably do need to make sure that people have reasons to leave their wagons/estates/walled waterslides though, and build that more often into areas and lore instead of giving everyone everything they need with no danger to them (WHEN SO MUCH OF THE GAME IC IS ABOUT ACCESS TO FOOD AND WATER AND SO HAVING REASONS TO TALK TO THE OTHERS THAT NEED TO EAT AS WELL!), you do have a point there though - I think in a few cases people made pretty obvious and avoidable mistakes when building clans There should also be more nudges if players hide away - so it's not just a staff oversight here, I remember - and appreciating it at the time - getting told at one point we were not seen enough in public, and need to be out there making stories and waves with the new players instead of being invisible

I remember when Hestia made role calls she mentioned wanting nobles to be seen publicly, that seemed cool - staff don't seem to approve at all of just killing people for no reason, so I think part of peoples' worries might be the vision of how the game used to be sticking with people, even if the times have really moved on a bit for the better (to the point Armaddict kept saying he wishes there were more people were killing people more, lol!)

Same problem with offline messaging - encourages people to stay in those wagons, not log on, do plots-by-email basically

[Classclown]

The point of the game isn't skilling up. The point of the game is roleplaying. You can still hunt, fight, craft, steal, whatever at master level. If you only do those things to skill up, you're missing the point. We're roleplaying people's lives. Experienced fighters don't stop fighting once they've reached the pinnacle of their training. They keep fighting or do something else. Throw a party, go on an expedition that you coordinate with people, or whatever else your imagination can come up with. The Known is a big place to explore.

I don't think it's fair that someone like me, with a lot of free time, can theoretically skill up quicker than someone with a family and full time job with limited playing time, either. You would still have to practice, like I said, just less. A year is a decent amount of time to get your training rp, complete with music montage if you have access to some 80's music.

[Night Queen]

If you haven't done any roleplay for the "skilling up" (which sounds so gamey) your character should not have those skills, it removes the whole point of RP (also seen characters abuse the skills they get from sponsored roles too, the reopening of the Tan Muark a few years ago was a great example of that where they had boosts that didn't really make sense for their role and ended up going around playing trying to be famous hero warriors but they didn't have any RP prior to that they were just showing up out of nowhere and being the center of attention - and in the end, using those skills just to bodyguard other sponsored roles)

Part of the RP is seeing a character starting out from nothing (I really enjoy the start of a new character I've found, I don't get these people who are implying that isn't one of the most fun times) and the journey (and the danger on that journey which is a big point, even Byn training has dangers), but when it's just thrown on characters without reason, the story becomes about throwing all these randomly perfect characters around instead, and like in the case of the Tan Muark it seemed embarrassing to be part of a plotline involving them because you knew that these tiny powerhouses were just amazing like that because they'd been made like that on paper, there was no story to it

[Inks]

God no. It's already fast enough.

[Tailong]

If you haven't done any roleplay for the "skilling up" (which sounds so gamey) your character should not have those skills, it removes the whole point of RP (also seen characters abuse the skills they get from sponsored roles too, the reopening of the Tan Muark a few years ago was a great example of that where they had boosts that didn't really make sense for their role and ended up going around playing trying to be famous hero warriors but they didn't have any RP prior to that they were just showing up out of nowhere and being the center of attention - and in the end, using those skills just to bodyguard other sponsored roles)

Part of the RP is seeing a character starting out from nothing (I really enjoy the start of a new character I've found, I don't get these people who are implying that isn't one of the most fun times) and the journey (and the danger on that journey which is a big point, even Byn training has dangers), but when it's just thrown on characters without reason, the story becomes about throwing all these randomly perfect characters around instead, and like in the case of the Tan Muark it seemed embarrassing to be part of a plotline involving them because you knew that these tiny powerhouses were just amazing like that because they'd been made like that on paper, there was no story to it

While at times, the grind is very real, but people should be using this early training to develop and flesh out the character. I love this time, experimenting with the personality, whatever.

This should also be what karma could be used for, to avoid part of the grind, depending on what you want out of the character.

[Trevalyan]

While at times, the grind is very real, but people should be using this early training to develop and flesh out the character. I love this time, experimenting with the personality, whatever.

This should also be what karma could be used for, to avoid part of the grind, depending on what you want out of the character.

That's certainly what I do. Karma is already used for a very similar purpose, whether as part of rolecalls to boost particular characters, or more generally for the Byn/ militia early starts. However, such boosts are likely not offered to your standard desert elf or Touched: partly because those types don't need boosts as badly, but perhaps partly to steer people towards the cities for RP.

[Classclown]

Coded skill level shouldn't matter except to facilitate roleplay and shouldn't be a focus. You can easily roleplay the grind even if you have a coded master level. Either make it easier to skill up quickly or take away the age penalties for rolling younger characters and let us play actual green characters where it makes sense to take years to be good. Let characters be 13 again. A green 30 year old hunter/crafter/fighter is not realistic unless switching professions.

[mansa]

Combat skills in ArmageddonMUD are designed to grow like this:

(click for a bigger image)

There are a few reasons why it's not a linear growth pattern:
a) It's harder to fail the skill when you're getting better and better at it.
b) Skills never degrade over time - so once you hit a certain proficiency, you need to find harder and more difficult challenges to progress.
c) The game is primarily designed for "low level" characters - there is no end-game play for "high level" characters.


To expand on point c:
Balder's Gate 3 recently came out, and it locks the character progression to max at level 12.  Level 13 characters start to become "overpowered" with their abilities and spells and the game itself is not designed to provide a challenge for that difficulty level.

In relation to ArmageddonMUD - there is a cap of coded skills and abilities, as well as political power and influence.  Your character will become too powerful for the interactions that the game is designed to play out.  At some point, your powerful character will need a dedicated staff member to play the world surrounding them and manually manipulate the world to show the power and influence that your character has obtained.

This expands to the skills and spells that are coded in the game.  There comes a point where the implemented world cannot offer a challenge to highly skilled characters.  A recent example is where a highly skilled criminal is captured and put into the Allanak arena, and after throwing all the arena creatures at the criminal character, that criminal character defeated them all.  In order to actually execute that criminal, staff members had to manually intercede to have the game world react accordingly - which was not possible using the game code.


So, to summarize again:
The game world is not implemented to offer a challenge to extremely high skilled characters.
Using D&D levels, the game world is designed as a play area for characters between the levels of 1 and 10.

[Windstorm]

Mansa's post above is super insightful and interesting. Great perspective offered.

It's important I think when one gets to a certain "level" also to use that sort of power judiciously and be conscious of not over-wielding it. When you've hit level 11, which is probably pretty rare, I feel like your job is mostly to make RP for others (almost in the vein of a sponsored role), and not necessarily steal the spotlight in every instance even when it's probably within one's power to.

The slow rate of skill gain sort of regulates this. If everyone's a boss monster there are no boss monsters. But there should be. Sometimes they represent the world in ways that it needs to be represented - without need for staff spoofing up an NPC to do it. Power being in (hopefully) responsible players' hands instead of staff is, I think, part of the ideal here, and one that I like.

[Classclown]

Athletes who are the best don't stop playing because they keep winning. The game world is what we make it. Who cares if your character is maxed out? That just means you use other means to get that powerful fighter or magicker. We would be the challenge. Our characters, which is where the focus should be. Open up higher ranks within clans, expand what we can do. Add more powerful challenges. I'm tired of hearing oh we can't do that because it's always been this way. If you don't adapt and grow, you grow stagnant and die.

[Windstorm]

I don't disagree with what you wrote.

But I think the larger point, most concisely, that Mansa was trying to make is that the world isn't really coded or prepared for everybody to be a max-skills warrior. Everything would break.

Even now when someone gets to that point it requires adjustment and micromanagement by the staff, and (in my opinion!) awareness and responsibility on the part of the player.

If combat skills developed faster or it was easy to get to high skills with them the results would be pretty chaotic in this way. It couldn't really be accounted for en masse.

[Lizzie]

I'll go ahead and take the polar opposite perspective:

Anyone who thinks skills should increase because characters die so quickly, should stop playing characters who die so quickly.

Those of us who consistently play long-lived characters would have nothing to look forward to if we skill-gained quickly, and then plots slowed down, or our bosses died/stored, or our minions died/stored.

Knowing that my character isn't maxed out yet means during slow times, I can always try making a new purple-dyed djellabah while standing on one foot, drunk, using a crow-bar for a tool, in the middle of a desert storm at the edge of the silt sea (y'know, to guarantee failure).

Although I (personally) keep thinking that I'm risk-averse and that's why I have long-lived characters, it turns out - I'm really not. I take lots of risks that put my character in precarious situations, or make acquaintance with people who could easily become powerful, dangerous enemies.  My PCs are assassinated more often than they're killed by random things, and I've been playing for 20 years.

The higher the risk, the higher the chance that you won't skill up. Them's the breaks. Take different risks, or reduce your risks, or eliminated one or two risks entirely. Make friends in high places to create risk for your enemies before your enemies can create risk for you. Play the political game, or the social game, or the socio-political game.

Make characters who others want to protect and keep safe. Make characters who are worthy of keeping alive. And then you can take your time skilling up, and have something to do during the days, weeks, even RL months when everyone you know is dead, stored, or on vacation.

[Riev]

As I play a lot of Artisans (despite not liking to play artisans!), I like that there are people who can squash me. Its a challenge to justify taking my fancy-pants artistry into a sparring ring to take a few bruises.

As I play a lot of Bynners (and I love the Byn), an IC year of 'decent' training puts you at a point where if you die ... you earned it.

I'm on the Mansa-side of things that the game world isn't built for high-powered combat or magick characters. I've seen staff burn out because SOMEONE has to be watching Samos at all times in order to make sure he 1) doesn't murder all of Allanak on Accident and 2) is still scary powerful for being that role in public.



If the goal is to "not be worried about critters", I suggest fighting them and running away until you learn to fight them better. Or stop headbutting bahamets.

[mansa]

I've witnessed powerful characters in which they were crim-flagged in Allanak, and then killed every single NPC soldier in their path from the Bazaar to the Labyrinth. This was not just a single NPC in every room, but groups of soldiers as well.

And these criminal characters would do it constantly - so much that the staff had to step in and implement a script that would load NPC soldiers "out of nowhere" to run into the room and assist with the combat against the criminals.


And it becomes a delicate balance at this point:
* How do you set NPC soldiers so that they do not immediately kill newly created thieves, because their skills are set to combat against high-powered criminals?
* How do you protect non-criminal characters against criminal characters, if the criminal characters can easily kill the NPC guards?   Within the world - very rich non-criminal characters should be able to afford many of the best guards but often are told by staff they can only have one or even zero NPC guards.


All of these examples are the downstream impacts of having player characters whose combat skills are extremely high.

It's not the opinion that "#nochanges'.  It's the opinion that the current game balance would be extremely upset, and to rebalance it after a change like that - to rebalance it for a challenging and fun game is out-of-scope for the time/effort/skill of the current staff team.

[Cordon]

I've witnessed powerful characters in which they were crim-flagged in Allanak, and then killed every single NPC soldier in their path from the Bazaar to the Labyrinth. This was not just a single NPC in every room, but groups of soldiers as well.

And these criminal characters would do it constantly - so much that the staff had to step in and implement a script that would load NPC soldiers "out of nowhere" to run into the room and assist with the combat against the criminals.


And it becomes a delicate balance at this point:
* How do you set NPC soldiers so that they do not immediately kill newly created thieves, because their skills are set to combat against high-powered criminals?
* How do you protect non-criminal characters against criminal characters, if the criminal characters can easily kill the NPC guards?   Within the world - very rich non-criminal characters should be able to afford many of the best guards but often are told by staff they can only have one or even zero NPC guards.


All of these examples are the downstream impacts of having player characters whose combat skills are extremely high.

It's not the opinion that "#nochanges'.  It's the opinion that the current game balance would be extremely upset, and to rebalance it after a change like that - to rebalance it for a challenging and fun game is out-of-scope for the time/effort/skill of the current staff team.

One idea that comes to mind is increasing strength of soldier spawns, spawns based on location. First wave high flee probability Second wave archers, third the tanks' with the income of the tanks' Gates lock and city locks down if in extreme points. Going into the city should be a death trap for the savages (or close to it) I.M.O.
To clairify about the 'lock down' RP wise. most Vnpc would had fled the streets knowing the archers are out and letting loose. shop keeps close up and protect their establishment. Limits places for PC to go, increasing that 'kill box' potential soldiers with psionic abilities would quickly create in a massive city.

[Lotion]

If skills increase faster then it should be done in a way where people who have high wisdom still can max out much faster and people with low wisdom will still max out much much slower.

[Nacria]

It would be nice if most of the world was not gated behind combat and skill checks. Like do I really need to blow 500 hours on dummy training just to survive the grey forest? What about the ride skill? The pace of improvement (not immediately falling off) is infuriatingly slow.

[Fredd]

You could put higher weight on Wisdom if you want to learn fast.

[whengravityfails]

Don't dumpstat wisdom and you'll learn at a much quicker rate. There's no reason to change anything regarding skill gain.

[Kavrick]

Don't dumpstat wisdom and you'll learn at a much quicker rate. There's no reason to change anything regarding skill gain.

It's a little hard to dumpstat something when there are only four stats and they're all pretty useful.

[dumbstruck]

Don't dumpstat wisdom and you'll learn at a much quicker rate. There's no reason to change anything regarding skill gain.

I don't dumpstat wisdom. After 15 years of the same grind, I'm tired of the time it takes. I wish it took less.

[Trevalyan]

Like do I really need to blow 500 hours on dummy training just to survive the grey forest?

Dummy training is aptly named. Your improvement would be much more dramatic with sparring against PCs, never mind actual combat. You should only be using training dummies as part of guard drills, or when your character is justifying solo training with no one else around.