Hey folks. I tend to avoid reading too much in the GDB (with the exception of clan boards) but once and awhile, every couple of years I guess, I get an itch and dig in a bit. Heck, I don't even speak with anyone from the game OOC so maybe I'm just anti-social.
I have the first post under General Discussion - I've been around a long time but I have a relatively low post count. The point is that I'm a creeper, I observe. I have no shame. :)
Now since that is out of the way.
Recently I have really dug and have been reading a lot of the GDB. I noticed a lot of posts about skills. People seem to post and speak about skills now in a much more casual way than how we used to. Heck, it used to be kind of taboo. Skills were secondary. My recent impression from skimming topics and posts is that there is a large number of people who see skills much differently these days - mostly newer players (<5 years) I would say but who knows. The number of posts talking about skills seems quite large. Heck, there's even a recent post about someone talking about explaining how the code works IC at length. Granted, some is code knowledge is particular roles is needed to play the game without being completely tooled. But I feel that there has been an overemphasis on it lately.
I wonder if this trend of being so worried about skills is a newer generation (I'll call them the Tuluk generation because I'm a mean man) or simply the evolution of the game, for better or worse?
How important are skills and skill knowledge to you?
Are we as a community too concerned with mechanics?
Can you tell a difference from when you started playing Arm? If so, how long have you been playing?
Edited to add: I intended the post to be a contrast of skills vs RP but I went off a bit from my original goal. This post may be better served in General Discussion. Sorry, folks!
Skills for me as an explorer playing a combat guild are only as important as getting to the point where I can go and explore without getting facerolled by the wildlife at every turn.
Skills to me as a merchant/crafter are only as important as being able to make the stuff I'm looking to make money on.
Skills to me as an assassin (never done burglar or pick pocket - or warrior for that matter - none of those seem appealing to me) are only as important as being able to skulk around without being seen. I've never actually pked someone with a mundane pc so obviously for me, the stealth aspect is more important than the combat aspect with this role niche.
As to the specifics.... meh. As to other people... couldn't say.
There's been this feeling (justified or not) among the player based for a while now that it's utterly impossible to achieve or change anything in Zalanthas.
If you buy into the bartle taxonomy of players, this would mean code and character to character relationships is all killers/achievers can actually invest time into and see returns on.
Explorers will most likely have found most everything there is to find after a few decently long lived rangers. The newest administration seems alot more willing to accommodate player efforts and start plots, so I'm fairly optimistic we might see the focus mellow some.
Hey Lonely Hunter! I remember you.
1. Some people have always been concerned about skills. I don't think it's simply the newer generation. However where before it was spoken privately on AIM among a subset of the community and was officially considered cheating, it is now spoken about publicly on forum(s) by a greater subset of the community and is now viewed as acceptable.
2. I'll admit I have perused the skill trees of the mundane guilds and do use that knowledge when selecting my guild and Subguild. Beyond that, it's not overly important (I certainly don't spend 4 months grinding a character before finally "play for realz" as some posters here and elsewhere advocate).
3. Yes, the community at large have become too concerned by skills. A certain portion of our community have pushed the idea that you must have X rank in skills A, B and C before you can have fun. They've done it both here and elsewhere. New players see these posts and treat this as the new normal. Frankly shouting down these posters is something I don't have energy for most times and there seems to be less of us bothering. The fact that skill ranks are now viewed IC only exacerbates the problem and promotes this mindset. Alas it's too late to put that genie back in the bottle and we're now stuck with the sins from pandora a box.
4. IG: No. On the forums: Yes. The enjoyment I get from reading the GDB is greatly diminished as a result (thankfully none of it has seeped into the game for me). I started playing in 2002.
I'll go back to my grognard corner now.
I deleted a REALLY long post because I was getting more and more annoyed the more I wrote. So I'll just chime in to say I agree 100% with John. I've been playing as long as he has (I think we showed up the same month).
My tl;dr on the post I didn't actually post:
People want to break the rules and be "that one who's different." I get that. But you need time to learn what the rules ARE before you should try and break them, or you end up doing stupid shit that ruins it for everyone else.
I got "the map" just like most of you do, and like most of you who've been playing for a LONG time - I didn't get it in my first month of play. I had to learn some of the game first - before "those who had it" felt I could be trusted with it. Learn the rules before you learn how to break them. If you just give them the cheat-sheet you are depriving them of the ability to learn the rules first. You're just going right over to "here - you can cheat, don't bother learning the rules."
And I think that's what's hurting the game most.
Skills are important. We're still playing a MUD here, and some people have to be concerned about skills in the same way a government has to be concerned about long range missile defense. Whether YOU want to use LRBMs or not, you certainly have to understand what they are capable of to defend yourself against people who WILL use them.
Honestly, I think the "We need skills for <x>" attitude is waning, because we've scared away and pushed off most of the code-focused players. Whether its due to banning for twinking, or having the "gameworld react" when they do something code-focused, they slowly leak away from the game.
I think its important to understand that the GDB is NOT the game. Most people are not representing their true personalities in game, whereas the GDB might be a different story. I focus on code a LOT, perhaps less than I used to, but I know many players who get into more shit and storyline from chargen than I ever will on a 50d warrior.
Where I take offense is that, because of this, I don't "play the game properly" or "am doing it wrong" because its not in line with what (the general) YOU think I should be doing. Focus on your RP, I bet you're going to want an assassin with high backstab to follow through with some of your plans, and no fucking Noble is going to be PLEASED with a PC that tried and failed an assassination. You can only be "that guy" so many times before its just ASKING to be a victim in an already harsh world.
I don't think anyone is saying skills aren't important. But play a character generally IC (as opposed to hunting down the 1 NPC that is optimal to increase skills X, Y and Z and revisit them every X minutes regardless of the IC hour) and they generally advance at a reasonable rate with little effort. You might not branch advanced warrior weapons in 4 months, but you will see significant improvement. I always see the Byn structure as a good rule of thumb for IC activities (get to where you need to be to do job X by morning, work for a couple of IC hours, take a break, work for a couple more than relaxe over night).
I'm pretty skills focused. I enjoy the sense of achievement presented by skills. If I wanted to play a MUSH, well, there's plenty with settings I might enjoy more. It's the harsh survival code of Armageddon I really like.
That said, I enjoy roleplaying the skills ARC. Where when you start out trying to kill a skeet, fall off your mount and lose half your hp before the fight is over, but later on you're taking down drov beetles without a single wound. The roleplay of BECOMING a badass is a lot of fun. More fun than it would be just being a hardcoded badass from the beginning.
I know there are plenty who just want to play "digital dolls" and sit around and roleplay without actually ever doing anything, and that's fine. A good setting needs those people too. But it also needs achievers/explorers who DO care about things such as coded power.
Quote from: Miradus on November 29, 2016, 09:10:16 AM
I know there are plenty who just want to play "digital dolls" and sit around and roleplay without actually ever doing anything, and that's fine. A good setting needs those people too. But it also needs achievers/explorers who DO care about things such as coded power.
I wrote before having to leave for work, but this is where I was trying to get.
We have plenty of cabbages, dune traders, and others who I would suggest are those wonderful types of players that seem to get into some great experiences and personal plotlines by 5days played and really give people someone to like, or hate.
We also have plenty of synthesis, and 'I don't post' players that are really good at understanding the code, and use it to their, and their bosses, advantages. The twink assassins, the rangers that seem to know where EVERYTHING is, the helpful halfgiant. Social roles need these tools to assist accomplishing their goals.
It takes all kinds, and the most vocal tend to be the ones trying to understand their coded abilities and limitations. The social players don't tend to have 'complaints' or 'discussions' on anything besides potential gameworld reactions that don't end up being public GDB posts in the first place.
tl;dr - GDB is not representative of the entire playerbase.
Well put Reiv and Miradus, I think.
I don't see how anyone could possibly be at 5 days played and NOT embroiled in some serious shit, or otherwise heavily invested in plotlines/stories/relationships in some fashion. But I tend to be very dichotomous in my play.
I don't like the byn schedule. 20 minutes, 30 minutes, as time to rp where speech and emotes can be 3 minutes between, that's not time for SHIT. I tend to craft/hunt/skulk/skill/whatever for 2-3 IC days, changing up what I do in between, and RP for 2-3 IC days, in alternating stretches. Because that allows better for me to get embroiled in these things, and to cycle through ALL the things I want to work on improving. When crafting for instance, there's 1 particular craft that takes 5 minutes. That's 1/4 of your IG afternoon. Sensible for the gameworld as a time ratio goes, yes, but not really sensible if you're cycling through multiple things you want to improve at.
I want to be competent. I don't have to be the best. I want to be involved in plots and the game world. And usually use the skills I work on improving to help me do so. I don't find the time ratios of the byn schedule practical for all guilds trying to improve at things. Then, apparently there are people who regularly play only an hour or two a day. That's not me. For me, it's more like six, or eight.
My current character has existed less than 2 OOC weeks and is at nearly 5 days played. My time scale for all things that happen is a bit different than someone who is working on 1/6th or 1/8th of that.
And because I forgot to add it: First character was in 2006, first engaging and longer lived pc was in 2008.
I disagree with the top post.
I think the skills should be made more perspicuous in help files and examples, and I applaud efforts to make them more perspicuous.
It is a code-based roleplaying game. We need to work within the confines of code to do things in the world. When things are great, the code is seamless. When things are bad, the code gets in the way: you're stuck with an immersion breaking moment as you, once again, stand in the middle of the great eastern grasslands attempting to pick a lock, for no apparent reason.
I certainly fall into the category of people who are too concerned about skills, as Staff recently sat me down to discuss. However, how is RP enhanced by not preparing oneself for the layered deathtrap that is Zalanthas? I had a ranger with master climb and a spike on who was involved in a lot of stuff who failed a climb check and fell to his death, thereby ending some plots that involved multiple tribes, etc. Does that enhance RP? Do I feel bad about the fact that I ran him up and down the walls of the Gaj to twink climb up? No, I'd feel a lot worse about failing that climb check if I hadn't.
I just came back after about 2-3 years of not playing and I was pretty shocked to see that not only does "craft branch" show you what skill is required to make that item, it also tells you how difficult it would be to make it! I was also shocked all those years ago when what level you are in each skill was added. That was a HUGE deal.
This new piece does make it easier to figure out what I should be making to skill up, but does it make the game better or more code focused? Not sure yet.
I started playing sometime in 2001, I think late summer. Maybe it's the fact that I've been playing so long, or I just haven't been back long enough to notice, but I don't think people are more code focused than they were before. More opportunities to know where you stand, but I think the players are just as code focused as they were 15 years ago.
Quote from: tortall on November 29, 2016, 10:27:13 AM
More opportunities to know where you stand, but I think the players are just as code focused as they were 15 years ago.
Oh, most certainly. Changes in staff attitudes and directions have clearly helped this, as mentioning that a skill even EXISTED usually ended with you face to face with an immortal or a temp-ban.
I think nostalgia and the "I had to walk to school uphill... BOTH WAYS... with barb wire wrapped around my feet because we couldn't afford boots" mentality affects a lot of the veterans. Because they had to do it some way, means nobody else should have it easier.
On my way out, saw that you posted and read it.
I remember you well. :)
Just wanted to chime in that essentially the ability to view skill levels fundamentally changed both the viewpoint and discussion of skills in a pretty drastic way over time. I fought it for awhile, then gave in. The ability to 'grind' skills is much more concrete now than it used to be...I used to assume I was 'master level' in combat the moment that I could start beating everyone I fought. Now we have huge discussions based on being stuck at journeyman and not really caring that you're kicking everything's ass anyway.
I'm not free of it, but just wanted to say you're not crazy. It has changed a great deal. I used to not talk about it. I used to not trust out of game anecdotes because there were so many different versions that went around that were different than mine. Now, when I can, I try to actively disperse code knowledge and mechanics where allowed, because one of the major complaints of newer players is that veterans try to rig the system for their benefit. I don't think this is the case; I think we just come from an era where dispersion of knowledge was a very hush hush, taboo thing to do.
Varies by character, once I'm successfully doing something 60% of the time I slow down. I've had characters where 90% of playing them was actually just leveling skills with only the barest of roleplay, and on the other hand I've had characters that just wanted to bum around and try to fall into as many plots as possible. I will say one of my favorite moments in the game is seeing a skill jump to master.
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QuoteI think nostalgia and the "I had to walk to school uphill... BOTH WAYS... with barb wire wrapped around my feet because we couldn't afford boots" mentality affects a lot of the veterans. Because they had to do it some way, means nobody else should have it easier.
I absolutely love some of the changes, such as help files being more explicit about what skills are gained and how, or the crafting list telling you what skills are used and how difficult it is. I do honestly believe that showing your Proficiency level in a skill has fundamentally changed how many people perceive their character and how they approach the game. I think in many of these cases it is a change that isn't for the better. That said, I don't have brief skills on myself, so I'm certainly not immune.
I wish this idea, that trying to "skill up" or power game a character is the opposite of role playing, would shrivel up and die. It's wrong. They go together just fine, and furthermore the transparency that Armageddon has gained over the years serves more to remove odd ic-disconnecting hurdles more than it serves the jollies of power gamers.
No matter the type of role playing game you're invested in, if it has any game mechanics whatsoever, you will have the exact same spectrum of players: On one end, some people will min-max and consider their numbers before anything, and on the other you have the people who just want a cool story, win or lose. If you want coded conflict, accept that some people are going to climb buildings for no reason than to get better at it. If you want storylines, accept that some people are going to throw their completely green non-warrior into the thick of a byn contract to play out the horrors of war or whatever, despite how mad that makes you that they threw away 3 AI's.
You get better at things by seeking challenges. The game works this way by design. So go find that npc that's impossible to shoot because one, you're going to get hella good at shooting (Arya chasing cats) and two, the pelts are probably kinda rare. If you see people doing weird things without any explanation, like planting and stealing the same object a dozen times on an npc, okay sure they're being a tool but who cares. Call on a Templar to show them how the game is really played. If somebody has an ic scene set up that shows them spamming something and you don't like it just because they're spamming a skill, that's kinda your problem. Only Daniel didn't like waxing that car and painting that fence for hours and hours and hours.
I also want to add, the only part of the remaining problem as I see it is the way skills branch. Sometimes it's not very organic and it's one place where unintentional transparency has had a negative impact on realistic PC behavior. But even this is small, so small that to change it for rp's sake would be an absurd trade off.
Thank you for the great feedback! I would like to point out that I don't feel you should ignore your skills, just not be overly concerned with them. I pay attention to mine as well but the level of which people seem to be completely obsessed with skills or focused entirely on them seems way higher than it used to be.
Just a little while ago a staff member had to make a comment about a player using an NPC is a sparring buddy, letting them know that this was not okay. A lot of people thought that this was perfectly fine before the staff member thankfully spoke up because of their perceived obsession over skills.
Too much attention to your skills seems to lead to a degradation of RP. I can't help but wonder how entwine the two really are.
Quote from: The Lonely Hunter on November 29, 2016, 02:32:43 PM
Thank you for the great feedback! I would like to point out that I don't feel you should ignore your skills, just not be overly concerned with them. I pay attention to mine as well but the level of which people seem to be completely obsessed with skills or focused entirely on them seems way higher than it used to be.
Just a little while ago a staff member had to make a comment about a player using an NPC is a sparring buddy, letting them know that this was not okay. A lot of people thought that this was perfectly fine before the staff member thankfully spoke up because of their perceived obsession over skills.
Too much attention to your skills seems to lead to a degradation of RP. I can't help but wonder how entwine the two really are.
This is dangerous territory TLH. You don't KNOW that it causes anything, or that one is a symptom of the other, or how they are related.
Too much attention to skills and "poor RP" may be related. But I don't think it degrades from the RP. I've met and played with people I KNOW were either scripting, or utilizing twinky habits. Outside of those habits, their RP was actually very solid and on point, when dealing with other players.
Its a hard balance, sure, but "the way it used to be" is always golden. "The way it is now" is never as good.
I actually have no qualms with people playing with improvement of skills in mind. I think that's altogether realistic in a lot of different cases. I've also been making posts regarding how code is the way that we act, react, and interact with the autonomous, persistent world of Zalanthas. Code knowledge = good, for that reason alone.
The different behavior I see towards skills is an increased focused on the grind, where the way I remember it from before, there was kind of a mad scramble to 'get gud', but only until 'gud enough'. Then people kind of tapered off into comfort levels, whereas now there's less of a mad scramble to get gud enough, with more emphasis on buckling down for a long haul; being able to beat up everyone you spar isn't good enough, because you know you're still only at journeyman. There's frustration at the speed that it goes up, regardless of how effective you seem to be in combat or in doing your job.
I think it's led to a lot more longer-lived characters due to playing it safe until advanced and master fills your skill list, and therefore a lot more time investment, and then a lot more painful breaks on character death.
I don't have brief skills on either. To be an outlier not using it seems silly, given it is now how the game is fundamentally played. However, I don't want to say that everyone playing this way is subject to 'bad rp'. I think quality of roleplay has as a rule gone steadily upwards in quality over the long period of time I've spent here, but there are always some facets that fade or are lacking that I genuinely think detracted from the game.
It's a give and take thing. I don't think people are as skill-focused as they are time-invested, and I don't think they're code-oriented as much as frustrated by mysterious code knowledge. I try to help with the frustration as much as I can while still implanting some of the former ideals that I think enhanced the experience overall for me. Sometimes that get twisted around into certain viewpoints, and sometimes it actually helps someone. Hopefully that give and take balance in those areas of the game continues to shift until a premium balance is formed.
I talk about skills a lot on the GDB because I'm more interested in discussing technical aspects that are measurable and can be evidence-based than in opining about the best way to play elves or half-elves, or what the Arabeti really believe, or otherwise commenting on how other people play the game. That doesn't mean I never do that, but I find the technical discussion more interesting, usually. Also, it doesn't mean that I don't believe the opining discussions aren't useful...I get a lot from reading them, I just don't personally find it compelling enough to engage in the discussion.
The changes to the way we can get usable, useful data in-game have made these technical discussions much more interesting, because it's -far- less based on guesswork and anecdote. Obviously, there still is an element of that, but not nearly as much as before.
Personally, I skill up to be useful to other PCs. It isn't about winning Armageddon, or flexing on scrubs, or racking up PKs. I like being able to say, "Hell yes, I'll ride with you to the Xytrix-za!" or "Hell yeah, I'll steal your fancy knife back!" or "You want a full set of scrab-shell gear? YOU GOT IT."
Quote from: Synthesis on November 29, 2016, 03:19:12 PM
I talk about skills a lot on the GDB because I'm more interested in discussing technical aspects that are measurable and can be evidence-based than in opining about the best way to play elves or half-elves, or what the Arabeti really believe, or otherwise commenting on how other people play the game. That doesn't mean I never do that, but I find the technical discussion more interesting, usually.
The changes to the way we can get usable, useful data in-game have made these technical discussions much more interesting, because it's -far- less based on guesswork and anecdote. Obviously, there still is an element of that, but not nearly as much as before.
Personally, I skill up to be useful to other PCs. It isn't about winning Armageddon, or flexing on scrubs, or racking up PKs. I like being able to say, "Hell yes, I'll ride with you to the Xytrix-za!" or "Hell yeah, I'll steal your fancy knife back!" or "You want a full set of scrab-shell gear? YOU GOT IT."
I agree with this, and it's a large part of why some of my posts have been more firmset on 'code plz' of late. I essentially hit a point where I got tired of everything degrading into arguing how vnpcs would behave, what should or shouldn't be possible based on culture or arbitrary/relative interpretations of things, and so on.
It isn't that I'm trying to tell everyone to twink out on code. It's that I think we're at the point that we're paralyzing ourselves on what we allow other players to do under the banner of 'Good Roleplaying'.
There is definitely a difference between these scenarios:
> think I am sparring or hunting down animals whose parts I need to get better.
> think I am punching scrabs in the dark with rocks in a bag in my inventory to get better, and I have an egg timer on my desk to keep track of when I should go out to punch scrabs again.
There's obviously a spectrum between the Goofus and Gallant scenarios. All we ask is that you try to be Gallant-ish. Consider IC justifications for what you're doing. Consider the virtual world. Gaining skill goes hand in hand with playing the game, and is nothing to be ashamed of as long as you are roleplaying. Now, the way skill-gain works isn't necessarily set in stone and it's changed in the recent past. It could change again, but if it does, it's going to be done in a measured way by people that are the most familiar with the code.
Just keep in mind a couple of things: a vast majority of player speculation on skill-gain, how it works, etc. is wrong. Roleplay and time will get you where you need to be with most skills. People who participate in the arms-race of grinding without regard for RP so they don't get killed by some other skill twink are skill twinks themselves and are dealt with. People who are obviously following suspicious skill-gain guides are dealt with. People who legitimately RP, use think/feel/emote/etc and their character's status to justify their actions, are not bothered by staff and are in fact encouraged. Sometimes there are accidents and misperceptions staff-side, but we work to correct that when it happens.
I too admit to being something of a twink, I have climbed the Gaj walls for climb with little to no rp. But I do that like once every rl week, its just so that I do have a steady stream of improvement.
I like being a good fighter in game, perhaps I am a little too good sometimes but I always emote during a fight, even against npcs and have not once put rock bags on my back for enhanced skill gains.
I made a poll (http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,50559.msg925537.html#msg925537) about this a few months ago, and I feel similarly. I think my biggest complaint about it is that the availability of the information seems (or at least seemed) to be increasing the gap between the 'haves' (of twinked skills) and the 'have nots'. I don't know that I've really seen a notable decrease in the quality of RP, but I remain concerned that at some point it may become necessary to twink skills to have a character be seen as "relevant" or "useful".
I don't think it's an imminent danger, but if it ever comes about, that will probably be the day I quit Arm. There are already plenty of games where I can get bumped from parties because I didn't put the exact accepted number of points in skill #52. ::)
Great post, Nergal. I agree completely. Guards and hunters are going to train to be better at what they do. Crafters will practice new techniques. These are good things, imo. I think to sum up what brought me to even think about this is the way that it is done.
A crafter RPing out trying a new technique of some sort vs someone sitting there spam crafting in a tavern. A mercenary taking tips and practicing a new way to take advantage of a foe as opposed to giving a NPC a sparring weapon and power-playing with them.
The problem with expecting people to always have a "good reason, right now" for using a skill is that there are quite a few skills that are useful only in uncommon circumstances, and only if they are maxed or near-maxed, but also take a fucking SHITLOAD of repetitious practice that is typically available only if you intentionally manufacture the circumstances--and often this is without any good reason to do so, other than intent to skill up.
If you ask me, this is not a problem with player behavior, it's a problem with game design. Y'all essentially created a bunch of useful stuff, then neglected to provide a legitimate means of achieving usefulness. Almost every "skilling up" activity outside of clan sparring and crafting requires some degree of questionable behavior (and even crafting has to be gamed when you're a noob merchant, unless you have benefactors).
I feel like rangers, pickpockets, and merchants are the only guilds where you can really stick true-to-game and not constantly feel like you're nerfing yourself. And hell, even with merchants, it's only that way because nobody really polices crafting activity...maybe I should cross that one off the list.
I basically practice until I fail, and don't worry about skills too much. I think if/when the main guild karma stuff gets rolled out, i'll basically always pick a 'pretty good <guild>' instead of 'grind from novice to master in 1000 days'. I basically just want a mildly competent PC. I find that plots are inaccessible to new PCs (see my previous post on Casual Players and the changing player base). I wish this weren't the case -- I found it to be less of the case in Tuluk, where my new PCs could get jumpstarted into plots almost immediately out of chargen.
When I do play in Allanak, I find myself 'training' for the first however long it takes to get to apprentice/journeyman in skills that I think the concept relies on. I do RP with people, and hang out, and otherwise get into the feel of my PC, but that in itself usually takes time and patience. I think the two processes go hand in hand.
I've been playing the game for 15 years -- And I don't find Allanak exceptionally 'Zalanthas' in a way that Tuluk wasn't. Different flavors of ice cream -- Don't yuck my yummy!
Quote from: Synthesis on November 29, 2016, 05:50:45 PM
The problem with expecting people to always have a "good reason, right now" for using a skill is that there are quite a few skills that are useful only in uncommon circumstances, and only if they are maxed or near-maxed, but also take a fucking SHITLOAD of repetitious practice that is typically available only if you intentionally manufacture the circumstances--and often this is without any good reason to do so, other than intent to skill up.
If you ask me, this is not a problem with player behavior, it's a problem with game design. Y'all essentially created a bunch of useful stuff, then neglected to provide a legitimate means of achieving usefulness. Almost every "skilling up" activity outside of clan sparring and crafting requires some degree of questionable behavior (and even crafting has to be gamed when you're a noob merchant, unless you have benefactors).
I feel like rangers, pickpockets, and merchants are the only guilds where you can really stick true-to-game and not constantly feel like you're nerfing yourself. And hell, even with merchants, it's only that way because nobody really polices crafting activity...maybe I should cross that one off the list.
I also agree with Code Guru. I find it to be a 'flaw' of game design, not player purpose/goals. I say flaw loosely, because I don't think it's like...Staff's fault or something. It's just a fundamental part of how the 'game' works. If skills raised from successes, or if skills could have points bought into them at chargen (so you have an assassin who's slightly better at backstab or slightly better at poisoning or a warrior who can pick an advanced weapon or that level of customization), it'd be a different story.
The thing is, people don't like playing nobodies who suck at doing anything. Most guilds start with novice in literally everything, and a couple apprentices if they picked the right sub guild. I play the game to chop motherfuckerz up with bone swordz, and until I can actually do that, the grind is mind numbing. I hate it. I hate having to think about it, or having to think about skills. But it's just the game culture we live in.
Part of me also thinks...Who cares? I think if someone is blatantly abusing code, report them if you're a player, or talk with them if you're Staff. But all these notifications of people using skills, and then coming to them and saying "You know, you're using your skills too much or power gaming too much" not only seems like a monumental waste of time, but a monumental waste of energy. Why not focus on the players/people who aren't skill minded, rather than witch-hunting people who are just focusing on another aspect of the game? It's really their loss -- Armageddon is a MUD, and it does have code/skills, but the true joy of it is the RP and the RPI aspect of it, and you will never ever interact with that if you are solely focused on 'git gud'.
I do think:
-You need a modicum of skill to have fun, sometimes, depending on the clan/experience.
-You sometimes don't need any skill at all to have lots of fun. Nobles/Politics almost never require skills.
-You almost never have fun being unskilled when people expect you to be skilled. This part sucks the most.
I think we should (as a player base) be much more OK with failing, not needing to kill people to solve a problem, and focusing on the world and how to bring it to life.
Quote from: Nergal on November 29, 2016, 04:07:57 PM
There is definitely a difference between these scenarios:
> think I am sparring or hunting down animals whose parts I need to get better.
> think I am punching scrabs in the dark with rocks in a bag in my inventory to get better, and I have an egg timer on my desk to keep track of when I should go out to punch scrabs again.
I don't want to be contrary but this is exactly what I'm talking about. That anybody feels like Goofus needs to be "dealt with" is just wrong. What you've described here probably plays out in the players head more like: I am a master of the night, a fighter beyond compare, I am honing my reflexes to a razor's sharpness because I am the softspoken, always serious, BA anime antihero. I practice every morning because that's how serious people et seriously good at things like my morose violence.
Just because he's not conveying that to the rest of us very effectively is no reason to... Well do anything, really. Let them learn. Step in and "deal with" people who actually abuse the code in harmful ways. Years back I believe NPCs would carry anything you gave them with no limit to weight or inventory space, but they were still affected by weight penalties. When someone is using bags of rocks to slaughter soldiers, then you say hey stop and
change what allowed the behavior in the first place. I believe that's how that went down.
Less far back my rogue whiran and his Krathi buddy encountered a *dundundunnnn* sorcerer! I think it was falcon. He lurked for a while, creeping us out, being all mysterious and asking us questions in this tense scene. Then out of nowhere he starts casting spells like crazy. Most on nil, or at least all with no appreciable effect except the insane light show. It was obvious that time to get another fail had rolled along, whether that's correct and helpful or not, he was just skill gaining. Sat right back down and resumed the conversation. I could have seen that as a horrible offense to my sense of quality rp or complained to staff or whatever. Instead, we just agreed to avoid that clearly nutty superwizard and moved on with our adventure. That was a totally fine outcome for that part of our story.
My point I guess is instead of railing on people for playing in a way we don't like, or damaging relations with newer players who haven't seen the Better Way, let's just let it go and react to their weird-ass behavior with ic derision and murderizing until those players get right on their own.
Also specifically about focus on skills being more recent, I'll point out that people got super obsessive about how to speed up their skill gains when apocalypse was created and a lot of people had access to a copy of the code at the time. Fools have been running on the same model ever since. It's not new behavior.
Quote from: Reiloth on November 29, 2016, 07:27:25 PM
I basically practice until I fail, and don't worry about skills too much. I think if/when the main guild karma stuff gets rolled out, i'll basically always pick a 'pretty good <guild>' instead of 'grind from novice to master in 1000 days'. I basically just want a mildly competent PC. I find that plots are inaccessible to new PCs (see my previous post on Casual Players and the changing player base). I wish this weren't the case -- I found it to be less of the case in Tuluk, where my new PCs could get jumpstarted into plots almost immediately out of chargen.
When I do play in Allanak, I find myself 'training' for the first however long it takes to get to apprentice/journeyman in skills that I think the concept relies on. I do RP with people, and hang out, and otherwise get into the feel of my PC, but that in itself usually takes time and patience. I think the two processes go hand in hand.
I've been playing the game for 15 years -- And I don't find Allanak exceptionally 'Zalanthas' in a way that Tuluk wasn't. Different flavors of ice cream -- Don't yuck my yummy!
I hate the "practice til I fail" thing. I mean, I hate the concept of this, as an IC concept. It's not an IC concept. If my character is working on making red shoes, I'm not going to spam-craft red shoes til I fail to make red shoes. I'll craft til I SUCCEED in making a pair of red shoes. and then, I've made them, and don't need to try and make any more that day.
But maybe - if I want to get some "codedly-useful training" in, I'll think "I need to work on making shoes. I'll try a couple of different types." And then I'll run through the craft list of shoes I can make with these materials - if I make a few and still don't fail, well I'm not going to run myself out of materials in a single day, that'd be pointless. So I'll stop anyway. If I DO fail - I might RP being frustrated with not being very good at it yet, and give up for the day.
While I know that *I* won't see a skill bump til I fail "x" amount of tries in "y" period of time as long as I only attempt and fail once every "z" minutes - my character knows no such thing, and I refuse to play it as if she does. My character wants to succeed, not fail.
If players could branch their skill trees without mastering the prerequisites first; we would see a lot less of the nonsensical grindy play.
Quote from: Jingo on November 29, 2016, 08:50:36 PM
If players could branch their skill trees without mastering the prerequisites first; we would see a lot less of the nonsensical grindy play.
This.
I passionately hate skill branching, because inevitably, I have to master something I don't give a damn about to get something I want, unless I purposely choose a subguild that 9/10 times only has skills my main guild will eventually branch. Which sucks.
Quote from: Lizzie on November 29, 2016, 08:29:35 PM
Quote from: Reiloth on November 29, 2016, 07:27:25 PM
I basically practice until I fail, and don't worry about skills too much. I think if/when the main guild karma stuff gets rolled out, i'll basically always pick a 'pretty good <guild>' instead of 'grind from novice to master in 1000 days'. I basically just want a mildly competent PC. I find that plots are inaccessible to new PCs (see my previous post on Casual Players and the changing player base). I wish this weren't the case -- I found it to be less of the case in Tuluk, where my new PCs could get jumpstarted into plots almost immediately out of chargen.
When I do play in Allanak, I find myself 'training' for the first however long it takes to get to apprentice/journeyman in skills that I think the concept relies on. I do RP with people, and hang out, and otherwise get into the feel of my PC, but that in itself usually takes time and patience. I think the two processes go hand in hand.
I've been playing the game for 15 years -- And I don't find Allanak exceptionally 'Zalanthas' in a way that Tuluk wasn't. Different flavors of ice cream -- Don't yuck my yummy!
I hate the "practice til I fail" thing. I mean, I hate the concept of this, as an IC concept. It's not an IC concept. If my character is working on making red shoes, I'm not going to spam-craft red shoes til I fail to make red shoes. I'll craft til I SUCCEED in making a pair of red shoes. and then, I've made them, and don't need to try and make any more that day.
But maybe - if I want to get some "codedly-useful training" in, I'll think "I need to work on making shoes. I'll try a couple of different types." And then I'll run through the craft list of shoes I can make with these materials - if I make a few and still don't fail, well I'm not going to run myself out of materials in a single day, that'd be pointless. So I'll stop anyway. If I DO fail - I might RP being frustrated with not being very good at it yet, and give up for the day.
While I know that *I* won't see a skill bump til I fail "x" amount of tries in "y" period of time as long as I only attempt and fail once every "z" minutes - my character knows no such thing, and I refuse to play it as if she does. My character wants to succeed, not fail.
Ok cool. Works with crafting. Works with no other skills.
Quote from: bardlyone on November 29, 2016, 08:58:33 PM
Quote from: Jingo on November 29, 2016, 08:50:36 PM
If players could branch their skill trees without mastering the prerequisites first; we would see a lot less of the nonsensical grindy play.
This.
I passionately hate skill branching, because inevitably, I have to master something I don't give a damn about to get something I want, unless I purposely choose a subguild that 9/10 times only has skills my main guild will eventually branch. Which sucks.
That.
And, Rieve is correct, despite semi-grindy play I still find myself neck-deep in shit by 2-3 days played... even with combat/stealthy characters. I'm like, awww no, here we go again. I can't tell Lord Fussypants I haven't maxed sneak/hide/poisoning/piercing/backstab/climb/demonfire/etc. for this crazed plan... that's where being SEMI-grindy comes in, because you have to live fast and wild to make the kind of contacts you need when the shit goes down. Most times the egg-timer dings and I'm like, no thanks, this other stuff is too important. I don't frown on someone who has an egg-timer on their desk, I just know I'll have other advantages in the face of a problem. It's a sacrifice. For one thing to be gained, another crucial piece must be lost. Insert insane rambling about Full Metal Alchemist here.
I think Armaddict is right on the money. There's a lot more push towards achieving that next skill rank now that you see it. And for some reason, it seems many players think that they have to pass a certain threshold before they can 'play' their PC. Part of playing, it seems to me, is getting there. Is there a grind to it? Yea, but something's got to make memorable characters memorable. Someone recently mentioned having a weapon skill stuck at 'advanced'...I mean, by the time you get there in most characters, you can probably lay waste to the vast majority of stuff you'll encounter. But there's still this push, because now subjectively good isn't objectively what you see.
As far as playing for skills, I definitely do try to optimize skill gains if I'm out doing stuff. I like to see progress skill-wise as much as anyone. Though I don't generally go out and grind stuff or use timers or anything crazy. But if there's an opportunity to practice a little bit I'll take it.
And finally, I think the discussion about code has grown more and more in the open in the GDB, for sure. Probably has something to do with the growing availability of that information, but there you have it.
Quote from: Reiloth on November 29, 2016, 11:22:03 PM
Quote from: Lizzie on November 29, 2016, 08:29:35 PM
Quote from: Reiloth on November 29, 2016, 07:27:25 PM
I basically practice until I fail, and don't worry about skills too much. I think if/when the main guild karma stuff gets rolled out, i'll basically always pick a 'pretty good <guild>' instead of 'grind from novice to master in 1000 days'. I basically just want a mildly competent PC. I find that plots are inaccessible to new PCs (see my previous post on Casual Players and the changing player base). I wish this weren't the case -- I found it to be less of the case in Tuluk, where my new PCs could get jumpstarted into plots almost immediately out of chargen.
When I do play in Allanak, I find myself 'training' for the first however long it takes to get to apprentice/journeyman in skills that I think the concept relies on. I do RP with people, and hang out, and otherwise get into the feel of my PC, but that in itself usually takes time and patience. I think the two processes go hand in hand.
I've been playing the game for 15 years -- And I don't find Allanak exceptionally 'Zalanthas' in a way that Tuluk wasn't. Different flavors of ice cream -- Don't yuck my yummy!
I hate the "practice til I fail" thing. I mean, I hate the concept of this, as an IC concept. It's not an IC concept. If my character is working on making red shoes, I'm not going to spam-craft red shoes til I fail to make red shoes. I'll craft til I SUCCEED in making a pair of red shoes. and then, I've made them, and don't need to try and make any more that day.
But maybe - if I want to get some "codedly-useful training" in, I'll think "I need to work on making shoes. I'll try a couple of different types." And then I'll run through the craft list of shoes I can make with these materials - if I make a few and still don't fail, well I'm not going to run myself out of materials in a single day, that'd be pointless. So I'll stop anyway. If I DO fail - I might RP being frustrated with not being very good at it yet, and give up for the day.
While I know that *I* won't see a skill bump til I fail "x" amount of tries in "y" period of time as long as I only attempt and fail once every "z" minutes - my character knows no such thing, and I refuse to play it as if she does. My character wants to succeed, not fail.
Ok cool. Works with crafting. Works with no other skills.
And yet you don't use it on other skills do you? In combat sparring - do you fight until you miss, and then stop? No. You fight for several RL minutes at least, probably closer to 20 minutes real-time (the beginning of early morning until the end of late morning). You succeed and fail many times during this window, and you don't stop just because you fail.
When you're out grebbing - do you try til you fail, and then go back in? Or do you try til you get at LEAST the cost of a water refill and stable fees, whether you fail or not?
When you're skinning chalton - do you skin til you fail? Or do you skin til there's no chalton left in your area? Do you only kill one chalton at a time, skin it, and then move to the next chalton, kill it, skin it - to make sure that you only kill critters that you will skin, so that you know to stop when you fail in skinning it? Or do you come across a whole bunch of them, kill them all, and then worry about whether or not you'll succeed or fail in skinning it? Is that why there are so many scrab parts across the road? Because someone is going along trying to fail at skinning over and over again, and just keeps succeeding and having to try failing at more of them?
All of this is OOC player stuff, geared toward min-maxing the "fail = improve" methodology of coded game play. And it all reeks of twinkery, and it makes zero RP sense.
Quote from: Bogre on November 30, 2016, 01:35:48 AM
I think Armaddict is right on the money. There's a lot more push towards achieving that next skill rank now that you see it. And for some reason, it seems many players think that they have to pass a certain threshold before they can 'play' their PC. Part of playing, it seems to me, is getting there. Is there a grind to it? Yea, but something's got to make memorable characters memorable. Someone recently mentioned having a weapon skill stuck at 'advanced'...I mean, by the time you get there in most characters, you can probably lay waste to the vast majority of stuff you'll encounter. But there's still this push, because now subjectively good isn't objectively what you see.
As far as playing for skills, I definitely do try to optimize skill gains if I'm out doing stuff. I like to see progress skill-wise as much as anyone. Though I don't generally go out and grind stuff or use timers or anything crazy. But if there's an opportunity to practice a little bit I'll take it.
And finally, I think the discussion about code has grown more and more in the open in the GDB, for sure. Probably has something to do with the growing availability of that information, but there you have it.
When I'm interacting with people who want to know whether or not I can accomplish a specific coded task, I answer them however I think my *character* would answer them. "Well yes, Lord Fancypants. I killed a scrab just yesterday and was able to pry the chitin off of it. Would you like me to try again today?" or "I don't know, Lord Fancypants, I've never tried." or "Well I've tried before Lord Fancypants, and wasn't able then. I don't know what I'll be able to do tomorrow but I'll let you know tomorrow night."
I don't see why making four pairs of red shoes, failing on the fifth one, and stopping, makes 'zero RP sense'. Maybe you get frustrated because you feel that cobbling together shoes is second nature, but suddenly you drop a stitch and there is a big hole in the side? Oof. Maybe its time to stop making shoes for today.
For combat and grebbing and other skills? The only reason people don't stop after the first fail, lets be real serious, is because there's a thought that you need to fail a number of times to "guarantee" the skill up. Gith guard merchant? Same thing. Three times. Rough circle? Its just an excuse to ensure the fail counts.
More on topic; yes code talk has gotten more prevalent. Maybe staff felt that limited talk in a controlled environment was better than IRC/AIM/Discord/etc. Maybe current staff incarnation felt more like providing a wider base of code knowledge for new players to be able to keep up with the 20year veterans who "had to learn the hard way". Maybe the veterans are looking at the game through rose colored glasses.
Or maybe the staff decided that after more than just one hack into their database, that if they provide some modicum of information to the players, the urge to hack and steal their information won't be as difficult to control.
I would not have wanted to play in the era where code talk was completely forbidden.
I like code. I am a coder. I have coded my own games, worked on other people's games, and made a fine living debugging code in the professional world. I am fascinated by the nuances in game code as much as I am by any setting.
At times playing Arm is extremely frustrating for me because nobody (who actually knows) will talk about how the code works. All you ever see is speculation, which while it might help you twink (might) doesn't scratch the curious itch that people who like code have. We want to see the code, not someone's theory on how the code they've never seen works.
The "try till you fail" thing is weird and as far as I've seen, unique to Arm. Even among roleplay enforced games it's more common to see a "improve as you play" skill progression. Either a small portion from fails and a larger portion from success, or a percentage chance to learn from either.
In my roleplay I don't tend to really focus on "skill gains". When sparring, if I see a fail I'll emote a out growing frustrated and then either switch grip or switch weapons. (I rarely acknowledge crafting fails, writing them off as a continuing the effort instead of completely starting over.) A failure when skinning to get the hide I shrug off not as a failure of skinning but as the hide was just too damaged in the fighting.
Quote from: Bogre on November 30, 2016, 01:35:48 AM
I think Armaddict is right on the money. There's a lot more push towards achieving that next skill rank now that you see it. And for some reason, it seems many players think that they have to pass a certain threshold before they can 'play' their PC. Part of playing, it seems to me, is getting there. Is there a grind to it? Yea, but something's got to make memorable characters memorable. Someone recently mentioned having a weapon skill stuck at 'advanced'...I mean, by the time you get there in most characters, you can probably lay waste to the vast majority of stuff you'll encounter. But there's still this push, because now subjectively good isn't objectively what you see.
As far as playing for skills, I definitely do try to optimize skill gains if I'm out doing stuff. I like to see progress skill-wise as much as anyone. Though I don't generally go out and grind stuff or use timers or anything crazy. But if there's an opportunity to practice a little bit I'll take it.
And finally, I think the discussion about code has grown more and more in the open in the GDB, for sure. Probably has something to do with the growing availability of that information, but there you have it.
You don't "lay waste" at advanced, and you never did. The difference is that before advanced weapon skills went in, nobody knew WHAT laying waste actually was.
People were stuck at jman and thought winning was "laying waste," until people started grinding for trident weapons and realized that "winning" is scrub, "laying waste" is multiple consecutive head shots with reel-lock from combat initiation to mantis head.
The bitching about weapon skills started when folks realized it was nigh-impossible to branch them. It intensified when people could see just how low they are when the plateau begins.
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 09:42:27 AM
The "try till you fail" thing is weird and as far as I've seen, unique to Arm.
Likely a holdover from old Runequest. Which may have shared/gotten it from HARN. Otherwise, agreed. I don't like the concept in an RPI where we are reminded to keep in mind the virtual population, that the best PC fighters have virtually no one to help train them to keep improving.
I never saw either of those. Likely in my era of graphical mmo playing.
I really only complain about the "practice until you fail" thing when crafting, and that's largely due to other issues that are imbalanced.
For example, if I want to improve widget making then I buy the three components for my widget and go sit down to craft them. Total cost of components = 30 sid. I succeed in making the widget, which means I get no skill up (boo!). But at least I now have a widget, right? The NPC will now buy the completed widget for 12 sid. So not only did I not get my skill up, but I lost money WHILE CRAFTING.
I know the economy is supposed to be player to player, but it's not. If you want a player-driven economy then you have to remove all NPC merchants totally. Nobody wants my junior level widget. They all want exclusive elf-crafted widgets or a special custom-made widget from Salarr.
You can still make a fat pile of sids as an indie merchant, but not really from doing what an indie merchant is designed to do. Really you only make those sids from the other tools an indie merchant has, which feel a wee bit exploity.
And a ranger with the haggle skill is going to make so much more and so much easier than an indie merchant that it just sort of makes me wonder every time why I started a merchant.
If I was in charge of the economic system (rest assured, I'm not), I would remove all NPC merchants except for ones that purchase raw materials. The only NPC merchants available that sell finished products would be ones attached to an actual player merchant and would sell only what that person had crafted. There would be no more NPC merchants selling a list of pre-loaded items.
Uh, an indie ranger with haggle is nowhere near what a merchant can do in terms of 'sid generation.
It is ridiculously easy to line up hunters to buy crafting loot from, if you're on peak time. Once your haggle skill is mastered...it's just ludicrous. Even a ranger/master armorcrafter can't compare to a merchant. Even without buying raw materials from other PCs, the upside potential is just mind-bogglingly broken. In fact, with maxed haggle, there used to be 2 NPC merchants in the game (probably still are, judging from the buy/sell tables) where you could buy something from the NPC and sell it right back to him for more 'sid than you bought it for.
If you haven't blown hundreds of thousands of 'sid on dumb shit and philanthropy by day 20 as a merchant, you either a) aren't really trying or b) just don't know what you're doing.
I suspect B.
I don't play peak time (I usually am not around after 8pm) and I operate mostly out of Luir's and Morin's (I like the north, don't like the south).
There's a couple of exploity mechanics with a merchant that I can turn into nearly limitless sid in Luir's, but I generally only do it so that I have some coin in my pocket to buy from indie rangers. Of which there are few on the ground now.
Quote from: whitt on November 30, 2016, 09:58:14 AM
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 09:42:27 AM
The "try till you fail" thing is weird and as far as I've seen, unique to Arm.
Likely a holdover from old Runequest. Which may have shared/gotten it from HARN. Otherwise, agreed. I don't like the concept in an RPI where we are reminded to keep in mind the virtual population, that the best PC fighters have virtually no one to help train them to keep improving.
I actually like the concept of skill up when you fail. In real like, do you learn more from your failures or from your successes? Gotta say, I've never seen a kid that will believe to not put their hand on the hot stove until they've actually done and and learned from their mistake.
I also agree that the economy system is a bit out of wack. You can usually sell raw materials than you could for the completed item, and the cost to buy the raw material is often 5x more value than what you can make from it. Add that to low skill, and without bring in a clan where the hungers bring you an endless supply of materials, it's really hard. I've seen people do it and get insanely rich. That's not the issue.
In real life as a craftsman, I can produce something of higher or lower quality. A "fail" may be a mediocre sword blade instead of an excellent one. And in the process I learned how to more consistently make an excellent one.
I also learn how to judge the quality of materials so that I don't begin trying to make an excellent sword blade with shitty iron.
I also can, at many stages in the process, stop and review what I'm doing and either repeat a previous step in order to do it more expertly or take more time and care to make sure a specific process will complete. A failure is almost never a complete loss of materials.
The problem with learning only on failure in Arm isn't the fact that learning more from failure isn't realistic ... it's that failure in Arm crafting is so BINARY. In most cases you either make the widget or you destroy all or most of the materials. And the finished product is equal to all the other ones. I can't spend more time and effort making an individual item better than another merchant. My object_id 37 bone knife is completely equivalent to the master craftsman's object_id 37 bone knife.
It may require a split off, but perhaps "weapons and armor" can have a "tool quality" upgrade at some point in the future.
Though the point remains... people ARE concerned with skills. The issue at hand, is it "overly", and does it ACTUALLY affect the RP of the game, or is it baseless fears about what "could be" happening?
If there is an 'overall loss of quality RP' in the game, I still wouldn't attribute it to "people concerned about their skills" as a loss of retention for the superior players of old.
I'd ask how, specifically, a player overly concerned with skills is detrimental to roleplay.
Even with Nergal's extreme example of the night-crawling scrab puncher with rocks, I fail to understand how that hurts roleplay.
HIS roleplay during the activity may be questionable, but in all likelihood he is doing it alone.
The two fat guys roleplaying big-breasted lesbians mudsexing in an Allanak apartment don't suddenly stop and say, "Wait! I feel our roleplay has been diminished by some guy twinking somewhere in the desert!"
If the rock-carrying scrab puncher roleplayed receiving instruction from an elderly desert samurai about how carrying rocks and fighting scrab bare-handed would turn him into One Punch Man then doesn't it suddenly become "good roleplay"?
This is a vaporous, highly-subjective thing, this "good roleplay". It's also not consistent. There are days we nail it and days we "phone it in", even with the same character.
This debate feels largely to me like older players taking a swipe at newer players.
I'm a pretty old player, and I'm not taking a swipe at anyone.
Do I go out with bags of rocks and drunken blind-fight scrabs? No.
When I want to fail in combat, do I intentionally keep myself slightly more encumbered than I need to be, and go out to fight things that I don't really need to fight? Absolutely.
Do I massively break character in order to do so? No.
Do I, at chargen, intentionally create characters with backgrounds that will facilitate training the skillset that I need to improve? Absolutely.
Do I sit here with an egg timer? No.
Do I know exactly what RL time every dawn is, and plan accordingly, if possible? Absolutely.
You eventually get to a point where you have to choose between never getting a miss or blatant twinkery. I wish we had some kind of update to address this.
Quote from: Lutagar on November 30, 2016, 11:42:35 AM
You eventually get to a point where you have to choose between never getting a miss or blatant twinkery. I wish we had some kind of update to address this.
If you never get a miss... why would you think your skill needs to be higher? The answer is that
the branching point is "too damn high". Change the branch points lower and people will no longer feel a need to twink to a maxed out skill list or complain about how impossible it is to get there. Either that or allow people to be taught and pick up skills they have the ability to branch without reaching the branching point in the "gate" skill.
It's impossible to train and not improve. It's impossible to get to a point where you can't improve. World class martial artists don't go, oh, well, there's no way I can possibly get better so I don't have to do anything now.
It's particularly notable that since the start of armageddon, no one, not a single PC, has ever branched and maxed all of the skills that come with guild_warrior.
Quote from: whitt on November 30, 2016, 11:54:11 AM
Quote from: Lutagar on November 30, 2016, 11:42:35 AM
You eventually get to a point where you have to choose between never getting a miss or blatant twinkery. I wish we had some kind of update to address this.
If you never get a miss... why would you think your skill needs to be higher? The answer is that the branching point is "too damn high".
Change the branch points lower and people will no longer feel a need to twink to a maxed out skill list or complain about how impossible it is to get there. Either that or allow people to be taught and pick up skills they have the ability to branch without reaching the branching point in the "gate" skill.
Your defenses and other skills are unfortunately linked to your weapon skills, so "if you never get a miss" at jman, it means your defense will also forever be nerfed as well, which is a persistent frustration. Prior to the introduction of branched weapons, everyone assumed this was "normal at max." Now, we know that it isn't, and it is an entirely normal response to be frustrated about it.
For me, "branching an advanced weapon skill" is utterly pointless, because I -probably- am not willing to grind that grind twice+ to master another weapon skill. The point is to master -a- weapon skill, because it makes a massive functional difference in both offense and defense.
Again, the difference is not between "winning a fight" and "losing a fight." The difference is between "winning a fight" and "crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of the women."
But if you're fighting or sparring with other players, isn't THEIR defense going to go up, meaning that you will incrementally have your offense/weapon skills go up?
When I started trying yoga (Don't laugh. I have injuries that require me to stretch) I was able to Youtube it for a little while, but to advance much further I need a teacher.
I don't find it a stretch that at a certain point you'd need to turn to an academy or an instructor inside Arm. If the code supports such a thing, wouldn't that be a good roleplay opportunity? Advanced warriors hire themselves out as instructors or cadre for a house/unit?
The problem is, if there's a PC that's skilled enough to be the instructor you mentioned, they either got that strong by using the methods mentioned in Nergal's posts or got staff boosts.
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 12:11:13 PM
But if you're fighting or sparring with other players, isn't THEIR defense going to go up, meaning that you will incrementally have your offense/weapon skills go up?
When I started trying yoga (Don't laugh. I have injuries that require me to stretch) I was able to Youtube it for a little while, but to advance much further I need a teacher.
I don't find it a stretch that at a certain point you'd need to turn to an academy or an instructor inside Arm. If the code supports such a thing, wouldn't that be a good roleplay opportunity? Advanced warriors hire themselves out as instructors or cadre for a house/unit?
No.
-Maybe- d-elf clans who allow magickers to buff them can reach a point where sparring a PC at the top tier will generate misses enough to get to mastery in a reasonable timeframe. Otherwise, (base offense + weapon skill + random factor) is always greater than (base defense + random factor).
The problem is, you can't make base D more powerful, because then it unbalances combat. The solution is to make parries and blocks count as misses.
Again, this is a problem that's been described in laborious detail elsewhere.
To give an example of the scope of the problem:
Today, I killed 3 scrabs, 3 giant tarantulas, 4 raptors (at once), a rat, a chalton, a snake, an inix, and a gith.
At only (advanced), I failed a weapon-skill check twice on the same giant tarantula. To be fair, I was only -trying- to generate a weapon-skill failure for about 20 minutes before I got it. But the point remains: at a certain level (far below mastery), you must
intentionally seek out weapon skill failures, or you will never get them.
"I don't find it a stretch that at a certain point you'd need to turn to an academy or an instructor inside Arm. If the code supports such a thing, wouldn't that be a good roleplay opportunity? Advanced warriors hire themselves out as instructors or cadre for a house/unit?"
Miradus, that is perfect. I believe that problem is (as you can see how this post turned into a mechanics topic somehow) that people are thinking less and less like that. They are more concerned with the hard code than RPing things out and more and more people seem to be thinking that there is nothing wrong with that. Knowing the basics of how the code works helps - we do use skills. We should have a /basic/ understanding. When you start crunching numbers and getting angry because you can't fail at something there is something wrong.
I don't think that letting us see where our skills are is a bad thing. It can help us RP appropriately. I love that we can see where our skills stand and I agree, it is really neat to see that skill go up or a new skill show up. We also don't need some novice swordsman twirling his blade all around and emoting that he is Conan.
I think that it just turned into a slippery slope and now a portion of the community believes that it should be acceptable. I believe, and I may be wrong of course, that such focus detracts from the level of RP and you end up with people doing really silly things.
Like I said before...as soon as they added the advanced weapon skills, people started doing "silly" things to branch them...because doing silly things is necessary to branch them, and because everyone knows that the branch point is mastery...ergo if you have not branched, you by rather simple logic, have not mastered the base skill.
Almost every other skill in the game has a tolerable learning curve.
I'd say that the vast majority of what you're complaining about, and perceiving as a problem, is relating specifically to weapon skills, because NOTHING ELSE is so difficult or broken that it requires borderline shenanigans to master.
That's why this isn't a derail. The problem IS weapon skills. If the problem were fixed, we would stop complaining about it.
I guarantee you if Staff came out and said "Okay, shield blocks and parries now count (or have always counted) as failures for weapon skills, but we've adjusted (or not) the learning curves so that it still takes about 15-20 days to master a weapon skill," the vast majority of the bitching about training would stop. Very few people are complaining about the timeline itself...they're complaining about what you apparently have to do to get there, because all Staff will say is "works as intended."
Honestly, this figure it out yourself attitude when it comes to code has always felt like a way for veteran players to always have a one up over newer ones.
I miss the days where my rangers could ROFLSTOMP any warrior because their players didn't understand the consequences of practicing defense while having parry and weapons drawn and everyone pretended that them not knowing was somehow enchaining their experience.
I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.
Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 02:06:41 PM
I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.
Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.
Exactly. My own findings is that if you play realistic -- take a default template as a hunter who goes out and hunts one animal every in game day -- you will move through three stages:
1. Weak. This takes about five days to overcome. It kind of stinks, but isn't that terrible, and a lot of fun can be had getting your ass kicked.
2. Perfect. This happens from about 5 to 20 days, I'd say. You get rolled now and then by a gortok, carru/gith are definitely a flee beast, but you can more or less handle 80% of the mobs out there.
3. Too Good. Then you hit this level where nothing hurts you unless it gets lucky (with the rare 5% of beasts that you have to go out of your way to find anyway). If you want to liven things up you have to do tricky things like wishing up (hehe) or holding things in the offhand or 'forgetting' to draw your weapon, or whatever.
This is all a PvE perspective. My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.
Quote from: nauta on November 30, 2016, 02:26:41 PM
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 02:06:41 PM
I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.
Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.
Exactly. My own findings is that if you play realistic -- take a default template as a hunter who goes out and hunts one animal every in game day -- you will move through three stages:
1. Weak. This takes about five days to overcome. It kind of stinks, but isn't that terrible, and a lot of fun can be had getting your ass kicked.
2. Perfect. This happens from about 5 to 20 days, I'd say. You get rolled now and then by a gortok, carru/gith are definitely a flee beast, but you can more or less handle 80% of the mobs out there.
3. Too Good. Then you hit this level where nothing hurts you unless it gets lucky (with the rare 5% of beasts that you have to go out of your way to find anyway). If you want to liven things up you have to do tricky things like wishing up (hehe) or holding things in the offhand or 'forgetting' to draw your weapon, or whatever.
This is all a PvE perspective. My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.
You're confusing "good" with "defensively sufficient for PvE."
Trust me, it is ENTIRELY possible to die in straight-up melee PvP where one successful bash, charge, or reel is all it takes. Whether you do 10 damage with a solid chop to the arm or 35 damage with a brutal chop to the neck is not random. Does it matter for hunting gortoks? No. Does it matter in PvP? HELL YES IT DOES.
Its also important to note that most of the organizations in game can get you from "dead in a second" to "doesn't need to worry about much" in the course of an in game year. Byn training for a year produces people that, at least in my experience, can either take care of spiders on their own, or suddenly aren't immediately resigned to death. This is why Byn Troopers make the "meat" of an RPT, and are sold as the common frontline soldiers.
But that's an in game YEAR, an OOC 6 weeks, of semi-regular training to be 'competent' in the Wastes.
Or, you could spend half the time with a different mindset and focus, and be able to spend 4 weeks, and even then the MAJORITY of it socializing or bar sitting.
Related to the "find a grandmaster to teach you", I'm still on the "fat fucking chance finding one" unless they went through some extremely twinky times themselves. Should being a MASTER SWORDSMAN take two IG years and boom? Fuck no. But it shouldn't take 20 years, and even then only because you wanted to branch "smaller swords"
I've said it before and I'll say it again, even though I'm sure I'll be shouted down again...
You don't have to resort to stupid tactics to Get Gud anymore. Y'all are operating on out of date presumptions.
source: actual experience within the last 6 months of gameplay.
Quote from: Synthesis on November 30, 2016, 03:16:03 PM
Quote from: nauta on November 30, 2016, 02:26:41 PM
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 02:06:41 PM
I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.
Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.
Exactly. My own findings is that if you play realistic -- take a default template as a hunter who goes out and hunts one animal every in game day -- you will move through three stages:
1. Weak. This takes about five days to overcome. It kind of stinks, but isn't that terrible, and a lot of fun can be had getting your ass kicked.
2. Perfect. This happens from about 5 to 20 days, I'd say. You get rolled now and then by a gortok, carru/gith are definitely a flee beast, but you can more or less handle 80% of the mobs out there.
3. Too Good. Then you hit this level where nothing hurts you unless it gets lucky (with the rare 5% of beasts that you have to go out of your way to find anyway). If you want to liven things up you have to do tricky things like wishing up (hehe) or holding things in the offhand or 'forgetting' to draw your weapon, or whatever.
This is all a PvE perspective. My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.
You're confusing "good" with "defensively sufficient for PvE."
Quote
This is all a PvE perspective.
Quote
Trust me, it is ENTIRELY possible to die in straight-up melee PvP where one successful bash, charge, or reel is all it takes. Whether you do 10 damage with a solid chop to the arm or 35 damage with a brutal chop to the neck is not random. Does it matter for hunting gortoks? No. Does it matter in PvP? HELL YES IT DOES.
Quote
My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.
Well PVP is territory I haven't engaged in much, so I can't really say.
I've been involved in 3 pvp incidents over dozens of characters.
One I got shot up with arrows and I fell over a cliff trying to run away. *doh*
One I started and could have fled out at any time but didn't.
One I started and then fled out of.
I don't particularly feel that I was vastly overwhelmed by someone else's coded power in any of them. (Well, MAYBE the one where I ate a few fireballs but I did have the ability to get away.)
I have no way of knowing what their skillsheet looked like, but there was no "WTF PWNED" moment in my head. Which you sometimes get even on pure PK muds.
I think if you're going to be reel-locked and murderized then it probably would have happened with a carru as well as another player. I'm aware that as someone who hasn't focused on pvp I'm talking out my ass, but hey, listen to that ass go.
I once reel-locked a dude so hard while I was playing a c-elf (street duel, bad move on his part) that I could barely disengage fast enough to stop from killing him. Then he attacked again, luckily, I was quick and only critted him once more. He required a while of resting to recuperate. Had I bashed? If it landed (it probably would), it would have been over.
This with a jman weapon skill... and elf arms.
I used a spear as apprentice, as a c-elf with (relatively) shit endurance and helped a human warrior branch a weapon skill, and it was STILL a tossup at the end who would win a sparring match. This tells me there's more at play than weapon skill (master), but it's all anecdotal. Fighting an opponent on the ground is not the same as fighting a skilled mounted opponent... hint hint. (byn stables and mounted combat rink ftw)
I know I've "made it" as a combat character in PVE when mobs stop going from taking a butt-kicking down to near death and then ushering up a Rocky-style victory and nearly killing me.
Synthesis knows the PvP side of the game as well. I think a lot of the conceptions are based around the lowered amount of PvP in the game relative to where it once was.
PvE, you're completely fine at journeyman weapon skills. I have stated through various threads that I don't want weapon skill progression changed, but I do think that advanced weapon skills should come earlier to prevent the need to do silly things to use something that should be an option for a warrior to do.
PvP, being at advanced rather than journeyman is a big deal. Being at master rather than advanced is a huge deal. I rather like this setup, because at a certain point going out and hunting beasts just isn't an effective way to train in being a master swordsman. Fighting giant beetles doesn't require (more) technical skills, (better) feints, and so on. Fighting other people in their quest to be a master swordsman is what matters. You will need to find someone better than you, and feel the need to improve. I think this is why I like the 'works as intended' in terms of weapon skill training sits well with me; if you didn't see that you weren't a master yet, and you'd already branched the weapon skill, this would never be talked about.
However, overall, I tend to agree with Lonely Hunter. The skill-progression I remember from prior was less about trying to understand the mechanics for maximum gain. Most people just wanted to fight more to get better, not understand which things you had to seek out and hunt to get a skill gain. As I've noted many times, people fought each other more, and there was less emphasis on having to succeed because no one really cared if you attacked people in lawless areas except that person's friends. People stealthed because they wanted to be stealthy, not because they needed to trigger a fail to tick up. The ability to see when things are ticking just made a subtle-and-also-not-subtle shift in how people treated the character's journey from newly created to established professional. It isn't like the behavior wasn't there before. It just wasn't so...-targeted- at skill gains.
QuoteI used a spear as apprentice, as a c-elf with (relatively) shit endurance and helped a human warrior branch a weapon skill, and it was STILL a tossup at the end who would win a sparring match.
City elf combat skills are wildly underestimated because of the big 'fuck you' expectation from dwarven strength. City and desert elf warriors are actually really really effective, and due to the bash skill only taking height into account (which needs to be changed), they actually have some tremendous advantages in terms of PvP at a certain point; they trade random reels for reliable stunlock and better pursuit ability.
Quote from: Delirium on November 30, 2016, 03:25:28 PM
I've said it before and I'll say it again, even though I'm sure I'll be shouted down again...
You don't have to resort to stupid tactics to Get Gud anymore. Y'all are operating on out of date presumptions.
source: actual experience within the last 6 months of gameplay.
Wow.
I've been playing the same game for the last 4 months, and *surprise* it's behaving exactly the way I always expected it to. You keep making these claims, but without some kind of data to support it, it's highly questionable. Are you claiming to have solid evidence that a strict dodge is not a requirement for a weapon skill gain? Because that is the issue, unless you're doing squirrelly shit like having your partner snort agility spice, blindfight sparring, or intentionally sparring while bashed, to nerf your offense rolls.
Quote from: nauta on November 30, 2016, 03:26:19 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on November 30, 2016, 03:16:03 PM
Quote from: nauta on November 30, 2016, 02:26:41 PM
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 02:06:41 PM
I've only had one long lived warrior, and he only reached journeyman. But dang, I could take on most everything I had a need to, including multiple spiders at once or a kryl.
Before that I was very keen on seeing mastery of a weapon, but after that I realized I'd be content to just have it happen naturally as the result of a long-lived and fun-to-play character. My biggest worry was having low skills and being fragile but that seemed to dry up at around 5 days played. Another player was dangerous, but I could handle carru and other things that I'd randomly run into ... meaning longer life.
Exactly. My own findings is that if you play realistic -- take a default template as a hunter who goes out and hunts one animal every in game day -- you will move through three stages:
1. Weak. This takes about five days to overcome. It kind of stinks, but isn't that terrible, and a lot of fun can be had getting your ass kicked.
2. Perfect. This happens from about 5 to 20 days, I'd say. You get rolled now and then by a gortok, carru/gith are definitely a flee beast, but you can more or less handle 80% of the mobs out there.
3. Too Good. Then you hit this level where nothing hurts you unless it gets lucky (with the rare 5% of beasts that you have to go out of your way to find anyway). If you want to liven things up you have to do tricky things like wishing up (hehe) or holding things in the offhand or 'forgetting' to draw your weapon, or whatever.
This is all a PvE perspective. My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.
You're confusing "good" with "defensively sufficient for PvE."
Quote
This is all a PvE perspective.
Quote
Trust me, it is ENTIRELY possible to die in straight-up melee PvP where one successful bash, charge, or reel is all it takes. Whether you do 10 damage with a solid chop to the arm or 35 damage with a brutal chop to the neck is not random. Does it matter for hunting gortoks? No. Does it matter in PvP? HELL YES IT DOES.
Quote
My own view on PvP is that either (1) you get poisoned/locked roomed or (2) you can flee (unless merchant, I guess), so there's not much point in skilling to win at the PvP in straight combat.
Your view is clearly based on the circumstances that you've a) never been attacked by someone who was actually good and b) never attacked someone while you were actually good.
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 03:32:14 PM
Well PVP is territory I haven't engaged in much, so I can't really say.
I've been involved in 3 pvp incidents over dozens of characters.
One I got shot up with arrows and I fell over a cliff trying to run away. *doh*
One I started and could have fled out at any time but didn't.
One I started and then fled out of.
I don't particularly feel that I was vastly overwhelmed by someone else's coded power in any of them. (Well, MAYBE the one where I ate a few fireballs but I did have the ability to get away.)
I have no way of knowing what their skillsheet looked like, but there was no "WTF PWNED" moment in my head. Which you sometimes get even on pure PK muds.
I think if you're going to be reel-locked and murderized then it probably would have happened with a carru as well as another player. I'm aware that as someone who hasn't focused on pvp I'm talking out my ass, but hey, listen to that ass go.
I've straight-up, no-poison, melee-only reel-locked and killed d-elves with a human warrior who only had "good" strength and was using sword+shield.
I've no-poison charge+reel'ed numerous people with a dwarf ranger.
Hell, I've no-poison melee-only, no-locked-doors PK'ed PCs in the 'rinth with a city-elf warrior who wasn't even all that great.
Trust me, it is possible, but you have to do work to get there, and you have to know what you're doing, because you have to do it intentionally. It will not just "happen over time."
Quote from: Armaddict on November 30, 2016, 03:52:51 PM
QuoteI used a spear as apprentice, as a c-elf with (relatively) shit endurance and helped a human warrior branch a weapon skill, and it was STILL a tossup at the end who would win a sparring match.
City elf combat skills are wildly underestimated because of the big 'fuck you' expectation from dwarven strength. City and desert elf warriors are actually really really effective, and due to the bash skill only taking height into account (which needs to be changed), they actually have some tremendous advantages in terms of PvP at a certain point; they trade random reels for reliable stunlock and better pursuit ability.
Yeah. Agility is king at top-tier, I don't care what anyone says. It's also why I strongly suspect that Delirium is playing an elf, or playing with elves, because agility now has a tremendous effect (probably always did and I just wasn't paying attention).
ANYWAY
My ultimate goal is this: the time-to-mastery curve should remain the same for weapon skills, but parries and blocks should count as failures. If they
already count as failures, the Staff should
just come out and say so, so we can stop bitching about it.
I have noticed that my characters with high agility get a couple of million swings compared to my high strength/low agility characters. Could that number of swings simply end up in a statistically greater number of generated misses?
I've always wanted to have a high agility ranger/protector combo just for the survivability.
Quote from: Delirium on November 30, 2016, 03:25:28 PM
I'm sure I'll be shouted down again...
(http://i.giphy.com/xT9DPJS1LRZXDrwuac.gif)
It's like magic!
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 04:12:30 PM
I have noticed that my characters with high agility get a couple of million swings compared to my high strength/low agility characters. Could that number of swings simply end up in a statistically greater number of generated misses?
I've always wanted to have a high agility ranger/protector combo just for the survivability.
I'm just waiting for someone to make a magickal dworf called sanic with a mutation that turns his skin blue coupled with a focus to become the fastest.
Quote from: Synthesis on November 30, 2016, 04:03:25 PM
ANYWAY
My ultimate goal is this: the time-to-mastery curve should remain the same for weapon skills, but parries and blocks should count as failures. If they already count as failures, the Staff should just come out and say so, so we can stop bitching about it.
Quote from: Nergal on January 21, 2016, 06:30:42 AM
QuoteSome of you may also know that a Parried attack gives no skill-gain benefit to either the attacker or the defender. It isn't a failed attack, so the attacker's weapon skills and offense do not raise; nor is it a failed defense, so the defender's defense remains unchanged.
This statement isn't actually true. A successful parry is a success for the person being attacked and a failure for the person attacking, as one would logically expect.
Which is funny because in that very thread you go on to claim that Nergal (staff) is wrong. So clearly coming out and stating it is not enough for you.
Quote from: Synthesis on November 30, 2016, 04:03:25 PM
My ultimate goal is this: the time-to-mastery curve should remain the same for weapon skills, but parries and blocks should count as failures. If they already count as failures, the Staff should just come out and say so, so we can stop bitching about it.
I've said that parries and blocks count as failures in the past, when talking about the offense/defense changes that happened a while back. If I recall correctly, you and others rejected that assertion at the time.
Your commentary on weapon skills is fair and something staff can look at more closely.
.
Quote from: Delirium on November 30, 2016, 04:49:17 PM
It's like magic!
I'm listening! In fact, I haven't posted in this thread because I agree with pretty much everything you said. :-*
Except your experience of the past 6 months... I'm still waiting to get back into the game so I wouldn't know what / if anything has changed.
Quote from: Molten Heart on November 30, 2016, 06:51:39 PM
Quote from: Nergal on November 30, 2016, 05:59:35 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on November 30, 2016, 04:03:25 PM
My ultimate goal is this: the time-to-mastery curve should remain the same for weapon skills, but parries and blocks should count as failures. If they already count as failures, the Staff should just come out and say so, so we can stop bitching about it.
I've said that parries and blocks count as failures in the past, when talking about the offense/defense changes that happened a while back. If I recall correctly, you and others rejected that assertion at the time.
Your commentary on weapon skills is fair and something staff can look at more closely.
Just to be clear, blocks and parries count as weapon skill failures, specifically?
Having your attack blocked, parried, or dodged all count as skill failures. A skill failure covers many skills involved in the calculation of the attack. That includes weapon skills, combat skills, and offense. It is possible that none of these skills will go up on a single failure. It is possible that all of them will. Usually though, at least one will.
To answer the OP directly, or more directly --
I think skills would matter less if they were less of a grind to achieve. As I stated in my 'casual play' thread, people (myself included) sometimes would rather turn on Dragon Age: Inquisition or some other game where you can be rad and skilled and the 'git gud' part of the game is only a few hours long.
ArmageddonMUD is an entirely different beast -- Some of my favorite PCs i've played have been only marginally talented at what they do. I personally don't think skills are the 'end all be all' for a character. However -- here are a few things I think could help.
1. Change the 'teach' function to be a skill. Allow people with high wisdom, and with talent in a skill, to be the most proficient teachers. Allow for the apprentice to journeyman to master experience to be possible in Zalanthas, as it was possible and done for many hundreds of years in Real Life. Have caveats attached -- You can only use the 'teach' skill once a day, hell even once every few days. Depending on the student's wisdom, have the 'teach' only give them one or two points, or several, or none. Cap out the 'teachability' to Journeyman in most or all skills.
2. Allow people to gain in skills through successes. Depending on the person's wisdom and proficiency in the skill, successes count for less as you get closer to 'master', but still count for something over time. Tortall -- Nothing against you at all, I can tell you as a craftsman working in art restoration and previously in guitar lutherie, you most -definitely- learn from mistakes, but you also just as definitely learn from successes. I've fine tuned my dexterity and talents through the things i've done right much more often than by the things i've done wrong. It's sort of a fallacy to think 'If I make a mistake, I will do better next time.' Unless you have someone showing you why you fucked up so bad, you tend to keep doing it the same way until you personally discover a different approach or you just give up and have the 'master craftsman' do it.
3. Have the ability to train skills without actualizing them, akin to the 'nil' reach for Magic. This would be for skills like backstab, where the 'twinkery' involved is just plain old necessary to get the skill to any good place of usability. I can't think of anyone who wants to hire a 'p good assassin', considering if the assassin fails, they are pretty much boned, and their contractor is pretty much boned. No wonder assassinations are as rare as coffee. Sure, they happen, but in apartments. Exciting! Riveting!
4. Have combat be more deadly than it already is. If two incredibly equal people (say a day 1 merchant, and another day 1 merchant) start stabbing each other, make it brutal and nasty, not absolutely mind-numbing and impossible. If normal people could hurt each other without days upon days of training, and if those who do train have no problem fending people off without training, but also end up having brutal combat with those who are trained...Gosh, I just think it would be more thrilling. Nothing more exciting (See: Sarcasm) than witnessing two incredibly well trained warriors fight each other. It's all kicks and bashes, you know, like cavemen. No nuance, no 'fighting styles', nothing of that sort.
I think we're far too used to being able to get away, get back to the city, get into an alley, hide perfectly, escape conflict, and so on. If combat were more realistic, if wounds were possible, slowing people from running, bleeding to death, these sorts of things, not only would we have more PC turnover, but the world would just seem brutish and short. Just the way I like it.
More to the point -- If skills mattered less in killing people, you would see people care less about skills.
Up yours, Reiloth. I'm not going to be your fanboy.
(Muttering under breath) But yeah. I kind of love all of those suggestions.
Lots of posts here, can't say I read them all. But I wanted to offer my two cents which are hopefully not redundant with too many other posts.
1. It's too much of a black box on whether or not you've learned something in a given play session. This leads to people over training because they're not sure whether or not they improved. Experienced players may not think this way, but I guarantee you many do.
Proposed solution: Echo when learning occurs. Something like, "You feel as though you've learned more about how to use slashing weapons."
2. It's also a black box on how long you need to wait to improve again.
Proposed solution: Set the timer to mirror the in-game day cycle. All skill-up opportunities reset at dawn, regardless of your wisdom stat. Instead you learn more from a skill up with higher wisdom.
3. "Masters" at non-combat skills in Armageddon are far too ubiquitous. This creates a sense of needing to twink up your skills in order to be considered useful.
4. Some players want to play amazing, bad asses at their particular field. So they train like fiends to get to that level, as roleplaying will not help them achieve the ultimate vision they have for their character.
Proposed solution to 3 & 4: Make it impossible to get to the highest skill levels through conventional training alone. Require specialized training to reach truly epic skill levels, training that often requires roleplay or social elements to attain. (Repeated applications of the teach command. Either from a PC, or an animated NPC.) There's no reason to fight blindfolded in a cave with a sack of rocks on your back. You're wasting your time. Go spend your time trying to get into the Tor Academy so you can receive training from their Weaponmaster, or join House Kurac because one of their active Sergeant's is known to be a legendary archer. The same should apply to non-combat skills too. Want to become a Master weapon crafter? You aren't going to get there by chipping away at obsidian on your own. You'd better find another PC to teach you, or join an organization that's known to have those kinds of people.
Certain skills will require tweaking so that 'Advanced' covers more applications, given the new rarity of 'Master'.
'Masters' of a given skill need to understand that they have a responsibility to use 'teach' only when sufficient roleplay is done. Though honestly, I don't expect this to be abused very much. If you're one of the few rare 'Masters' at a given skill, are you really going to teach just anybody? You're devaluing yourself. You should make them work for it!
Quote from: wizturbo on November 30, 2016, 08:06:24 PM
Lots of posts here, can't say I read them all. But I wanted to offer my two cents which are hopefully not redundant with too many other posts.
1. It's too much of a black box on whether or not you've learned something in a given play session. This leads to people over training because they're not sure whether or not they improved. Experienced players may not think this way, but I guarantee you many do.
Proposed solution: Echo when learning occurs. Something like, "You feel as though you've learned more about how to use slashing weapons."
2. It's also a black box on how long you need to wait to improve again.
Proposed solution: Set the timer to mirror the in-game day cycle. All skill-up opportunities reset at dawn, regardless of your wisdom stat. Instead you learn more from a skill up with higher wisdom.
3. "Masters" at non-combat skills in Armageddon are far too ubiquitous. This creates a sense of needing to twink up your skills in order to be considered useful.
4. Some players want to play amazing, bad asses at their particular field. So they train like fiends to get to that level, as roleplaying will not help them achieve the ultimate vision they have for their character.
Proposed solution to 3 & 4: Make it impossible to get to the highest skill levels through conventional training alone. Require specialized training to reach truly epic skill levels, training that often requires roleplay or social elements to attain. There's no reason to fight blindfolded in a cave with a sack of rocks on your back. You're wasting your time. Go spend your time trying to get into the Tor Academy so you can receive training from their Weaponmaster, or join House Kurac because one of their active Sergeant's is known to be a legendary archer. The same should apply to non-combat skills too. Want to become a Master weapon crafter? You aren't going to get there by chipping away at obsidian on your own. You'd better find another PC to teach you, or join an organization that's known to have those kinds of people.
Certain skills will require tweaking so that 'Advanced' covers more applications, given the new rarity of 'Master'.
Agreed!
Quote from: Miradus on November 30, 2016, 07:48:31 PM
Up yours, Reiloth. I'm not going to be your fanboy.
(Muttering under breath) But yeah. I kind of love all of those suggestions.
Join the Dark Side...The power is unimaginable...
Or...you know...go back to where 'mastery' was determined by how good you were at it, rather than a label that shows up that lets you know you're not there yet.
They both accomplish the same thing. One of those is drastically easier to accomplish than the other.
Yeah I love the idea of making the process of adding a point to a skill more dynamic and way more mysterious. On the game side of things, if you make it factor in enough unexpected elements, even the most hardcore mechanics detectives will have no idea how to twink out except just to play the game. On the rp side, the fact is that "learning" is really superduper complex. How is learning to juggle different from learning calculus? How about learning a new language or learning all the different things that go into swordfighting? It's almost never just through failures -- that's just the quick and dirty game shortcut that made the most sense when they put this thing together.
One could argue that if failures and successes both had varying chances to raise a skill, a player would be more inclined to constantly spam that skill, succeeding and failing over and over, and nothing would really change. Well, remove this whole notion of a wisdom based "timer" and have the +1 of a skill rely on a coder's nightmare of broad conditions. Aim for the end result of, "if you use a skill, you will gradually get better, having an instructor is best, if you overdo it you stop learning entirely because you reach a mental block."
Haven't you all ever been trying to learn to do something better, and you just can't? You try and try and are close to tears and you just can't do it? Usually it takes a little break, then you go back to it and all that practicing you did sank in over a few days and you finally turn that corner. At least, you think so. Then you go back to it again and the next big thing you learn ruins all the progress you made and you feel like you're back to square one.
That's the feeling I think the code should simulate in a perfect Armageddon. I know that would be a beast of a project so don't anybody start with that complex code nonsense. We're not setting the 2017 agenda here, just talking.
Quote from: Armaddict on November 30, 2016, 08:14:43 PM
Or...you know...go back to where 'mastery' was determined by how good you were at it, rather than a label that shows up that lets you know you're not there yet.
They both accomplish the same thing. One of those is drastically easier to accomplish than the other.
There's a very valuable feedback loop involved with showing people their skill levels. I find it extremely satisfying to see a skill has improved from one level or another... It's stupid and arbitrary I know, but I feel it anyway. I think many people do.
Also it's helpful to gauge how to roleplay a situation.
QuoteI find it extremely satisfying to see a skill has improved from one level or another... It's stupid and arbitrary I know, but I feel it anyway.
It's also a fundamental driving force behind the behavior discussed in this thread, and an implantation of OOC direction into IC behavior, and you've just proposed a series of rather unnecessary changes to maintain the visibility, but then try to change the behavior the visibility brings. The visibility itself, and the satisfaction you get from seeing rather than experiencing the improvement, is at least in large part contributing to what the OP was bringing up.
Make it so that the success/fail ratio is more important to the player than the official sponsored 'level' they're at, and make branch levels more reasonable, and while the behavior won't disappear, it will definitely fall away because as has been noted many times, grinding isn't fun. The driving force behind it is that they know it's still being effective, and they haven't reached master yet.
Make branching skills occur closer to low-advanced or high-journeyman for most skills, and people will gauge things a lot more based off of how good they think they are rather than 'I haven't reached that level yet.'
QuoteAlso it's helpful to gauge how to roleplay a situation.
Uhhh...kind of. You're kind of speaking in terms of having an invisible sensei whispering in your ear what color belt you have, in game. I think far more meaingful and real roleplay comes from 'I've done it a lot and I do a pretty good job so that I rely on it' than a thrown together IC justification of what breaks down to 'I'm still only journeyman.'
Quote from: Armaddict on November 30, 2016, 08:33:36 PM
Uhhh...kind of. You're kind of speaking in terms of having an invisible sensei whispering in your ear what color belt you have, in game. I think far more meaingful and real roleplay comes from 'I've done it a lot and I do a pretty good job so that I rely on it' than a thrown together IC justification of what breaks down to 'I'm still only journeyman.'
In real life, you have ton of empirical evidence to draw from on how good you are at something. Inputs that just aren't present in a MUD.
Take crafting for instance. A Master level crafter makes the exact same 'a pair of leather boots' as the apprentice level crafter. It's identical. A Master's boots would look better, be more comfortable, and waste less materials building it.
That 'Master' level crafter likely did it in a fraction of the time. Crafting times in Armageddon are a total joke, so this doesn't apply.
The 'Master' would be able to complete that task while hung over, holding a conversation, and keeping track of three other projects they're working on at the same time. The apprentice would struggle.
The code in Armageddon doesn't reflect these nuances. Sure, you could get a spreadsheet out and keep track of how many boots you made successfully without a failure, and compare it to the other crafter, and determine you're the better of the two... That isn't exactly realistic though.
Quote from: Armaddict on November 30, 2016, 08:14:43 PM
Or...you know...go back to where 'mastery' was determined by how good you were at it, rather than a label that shows up that lets you know you're not there yet.
They both accomplish the same thing. One of those is drastically easier to accomplish than the other.
This is the disconnect for some people: Being good use to mean beating up everyone else and was achievable within 1 IC year of regular training. Now being good means getting Advanced or Master on your skill list. This is significantly harder to achieve through legitimate role play.
Note: Based on what people have said in this thread, everyone here engages in legitimate role play. This is not an attack on anyone here.
Quote from: wizturbo on November 30, 2016, 08:43:48 PM
Quote from: Armaddict on November 30, 2016, 08:33:36 PM
Uhhh...kind of. You're kind of speaking in terms of having an invisible sensei whispering in your ear what color belt you have, in game. I think far more meaingful and real roleplay comes from 'I've done it a lot and I do a pretty good job so that I rely on it' than a thrown together IC justification of what breaks down to 'I'm still only journeyman.'
In real life, you have ton of empirical evidence to draw from on how good you are at something. Inputs that just aren't present in a MUD.
Take crafting for instance. A Master level crafter makes the exact same 'a pair of leather boots' as the apprentice level crafter. It's identical. A Master's boots would look better, be more comfortable, and waste less materials building it.
That 'Master' level crafter likely did it in a fraction of the time. Crafting times in Armageddon are a total joke, so this doesn't apply.
The 'Master' would be able to complete that task while hung over, holding a conversation, and keeping track of three other projects they're working on at the same time. The apprentice would struggle.
The code in Armageddon doesn't reflect these nuances. Sure, you could get a spreadsheet out and keep track of how many boots you made successfully without a failure, and compare it to the other crafter, and determine you're the better of the two... That isn't exactly realistic though.
...what does that have to do with promoting or not promoting skill-progression-based behavior for mastery? The master makes more things and doesn't fail at making boots. Someone who doesn't fail at making those boots and makes more impressive boots is probably more comfortable at making boots.
Edit: Which isn't to say that I don't agree that a master makes better boots, and knows that he makes better boots. But breaking it down to a single pair of boots being the determining factor that you should be told you're a master, versus all of the other indicators that you receive through use of the skill doesn't seem to illustrate a meaningful point.
Quote from: wizturbo on November 30, 2016, 08:06:24 PM
Lots of posts here, can't say I read them all. But I wanted to offer my two cents which are hopefully not redundant with too many other posts.
1. It's too much of a black box on whether or not you've learned something in a given play session. This leads to people over training because they're not sure whether or not they improved. Experienced players may not think this way, but I guarantee you many do.
Proposed solution: Echo when learning occurs. Something like, "You feel as though you've learned more about how to use slashing weapons."
2. It's also a black box on how long you need to wait to improve again.
Proposed solution: Set the timer to mirror the in-game day cycle. All skill-up opportunities reset at dawn, regardless of your wisdom stat. Instead you learn more from a skill up with higher wisdom.
Both of thee I fully back and agree with.
Quote from: wizturbo on November 30, 2016, 08:06:24 PM
3. "Masters" at non-combat skills in Armageddon are far too ubiquitous. This creates a sense of needing to twink up your skills in order to be considered useful.
4. Some players want to play amazing, bad asses at their particular field. So they train like fiends to get to that level, as roleplaying will not help them achieve the ultimate vision they have for their character.
Proposed solution to 3 & 4: Make it impossible to get to the highest skill levels through conventional training alone. Require specialized training to reach truly epic skill levels, training that often requires roleplay or social elements to attain. (Repeated applications of the teach command. Either from a PC, or an animated NPC.) There's no reason to fight blindfolded in a cave with a sack of rocks on your back. You're wasting your time. Go spend your time trying to get into the Tor Academy so you can receive training from their Weaponmaster, or join House Kurac because one of their active Sergeant's is known to be a legendary archer. The same should apply to non-combat skills too. Want to become a Master weapon crafter? You aren't going to get there by chipping away at obsidian on your own. You'd better find another PC to teach you, or join an organization that's known to have those kinds of people.
Certain skills will require tweaking so that 'Advanced' covers more applications, given the new rarity of 'Master'.
'Masters' of a given skill need to understand that they have a responsibility to use 'teach' only when sufficient roleplay is done. Though honestly, I don't expect this to be abused very much. If you're one of the few rare 'Masters' at a given skill, are you really going to teach just anybody? You're devaluing yourself. You should make them work for it!
I can't back these without a change in policy. Period. Well, success ratios for #3, and policy for #4.
Master crafting NICE things already requires this via rp/bacground/clan stuff, go read the help file. Given that you have to be 'master' to even make a new recipe/craft for a crappy scrap of leather and length of bone to make a new type of torch, 'master weapon crafter' doesn't JUST mean 'able to make OMGBBQsauce!!1! deathsword' it also means being able to fire blacken or add a frickin' strap of leather to a crappy sword that already exists, due to OOC mechanics and policy stuff, I would yes, have problems with this.
When i was playing a merchant c-elf, I actually DID seek out mentors, going so far as to sneak long, drawn out lessons on the sly from a famous Salarri armorsmith in hardening leather. Having (master) in your skill list doesn't make you a real master. You can RP it that way, but where's the fun in that? I mean, you're only cheating yourself. I don't feel mastery needs to have restrictions on it. Is it annoying to see a know-it-all geek mad-scientist in the game who hasn't robbed noble libraries to get so smart? Yeah, very. But I feel if it's being overly abused then a player complaint is in order.
QuoteNote: Based on what people have said in this thread, everyone here engages in legitimate role play. This is not an attack on anyone here.
I think Armageddon as a whole has absolutely stellar roleplayers. If anyone doubts that, run into some other role-play enforced games...there are others, but not many, that come remotely close. So I think this above quote should be +1'd on principle alone in the case the differences in some opinions or approaches make anyone feel attacked.
Quote from: bardlyone on November 30, 2016, 08:47:36 PM
I can't back these without a change in policy. Period. Well, success ratios for #3, and policy for #4.
Yeah, I agree. That's what I meant by:
Quote from: wizturbo on November 30, 2016, 08:06:24 PM
Certain skills will require tweaking so that 'Advanced' covers more applications, given the new rarity of 'Master'.
Quote from: Nergal on November 30, 2016, 05:59:35 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on November 30, 2016, 04:03:25 PM
My ultimate goal is this: the time-to-mastery curve should remain the same for weapon skills, but parries and blocks should count as failures. If they already count as failures, the Staff should just come out and say so, so we can stop bitching about it.
I've said that parries and blocks count as failures in the past, when talking about the offense/defense changes that happened a while back. If I recall correctly, you and others rejected that assertion at the time.
Your commentary on weapon skills is fair and something staff can look at more closely.
Okay, yeah, I forgot you said that.
Here's my problem with it (and it stems primarily from dual wield, not from weapon skills).
I have NEVER branched parry on an assassin or ranger while in the Byn or any other sparring-dominant clan, even after several years of training. I got -really- close with a dwarf assassin with trashy agility when that half-elf Hawk was a Trooper, but I eventually reached the point where he could only parry my off-hand. I eventually branched parry when I quit the Byn, went north, and got a whole bunch of solid dodges off of tembos.
On the other hand, I branched parry -really- fast as an indie assassin (fairly recently) by going out and getting solid dual wield dodges from iridescent jozhals and tarantulas (although I eventually branched from fucking around with some dumbass snake). I mean...it's like the difference between 10 days played to branch and 15 days played to branch (after quitting sparring).
I've never stuck with a clan (and survived--thanks RPTs) long enough to put a weapon skill to the test, so I'm mostly assuming that weapon skills work the same way as dual wield. On the other hand, as with the old thread that got locked, the fact that I can, in 4 or 5 days (I forget the exact number, now) surpass someone else's 15 or 20 day mark with a weapon skill (because they stayed in the Byn or whatever) by grinding on high-agility critters that can actually dodge REALLY ought to make y'all take a hard look at whether what you THINK is happening is actually happening.
The numbers just don't add up, dude. Something is either a) not working or b) dodges are SO MUCH BETTER than parries and blocks that it looks like parries and blocks don't work.
Quote from: Armaddict on November 30, 2016, 08:33:36 PM
It's also a fundamental driving force behind the behavior discussed in this thread, and an implantation of OOC direction into IC behavior, and you've just proposed a series of rather unnecessary changes to maintain the visibility, but then try to change the behavior the visibility brings. The visibility itself, and the satisfaction you get from seeing rather than experiencing the improvement, is at least in large part contributing to what the OP was bringing up.
Disagree with you here. The behavior is not being driven by being able to perceive character improvements. I do not believe there are many players who spend tens or hundreds of hours working on skills because of some obsession with seeing 'Master' next to the skill. The behavior is driven by wanting to attain a certain power level. To play a character that's exceptional. Whether or not they see 'Master' next to their skill only affirms whether they're being successful at this. Take it away, and they'll find a new measuring stick. That new measuring stick might actually create a ton of unwanted meta behaviors.
I'm proposing that the only way to become truly exceptional (beyond having superior stats through luck) is through roleplay, rather than skill ups from hacking up gith with a bag filled with boulders.
QuoteI'm proposing that the only way to become truly exceptional (beyond having superior stats through luck) is through roleplay, rather than skill ups from hacking up gith with a bag filled with boulders.
Well. Proposing that they indulge in your idea of roleplay. But guys who are out hunting consistently for an IC decade who don't engage in that version of roleplay would be on the short end of your stick, and that in no way makes them less of a roleplayer; I think you're just adding another motivation on top of a first motivation to try to make them cancel out, when the first incentive isn't truly needed as much as it's just...friendlier. I think Nergal said earlier that instances of twinkout/abuse of code are relatively rare and dealt with. I kind of stopped talking about that instance as a whole after that, because that's not really a topic of interesting discussion and I don't think it's what the OP was referring to.
What I'm referring to is that with the exception of branching, success/failure ratios and ability to even try are very IC-centric avenues of regarding your level, and being directly told seems to come with the side product of feeling inadequate despite good ratios. If we shifted the branching values and had no visibility again, I think mindless grinds would take a very big backseat because you'd be removing that unconscious reward from it. You don't get the neat little squee of 'I just hit advanced!'.
I agree, that is a neat little squee, but the nature of the neat little squee is that you want it. If you don't get it, the incentive to do something solely for it is gone. In the same bag, if you're trying to improve it and -can't get yourself to fail-, in one instance it's nice to never fail, and in the other it's incredibly frustrating for no good reason other than the stupid little level thing not going up when you want it to.
The behavior shift because of that neat little squee, like I said earlier, has been paradoxical (I might be misusing that) in that the behavior in each character is relatively subtle, but the behavior engaged in on a mass scale by most of the people in the game has been blatantly obvious.
Edit: At the least, I think we seem to be for the most part in agreement throughout the thread that branching mechanics need to be evaluated. But I don't support further complicating the skilling process to take the edge off of the incentives we provided in the first place, like stacking medications to treat side effects from previous medications all in support of an original medication that makes you feel marginally nicer.
I still don't understand how killing animals like snakes and shit in any way makes you good with a weapon.
Quote from: Case on November 30, 2016, 09:32:59 PM
I still don't understand how killing animals like snakes and shit in any way makes you good with a weapon.
Basic strength-building and hand/eye coordination.
It makes sense. Are you going to become a master duelist that way? No. But you'll at least build up the muscles required to swing the weapon and the skill to not chop/crush your foot. And that's already reflected in the code, I think.
It sounds like some people just want a different MUD. Making changes like some proposed is a slippery slope. This isn't a H&S. This is a unique MUD in many ways - let's not go changing that.
If you want something more grindy and skill-centric, check out TMS. If you want the experience that IS Armageddon don't try to change it into something that it has never been.
RP. Enjoy the RP. Stop doing silly crap just to "skill up". Stop being so concerned about how things work. Stop trying to win. Stop trying to capitalize on the code. Play your character in a realistic way and you |will| experience what Armageddon is all about.
Some of the game mechanics discussed here has made me cringe - when did we get to this point?
Quote from: Case on November 30, 2016, 09:32:59 PM
I still don't understand how killing animals like snakes and shit in any way makes you good with a weapon.
We can change it to the psychotic alley stalker who kills people for five years straight without getting caught if that removes the hold up. It's not a case where the example is particularly important as much as the situation the example is in.
1. I'd like to see branches pop some time prior to Master. Perhaps make it so that a "branched" skill isn't able to max out, until its "root" skill has maxed out. Example:
Fletchery branches off of archery - so you get fairly good at archery - maybe as far as "advanced." and then boom - out comes fletchery onto your skills list.
BUT
No matter how much you twink up fletchery, you won't master it - til you master archery. Maybe you can't surpass the skill level of the skill it came from. So if you pop fletchery when your archery is only at jman, then you won't be able to get fletchery past jman, til you get archery to advanced. Something like that. In short: the level of the branch cannot exceed the level of its root, but the branch will occur prior to the root maxing out.
Does that make sense?
Anyway that's something I'd get behind. I do agree that having to master "random uninteresting skill" just so you can branch "skill I actually want" is frustrating. This wouldn't "solve" it but it would significantly reduce the frustration.
QuoteSome of the game mechanics discussed here has made me cringe - when did we get to this point?
Not sure if it was on this thread or another that I discussed this question. But there was a large movement at some point where the idea of keeping code talk secret/hushed/suppressed was viewed as unfriendly to players and contributing to a systemic dominion over the game by veterans. I don't think most veterans did it with this intent in mind, but there was a very big shift towards alleviating that appearance.
I agree that not all moves to alleviate it are necessarily good, but I also agree that there can be at least some discussion to avoid keeping people completely in the dark. Code is the way we interact with the persistent world, as I keep saying, and there's just some nuances with it that pretty much only get learned through character death. That's how I preferred it. That might be too hard on others. So instead...it gets discussed. I'm not exactly sure where the line is aside from magick/psionics and such, but I kind of depend on moderators/staff to let me know, and that hasn't happened yet (surprisingly).
Quote from: Akaramu on November 30, 2016, 07:02:08 PM
Quote from: Delirium on November 30, 2016, 04:49:17 PM
It's like magic!
I'm listening! In fact, I haven't posted in this thread because I agree with pretty much everything you said. :-*
Except your experience of the past 6 months... I'm still waiting to get back into the game so I wouldn't know what / if anything has changed.
How do you agree with everything she said if that's pretty much the only thing she said (that things have changed in the last six months) ??
Quote from: The Lonely Hunter on November 30, 2016, 09:38:20 PM
It sounds like some people just want a different MUD. Making changes like some proposed is a slippery slope. This isn't a H&S. This is a unique MUD in many ways - let's not go changing that.
If you want something more grindy and skill-centric, check out TMS. If you want the experience that IS Armageddon don't try to change it into something that it has never been.
RP. Enjoy the RP. Stop doing silly crap just to "skill up". Stop being so concerned about how things work. Stop trying to win. Stop trying to capitalize on the code. Play your character in a realistic way and you |will| experience what Armageddon is all about.
Some of the game mechanics discussed here has made me cringe - when did we get to this point?
"Damn, I actually kinda suck, I should do something to get better."
"Damn, this thing I'm doing isn't working, I should probably try something else."
...is perfectly IC.
Quote from: Armaddict on November 30, 2016, 09:14:07 PM
QuoteI'm proposing that the only way to become truly exceptional (beyond having superior stats through luck) is through roleplay, rather than skill ups from hacking up gith with a bag filled with boulders.
Well. Proposing that they indulge in your idea of roleplay. But guys who are out hunting consistently for an IC decade who don't engage in that version of roleplay would be on the short end of your stick, and that in no way makes them less of a roleplayer; I think you're just adding another motivation on top of a first motivation to try to make them cancel out, when the first incentive isn't truly needed as much as it's just...friendlier. I think Nergal said earlier that instances of twinkout/abuse of code are relatively rare and dealt with. I kind of stopped talking about that instance as a whole after that, because that's not really a topic of interesting discussion and I don't think it's what the OP was referring to.
What I'm referring to is that with the exception of branching, success/failure ratios and ability to even try are very IC-centric avenues of regarding your level, and being directly told seems to come with the side product of feeling inadequate despite good ratios. If we shifted the branching values and had no visibility again, I think mindless grinds would take a very big backseat because you'd be removing that unconscious reward from it. You don't get the neat little squee of 'I just hit advanced!'.
I agree, that is a neat little squee, but the nature of the neat little squee is that you want it. If you don't get it, the incentive to do something solely for it is gone. In the same bag, if you're trying to improve it and -can't get yourself to fail-, in one instance it's nice to never fail, and in the other it's incredibly frustrating for no good reason other than the stupid little level thing not going up when you want it to.
The behavior shift because of that neat little squee, like I said earlier, has been paradoxical (I might be misusing that) in that the behavior in each character is relatively subtle, but the behavior engaged in on a mass scale by most of the people in the game has been blatantly obvious.
Edit: At the least, I think we seem to be for the most part in agreement throughout the thread that branching mechanics need to be evaluated. But I don't support further complicating the skilling process to take the edge off of the incentives we provided in the first place, like stacking medications to treat side effects from previous medications all in support of an original medication that makes you feel marginally nicer.
I don't believe anything has really changed.
The mechanics discussion has moved from IRC to AIM to the shadowboard to the GDB.
Many of the people who are engaged in the discussion are much more experienced and have much more data to work with (when I started playing, the most experienced player possible would've had 7 years under his belt...you and I now have what...18 years apiece?).
For example...back when I started in '98...the "meta theory" was that getting hit HARD increased your base O/D much faster than an equivalent damage-point-number of nicks and grazes, so I had a friend who would go out and intentionally get pinched by bahamets (this was before the reel code went in, obviously) to train up base O/D. Currently, the same shit goes on, except instead of "a friend of a friend who knows an Imm IRL" it's "I've been playing for 18 years and never ever branched parry on a clanned ranger, except in Salarr--when I was grinding stilt lizards like a boss every day after I bagged my 1 duskhorn."
A lot of the stuff actually worked. Some of it still works. Some of it was so pants-on-head retarded (rock bags, drunk sparring) that the imms made it stop working.
I don't have a problem with it. If sparring supposedly works just as well as grinding tarantulas...guess what? Nobody else should have a problem with it, either, right? What skin is it off your back if a dude is out grinding tarantulas while you're sparring, if the results supposedly are the same?
Well...the trick is obviously that they don't work the same, for whatever reason, and everyone who has done both for any length of time knows damn well they don't work the same. WITH SOME VAGUE AND UNSPECIFIED POSSIBLE EXCEPTIONS, DELIRIUM
Did you mean to quote my other post? XD
Quote from: The Lonely Hunter on November 30, 2016, 09:38:20 PM
It sounds like some people just want a different MUD. Making changes like some proposed is a slippery slope. This isn't a H&S. This is a unique MUD in many ways - let's not go changing that.
If you want something more grindy and skill-centric, check out TMS. If you want the experience that IS Armageddon don't try to change it into something that it has never been.
RP. Enjoy the RP. Stop doing silly crap just to "skill up". Stop being so concerned about how things work. Stop trying to win. Stop trying to capitalize on the code. Play your character in a realistic way and you |will| experience what Armageddon is all about.
Some of the game mechanics discussed here has made me cringe - when did we get to this point?
This is an attitude we (as veterans) need to consider wisely before we begin repeating it wholesale.
No, ArmageddonMUD isn't the same game it was in 1998, 2004, 2008, or even 2015. The game is evolving, changing, as the player base ages and changes. Many people who once played the game don't anymore, for reasons as simple as life passed them by, and they don't have the time, or they just aren't interested anymore.
Video game culture on a whole has also changed. When I first started playing ArmageddonMUD, there were a slew of other RP-enforced or RP-encouraged MUDs and MOOs and MUSHs with competing player bases. They're all extinct now. The MMORPGs and CRPGs and other sorts of games and consoles just swallowed people's interests in text-based gaming.
So -- We should really carefully consider before we tell people "This game isn't for you, try something else". We may start finding that we are one of those soon-to-be-extinguished RPI MUDs of yore.
The solution that I see here requires figuring out why people are skill-centric, and if/how that harms the game's RP environment. Comparing the game environment of 2016 to any sort of aggrandized memory of the past 'good ol' days' of ArmageddonMUD is like remembering how good sex was with your high-school girlfriend. Just as with that girlfriend, the 'good ol days' ain't coming back any time soon. Even if they did, they wouldn't look the same, would they? Most of the people we played with in the 'good ol days' don't play anymore, aren't around, aren't interested in ArmageddonMUD. You can't change the past, you can't make the past the present, and we certainly aren't going to predict the future.
So -- As a rebuttal to your question -- How do you see us as a community reconciling with newer players that come from games that aren't archaic about how code is presented to the player base? How do we encourage them to put RP first? How can we possibly modify how skills are gained or trained in order to facilitate RP over skill grinding?
These are the kinds of things I find to be helpful questions. I hate to say it, but telling people to go play a different game will only yield one result -- They take you up on the offer and don't play ArmageddonMUD. How does that help us?
Sure, the game isn't for everyone. People figure that out and stop playing, or never get started. But it's a crap message for a Veteran to send to new players. I've done it myself, but I really think we should stop it, collectively. It's a MUD, not a MUSH. This means that RP, especially on an RPI, is incredibly important, but skills are not to be ignored and completely disregarded. It's a part of the game -- And just because you play the game one way, doesn't delegitimize the way that other people play it as well.
Quote from: Armaddict on November 30, 2016, 09:39:05 PM
Quote from: Case on November 30, 2016, 09:32:59 PM
I still don't understand how killing animals like snakes and shit in any way makes you good with a weapon.
We can change it to the psychotic alley stalker who kills people for five years straight without getting caught if that removes the hold up. It's not a case where the example is particularly important as much as the situation the example is in.
This is very true, and the more I read it, the more true it is.
People are going to continue to do ridiculous shit to 'git gud' until the paradigm changes. Until we can get better at skills by (a) simply existing or (b) succeeding at using the skills, the 'failure' platform will create unrealistic meta-game play. People want to achieve something, people want to use useful people in plots, and that's just the way the cookie has always crumbled.
We can pray it away, we can stick our heads in the sand repeating RP as a mantra, but the simple answer is: the way skills are trained and gained doesn't facilitate RP. It facilitates meta-game theory. Change the way skills are gained and trained, and you change the paradigm.
I can't tell if you're reading that part right.
That was me responding to Case because I assumed she was talking about my hunter who just kept huntin' story, and how they'd never reach mastery under wizturbo's idea.
I was using it to illustrate why I think skill levels being invisible again would be a good thing. Not because it would eliminate all of such behavior, but because it would remove that little 'reward' for making skill gains a focus, and making constant success more satisfying than frustrating.
I agree Armaddict. But I doubt the playerbase would ever accept skill levels being removed.
There are/have been lots of things done that the playerbase would never accept under the banner of rational, directional thinking for the benefit of the game.
That awkward moment when you realize most people think wanting to take advantage of your chosen guild's strength is twinking.
If wanting [master] skill_fightan as a guild_warrior is bad (and lets be honest the caps are the only reason play to this otherwise underwhelming guild) then it kind of rasies the question of why we're using such a system to begin with.
Quote from: Lutagar on December 01, 2016, 02:33:03 AM
That awkward moment when you realize most people think wanting to take advantage of your chosen guild's strength is twinking.
If wanting [master] skill_fightan as a guild_warrior is bad (and lets be honest the caps are the only reason play to this otherwise underwhelming guild) then it kind of rasies the question of why we're using such a system to begin with.
Eh, that's not the impression I meant to give, man. I'm Mr. Codelover over here, and I play skill-oriented characters. That's not the equivocation I'm making at all, and no one should have that impression.
What I dislike is the idea that people are using that [advanced] or [master] to determine when they're ready to try things, rather than success and failure and use of the skill. People as a whole tend to keep really safe until they see that thing happen at this point, and/or get really upset when they're too good at a skill to improve it (Unless it leads to a branch, in which case the frustration is totally understandable).
No way shape or form am I saying you're a twink for being skill oriented as well.
This is one of those times I agree with Armaddict here. Players are generally pretty mature about skill failurs EVEN STEALTH. I have played some sucessful pcs and I don't think the pro code players here are particularly in the majority. Code is very important. Skills doesn't make your pc. Rp first code second. Don't play to win for instance assassinate someone and then hire a room to wait out crim code. Have fun.
Quote from: John on December 01, 2016, 02:08:07 AM
I agree Armaddict. But I doubt the playerbase would ever accept skill levels being removed.
Armaddict isn't talking about removing skill levels. He's talking about *being able to see* skill levels. We used to not be able to see them. The particular variety of focus on skills this thread is about, presently, reflects the ability to see "advanced" and "jman" and "novice" and so forth. If you revert back to not being able to see them anymore, we'll reduce (not eliminate, but reduce) this particular focus on skills.
No one ever whined about not being able to function at anything less than jman - back when no one was able to see what level of skill they were at.
Quote from: Malken on November 30, 2016, 10:19:06 PM
Quote from: Akaramu on November 30, 2016, 07:02:08 PM
Quote from: Delirium on November 30, 2016, 04:49:17 PM
It's like magic!
I'm listening! In fact, I haven't posted in this thread because I agree with pretty much everything you said. :-*
Except your experience of the past 6 months... I'm still waiting to get back into the game so I wouldn't know what / if anything has changed.
How do you agree with everything she said if that's pretty much the only thing she said (that things have changed in the last six months) ??
I... checked back and it seems I got threads mixed up, which happens when I quickly skim the GDB from my tablet. :-[ I'm getting old and blind.
I generally tend to agree with Delirium on most everything, though. Same with wizturbo and sometimes Lizzie. They tend to say what's on my mind much better than I could.
Time for my afternoon nap!
Quote from: Lizzie on December 01, 2016, 08:13:05 AM
Quote from: John on December 01, 2016, 02:08:07 AM
I agree Armaddict. But I doubt the playerbase would ever accept skill levels being removed.
Armaddict isn't talking about removing skill levels. He's talking about *being able to see* skill levels. We used to not be able to see them. The particular variety of focus on skills this thread is about, presently, reflects the ability to see "advanced" and "jman" and "novice" and so forth. If you revert back to not being able to see them anymore, we'll reduce (not eliminate, but reduce) this particular focus on skills.
No one ever whined about not being able to function at anything less than jman - back when no one was able to see what level of skill they were at.
This is not true.
Every player of a warrior was complaining about not being able to branch advanced weapons in 2005-2006, long before skill levels were visible.
Those of us who managed to do it had the same complaints: you had to resort to silly things to get over the plateau, and it was virtually impossible to skill up the advanced skill once you branched it, so it was pointless that they have higher skill caps.
Warrior branch is an exception yeah. I would argue that code changes make brancing well possible now though.
And again, while it certainly IS possible, there are still some ridiculous things you need to go through to GET the branch, and then you need to do it all over again with the branched weapons but NOW you have an inflated offense score.
I really think Offense/Defense and fighting skills are the only "skills" people are overly concerned with, and honestly I haven't seen many who focus SO much on them that it ruins my gameplay. There are a few that make me think "What have you done to be so effective, you've barely been around <x> time" but... it doesn't affect MY gameplay other than "avoid that guy he might be a magicker or some Templar pet".
QuoteEvery player of a warrior was complaining about not being able to branch advanced weapons in 2005-2006, long before skill levels were visible.
Every player of every class, old and new, have had to whine about lack of ability to make a skill branch and the things they had to go through to make it pop. I acknowledged and agreed with this earlier in the thread, but I don't think mechanics of skill progression need to be jostled around to fix it.
Just make everything branching come out much earlier. While still failing, even. We've put a lot of importance with most skills on branching at master, and I think throughout the thread we've kind of agreed that there's no real reason to keep it that way. For me, that includes weapon skills. I've been saying in a lot of threads that I agree warrior weapon skills should be easier to attain. Likely still take a long time if mechanics work the way they're described, but earlier (i.e. early to mid advanced, rather than master.)
That's fine, but the slow-gain cat is already out of the bag.
There is no experienced player who will think, "well, I can kill a gith, so I guess I can quit training now!"
Again, agreed, which is how it often was before, too. It should be noted from my examples that I don't think hunters will stop hunting, warriors will stop warrioring, thieves will stop thieving, etc, just because they started succeeding so much. The opposite, actually. They'll do it for their living, they'll depend on it. But the 'training it up stage' should fade out a lot earlier, naturally, over time.
But I think having it shoved in your face that you're not -really- that gud yet provided a lot of incentive for people to focus harder on it, and feel really frustrated when skills weren't failing for them. This purely about removing that added incentive for 'Goddammit, I -still- have to grind this out? I'm done with it, it never fails, and I still haven't (gotten master)/(branched that skill). Some people are continuing to do things, and tempted to twink, well beyond the point of enjoyment for those motivations. It's arbitrary, unneeded goals that are also just so damn sensible to aim for, in the current form.
With that away again, and branches coming earlier, it really does turn into a 'Am I maxxed yet? I don't think so, but hot damn I kick everything's ass. I haven't been seen in ages, I must have hide mastery now. I'm selling my services at this shit and telling people I'm the best damn archer in the known.'
I agree with Armaddict that branching levels could stand to be reduced, where those skills branch, precisely, could be looked at for guilds and subguilds across the board, my list of priorities among the mundane classes for looking at where things branch would be thus:
1) Parry. Hands down this survivability skill is one of the most irritating to get to. A temp fix would be to provide a zero-karma protector-light subguild, or just give guard subguild jman capped parry (although that may be too much since they get subdue)
2) Stealth skills. Ease the burden on stealthies a smidge to branch critical skills
3) Perception skills.
4) Manipulation skills
5) Combat skills
6) Weapon skills
7) Crafting skills (If you know what you're doing, you can branch these semi-reliably and still make some coin in the process, the one exception is the merchant skill that shall not be named, we all know which one that is though, I have a reccomendation that would probably require the request tool to be specific, but I'd lower it a tier and have it pop at the same time as a related skill, instead of as a result of it)
I'm not really that concerned about advanced weapon skills. They seem more of a prestige thing to me, a status symbol of sorts. I know I've seen them used several times, while powerful, they should still likely be difficult to branch, but toning down the level at which they can be branched a tad, while making them a little less rare, they'd still be difficult to get to due to the slow nature of weapon skillups.
To counter something someone said, I wouldn't say I'm "experienced", certainly not "leet", but I am one of those players that once I realize I can hold my own against some of the more dangerous beasties out there without too much cause for concern, will turn my back on training for skillups because I get tired of a training regime. If I do any training at that point it's usually simply to help allies gain their critical skills. This is why I hardly ever take a Trooper stripe in the Byn, for example. I'm not here to be the very best, like no one ever was. I'm simply here to be moderately scary, of a rather considerable threat-level, to be an obstacle to the progression of certain plots and to aide the progression of others. If I lose because some twink comes out of the woodworks at this point, well, sad-face, but that's how it goes...
Of course, a lone twink is going to have a significantly more difficult time dealing with the army of minions I've build up while they've been twinking their arse off to build those skills to optimal level.
QuoteI agree with Armaddict that branching levels could stand to be reduced
While I'm very vocal about skill level visibility, that's because it's been something I've talked about from the moment that the visibility was put in. There were lots of us who kind of anticipated big behavior shifts about it, and were vocal about it. Some told us not to worry about it, some told us it was worth it for friendly factor.
But the above quote is the really likely thing to truly take into account. I'd be overjoyed if we took out/toned down visibility of skill levels, but if only the branching part came out of this...that's still progress towards my overall goal of removing ooc-factored motivation for the -endless- grind.
People will never stop training. But they won't make it into a chore if there's not a lot fruit being given for their mind-numbing labor. Or if it's at least invisible fruit that you either have or don't have when the unforeseen famine comes.
I feel like eliminating skill level visibility would disadvantage newer players with respect to older players, because older players have years of data now to correlate in-game practical ability to skill level, whether it's visible or not.
A noob will say, "I can kill a tembo, I'm good." A vet will say, "I can kill a tembo, but I can't land 3 consecutive neck shots yet, so I'm probably only high jman/low advanced."
And I disagree that other skills get grinded like weapons and O/D. Maybe backstab, ride, and archery require some tricks to get those last few points, but everything else is pretty easy to max via general use, as far as I can remember off the top of my head. Now, sure, noobs who don't know how it works and what the expected time frame is might get frustrated, but everyone else knows that if you use it often, it'll take 5-7 days played, generally, unless you're using the "trick" to keep your displayed playtime low.
Quote from: Synthesis on December 01, 2016, 02:02:33 PM
And I disagree that other skills get grinded like weapons and O/D. Maybe backstab, ride, and archery require some tricks to get those last few points, but everything else is pretty easy to max via general use as far as I can remember off the top of my head.
See, maybe there's a terminology problem. Folks talking about Combat Skills are speaking of "grind" in terms of RL hours/days/weeks to get from Novice to Master. Because the Branched skill doesn't matter to them. Folks talking about, well, every other skill in the game are talking about the IG "grind" through materials and time to get to the next skill, because the skill because used may not even be important to that character's concept, but it
is somehow magickally locked behind the first skill.
Grind doesn't just account for time. It accounts for effort too.
Dear Merchant, why are you going outside the gates, every day, looking for rocks? Well, if I don't? I won't ever be able to X. Is Grind. You're just doing it to get to the next thing and you're not doing it for RP reasons. The concept of the character is not a "grebber got good", but you can't get there without... grinding...
I second (third? fourth?) Armaddict. Drop the Branch point from (assumption follows) 90+% of max in the skill to 75+% of max in the skill. Folks that have that desire to see Master pop will still grind for it. Others will just get on with playing with the skill they actually wanted their character to know. I think the truly odd behavior begins when a PC is at the point where they don't fail regularly, wouldn't care that they don't fail regularly, but know they must fail to get to the next skill.
I enjoy a degree of grinding. I enjoy going out and getting the materials to craft with. I enjoy working my way through stockpiles of those same goods for financial gain and skill achievement.
I'm not real sure what some of you want. Seems like some want all game mechanics obscured and we just be given a basic ">" for a prompt. Other seem to want to be loaded with a character who has all the skills already branched and ready to play.
I'm okay with grinding to get where I want to be. Getting good for pvp? It's such a miniscule part of the game I don't know that I'm going to focus on it, but if I did, I'd accept a grind there too. After all, any opponent I've got is going to go through the same grind.
Quote from: whitt on December 01, 2016, 02:16:46 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on December 01, 2016, 02:02:33 PM
And I disagree that other skills get grinded like weapons and O/D. Maybe backstab, ride, and archery require some tricks to get those last few points, but everything else is pretty easy to max via general use as far as I can remember off the top of my head.
See, maybe there's a terminology problem. Folks talking about Combat Skills are speaking of "grind" in terms of RL hours/days/weeks to get from Novice to Master. Because the Branched skill doesn't matter to them. Folks talking about, well, every other skill in the game are talking about the IG "grind" through materials and time to get to the next skill, because the skill because used may not even be important to that character's concept, but it is somehow magickally locked behind the first skill.
Grind doesn't just account for time. It accounts for effort too.
Dear Merchant, why are you going outside the gates, every day, looking for rocks? Well, if I don't? I won't ever be able to X. Is Grind. You're just doing it to get to the next thing and you're not doing it for RP reasons. The concept of the character is not a "grebber got good", but you can't get there without... grinding...
I second (third? fourth?) Armaddict. Drop the Branch point from (assumption follows) 90+% of max in the skill to 75+% of max in the skill. Folks that have that desire to see Master pop will still grind for it. Others will just get on with playing with the skill they actually wanted their character to know. I think the truly odd behavior begins when a PC is at the point where they don't fail regularly, wouldn't care that they don't fail regularly, but know they must fail to get to the next skill.
The time and effort it takes to get from 75% vs 90% for most skills is so minimal that you'd barely notice it.
I'm not ignoring the "grind" there. I'm saying the "grind" there is paltry. If you're really complaining about mastering a crafting skill...damn...do you even Arm, bro? I mastered a 3rd-tier branched crafting skill (e.g. mastered THREE skills) from novice in the time it took disarm to go from apprentice to jman, dude. I branched and just about mastered every skill on a merchant who NEVER LEFT ALLANAK in about 20 days played. With a clanned d-elf merchant, I compiled a list of almost 1,200 craftable objects in 11 days played. A 20 day clanned warrior is just barely hitting its stride. Complaining about merchants in the context of a "grinding" discussion is pretty weak. Like...merchants are not a real grind, man, unless you just have terrible difficulty remaining alive for 10 days.
Moving the branch point wouldn't -matter- for anyone who knows anything about the game, because the point is not "to branch," because branching is simple for most skills if you have the chops to survive for 10 days played on a regular basis. The point of training a skill, for the most part, is to be -functional- with it.
The problem with "functional" on Armageddon, is that, in a permadeath setting with binary (pass/fail) checks, "functional" usually means "absolute minimal failures" which means "maxed." Nobody who knows wtf they're doing stops spam-sneaking just because they branched hide or listen. They continue to spam-sneak for at least a couple more days, because the difference between -10% off your max and being at your max is usually the difference between getting detected by maxed listen or not. If you move the branch point...everyone still knows that once you branch, you still have 25 friggin' points to go! If you honestly believe that players will look at that knowledge (25 points left!) and say "nah, I'm good bro," you're delusional--except in the case of some of the shit crafting skills that you just have to get through to get to the good stuff, and like I said...merchants are not even remotely related to the problem we're talking about.
All of the "good" skills that branch things still need to be maxed, because they're only "good" if they -work-, and they only work reliably if they're maxed. Fine, people will branch stuff faster, but they'll still engage in the last-ditch max grind, because the average player simply is not going to let that 25 points sit there in the dumpster.
This idea that people only "grind" to either a) branch or b) see the skill level go up is absolutely false. People grind so their shit works better. Once you have seen the "promised land" for weapon skills, you will never be satisfied with jman-level functionality, regardless of whether you branched a stupid advanced weapon skill or not. Every time you hit an arm, leg, foot, or something miraculously dodges you, you're going to think "probably still got points to go." It's not going to stop the grind...it'll just restart the grind to max that advanced weapon skill, assuming the player even cares to use it.
So...sure, move the branch point, I guess--it'll make advanced weapons easier to get and more common, and it'll make parry easier to branch for assassins and rangers, which is all cool, I guess. But don't argue that it's going to change the grind game, because it isn't.
QuoteI'm okay with grinding to get where I want to be. Getting good for pvp? It's such a miniscule part of the game I don't know that I'm going to focus on it, but if I did, I'd accept a grind there too. After all, any opponent I've got is going to go through the same grind.
You and me are in the same boat. But I don't consider that a grind. I like to use my skills, find challenges, and overcome them. That isn't the same as grinding. What I'm talking about is striking a balance for the players, while simultaneously removing the 'need' to do it, for some other players who are not so skill-oriented as I am, nor as familiar with it. Make it attainable so that the people who need that branch can stop doing shit they don't want to do, and those of us who like doing that shit will continue to do so because that's what we do.
QuoteI'm not real sure what some of you want. Seems like some want all game mechanics obscured and we just be given a basic ">" for a prompt. Other seem to want to be loaded with a character who has all the skills already branched and ready to play.
That's...nowhere near what's been mentioned, to the point that I think you're intentionally throwing out hyperbole. Keep in mind that the same way you can't imagine the game being healthy without skill levels being seen is how some of us felt about them being seen; the 'hidden' level was not inferior, it was just jarring to people who came here from character-sheet based roleplaying games where everything was tracked and recorded, and all actions were based on design to improve them.
QuoteI feel like eliminating skill level visibility would disadvantage newer players with respect to older players, because older players have years of data now to correlate in-game practical ability to skill level, whether it's visible or not.
As noted, I don't think veterans actually push for the dominion of the game through concealment of code. But that was an appearance that was unhealthy and hard to put into terms for a newer player who was just starting to figure things out. However, the truth is that while the lack of appearance of the level is -jarring- to a new player, they're at the same disadvantage whether skill levels are showing or not; they don't know how to effectively train, they don't know what levels mean what. You said it yourself. The experience is what gives the advantage, not the visibility. So it again falls back on the visibility merely prompting a reward for behavior, and a false need for that behavior, for at least a portion of the playerbase. Meanwhile, the only 'boon' of it is a friendlier-looking skill list for the unfamiliar, and a reward whenever it ticks up...the latter of which, I think, is the very subtle cause of a lot of this discussion.
It being invisible again doesn't change the skill-oriented progression in the game. It just makes use of the skill more relevant, and gauging where you in the spectrum more based on experiences of the character. A bynner will only know how good he is by comparison to peers. He may feel like a badass when he's surrounded by a bunch of burglars, then get surprised by a giant agile spider. In our current iteration, that's pretty hard to imagine, but in a roleplaying atmosphere, that makes a lot of sense.
'How good are you?'
'I haven't met a challenge in a long time.'
This becomes a lot more exciting when you don't have silent confirmation that you are indeed probably better than 90% of the playerbase in a weapon skill, versus just being in a closed environment with no challenges.
QuoteBut don't argue that it's going to change the grind game, because it isn't.
It does. Not in that it doesn't happen, but the standard of comparison changes. When you're succeeding against everything you hope to succeed with, there's not many that will still engage in mindless use of the skill in hopes of getting more points into it. That's kind of a rare thing...unless you continue to see rewards for it. An example is an elf with high agility using sneak. You are hardly failing through journeyman. You pretty much stop failing halfway through advanced. If you need to branch from that, you have to find places that inhibit your sneak, for no real reason. You behave out of the norm out of the need for a fail. If you lower branching, you still see you're not to master yet. Same behavior.
If it's hidden AND branching occurs lower...you stop the behavior when you have your branch and you know you never fail. You assume you're already at master. And for all intensive purposes, you are. -But the behavior changes-.
QuoteThe point of training a skill, for the most part, is to be -functional- with it.
Exactly. Functionality rules. Not the skill list. The need to train falls when functionality is realized. When you remove the need for the branching, and you are succeeding constantly, there need be no further motivation to 'train', because you should be moving on, quite clearly, to 'use' instead.
I like my hyperbole. You can't take it away from me. :)
So maybe it's just a matter of branching stuff from stuff that makes sense.
When I learned what I had to do to branch sneak on a ranger I was ready to jump off a bridge. My wilderness-loving character has to leave the wilderness and sit in a tavern to learn a fundamental skill for surviving in the wilderness? C'mon.
But some things do make sense. Your skill in riding branching some skills to use on your mount makes good sense. And I'm going to branch those things just by playing the game.
Maybe that's the key. Find the skills that take you out of the style of play and move them around.
QuoteMaybe that's the key. Find the skills that take you out of the style of play and move them around.
I agree. I think a lot of the evaluation of branching as a whole can be made into a much more fluid movement altogether, without the need for really revamping skill progression as a whole, which seems to be the other recourse.
Synthesis' post seems to be the epitome of worrying too much about skills. Not that he's a bad player. It's simply a good example of what this thread is about.
Quote from: Armaddict on December 01, 2016, 02:04:06 AM
I can't tell if you're reading that part right.
That was me responding to Case because I assumed she was talking about my hunter who just kept huntin' story, and how they'd never reach mastery under wizturbo's idea.
I was using it to illustrate why I think skill levels being invisible again would be a good thing. Not because it would eliminate all of such behavior, but because it would remove that little 'reward' for making skill gains a focus, and making constant success more satisfying than frustrating.
No, it wasn't a specific comment. I find it hilariously stupid that the same skills to kill animals are equivalent to fighting people. I think it should be two skillsets basically.
hey 300 showed young spartans (so they get best stats for gains) skilling up on wolves before engaging in PVP so it makes sense to me
More seriously, wasn't there a change awhile back to add hidden skill modifiers to Offense based on what kind of creature_types you were leveling up on? Maybe that needs expansion, so that someone who skills up exclusively on snakes is still rather hopeless fighting someone who has trained on other humanoids. I do wonder just how significant those factors really are.
Swordfighting, no it doesn't make a lot of sense but meh.
Spears, arrows, even an axe? Sure. There's a lot of cultural examples from our own world to draw on. So many that I have trouble understanding why anyone wouldn't think it made sense. Look at the Comanche for one good example.
I'd have no problems with expansion and definition in it, but I don't necessarily see it as a huge problem as is, either.
And apologies for the assumption you were replying to me, Case, though apparently it led to further elaboration that was needed anyway. :)
Quote from: BadSkeelz on December 01, 2016, 06:37:36 PM
hey 300 showed young spartans (so they get best stats for gains) skilling up on wolves before engaging in PVP so it makes sense to me
More seriously, wasn't there a change awhile back to add hidden skill modifiers to Offense based on what kind of creature_types you were leveling up on? Maybe that needs expansion, so that someone who skills up exclusively on snakes is still rather hopeless fighting someone who has trained on other humanoids. I do wonder just how significant those factors really are.
There is code implemented announced in January and discussed around then too:
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,31255.msg923994.html#msg923994
It's in RAT which I guess is locked, so I can't quote it, but here's a cut-and-paste:
Quote
Quote
-Ability to use specific weapon type vs specific race type is now correctly read/written to characters. Previously the first and last combinations were unusable. This may result in a slight decrease (or increase) in combat vs specific race types (using specific weapon types) as a result of using the correct values, until skills level out through more combat.
[snip]
Each character has a matrix of skills which you can think of like a chart. Along one side are the weapon types (bare handed, slash, chop, pierce, stab, etc...), along the opposing axis are race types (humanoid, avian, ophidian, insect, and so on). The intersection on this matrix is a skill that provides a bonus to offense when an attack is made.
Despite what others have speculated, this is not guild based, but is rather purely experience based.
If you fight most of your battles using a sword against snakes - you'll be pretty good at using slashing weapons against snakes. Maybe not pretty good, but better than if you used a club or a spear, certainly.
----
With regards to displaying this information to players - the benefit it gives isn't huge. It isn't like double offense, but it is enough it is noticeable. This was one of many (many) long term projects started up that didn't see their full fruition. There were periods of time where the benefit was removed while debating its future, then re-added, but still not completed. For that reason it's never shown up in the skills command (for players).
It will need more work before it shows up for players. Either in the skills command, or maybe in combat messages such as, "Using your knowledge of slashing weapons and snakes, you deal a deft blow."
When it was implemented, staff warned those of us fighting gith that we'd see a hit to our vs_humanoid hidden stat for a bit.
Thanks Nauta.
Quote from: Miradus on December 01, 2016, 07:02:51 PM
Swordfighting, no it doesn't make a lot of sense but meh.
Spears, arrows, even an axe? Sure. There's a lot of cultural examples from our own world to draw on. So many that I have trouble understanding why anyone wouldn't think it made sense. Look at the Comanche for one good example.
Eh, I still find the idea of "experience from fighting beasts is equivalent to fighting men" skills a little specious. As you said, it fits for some weapons better than others, but only so much.
The Comanche skill with a bow and the (mounted) lance in combat could certainly be rationalized as coming from their time hunting. But the Comanche weren't dueling buffalo with an axe. I don't think
anyone hunted with an axe like we would in Armageddon. For a spear, I'm not sure hunting a wolf or bear on foot with one would teach much of how to fight another human (except maybe to steel your nerves and hone your reflexes). It wouldn't teach you anything about how to deal with an opponent who is using, say, a shield.
I think the Comanche example illustrates weaknesses and shortcomings in Armageddon's combat code much more than it rationalizes them. Mounted combat especially is poorly explored and underutilized.
I don't think it would be a horrible thing if there were lots of merchants running around with maxed skills.
I do think it would be a horrible thing if there were lots of combat oriented characters running around with maxed skills. To a certain extent the game needs folks to plateau at a certain level, with only really dedicated, long lived characters reaching the max potential for combat. The 1% of long lived combat characters, not the 25%.
On Zalanthas, we hunt humongous man-eating desert monsters. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief.
In response to the first post, I gather there is more skill discussion now than when I started four years ago, or beyond that.
I imagine the playerbase has grown a little more code-obsessed (or at least more willing to discuss it openly) as it ages due to an increased desire to protect our investments in our characters. This is particularly true for combat and stealth characters, which dominate code discussion. For these "Action" PCs, skill levels and code gain have higher influence on the success and longevity of that character than a merchant, or noble, or other non-action-oriented character. With a merchant, your only threat during skill-up is running out of money and starving. With a warrior or a pickpocket or an assassin, you are risking your character every time you engage in skillplay. Even in sparring, you're just one bad round or server-disconnect or forgot-to-unequip-my-actual-weapon away from death.
That it takes so comparatively long to skill-up an Action PC to "useful" levels just increases the focus on the code. A Merchant can be made useful in a matter of RL days. A warrior can take RL weeks to reach a point where two gith are not going to obliterate him. Once Action PCs get to a point where you can begin engaging more adventurously with their skills, the time invested is pretty significant. I think this encourages a cycle where players of these PCs feel they must continually get better to protect their investment (and to make up for inevitable stat decay), whether from more dangerous monsters they choose to face or hypothetical PVP opponents.
For my part, I just pick warriors, hope I roll a good stat, join a combat clan, and train to the point where I think I can reasonably survive an encounter with LocalDangerousMonster. That usually happens within about 10 days. Hopefully by that point I've acquired roleplay that makes the character interesting to play, because the actual combat of Armageddon is frankly not good enough to be compelling on its own.
I don't mind non-magickal code being discussed. As I see it, Code are the rules of the game, and forbidding people from discussing Code is like forbidding DnD players from looking up how their skill goes in the rulebook. Given the fact that the older players at the table will have a better sense of the code (whether through trial and error, prior experience as a DM, or giving the current DM sexual favors in exchange for knowledge), enforcing a Code discussion blackout is just a means of favoring the older players over the new. Code discussion evens the playing field and I think encourages us to be less obsessed with it. If we all know how to play a useful Action character, and we're confident that it will come with playing that character organically from a RP standpoint ("I hunt because I need food" vs "I hunt because I need to git gud and branch"), there's less time devoted to sparring and code-tricks and more time Roleplaying.
I think there's been a lot of progress in the last year or so to putting everyone on an even footing when it comes to Code knowledge.
One more thing I forgot to mention is that Skill discussion is pretty much the only sanctioned discussion on the GDB. We can discuss plot ideas in vague terms, but can't go in to specifics less we reveal anything or come across as critical of current plotrunners.
Armaddict, your reasoning relies on the assumption that players will be too stupid to tell the difference between being on the plateau and being maxed, or too lazy to continue to grind, and that they will play as if they are maxed (i.e. training is no longer useful).
I'm assuming that players will be able to tell the difference (except at the extreme near-max of the plateau), and even where skill gains are slow and/or minimal, they will continue to play as if they are not maxed, because there is -real- value in being maxed, vs. being resigned to jman.
The rest of the stuff...meh...okay, y'all can argue about all the fancy creature vs. humanoid vs. hunting vs. sparring shit or whatever, but it just clouds the discussion with wishful thinking about an ideal skill system that will be years in the making, if it ever comes about at all.
Twilight: nobody is making the argument that being maxed in combat should take less time. The argument is that it is -impossible- without twinking. If you rig the game so that only twinks can get maxed...I mean...I guess that's one way to design a game. Not the best way, if you ask me, but that's how it's currently set up.
Quote from: Synthesis on December 02, 2016, 01:54:56 AM
Armaddict, your reasoning relies on the assumption that players will be too stupid to tell the difference between being on the plateau and being maxed, or too lazy to continue to grind, and that they will play as if they are maxed (i.e. training is no longer useful).
I'm assuming that players will be able to tell the difference (except at the extreme near-max of the plateau), and even where skill gains are slow and/or minimal, they will continue to play as if they are not maxed, because there is -real- value in being maxed, vs. being resigned to jman.
The rest of the stuff...meh...okay, y'all can argue about all the fancy creature vs. humanoid vs. hunting vs. sparring shit or whatever, but it just clouds the discussion with wishful thinking about an ideal skill system that will be years in the making, if it ever comes about at all.
Twilight: nobody is making the argument that being maxed in combat should take less time. The argument is that it is -impossible- without twinking. If you rig the game so that only twinks can get maxed...I mean...I guess that's one way to design a game. Not the best way, if you ask me, but that's how it's currently set up.
I think you may possibly be projecting. I find the grind to get critical skill X to pop on my skill list to be draining and involve just way too much sillyness. It's like, I don't want to master this skill fully right now, I just want to get to the goodies, and I'll come back to clean up later/at my leisure and finish it up as it relates to my other goals. Branching earlier would end the obsessive twinkery of players who actually give a shit about something more than being top-tier, which I assume are numerous people who've posted in this thread.
I agree with you on merchants, for everything except getting a few skills, namely, club-making, axe-making, and fricking armor making. I mean, seriously, how hard is it to whittle out a crude representation of a massive chicken-leg from a log? I think lengths of bone should already BE clubs that can be refined. The club and axe are the two most primitive forms of weapon known to man. Sure, you could make an axe shaft out of wood, but you could also do it with fricking bone. I don't understand these few branch trees, and think club-making should be available from the get-go, and branch axe-making.
The weapon-making subguilds don't even touch on axe or club-making. I suspect these factors, also given the heavy concentration of the playerbase in the south, contribute to the apparent lack of club and axe recipes, which makes them rather underwhelming skills to unlock anyway.
Eh, I think Synthesis understands me well enough.
He's basically poking at me for trying to make a blanket solution to a problem that is literally as old as we've both played the game and longer. Moreso I'm just trying to stepping stone (back) in the right direction by my opinion and outlook, though, with some modifications. But neither of us ever truly convince the other one when we have a difference of personal view on things, though, so we could do this all day! :P
I think I've reiterated my position enough on the thread for now, I won't keep blabbing on it. Think we got some good things to think about and points and counterpoints investigated by other minds, though.
Armaddict:
I feel like a lot of your arguments toward rolling back skills being visible are the same sort of arguments that someone who is straight and just doesn't like 'the gays' getting married would use.
'It's a step in the wrong direction' - for who - people who don't care about seeing them and don't want to see them?
'It just encourages behavior I don't like' (skillgrinding/twinking) - really, because before people could see them they didn't do insane things for the exact same reasons? Ask synthesis - he did the exact same shit he's doing to max now, before he could see he was maxed. And for the exact same reasons. If it is a behavior that you don't engage in it, you're not going to engage in it.
If it's a behavior you only engage in 'when it's possible to see it's bearing fruit' - that's on you to turn off skills display if you don't want to see it. Because the people who behave that way no matter what aren't changing when this goes away. They're just doing it FOREVER now, because they can't ever SEE that they're maxed and it might still yield gains.
If you don't want to see your progress, well, frankly, don't look. Just because you can see it doesn't mean you should look if looking makes you unhappy. Don't project the norms of your behavior ('if I couldn't see them, I wouldn't grind for that point') on other people. Some people will always grind (synthesis), some people will never grind (raptor_dan).
I think it would be unreasonable to kill something most people find useful and sometimes even enjoy, because you don't want to see it, when you can ALREADY turn it off. You want to take away other people's ability to enjoy what makes THEM happy, because you think it's wrong. And that is crap.
I love the hell out of you, but I will never agree with you on this point, and I think most people feel the same.
I think that's an extreme analogy.
Armaddict and Code Guru are just having a healthy debate. I don't think we need to label them as bigots?
Yeah, bringing in that sort of real world politico/cultural thing feels like you're trying to shame someone into shutting up.
It's an argument about a game. It's not even rude. It's interesting, enlightening, and impassioned. Arm is a fun and interesting hobby and I enjoy good and meaty discussions on it.
Even when I think Armaddict is a big poo-poohead for disagreeing with me.
Quote from: Reiloth on December 01, 2016, 01:29:13 AM
Quote from: The Lonely Hunter on November 30, 2016, 09:38:20 PM
It sounds like some people just want a different MUD. Making changes like some proposed is a slippery slope. This isn't a H&S. This is a unique MUD in many ways - let's not go changing that.
If you want something more grindy and skill-centric, check out TMS. If you want the experience that IS Armageddon don't try to change it into something that it has never been.
RP. Enjoy the RP. Stop doing silly crap just to "skill up". Stop being so concerned about how things work. Stop trying to win. Stop trying to capitalize on the code. Play your character in a realistic way and you |will| experience what Armageddon is all about.
Some of the game mechanics discussed here has made me cringe - when did we get to this point?
This is an attitude we (as veterans) need to consider wisely before we begin repeating it wholesale.
No, ArmageddonMUD isn't the same game it was in 1998, 2004, 2008, or even 2015. The game is evolving, changing, as the player base ages and changes. Many people who once played the game don't anymore, for reasons as simple as life passed them by, and they don't have the time, or they just aren't interested anymore.
Video game culture on a whole has also changed. When I first started playing ArmageddonMUD, there were a slew of other RP-enforced or RP-encouraged MUDs and MOOs and MUSHs with competing player bases. They're all extinct now. The MMORPGs and CRPGs and other sorts of games and consoles just swallowed people's interests in text-based gaming.
So -- We should really carefully consider before we tell people "This game isn't for you, try something else". We may start finding that we are one of those soon-to-be-extinguished RPI MUDs of yore.
The solution that I see here requires figuring out why people are skill-centric, and if/how that harms the game's RP environment. Comparing the game environment of 2016 to any sort of aggrandized memory of the past 'good ol' days' of ArmageddonMUD is like remembering how good sex was with your high-school girlfriend. Just as with that girlfriend, the 'good ol days' ain't coming back any time soon. Even if they did, they wouldn't look the same, would they? Most of the people we played with in the 'good ol days' don't play anymore, aren't around, aren't interested in ArmageddonMUD. You can't change the past, you can't make the past the present, and we certainly aren't going to predict the future.
So -- As a rebuttal to your question -- How do you see us as a community reconciling with newer players that come from games that aren't archaic about how code is presented to the player base? How do we encourage them to put RP first? How can we possibly modify how skills are gained or trained in order to facilitate RP over skill grinding?
These are the kinds of things I find to be helpful questions. I hate to say it, but telling people to go play a different game will only yield one result -- They take you up on the offer and don't play ArmageddonMUD. How does that help us?
Sure, the game isn't for everyone. People figure that out and stop playing, or never get started. But it's a crap message for a Veteran to send to new players. I've done it myself, but I really think we should stop it, collectively. It's a MUD, not a MUSH. This means that RP, especially on an RPI, is incredibly important, but skills are not to be ignored and completely disregarded. It's a part of the game -- And just because you play the game one way, doesn't delegitimize the way that other people play it as well.
Just because I think it got page rolled by the debate between Armaddict and Synthesis.
I think it's important to note that this is the environment of the game. We are the players of the game. Until the paradigm shifts away from needing skilled, talented people to commit to and execute plots, there won't be a de-emphasis on the grind, especially where combat roles are concerned.
If you could create a character, and they could immediately become a de-virtualized asset (as in they are a mildly talented warrior, or a pretty good assassin), you might find people are less attached to their PC, because they didn't pour in literally days of their life to achieve some modicum of success. It's a human instinct, one that's very difficult to detach from. You, the player, don't want to put your PC into a situation that will possibly get them killed. That's the first instinct. It takes time and training to take a breath and go 'Well, this is what would make sense' and have them still do it. Sometimes you've been playing the PC for so long, it's a relief when they get killed, but most of the time (For me) I knowingly do something my PC doesn't know will kill them or put them in a dangerous situation.
So...For me -- If I could jump into a moderately talented PC and avoid the early-stage grind, I would be much more productive in the RP sense. I wouldn't even care about being a 'master' at every skill or even important skills to my PC. Starting at novice in pretty much every category (even skills that are crucial to the guild, even starting lower than subguilds in the same vein) is a detriment to the RP quality of the game.
Things like automated skill bumps would go a long way in alleviating early-stage grind. What Synthesis and Armaddict are talking about is esoteric end-game skill grind for warriors -- Which I an attest is not only meta-gamey to the max (you need to find the right creatures to fight), but has no nuance. A 'Fail Gain' system is antiquated and only serves the grind, not the RP. Even if you gained 1/8 of a point in a skill from a success, I think you would see a marked difference in how people play their PCs.
What I would like to see is a system of aging properly represented.
If I start at ~25 for a human then I have decent stats but crappy skills. I consider that normal.
But what if I don't want to play the plucky kid from the farm who knows nothing about the world? What if I want to start as old Ben Kenobi and I'm willing to take the stat hit for that advanced age?
Doesn't matter. I don't get any increased skills as a tradeoff to that age. Not automatically. I'd have to expend a special app and get skill bumps for that.
I don't like always playing young people, but the stat hit is too onerous for me to play a 50 year old right out of chargen and not get some bumped skills in return for that.
Quote from: Reiloth on December 02, 2016, 10:16:41 AM
I think that's an extreme analogy.
Armaddict and Code Guru are just having a healthy debate. I don't think we need to label them as bigots?
I did not in any way mean to imply that Armaddict was a bigot. I meant to imply that 'I disagree with this arbitrarily and I don't like it, I can simply avoid it myself, but that's not enough, I don't want other people to have the ability to do this' is the exact mentality of everyone I've ever met who was opposed to gay marriage. Not because I wanted to imply he was a bigot, but because I thought if I could show him, in that framework (where I'm 99% sure he's totally on board with people being able to do what they want in that other scenario), he would see that taking the same attitude to other things is just as absurdist with those other things.
Quote from: bardlyone on December 02, 2016, 12:35:03 PM
Quote from: Reiloth on December 02, 2016, 10:16:41 AM
I think that's an extreme analogy.
Armaddict and Code Guru are just having a healthy debate. I don't think we need to label them as bigots?
I did not in any way mean to imply that Armaddict was a bigot. I meant to imply that 'I disagree with this arbitrarily and I don't like it, I can simply avoid it myself, but that's not enough, I don't want other people to have the ability to do this' is the exact mentality of everyone I've ever met who was opposed to gay marriage. Not because I wanted to imply he was a bigot, but because I thought if I could show him, in that framework (where I'm 99% sure he's totally on board with people being able to do what they want in that other scenario), he would see that taking the same attitude to other things is just as absurdist with those other things.
Comparing someone to basically a homophobe in order to support your argument does not make for a strong analogy to what was actually going on.
Saying someone is a homophobe in hyperbole in order to support your argument isn't very generous. Or relevant.
I don't mind the response. A wise man's tools are analogies and puzzles.
But I think it should be noted that I never said this was how -I- was doing things, or how much I disliked it; I look at my skills list all the time long after they've mastered. It's a habit. People did that all the time before levels were showing too. It's not like this removes skills from the game.
I was going much more into a analytical 'Well, what does this reinforce/give you, and in return for what?' Since I've done the before and after, I actually know what it felt like before versus now. Apparently me and Synthesis thought about it differently, so my responses were based on saying that he was kind of throwing everyone into a place of that change not even mattering, where I can pretty adamantly say: Yes. It did change things, and yes, for many, this would change things. For at least a portion of the playerbase, they only do strange things because they need the branch, or they see the non-mastery. For at least a portion of the playerbase, not attempting anything despite reasonable success rates is a thing because they know they aren't to a level they approve of yet.
Likewise, as was mentioned earlier in the thread, yes, I can turn it off. But this is not me discussing my personal preference. This is a discussion on behavior of the playerbase as a whole. This was a change that when it came, there were a lot of people saying 'Hey, just let it happen, we can always go back if it causes a problem', but by its nature, that doesn't cause a problem quickly. Here we are, discussing actual events, and with people in their arguments against it actually repeating the evidence of it: 'Don't take it away, because I really like watching it go up." I think you took the part of me saying I've been against this change since it happened to mean that it's a viewpoint of the game versus me, rather than me trying to be heard in what I think is best for the game. Not for me.
QuoteBecause the people who behave that way no matter what aren't changing when this goes away. They're just doing it FOREVER now, because they can't ever SEE that they're maxed and it might still yield gains.
That is, again, the entire point. This is not a way to eliminate the behavior, and was never asserted as such. It's a way of eliminating one of the side-incentives for the behavior that makes people not normally prone to the behavior...suddenly prone to the behavior. I return to my elven sneak example earlier: Are you saying that if visibility were gone, and branching based on the skill had already occurred, someone who never failed would continue to twink out sneak 'just because'? Because my experience, and my observation of other stealthies, says the opposite, so I will continue to disagree on that point. There is only a relatively small portion of the playerbase that enjoys engaging in training of the activity just because. Most at that point or before, move on to putting it to use in a more fun and beneficial way.
When it comes down to it, none of this is remotely similar to a bigot approach of analysis. This was a discussion brought up as how it would impact things when it was put in. Those effects that were 'prophesied' are literally the topic of this thread. I've added in some of the other affects that were discussed. I've searched a few times to try and find the thread where skill-visibility was added, but I can't find it. I, as of yet, haven't had anything said in response to this other than 'But I like it', and 'It won't change it anyway', the latter of which I've challenged several times now, and now, with your post, 'This behavior is your problem, not ours'. That's why it's hard for me to drop it. But I'd done it, up until you directly went back to repeating things from earlier the thread in such a way as if I'd just not seen it that way.
The analogy -was- a twist, though.
Edit: Also. I've been the very opposite of arbitrary. My position on this has been consistent for years, and even against self-interest since I am someone who directly benefits more than most from visibility of where I am in the spectrum with more knowledge of what rests about where in that spectrum. Neither did I take my original stance based off of a coin flip. Calling this arbitrary would infer that I'm making an exception to another stance for no reason other than I feel like it, or that I'm wildly inconsistent on the matter and prone to my current mood in that stance.
2nd Edit: And even with that code knowledge, it should be noted it was said I'd still be able to tell where I was even with them invisible. This is false, particularly with weapon skills. I'd have to step outside of my training group for more than just a few fights to even start getting an idea. I can't guess based off of a risk-free environment.
Quote from: Miradus on December 02, 2016, 12:31:04 PM
What I would like to see is a system of aging properly represented.
If I start at ~25 for a human then I have decent stats but crappy skills. I consider that normal.
But what if I don't want to play the plucky kid from the farm who knows nothing about the world? What if I want to start as old Ben Kenobi and I'm willing to take the stat hit for that advanced age?
Doesn't matter. I don't get any increased skills as a tradeoff to that age. Not automatically. I'd have to expend a special app and get skill bumps for that.
I don't like always playing young people, but the stat hit is too onerous for me to play a 50 year old right out of chargen and not get some bumped skills in return for that.
I've always liked the 'Choose your Own Adventure' type questions asked in Morrowind and some CRPGs that determine some skill bumps you have (or more complex things, like how factions treat you, in a game like Tyranny). It'd be cool to have those questions based off your guild/subguild choice, and moving stats/skills up and down based on those responses. Make every response have a +/-, so it isn't really about min/maxing.
I totally want age related skill bumps.
I don't think that'd help me be skilled though... unless I'm gonna play an old crone. :(
Quote from: Armaddict on December 02, 2016, 12:39:59 PM
I don't mind the response. A wise man's tools are analogies and puzzles.
...
The analogy -was- a twist, though.
Thank you for getting that I didn't in any way mean to imply bigotry or something negative about you.
Frankly, I'll continue to be for seeing skill levels as long as it takes a merchant hitting 'master' level in a skill to 'mastercraft', because it means you don't have to turn in a bunch of requests every time you have a merchant pc to check on whether or not you can modify or make a new thing yet. Which means less work for staff, and less work for players who play merchant guild pcs often.
Like... for me, the combat, the stealth, all that other stuff has 0 to do with it. And if you didn't need to have a skill at X level to do a thing which requires requests, I wouldn't mind the idea of skill visibility disappearing, ESPECIALLY if you could branch earlier. As things are set up with on of the main no-karma staring guilds though, it would make more work for both staff and players to do that. I like seeing skill levels, but it actually impedes your ability to function without more work on both sides, for merchant pcs if you take it away.
Quote from: Reiloth on December 02, 2016, 12:47:06 PM
Quote from: Miradus on December 02, 2016, 12:31:04 PM
What I would like to see is a system of aging properly represented.
If I start at ~25 for a human then I have decent stats but crappy skills. I consider that normal.
But what if I don't want to play the plucky kid from the farm who knows nothing about the world? What if I want to start as old Ben Kenobi and I'm willing to take the stat hit for that advanced age?
Doesn't matter. I don't get any increased skills as a tradeoff to that age. Not automatically. I'd have to expend a special app and get skill bumps for that.
I don't like always playing young people, but the stat hit is too onerous for me to play a 50 year old right out of chargen and not get some bumped skills in return for that.
I've always liked the 'Choose your Own Adventure' type questions asked in Morrowind and some CRPGs that determine some skill bumps you have (or more complex things, like how factions treat you, in a game like Tyranny). It'd be cool to have those questions based off your guild/subguild choice, and moving stats/skills up and down based on those responses. Make every response have a +/-, so it isn't really about min/maxing.
Min/maxing by definition involves consideration of +/- tradeoffs.
That sort of setup would make the min/max game more interesting, though.
I am also in agreement that age-related skill/stat questions would be pretty awesome in chargen.
My intention was never to argue about having skill levels added nor did I imagine that the post would go on so long. I feel a need to apologies.
With that said, I like seeing skill levels. They let me know how I stand and I can adjust my skill-based activities to RP properly.
There was some great comments here and some really neat points of view. A lot of people pretty much just confirmed that they are indeed overly concerned with skills and that it leads them to doing silly things that they may or may not realize are silly. I don't think that removing the ability to see skills is the answer - the answer is to just stop being silly. Stop obsessing. Play your character as your character would act, not because you want to get that next skill bump or branch some particular skill.
Thanks for contributing, I am grateful that you took the time to read and respond here! However, in all honesty if I could I would hit the "end" button on this thread I would. Good discussion but people are starting to argue through a privacy fence and are just growing repetitive. :)
Yeaah, sorry, that was why I said I needed to drop.
IT'S HARD FOR ME TO NOT ARGUE ON THE INTERNET, OKAY?!
Edited to add: For a good reason, too. I'm pretty sure I've momentously changed like 0 lives over 20 years doing it and gotten maybe 3 point of views changed. *serious nod* We got all set up on a track just because I agree that skill-orientation has taken a very weird turn. It isn't that anyone is roleplaying poorly, that was never my intention. We're all pretty baller here, despite our little clashes of story-based progression vs character-based progression.
I'm still upset that staff changed the rules for skill boosts.
Quote from: Armaddict on December 02, 2016, 12:39:59 PM
Are you saying that if visibility were gone, and branching based on the skill had already occurred, someone who never failed would continue to twink out sneak 'just because'?
Ahem ahem... :P (actually as an elf with high agi getting sneak past novice/apprentice can be an exceedingly difficult task, getting it to a certain point can be nigh impossible once you hit that SPOT, you can either, live off your crafting subguild until you age your agi to pieces in say, 30-40 IG years and give up on portions of your main guild, or resort to seemingly unrealistic behavior, although there are ways to make it ICly legit)
Anyway, THIS is one of the BIG reasons I'd like to see branching levels lowered.
Also I didn't find Bardlyone's analogy out of place at all. In no way was she saying: You're a homophobe because you don't like visible skill levels. She was saying, there are similarities between these kinds of logic. It would be the similar to a dictator banning other kinds of ice cream, because he absolutely LOVES chocolate and demands the populace agree with him. Sorry bub, I believe mint chocolate chip is the only one worth enjoying! VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
The game definitely changed when visibility went in. I don't think it will change if we go back.
Quote from: Dunetrade55 on December 02, 2016, 01:56:58 PM
Quote from: Armaddict on December 02, 2016, 12:39:59 PM
Are you saying that if visibility were gone, and branching based on the skill had already occurred, someone who never failed would continue to twink out sneak 'just because'?
Ahem ahem... :P (actually as an elf with high agi getting sneak past novice/apprentice can be an exceedingly difficult task, getting it to a certain point can be nigh impossible once you hit that SPOT, you can either, live off your crafting subguild until you age your agi to pieces in say, 30-40 IG years and give up on portions of your main guild, or resort to seemingly unrealistic behavior, although there are ways to make it ICly legit)
Anyway, THIS is one of the BIG reasons I'd like to see branching levels lowered.
Also I didn't find Bardlyone's analogy out of place at all. In no way was she saying: You're a homophobe because you don't like visible skill levels. She was saying, there are similarities between these kinds of logic. It would be the similar to a dictator banning other kinds of ice cream, because he absolutely LOVES chocolate and demands the populace agree with him. Sorry bub, I believe mint chocolate chip is the only one worth enjoying! VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
I can confirm that sneak and hide get hard to branch with high agility. I had a long-lived assassin that branched at 40 days. I hit advanced at 10 days and used it so much that I had thought I was at max.
I've never had any sort of difficult time branching from sneak/hide...not sure what you're doing, but they've always followed the same 5-7 day rule as other skills, regardless of race (my c-elves and d-elves tend to branch faster, actually).
Quote from: Synthesis on December 02, 2016, 04:52:50 PM
I've never had any sort of difficult time branching from sneak/hide...not sure what you're doing, but they've always followed the same 5-7 day rule as other skills, regardless of race (my c-elves and d-elves tend to branch faster, actually).
My last one I had to send in a request after 12 days of playtime.
Quote from: Synthesis on December 02, 2016, 04:52:50 PM
I've never had any sort of difficult time branching from sneak/hide...not sure what you're doing, but they've always followed the same 5-7 day rule as other skills, regardless of race (my c-elves and d-elves tend to branch faster, actually).
I'm not sure either. I literally thought I was maxed. Max scan rangers were not noticing me and I wasn't afraid of avoiding people in public space.
Quote from: Synthesis on December 02, 2016, 04:52:50 PM
I've never had any sort of difficult time branching from sneak/hide...not sure what you're doing, but they've always followed the same 5-7 day rule as other skills, regardless of race (my c-elves and d-elves tend to branch faster, actually).
Just from a game design standpoint...Thinking that I have to put in 120-168 hours of played time (obviously, not all of this is done 'gittin guud') to be mildly competent in skills that are the bread and butter of my class is sort of absurd. I wish there were a solution that appeased both the achievement part of my playstyle, the getting involved with plots with competent PCs, and the RPI intensity I enjoy.
I'd personally like to be able to choose skill bumps at chargen, or not be limited to 3 skill bumps via Special Application. The original purpose behind skill bumps was to allow the casual player to get a boost to their PCs before they went in game, with the express purpose of avoiding some of the early-stage grind that older, casual players may not have to commit to the game. This was so they could jump out of the box into plots with decently alright PCs.
Now, we're back to where we started. We have to commit to a PC with a special application, wait for the special application to be approved, set up a time with Admins to get the measly 3 skill bumps, and then...Our PC isn't really all that much better than an out of the box PC.
Bums me out. I know it's a lot of paperwork for Staff to do it the other way, but it's sort of a draconian rollback we're dealing with now.
Quote from: Reiloth on December 02, 2016, 05:39:47 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on December 02, 2016, 04:52:50 PM
I've never had any sort of difficult time branching from sneak/hide...not sure what you're doing, but they've always followed the same 5-7 day rule as other skills, regardless of race (my c-elves and d-elves tend to branch faster, actually).
Just from a game design standpoint...Thinking that I have to put in 120-168 hours of played time (obviously, not all of this is done 'gittin guud') to be mildly competent in skills that are the bread and butter of my class is sort of absurd. I wish there were a solution that appeased both the achievement part of my playstyle, the getting involved with plots with competent PCs, and the RPI intensity I enjoy.
I'd personally like to be able to choose skill bumps at chargen, or not be limited to 3 skill bumps via Special Application. The original purpose behind skill bumps was to allow the casual player to get a boost to their PCs before they went in game, with the express purpose of avoiding some of the early-stage grind that older, casual players may not have to commit to the game. This was so they could jump out of the box into plots with decently alright PCs.
Now, we're back to where we started. We have to commit to a PC with a special application, wait for the special application to be approved, set up a time with Admins to get the measly 3 skill bumps, and then...Our PC isn't really all that much better than an out of the box PC.
Bums me out. I know it's a lot of paperwork for Staff to do it the other way, but it's sort of a draconian rollback we're dealing with now.
#givebackourbumps
When I play rangers I always make sure to pick advanced guilds that come with sneak right away, there's no way I could play a ranger without sneak + hide already available from the start. Just the thought of having to sit at the Gaj forever to branch sneak *shivers*.
I thought that nowadays they could actually adjust your skills -before- you got in the game, so you didn't have to wish up for it anymore? At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened on my last few characters.. (I admit that it's been forever ago, though).
As much as I'm totally for a brand new skill system to match the realities of 2016, I'll admit that those skill bumps and those advanced guilds are -very- helpful and a step in the right direction.
Quote from: Malken on December 02, 2016, 05:50:25 PM
When I play rangers I always make sure to pick advanced guilds that come with sneak right away, there's no way I could play a ranger without sneak + hide already available from the start. Just the thought of having to sit at the Gaj forever to branch sneak *shivers*.
I thought that nowadays they could actually adjust your skills -before- you got in the game, so you didn't have to wish up for it anymore? At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened on my last few characters.. (I admit that it's been forever ago, though).
As much as I'm totally for a brand new skill system to match the realities of 2016, I'll admit that those skill bumps and those advanced guilds are -very- helpful and a step in the right direction.
AFAIK, you still have to get the bumps from Admins+ once you are in game. I could be mistaken.
If so, I don't see why it is limited to 3 bumps, or why karma has no affect on how many bumps you get (which I thought was part of the whole appeal for us old timers?)
Quote from: Reiloth on December 02, 2016, 05:57:29 PM
If so, I don't see why it is limited to 3 bumps, or why karma has no affect on how many bumps you get (which I thought was part of the whole appeal for us old timers?)
Where did you read that the bumps are limited to 3? I thought that weapon skills were limited to 2 but other skills weren't limited as long as you had the karma for it.
Pretty sure Malken is dead on.
Also with no bumps to hidden skills or to skills that branched from bumping.
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,50840.0.html
Slightly baffled why this is the stopgap, when it's been admitted the guild revamp process is ready when it's ready. Why bone the casuals?
Yeah, you only get 3 bumps to skills, unfortunately.
(As a filthy casual) I liked it better the other way!
You two and me both. I had a shiny app all ready and then, uh. I was told it was 3. Dammit.
Quote from: Reiloth on December 02, 2016, 07:10:55 PM
http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,50840.0.html
Slightly baffled why this is the stopgap, when it's been admitted the guild revamp process is ready when it's ready. Why bone the casuals?
Oh, that sucks, I never saw that update.
And that was a year ago - I doubt that the 'guild revamp' is anywhere close to being completed.
I'd totally support rolling back the change to skill bump policy, as well.
I think the skill bump policy is fine because those apps go through about as fast as a normal one (in my experience). However I feel like full Special Applications should be able to get as many skill bumps as would make their concept realistic.