Quote from: Krath on April 22, 2024, 12:42:22 PMI 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.

Quote from: roughneck on April 23, 2024, 08:59:32 AMFolks 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.

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.

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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.

Quote from: Lizzie on April 20, 2024, 10:06:50 PMFor magick, I don't necessarily need to know which spells I'll get when I practice firebutt. I just need to know whether I'll get spells from it, or not get any from it. And I want to know this, before I ever try practicing with it. Just like you know that there are skills that branch from steal.

Yeah I agree.  The benefit of hiding this info is that you force people to either find a mentor ICly or find one OOCly. The cost is a big waste of honest player time.  Many of us are old now. We don't have the time we had in our youth to waste.  And new players come from games with very different, and arguably better, approaches. 

Those that want to seek a IC mentor still could.  But those that don't enjoy practicing a skill in a game for nothing  can just "feel it on the wind" or something. 

When I was a storyteller and someone asked me about branching, I wasn't sure what I could even tell them.  Just animate an npc and be like "blah"? Demand a mini quest plus ritual to give a vision? Just say no?


Even if there's no change to the game itself, a clear rule in the magicker docs that's like "ask your ST for Magick info you want, and they will facilitate FOIC" then it'd  resolve the issue. 

Yes this and the hidden flags for classes. And race based skills.

Right now we can't even get through char gen without hidden mechanics walloping us.

No Hall of Kings pvp??

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.

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.

QuoteFrom 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.

Quote from: Roon on April 23, 2024, 10:04:50 AMAre 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.

Quote from: Roon on April 23, 2024, 10:04:50 AMMost 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."

Quote from: Halaster on April 23, 2024, 09:44:08 AMWe'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.