Skill Gain Alt Stats - Discussion and Feedback

[Halaster]

See this announcement for a new mechanic we're introducing to skill gain timers:  https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60327.0.html

Discuss it as you see fit, though I would like some specific feedback, too.  Specifically:  Do you think any of the skills should have a different secondary stat that affects their timer than what I've listed?  There were a few I could see be something different depending on how you view it.  Note that each skill will only be able to have ONE secondary stat that affects it.

[Lizzie]

See this announcement for a new mechanic we're introducing to skill gain timers:  https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60327.0.html

Discuss it as you see fit, though I would like some specific feedback, too.  Specifically:  Do you think any of the skills should have a different secondary stat that affects their timer than what I've listed?  There were a few I could see be something different depending on how you view it.  Note that each skill will only be able to have ONE secondary stat that affects it.

I -usually- reject the idea of prioritizing stats at all, and let the RNG do it for me. Will this new system make prioritizing more important? Or will it not really affect things at all if you don't prioritize?

[Roon]

It won't make much of a difference. Most skills are easy to raise no matter what. The skills that are hard to raise are hard not because the timer is long but because it's difficult to fail (combat skills) or find opportunities to use the skill at all (some crafts and skills like pick and poisoning where you might just not have the things required to try). Shortening the timer doesn't really matter in any of these cases.

I would have liked for stats - wisdom in particular - to increase the chance to gain in the skills that aren't guaranteed to go up on every failure. Wisdom is a "dumpstat" for combat characters in particular because they quickly reach a point where your skill timer doesn't matter because you just don't bump up against it. And for non-combat characters, it isn't a concern anyway since non-combat skills are generally easy to raise.

If it's a lot of work to include wisdom in the skillgain calculations (which I suspect it is), the next-best thing is to improve the stat's bonuses to perception skills. Shift these down two lines and suddenly there will be characters who have a real reason to care about wisdom, even if those concepts are a little bit niche. The undetectable stealth meta could do with a bit of a foil, if you ask me.

[Bogre]

Am I reading this wrong or is it just making it more OK to dump wisdom?

[shadeoux]

Am I reading this wrong or is it just making it more OK to dump wisdom?

This means that if you're a combat character who "dumpstat's" wisdom, but the secondary stat for specific skills is high, you'll gain faster in those skills.

That is how I took it from that fragment of Halaster's post.

[Lizzie]

I think I'll stick with just not prioritizing. Let the system do what it does, hope for the best and roll with the worst.

[Armaddict]

Am I reading this wrong or is it just making it more OK to dump wisdom?

It means wisdom is still always better for skillgains, and having high wisdom with high secondary stat can get you faster gains than before, but if you dumpstat wisdom in favor of your 'primary' stats, you can see faster gains than dumpstatted wisdom before.  But only in the skills of those stats.

So...kind of?  But Wisdom remains super valuable in terms of skill gains.  You just aren't punished as hard for dumpstatting it.

[CirclelessBard]

There were a few I could see be something different depending on how you view it.

Would it be possible to make a skill have a different secondary stat depending on which one is higher? For example, skinning skill gain being affected by the higher of the character's wisdom or the character's agility. If not, the list seems pretty solid, but I think mixing in some "higher of two" or "highest of three" cases might help with the stat being something different depending on how the skill is viewed.

[shadeoux]

Am I reading this wrong or is it just making it more OK to dump wisdom?

It means wisdom is still always better for skillgains, and having high wisdom with high secondary stat can get you faster gains than before, but if you dumpstat wisdom in favor of your 'primary' stats, you can see faster gains than dumpstatted wisdom before.  But only in the skills of those stats.

So...kind of?  But Wisdom remains super valuable in terms of skill gains.  You just aren't punished as hard for dumpstatting it.

That explanation makes sense now. Appreciate it

[Agent_137]

Right direction. Not far enough imo. Still leaves combat PCs with an impossible climb. But maybe I can finally succeed with a city sneaky now that it won't take forever, especially as a city elf. I just want to be able to do cool stuff without investing 20 days into a temporary pc. Between this and sub guild rework to start higher, and the now-old main guild rework... we're getting there. 

[Bogre]

The other issue with this is that it makes the rich get richer in that those lucking out with high stat rolls will now be even better at life, skills and everything than a character with a crap roll.

[Riev]

Can I just ask what the "problem" was that this is intended to fix, or at least address?

[dumbstruck]

I'm curious why scan is 'wisdom' but 'watch' is agility. Do you require agility to watch someone's face? Or the southern direction? Why should this be the one perception skill that is agility?

Other than that, it seems odd and gamey, but I don't really care either way.

[Windstorm]

After some pause to give it due thought, I still don't like these changes? At all? Lowering the importance of wisdom so more people can just, like, by the stats, be unga bunga cavemen and more easily achieve SWORD MASTA status isn't a good thing.

Maybe this was just misguided if well-intended, possibly towards reducing grind? But the end result at least appears to be a full on negative likely to exacerbate problems, not solve them.

[Agent_137]

Can I just ask what the "problem" was that this is intended to fix, or at least address?

It's in the announcement

The overall goal of this is to help towards making a small reduction in The Grind for most characters.  It also introduces a new dynamic when considering character stats if you are concerned about learning skills more quickly.

[Kavrick]

I generally like anything which lessens the grind, this is cool and flavorful, I enjoy the idea of having it so my character has talent in some skills and not in others. But I will say this does point out a weird flaw that wisdom is just a strange stat. Dump statting and trying to decide your stats is already strange in a game that only has four stats and RNG in character creation. Most rpgs have around 6 stats which gives you more room to decide what to focus and what to lessen, four stats means having one bad stat is still 25% of your stats being low.

Honestly though, I don't know how to fix this, I don't have a suggestion because adding more stats would be huge work, so aside from that, I like this change! Very forward thinking.

[Riev]

Can I just ask what the "problem" was that this is intended to fix, or at least address?

It's in the announcement

The overall goal of this is to help towards making a small reduction in The Grind for most characters.  It also introduces a new dynamic when considering character stats if you are concerned about learning skills more quickly.

So the problem its attacking is "the grind for skills takes too long".

But per the announcement, the only instances where "the grind" takes less time is when you TOTALLY DON'T SUICIDE for high wis and high primary stats. In fact in a couple cases the skill learning is the same or slower. It only serves to benefit in the case where you dump-stat Wisdom but still got a high other stat.

So it really seems to only encourage continuing to dumpstat wisdom because now you're not punished for your choice, or suiciding because if you get high strength + decent wisdom you get a MUCH higher learn rate than before.

I disagree that as presented, it will reduce the grind for anyone but the people who already are willing to game the system to get a combat-oriented character.


That said? Watch and Scan should both be wisdom. I can see watch being on agility, considering if you use it with guard, you'll want high agility to succeed in saving someone. But it doesn't make sense without that explanation.

[Windstorm]

I generally like anything which lessens the grind

I mean I do like agree with this, but this isn't what this particular change is doing.

This particular change is making it so dwarves, giants, and lunkhead humans who chose Wisdom last can grind productively more often.

[Kavrick]

This particular change is making it so dwarves, giants, and lunkhead humans who chose Wisdom last can grind productively more often.

Honestly I kinda wish every race had the same rate of gaining XP. Right now elves are incredibly good because Dex was massively buffed and they learned skills incredibly quickly because of their good wisdom. The combat changes basically made it so Strength = Dexterity when it came to balance, which is good, but the main issue imo was that Wisdom > Endurance. Strength races were paired with Endurance and Dex races paired with Wisdom. This is why towards the end of old Arm's playtime, there were very very few half giants, dwarves and muls compared to before the change.

Also I just think xp gain is more of an ooc advantage, grinding isn't fun, I don't want to have to grind more just because I want to play a different race, that's not even to mention that dwarves, muls and half-giants get the short end of the stick roleplay wise anyway, so anything to make them more bearable is good thing I think.

[roughneck]

I think it's a great.

The only part I disagree with is weapon skills falling under agility. I think they should be strength.

• High agility characters (elves and half-elves) are also higher wisdom characters, this unbalances things in their favour, let's cut the poor dwarves and half-giants a break.
• Agility has a shitload of other skills, including stealth and ranged weapons.
• Charge and trample make no sense in the strength category, they should be traded for weapon skills (there is a reason that horse-jockeys are very small and agile).

Or, maybe, leave slashing and piercing with agility, and chopping and bludgeoning with strength?

[Kavrick]

The only part I disagree with is weapon skills falling under agility. I think they should be strength.

I personally think the easiest and most obvious answer to this is to make it so combat skills scale off strength or agility, depending on which is higher. Otherwise you're honestly blocking a lot of roleplay value behind enforcing 'fighting styles'. You could easily argue that certain fighting styles would be one or the other.

Two handed for example. Two handed swords could be used in a way that is more of a 'dueling' style, which would be agility. But things like hammers, axes and the like could be used in a more brutish way, meaning strength.

Even dual wielding styles could be argued for either strength or agility. Being the quick, flick-wristed dagger wielder or being a maddened, barbarian dual-axe using dwarf.

By making it so the majority of combat skills are agility, it really hurts a lot of the creativity you can have when designing your character. Not to mention what you said, this is another indirect buff to elves, who already had naturally high wisdom. Now, they basically get double the boon to their weapon skill gains, from their high agility, and their high wisdom.

[Halaster]

I'm curious why scan is 'wisdom' but 'watch' is agility. Do you require agility to watch someone's face? Or the southern direction? Why should this be the one perception skill that is agility?

Yeah I wasn't totally sure what to do with watch, happy to change it to wisdom.

[Halaster]

let's cut the poor dwarves and half-giants a break.[/li][/list]

They do get a break with this.  Take a low wisdom, high strength HG.  Their skills (that use strength as a secondary stat) will increase faster than those same stats would under the old method.

[Halaster]

Charge and trample make no sense in the strength category, they should be traded for weapon skills (there is a reason that horse-jockeys are very small and agile).

That makes to me, I'm happy to change those two to agility.

[roughneck]

let's cut the poor dwarves and half-giants a break.[/li][/list]

They do get a break with this.  Take a low wisdom, high strength HG.  Their skills (that use strength as a secondary stat) will increase faster than those same stats would under the old method.

The learning bonus for two-handed and bash would definitely be noticed, but shield-use already gains pretty quickly and the weapon skills are the true holy grail of combat.

It would just make sense of me to either have strength count for weapon skills as well, or have a weapon type or two in the strength category.

But, regardless of my opinion on that (and it is only one person's opinion), I think it's a great design change overall, and I appreciate the engagement. Thanks for responding.

[Kavrick]

It would just make sense of me to either have strength count for weapon skills as well, or have a weapon type or two in the strength category.

I think you could easily argue for blunt and axes to be strength, and have slashing/piercing be agility.

[Tuannon]

Should sap be strength, is a called shot with a kosh a power move? Consensus for or against?

[roughneck]

Should sap be strength, is a called shot with a kosh a power move? Consensus for or against?

I think it could be either, but, Enforcer is the only Master Sap class/subclass (I think), which is thematically a strength priority class, so it makes sense to me from that point to have it a strength skill.

[Armaddict]

Charge and trample make no sense in the strength category, they should be traded for weapon skills (there is a reason that horse-jockeys are very small and agile).

That makes to me, I'm happy to change those two to agility.

Endurance, maybe?  Riding as well for endurance, to be honest.

[flurry]

I'm curious why scan is 'wisdom' but 'watch' is agility. Do you require agility to watch someone's face? Or the southern direction? Why should this be the one perception skill that is agility?

Yeah I wasn't totally sure what to do with watch, happy to change it to wisdom.

Yeah, I was wondering about watch also. I could also see an argument for pairing it with endurance (since you have to maintain your attention) but wisdom is probably the most intuitive choice.

[Windstorm]

grinding isn't fun

I agree and it's part of why I don't like the change.

This isn't reducing grind, which is my problem with it. Just reducing skill timers makes it so players inclined to will.... drumroll.... grind more often, and without any investment in being any smarter. To me this isn't reducing grind, it's encouraging more of it, doubly so if you play a combat role often and take wisdom last.

[Kavrick]

This isn't reducing grind, which is my problem with it. Just reducing skill timers makes it so players inclined to will.... drumroll.... grind more often, and without any investment in being any smarter. To me this isn't reducing grind, it's encouraging more of it, doubly so if you play a combat role often and take wisdom last.

I hadn't really thought about this and I think I understand your point. I guess personally I don't actually tend to stop doing something just because I got a fail in, so I'd feel the effects differently. But I also know I play this game far more than some people do when it comes to hours-per-day, so it might feel bad for people who have less time to play? I'm not sure.

[Lotion]

If off and def have differing stats then this will have a profound impact on the long term gameplay of a very patient twink who focuses heavily on macroefficiency.

[Lotion]

If off and def have differing stats then this will have a profound impact on the long term gameplay of a very patient twink who focuses heavily on macroefficiency.

nevermind, from halaster in discord: [11:17 AM]Halaster: no they don't, right now offense and defense specifically are just wisdom.

[Halaster]

I get the idea of changing chopping and bludgeoning weapons to be str based, but does that then sort of pigeon-hole high strength people to those?  Meaning, we see even more of high-str folks focusing on those and ignoring slashing/piercing?

[Kavrick]

I get the idea of changing chopping and bludgeoning weapons to be str based, but does that then sort of pigeon-hole high strength people to those?  Meaning, we see even more of high-str folks focusing on those and ignoring slashing/piercing?

It's hard to say, I do think generally the better option is to make it so weapon skills use either strength of agi, based on what is higher but I don't know how hard that is to impliment code-wise.

My main concern is that the agility list is more than double the strength list and has a lot of really good stand-outs. Not to mention crafting and sneaky stuff.

I kinda feel bad for people who might want to play a strength race and find that their original niche (being good at combat) has kinda totally been taken over by agi races, along with all the utility.

That aside, I do have a question. How do you perceive Muls, Dwarves and Half Giants and their position in the game? Both mechanically and roleplay wise. That might be out of the scope of this thread but if we're talking about agility Vs strength I think the intended position of the races matters a lot.

[Krath]

I tend to agree with Kavrick...I think Pierce and Swords should be agility secondary, and Axes and Bludgeoning Strength. It would align it with the secondary skills that are specific for each weapon type:

Swords -> Riposte -> Agility as a Secondary Stat for Both
Pierce -> Backstab -> Agility as a Secondary Stat for Both
Bludgeon -> Sap -> Strength as a Secondary Stat for Both
Axe -> Hack -> Strength as a Secondary Stat for Both

Non-Weapon Skill Changes I would make:

Bandage -> Agility as a Secondary Stat
Poison -> Agility as a Secondary Stat
Guarding -> Agility as a Secondary Stat
Threaten -> Agility as a Secondary Stat
Sling Use -> Strength as a Secondary Stat
Kick -> Strength as a Secondary Stat

Watch -> Just Wisdom
Search -> Just Wisdom
Direction Sense -> Just Wisdom
Ride -> Just Wisdom

[roughneck]

I'm on the same page as Kavrick and Krath.

[dumbstruck]

Yeah, I like the changes @Krath is suggesting. The way that the weapons break down works well with classes are currently designed, as most of the pure combat classes if not all have all the weapon skills, and most of the more utility heavy classes have bludgeoning and piercing. As far as I know, the only classes that only have piercing are the trade classes which should also have a secondary agility bonus to help their crafting so it syncs well with the natural inclination of priorities of those classes, while giving people with mixed classes the ability to focus on strength or agility focus or both, while not impacting the pure combat classes negatively as far as I can tell.

[Bogre]

grinding isn't fun

I agree and it's part of why I don't like the change.

This isn't reducing grind, which is my problem with it. Just reducing skill timers makes it so players inclined to will.... drumroll.... grind more often, and without any investment in being any smarter. To me this isn't reducing grind, it's encouraging more of it, doubly so if you play a combat role often and take wisdom last.

I agree with Windstorm's point. Skill timers are such that you are cannot go up 10 ticks in an RL day, or whatever, which discourages constant  grinding of skills. Decreasing that means you can maybe get a couple more gains if you stay logged in for a long time, but it doesn't really change the more casual play pattern of log in once or every couple days and train. One main 'grind' people feel is that people feel like they start really weak and don't get up to capable for a few days played - this change might make it slightly quicker for those who play a lot, but matters less for those people who log in far more intermittently.

The other grind is that some skills (combat skills, namely) simply won't increase because the rate of failure is low, and sometimes the rate of skill gain even if failing is low. Reduced timers won't really matter if you're never triggering the timer by gaining.

I moreover think that the characters to benefit, if they were spending that long online, would be high-stat, combat-stat prioritized characters, and helps out already powerful races (dwarves, muls, elves) that need very insanely godlike in PVP and very dangerous to other PCs. And that's not even considering ways to boost stats, which presumeably would then help timers.

-------------------

My thought would rather be help the initial curve out and make the top-end progress require investment (but not impossible flailing like now). That would be to increase the % chance to gain from novice->apprentice, apprentice->jman, and then once there you have a bit tougher of a time. You could even make it so novice->apprentice combat skills bump by 2 per gain, and then slow to 1, keeping offense/defense where its at, which I believe would starkly improve the time-to-not-newbie, get people on an even playing field faster.

 Obviously I don't think anyone wants it to be laughably easy to get maxed out combat chars, since those are overwhelmingly powerful vs PVE and PVP balance, and makes it hard for new PCs to catch up or be meaningful. But in a season, there is a limiter in the eventual end of season so you don't want everyone frustrated at a 'plateau' and trying to metagame past it.


 

[Roon]

Stats need to be made less random before they're made even more important.

[shadeoux]

Stats need to be made less random before they're made even more important.

I'd like to see the ability to swap stats around.

Swap Strength Wisdom
Unswap Strength Wisdom

[Roon]

I don't think that would do a whole lot. You already get to prioritize your stats at creation, so there's no need to swap them afterwards. They come out in the order you chose, although class and age can affect the final outcome. Swapping stats around doesn't address any of the problems, and would rarely serve any purpose anyway. Unless you opt not to prioritize for some reason, you don't get stat rolls that should warrant swapping. There's no such thing as prioritizing strength and then entering the game to find that you got low strength but high wisdom.

Unless you meant swapping back and forth at will throughout the character's life, in which case I'm highly doubtful that such a feature would ever be added to the game.

The problem was never that the game gives you stats that are the wrong way around. It's the fact that your overall rolls can be junk or amazing, and this has a significant impact on what a character is capable of. That impact only increases if multiple stats determine skill timers instead of just wisdom. There really isn't room for this level of randomness in a game that features both FFA PvP and an overwhelming emphasis on (and rewards for) living a long time. It's simply unhealthy for the game.

There should be no such thing as characters who have godlike stats, or crappy stats, through sheer luck. Each race should have a fixed pool of total stats, and then some degree of randomness can determine their exact distribution. That leaves plenty of room for characters to be different, but you never just get shafted or handed a character that's objectively superior.

In a better system, you might roll...

17 14 12 7
14 13 13 10
19 16 7 6

But not...

19 17 17 15

or

14 9 8 7

[Dresan]

Just a quick summary of thoughts:

1. As its been said above this makes wisdom more of a dump stat. For some ideas how to make wisdom more desirable and just some ideas on stats in general to improve mundane selection (especially in this setting) see the following threads: Wisdom and Discussion on stats

2. This does nothing to fix skill grind. I recommend just doubling the learning gains at the beginning of the season, then upping that to times X5 at the 50% mark of the season, and then upping that further to X10 learning gains around the 85% mark of the season. One thing the game is missing is a way to keep the player-base coming back especially as a season ends and your character dies. I think from experience we've seen once a game is closing people just stop logging in, doubly so if their character died. Slowly upping skill gains through the season would help with that.

3. Ultimately the main concerns with learning skills too quickly is often centered around combat. More so these days since the natural weaknesses of heavy combat classes (like the scary poisons) have become harder to pull off over time due to changes in the game. I think by solving that first as discussed here: Combat, it'll be easier to improve skill gains across the board without suddenly ending up with combat juggernauts everywhere.

Anything we can do to continue to encourage people to play mundane characters instead of mages/high karma options is strongly recommended as well.

[Kavrick]

There should be no such thing as characters who have godlike stats, or crappy stats, through sheer luck. Each race should have a fixed pool of total stats, and then some degree of randomness can determine their exact distribution. That leaves plenty of room for characters to be different, but you never just get shafted or handed a character that's objectively superior.

It's a drum I've bashed since I've started playing. The complete RNG in character creation stats feels like a relic of a bygone age and there are good reasons why modern day rpgs, both tabletop, text-based and any other type of roleplaying game have pretty much completely removed RNG from character creation. Sure there are still some stragglers, but the most popular ones have completely gotten rid of it. Even old editions of Dungeons and Dragons had stat arrays as an alternative to rolling dice for your stats.

[Windstorm]

Just a quick summary of thoughts:

1. As its been said above this makes wisdom more of a dump stat. For some ideas how to make wisdom more desirable and just some ideas on stats in general to improve mundane selection (especially in this setting) see the following threads: Wisdom and Discussion on stats

2. This does nothing to fix skill grind. I recommend just doubling the learning gains at the beginning of the season, then upping that to times X5 at the 50% mark of the season, and then upping that further to X10 learning gains around the 85% mark of the season. One thing the game is missing is a way to keep the player-base coming back especially as a season ends and your character dies. I think from experience we've seen once a game is closing people just stop logging in, doubly so if their character died. Slowly upping skill gains through the season would help with that.

3. Ultimately the main concerns with learning skills too quickly is often centered around combat. More so these days since the natural weaknesses of heavy combat classes (like the scary poisons) have become harder to pull off over time due to changes in the game. I think by solving that first as discussed here: Combat, it'll be easier to improve skill gains across the board without suddenly ending up with combat juggernauts everywhere.

Anything we can do to continue to encourage people to play mundane characters instead of mages/high karma options is strongly recommended as well.

Absolutely fantastic post, with suggestions that really attempt to solve The Grind. The current proposed changes simply don't, and in ways I'd even argue exacerbate them.

[Dune Bunny]

With many posters feeling this doesn't lessen the grind, and Dresan's idea for gains, perhaps something else is also worthy of consideration?

Maybe a decent idea would be to take the timer reduction away from secondary stats, and replace it with an increased skill gain based on said stats? A time reduction is nice for very busy/active players, but for many, they won't really notice a change in the timer when they're not constantly working on skills, are out rping, attending this event, etc.

Say, as an example that a PC's sneak skill gains come in increments of 1 with each failure.

PC has an agility score of X, and each time they fail now, that X translates to additional gains. Say that X is a .25 increase, (with higher values meaning more?) making a failure now a 1.25 increase in the sneak skill for each fail within the timer.

This lets people get more out of their skill ups, without trying to work around timers to level as quickly as possible. The timers stay the same, but the gains increase, making a notable difference without impacting play preferences.

[Riev]

Tongue in cheek:

double the timer on combat skills
double the gain when a fail tick occurs


The only people it "punishes" are people who play multiple-hours per day, but if you log in every day you'll still be able to keep up, as it were. It would require less Days Played, but a similar amount of Time Played (10d played won't matter as much as you playing for a month consistently).

Numbers obviously could change, but I feel this would help "the grind", as I see the grind being affected more by opportunity to fail than by the timer being less. If I find that opportunity to get my fails once a week, and only get one point out of it, it feels bad.

[roughneck]

Folks who say this would not help the grind, what in the world?

If the stat you would naturally prioritize then helps you gain skills faster, you are grinding less. Couple that with higher starting skills for mundane classes and subclasses, and we are on fast-track baby.

Based on Halaster's first post. The worst case scendario with low wis and secondary stat is it remains the same as before... so your grind is either the same or it's better. Neutral is your worst case scenario.

Randomized stats is a completely different topic.

Halaster's post:

- High wisdom, low secondary stat - It will be a little slower in that skill than if you just had a high wisdom in the old system.
- High wisdom, high secondary stat - It will be noticeably faster in that skill than the old system where if you just had a high wisdom.
- Low wisdom, low secondary stat - It will be about the same as the old system if you had a low wisdom.
- Low wisdom, high secondary stat - It will be noticeably faster in that skill than the old system where if you just had a high secondary stat

[Halaster]

I agree with Windstorm's point. Skill timers are such that you are cannot go up 10 ticks in an RL day, or whatever, which discourages constant  grinding of skills. Decreasing that means you can maybe get a couple more gains if you stay logged in for a long time, but it doesn't really change the more casual play pattern of log in once or every couple days and train. One main 'grind' people feel is that people feel like they start really weak and don't get up to capable for a few days played - this change might make it slightly quicker for those who play a lot, but matters less for those people who log in far more intermittently.

The other grind is that some skills (combat skills, namely) simply won't increase because the rate of failure is low, and sometimes the rate of skill gain even if failing is low. Reduced timers won't really matter if you're never triggering the timer by gaining.

I moreover think that the characters to benefit, if they were spending that long online, would be high-stat, combat-stat prioritized characters, and helps out already powerful races (dwarves, muls, elves) that need very insanely godlike in PVP and very dangerous to other PCs. And that's not even considering ways to boost stats, which presumeably would then help timers.

-------------------

My thought would rather be help the initial curve out and make the top-end progress require investment (but not impossible flailing like now). That would be to increase the % chance to gain from novice->apprentice, apprentice->jman, and then once there you have a bit tougher of a time. You could even make it so novice->apprentice combat skills bump by 2 per gain, and then slow to 1, keeping offense/defense where its at, which I believe would starkly improve the time-to-not-newbie, get people on an even playing field faster.

 Obviously I don't think anyone wants it to be laughably easy to get maxed out combat chars, since those are overwhelmingly powerful vs PVE and PVP balance, and makes it hard for new PCs to catch up or be meaningful. But in a season, there is a limiter in the eventual end of season so you don't want everyone frustrated at a 'plateau' and trying to metagame past it.
 

Just because a change doesn't fix all scenarios doesn't mean a change shouldn't happen.  You guys are right, this doesn't do much for some groups of people, but it does for other groups.  It's still OK to make the change.

[Halaster]

It's a drum I've bashed since I've started playing. The complete RNG in character creation stats feels like a relic of a bygone age and there are good reasons why modern day rpgs, both tabletop, text-based and any other type of roleplaying game have pretty much completely removed RNG from character creation.

We're not trying to be like them.  I think it's a good idea to pay attention to how other games do things, and if something is a good idea, maybe consider doing the same.  But just because other games do something doesn't mean we need to, or should, or want to.

[Kavrick]

We're not trying to be like them.  I think it's a good idea to pay attention to how other games do things, and if something is a good idea, maybe consider doing the same.  But just because other games do something doesn't mean we need to, or should, or want to.

I completely understand that, I don't think you should copy other games just because they're successful or popular, but I do think even discussing it in a vacuum, the amount of RnG in Armageddon character creation is pretty heavy. I've played characters with both abysmal stats and godlike stats and it's pretty night and day. But it's also such a subjective thing that It's a little difficult to discuss.

Maybe I have a bit of a bias, on several occasions I've written up a character I was really excited for just to roll terrible stats, which usually takes the winds out of my sails for the excitement I once had. I understand wanting to have some variety in character creation, but I guess personally I just feel as if there are better ways to go about it? One way for example is having it so stats are random, but always total the same amount, post-modifiers. I've actually seen a few other muds do this, and it results in characters that are either well-balanced, or lop-sided, which can be interesting in it's own way.

At the end of the day I do know that it's a 'design vision' thing, but I do think it's important to keep in mind that I doubt many people enjoy rolling a character with bad stats. And once you do, there's nothing you can really do about it aside from 'deal with it until you die/store', which kinda just sucks. I think I wouldn't be so sore about the topic if it wasn't for the fact that there's nothing you can do once you're stuck with bad stats.

[Roon]

Folks who say this would not help the grind, what in the world?

The timers were never a problem. Any skill that can be raised as fast as the timer allows is a non-problematic skill. When people talk about the "grind," I don't think they mean skills like forage and knifemaking. They mean skills that are either difficult to fail (i.e. many combat skills after mid-level), hard to justify using frequently (e.g. steal) or hard to acquire the things that let you use them (e.g. pick).

Those are the kinds of skills that take a long time and/or require that you do questionable things in pursuit of opportunities to use them, and thus become a grind. Lowering the skill timer doesn't do a whole lot. For the skills that aren't hard to raise, there's no problem that needs solving - and for the skills that are, lowering the timer doesn't help, because those skills aren't held back by the timer but by the fact that the game doesn't offer reasonably accessible opportunities to use or fail them unless you do unrealistic stuff.

Lowering the skill timer doesn't solve any problems. It helps where the help is least needed, and does nothing where it's most needed. Skills that you can raise at will as fast as the timer permits are not skills that needed to go up even faster. The problem is the skills that might still be stuck at journeyman after 15 days of playtime because they just stopped failing, or because there isn't anyone who's able/willing to supply you with lockpicks, or whatever it is that's getting in the way. The skill timer is never the thing that's in the way.

[Roon]

We're not trying to be like them.  I think it's a good idea to pay attention to how other games do things, and if something is a good idea, maybe consider doing the same.  But just because other games do something doesn't mean we need to, or should, or want to.

It is a good idea to reduce the level of "your PC is forever superior/inferior because of a diceroll at the start," which is why absolutely all other forms of gaming did that around the turn of the millennium. Hell, not just other forms of gaming - all other RPIs did it, too. It's only Armageddon that stuck with wildly random stats. Are all other games in existence wrong and only Arm is right, or might it not be the other way around?

Most of all, I would love to hear what the perceived benefits of this current system are supposed to be. Given the fact that you're proposing making stats matter even more (at least in principle), I feel it's fair to ask.

[Halaster]

Are all other games in existence wrong and only Arm is right, or might it not be the other way around?

It's not a matter of "wrong" or "right".  It's a matter of preference and game design.

Most of all, I would love to hear what the perceived benefits of this current system are supposed to be. Given the fact that you're proposing making stats matter even more (at least in principle), I feel it's fair to ask.

From the announcement found here:  https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60327.0.html
"The overall goal of this is to help towards making a small reduction in The Grind for most characters.  It also introduces a new dynamic when considering character stats if you are concerned about learning skills more quickly."

[Roon]

Why is it your preference? What is it that you prefer about this current stat system that compels you to keep it this way when literally all other games of every type discovered long ago that it wasn't worthwhile? "Because I said so" isn't much of an answer.

From the announcement found here:  https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60327.0.html
"The overall goal of this is to help towards making a small reduction in The Grind for most characters.  It also introduces a new dynamic when considering character stats if you are concerned about learning skills more quickly."

That wasn't what I meant to ask. I was asking about the nature of this "design preference" for a stat system where you might roll 19 17 17 15, or 16 12 8 7, based purely on raw luck that you can do nothing about. I appreciate that this isn't quite the original topic, but when I made a thread to discuss just this, no staff members weighed in at all. Feel free to move these posts into that thread if you like, but I do hope you'll give an actual answer.

[Halaster]

Ah I misunderstood your ask, too.  So this thread is about feedback on this specific idea, if you have any about it.  I'm not really interested in getting into a discussion about our stat system, sorry.  I'll say that I didn't design the system 30+ years ago for stats, it's what we have, and there's no interest in changing it at this time.

[Bogre]

Just because a change doesn't fix all scenarios doesn't mean a change shouldn't happen.  You guys are right, this doesn't do much for some groups of people, but it does for other groups.  It's still OK to make the change.

[/quote]

I don't think anyone expects all scenarios to be fixed. But the concern I have is with a change that maximizes downside for something uncontrollable (rolling poorly) and maximizes upside for meta choices (min-maxing character priority or race choice) is potentially a less egalitarian way of achieving the goal of grind reduction.

[Bogre]

Folks who say this would not help the grind, what in the world?

If the stat you would naturally prioritize then helps you gain skills faster, you are grinding less. Couple that with higher starting skills for mundane classes and subclasses, and we are on fast-track baby.

Yeah- I read Halaster's post. This change shortens skill gain timers, not the instance of how you gain a skill. You're only gaining the benefit from that if you're really playing or doing skill training lot in a short time period IRL, consecutively. So yeah - it'll probably help those characters at the very beginning, when they're super excited, and play for an entire Saturday. Maybe it helps you get 3-4 forage or armorcrafting skill ups that Saturday as opposed to 2. But for those logging in more intermittently, anytime past the timer expiring and your next log in isn't effected and so a longer timer is kinda meaningless. So it helps in the specific instance you are hardcore doing things to build skills, in a near/consecutive play session, yes, it would decrease the time that you're required to do that.  And trying to gain a ton of skills in a single play session would qualify to me as grinding.

If I'm trying to get skills on a character I'll typically do once an IRL day than leave it for the next IRL day, or do morning / evening. The grind in this case won't be affected, as it depends more on % to skill up and ability to get a fail in whatever skill than skill timers.

As Roon mentioned, for many skills, it's really an opportunity thing. The more palatable reduction to the grind is to maybe make the difficulty of getting to journeyman in skills, or whatever, less, by potentially making them notch more.

(Numbers made up)
If you currently require 60 fails to get to advanced, for instance, and your skill timer in the new system is 3 instead of 4 hours, you could do that in 1 week (7.5 days), assuming you logged in at every time you qualified to bump and went to train. Say you played a lot like it was your job, half the day - 12 hours. You could get to advanced in 15 days (~2 weeks). It takes the 4 hour timer character 10 days of solid play, and 20 days - playing half the day. Sure, the grind is reduced minimally in the total start->finish time, but not the time required to be invested, as each character needs to find 60 skill instances.  If you logged in once a day, it would take both characters 60 days. The time required meet the more infrequently you play.

If you doubled the skill notch gain from 0-30, and kept the timers the same, it would take 7.5 days of solid play, and 15 days of playing 12 hours a day -  same as reducing the timers, in this specific incidence. Yet you would only have to be doing things/foraging rocks/sparring/breaking sticks/grinding/whatever to skill up 45 times, as opposed to 60 times. If you were a daily player, it would take you 45 days as opposed to 60, saving you two whole weeks. You would have to break 15 less picks, or find 15 less scrab shells. And you would reach the halfway point faster - meaning your character could get into plots and survive getting scrabbed MUCH faster.

-That-, to me, is reducing grind, because it reduces the hoops you have to jump through, not meaning you can just jump through said hoops at a faster rate.

It's clear what option I think would make more sense.

[Halaster]

I tend to agree with Kavrick...I think Pierce and Swords should be agility secondary, and Axes and Bludgeoning Strength. It would align it with the secondary skills that are specific for each weapon type:

Swords -> Riposte -> Agility as a Secondary Stat for Both
Pierce -> Backstab -> Agility as a Secondary Stat for Both
Bludgeon -> Sap -> Strength as a Secondary Stat for Both
Axe -> Hack -> Strength as a Secondary Stat for Both

Non-Weapon Skill Changes I would make:

Bandage -> Agility as a Secondary Stat
Poison -> Agility as a Secondary Stat
Guarding -> Agility as a Secondary Stat
Threaten -> Agility as a Secondary Stat
Sling Use -> Strength as a Secondary Stat
Kick -> Strength as a Secondary Stat

Watch -> Just Wisdom
Search -> Just Wisdom
Direction Sense -> Just Wisdom
Ride -> Just Wisdom

I like and agree with all these.

[Kavrick]

The only ones I don't think I agree with are bandage and poison. Both of these skills really feel like "knowledge" skills rather than something relying on alacrity, so wisdom feels more fitting to me.

[Dresan]

There is a reason most people train once a day. We don't really know our timers and spamming skills tends to be looked upon unfavorably. Unless you are rather twinky, this won't have much impact on the majority skills even if you are playing for hours at a time.

Weapon skills alone are a different beast, this may have an impact on weapon skill gains themselves. This means you might reach plateau a bit quicker which then turns into an opportunity game once again.

So while the change may help with plateauing weapon skills, it does not quite address the feelings of fustrating grind the players have expressed over the years.

The change does also make wisdom more of  dump stat. The game seemingly going from 4 viable stats to 3 does have on impact on overall experience even if it seems minor at first.

Not quite the feedback staff probably wants to hear but its still feedback none the less. After all, the sentiment for this change didn't just pop out randomly for no reason at all. There is a clear intent to this change which may have some unintended outcomes.

[Roon]

I'm not really interested in getting into a discussion about our stat system, sorry.  I'll say that I didn't design the system 30+ years ago for stats, it's what we have, and there's no interest in changing it at this time.

Well, that's your decision and it's up to you, but you did put "Overhaul / fix stats" on the list of stretch goals for seasons. While I appreciate that the stretch goals are an 'if we have time' thing, it's peculiar to see it on the list and then hear that there's no interest in changing it. Either way, I'll resort to the topical thread for any further discussion on the stat system.

[dumbstruck]

I like all the changes, but I might make camping use endurance as a secondary stat if a second stat for it is being considered. Only because I've lived in a tent lol. That takes some endurance.

[Halaster]

I'm not really interested in getting into a discussion about our stat system, sorry.  I'll say that I didn't design the system 30+ years ago for stats, it's what we have, and there's no interest in changing it at this time.

Well, that's your decision and it's up to you, but you did put "Overhaul / fix stats" on the list of stretch goals for seasons. While I appreciate that the stretch goals are an 'if we have time' thing, it's peculiar to see it on the list and then hear that there's no interest in changing it. Either way, I'll resort to the topical thread for any further discussion on the stat system.

Yeah, that's fair to call me on that. There's no real interest in changing it right now, because we've just got too much other stuff on our plate.  And that's because it is not an easy change.  A minor tweak here or there is one thing, but a meaningful overhaul of stats is a really big deal, because soooo much code and other systems rely on the stat system being what it is.  If people wanna brainstorm and thought-experiment over it, by all means go for it (in another thread!), just not sure how much I can participate right now.


EDIT:  Aaaand I see you did here:  https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60269.0.html

[Bushranger]

Agility-based (meaning, agility score affects gain timers):
...
- the following Manipulation skills:
...
    - trap

If the trap skill is back does this mean blasting powder is also returning?! 



Or is Help Skill Trap correct when it still reads "The trap skill is no longer implemented."? 

[Halaster]

Or is Help Skill Trap correct when it still reads "The trap skill is no longer implemented."? 

I guess you didn't see my answer when you asked me in Discord.  No, trap skill isn't back, I wasn't paying attention to the fact it was gone when I listed it.  I've removed it from the list.

[Roon]

The Overlord giveth, and then he taketh away.

[eska]

IMO Component Crafting should be wisdom instead of agility.
It is a magick related skill on the other hand a crafting skill.
As a crafting skill it requires some level of agility but the most important thing regarding Component Crafting is knowing what to do and how to do.