Armageddon General Discussion Board

Quote from: Inks on October 28, 2015, 04:46:44 PM
Code based player retention?

Honestly the problem with player retention has nothing to do with code tweaks.

I can personally vouch that having to put 240 hours into a character's code-based levelling up before I reach a point where I can start playing as I want to IS a turn-off.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on October 28, 2015, 04:50:24 PM

I can personally vouch that having to put 240 hours into a character's code-based levelling up before I reach a point where I can start playing as I want to IS a turn-off.

240 hours even with skill bumps BadSkeelz?  Or just if you start from scratch?

Quote from: Beethoven on October 28, 2015, 04:56:05 PM
And I agree, skills should start higher AND train faster. The slow grind of mundanes doesn't really facilitate much RP in my opinion.[/list]

I don't know...  I kind of like the notion that really bad ass warrior types are rare.  I don't want every mundane warrior whose been around for 10 played days to be a monster in combat.

My beef with bad ass warrior types is that they get to that level by doing things that aren't necessarily the pinnacle of role playing.  Solo hunting (from my limited perspective) seems to be the way to become a combat monster, and that seems lame to me.  I'm not saying it shouldn't be one way to gain skill.  Don't nerf it.  But I think showing up to training every single day, being trained by professionals and bad asses themselves, should be an equally fast route to coded combat power.  A guy whose served in the Byn for a couple IC years, then the AoD, and then trained by House Tor once he got promoted to a position to get enrolled, should be just as dangerous, if not more so, than the guy whose hunted critters.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on October 28, 2015, 05:02:56 PM
Skill bumps might shave a few hours off of the grind, but unless you're playing 40 hours a week and using a skill timer it's difficult to  get to a point where you feel your character is competent in a "reasonable" time frame. At least where combat is concerned.

I'd like to see Armageddon be more of a game and less of a part/full-time job.

A few hours off?  I thought skill bumps shaved 100+ hours off the grind...  am I mistaken?

Quote from: Dresan on October 28, 2015, 04:41:29 PM
Combat is fine but other skills could be adjusted a bit.

Its not only that most skills should train faster, but I also feel like some skills should start a little higher. Either at apprentice or journeyman depending on the guild of the character, so that they are able to a bit more do more from chargen. However I agree the amount of time it takes for any character to become decent is way too long, resulting in people not wanting to  risking the lives of their characters and contributing to lack of plots from the player side.

I like feeling like I accomplish something when I play a game.  If skills started higher, I'd feel like I was already in a place where half my leveling had been done for me.  In some cases I think this is fine (training Contact from novice to master on multiple subsequent characters is something I absolutely don't miss), in others I like feeling as though I've pulled my character up from nothing.  Starting out shit at a skill and gradually being able to roleplay yourself improving is a lot of fun, for me at least.  But I do wish it wasn't as difficult to train some skills - combat's a ridiculous time investment, as many have noted.  In other words, I wish the road to become good at something wasn't as long and steep, but I still want to travel the road, not be dropped off halfway to the destination.

Quote from: wizturbo on October 28, 2015, 05:14:44 PM

Quote from: BadSkeelz on October 28, 2015, 05:02:56 PM
Skill bumps might shave a few hours off of the grind, but unless you're playing 40 hours a week and using a skill timer it's difficult to  get to a point where you feel your character is competent in a "reasonable" time frame. At least where combat is concerned.

I'd like to see Armageddon be more of a game and less of a part/full-time job.

A few hours off?  I thought skill bumps shaved 100+ hours off the grind...  am I mistaken?

Yes. I'd say it's more along the lines of 48-72 hours, maximum. Which is a good chunk, but you'd still have a LONG way to go.

Two bumps to one skill seems to get you to low journeyman at best, and you can't bump off/deff, and those take forever to improve.

Break it down - I have 8 Karma, which gives me 11 CGP. I app a warrior/slipknife, that uses up 3 karma right there. I then spend 2 skill-bumps on all four weapon skills, which takes me to high apprentice. So I've gone from novice to apprentice in all of my weapon skillls but none of my other skills have been given a bump whatsoever.

Whereas, I have personally gotten all of my weapon skills from novice to apprentice in approximately 2-3 days played, so it essentially shaved a couple days off my playtime but didn't help me with any of my other combat skills, so I am starting out with decent weapon skills but nothing else.

CGP skill bumps are kiiiind of a ripoff because they really don't do much at all for you unless your guild has only one focal set of skills (stealing and sneak, for example). Even then, all you've really done is shaved a couple days of playtime off the grind, which considering most of our PCs don't tend to get truly "good" until 15,20 days played.. ain't much.

Yikes...  here I thought I could play a reasonably decent fighting type straight out of char gen...  Maybe the "two bumps only" rule should be reconsidered?  Maybe allow 4?  Get up to high journeyman?

Quote from: Dresan on October 28, 2015, 06:25:58 PM
For the love of everything mercilful please raise the issue again.  :'(

Yes, let's. Even if it's a very contentious topic, it's something that in my mind ought to be considered. I WANT to make rugged combat characters. I want to make (mundane) world exploration characters. I just...can't bring myself to, because the grind is so unfun and exhausting and drains time I'd rather be RPing.

A twinky ranger guide some of you guys might know about actually flat-out says NOT to make friends and not to interact while you're grinding your skills, because it's going to cut into your grinding time, making it even slower, and you're useless to anybody until you get your skills up anyway. If that's the kind of play the slow skillup encourages, something should be changed.

Starting everyone at "competent" skill levels just raises the bar of competency and makes the game much less "scary" if you get wtfpwn'd by a scrab. I HATE the grind, and as with all games that don't produce expansions or like 6month overhauls of their systems, Arm's combat has been the same for years. Decades, near to. You might see a warrior skill set trying to kill someone, but its not very likely, because there's an air of "flee self;e;e;e;e;e;e;e;e;win". So everyone twinks assassins and secret magickers that kill you in one prompt, and the response is an arms race to be defensive enough not to be in that situation.

That said, I've branched things on a warrior a couple times, and each time it resorted to either a method of twinking or outright abuse (Yes, I'm aware) of code. The idea that a warrior can't get these skills without going to some PRETTY extreme lengths, and then the chances of them -ever- being decent at them is just ridiculous.

I feel like I'm pouring a pinch of flash powder x50,000 all over again.

I'm not really sure why it's believed that being maxed out or pretty highly skilled is a requirement for competence when soft skills are important and all clans I've been in always had leaders who managed the risks around skill levels of its members well, without concern for being super expert.

The skill stuff might be worthy of a new thread, we're well out of brainstorming about player retention territory. I'll split off some of this chatter.

Ugh, this was an ugly split. Sorry about that. In my defense the gdb is nearly non functional for me right now. Crazy lag spikes when I went to split the posts and it hasnt let up. If another mod wants to go back and salvage more posts from that thread that would be helpful.

Quote from: Adhira on October 28, 2015, 05:44:10 PM

Quote from: BadSkeelz on October 28, 2015, 04:50:24 PM

Quote from: Inks on October 28, 2015, 04:46:44 PM
Code based player retention?

Honestly the problem with player retention has nothing to do with code tweaks.

I can personally vouch that having to put 240 hours into a character's code-based levelling up before I reach a point where I can start playing as I want to IS a turn-off.

I've raised the idea of bumping up all starting levels in the past. In fact I wanted to move them all to a point where no one bothered to train them, putting (in my mind) the focus on RP, rather than coded advancement.  An informal query amongst players resulted in multiple people expressing a desire not to shift all skills to this kind of level. I believe the reasoning was that some felt it devalued their characters progression if others could just app in at 1 hour old and be at the level of more experienced characters.

I'd be happy to revisit the idea if thinking amongst the playerbase was different.

It doesn't have to be either/or. Why not add an option to start with nearly maxed skills, but at some kind of long-term cost? I think it was Desertman that suggested a while back to offer up options for characters that skipped the grind so to speak, but had lower skill caps. You could also reduce skim a few of the branched skill lists down (possibly using the reduced skill maxes as guidelines) and make what amounts to a new set of guilds that have all the features you mention at a some sort of cost (reduced maximums, trimmed skill lists, or maybe even a higher minimum age).

I think this would be a huge boon to people with lower playtimes, or people that wanted to play high-danger roles like a noble's assassin or a bandit and didn't want to make the 20 RL days training to 1 RL day of doing the role trade off that's not required.

It would be less work, and open up options for both styles of play depending on what the player preferred.

I don't mind that it takes a long time to get good at combat.  I don't enjoy grinding but I can deal with it being necessary for making an out-of-the-ordinary warrior.  Of course I have a lot of time to put in the game, and I tend to play long-lived PCs.

I don't like that the players who do the much-more-boring play of sparring day after day don't do as well as the players who get to go out at will hunting, which is much more fun, in my opinion.  You should improve more from structured training.

I don't like how you basically have to twink and know the code to get weapon skills past jman.  I think it's much more realistic that you couldn't get weapon skills past jman unless you -were- doing structured training.  All the tricks you have to do to accomplish it are really kind of unreasonable in an RP sense, why would you do that...

I guess my posts didn't make the cut. Good thing some people quoted them.

Anyways, as I said before for the most part I think combat is fine. In the sense there is a clear difference between a 1 day warrior, and a three day warrior, five day warrior. And by combat, I mostly mean the hidden offense/defense skills.

I don't think they need to be touched. If you ever play a 30 day old warrior, and then play a fresh warrior with advanced weapons. You will still see a very big difference in performance. Again skill bumps don't make as big of a difference as people think at first at least. Still I agree with Delerium when she says its kinda of a rip off, which is why I'm been asking for two skill bumps for one CGP for a long while.  So for those people that think characters recieving a modest boost to start skill will prevent them from having that feeling of accomplishment, don't worry,  there is still a long way to go before you are standing toe to toe with bahamets. Even if combat training time is cut in half, it would still take a couple months of your 75~ years in this living world before you get there.  

And then you'll get sucked into a plot, where you will be kill anyways and have to start all over again. :)

Even if visible skills start higher, even if offense/defense get a slight bump (not saying this one in particular should happen but it wouldn't be the end of the world either), and even if you can train everything slightly quicker it won't change the fact that there will be a huge difference between younger and older characters in terms of power and influence, both codedly and socially.  The main change here is that people will have less to grind and more to time to use their skills towards generating demand, offering services and plotting in general. Not to mention dying and starting a new character doesn't take the player out of the game for a month or two, before they can start contributing/generating solid plots.

Wrote it in the other thread, but I no longer play characters that actually have to use their skills, besides merchants. I don't have the inclination or the time for that initial grind, and the skill bumps available are only slight.

This might be a slight derail but I think there should be a process where longer lived characters can have a slight customization done to their characters.

If your roll a human pickpocket/hunter and join a GMH. Move up the ranks and have played there for over six months. Perhaps using one/two of your yearly apps to ask for a boost in riding or archery beyond your original cap.  Or maybe you assassin made sergeant of the byn and he wants to learn a combat move, he can learn it at the extended guild skill level.  Some small modification to make your longer lived character a little more special more special.

And yes I think six months of my life is a long time to spend anywhere. I think there should be more freedom for characters to grow in game then there is now and it should be a documented process, just like creating a small merchant clans is currently.  

Quote from: whitt on October 27, 2015, 03:36:17 PM
Also start primary guild skills at the bottom of Apprentice instead of Novice.  Branched skills can grind away, but few new players come into game understanding how much they are going to suck at the skills they think (and probably background app'd) their character as having made a living at.  Not sucking out the gate makes for a better new player experience.  You're still not going to be good.  Not sucking would be pretty hot for characters that die and need to start over too.

You could still skill bump from low-apprentice and get two things: 1) Meaningful bumps that move you from Apprentice Bone Sword Hacker to Veteran Bone Sword Hacker and 2) Noticeably closer to a branch that might help your concept along.

I get the feeling that the grind is part of the game, but grinding through the bottom-feeder suck?  I think if I ever stop playing it will be because I can't stomach needing to come up with another background that explain why my character is totally incompetent at their life's vocation. 

Quote from: whitt on October 28, 2015, 09:19:18 PM

Quote from: whitt on October 27, 2015, 03:36:17 PM
Also start primary guild skills at the bottom of Apprentice instead of Novice.  Branched skills can grind away, but few new players come into game understanding how much they are going to suck at the skills they think (and probably background app'd) their character as having made a living at.  Not sucking out the gate makes for a better new player experience.  You're still not going to be good.  Not sucking would be pretty hot for characters that die and need to start over too.

You could still skill bump from low-apprentice and get two things: 1) Meaningful bumps that move you from Apprentice Bone Sword Hacker to Veteran Bone Sword Hacker and 2) Noticeably closer to a branch that might help your concept along.

I get the feeling that the grind is part of the game, but grinding through the bottom-feeder suck?  I think if I ever stop playing it will be because I can't stomach needing to come up with another background that explain why my character is totally incompetent at their life's vocation. 

That's why I would like to see the bottom (novice) raised to a higher minimum than it currently is. That way, you're closer to your first "visible" bump to jman, but you still have to "earn" the accomplishment.

Quote from: Dresan on October 28, 2015, 08:32:48 PM
This might be a slight derail but I think there should be a process where longer lived characters can have a slight customization done to their characters.

If your roll a human pickpocket/hunter and join a GMH. Move up the ranks and have played there for over six months. Perhaps using one/two of your yearly apps to ask for a boost in riding or archery beyond your original cap.  Or maybe you assassin made sergeant of the byn and he wants to learn a combat move, he can learn it at the extended guild skill level.  Some small modification to make your longer lived character a little more special more special.

And yes I think six months of my life is a long time to spend anywhere. I think there should be more freedom for characters to grow in game then there is now and it should be a documented process, just like creating a small merchant clans is currently.  

I feel the same way about this, while I -understand- the hesitation to not give characters skills outside their chosen guild choice, sometimes you wind up in a situation which you never expected in a character, doing something completely unexpected, or simply have been doing something for a long time.

A thief who winds up in the military training with badass warriors for some IC years would definetly pick up a trick or two. Things like that. IMO.

Starting skill levels should be pegged to age and guild.

If I start as a 30 year old (insert guild here), then my starting skills should reflect that I have been doing certain things for at least 12 years. I should start at journeyman.

This should apply to a set of core skills which are specific to the guild. Not the entire skill set.

Skilling up in weapons and combat is very hard. It takes a long time. This should be adjusted .

Quote from: Norcal on October 28, 2015, 09:30:58 PM
Starting skill levels should be pegged to age and guild.

If I start as a 30 year old (insert guild here), then my starting skills should reflect that I have been doing certain things for at least 12 years. I should start at journeyman.

This should apply to a set of core skills which are specific to the guild. Not the entire skill set.

Skilling up in weapons and combat is very hard. It takes a long time. This should be adjusted .

It should have been this way 15 years ago.

Quote from: Norcal on October 28, 2015, 09:30:58 PM
Starting skill levels should be pegged to age and guild.

If I start as a 30 year old (insert guild here), then my starting skills should reflect that I have been doing certain things for at least 12 years. I should start at journeyman.

This should apply to a set of core skills which are specific to the guild. Not the entire skill set.

Skilling up in weapons and combat is very hard. It takes a long time. This should be adjusted .

This too, I can agree with.

It makes little sense for a 13 year old to start at the same level of skill as an adult of 25 years, ect.

The way i see it, if you're playing a kid char, you're supposed to be playing extreme hard mode.

Skill progression is an important part of the game.  I hate it at times, but I would hate more for it to be removed or seriously diminished by starting all characters with advanced level skills.

I have two suggestions:

1.  Change the combat skill-level descriptors to be much, much lower.  Novice = 1-10%, Apprentice = 11-20%, Journeyman = 21-30%, Advanced = 31-40%, Master = 41-99%.  You reach 41% and suddenly you, the player, can see no further descriptions of skill level advancement.  At 41%, your character is sufficiently badass to handle a lot of things, but you can still encounter other PCs that are better than you, by far.

2.  What if, when your character dies, their skill levels are carried over to matching skill sets?  So, your warrior masters bash, and piercing weapons, then dies.  Your next character is an assassin, and he starts with standard skill levels, except for piercing weapons which starts at master.  Your third character is a Whiran, which shares no skills with assassins, so they start with a completely clean slate.  That way, if a player chooses to put in all the time and grind, they can choose to hang onto part, or all of that work, just in a different form.

Once upon a time, Arm had a system in which the skill levels attained by one character were transferred in part to the next upon death.

Quote from: Eyeball on October 29, 2015, 05:29:36 AM
Once upon a time, Arm had a system in which the skill levels attained by one character were transferred in part to the next upon death.

And you could play a mul sorcerer for no karma!

Quote from: LauraMars on October 29, 2015, 05:30:54 AM

Quote from: Eyeball on October 29, 2015, 05:29:36 AM
Once upon a time, Arm had a system in which the skill levels attained by one character were transferred in part to the next upon death.

And you could play a mul sorcerer for no karma!

By which I'm guessing you mean that everything which has been removed from the game over the years must have just been horrible and absolutely deserving of it. And must never be spoken of again. Like halflings and Blackwing and Red Storm East. Just awful.

Uh...No? I thought we were just reminiscing. Ok then.

Some people in this thread should take a chill pill because it would be a shame for a potentially helpful discussion to get bogged down in personal attacks and snark that result in a locked thread.

QuoteStarting everyone at "competent" skill levels just raises the bar of competency and makes the game much less "scary" if you get wtfpwn'd by a scrab.

Starting everyone at higher levels as far as -combat- is concerned does nothing.  The people who were in game longer are still better than you.  You can say it allows you to be a competent hunter straight out of the gate, but when the wilderness was already pretty drastically altered from what it was at times where it was actually dangerous, this is just another step towards what is in my opinion that very dangerous shift that gets brought up now and again which is the aversion of risk.

Right out of chargen, it is fairly easy to survive. Right out of the gates.  There are mobs of creatures immediately around the city to support you, and that area was made much safer from wandering baddies as well.  Scrab -is- the big danger there.  So let's say we do raise it then.  Yay, everyone can now hunt scrab.  Move the edge out to the territory of the next thing you don't want to have to 'grind' to kill.  That's...how this seems to be talked about, and yes I realize that's a slippery slope argument, but over the course of time, this has indeed been a slope that is slipping.  I put 'grind' in those little quotees because with my characters, it's not really grinding so much as doing what they do.  My hunters are out hunting.  My soldiers hunt a lot less, but spar more.  My assassins hardly ever train at all, unless they're a psychopath (which I haven't played for a long time, thus my assassins tend to be rather low skill in comparison), but they are some -stealthy- sumbitches!

Generally speaking, playing in this way results in my branching the skills that I actually need in a pretty reasonable amount of time, and I do relatively safely improve, but with some of those random risks that I take in the interim.  This grind mentality is...really only there because it's put there in the pursuit of skill branches, really.  I pretty naturally swing out of the 'need a skill failure to improve' to 'The success rate is high enough to just go about my business' within around two days of playing time.  Granted, I have done most of the classes several times and know, but the point is that it's very -early- that you can stop what you're calling the 'grind' and just live the character's profession and have them naturally improve, assuming your skillset is involved in your profression.

So, two things:
1) Rather than just do a universal bump across all skills with the possible detriments that come with such a thing, as well as removing the progression involved in such and development forced -by- such...if this is considered a must have by so many people other than me, could it not be something similar to certain classes that need to (or once needed to) appeal to staff for their branch due to it being a fighting style?  More directly, if someone is in need/thinks they should have a skill they know they should have later, they can have that branch given 'early' through request?  Maybe set some time period that it's allowed to be asked, or show they've progressed in some way that warrants it?

2) The exception to this is weapon skills, but when this was discussed I was with Synthesis in basically being against making those skills go up faster or easier due to the huge amount of impact those skills actually have on a combat scene.  Getting that good more easily does not appeal to me.  However, that doesn't mean I'm against lowering the point that those weapon skills branched, which seemed to be  a major frustration of those wanting the change.

My last skill-bumped PC hit advanced in their primary weapon skill in the first month of play.

As much as I get a kick out of seeing my skill level advance on the skill list, I'm starting to think that the ability to see it is what's causing this particular complaint. If you don't know that you're at 32% skill, you wouldn't know to complain that you're not at 50% yet.

Maybe we should just remove the advance/jman/master stuff entirely so people don't have to constantly obsess and compare theirs with the other guy's, or theirs with their previous character with similar stats...

Or perhaps we could go a different route - the MOO/H&S route: remove those adv/jman/etc. designations..and replace it with unlock echoes. Every single time your character experiences an improvement in a skill - even if it's just 1% improvement - you get an echo letting you know it happened.

>You feel a brief sense of accomplishment.

I think y'all need to stop setting your sights so high as well. What you consider to be "competent," it sounds like I consider to be "good." For me, competent means - I'm capable of making use of this skill. I have no particular proficiency in it, but I'm not likely to blow the wagon up if I try doing it in the store-room. On occasion, I might actually succeed, and I know enough about it that I have a chance to improve if I pay attention to what I'm doing. That- to me - is competent.

Being able to PK or kill a scrab or make 5000 sids crafting nothing but sandcloth stuff and selling them in RSV in a RL week - is not competent to me. That's good, to me.

Being able to "not die and manage to flee without falling off my mount" is competent. Being able to defend the leader of the unit by killing the gith is good - or lucky.

So maybe re-evaluate what you consider to be competent. I think that would go a long way to improving things. I don't think the starting levels are all that great, and I can understand and agree that it'd be great to improve the starting levels. But I don't think they should be replaced with higher levels, because that won't solve anything at all and will make things even harder for people who want to earn their way up the skill tree.

Having it be a player option won't work either. There are players who want to be good in order to PK. There are brand new players who want that too, because they come from PK-H&S games and that's what they know. You give that to them, and characters played by people who want to earn their way through will no longer have a chance to survive.

Remember the game is only as good as its worst player. Just like a business is only as good as its worst employee, and a classroom is only as good as its worst student. Dumbing down the game will just make this a dumb game.

Lower your standards, everybody!

IKR.

Quote from: MeTekillot on October 29, 2015, 08:23:47 AM
Lower your standards, everybody!

In a sense, yes. But there's more to it. Standards have gone UP since the addition to the code that lets us see our skill levels. We expect more. We expect to *see* those improvements on our skills lists, instead of merely experiencing "wow - I actually hit that guy, I never hit him."

So not exactly lower your standards - but instead, return them to what they were before you raised them. The game play hasn't changed. Only what you are able to see of the code. I think it's spoiled people into expecting more than they realistically should be expecting.

Returning my standards to what they were before I raised them is called "lowering". Realistic is an arbitrary qualifier for expectation when the subject of my expectations is an arbitrary exchange of integers and code variables. Put a 5 instead of a 1 in the wizbangdoodle and it's diamond season for me. I know it's not that simple, but it's not an insurmountable task either.

Quote from: Lizzie on October 29, 2015, 08:10:51 AM
As much as I get a kick out of seeing my skill level advance on the skill list, I'm starting to think that the ability to see it is what's causing this particular complaint. If you don't know that you're at 32% skill, you wouldn't know to complain that you're not at 50% yet.

Maybe we should just remove the advance/jman/master stuff entirely so people don't have to constantly obsess and compare theirs with the other guy's, or theirs with their previous character with similar stats...

As a counterexample, I usually grind solely to branch a skill. I like having a reasonable sized toolkit for my characters to try things with or even just to dink around with. Whether it says master or journeyman next to the skill is usually beside the point. I'm playing a character now that's over 60 days played and still has skills they could have at master sitting at novice just because I don't care about what they branch to. Other skills that I actually use are at journeyman still because they don't branch at all and I never focus my grinding on them.

I played for many years before they started showing rough skill levels and honestly I did about the same amount of grinding. It had little to do with the skill level and everything to do with the branching system.

Quote from: Rayonklar on October 28, 2015, 06:45:23 PM
I'm not really sure why it's believed that being maxed out or pretty highly skilled is a requirement for competence when soft skills are important and all clans I've been in always had leaders who managed the risks around skill levels of its members well, without concern for being super expert.

Those people with soft skills can't do much without people with the hard skills (or some other form of power).

Quote from: Molten Heart on October 29, 2015, 10:52:48 AM

Quote from: Rayonklar on October 28, 2015, 06:45:23 PM
I'm not really sure why it's believed that being maxed out or pretty highly skilled is a requirement for competence when soft skills are important and all clans I've been in always had leaders who managed the risks around skill levels of its members well, without concern for being super expert.

Those people with soft skills can't do much without people with the hard skills (or some other form of power).

This is the case often but not always.

Conversely though people often drastically overestimate what they can accomplish with just hard skills and no soft ones.

Quote from: Narf on October 29, 2015, 10:56:09 AM

Quote from: Molten Heart on October 29, 2015, 10:52:48 AM

Quote from: Rayonklar on October 28, 2015, 06:45:23 PM
I'm not really sure why it's believed that being maxed out or pretty highly skilled is a requirement for competence when soft skills are important and all clans I've been in always had leaders who managed the risks around skill levels of its members well, without concern for being super expert.

Those people with soft skills can't do much without people with the hard skills (or some other form of power).

This is the case often but not always.

Conversely though people often drastically overestimate what they can accomplish with just hard skills and no soft ones.

It's certainly a balance where both are required (unless someone like staff steps in to make up the difference.)

Hi,

Just to pitch in here, here are a few cases where making skill gains easier or more reasonable and realistic would be helpful:

Bad Guys If you want to play a bad guy, it'd be nice to be able to skill up on something other than skeet or whatever that twink animal is.

Flavour Combat Roles If you aren't in the Byn, then it's hard to skill up, e.g., AoD, an Oash Elite, or a Tor whatever they are, or a Borsail Wyvern, or, to a lesser extent, GMH combat characters.

Suggestions:

o Perhaps make dummies useful again.  If I recall correctly, staff gets notified when you do some twink actions (e.g., trying to sneak past guards).  You could rectify the twink situation by either making the dummies available only at certain hours or putting it in the twink notification list.

o Tweak the skillgain system a little, for people that want to play bad guys and who have some amount of karma (probably just one is sufficient, really), but don't have the time to invest hours into skilling up.

In some places, PCs with powerful combat skills tend to 'rule the roost', and it's very annoying, so we want to avoid that.  But I think with Arm's rich documentation about how the virtual world works, it'd be implausible to think that a PC with a lot of combat skills could 'rule the roost', that is, there'd be a balance to that worry.

Quote from: Lizzie on October 29, 2015, 08:10:51 AM

Having it be a player option won't work either. There are players who want to be good in order to PK. There are brand new players who want that too, because they come from PK-H&S games and that's what they know. You give that to them, and characters played by people who want to earn their way through will no longer have a chance to survive.

If players can ruin the game for you with competent characters that can never become excellent, then they can ruin the game for you with competent character that can become excellent.

That said, if the player option was frequently abused by new players (and I don't think most new players would have the wherewhithal to abuse it the way you're thinking) then staff could simply make it a karma option. There's plenty of solutions to these supposed and hypothetical problems and the payoff for attracting casual players could be enormous.

You would have an entirely new niche of players with kids and players with hectic work schedules and players with other games they want to play sometimes. That's more than worth the occasional jackoff making and harassing folks with his brand new character with starting journeyman weapon skills or whatever it is you're worried about.

QuoteI'm starting to think that the ability to see it is what's causing this particular complaint.

You are absolutely correct, Lizzy, and I've had this point several times.  Seeing the skill levels has made a very noticeable shift in behavior for me, and it was not a good shift, and the discussions on skills on the boards have shifted accordingly.

Quote from: MeTekillot on October 29, 2015, 08:46:37 AM
Returning my standards to what they were before I raised them is called "lowering". Realistic is an arbitrary qualifier for expectation when the subject of my expectations is an arbitrary exchange of integers and code variables. Put a 5 instead of a 1 in the wizbangdoodle and it's diamond season for me. I know it's not that simple, but it's not an insurmountable task either.

This is actually raising expectations, not lowering them.  The expectation raised is for you to use your skills to dictate how good you are at them, not for the skills list to dictate when you try things.  So yes, I agree, lowering the expectation of players to roleplay their skillset is a bad thing.  If you'd care to argue with me further on what the behavior shift was and why it's detrimental and not good, just let me know and we'll get into it.

However, that was also not the point of the discussion.  On topic, raising skill levels is an ineffective gesture.  While there are perhaps valid points for why it -could- be changed, there are also valid points for why it should -not- be changed, and in the end this degrades to people who want to play it and people who don't want to play it.  In the end, the change is an imposition on the other 'group' of players, while keeping it the same is just keeping things as they are and no one imposing anything on anyone.

It should be noted that there seems to be discrepancy between what people think and what people are affirming here...someone asserts CGP skill bumps are useless, only to have people counteract it with personal experience.  It makes me think there is some misinformation floating around (imagine that) that is making some people not even bother trying the things that already counteract this perceived problem.

I hope this isn't getting too code-specific, but I would imagine CGP weapon skill bumps would be very nice for cutting away at the grind because you are boosting your weapon skills and nothing else, so you will fail more often than someone who has worked hard to get to the level you're at. My understanding is that a lot of the twinky stuff combat PCs do at journeyman is because they can't miss anymore unless they fight ridiculously agile creatures. So in that way it's quite effective indeed. It's just kind of a rare treat because it takes up a spec app slot.

Quote from: Armaddict on October 29, 2015, 12:31:50 PM

QuoteI'm starting to think that the ability to see it is what's causing this particular complaint.

You are absolutely correct, Lizzy, and I've had this point several times.  Seeing the skill levels has made a very noticeable shift in behavior for me, and it was not a good shift, and the discussions on skills on the boards have shifted accordingly.

Thank you.

My play has suffered dramatically since the introduction of skill levels.  I never used to give a shit about my skills until it became a quantifiable objective that I could actively work on.

Also:  I think a lot of these complains point to just how rotten the combat code is.  I know it's a monster task that underpins the whole game, but maybe it's time to take a stab at updating it?

As long as there is a gaining skills component of the game, it seems like some people will obsess over it and others will not care.  I'm not sure what simply raising the starting line to a higher level will really do.

The ability to turn off the >Skills command?

The focus on coded skills is great because the game world and those in it respond primarily to the code. If the game world and those in it responded more realistically to simple roleplay, there'd be more desire to use simple roleplay to manipulate the game world and the other characters in it.

There is an existing balance, but I wouldn't mind additions like these:

- lower the caps for mundane skills to branch in most cases (make it more exciting to have a new character)

- speed up the time to low journeyman competency in most cases

- encourage the use of 'teach' by giving it a small chance of improving the teacher's skill, too, as a reward for RPing about the skill

- give old characters boosts up to apprentice across a randomized subset of their starting skills (the older you are, the larger the subset becomes)

Quote from: BadSkeelz on October 29, 2015, 01:13:02 PM
The ability to turn off the >Skills command?

brief skills gets you halfway there, but you probably already knew about that one.

The problem is that whenever there are discussions about raising starting skills, everyone immediately thinks of combat at its peak level.

Stop thinking of combat and think about this:

An assassin that is stealthy and deadly without having to put in 5-10 days of playing time.
A pickpocket that can actually pickpockets without having to branch
30 year old rangers that can travel between luirs and redstorm and be the life blood of these places.

We aren't talking about players that can concur the corners of the known, we are just talking about players that can do a bit more without having to grind as much from the beginning. I find it funny people would suddenly think the game would become risk free, especially when it might mean we actually have more competant assassin walking the street willing to take work. Remember, there are no more invinsible sorcerers anymore, this is a game where any 100 day characters can die.

The other thing I never quite understood is why people feel the need to make something so utterly boring an 'accomplishment', thats really old fashion, low standard thinking this day and age. As if grinding for 5 days just to get to luirs safetly in order to be able to open up RP there is such a wonderful thing. It ain't, there are better things people can do with thier lives.

And thats what the divide is...

In the time it takes for people to accomplish something so trivial in this game, a person can accomplish so much more rewarding things elsewhere. Instead of getting to the meat of this game, getting to the betrayal, corruption, and murder...no...we need to train/grind for several days before we can travel to lurs, yes LUIRS not the Valley or deep into the grey forest. Or grind several days before we are even considering attempting an assassination or theft. I guess thats not too big of a deal if you are playing a sponsored role where the staff is willing to boost you up to those social/coded levels but when you start a game from scratch over and over, it is just tedius and not worth anyone's time.

This game can be so much more interesting but we have these coded roadblocks called grind in this game. Right now people are dependant on clans, staff and sponsored roles to accomplish anything in the game, which puts a bigger strain on those things to deliver more content that the average player could be creating instead.

The biggest difference from what the game was then, and what the game is now is that I and so many others have less time to play due to RL responsibilities and just the fact that there are other enjoyable ways I can be investing my free time in. Not to mention that now, unlike in the past when I began playing this game,  I also have to grind defence skill (defense fix/nerf)  

Oh and for those people that think seeing skill progression is such a bad thing, back in the day your skill progression was based on whether or not you branched yet and by what you could kill. Not really that much different then it is today if you ask me.

Quote from: Eyeball on October 29, 2015, 05:29:36 AM
Once upon a time, Arm had a system in which the skill levels attained by one character were transferred in part to the next upon death.

I recently stumbled upon some of the code for this, actually!  As well, the values for it are still stored on character files, even though they're not used.  Prior to the account system this was how we would track which characters belonged to the same person.  Although a new e-mail could be quickly created, most people would still name their prior character to make use of the skill bump.

For those that weren't around, the process was (as I recall) when creating a new character you could list your previous character and 'reincarnate's some of the skills into your new PC.  For the most part it was things that were guild-agnostic.  Offense, defense, some psi skills, and so on.

I think it would be kind of neat if instead of increasing the capability of a fresh PC, we talked about reducing the time required to become capable.

Quote from: nessalin on October 29, 2015, 02:24:55 PM

Quote from: Eyeball on October 29, 2015, 05:29:36 AM
Once upon a time, Arm had a system in which the skill levels attained by one character were transferred in part to the next upon death.

I recently stumbled upon some of the code for this, actually!  As well, the values for it are still stored on character files, even though they're not used.  Prior to the account system this was how we would track which characters belonged to the same person.  Although a new e-mail could be quickly created, most people would still name their prior character to make use of the skill bump.

For those that weren't around, the process was (as I recall) when creating a new character you could list your previous character and 'reincarnate's some of the skills into your new PC.  For the most part it was things that were guild-agnostic.  Offense, defense, some psi skills, and so on.

That's really interesting. I don't think bringing something like that back for the general populace is necessarily a good idea (though intriguing), but I could see it being a hand-up for people who store PCs to take on sponsored roles. Especially roles like Sergeants where being able to survive in your own training hall is something of an iffy prospect.

Quote from: HavokBlue on October 29, 2015, 02:26:33 PM
I think it would be kind of neat if instead of increasing the capability of a fresh PC, we talked about reducing the time required to become capable.

I support this as well. There should be a difference between an experienced an an inexperienced character. I just don't think it should be a part-time job to become experienced.

Quote from: HavokBlue on October 29, 2015, 02:26:33 PM
I think it would be kind of neat if instead of increasing the capability of a fresh PC, we talked about reducing the time required to become capable.

Yeah, there's a few offenders in particular.

In general crafting skills increase at an appropriate rate. It's combat (especially weapon skills) that's the big offender.

Quote from: Eyeball on October 29, 2015, 05:36:22 AM

Quote from: LauraMars on October 29, 2015, 05:30:54 AM

Quote from: Eyeball on October 29, 2015, 05:29:36 AM
Once upon a time, Arm had a system in which the skill levels attained by one character were transferred in part to the next upon death.

And you could play a mul sorcerer for no karma!

By which I'm guessing you mean that everything which has been removed from the game over the years must have just been horrible and absolutely deserving of it. And must never be spoken of again. Like halflings and Blackwing and Red Storm East. Just awful.

Some of these were, in reality, "just awful", for staff side in ways that didn't affect players much, if at all, negatively.  Others were "just awful" for players in ways that didn't affect staff, but made things unplayable for other character concepts.

Certainly bad decisions have been made over the years, and that's unfortunate, but also the reality, and an effect of growth in a complex system.  Holding a grudge, pretending bad decisions were driven by nothing more than staff whimsy, or hoping to go back in time won't really make a difference, though.  It certainly doesn't increase the likelihood of staff being open about their process when they'll be attacked for it endlessly - even after the people involved have been gone for over a decade.

We have regularly, over the years, bumped up the starting value on a variety of skills.  Some of these were publicized, not all were. Almost always this is done in response to seeing new players immediately going off and doing something boring, like ride a kank in a circle for a week before they can leave the city.

Woah. A Nessalin post!

I know staff complains about the negativity and attacks on them, and its true. Just reading the back and forth threads between Nyr and some hostile people, or the vitriol in some threads here would make anyone not want to contribute. I've had those feeling myself in the past, and I'm not even staff.

But its good to see staff engaging in positive conversation. It also inspires those of us who would like to see the game continue for at least another 10 years to contribute more towards a more enjoyable IC and OOC experience.


Thanks for posting.  :)

My thoughts and feelings (phew, tough act to follow after a series of Nessalin posts!):

Melee combat
When it comes down to close quarters combat, I'd kinda like there to be a serious threat of harm every time you get in a direct fight. Being skilled should mitigate this to a degree, but getting up close to a giant insect or a pack of raptors should be cause for concern and make people want to hunt in groups. Melee with the big nasties should be suicide.  Overhauling combat would be a different topic though - for the sake of this one, I think it'd be better to leave weapons skills and other hidden factors to combat as they are.

All other skills
So, with the exception of weapon skills, I think that having the skills from your main guild starting around Journeyman would be great - as well as skills that you branch through your main guild.  Typically that seems like it's a high enough level to make use of the skill reliably while still having room to improve.

This way, a ranger can hunt competently via ranged combat if they have the right equipment, pickpockets can steal more often than not without getting thrown into a militia blender, and crafters can make things reliably without the grind as long as they can get materials.

And for warriors, things like kick or bash would have a higher chance of success.

Quote from: Taijan on October 29, 2015, 02:54:43 PM
The right stuff.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/Buddy_christ.jpg)

I speak mostly about combat because those are the harshest offenders of what is being called 'the grind'.

I'm not certain what is being spoken of when people talk about needing 5-10 days for their non-combat skills to be viable.  By being sneaky, my sneaky characters are almost perfectly sneaky by 2 days of playing time.  By hunting, my hunters are very very competent at non-combat hunting skills in about the same amount of time.  By thieving, my thieves are very good at pilfering in, again, about the same amount of time. It's not going out of their way to skill up in those areas, it's just doing what they do.  That does not mean they've branched, but everything is working at the level that I am fulfilling my role.  It should also be noted that it is not a part time job to get competent at skills.  The way skill code works, playing more during the day is actually less efficient use of game time, as far as advancing skills.  More failures in less time != more skill ups, it equals the same amount of skill ups as occasional failures in the same amount of time.  It's only once you're succeeding most of the time that more playtime becomes truly better at pushing skills along.  If your role, and what you are working to do in the game, requires your skills, then they will go up accordingly, relatively fast.  Thus, increasing starting skills does not address the concern on that front, it only bumps the starting level that the 'competitive skilling' that you talk about begins at.

When I hear of 'the grind', I really do always assume the combat skills, because that is where I agree there is a very different time frame expected.  But that's also how I expect it to be.  I don't think being a runner in the byn needs to make you more badass than it already does.  I feel like 'journeyman' is very underrated, as far as weapon skills go...

I've said elsewhere, I think that when you're going out looking for fights to lose and having a hard time, you're in a pretty good spot, and the argument that your weapon skills aren't maxed yet is a disorienting argument for me...if you're winning your fights, that's a good thing, and should have no relation to what your skills are.  The exception to this was addressed in my previous post, where weapon branching is concerned.  I don't think weapon skills need to go up faster, I don't think people need to start at higher levels, I just think we could move the level they branch at downwards.  Winning fights too easily is not a valid method of approach for why we need to be able to improve combat skills more easily.

Mostly, I do not resonate with the mentality of 'Higher skill levels means more time to RP'.  RP is what is constantly happening.  If you're an aide...your combat skills will likely not go up quickly because you're more oriented around non combat skills.  If you're a hunter, who is actually hunting, that is you role-playing.  You hunt, you socialize between hunts, you balance survival and social.  If you're a criminal, you crime, you balance crimes against your survival and anonymity as a criminal.  The insinuation that 'This is degrading RP' is exactly false on a MUD like Armageddon, and seems to be more reminiscent of a MUSH, where you don't skill up, you just dictate what you should and shouldn't be able to do.  This is not the platform of Role-Play that has brought Armageddon here, because it's about the progression from useless to useful, from no one to someone, from new character to established one.  These progressions are done on a variety of scales, and skills is only one of them, but it -is- one of them and should not be removed out of a group's preference to prioritize on another scale of progression while wanting the benefits of the one they don't like to play as much.

On another front, while this may be ideal for some of those who do not really engage much in the skilling up game, there are likewise groups where skills are their focus.  The early-level danger and uncertainty is something of a rite of passage for the character.  That thief who isn't that good yet?  He doesn't go after templars and noble's belts.  That's left up to the longer lived, established thieves.  That hunter there doesn't bring in the raptor hides.  For that, you need a hunter who's been established for a bit.  Taking away that level of scaling really does interact fairly heavily with both economy and the 'social hierarchy' of PC's.  Reputations are made and built based off of how this rite of passage is traversed and used.

I do, however, concede the point...an older character should probably have something to show for their age in their guild.  That I do not disagree with.

Just one more slight idea so that warriors don't get the short end of the stick here. Right now one weapon skill gets a boosted to apprentice. I think all warriors should start with their all weapons skills at that level.

Again i agree invisible skills like offense and defense shouldn't be touched.

Quote from: Armaddict on October 29, 2015, 03:22:46 PM

Mostly, I do not resonate with the mentality of 'Higher skill levels means more time to RP'.  RP is what is constantly happening.  If you're an aide...your combat skills will likely not go up quickly because you're more oriented around non combat skills.  If you're a hunter, who is actually hunting, that is you role-playing.  You hunt, you socialize between hunts, you balance survival and social.  If you're a criminal, you crime, you balance crimes against your survival and anonymity as a criminal.  The insinuation that 'This is degrading RP' is exactly false on a MUD like Armageddon, and seems to be more reminiscent of a MUSH, where you don't skill up, you just dictate what you should and shouldn't be able to do.  This is not the platform of Role-Play that has brought Armageddon here, because it's about the progression from useless to useful, from no one to someone, from new character to established one.  These progressions are done on a variety of scales, and skills is only one of them, but it -is- one of them and should not be removed out of a group's preference to prioritize on another scale of progression while wanting the benefits of the one they don't like to play as much.

On another front, while this may be ideal for some of those who do not really engage much in the skilling up game, there are likewise groups where skills are their focus.  The early-level danger and uncertainty is something of a rite of passage for the character.  That thief who isn't that good yet?  He doesn't go after templars and noble's belts.  That's left up to the longer lived, established thieves.  That hunter there doesn't bring in the raptor hides.  For that, you need a hunter who's been established for a bit.  Taking away that level of scaling really does interact fairly heavily with both economy and the 'social hierarchy' of PC's.  Reputations are made and built based off of how this rite of passage is traversed and used.


I do, however, concede the point...an older character should probably have something to show for their age in their guild.  That I do not disagree with.

This is a game. We are here to have fun. There is a reason our characters don't need to go take shits everyday. Or that there are no openings for stable boy position. Because that would be really boring to do, and we rather focus on RPing more enjoyable things because again this is a game, it should be fun at all levels to play.

Its great aides not need to grind skills but they have other demands of their role, not to mention alot of us enjoy being mercenaries, hunters, and rogues that really do need some skills under their belts before they can perform adequately. The time it takes to get to that point might not seem that much to you, but its alot of time for me. It shouldn't take a month of bordom for someone to get to enjoy some good plots with their character. Characters should be more adequate out of the box, they should be more useful to everyone around them, so they can focus doing stuff that everyone can find enjoyable. That way new characters can do more then just going into a tavern sitting in a corner waiting for something fun to happen, like trying to RP accomplishing something that is worth their time. Again no one is saying for people to be the best over night, just being more capable out of the box to play the roles they want and be able to engage in more enjoyable RP with others.

The idea that a player should be bored to tears as a rite of passage is outdated, and there are too many games out there that will offer a better alternative. I understand some people enjoy the grind, but frankly there is a reason korean grind games are changed for western audiences, because the general populace doesn't enjoy them.

I can agree that maybe age should play a factor for those that want to start a younger character (under 20?) with more of a 'challenge'.

Quote from: Taijan on October 29, 2015, 02:54:43 PM
My thoughts and feelings (phew, tough act to follow after a series of Nessalin posts!):

Melee combat
When it comes down to close quarters combat, I'd kinda like there to be a serious threat of harm every time you get in a direct fight. Being skilled should mitigate this to a degree, but getting up close to a giant insect or a pack of raptors should be cause for concern and make people want to hunt in groups. Melee with the big nasties should be suicide.  Overhauling combat would be a different topic though - for the sake of this one, I think it'd be better to leave weapons skills and other hidden factors to combat as they are.

All other skills
So, with the exception of weapon skills, I think that having the skills from your main guild starting around Journeyman would be great - as well as skills that you branch through your main guild.  Typically that seems like it's a high enough level to make use of the skill reliably while still having room to improve.

This way, a ranger can hunt competently via ranged combat if they have the right equipment, pickpockets can steal more often than not without getting thrown into a militia blender, and crafters can make things reliably without the grind as long as they can get materials.

And for warriors, things like kick or bash would have a higher chance of success.

I can't agree more with you - Another mud I played, CLOK, doesn't use an HP system like armageddon does. theres an 'energy' stat that when you take damage, is lowered, and blood loss slowly drains it, and if its negative enough, you die.  but you can be injured on any of the limbs of the body, head, neck, torso, back, and abdomen, and the eyes.  If any of the places beside the limbs take a total of 120 damage, its instant death, but 45 damage for the eyes. as the damage gets to the middling point, a character starts bleeding, and it gets increasingly worse. A limb thats 'severely injured (80+ damage) can have negative effects - you cant block with a shield on a severely injured arm, for example, or even use a weapon.

A single hit from a well placed arrow, or weapon, without armor to protect someone (Sometimes even with, depending on the weapon) can instantly turn the tables of a the fight so hastily, or instantly end it. The average longsword deals 25-60 damage on a hit, and can attack up to two times per round. It makes the threat of melee combat very scary when going up agaisnt properly equiped opponents., an arrow could graze, doing 1 damage, or be absoutly lethal, hitting for 100 damage.  Not to mention trying to move with an arrow stuck in you makes your energy use go way up! (Energy is also used from fighting, traveling, ect. So its a risk of energy management agaisnt combat. A lengthy fight where either side barely got wounded, then suddenly someone has a serious wound? they'll die within moments from bloodloss if they don't run away to tend to it!)

I'm not saying that we should over haul to this, or anything, but Melee combat should be SCARY. But its also a game, making melee combat unpreferable wouldn't be -fun-. Making it dangerous, with risks vs reward in mind, is definitely important. Keep in mind the mud I spoke of above does not have perma death.

As for the mention of skills - I generally agree. WIth pickpockets as my favorite guild to go with, I can tell you right now that more often then not i've felt it important to get other skills up first before even -trying- to steal. I do not feel it should be that way.

on the subject of skills the guilds have, I'd have a lot to say about the guilds in general and what skills they have,ect  and general thoughts of a new player, but this isn't the topic for feedback on such things.

Quote from: Taijan on October 29, 2015, 02:54:43 PM
My thoughts and feelings (phew, tough act to follow after a series of Nessalin posts!):

Melee combat
When it comes down to close quarters combat, I'd kinda like there to be a serious threat of harm every time you get in a direct fight. Being skilled should mitigate this to a degree, but getting up close to a giant insect or a pack of raptors should be cause for concern and make people want to hunt in groups. Melee with the big nasties should be suicide.  Overhauling combat would be a different topic though - for the sake of this one, I think it'd be better to leave weapons skills and other hidden factors to combat as they are.

All other skills
So, with the exception of weapon skills, I think that having the skills from your main guild starting around Journeyman would be great - as well as skills that you branch through your main guild.  Typically that seems like it's a high enough level to make use of the skill reliably while still having room to improve.

This way, a ranger can hunt competently via ranged combat if they have the right equipment, pickpockets can steal more often than not without getting thrown into a militia blender, and crafters can make things reliably without the grind as long as they can get materials.

And for warriors, things like kick or bash would have a higher chance of success.

Everything said here is awesome.

I'd like to agree that the skill grind is a little intense.  I think easing up the low end of the grind, while maintaining the long term grind for overachievers with things like advanced weapon skills is a good way to go.  Somewhat faster skill gains for people who have maxed a guild before would also be good.  My first character was basically a skillmaxed merchant.  Later, I tried to play another, and wound up retiring him simply because the prospect of having to max all those skills again was too depressing.  And merchants are easy compared to warriors, I'm told.

I also like the idea of having better skills if you make an older character.  This might discourage people from artificially making all their characters kids just because of the accelerated clock in the game and the knowledge that they will need their character's teenager years to reach adulthood without looking like a total chump.

Making a 40-year old grizzled ranger who can actually be played as a grizzled ranger would be great.  Maybe these could function as new guild templates like 'veteran warrior.'  And maybe their potential gains should be reduced, though I think people's desires to be young and hot would naturally limit the number of older characters.

Quote from: Erythil on October 29, 2015, 04:25:14 PM
Making a 40-year old grizzled ranger who can actually be played as a grizzled ranger would be great.  Maybe these could function as new guild templates like 'veteran warrior.'  And maybe their potential gains should be reduced, though I think people's desires to be young and hot would naturally limit the number of older characters.

How is a 40-year old grizzled ranger not hot?

It might be neat if older characters had higher skills by default, while younger characters tended to learn skills faster (despite reduced wisdom.) Then again, I guess there wouldn't be much of a point to giving older [mundane] characters higher wisdom if it doesn't affect the learning rate.

What about having a small, set amount of skill points that accrue just for being logged in and NOT idle - that you can distribute where you wish?

This can be considered to be time you've spent off-screen training, or doing whatever it is you do.

I think combat skills are the only real contenders for compression here. Everything else comes with time, more or less.

My other concern is that it's just easier to grind combat skills if you're a lone hunter that can login at 1am and get some grinding done. If you're in a semi restricted clan that doesn't patrol or hunt, it's going to take you 3 times as long.

Quote from: Delirium on October 29, 2015, 04:43:47 PM
What about having a small, set amount of skill points that accrue just for being logged in and NOT idle - that you can distribute where you wish?

This can be considered to be time you've spent off-screen training, or doing whatever it is you do.

This is a cool idea.

Quote from: Rokal on October 29, 2015, 04:47:23 PM

Quote from: Delirium on October 29, 2015, 04:43:47 PM
What about having a small, set amount of skill points that accrue just for being logged in and NOT idle - that you can distribute where you wish?

This can be considered to be time you've spent off-screen training, or doing whatever it is you do.

This is a cool idea.

It would be great for clanned characters that are too busy doing clanny things instead of training.

Quote from: Jingo on October 29, 2015, 04:46:18 PM

My other concern is that it's just easier to grind combat skills if you're a lone hunter that can login at 1am and get some grinding done. If you're in a semi restricted clan that doesn't patrol or hunt, it's going to take you 3 times as long.

Or infinite times as long, depending on which skills.

Quote from: Jingo on October 29, 2015, 04:50:16 PM

Quote from: Rokal on October 29, 2015, 04:47:23 PM

Quote from: Delirium on October 29, 2015, 04:43:47 PM
What about having a small, set amount of skill points that accrue just for being logged in and NOT idle - that you can distribute where you wish?

This can be considered to be time you've spent off-screen training, or doing whatever it is you do.

This is a cool idea.

It would be great for clanned characters that are too busy doing clanny things instead of training.

Maybe there could be more skill points offered as an OOC perk of being clanned, explained by having virtual mentors that train you in said "offscreen" time.

Assigning skill points, and all this discussion of needing higher skills to do anything, makes me feel like you guys are more meta-gamey than the metagamers.

The skill system of armageddon and it's basis of improvement-through-use has been a long-time appreciated value.  I'm unsure how this suddenly turned into a detriment.  The big complaint beforehand was not 'Oh, I can't do this well immediately', it's always been 'I wish I could customize what I started poor at but could get better at, rather than using classes'.

I think this is another poor byproduct, for reasons that were already explained but I think misunderstood.  Basically...I think there's too much of the 'I hate dying'.  I don't think this is about competence in plots (you actually get roped into a lot of plots in Armageddon through incompetence, because it reveals you to interested parties), I think it's about risk aversion, once again.  If your first five days of playing time as a rogue being roguish or a mercenary being a mercenary are boring skill grinds, I'm pretty much putting that on you.  Those are very exciting times that define the rest of my character's life, which may or may not be short.

Armaddict, you may be right, but these topics are about what makes players unhappy enough to eventually stop playing. Combat skill ups is one of the issues that some of our players have been complaining about for years. If we can change it so they don't play lizard loving hermits, or just stop making combat PCs, and give them some happiness, it is worth it, in my eyes.

Quote from: solera on October 29, 2015, 05:26:24 PM
Armaddict, you may be right, but these topics are about what makes players unhappy enough to eventually stop playing. Combat skill ups is one of the issues that some of our players have been complaining about for years. If we can change it so they don't play lizard loving hermits, or just stop making combat PCs, and give them some happiness, it is worth it, in my eyes.

And yet again...when did these 'issues' with combat skill ups actually arise?

This is not an actual problem, it's a perceived problem.  People seeing journeyman, instead of advanced, instead of master, is making people frustrated, wherein the skill itself is actually functioning very well in terms of everything -except- branching the weapon skill.

If someone goes back to the discussion thread of when that change was made, and why there were bunch of people against it, you'll note that threads and mentalities like these were actually predicted ahead of time.  However, again, the system itself is still working well.  The amount of time that it takes through 'apprentice' is pretty short, but important.  Using success and failure as a measure of how good you are, instead of being told what it is, and trying to improve it based off that information, is ultimately far more satisfying and supplemental to a roleplaying game that is designed to be played to such extremes. (i.e. 'Real' living the character, not a pen and paper d&d group)

Edited:  This is not brought up to say 'hide the skill list again', but to point out that this is a byproduct of being able to view the system at work, even though said system is still functioning well.

This is a coded game. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play a character who grows competent over time.

A move toward a more EVE-like system would allow people to focus more on roleplay interaction.

So your accusations of meta-gaming fall pretty flat.

Quote from: Delirium on October 29, 2015, 05:37:23 PM
This is a coded game. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play a character who grows competent over time.

A move toward a more EVE-like system would allow people to focus more on roleplay interaction.

So your accusations of meta-gaming fall pretty flat.

It is indeed a coded game.  Characters do grow competent over time.  In ways they should, due to being used.

The meta-gameyness comes from the idea of 'assigning skill points', rather than there being a requirement.  I.e. Your proposed system allows someone not playing the game at all, uninvolved in clan activities, uninvolved in plots, and just generally uninvolved to come back and put them exactly where they want to.  Then say they've been in the sparring hall the entire time.  Then proceed to beat people up who have been invested in getting things going.  This is worse than the generally weak arguments for the change in the first place, in the way of my character was created three months before yours, so no matter what, it will be skilled up higher than yours.

That is the opposite effect of what lifting the starting skills was intended for.

Quote from: Jingo on October 29, 2015, 04:46:18 PM
I think combat skills are the only real contenders for compression here. Everything else comes with time, more or less.

My other concern is that it's just easier to grind combat skills if you're a lone hunter that can login at 1am and get some grinding done. If you're in a semi restricted clan that doesn't patrol or hunt, it's going to take you 20 times as long.

What Jingo said here. The combat skills need to go up slowly, even if you can't miss.

Does anyone else look at a PC using an advanced weapon skill and immediately wonder what kind of twinky shit they get up to? If so, that's a problem.

Quote from: Armaddict on October 29, 2015, 05:42:35 PM

Quote from: Delirium on October 29, 2015, 05:37:23 PM
This is a coded game. There's nothing wrong with wanting to play a character who grows competent over time.

A move toward a more EVE-like system would allow people to focus more on roleplay interaction.

So your accusations of meta-gaming fall pretty flat.

It is indeed a coded game.  Characters do grow competent over time.  In ways they should, due to being used.

The meta-gameyness comes from the idea of 'assigning skill points', rather than there being a requirement.  I.e. Your proposed system allows someone not playing the game at all, uninvolved in clan activities, uninvolved in plots, and just generally uninvolved to come back and put them exactly where they want to.  Then say they've been in the sparring hall the entire time.  Then proceed to beat people up who have been invested in getting things going.  This is worse than the generally weak arguments for the change in the first place, in the way of my character was created three months before yours, so no matter what, it will be skilled up higher than yours.

That is the opposite effect of what lifting the starting skills was intended for.

Incorrect - it's for non-idle time logged in. It would also be a small amount, and not the same as skilling up in-game.

But it would allow aides and clanned people some recourse - those who arguably have access to better resources - to compete with independants.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on October 29, 2015, 05:44:20 PM
Does anyone else look at a PC using an advanced weapon skill and immediately wonder what kind of twinky shit they get up to? If so, that's a problem.

Every time. THEY MUST BE A TWINK FOR BRANCHING!!!!1111ONE

In reality what choice do they have other than twink or never branch.

Skeelz you had a warrior pc and regular playtimes for 3 rl years. Did you branch? And if so, when?

Ahhh! I misread your post, sorry!

Quote from: LauraMars on October 29, 2015, 05:37:55 AM
Uh...No? I thought we were just reminiscing. Ok then.

Ok. It sounded to me like Laura was holding up an example of a change (no mul sorcerers without karma now) which every agrees on and using it to imply that all other changes that were made must be the same. More or less implying it is foolish to even bring it up.

It wasn't my intention to attack the staff, I just listed some past changes that weren't as 100% unambiguously positive as the mul change for Laura to look at and realize there might be some value in past ideas. I did it in a sarcastic way, so I'm sorry for that. I'm sure Laura wasn't trying to attack the staff either.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on October 29, 2015, 05:44:20 PM
Does anyone else look at a PC using an advanced weapon skill and immediately wonder what kind of twinky shit they get up to? If so, that's a problem.

It used to be much, much worse my friend.  

Because once upon a time you'd have cats running around with massive/branched weapon skills, and they'd have the gall to come on the GDB and hate on people for twinking in the exact same way that they were!

They seemed especially interested in closing loopholes right after they had passed through them.  At least now there's less expectation that you have to reach levels of awesomeness while pretending that this shit just happened naturally.  To boot, you don't have to twink the feck out of your character while publicly decrying that twinking should ever take place on our beloved game, LOL.

If you're unhappy now BadSkeelz, you should have tried the game 10 years ago.

We should make a time machine or something.

Or maybe for April Fool's day we can shut down the MUD and restore from the oldest available backup?  Total lulz

Quote from: Delirium on October 29, 2015, 05:37:23 PM
A move toward a more EVE-like system would allow people to focus more on roleplay interaction.

I would absolutely LOVE an EVE-like system for Armageddon.  Not as a replacement for going out and training skills, because that's pretty fun actually for a lot of people, but as a supplement to it.

Even something as simple as +1% to a skill of your choice every week would be fantastic.  It might not sound like much, but that's equivalent to going from (I'm guessing) advanced in a weapon skill to fully mastered in 6 months.  The key advantage is it would chug along right past any plateaus you might have, whereas conventional skill training starts to get more difficult.  While this would clearly benefit combat skills over non-combat skills, make offense and defense able to be bumped this way and you've effectively made it useful for every single class in the game.  If you don't mind training all your skills as a merchant, then dump your 1% into offense or defense to make yourself a little tougher in that (hopefully) rare combat scenario.

Quote from: wizturbo on October 29, 2015, 06:12:12 PM

Quote from: Delirium on October 29, 2015, 05:37:23 PM
A move toward a more EVE-like system would allow people to focus more on roleplay interaction.

I would absolutely LOVE an EVE-like system for Armageddon.  Not as a replacement for going out and training skills, because that's pretty fun actually for a lot of people, but as a supplement to it.

Even something as simple as +1% to a skill of your choice every week would be fantastic.  It might not sound like much, but that's equivalent to going from (I'm guessing) advanced in a weapon skill to fully mastered in 6 months.  The key advantage is it would chug along right past any plateaus you might have, whereas conventional skill training starts to get more difficult.  While this would clearly benefit combat skills over non-combat skills, make offense and defense able to be bumped this way and you've effectively made it useful for every single class in the game.  If you don't mind training all your skills as a merchant, then dump your 1% into offense or defense to make yourself a little tougher in that (hopefully) rare combat scenario.

If I could triple bold, underline, italistic what I did, I would.

Eve's system of training is awesome for the people who don't have tons of time to play a game.

Quote from: wizturbo on October 29, 2015, 06:12:12 PM

Quote from: Delirium on October 29, 2015, 05:37:23 PM
A move toward a more EVE-like system would allow people to focus more on roleplay interaction.

I would absolutely LOVE an EVE-like system for Armageddon.  Not as a replacement for going out and training skills, because that's pretty fun actually for a lot of people, but as a supplement to it.

Even something as simple as +1% to a skill of your choice every week would be fantastic.  It might not sound like much, but that's equivalent to going from (I'm guessing) advanced in a weapon skill to fully mastered in 6 months.  The key advantage is it would chug along right past any plateaus you might have, whereas conventional skill training starts to get more difficult.  While this would clearly benefit combat skills over non-combat skills, make offense and defense able to be bumped this way and you've effectively made it useful for every single class in the game.  If you don't mind training all your skills as a merchant, then dump your 1% into offense or defense to make yourself a little tougher in that (hopefully) rare combat scenario.

My concern is that an EVE-like system encourages absenteeism. You hear stories on EVE of people who don't even play any more, they just log in now and then to set up their skill queues.

As a supplement to the skillup system that works for me. Would also means assassins could rp studying anatomy to train backstab instead of stabbing chaltons and rats.

Say if you log in that day +1% to your chosen skill

I like the idea of an eve-like system so long as its for time spent active in game as it was suggested. And if it is only a supplement to the other ideas already address in this thread.

Quote from: Eyeball on October 29, 2015, 06:16:32 PM

My concern is that an EVE-like system encourages absenteeism. You hear stories on EVE of people who don't even play any more, they just log in now and then to set up their skill queues.

That's why I wouldn't fully convert it over to EVE-like.  Just make it a supplement for players who want to keep progressing their character, without having to train...especially when training is in a highly diminished returns state, such as late stages of combat skills.

Quote from: Dresan on October 29, 2015, 06:23:17 PM
I like the idea of an eve-like system so long as its for time spent active in game. And also so long as its also a supplement to the other ideas already address in this thread.

I don't like it being based on "active in game" because it could encourage people to login and go AFK all day long.  Also, it wouldn't be an effective equalizer for people who don't have a lot of time to play, but still want their characters to grow at a reasonable clip.

Quote from: wizturbo on October 29, 2015, 06:25:13 PM

Quote from: Dresan on October 29, 2015, 06:23:17 PM
I like the idea of an eve-like system so long as its for time spent active in game. And also so long as its also a supplement to the other ideas already address in this thread.

I don't like it being based on "active in game" because it could encourage people to login and go AFK all day long.  Also, it wouldn't be an effective equalizer for people who don't have a lot of time to play, but still want their characters to grow at a reasonable clip.

...wait, we're trying to make all PC's equalized, now?

Stop focusing on maxxing out characters.  If the fun is in the progression, then do what progresses you.  This whole thing is so weird.

Quote from: Old Kank on October 29, 2015, 12:49:25 PM

Quote from: Armaddict on October 29, 2015, 12:31:50 PM

QuoteI'm starting to think that the ability to see it is what's causing this particular complaint.

You are absolutely correct, Lizzy, and I've had this point several times.  Seeing the skill levels has made a very noticeable shift in behavior for me, and it was not a good shift, and the discussions on skills on the boards have shifted accordingly.

Thank you.

My play has suffered dramatically since the introduction of skill levels.  I never used to give a shit about my skills until it became a quantifiable objective that I could actively work on.

Why not simply resolve not to look in that case? I suppose it's still necessary to look once in a while to see whether a skill has branched. I can think of two things to help out. One is to request an option to the skills command that only lists the skills and not the skills levels. The other is request an option to specify on character generation that you never want to see skill levels on the skill list (this would remove all temptation).

I'd assume this system would only apply to mundanes. It wouldn't make much sense for some unmanifested/in denial magicker aide to be slowly maxing their spells while offline (or online, depending on how this is implemented.) I don't think anybody wants that, and besides, magickers don't need to skill up any faster.

But in that vein, it might be weird for this to be applied to any skills you're not using. Say my noble PC is guild_burglar. Should she be gaining experience picking locks "off-camera"?

Not to hate on the system. I actually like the idea; I'm just throwing some things out there.

Quote from: Eyeball on October 29, 2015, 06:31:16 PM

Quote from: Old Kank on October 29, 2015, 12:49:25 PM

Quote from: Armaddict on October 29, 2015, 12:31:50 PM

QuoteI'm starting to think that the ability to see it is what's causing this particular complaint.

You are absolutely correct, Lizzy, and I've had this point several times.  Seeing the skill levels has made a very noticeable shift in behavior for me, and it was not a good shift, and the discussions on skills on the boards have shifted accordingly.

Thank you.

My play has suffered dramatically since the introduction of skill levels.  I never used to give a shit about my skills until it became a quantifiable objective that I could actively work on.

Why not simply resolve not to look in that case? I suppose it's still necessary to look once in a while to see whether a skill has branched. I can think of two things to help out. One is to request an option to the skills command that only lists the skills and not the skills levels. The other is request an option to specify on character generation that you never want to see skill levels on the skill list (this would remove all temptation).

Brief skills does this.

The point is not that it influences my play (though it does), but has a broad blanket effect over the entire playerbase, which is why these things have even come up.  People closely monitoring their skills list to see improvement, to see when it pops, to see what they can do to get it up so that they are maxxed.

Prior, the playerbase relied on trial and error to know how good they were.  When they could win consistently, they were getting good.  This stimulated more realistic play, not less realistic play.  Dangerous things were always things you were unsure about it.  No one ever got to say 'Hell yeah, I'm at advanced, I'm better than most people.'  They had to check.  The playerbase, now, is risk averse and searching for ways to increase those skills to advanced or master before ever deciding to bank anything on it, even if it is consistently succeeding.  That is why brief skills does not help.  Sure, it changes me, but it does not change the impact of the knowledge of PC's knowing -exactly- where in the scale they sit.

QuoteBut in that vein, it might be weird for this to be applied to any skills you're not using. Say my noble PC is guild_burglar. Should she be gaining experience picking locks "off-camera"?

That's what I meant by meta-gamey.  CHOOSING the skill points is...very very different in relation to people improving at what they're consistently doing.

Yes your noble should because he can pay off-camera for tutors. And yeah I don't mean there should be a system to equalize those that don't play with those who do, but it means at least they won't have to go twink that one skill they were going to for the 30 mins of rp time they have a day.

Quote from: Inks on October 29, 2015, 06:38:59 PM
Yes your noble should because he can pay off-camera for tutors. And yeah I don't mean there should be a system to equalize those that don't play with those who do, but it means at least they won't have to go twink that one skill they were going to for the 30 mins of rp time they have a day.

Can I kill your virtual tutor to prevent it?  CROSS-THREAD POINTS.

I think the ideal system would be something like this:

On top of whatever you might learn ICly through normal play....

• Every Tuesday every character gets a "skill boost" that they can spend on a single skill to gain a 1% bump to it.
• Characters can only have one skill boost at a time, so if you don't login that week, you don't get your boost for that week.
• Boosts may only be used on skills your character currently has on their skill sheet.  There's a good argument for excluding magick/psionics from this, but that's debatable.

Bonus awesome ideas that could compliment this system, but are clearly more controversial:

• Bonus skill boosts could be awarded by staff for good roleplay,  to account for IC circumstances where it would make sense, or a variety of other potential uses.
• Being a member of certain IC organizations might get you a bonus boost.  For example, Tor Academy members, maybe you get a bonus +1 combat skill boost per week from the training they receive there.
• Maybe allow PC's to skill boost on ANY mundane skill, even ones they don't know... If you want to develop an aptitude for a mundane skill, you can!  It will just take a long time to get really good.  Of course, maybe there's a cap on how high these skills can go, etc...

Obviously something like this would be a major coding effort, not sure if our coders can do something like it...  But it'd be neat!

OK, sure, Inks, if my noble is the sort that wants to be tutored in lockpicking, then yeah, she should be gaining that skill. I meant to come up with an example in which the person is not using their coded skills and the guild isn't a representation of their "job." I'm sure you can think of some, like a barber that's actually guild_warrior, representing some unknown talent in fighting or having formerly dabbled. The barber is probably not undergoing active training.

Sure, they could probably find some excuse for their skills going up ("I've been sparring with my [vNPC] cousin!") but it does seem rather silly. If you're not using certain skills at all on-camera, you shouldn't be gaining them off-camera.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on October 29, 2015, 05:44:20 PM
Does anyone else look at a PC using an advanced weapon skill and immediately wonder what kind of twinky shit they get up to? If so, that's a problem.

pretty much the default

No bonus points awarded by Imms. That would be more arbitrary than the karma system often is.

Quote from: Inks on October 29, 2015, 06:50:41 PM
No bonus points awarded by Imms. That would be more arbitrary than the karma system often is.

I've played MUDs that awarded accelerated skill boosts for good roleplay.  It was never often enough to really make a big difference, but it was effectively a kudos system, and it always made me feel happy when I got one.  Karma can be really, really slow to gain, and getting something tiny now and then could be fun....  As I said, it's a controversial subject.  I'd rather focus the discussion on the core of the system though, what do you think of that?

The first three bullet points would be fine and break and unbalance nothing, I would even go so far as make it 2 times a week. Who cares if it was used on magick? They are so fast to raise anyway.

I think a skill boost system like that is a good incentive to keep people coming back and logging in at least once a week. Even if its just once a week they'll be able to stay connected to the game, and eventually they'll come back to play. Though I'm wondering if it should be changed to maybe an smaller skill bump a day if you log in an hour. Even if people log in to idle, thats still a chance for them to get engaged in some RP and stay longer or get addicted to the game again.

I rather not see imm based rewards, we already get enough tears after people recieving account notes. Rather not see another reason for people to think staff is trying to eat their brainz.

I agree with Dresan's above post unless he edits it. ;)

Having points awarded by staff creates more workload on staff. Plus it feels too much like karma. I don't like karma.

Quote from: wizturbo on October 29, 2015, 06:55:05 PM

Quote from: Inks on October 29, 2015, 06:50:41 PM
No bonus points awarded by Imms. That would be more arbitrary than the karma system often is.

I've played MUDs that awarded accelerated skill boosts for good roleplay.  It was never often enough to really make a big difference, but it was effectively a kudos system, and it always made me feel happy when I got one.  Karma can be really, really slow to gain, and getting something tiny now and then could be fun....  As I said, it's a controversial subject.  I'd rather focus the discussion on the core of the system though, what do you think of that?

Instead of having "effectively a kudos system" why not just implement a kudos system? Then no one will care about favortism.

Quote from: Inks on October 29, 2015, 07:07:01 PM
I agree with Dresan's above post unless he edits it. ;)

I only edit for spelling and grammer....and snark at time :P

Okay, okay...  I'm taking off the staff awarded portion of the idea, because it's distracting away from the larger more important part of what I was trying to get out there.

Quote
I think the ideal system would be something like this:

On top of whatever you might learn ICly through normal play....

• Every Tuesday every character gets a "skill boost" that they can spend on a single skill to gain a 1% bump to it.
• Characters can only have one skill boost at a time, so if you don't login that week, you don't get your boost for that week.
• Boosts may only be used on skills your character currently has on their skill sheet.  There's a good argument for excluding magick/psionics from this so sekrit 'gicks have to risk being outed by practicing.

Bonus awesome ideas that could compliment this system, but are clearly more controversial:

• Being a member of certain IC organizations might get you a bonus boost.  For example, Tor Academy members, maybe you get a bonus +1 combat skill boost per week from the training they receive there.
• Maybe allow PC's to skill boost on ANY mundane skill, even ones they don't know... If you want to develop an aptitude for a mundane skill, you can!  It will just take a long time to get really good.  Of course, maybe there's a cap on how high these skills can go, etc...

Obviously something like this would be a major coding effort, not sure if our coders can do something like it...  But it'd be neat!

then you'll have players like me who don't have any time to play but pop in once a week for the bump, and a year later you have a really badass runner that nobody knows.

If combat skills are the problem and are so hard to raise compared to the rest, then just make them a little tiny bit easier and see how it goes. Experiment.

And for the record, adding the skill levels into the game caused me to obsess about them and track them. I don't like that and need to gag my skill command. I never understood what the benefit of adding the ranks was.

I had a thought before going to bed the other night:

What if the weapon/combat skills had a chance of improving just on use? Hear me out, because I know what you're thinking.

Nobody can get above Journeyman level in a weapon skill, without being in a defined military clan or one in which training occurs. (I'm aware this nerfs rangers)



Thought process: Not only would this bring about a change to making people WANT to be part of these "militarized" clans in combat roles, it would "take those indies down a peg". It would give a method in which to raise combat skills past this "hump" that causes everyone such grief, and only really screws over rangers/outdoorsy types, but really the "max without clan" would be about where people are at now.


I never understood how fighting [fast creature] for 2 RL months made you a better swordsman when fighting a trained gladiator.

The skill system for combat was never built to be realistic.  It was built to create a risk vs. reward scenario, for a hack and slash game.

Arm isn't a hack and slash game, but half it's systems are built around it.

Quote from: Riev on October 29, 2015, 09:44:43 PM
I had a thought before going to bed the other night:

What if the weapon/combat skills had a chance of improving just on use? Hear me out, because I know what you're thinking.

Nobody can get above Journeyman level in a weapon skill, without being in a defined military clan or one in which training occurs. (I'm aware this nerfs rangers)



Thought process: Not only would this bring about a change to making people WANT to be part of these "militarized" clans in combat roles, it would "take those indies down a peg". It would give a method in which to raise combat skills past this "hump" that causes everyone such grief, and only really screws over rangers/outdoorsy types, but really the "max without clan" would be about where people are at now.


I never understood how fighting [fast creature] for 2 RL months made you a better swordsman when fighting a trained gladiator.

It makes you a better swordsman, period. If you fight critters all the time and never fight people, you will not be as good at fighting people as someone who trains against people. It's already built into the code. That is why I generally play rangers. Because I suck at the whole PK scene, and would prefer to only fight people in self-defense, yet still enjoy the whole concept of hunting/killing stuff.

Quote from: Lizzie on October 29, 2015, 10:01:53 PM

Quote from: Riev on October 29, 2015, 09:44:43 PM
I had a thought before going to bed the other night:

What if the weapon/combat skills had a chance of improving just on use? Hear me out, because I know what you're thinking.

Nobody can get above Journeyman level in a weapon skill, without being in a defined military clan or one in which training occurs. (I'm aware this nerfs rangers)



Thought process: Not only would this bring about a change to making people WANT to be part of these "militarized" clans in combat roles, it would "take those indies down a peg". It would give a method in which to raise combat skills past this "hump" that causes everyone such grief, and only really screws over rangers/outdoorsy types, but really the "max without clan" would be about where people are at now.


I never understood how fighting [fast creature] for 2 RL months made you a better swordsman when fighting a trained gladiator.

It makes you a better swordsman, period. If you fight critters all the time and never fight people, you will not be as good at fighting people as someone who trains against people. It's already built into the code.

I know there are invisible modifiers that take into account stuff like this. I don't think the reward is comparable, though.

Generally the guy that can go out and hunt something anytime is going to have a better time than the guy that needs to find somebody to spar with. And that's without the dumb perks that fighting super agility creatures may or may not give.

Quote from: Riev on October 29, 2015, 09:44:43 PM
I had a thought before going to bed the other night:

What if the weapon/combat skills had a chance of improving just on use? Hear me out, because I know what you're thinking.

Nobody can get above Journeyman level in a weapon skill, without being in a defined military clan or one in which training occurs. (I'm aware this nerfs rangers)



Thought process: Not only would this bring about a change to making people WANT to be part of these "militarized" clans in combat roles, it would "take those indies down a peg". It would give a method in which to raise combat skills past this "hump" that causes everyone such grief, and only really screws over rangers/outdoorsy types, but really the "max without clan" would be about where people are at now.


I never understood how fighting [fast creature] for 2 RL months made you a better swordsman when fighting a trained gladiator.

I don't agree with the skill limit for indies Militarized clans and all sure, could have great skill. But indies can still put in the effort needed to become great warriors. Limiting them this possiblity is just .. silly.

I say maybe military clan members might have other benefits besides this.  It might be easier for one of the milltia to gain such ability ,but it shouldnt' be impossible for indies to reach master.

just my opinon.

I think combat skills progress at a perfectly reasonable rate, but it's hard to get opportunities to fail after a certain point.  At least, not without going out of your way.

Barring a major overhaul or code fixes, why not just correct training dummies?  Make them normal NPC's, clan them, and give all clan members the ability to order them to disengage.  Have them nosave combat if possible, and update their skills and stats to minimize the damage they do in order to mimic some of those scenarios that people seek out.

Another solution I'm surprised no one had mentioned yet: allow skill gain on successes.

^


Also I mentioned it. High five for good ideas.

Quote from: Delirium on October 29, 2015, 11:48:49 PM
Another solution I'm surprised no one had mentioned yet: allow skill gain on successes.

Inb4 banned

I've consolidated the ideas in this thread to post on the IDB, like I did for the player retention brainstorming thread. It's up for staff to discuss there now, too. Thanks for splitting off this discussion from the player retention thread because it has made it much easier to organize and potentially discuss further.

I sincerely doubt anything will change.

Quote from: Jihelu on October 30, 2015, 12:41:32 PM
I sincerely doubt anything will change.

These jaded veterans keep getting younger and younger!

Quote from: Rathustra on October 30, 2015, 12:46:36 PM

Quote from: Jihelu on October 30, 2015, 12:41:32 PM
I sincerely doubt anything will change.

These jaded veterans keep getting younger and younger!

I'm teaching my 4 year old niece to say "back in my day everything was better"

Quote from: Rathustra on October 30, 2015, 12:46:36 PM

Quote from: Jihelu on October 30, 2015, 12:41:32 PM
I sincerely doubt anything will change.

These jaded veterans keep getting younger and younger!

Lel.

I didn't mean it more as a "Armageddon was so much better back in my...six months ago extreme play period"
I just mean it in general. Things don't change often.

Quote from: Jihelu on October 30, 2015, 01:00:53 PM

Quote from: Rathustra on October 30, 2015, 12:46:36 PM

Quote from: Jihelu on October 30, 2015, 12:41:32 PM
I sincerely doubt anything will change.

These jaded veterans keep getting younger and younger!

Lel.

I didn't mean it more as a "Armageddon was so much better back in my...six months ago extreme play period"
I just mean it in general. Things don't change often.

Really? Because a lot has changed even in the last year. Or last five years!

Quote from: Eurynomos on October 30, 2015, 01:02:46 PM

Quote from: Jihelu on October 30, 2015, 01:00:53 PM

Quote from: Rathustra on October 30, 2015, 12:46:36 PM

Quote from: Jihelu on October 30, 2015, 12:41:32 PM
I sincerely doubt anything will change.

These jaded veterans keep getting younger and younger!

Lel.

I didn't mean it more as a "Armageddon was so much better back in my...six months ago extreme play period"
I just mean it in general. Things don't change often.

Really? Because a lot has changed even in the last year. Or last five years!

I haven't even been here that long! Silly.

So maybe it will.

I don't know.

Quote from: Eurynomos on October 30, 2015, 01:02:46 PM

Quote from: Jihelu on October 30, 2015, 01:00:53 PM

Quote from: Rathustra on October 30, 2015, 12:46:36 PM

Quote from: Jihelu on October 30, 2015, 12:41:32 PM
I sincerely doubt anything will change.

These jaded veterans keep getting younger and younger!

Lel.

I didn't mean it more as a "Armageddon was so much better back in my...six months ago extreme play period"
I just mean it in general. Things don't change often.

Really? Because a lot has changed even in the last year. Or last five years!

Yup. Things change. Eury has gotten old. Tuluk is closed and Whirans are 6 karma. Yet we have still not moved the jail closer to the criminals.

This is a change...that would very likely send me away.

My fondest memory is getting arrested and having the guy taking me to jail get stuck in the same square while saying "THE JAILS SURE ARE FAR AWAY" Or some shit.
10/10

How about a policy change that allows players to earn a boost to the skill of their choosing by participating in clan activities?  Each clan would be different, but maybe:  Bynners gain a boost for every three contracts they go on.  Fale nobles get two boosts for every celebration they throw.  AoD members get a boost for every two criminals they arrest.

Put in weekly boost cap if needed.

You get the idea. 

Quote from: Old Kank on October 30, 2015, 07:05:38 PM
How about a policy change that allows players to earn a boost to the skill of their choosing by participating in clan activities?  Each clan would be different, but maybe:  Bynners gain a boost for every three contracts they go on.  Fale nobles get two boosts for every celebration they throw.  AoD members get a boost for every two criminals they arrest.

Put in weekly boost cap if needed.

You get the idea. 

The idea is there, but not quite that solution, because that would mean some clans will get more "boosts" just because they have a more active staffer/leadership/etc.

The trouble is not punishing casuals, but still letting hardcores feel like their time is spent efficiently.

Quote from: Riev on October 30, 2015, 07:44:28 PM

Quote from: Old Kank on October 30, 2015, 07:05:38 PM
How about a policy change that allows players to earn a boost to the skill of their choosing by participating in clan activities?  Each clan would be different, but maybe:  Bynners gain a boost for every three contracts they go on.  Fale nobles get two boosts for every celebration they throw.  AoD members get a boost for every two criminals they arrest.

Put in weekly boost cap if needed.

You get the idea. 

The idea is there, but not quite that solution, because that would mean some clans will get more "boosts" just because they have a more active staffer/leadership/etc.

The trouble is not punishing casuals, but still letting hardcores feel like their time is spent efficiently.

Instead of making the game about questing, let's just casually offer three boosts in a character's lifetime. One to stats, one to a skill of their choice, and one to a language.
However, you'd need to make a convincing case about why the stat, skill, or language has raised, and there are certain factors to getting the boosts, which is concurrent with time played. Note that these won't be staggering boosts. We're talking about a single tick up in all of these. From good to Very good. From Journeyman to Advanced. From Poor to below-average. From not knowing a word of elvish to 'you know after being around all those bastards I think I can figure out when they're fucking with me.'


Right, so you became a huge badass? Right, here's a little bit more strength for having the character live 30 days!
60 days rolls around? Can't manage to hit that last little bit from Advanced into Master? Well, it's your lucky day!
Tired of chatting up sirihish? Here's a little gith so you can shout back at those ugly fuckers.

Maybe you could literally just like, put it in a little menu. Like, 'I want Wisdom, Slashing weapons, and Mirrukim'. Then you forget about it. Then, maybe staff notices you one day, notices you're qualified for a RANDOM BOOST of your choice, and they decide what's fitting for you. Maybe they decide instead of wisdom, you get agility. Maybe, instead of slashing weapons, you get some great cooking abilithy. Mirrukim? You haven't spent any time around dwarves, but you have spent some time around Templars. You figured out what they're saying, and that's dangerous! Maybe have it coinceide with bios!

One solution might be social: if you are a casual player, and you have enough karma, you could ask staff and make a case for bypassing the grind.  You'd have to make the rules for this perspicuous so that things are viewed as fair.

The karma system needs to be completely rewritten if you guys want to put all these things behind a karma barrier.

Quote from: Alesan on October 31, 2015, 10:37:02 AM
The karma system needs to be completely rewritten if you guys want to put all these things behind a karma barrier.

Agreed. Karma exists to keep people from breaking the game through violation of trust with powerful but RP restricted options.

It's ultimately about "Does staff trust you with this difficult to rp role?" If it's not a difficult to rp role it shouldn't involve the karma system.

Quote from: Narf on October 31, 2015, 10:41:39 AM

Quote from: Alesan on October 31, 2015, 10:37:02 AM
The karma system needs to be completely rewritten if you guys want to put all these things behind a karma barrier.

Agreed. Karma exists to keep people from breaking the game through violation of trust with powerful but RP restricted options.

It's ultimately about "Does staff trust you with this difficult to rp role?" If it's not a difficult to rp role it shouldn't involve the karma system.

I don't know what karma is about really.

If you have been faithfully playing a game for x number of -years- and you have not really sucked, then I think trust should be there.  I can see not  trusting a new player, or one who has continually messed up.  But if you are neither one of those things, then trust should be the default way you are viewed.

I am not in favor of what replaces karma in other games (MUD),  the ability to remort, join certain guilds etc.  I think that there -should- be a period of time in which a player is evaluated. Once you have successfully passed that period ALMOST all roles should be available, until you show that you cannot handle them.

I say almost because I think roles like a sorc, Templar, Noble, Leadership PC, or a mul should be special app roles.

So, if you meet these criteria:

1. Been playing for at least 12 RL months
2. Also have at least 20 days logged in and actively playing (not sitting at a bar afk)
3. No serious negative flags in your account.

Then immediately all races/guilds should be open to you except those which are special app only.

For the first year:

For your first 3 days of play you can only play a 0 karma race/guild

After that and until the above benchmarks are reached, you can play 2 or 3 karma race/guilds.

This would give new players a reason to log in and play consistently. It would improve retention because you are putting a goal out there. People like goals and challenges.

The system as it is now is built to chase folks away who feel they are not trusted after many years played, or that they simply get tired of trying/waiting.

Cheers

You should have to give staff a reason to take karma away, not give it to you.

Karma is about using the tool and requesting for it.  Imms can't watch everybody.  I know I've had some pretty awesome scenes that were never commented on.  Great characters that were never noted, so on and so forth.  It's frankly not their fault.  But for how long I've been playing I'd say I have a less than what it should be karma level because I haven't always used the request tool to ask for a bump review. I frankly don't mind though as I play for my own ways of having fun, although I wish I would have kept up more because I'd love to play high level mages more. :p


Edit: Because phone autocorrect sucks.

Quote from: Norcal on October 31, 2015, 12:18:15 PM

Quote from: Narf on October 31, 2015, 10:41:39 AM

Quote from: Alesan on October 31, 2015, 10:37:02 AM
The karma system needs to be completely rewritten if you guys want to put all these things behind a karma barrier.

Agreed. Karma exists to keep people from breaking the game through violation of trust with powerful but RP restricted options.

It's ultimately about "Does staff trust you with this difficult to rp role?" If it's not a difficult to rp role it shouldn't involve the karma system.

I don't know what karma is about really.

If you have been faithfully playing a game for x number of -years- and you have not really sucked, then I think trust should be there.  I can see not  trusting a new player, or one who has continually messed up.  But if you are neither one of those things, then trust should be the default way you are viewed.

I am not in favor of what replaces karma in other games (MUD),  the ability to remort, join certain guilds etc.  I think that there -should- be a period of time in which a player is evaluated. Once you have successfully passed that period ALMOST all roles should be available, until you show that you cannot handle them.

I say almost because I think roles like a sorc, Templar, Noble, Leadership PC, or a mul should be special app roles.

So, if you meet these criteria:

1. Been playing for at least 12 RL months
2. Also have at least 20 days logged in and actively playing (not sitting at a bar afk)
3. No serious negative flags in your account.

Then immediately all races/guilds should be open to you except those which are special app only.

For the first year:

For your first 3 days of play you can only play a 0 karma race/guild

After that and until the above benchmarks are reached, you can play 2 or 3 karma race/guilds.

This would give new players a reason to log in and play consistently. It would improve retention because you are putting a goal out there. People like goals and challenges.

The system as it is now is built to chase folks away who feel they are not trusted after many years played, or that they simply get tired of trying/waiting.

Cheers

You should have to give staff a reason to take karma away, not give it to you.

Absolutely agree.  Karma shouldn't be an 'award' -- staff can award us in other ways, by being encouraging.  As far as I can tell, karma just creates paperwork, other than its basic role of holding back new players from wrecking things owing to inexperience.  Hence, two, maybe three, levels of trust: new players, then, after a year (or whatever), you become a trusted player.  Trust can be lost, sure, but it should be default that staff trusts after a probational period.

If karma is meant to prevent too many of X (sorcs, muls), that's not the easiest way to do it: just put a cap on the number of Xs allowed in the game at a given time.

(Just my two cents.  Now that I think about it, I've only apped something that required karma once, and that something died in three hours or something.)

Quote from: Alesan on October 31, 2015, 10:37:02 AM
The karma system needs to be completely rewritten if you guys want to put all these things behind a karma barrier.

Even though I have certain views on simplifying the karma system, my suggestion was just to put it behind the 'one karma' veil, which is pretty easily achievable on the current system: longevity.

I just wanna be a psionicist nilazi.

Quote from: titansfan on October 31, 2015, 12:28:21 PM
Karma is about using the tool and requesting for it.  Imms can't watch everybody.  I know I've had some pretty awesome scenes that were never commented on.  Great characters that were never noted, so on and so forth.  It's frankly not their fault.  But for how long I've been playing I'd say I have a less than what it should be karma level because I haven't always used the request tool to ask for a bump review. I frankly don't mind though as I play for my own ways of having fun, although I wish I would have kept up more because I'd love to play high level mashes more. :p

I will likely never put in a karma request. Why? Because I feel it's egotistical to write in to staff and say "This is what I've done and I think I deserve karma." I think it promotes the wrong kind of goals in playing the game. I don't want to play to impress staff for brownie points. I want to play a character, be immersed in the environment, and let things come naturally. I don't expect to ever get karma. To me, karma is this mystical, magical thing that I'd have to perform miracles to earn. Even if I know what categories in which I can earn it, I don't know how to impress staff enough to make them think I'm worthy of it. And I don't think that's a good train of thought to have, either.

Roleplay for the sake of roleplay is good. Roleplay to reach an arbitrary goal... not so good.

Anyway, sorry, that's entirely off topic from this thread. I've had this on my mind and it was sort of itching to get out. I'm not against a way to bar untrusted players from roles like mages, HGs, and such. I just don't like the way it's done in practice.

Quote from: Alesan on October 31, 2015, 01:47:17 PM
I will likely never put in a karma request. Why? Because I feel it's egotistical to write in to staff and say "This is what I've done and I think I deserve karma."

So don't do that?  Just put in the request and ask for feedback.  It's just triggering the process for staff to look over their notes and make a decision.  Kind of self-defeating, I think, not to do it.  Unless you're perfectly happy with 0-3 karma roles and you're three spec apps per year.  Not needing to spec app a desert elf is worth doing it at least once.  IMO.

Quote from: whitt on October 31, 2015, 02:17:07 PM

Quote from: Alesan on October 31, 2015, 01:47:17 PM
I will likely never put in a karma request. Why? Because I feel it's egotistical to write in to staff and say "This is what I've done and I think I deserve karma."

So don't do that?  Just put in the request and ask for feedback.  It's just triggering the process for staff to look over their notes and make a decision.  Kind of self-defeating, I think, not to do it.  Unless you're perfectly happy with 0-3 karma roles and you're three spec apps per year.  Not needing to spec app a desert elf is worth doing it at least once.  IMO.

Yeah, my karma review requests are usually about two sentences. The second sentence is usually a thank you for the staff's time.

Isn't karma easy to get if you successfully play a +2 spec app?

They don't always approve +2 spec-apps.

I almost feel like they should automate skill bumps diku style. And everyone should get 3 by default even on normal app charactersfor free. Each skill will have a limit to where it can be bumped. Everyone gets a new skill bump every rl month (or insert your preferred time frame) played. Skill bumps should trigger branches at that point.

Yes. And people would twink up a character, then get them killed, so that they would have a new, unknown character with powerful skills.

And then they would run around and PK like madmen.

What if subguild skills just...started maxed?

I still say that skills should have a percentage chance to go up on success. I love, love, LOVE the fail system. I think its a great way to put people at "passable average" in a short amount of time, and allow people who work hard to get to the higher levels.

However, if there was even a 2% chance to skill up on using a skill, this would help combat, sneakies, crafting, everything. Sure, you still want to get fails in to "skill up bruh" but you wouldn't be -as- worried and have to RP around "Well, I stole from that guy... but... I didn't get my fail... so really I didn't do much"

Not to mention that sometimes you need to do hilarious, possibly stupid things in order to achieve your failures when you're going for that last bit.

The more I think about it, I really think the best solution is a three-pronged approach:

1) Introduce a moderate percentage chance for a skill to go up on use, regardless of success or failure,
2) Make weapons skills somewhat easier to raise (not a lot, but, somewhat easier).
3) Revisit what branches from where, and when, or maybe add/switch branches to address potential balance issues due to the above, such as:
   o Maybe backstab should branch from sap
   o Perhaps weapon skills should branch at a lower skill level
   o Start burglars with lockpick making, then branching lockpicking from that.

The examples attached to #3 are just me spitballing, so you can see where I'm going with it.

Quote from: Delirium on November 03, 2015, 12:31:13 PM
The more I think about it, I really think the best solution is a three-pronged approach:

1) Introduce a moderate percentage chance for a skill to go up on use, regardless of success or failure,
2) Make weapons skills somewhat easier to raise (not a lot, but, somewhat easier).
3) Revisit what branches from where, and when, or maybe add/switch branches to address potential balance issues due to the above, such as:
  o Maybe backstab should branch from sap
  o Perhaps weapon skills should branch at a lower skill level
  o Start burglars with lockpick making, then branching lockpicking from that.

The examples attached to #3 are just me spitballing, so you can see where I'm going with it.

I like these with the exception of number three in regards to burglars.

I'm not sure how much realistic sense it makes to start making tools to pick locks before you understand how to even pick locks.

It's a bit like making tools to fix engines before you know how to fix engines.

If the issue is playability and not realism, then I agree...it would make being a burglar a lot easier.

Quote from: Delirium on November 03, 2015, 12:31:13 PM

  o Start burglars with lockpick making, then branching lockpicking from that.

Wtih extended sub-guilds being what they are, I've had this idea myself. However not so much branch, mostly because that would defeat the purpose of characters being able to do more out from the start. However i see no reason why burgalars can't just start out being able to make the tools they need to practice using.

Quote from: Dresan on November 03, 2015, 12:39:30 PM

Quote from: Delirium on November 03, 2015, 12:31:13 PM

  o Start burglars with lockpick making, then branching lockpicking from that.

Wtih extended sub-guilds being what they are, I've had this idea myself. However not so much branch, mostly because that would defeat the purpose of characters being able to do more out from the start. However i see no reason why burgalars can't just start out being able to make the tools they need to practice using.

I'm not for or against this particularly but a bit of background: It used to be that burglars could start picking locks right from the get go with no need to go out and hunt down lockpicks.

At some point someone conciously made the change to what it is now. I suspect they had a reason.

The way i see it, if you role burglar, you should be able to play a burglar without having to stuggle. Building your tools, before testing them out, see what works and what doesn't.  

Now if you didn't start a burglar as your main class, then I can see you having to hunt down tools first.  

Quote from: Desertman on November 03, 2015, 12:38:39 PM

Quote from: Delirium on November 03, 2015, 12:31:13 PM
The more I think about it, I really think the best solution is a three-pronged approach:

1) Introduce a moderate percentage chance for a skill to go up on use, regardless of success or failure,
2) Make weapons skills somewhat easier to raise (not a lot, but, somewhat easier).
3) Revisit what branches from where, and when, or maybe add/switch branches to address potential balance issues due to the above, such as:
  o Maybe backstab should branch from sap
  o Perhaps weapon skills should branch at a lower skill level
  o Start burglars with lockpick making, then branching lockpicking from that.

The examples attached to #3 are just me spitballing, so you can see where I'm going with it.

I like these with the exception of number three in regards to burglars.

I'm not sure how much realistic sense it makes to start making tools to pick locks before you understand how to even pick locks.

It's a bit like making tools to fix engines before you know how to fix engines.

I hate the sound of my pedantic voice when I write stuff like this, but lockpicking is way lower tech than fixing an engine, it's more akin to knitting or belaying a climber.  You can improvise crude tools before your first attempt with no real specialized knowledge and achieve limited success.

But I agree overall -- it might be fun for new burglars if they branched lockpicking immediately after a few (3, or 4) lockpick crafting attempts, just as a show that their character is ruminating about the subject.

Burglars, well realistically yes. But. I like it the way it is. I like the game not making it easy to become a professional house-breaker, and that you need lots of  sids or need to put yourself out to make contacts. That's what this game is about?

I thought this game was about Murder, Corruption and Betrayal.

I dunno, I just think this game has much more to offer then to make people struggle to get good at the skills that defines their guilds.  

It is. You have to get tied to people before you can MCB them, unless you play random.

Quote from: solera on November 03, 2015, 03:43:23 PM
It is. You have to get tied to people before you can MCB them, unless you play random.

As I said, this sounds great if you didn't start off as a burglar. However, it shouldn't be a freaking struggle uphill if those 'people' aren't around or weren't around when the game reset.

If that burglar wanted to then become a world renown hunter, then yes, let the uphill struggle and grind begin.

How about we change the name and call them a spy?
But , getting back to the topic, slow skill gain suits me fine, (never played a warrior), but lots of players it doesn't. Delirium's suggestions all sound sensible.

Perhaps these ideas were already mentioned, this is a very long thread that I am only now joining.

Mentorship systems.
A high skilled PC can place a flag on other PCs which registers them as apprentices underneath them. After that is done, the mentor needs to perform a training session and issue some other flag type command 'lesson apprentice' with a delay of say ... 1 rl week. After 6 such lessons, the apprentice gets a 'significant' (1/8th of teacher's own skill percentage?) boost in their skills, while a teacher gains 2% gain boost per student.  People can be apprenticed only under one singular person, accepting mentorship from someone else, nulls all lessons received and removes them from that mentor's lesson plan.

People of similar skill can potentially be each other's mentor/apprentices. In which case this is more of a collaborative method of self teaching and experimenting. Of course if 6 people of one tribe become each other apprentice/teachers while each one has 10 points in their skills. Then after 6 rl weeks, one of them will gain 12% gain, while the rest 1-2%.

Add a requirement, that a mentor only receives his bonuses from lessons done in at least 50% assembly. So if a mentor has 6 students and must teach them 6 times, but across all of his lectures he only has 50% people near him at each time. He will only receive 50% of the skill gain. While the students, even if taught separately gain the full amount. 

Understand the core problem here :

People want to keep busy.  The game aspects are here to keep us busy until something social pops up.  Some of the games are social activities themselves.  Because we cannot envision a society that keeps us busy and engaged, we add games to the fringes.

So.  Let's play the game.  I'm tired of suggesting solutions to problems that don't have to exist.

The core problem is that there are better things to in RL then spend your time grinding again and agian. And then people wonder why no one wants to take any risks or risk death by interacting with others in dangerous situations.  

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 01:12:05 AM
The core problem is that there are better things to in RL then spend your time grinding again and agian. And then people wonder why no one wants to take any risks or risk death by interacting with others in dangerous situations.  

Yep, that sounds about right.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on November 20, 2015, 01:22:13 AM

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 01:12:05 AM
The core problem is that there are better things to in RL then spend your time grinding again and agian. And then people wonder why no one wants to take any risks or risk death by interacting with others in dangerous situations.  

Yep, that sounds about right.

I can sympathize with the desire to want to start your character more advanced without having to put the time into it, but since it would happen to everyone and not only you, I don't think you'd notice any significant change.

I imagine that if we raised the bar on what new characters roll out of the hall of kings stat'd with, then expectations would just rise in lockstep and we'd be back in a thread like this voicing that we need higher starting skills in short order.

I mean, for example: Right now scrabs mop the floor with a new character. So we increase their skills so scrabs are the new tregil. Now everyone hunts scrabs. The shops are full of scrab goods. New characters can't earn money from scrabs because everyone has flooded the markets with them so they have to press deeper into the wilderness to find more dangerous animals that the shops don't have lots of components from. Those animals kill the new characters because they don't have the skills to fight them yet. Another thread is started addressing the frustrations with not being able to be a competent hunter out of the gate and asking for skills to be raised so that the new type of critter can be handled by a starting level character.

Same for PvP: Every single recruit in the clan is also going to have these increased skills so your character is still going to have their clocked cleaned by those who have been in the clan for a longer period of time and you're still going to feel like it's a grind to get your character up to a point where they can hold their own in the sparring circle against their peers and be considered competent in their skills. Another thread is born voicing frustrations felt about it taking too much time for their character to be considered useful to their clan.

It seems to me like we're just drawing lines in the sand here in terms of where to start a new character, but the time it takes to move from "new" (whatever that is) to "seasoned" (whatever that is) will be unaffected.

I think boosting skills for a character is only going to make a discernible difference to the player if they are the only one receiving the skill boost and everyone else is still starting fresh. Then you'd notice a big difference. And you can already do this with the karma/special application based skill bumping we do now.

I'm just gonna keep drinking and do other things until I need to login.

As it has been discussed before, its not just about making people be able to fight meks as soon as they are created. You can give a character all the boosts you want and chances are they will still die to the first beetle they encounter, because no one here has ever asked to raise defense/offense skills.

There are alot of skills in this game which are terrible until you slowly grind them to their max potential. Hide,sneak, archery, steal...just to name a few off the top of my head. It can take 5 days of my life to get so many skills to be valuable. At 30 years old a ranger should be able to shoot things down. Again, its totally cool that scrab/raptor/beetle might still beat the shit out of amos the hunter if he walks into it, but if he plays it smart like a hunter should he should be able to -hunt- it. And its like this with so many classes.

And when you finally finally begin to sneak/hunt/steal effectively, basically do the stuff your class was designed to do, potentially beginning to do some more interesting things, be useful and competant to others... people here ask you to hang around to see if someone wants to charge you down and have you start again from nothing.

I shouldn't have to wait up to 6 days and use a special app(3 yearly max), just to avoid being bored out of my mind with the same old grind.

I understand why you feel frustrated, but I don't think the solution you're suggesting would actually address the source of your frustration, for the reasons I outlined above.

I'll touch on an additional few things though.

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 01:58:23 AM
As it has been discussed before, its not just about making people be able to fight meks as soon as they are created. You can give a character all the boosts you want and chances are they will still die to the first beetle they encounter, because no one here has ever asked to raise defense/offense skills.

Along that same experimental vein that led me to test low-skill/high stat warriors against high skill/low stat warriors, I also tested a mage (no combat skills) against a journey level warrior. Equal stats, but I maxed the mage's offense and defense to as high as it's possible for them to be, and they still lost in a straight up melee fight against the warrior. -- I think you may be over estimating the extent to which offense/defense factor into combat compared with the more specialized combat skills.

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 01:58:23 AM
There are alot of skills in this game which are terrible until you slowly grind them to their max potential. Hide,sneak, archery, steal...just to name a few off the top of my head. It can take 5 days of my life to get so many skills to be valuable. At 30 years old a ranger should be able to shoot things down. Again, its totally cool that scrab/raptor/beetle might still beat the shit out of amos the hunter if he walks into it, but if he plays it smart like a hunter should he should be able to -hunt- it. And its like this with so many classes.

And when you finally finally begin to sneak/hunt/steal effectively, basically do the stuff your class was designed to do, potentially beginning to do some more interesting things, be useful and competant to others... people here ask you to hang around to see if someone wants to charge you down and have you start again from nothing.

I shouldn't have to wait up to 6 days and use a special app(3 yearly max), just to avoid being bored out of my mind with the same old grind.

Emphasis mine. We have to put the line in the sand somewhere on that issue. We can't let everyone start the game with a heavy coded advantage over other new characters all the time or, as I mentioned above, the benefit that provides becomes meaningless.

I 100% agree with Jave's previous two posts.

One solution, if you don't feel that the grind is fun when you play a 30-year-old character, is to play a 16-year-old character instead.

The game offers choices. The game shouldn't have to change the code just to accommodate your desire to play a buffed-up 30-year-old warrior. Everyone starts out low, everyone has to work their way up. You can try playing a young character or -

You could say your character used to do something else but due to [bio mention] he doesn't any more, and shows up at chargen having decided to do this instead. He is physically capable of it (read: playable stats and the skills are actually on his skills list), now he just has to figure out how.

Quote from: Lizzie on November 20, 2015, 06:33:54 AM
One solution, if you don't feel that the grind is fun when you play a 30-year-old character, is to play a 16-year-old character instead.

The game offers choices. The game shouldn't have to change the code just to accommodate your desire to play a buffed-up 30-year-old warrior. Everyone starts out low, everyone has to work their way up. You can try playing a young character or -

Because "Everyone starts out low" the game doesn't offer choices.  You can only start out as an incompetent.  So, rather than the code being able to (not having to) allow for some leeway in starting skill level, character backgrounds have to (not may need to) be warped to provide some explanation for any one other than a youth entering the stage with no coded ability to have survived the last "x" years of their existence.

I don't think folks are asking to start out at "Journeyman".  Just not at "Novice" for their guild's primary skills.  That level of fail for anyone who might claim to have made a living at their guilded skills is simply improbable. 

Quote from: Jave
I imagine that if we raised the bar on what new characters roll out of the hall of kings stat'd with, then expectations would just rise in lockstep and we'd be back in a thread like this voicing that we need higher starting skills in short order.

I don't believe this is true either.  I don't see folks asking to be rock stars.  Only to not suck at their guild's primary skills.  Not sure how starting every (not special app'd characters) at the bottom of Apprentice is that impacting to the overall state of things.  Especially if this level of bump is to all primary guilds for all characters.  It just means that if you're playing a fighter, you can beat a non-fighter right out of char-gen and if you're playing a merchant you can maybe only fail 75% of the time instead of 90% of the time. 

Yes, thats exactly right, Lizzie I think the game should completely change the code to just suit my personal desire...thats been the point of everyone posting in this entire thread.  ::)

Your solution is one possibiltiy but let me offer another more common solution, people can instead 'take a break' and then come back when weeks, months, years from now instead when they don't mind grinding once or twice more before leaving again.

@Jave

Its really about balance, no one said the other skills were useless. A character with just offense and defense and no other skills losing to a warrior with maxed combat skills? No kidding, but the point was that you believed loading up a character with skills would make the world trivial. How about sending an assassin with advanced combat skills and weapons and nothing else up towards a beetle, or many other of the nasties in the game see how they manage.

If all you needed was max shield and high parry to make the NPC world trivial we'd probably be having a different discussion. That was my point. Again no one is saying to allow rangers to be able to one on one meks, or anything bigger then even chalton, but they should have other skills that allow them to hunt them without having to spend days of having to train it. Again its the same with other classes.

It just really just comes down to this, there are much better ways to spend five real life days then to grind these character over and over. There are games out there that offer an enjoyable experience without ever having to pay the price of bordom, and they are very good at competing for our time. This is a permadeath game, and alot of the problems you encounter in this game, like people not wanting to even interact for risk losing their character, not making the world more enjoyable by risking their character is attributed to the fact that starting a character over and over is such a shitty experience. Again some people don't bother learning you name until you've lived for a certain why, something anyone can do easily by going to the tavern and idling(much fun).

Now you can argue that making characters more viable in the beginning isn't the way( and again this has never meant just being able to kill bigger things), that fine, but it doesn't change that fact that it drives people away. I know the 5 day grind to relevancy in my chosen guild is driving me away right now at least, the only time I log in is when I absolutely have nothing to do, and that often includes after I've already played a couple other games.

All that said, I appreciate you responding Jave. I'm not really fustrated, if I felt angry or fustrated I probably wouldn't pose so much as move on quietly. Though I am noticing I spend more time on the GDB then logging in, I'm really thinking I need another 'break' or just reroll something new(uguh).

It would be neat if you could choose one starting skill from a list in chargen to start out with two automatic skill bumps applied. Across the board: no karma needed.

So if you were a warrior, and in your background, you were a bouncer at a bar, maybe you get to pick "guard" and start out with it bumped up.

Or if you are a ranger, and in your background, you hunted a lot of small game from a distance, you would pick "archery".

Or maybe you are a ranger who spent a lot of time keeping watch at your family's caravan, so you pick "scan".

Or maybe you are a pickpocket who has been scraping a living as a thief ever since they were a child, so you pick "steal" to start bumped.

The list goes on. I think that would be a happy compromise between "keep the playing field level" and "let people start out okay at their profession".

These skill bumps would be on top of regional or guild-based skill level bumps.

You would be choosing from a list that was generated based on your guild choice, so if there were skills staff wanted excluded from the "start bumped" list, it'd be a simple matter.

Quote from: Delirium on November 20, 2015, 10:06:24 AM
It would be neat if you could choose one starting skill from a list in chargen to start out with two automatic skill bumps applied. Across the board: no karma needed.
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You would be choosing from a list that was generated based on your guild choice, so if there were skills staff wanted excluded from the "start bumped" list, it'd be a simple matter.

Above is possible with skill bumps (three times per year).  If the three times per year limit were removed, this would be ok, but still requires staff intervention or a code change to allow for choice of which skill to bump.

I think it is more feasible to make one code change that sets all primary guild starting skills to all start at Apprentice instead of Novice.  Then apply cultural bumps and CGP point skill bumps.

Quote from: whitt on November 20, 2015, 10:16:04 AM

Quote from: Delirium on November 20, 2015, 10:06:24 AM
It would be neat if you could choose one starting skill from a list in chargen to start out with two automatic skill bumps applied. Across the board: no karma needed.
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.
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You would be choosing from a list that was generated based on your guild choice, so if there were skills staff wanted excluded from the "start bumped" list, it'd be a simple matter.

Above is possible with skill bumps (three times per year).  If the three times per year limit were removed, this would be ok, but still requires staff intervention or a code change to allow for choice of which skill to bump.

I think it is more feasible to make one code change that sets all primary guild starting skills to all start at Apprentice instead of Novice.  Then apply cultural bumps and CGP point skill bumps.

If you just start everyone at apprentice.....it just makes apprentice the new novice.

I've never understood this thought process.

If you bump all skills to advanced then that just makes advanced the new novice.

I think a HUGE part of what makes this game great is the fact it is SOOOO hard to get out of the "newbie" stages of a PC with them still alive.

I think it makes people make much more realistic decisions with their characters not only when they are new, but also once their PC's are established.

Imagine a system where everyone gets started at Master for example. (another idea I've seen presented here)

Nobody is working for shit so nobody is worried about losing anything so they will make their decisions based on the concept of not worrying about losing anything.

"Well, I could try and smoke this guy, but I might die.....oh well, who cares, I can just respawn with all Master skills. No big deal. I didn't put any work into this PC anyways."

I think one of the things Armageddon needs is a steep progression curve in order to force people to truly fear losing their hard work. In a perma-death game that is really a huge part of the game. The whole concept is centered around you making decisions based on the fear of you losing your hard work. It's what separates us from other games where you just respawn from your checkpoint and nobody gives a shit.

But, I'm old, I guess. I wasn't brought up in the culture of everyone gets a trophy etc...etc...I could be the extreme minority at this point.

(This is really a response to someone saying earlier they wished everyone just started with mastered skills. I have been meaning to respond to that but just got around to it.)

I think the person that said they wondered if everyone should just start with most skills mastered and be able to just roleplay instead of grind was Adhira.

I don't understand why people suddenly think making some character viable in there chosen field suddenly means making them master in just about everything.

Ranger: give him advance/master archery, scan, hunt and ride. Melee skills...yup you can make/keep them all novice. Do you want this guy in your hunting party?...oh yeah, someone can guard him with a shield while he shoots things down as a hunter should. Do you want this guy to fight beetles head on? probably not until he grinds for the current set number of days.  He would still be very useful without having to spend the special app or grind RL days to become it.  There is still plenty of ruff circle for people to do here, before he can fight bahamets head on,  sneak like a ninja, parry like a warrior, and just about anything else depending on his sub-guild. I think there are still plenty of jollies to be had when the player loses a 50 day old character even if we did something like this.

If you branch archery you start at zero, if you get archery with a sub-guild you start at zero. Again all the classes are basically like this.

Quote from: Desertman on November 20, 2015, 10:20:50 AM
If you just start everyone at apprentice.....it just makes apprentice the new novice.

I've never understood this thought process.

This is only true if you are solely basing your judgement on combat skills.  It is not true when you look at failure rate for non-combat skills.  Given this is an RPI with a wealth of non-combat skills and a lot going on besides killing things with bone swords, let's put the combat skills away for a bit and talk about the experience of someone who is not a stick-jock.

If your character is anything but a child, you have made a living with your guild skills up to the point when your character commences.  To not be able to, for instance, cut cloth without failing 75% of the time?  Kind of pathetic.  Can you track your prey?  Well, no... not really, but it's because of... um...  How about sneaking past that half-asleep guard?  Climb to the balcony? I thought you were a burglar?  How about a nice beaded necklace.  Doesn't get much easier Ms. Jeweler.  No?  Hmmm.  And you survived thirty years, how?  Bet you don't make it to thirty-one.

That's the point.  Combat Skills aside, you shouldn't have to suck at your character's career skills.  Even with Combat Skills, if you were anything but an amnesiac or a child, there is no chance you survived to a playable age without better than novice ability in your guild skills.  Need proof?  Try working in that chosen profession for the next IG year without advancing any of your appropriate skills as a result.  

The binary nature of fail based crafting does make things seem rather ridiculous at first.  I've been making fun of it for years.  But I don't think starting people with higher skills is the solution.  A better solution might be to create a crafting game in which a craft does not equal either total success or total failure.  Craft a shirt as a novice?  Sure - but you're bad at sewing, so you craft a shitty shirt. It's still a shirt though, and you didn't inexplicably just destroy every piece of fabric beyond saving. Craft a shirt as a master?  Great - you craft a stunning piece of fashion. It's worth a lot. etc.

That would take a really code intensive overhaul though, but it's nice to dream.

I like the fact not everyone starts the game being useful to the group. Being useful to the group is something you earn. Being useful to the group is what garners you respect from the group in a lot of ways.

I don't think everyone should be gifted that respect.

Suspending reality in regards to older characters is just one of those wonky sticking points that I think you have to look past.

People have been complaining about it for twenty years. I think it would be awesome if we could find a strong balance between 13 year olds and 35 year olds that made sense and did not also just "award people success" for apping an older character.

I don't know what that solution is though. Apparently nobody else has figured it out either as this has been an ongoing discussion for a very long time.

Quote from: Desertman on November 20, 2015, 10:20:50 AM
If you just start everyone at apprentice.....it just makes apprentice the new novice.

I've never understood this thought process.

If you bump all skills to advanced then that just makes advanced the new novice.

I think a HUGE part of what makes this game great is the fact it is SOOOO hard to get out of the "newbie" stages of a PC with them still alive.

I think it makes people make much more realistic decisions with their characters not only when they are new, but also once their PC's are established.

Imagine a system where everyone gets started at Master for example. (another idea I've seen presented here)

Nobody is working for shit so nobody is worried about losing anything so they will make their decisions based on the concept of not worrying about losing anything.

"Well, I could try and smoke this guy, but I might die.....oh well, who cares, I can just respawn with all Master skills. No big deal. I didn't put any work into this PC anyways."

I think one of the things Armageddon needs is a steep progression curve in order to force people to truly fear losing their hard work. In a perma-death game that is really a huge part of the game. The whole concept is centered around you making decisions based on the fear of you losing your hard work. It's what separates us from other games where you just respawn from your checkpoint and nobody gives a shit.

But, I'm old, I guess. I wasn't brought up in the culture of everyone gets a trophy etc...etc...I could be the extreme minority at this point.

(This is really a response to someone saying earlier they wished everyone just started with mastered skills. I have been meaning to respond to that but just got around to it.)

It doesn't make apprentice the new novice, because guilds have different skills. Skills take different amounts of time to raise too. If the NPC mobs don't change, then that matters a lot too.
If everyone had a maxed character, then you would still have stats and position. You might also like a certain character more then your other ones.

That being said, I also agree about Armageddon needing progression to take a long time. It gives a longevity to characters that no other game has. I can still make improvements to a character's skills after 100 days played. The perm-death is the reason I keep up with this game. It gives weight to every choice that even has a little bit of danger to it.

Quote from: whitt on November 20, 2015, 09:42:31 AM

Quote from: Jave
I imagine that if we raised the bar on what new characters roll out of the hall of kings stat'd with, then expectations would just rise in lockstep and we'd be back in a thread like this voicing that we need higher starting skills in short order.

I don't believe this is true either.  I don't see folks asking to be rock stars.  Only to not suck at their guild's primary skills.  Not sure how starting every (not special app'd characters) at the bottom of Apprentice is that impacting to the overall state of things.  Especially if this level of bump is to all primary guilds for all characters.  It just means that if you're playing a fighter, you can beat a non-fighter right out of char-gen and if you're playing a merchant you can maybe only fail 75% of the time instead of 90% of the time.  

It's worth noting that if you are playing a fighter, you can already beat a non-fighter out of char-gen. Beyond that, I'm a little confused by your reply. I agree -- starting every character at the bottom of apprentice instead of novice would not impact the overall state of things. That's why I said it wouldn't actually address the source of the frustration people are having. Because it wouldn't have an impact.

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 09:50:56 AM
@Jave

Its really about balance, no one said the other skills were useless. A character with just offense and defense and no other skills losing to a warrior with maxed combat skills? No kidding, but the point was that you believed loading up a character with skills would make the world trivial. How about sending an assassin with advanced combat skills and weapons and nothing else up towards a beetle, or many other of the nasties in the game see how they manage.

For clarity, I didn't say I loaded up a character with just offense and defense against a warrior with maxed combat skills. I said I loaded up a character with maxed offense and defense against a warrior with middling offense, defense, and combat skills.

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 09:50:56 AM
It just really just comes down to this, there are much better ways to spend five real life days then to grind these character over and over. There are games out there that offer an enjoyable experience without ever having to pay the price of bordom, and they are very good at competing for our time. [...] Now you can argue that making characters more viable in the beginning isn't the way( and again this has never meant just being able to kill bigger things), that fine, but it doesn't change that fact that it drives people away. I know the 5 day grind to relevancy in my chosen guild is driving me away right now at least, the only time I log in is when I absolutely have nothing to do, and that often includes after I've already played a couple other games.

I agree, it really does just come to down to whether or not you enjoy the kind of game where you start at the bottom and have to progress to the top. Some people, like myself, do enjoy this kind of experience. I've been getting into Fallout 4 now that it's out and I add extra handicaps to myself in the game like refusing to carry more than 5 inventory items or what have you just to make it feel harsher because for me, it makes the satisfaction of finally arriving on top all the sweeter for the journey. It seems Desertman, Inks, Lizzie, and some others share my mentality. We are one sizable chunk of the player base that like this sort of thing.

But other people don't like this sort of gaming experience at all. We've tried to make a middle of it here in Armageddon by putting some avenues in that allow for people to circumvent this with special applications, skills bumps, and the like, but we can't please everyone when different people want mutually exclusive experiences.

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 09:50:56 AM
All that said, I appreciate you responding Jave.

And I appreciate the candor of the discussion.

I always wanted it to be that if you choose a subguild that entirely overlaps with your main guild, you get significant skill bumps to those skills at the cost of future versatility. It also would be less painful for those noobs who choose warrior/guard for their first PC. That would provide a nice balance, I think. You'd still have to spec app if you wanted skill bumps AND a hobby subguild, but if you wanted to play a narrow-focused warrior who has done nothing but fight his whole life and actually has quite a bit to show for it, you can, no spec app necessary. The only problem is that this wouldn't usually really help with skills that actually need it, but it'd be a nice system with some tweaking in that area.

ETA: This would probably work really well if we replaced all regular subguilds with extended subguilds! (hint hint nudge nudge.) Extended subguilds are awesome at rounding out a character and making them feel more real. They feel less gamey. And if everyone had equal access to them, they wouldn't necessarily be OP.

Desertman I understand and respect your opinion, but I feel that this way of thinking is very outdated in this world of instant gratification and toxic in a game with permadeath and a population that has its ups and downs and you need people to achieve things. I feel you point is also moot, since there is already so much in the game beyond just code that you still have to achieve and earn, including trust, social influence and relationships with others.  

Being good/useful in a group at one or two things (not everything) makes for some really fun experience and gives insentives to team up with others right from the start, allowing more interaction as people seek their help. Locking these potentially enjoyable experiences behind days of grind has not helped this game, but that too is in my opinion.

QuoteJave's Post

^

Just a response to the point about you not sucking at your main character's skills just because your skill level says "novice".

This is so very true. Do you suck compared to someone else who is the same guild as you who has been in game for a RL year? Yes you do.

Do you suck compared to someone who isn't the same guild as you who has no aptitude in what you're potentially best at out of the gate? No. You are leaps and bounds above them.

This is more true in the case of combat in regard to warriors than anything else in my experience.

I've got my shit stomped by brand new warriors out of the gate still wearing four pieces of clothing as both a 45 day Byn trained assassin and a 65 day Byn trained ranger. Leaves a sour taste in my mouth every time. Can I kill them in the desert or in the street with ease? Yes. But when it comes to a straight up fight....I think they are almost stupidly/brokenly good out of the gate at combat.

Just my two cents on that. As a starting warrior you are actually pretty damn beast.

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 11:03:54 AM
Desertman I understand and respect your opinion, but I feel that this way of thinking is very outdated in this world of instant gratification and toxic in a game with permadeath and a population that has its ups and downs and you need people to achieve things. I feel you point is also moot, since there is already so much in the game beyond just code that you still have to achieve and earn, including trust, social influence and relationships with others.  

Being good/useful in a group at one or two things (not everything) makes for some really fun experience and gives insentives to team up with others right from the start, allowing more interaction as people seek their help. Locking these potentially enjoyable experiences behind days of grind has not helped this game, but that too is in my opinion.

I don't think this is a game that should adhere to the world of instant gratification. But I'm very set in my ways in this regard. I will agree to disagree with you.

Jave a better experiement would be load up two rangers: one with very max offense and defense and the other with advanced weapons and advanced combat skills but only starting offense and defense and see who comes out on top. My guess is ranger with offense and defense.

Take that experiment and do it with warriors, adding parry in combination with weapons skills at advance and you might see the opposite become true.


Having had a ranger with skill bump weapons and weapon skills though, I wasn't too impressed with is combat performance but i think that all this still goes beyond the point of this thread. As Whitt mentioned, this isn't really about combat skills.  

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 11:12:45 AM
Jave a better experiement would be load up two rangers: one with very max offense and defense and the other with advanced weapons and advanced combat skills but only starting offense and defense and see who comes out on top. My guess is ranger with offense and defense.

Why would this be a better experiment? Offense and defense rise along with the combat skills of a character because you train them at the same time, so outside of finding a poorly created NPC, you will never find yourself in combat with a character that has advanced combat skills but only starting offense and defense. If they have advanced weapon skills, their O/D is going to be comparable.

You may however, run into a non-combat guild that has been grinding up O/D for a long time to give themselves an edge in combat. -- Hence why I did the test I did.

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 11:12:45 AM
Having had a ranger with skill bump weapons and weapon skills though, I wasn't too impressed with is combat performance but i think that all this still goes beyond the point of this thread. As Whitt mentioned, this isn't really about combat skills.  

That's too bad. I did write in my earlier post that I suspected providing skill boosts wouldn't address the root cause of the frustration though.  :-\

Quote from: Jave on November 20, 2015, 10:56:46 AM
It's worth noting that if you are playing a fighter, you can already beat a non-fighter out of char-gen. Beyond that, I'm a little confused by your reply. I agree -- starting every character at the bottom of apprentice instead of novice would not impact the overall state of things. That's why I said it wouldn't actually address the source of the frustration people are having. Because it wouldn't have an impact.

I still think your focusing on combat.  You always go back to fighter vs non-fighter.  Please put the combat away.  Instead, look at how frustrating it is to try and skill-up non-combat skills. 

You're not going to sit down and have a knife-build-off with another PC to the death.  You're not going to IronChef Allanak, loser goes in the Pit.  Just trying to get the a half-dozen bandages made, or climb up onto the balcony, or sew a simple linen tunic that sells for half-a-small without spending two small in cloth or breaking your neck.

The PC is just trying to reach "less incompetent".  As has been pointed out, low-Advanced still fails plenty to be frustrating, so we're not taking the frustration out completely.  Just bypassing the five-days played of truly being pathetic.  This is taxing on the player of the new PC and any mentor that they might have.  As much as it's a drag to have to skill through Novice?  It takes a school teacher's level of patience to constantly recruit new crafters knowing they're probably going to vanish before they're useful.

tl;dr - I think it would make a significant difference in non-combat skills with regard to the level of frustration of the player.  Maybe run one of your tests with a guild Merchant at Novice vs Apprentice skills.  What is the availability of craftable items and more importantly how often do you fail at a simple craft.

Quote from: Desertman
Do you suck compared to someone who isn't the same guild as you who has no aptitude in what you're potentially best at out of the gate? No. You are leaps and bounds above them.

Leaps and Bounds?  No.  Can you try and fail something that the code doesn't allow someone else to even try?  Sure.  That's hardly leaps and bounds. 

Quote from: whitt on November 20, 2015, 11:59:00 AM
Leaps and Bounds?  No.  Can you try and fail something that the code doesn't allow someone else to even try?  Sure.  That's hardly leaps and bounds.  

You can literally do something someone else can't even attempt.

I can't think of a more exact definition of leaps and bounds.

I'm not going to beat Usain Bolt in the hundred yard dash. But I can run a hundred yards. I'm sure going to beat Stephen Hawking.

(Think of it from the roleplay perspective and not the coded perspective. Your PC is in fact leaps and bounds above those other people in the world who can't even imagine where to start. Also, imagine me racing Stephen Hawking...just for the chuckle. I'm sitting here laughing at my own joke. Save me from myself.)

Quote from: Desertman on November 20, 2015, 12:14:38 PM
You can literally do something someone else can't even attempt.

I think we're at the agree to disagree point.  Because the next step is a derail into the Pandora's Box of the closed skill system that is just how the game works.

I believe it's frustrating to the point of walking away to constantly have to fail to reach a level of less incompetent.  Unless I am wrong, you feel it's a rite of passage.

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 09:50:56 AM
Your solution is one possibiltiy but let me offer another more common solution, people can instead 'take a break' and then come back when weeks, months, years from now instead when they don't mind grinding once or twice more before leaving again.

Another solution is to use your Karma and free +3 CGP to make a character who's a decent way into things, skill-wise. I once used my 3 karma and 3 cgp to bump a dwarf warriors two-handed, bludgeoning, and clubs skills. + 2 each. He fucking wrecked shit right out of the gates. Excellent str and good agi probably helped, but still.

Or you could use the Special Application process to make a character tailored exactly to your wants and needs. They won't let you go overboard with laster eyes and master slashing, but I apped a warrior once who started out at J-man level of skills, bumps to offense-defense and had cool other little bonuses like height higher than you can choose from char-gen, and minor resistances to things like reel. Also a whole bunch of neat gear and items I'd never seen before that time(worn-out old armor, not flashy awesome statted stuff.)

When I got in-game I was competently sparring players who had been in the game for a couple in-game years. Had a background with items and gear that represented it. Sure, people probably knew I was a spec app, but it felt like I had been established in game for a long time when I jumped in. They might have been rangers or whatever, but the point still stands.

There are options for you, other than leaving, if you don't like the grind.

this is true, but it sure would be easier for us if we could "upgrade" a mundane-subguilded PC to an extended subguild version of what they were, after having played for X days and Y years of IC time playing them. The caps would improve for those skills and you'd not be stuck at a painful level of mediocrity without ANY CODED HOPE of improvement any further.

People like to at least be competent, and I agree from playing some of these subguilds over the years, that being somewhat better than incompetent is a disappointing peak to reach, especially if your PC is involved in plots and has been around for a long while.

I used to think extended subguilds were subguilds you could branch into after time.
Then I read the docs and was dissapointed.

What if we used "Subguild" as more of a "What you've been doing to survive" and "primary guild" as "what you're truly capable of". Switch it around so that Subguilds don't provide extra skills, as much as skills set at a moderate value for start.

So, if you're a burglar, but you've been "getting by" as a scavenger, you have forage and climb at like low journeyman (or wherever its decided to cap) so that you have skills you've "been doing".

I know people would counter it with "But I'm a burglar, so I want my burglar skills high because he's a burglar" but at least its a patch fix.

Some skills are pretty useful/fun even at novice levels, like hunt, flee, value, pick, listen, brew... and most recently, armor repair!  Maybe this list could be expanded.

bandage is a big one for me.  Why not have it restore 0hp most of the time, and 1hp on occasion.  Let someone burn through 500 coins of bandages if they want/need to.  It's a more roleplayable situation than "oops.  I recommend you sleep instead."

I find flee more useful at zero than having novice. Just my experience. I've never understood it.

Quote from: CodeMaster on November 20, 2015, 08:12:53 PM
Some skills are pretty useful/fun even at novice levels, like hunt, flee, value, pick, listen, brew... and most recently, armor repair!  Maybe this list could be expanded.

bandage is a big one for me.  Why not have it restore 0hp most of the time, and 1hp on occasion.  Let someone burn through 500 coins of bandages if they want/need to.  It's a more roleplayable situation than "oops.  I recommend you sleep instead."

Very well put. I wish all skills were like that. Fun and possibly useful without the sudden chance of, you know, dying horribly for attempting to use it.

Quote from: whitt on November 20, 2015, 11:59:00 AM
I still think your focusing on combat.  You always go back to fighter vs non-fighter.  Please put the combat away.  Instead, look at how frustrating it is to try and skill-up non-combat skills. 

You're not going to sit down and have a knife-build-off with another PC to the death.  You're not going to IronChef Allanak, loser goes in the Pit.  Just trying to get the a half-dozen bandages made, or climb up onto the balcony, or sew a simple linen tunic that sells for half-a-small without spending two small in cloth or breaking your neck.

I mentioned fighters vs non-fighters because you did. That was in direct reply to you.

On the subject of non-combat skills I think the same case I made about hunters can be made however.

We improve clothmaking so now everyone can succeed in making sandcloth tunics out of char-gen. Every new merchant crafts sandcloth tunics and sell them. The shops become full of sandcloth tunics and it ceases to be a viable method of making money. Merchants have to try and craft the more difficult stuff that the shops will still buy, but lack the skills to do so and fail a lot. We're back here having a conversation about how merchants are just trying to sew a simple silk tunic that sells for three small without spending two large in cloth first.

Quote from: whitt on November 20, 2015, 11:59:00 AM
The PC is just trying to reach "less incompetent".  As has been pointed out, low-Advanced still fails plenty to be frustrating, so we're not taking the frustration out completely.  Just bypassing the five-days played of truly being pathetic.  This is taxing on the player of the new PC and any mentor that they might have.  As much as it's a drag to have to skill through Novice?  It takes a school teacher's level of patience to constantly recruit new crafters knowing they're probably going to vanish before they're useful.

Emphasis mine. I think this goes to the crux of what I'm saying. "less incompetent" is not a static and objective line in the sand. "less incompetent" is a shifting subjective goal post that will always be defined more or less as: Being able to do what a new character cannot yet do. Given that, I don't think raising the skills would do much to assuage these frustrations.

I thin that all problems could be solved just by letting warriors branch an exotic weapons skill at about 20 days played. That way they don't need to grind to the point of stupid just to get those tridents.

I'm more sympathetic to the warrior's plight than to the crafter's or the mage's since weapon skills are actually more difficult to improve and we have some discussion going on staff side about how we can tinker with that to make weapon mastery more attainable.

But what I think would solve the problems being expressed by whitt and Dresan is taking advantage of the skill bump system we have in place when they want to play a character whose background makes them more proficient in their selected skill set than a starting level character would be. -- Or when the opportunity presents itself, applying for a leadership role.

Leaders in clans get skill bumps now to better reflect their backgrounds as experienced characters, and because we want them to dive into the game head first as a somebody and start making in roads into politics, social status, etc which seems to be something Dresan places more of a premium on over the grind.

I think in this way he and other more socially inclined players can scratch their itch while the more achievement oriented folks can enjoy our crawl from nothing up to mastery.

---

I know it's already been voiced that Dresan at least feels like a maximum of 3 skill bumped characters a year isn't enough, but we have to put the line in the sand somewhere.

Give warriors knife-weapons from the start. (assassins too, for that matter)

Make Blugeoning, Chopping, and Piercing all take as long to advance as the hard to master skills, like sleight of hand, or languages, but not forever, like currently happens.

Slashing now branches a new skill that gives + defense to multiple attackers.

Quote from: whitt on November 20, 2015, 12:37:46 PM

Quote from: Desertman on November 20, 2015, 12:14:38 PM
You can literally do something someone else can't even attempt.

I think we're at the agree to disagree point.  Because the next step is a derail into the Pandora's Box of the closed skill system that is just how the game works.

I believe it's frustrating to the point of walking away to constantly have to fail to reach a level of less incompetent.  Unless I am wrong, you feel it's a rite of passage.

I think you (and other people) are using the word "incompetent" erroneously, and therein lies the confusion/disagreement. In the game of Armageddon, "incompetent" doesn't mean "novice". It means "not on your skills list at all." If you're at novice, it means you've shown up with something better than incompetence. You have proven capable of learning this skill. You have the capacity to improve, and in some cases, to obtain mastery of it. At the very least, you are likely to become proficient. The skills that aren't on your visible list YET, but that will branch, are skills you have the -capacity- to discover, if you work toward that end. If you don't work toward that end, then you will forever be incompetent with those un-seen un-branched skills. That isn't even an exception to my opinion. It proves the rule: capacity to learn means competence. Incapacity to learn is incompetence.

Quote from: CodeMaster on November 20, 2015, 08:12:53 PM
Some skills are pretty useful/fun even at novice levels, like hunt, flee, value, pick, listen, brew... and most recently, armor repair!  Maybe this list could be expanded.

bandage is a big one for me.  Why not have it restore 0hp most of the time, and 1hp on occasion.  Let someone burn through 500 coins of bandages if they want/need to.  It's a more roleplayable situation than "oops.  I recommend you sleep instead."

Re: Lizzie above -- I could be wrong, but I think 'competence' means 'useful/fun' even at novice levels.  I don't have a horse here, but I think an approach that might have traction is to focus on individual skills that could use some love at novice levels (like CodeMaster is doing), rather than advocating bumping them across the board.

(I do kind of have a horse: I've always been a fan of slowing progression down once you reach the 'useful/fun' level.  But I'm pretty sure I'm in the utter minority on that.  My reason: similar to Jave's -- I want to feel like there are still critters in the environment that are challenging without having to up the ante, so to speak, and go after that ankheg or whatever.)

Some of this frustration may also come down to differences in play style and understanding of the code as well.

If you try to climb repeated with novice climb right out of the box and eventually crit fail and end up laying there for 30 RL minutes ... you're going to have a stressful time.
If you try to climb once, slip (ie fail) and think alright then that's enough practice for today let me head on down to the tavern to meet some friends and RP ... you're going to have a less stressful time.

Quote from: Jave on November 20, 2015, 10:06:35 PM
Some of this frustration may also come down to differences in play style and understanding of the code as well.

If you try to climb repeated with novice climb right out of the box and eventually crit fail and end up laying there for 30 RL minutes ... you're going to have a stressful time.
If you try to climb once, slip (ie fail) and think alright then that's enough practice for today let me head on down to the tavern to meet some friends and RP ... you're going to have a less stressful time.

Bingo!  (And mostly joking: or when you try to steal at novice and spend 90 RL minutes in jail.  I dunno if 'steal' is fixable.)

No, I don't think meta-gaming and efficient skill training is the solution. Since it it doesn't change the fact that you have to do the same thing over and over, over for a set period of days before you can finally use some skills, or be any use to anyone every time you die and start a new character.

Outside of boosting for the skills I think guilds should be very good at from the start, the idea of making skills not need to be advanced/mastered to be useful would be an excellent solution too. However, this would probably mean re-coding several skills, potentially making it very large time consuming coding project. I can't help but think it is probably best to work with what we have.

Knowing "how" to train just skews the game in favor of veterans and encourages OOC discussion about how to train. I certainly didn't learn about skill timers on the GDB.

Best advice for the grind, however long and short of it is is: make sure you can do it with someone else. Because solo roleplay is the death of role interest, at least for me.

Quote from: Jave on November 20, 2015, 08:57:56 PM
I think this goes to the crux of what I'm saying. "less incompetent" is not a static and objective line in the sand. "less incompetent" is a shifting subjective goal post that will always be defined more or less as: Being able to do what a new character cannot yet do. Given that, I don't think raising the skills would do much to assuage these frustrations.

I'm more from Nauta's camp.

QuoteI think 'competence' means 'useful/fun'

I also realize that at this point, I seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing.  So, I'll let it go with one final note: I know for my first "real" character I was very disappointed, almost to the point of stopping play, at how pathetic he was (he was a fighter/physician).  I stuck around for the RP beyond the skills.  Still do. 
That's me though, I come up with an excuse for why Amos sucks and background my character accordingly.  That said, I can't say I don't empathize with those who have bad luck and/or want to use their CGP to try a karma-req'd or extended subguild role instead of using their CGP on bumps to play someone that's not passable at their base skills especially after grinding just to "competent" (per above) and dying more than once in a row.     

Quote from: Jave on November 20, 2015, 10:06:35 PM
Some of this frustration may also come down to differences in play style and understanding of the code as well.

If you try to climb repeated with novice climb right out of the box and eventually crit fail and end up laying there for 30 RL minutes ... you're going to have a stressful time.
If you try to climb once, slip (ie fail) and think alright then that's enough practice for today let me head on down to the tavern to meet some friends and RP ... you're going to have a less stressful time.

I totally understand that confusion, because in real life you don't stop trying after the first failure at something, otherwise you'd never get good at it. You repeat it over and over until you know it like the back of your hand and it becomes second nature.

Quote from: BadSkeelz on November 20, 2015, 10:44:27 PM
Knowing "how" to train just skews the game in favor of veterans and encourages OOC discussion about how to train. I certainly didn't learn about skill timers on the GDB.

Sometimes this is true -- like with some sneak skill (I forget which now) there are two different echo responses, and apparently one is a real fail and one a partial fail or something like that, and, since I sort of just push my thumbs in my eyes and pretend they aren't there vis-a-vis skills in Arm, I don't remember which one.  But!  I should point out that it is in the help file (the FAQ):

Quote
In almost every instance, skills and spells are learned by practice. If your character has some basic knowledge of a skill or spell (i.e., if it appears in your 'skills' list), then it will improve by doing it over and over again. When you fail in an attempt to use a skill or spell, there is a chance it will improve.

Faq 9 (http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/faq_9)

It doesn't mention the (presumably common gdb/veteran knowledge) about 'timers' and stuff, however.  That might be worth putting in there, e.g., "Once you've failed, there will be some time before you can have a chance at improving again, so take it easy, have a beer, punch a breed."

Remember kids, a partial fail is still a fail.

Atleast I'm pretty sure.
Oh god I don't know.

Quote from: nauta on November 20, 2015, 10:09:08 PM
Bingo!  (And mostly joking: or when you try to steal at novice and spend 90 RL minutes in jail.  I dunno if 'steal' is fixable.)

Well, like combat skills, it's one of those skills that are easier and less dangerous to practice with a friend before going pro.

Quote from: whitt on November 20, 2015, 11:20:47 PM
I'm more from Nauta's camp.

QuoteI think 'competence' means 'useful/fun'

I think this is just one step removed from my original point. Because what defines 'useful/fun' is going to be "able to do something new characters can't do".

Quote from: Dresan on November 20, 2015, 10:33:41 PM
No, I don't think meta-gaming and efficient skill training is the solution. Since it it doesn't change the fact that you have to do the same thing over and over, over for a set period of days before you can finally use some skills, or be any use to anyone every time you die and start a new character.

Outside of boosting for the skills I think guilds should be very good at from the start, the idea of making skills not need to be advanced/mastered to be useful would be an excellent solution too. However, this would probably mean re-coding several skills, potentially making it very large time consuming coding project. I can't help but think it is probably best to work with what we have.

When learning a skill, like an instrument, a martial art, language, or a topic of study, repetition breeds mastery but any instructor will tell you that practicing for 10 minutes every day of the week is better than practicing for 420 minutes every Sunday.

Repetition is important, but frequency is more important.

In that sense, practicing a skill IG a little each day rather than for a long period of time infrequently is not meta gaming, it's behaving realistically. It also leaves you with more free time to role play your character, which is great as well.

I despise skill timers when I'm stuck at the bottom of a cliff. And when I have a surplus of materials, it is human nature to finish the day with a success, and some drinking sids. Having said that, in RL, sleeping on it does seem to lead to improvement of technique the next day.

Quote from: solera on November 21, 2015, 05:10:59 AM
I despise skill timers when I'm stuck at the bottom of a cliff. And when I have a surplus of materials, it is human nature to finish the day with a success, and some drinking sids. Having said that, in RL, sleeping on it does seem to lead to improvement of technique the next day.

Yes. This happens to me all the time.

Quote from: Jave on November 21, 2015, 07:11:12 AM

Quote from: solera on November 21, 2015, 05:10:59 AM
I despise skill timers when I'm stuck at the bottom of a cliff. And when I have a surplus of materials, it is human nature to finish the day with a success, and some drinking sids. Having said that, in RL, sleeping on it does seem to lead to improvement of technique the next day.

Yes. This happens to me all the time.

I tend to find hordes of people who can't let go of a task until they succeed to be far more in line with a harsh, desert world than a bunch of people who get up at dawn and go to sleep at night.  One seems like a horde of desperate, struggling individuals and the other seems like a straight analog to an idealized modern life. 

And that idealized modern life does not exist in the game itself, which is the great flaw in this notion.  To follow this idea, there have to be people who are simply playing their own delusion and not interacting with other characters.

Quote from: Jave on November 21, 2015, 04:17:58 AM

Quote from: whitt on November 20, 2015, 11:20:47 PM
I'm more from Nauta's camp.

QuoteI think 'competence' means 'useful/fun'

I think this is just one step removed from my original point. Because what defines 'useful/fun' is going to be "able to do something new characters can't do".

Nope.  Not at all.  "useful/fun" means if I tell someone I'm an 'X', I don't fail more often than I succeed at the mundane tasks of 'X'.  I don't care at all that Amos, who is an also an 'X' can just as easily succeed at the mundane tasks of 'X'.  Of course they can.  They're an 'X'.  It's kind of equally expected that they can do that.  Now Samosa?  She's not really an 'X'.  She just does it as a hobby (sub-guild).  So maybe she's still learning and yeah it's kind of funny when she burns the water trying to boil it.

It's not about comparing one PC to another PC at all.  Unless that comparison is "I'm a Seamstress and they're not".  If I say I'm an apothecary, and you ask me for bandages?  I shouldn't need to spend two small on cloth just to get a couple bandages made, which amounts to running scissors across the cloth.

It's not about "winning".  I'm talking about being able to believably portray the role your character is in.

Quote from: Dalmeth on November 21, 2015, 11:49:56 AM
I tend to find hordes of people who can't let go of a task until they succeed to be far more in line with a harsh, desert world than a bunch of people who get up at dawn and go to sleep at night.  One seems like a horde of desperate, struggling individuals and the other seems like a straight analog to an idealized modern life.  

And that idealized modern life does not exist in the game itself, which is the great flaw in this notion.  To follow this idea, there have to be people who are simply playing their own delusion and not interacting with other characters.

I don't think the biological need for sleep and the neurological processes that occur while sleeping are the result of modernity, so I disagree with you.

But if you want to play the struggling individual who can't let go of a task until they succeed you're more than free to do so. We do ask that you don't do it to an unrealistic degree (sparring/crafting/casting/foraging for multiple IG days straight for example) but if you want to portray someone who stays up for days on end huffing spice to stave off the exhaustion while they hammer away obsessively towards a goal like a dwarf with a focus I think that's a perfectly valid character concept to roll with.

Quote from: whitt on November 21, 2015, 01:06:28 PM
Nope.  Not at all.  "useful/fun" means if I tell someone I'm an 'X', I don't fail more often than I succeed at the mundane tasks of 'X'.  I don't care at all that Amos, who is an also an 'X' can just as easily succeed at the mundane tasks of 'X'.  Of course they can.  They're an 'X'.  It's kind of equally expected that they can do that.  Now Samosa?  She's not really an 'X'.  She just does it as a hobby (sub-guild).  So maybe she's still learning and yeah it's kind of funny when she burns the water trying to boil it.

It's not about comparing one PC to another PC at all.  Unless that comparison is "I'm a Seamstress and they're not".  If I say I'm an apothecary, and you ask me for bandages?  I shouldn't need to spend two small on cloth just to get a couple bandages made, which amounts to running scissors across the cloth.

It's not about "winning".  I'm talking about being able to believably portray the role your character is in.

Eh, sorry I wrote out a lengthy reply but then realized a lot of it was repeating myself.

I'll leave it at: I understand you're saying "I don't like having to grind my character up from level 1. I want to already be competent in the profession I select and get involved in more important stuff when I roll into the game."

But please understand that there are plenty of players who do like the grind from level 1, and they appreciate how that differentiates the new characters from the accomplished ones, and it wouldn't be fair to them to take that away. It would possibly improve the game for you, but at their expense.

The skill bump system is, I think, the best compromise I've seen that we can do to keep the game as fun as it can be for everyone given the mutually exclusive desires.

In any case though, I enjoyed the conversation.

EDIT AGAIN TO ADD: Please don't misconstrue anything I wrote as dismissive of your concerns. We have different play styles and seem to enjoy different things but that does not mean that I don't want to see a happy middle ground found as much as it's possible to have one. -- Over in staff land we're looking into ways we can fiddle with the guilds and subguilds to provide a more organic experience. Stay tuned.

I think you're still missing the point, Jave. At least as far as I'm understanding whitt.

It's not about having skills that work well right off the bat, netting high chance of success and being able to start off saying "I'm a hunter, see? I can kill stuff with archery!". It's about having skills like hunt, or forage, or many others in-game currently that are actually fun to use at low levels, even when they fail. It doesn't feel like you have to grind the skill up to master before it's useful in more realistic situations. Like backstab, climb, scan, and many other incredibly unforgiving or utterly useless skills at low level.



Let's go back to that archery example. Currently, at low levels it's incredibly unrealistic. Arrows plunk in for 5-10 hp dmg, the arrow breaks, the mob regens, and if you actually needed to kill something you'd just end up spending thousands of 'sids on arrows. To fight this people have actually taken to using slings to up their archery skill. That makes absolutely zero sense. It's jarring and increadibly unrealistic.

Instead, archery could work like so(yes I know this is very complex and would take a ridiculous amount of coding, also probably unbalanced, the concept is what's important, not the numbers):


1)Make arrows deadly. If you get a hit to the chest should be about 75 hp, regardless of how high your skill is. Get hit to the arm, and your drop the weapon/shield there. Get hit to the leg, and now you're sitting and lose 25 movement points.

2)Make arrows highly inaccurate with much distance at low levels(95% chance to miss at 1 room at novice), but very accurate when in the same room(say 25% chance to hit when in same room at novice).

3)If an arrow breaks in a mob, have it drop some flint and wood/bone, so they can be re-crafted.



So now instead of plinking off 15 arrows into some poor scrab nocking of bits of hp before it dies(or regens), you might only nail it once or twice in 15 shots, and it becomes crippled or heavily damaged, and able to be finished off with a blade.

That guy who walks into your room with a crossbow and tells you not to move, you would actually be afraid of. Because who knows, he might get lucky and shoot you in the guts.


Now you have an archery skill that actually has a use at anything below advanced, even if the uses are limited or based on somewhat low chances. It would be better than what you have currently, where it's like you might as well not have the skill until high journeyman.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on November 21, 2015, 11:10:41 PM
I think you're still missing the point, Jave. At least as far as I'm understanding whitt.

It's not about having skills that work well right off the bat, netting high chance of success and being able to start off saying "I'm a hunter, see? I can kill stuff with archery!". It's about having skills like hunt, or forage, or many others in-game currently that are actually fun to use at low levels, even when they fail. It doesn't feel like you have to grind the skill up to master before it's useful in more realistic situations. Like backstab, climb, scan, and many other incredibly unforgiving or utterly useless skills at low level.

That was, I think Nauta's point, but sort of still a valid discussion point.  Having to fail a skill that could get you dead on every failure is harsh.

Quote from: Jave on November 21, 2015, 09:46:41 PM
Again, I understand you're folks saying "But I don't like having to grind my character up from level 1. I want to already be competent in the profession I select and get involved in more important stuff when I roll into the game."

But please understand that there are plenty of players who do like the grind from level 1, and they appreciate how that differentiates the new characters from the accomplished ones, and it wouldn't be fair to them to take that away. It would possibly improve the game for you, but at their expense.

The skill bump system is, I think, the best compromise I've seen that we can do to keep the game as fun as it can be for everyone given the mutually exclusive desires.

Fixed one part of the above, because I'm more the sort to write a background that fits the skills my character will have and I liked the skill bump change too, as it added options.  I haven't run into a situation where I died so fast that I'd have to worry about running out of spec apps and if I did?  I'd probably just play another character or two.

Again I really like the idea RGS and Nauta have been describing.

However, as he stated it would be a massive coding project. (though I bet we could make a list of the biggest offenders and focus on those first...would make a neat new thread)

Which is why I've been suggesting the other less code intensive option. Basically in order to avoid much of the initial grind and uselessness is to have these character start with the particular skills that define them at levels where the skill is actually useful.  Not maxxed but just at useful levels. It has nothing to do with combat skills, and this wouldn't make anyone badasses. People would just be more useful, and there would still be plenty of grind less for those that enjoy it.

And again, I don't believe I should have to spend a special app just to avoid a tedious experience.  

Quote from: whitt on November 21, 2015, 11:25:27 PM
Fixed one part of the above ...

Point taken. I meant you in the general sense of the world so that's a more appropriate term.

Quote from: RogueGunslinger on November 21, 2015, 11:10:41 PM
I think you're still missing the point, Jave. At least as far as I'm understanding whitt.

I don't think this was what whitt was talking about, and I don't think it's actually related to skill progression or what level they start at. It's more about how skills function over all. Not to say that's not a conversation worth having, I'm saying I don't think I was missing whitt's point.

On the topic of tweaking how skills specifically work though, the coders are tweaking them. Ness just went through and made changes to the climb code to make it more realistic and fun to use but as you already pointed out coding is slow and difficult work and balance is always something we have to consider before introducing anything into the game.

Your archery example for instance would make it easier for novice archers to kill npc animals out in the wilds and for novice raiders to threaten victims with a crossbow as you pointed out, but imagine if arrows did a minimum of 75 damage when they hit you, and someone has already maxed out archery and doesn't miss anymore.  :-\

---

I've played my fair share of rangers, and rather than using slings as you described, I was always more in the camp of getting off my mount, taking a knee, shooting and missing because novice archery isn't reliable. Cursing. Hopping back on my mount, and role playing running the animal down to engage it in melee combat.

I was still hunting no problem, and my archery improved eventually to the point that I wasn't missing anymore and would sometimes even one shot the critters I was out to hunt.

That's just how I trained up archery without letting it make me miserable about my hunting prowess or going through too many arrows.

---

But that's neither here nor there. I take the point that some skills could benefit from tweaking. Perhaps you can make a different thread about it in the code board and get some discussion going on specific skills? Then we can perhaps generate some discussion about it on the staff boards and see how feasible some changes are to implement.

Sorry if I wandered off topic. I got lost and then sidetracked in the discussion a bit.

Quote from: Jave on November 21, 2015, 09:18:34 PM

Quote from: Dalmeth on November 21, 2015, 11:49:56 AM
I tend to find hordes of people who can't let go of a task until they succeed to be far more in line with a harsh, desert world than a bunch of people who get up at dawn and go to sleep at night.  One seems like a horde of desperate, struggling individuals and the other seems like a straight analog to an idealized modern life.  

And that idealized modern life does not exist in the game itself, which is the great flaw in this notion.  To follow this idea, there have to be people who are simply playing their own delusion and not interacting with other characters.

I don't think the biological need for sleep and the neurological processes that occur while sleeping are the result of modernity, so I disagree with you.

But if you want to play the struggling individual who can't let go of a task until they succeed you're more than free to do so. We do ask that you don't do it to an unrealistic degree (sparring/crafting/casting/foraging for multiple IG days straight for example) but if you want to portray someone who stays up for days on end huffing spice to stave off the exhaustion while they hammer away obsessively towards a goal like a dwarf with a focus I think that's a perfectly valid character concept to roll with.

A. There are many times people work for extended periods with no sleep or so little sleep it ceases to matter, and I said an ideal modern life.  In reality, people's sleep schedules can be fluid.  A person can run back to back shifts and spend thirty to forty hours on their feet.

B. In the game, a day lasts an hour.  Roleplaying these natural cycles is a problem when what you're doing has to be interrupted so regularly.  I understand this is a gray area, but it is a gray area.  The notion is either unenforceable except in genuinely extreme cases or so stringent as to cripple.

A day lasts an hour and a half. There are nine cycles in the game, from dawn, early morning, late morning, high sun, early afternoon, late afternoon, dusk, late at night, before dawn.

Quote from: Dalmeth on November 22, 2015, 02:20:56 AM
A. There are many times people work for extended periods with no sleep or so little sleep it ceases to matter, and I said an ideal modern life.  In reality, people's sleep schedules can be fluid.  A person can run back to back shifts and spend thirty to forty hours on their feet. 

B. In the game, a day lasts an hour.  Roleplaying these natural cycles is a problem when what you're doing has to be interrupted so regularly.  I understand this is a gray area, but it is a gray area.  The notion is either unenforceable except in genuinely extreme cases or so stringent as to cripple.

I agree that role playing thru the passage of time is a grey area. My own personal rule of thumb is that I don't pay much attention to it when I'm RP'ing with another person in a social setting, but a bit more attention to it when I'm training a skill.

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough though, I never meant to imply that strict adherence to the game's time dilation was a rule. It's not. Extreme examples like casting for multiple IG days straight will earn you a talking to but one IG day is 1.5 RL hours. If you're sitting there using the cast command for over 3 hours straight, you are past the grey area. FAQ9 (http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/FAQ%209) covers this in the help files.

You are also, for what it's worth, not actually improving your character's skills any faster when you use your time this way because of the anti-spam training measures built into the game.

But as I said earlier, if you want to portray a character who is obsessively driven and hammering away at a task for days before exhaustion catches up with them that's perfectly fine. Role play away.

The last skill you used before you log out has a 1/200,000 chance of increasing while you're logged off for at least an hour.

Teach time you do not receive the skill up, the chance is doubled.

1/100,000
1/50,000
1/25,000
1/12,500
1/6,250
ect

I like starting with the lowest wisdom possible at bottom novice skills. I need the challenge, and being able to forage a single pearl must be the result of ages of hard work to get that good.

Quote from: Jave on November 22, 2015, 04:14:14 AM

Quote from: Dalmeth on November 22, 2015, 02:20:56 AM
A. There are many times people work for extended periods with no sleep or so little sleep it ceases to matter, and I said an ideal modern life.  In reality, people's sleep schedules can be fluid.  A person can run back to back shifts and spend thirty to forty hours on their feet. 

B. In the game, a day lasts an hour.  Roleplaying these natural cycles is a problem when what you're doing has to be interrupted so regularly.  I understand this is a gray area, but it is a gray area.  The notion is either unenforceable except in genuinely extreme cases or so stringent as to cripple.

But as I said earlier, if you want to portray a character who is obsessively driven and hammering away at a task for days before exhaustion catches up with them that's perfectly fine. Role play away.

So a dwarf!