In spar-happy clans like the AoD and the Byn, a large portion of the week is spent training. Which means PCs smacking each other with slightly blunted sparring weapons.
Recently a change was made to skill progression in offense and defense (and some other combat skills, although it's not clear which are exempt and which are not). A PC will progress more quickly by training with someone more advanced in these than themselves, and less quickly (or even not at all) by training with someone less advanced.
The effects of these have been slowly registering in the collective player consciousness.
For example. Let's say Player A starts off with Players B, C and D to train with. The latter three only log in now and then, while Player A has more time to devote to the game and is the go-to sparring buddy for the other three.
Player A is working hard and expects to excel because of it. Or not even, Player A just wants to play but is constrained by the clan's schedule and would still reasonably like to see a reward for the time put in.
Player A does initially excel. But progress slows down and nearly halts. Meanwhile, Players B, C and D sing la la la, logging in once in a while and start advancing in leaps when training with Player A.
Player A's grinding effectively goes into Players B, C and D's pockets.
What are Player A's options here now?
1. Continue to grind away basically as a servant to the others.
2. Adjust login times to avoid fruitless periods of training on the schedule.
3. Reduce play times to match Players B, C and D's average.
4. Quit the clan and do something else.
None of these seem a particularly good outcome to me. Previously an advanced character at least could still take the occasional knock and have a chance to improve. No longer.
Yes, I realize that roleplaying out sparring can be its own reward, but after the ten thousandth time, maybe not any more?
I can understand why the notion of PCs grinding against high-agility NPCs to achieve high skills was unappealing, but please either give Player A some benefit for the time locked into a clan schedule or give PCs in these clans something meaningful they can do sometimes instead of train, train, train. Right now, it's set up to punish those who play a lot and reward those who play little.
EDIT: and pity Player A if B, C and D die or disappear or store and now rookies E, F and G come along.
I feel the underlying question here isn't so much about skill progression, but about this question - "What do I want to do in the game, when my clan mates aren't regular?"
Because the simple solution to the proposed question is to have clan mates that are regular.
I feel the real reason you want to ask the question is - "What do I do now? What are my character's goals? Why do I want to get powerful and what do I want to accomplish once I reach that? Why am I trying to rush my progression?"
I don't have an answer for that.
My question is more like, "I'm just sick of sparring, but the clan schedule is full of it, and now to top it off, the character doesn't even benefit from it. So logging in feels like a complete waste of time except for the rare extracurricular events. I want to be part of a clan for the social and activity elements, but this isn't working."
I only play in one of the military clans you mention, but the fun extracurriculars seem more bounded by organizational problems. A world of static risks requires a big group to be somewhat safe, and coordinating a dozen or more players for multi hour outings isnt always easy. Maintaining three or four leadership pcs also doesnt seem easy, although there have been times where that has been the solution in the Byn.
I dislike that the new clan sparring reality negates playtime as you mentioned, and negates high wisdom advantages. I do like that it could bring Runner E, F, and G up enough in skill as to quickly bypass the early feeling of uselessness. That said, hunting animals is still the faster, riskier way to a skilled character.
I am very much hoping that this new clan sparring mechanic will create social opportunity and value for highly skilled combatants. Those champions dont have to train everyone evenly. A shifting reality of favorites, favors, and prejudice could make for more interesting military clans. It also creates recruitment possibilities. Recruiting a Rink or an Ish now is absolute coup for a leader and the clan they lead, even if that veteran combatant only stays a game year.
I'm a dilettante and this is a huge downer. For what it's worth, I'm not all, "la-la-la". I'm like, oh man. That is not great.
It's unfun.
So much of gameplay is motivated by achievable goals and for a lot of players, those goals are skills. And then there are the players who are explorer types or whatever. And me, I feel that I'm winning when contributing to an interesting scene.
However, I digress. In my experience I often learn material best when teaching it. That's not reflected here. I'm tempted to give you character advice but I'm going to skip that, since you're posting here to bring attention to an aspect of code that seems like it could use some assistance.
Halcyon, that was a glorious example of creating fun situations within the structure and I wouldn't feel right if I didn't call you out on how imaginative and awesome that set-up would be.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 02, 2019, 04:40:26 AM
Recently a change
You do realize this change is multiple years old at this point?
And even before that change, folks hit the plateau, which if anything shifted slightly upwards by this change.
So I am going to turn this around. How do we give you what you want, but keep truly exceptional combat characters exceptional, where it isn't just a matter of putting in the time/effort to become exceptional, from a skill perspective?
Quote from: Brokkr on June 02, 2019, 04:33:50 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 02, 2019, 04:40:26 AM
Recently a change
You do realize this change is multiple years old at this point?
Ok, put it this way then: it's a change I only recently became aware of.
Quote
So I am going to turn this around. How do we give you what you want, but keep truly exceptional combat characters exceptional, where it isn't just a matter of putting in the time/effort to become exceptional, from a skill perspective?
Get the clan imms to change the clan schedule and ease off the sparring requirement. Here are a few ideas to replace it:
1. Pest control of giant rats and such in the city. Each body collected earns a few coins of a bounty paid by an NPC, or maybe a crossbow bolt.
2. Scheduled patrol of the road west of the city, with the purpose of giving visitors to Menos some security at a specific time they can know about.
3. Quarry duty. Stone for repairs to the compound. If the work isn't done, the degradation becomes noticeable and inconvenient.
4. Alley patrol. Put in some invisible object that detects when the AoD enters and rolls a small chance for some type of random encounter to be spawned. It can have a list of possible encounters it sets up.
5. Sewer patrol. Give the AoD access to a new, separate subsection of the sewers. (Maybe they hook up to the main sewers but the way is blocked by a grate). Like the alley patrol, put in chances for various encounters at various spawn points, but for a different set than in the alleys. They don't all have to be beast #19382. There could be rare odds of something good happening, like a gemstone was flushed and now catches a soldier's eye.
Things like that. Add interest and variety to the schedule.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 02, 2019, 04:33:50 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 02, 2019, 04:40:26 AM
Recently a change
You do realize this change is multiple years old at this point?
And even before that change, folks hit the plateau, which if anything shifted slightly upwards by this change.
So I am going to turn this around. How do we give you what you want, but keep truly exceptional combat characters exceptional, where it isn't just a matter of putting in the time/effort to become exceptional, from a skill perspective?
I've been a fan of these changes since they rolled in, posted a few times about how they did exactly as you say for the average player: put the plateau higher. Most importantly, it seems to me that if you are working with other players, even if you hit a plateau, you don't 'stop'. You just slow down a good deal.
I think people are just starting to realize the nature of some of these changes due to the class changes but that's another can of worms.
To answer your question as succinctly as I can I will make two statements. I think the reason that people hit a plateau is one of the driving factors for 'bad' behaviors in the game. I also believe that most importantly a way to 'spread the love' of feeling special is important, as in make sure different players are getting the chance with each 'generation' of pcs to be the chosen ones. And not just by being the next in line to spec app sorcerer.
Lastly, I also agree with the sentiment that static world design negatively impacts clan behaviors and life for the average player and leader. Agency, dynamic objectives, and the ability to change things are the bricks of good story telling. Great players(authors) participating is the concrete.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 02, 2019, 05:20:11 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on June 02, 2019, 04:33:50 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 02, 2019, 04:40:26 AM
Recently a change
You do realize this change is multiple years old at this point?
Ok, put it this way then: it's a change I only recently became aware of.
Quote
So I am going to turn this around. How do we give you what you want, but keep truly exceptional combat characters exceptional, where it isn't just a matter of putting in the time/effort to become exceptional, from a skill perspective?
Get the clan imms to change the clan schedule and ease off the sparring requirement. Here are a few ideas to replace it:
1. Pest control of giant rats and such in the city. Each body collected earns a few coins of a bounty paid by an NPC, or maybe a crossbow bolt.
2. Scheduled patrol of the road west of the city, with the purpose of giving visitors to Menos some security at a specific time they can know about.
3. Quarry duty. Stone for repairs to the compound. If the work isn't done, the degradation becomes noticeable and inconvenient.
4. Alley patrol. Put in some invisible object that detects when the AoD enters and rolls a small chance for some type of random encounter to be spawned. It can have a list of possible encounters it sets up.
5. Sewer patrol. Give the AoD access to a new, separate subsection of the sewers. (Maybe they hook up to the main sewers but the way is blocked by a grate). Like the alley patrol, put in chances for various encounters at various spawn points, but for a different set than in the alleys. They don't all have to be beast #19382. There could be rare odds of something good happening, like a gemstone was flushed and now catches a soldier's eye.
Things like that. Add interest and variety to the schedule.
This sounds mostly like stuff we expect clan leaders to facilitate.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 02, 2019, 09:01:07 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 02, 2019, 05:20:11 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on June 02, 2019, 04:33:50 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 02, 2019, 04:40:26 AM
Recently a change
You do realize this change is multiple years old at this point?
Ok, put it this way then: it's a change I only recently became aware of.
Quote
So I am going to turn this around. How do we give you what you want, but keep truly exceptional combat characters exceptional, where it isn't just a matter of putting in the time/effort to become exceptional, from a skill perspective?
Get the clan imms to change the clan schedule and ease off the sparring requirement. Here are a few ideas to replace it:
1. Pest control of giant rats and such in the city. Each body collected earns a few coins of a bounty paid by an NPC, or maybe a crossbow bolt.
2. Scheduled patrol of the road west of the city, with the purpose of giving visitors to Menos some security at a specific time they can know about.
3. Quarry duty. Stone for repairs to the compound. If the work isn't done, the degradation becomes noticeable and inconvenient.
4. Alley patrol. Put in some invisible object that detects when the AoD enters and rolls a small chance for some type of random encounter to be spawned. It can have a list of possible encounters it sets up.
5. Sewer patrol. Give the AoD access to a new, separate subsection of the sewers. (Maybe they hook up to the main sewers but the way is blocked by a grate). Like the alley patrol, put in chances for various encounters at various spawn points, but for a different set than in the alleys. They don't all have to be beast #19382. There could be rare odds of something good happening, like a gemstone was flushed and now catches a soldier's eye.
Things like that. Add interest and variety to the schedule.
This sounds mostly like stuff we expect clan leaders to facilitate.
I think there needs to be a Militia Ranger's Division for outdoors. Then I will instantly apply for it. lol
Why not start one? It's not like there's crim code in the wilderness. Start small, be careful, get a merchant's license and then start to work your way up.
Quote from: John on June 02, 2019, 10:58:59 PM
Why not start one?
On the topic of this derail: you can also make the Salarri hunting division great as it once was (and is described to be in the docs).
On the original topic of this thread: Tuluk had a public sparring area that has no equal in Allanak, Morin's, and so forth. I find these areas to be extremely valuable to unclanned people and people in smaller clans. Fun roleplay as well, it's like going to a gym. Would love to see one in every location in which a character can spawn in.
Quote from: triste on June 02, 2019, 11:02:28 PMOn the topic of this derail: you can also make the Salarri hunting division great as it once was (and is described to be in the docs).
Definitely. Making a hunting crew who takes down big critters and stuff like that seems like a very useful idea.
Quote from: triste on June 02, 2019, 11:02:28 PMOn the original topic of this thread: Tuluk had a public sparring area that has no equal in Allanak, Morin's, and so forth. I find these areas to be extremely valuable to unclanned people and people in smaller clans. Fun roleplay as well, it's like going to a gym. Would love to see one in every location in which a character can spawn in.
Definitely doable for a player. Get a merchant's license. Get a warehouse. Boom. Allanak has a gym.
Quote from: John on June 02, 2019, 11:06:35 PM
Definitely doable for a player. Get a merchant's license. Get a warehouse. Boom. Allanak has a gym.
This is one I'd prefer to be out in the open and not player run such that it is an enduring fixture and doesn't rely on the playtimes of anyone to "open" the gym, as public sparring areas are a solution to the whole problem of "my leader and clan mates aren't around, but I want to train in an in character way besides killing rats."
I do love your predilection to say nothing technically bars a player from setting something up though <3 in this case though because of crim code I am just saying that the public sparring area in Tuluk worked great from my experience and helped small clans, independents, and so forth. I think part of the reason Allanak is such a bind where "if you want training you should go to the Byn," whereas Tuluk never suffered from that as much, is because Tuluk had a public sparring area.
Quote from: John on June 02, 2019, 11:06:35 PM
Get a merchant's license. Get a warehouse. Boom. Allanak has a gym.
Lol. Sorry, but that's some serious /r/restofthefuckingowl shit right there.
"Get a warehouse", I mean. Some players have spent OOC years of effort to do that.
So skip the warehouse. Think outside the box.
Quote from: triste on June 02, 2019, 11:18:07 PMThis is one I'd prefer to be out in the open and not player run such that it is an enduring fixture and doesn't rely on the playtimes of anyone to "open" the gym, as public sparring areas are a solution to the whole problem of "my leader and clan mates aren't around, but I want to train in an in character way besides killing rats."
Then talk to local authorities, get creative and make such a place. I can think of one location in game that could definitely serve as a replacement for the Tuluk arena. It would certainly be thematic. And yes there would be some risk, but it'd get the ball rolling. And/or talk to staff about getting it with a shop in converting.
Remember. The Tuluk arena was initially player created.
Quote from: triste on June 02, 2019, 11:18:07 PMI do love your predilection to say nothing technically bars a player from setting something up though <3 in this case though because of crim code I am just saying that the public sparring area in Tuluk worked great from my experience and helped small clans, independents, and so forth. I think part of the reason Allanak is such a bind where "if you want training you should go to the Byn," whereas Tuluk never suffered from that as much, is because Tuluk had a public sparring area.
Crim code can definitely be gotten around. You just need to think somewhat out of the box. Will it work exactly like Tuluk? No. But that's good. Allanak isn't Tuluk. It's rougher. And grittier and IMO that makes Allanak more enjoyable.
Any public sparring area is going to have that grittiness about it. Accept it and pursue it. Or don't and give up on it and post on the GDB how it'd be nice if staff did everything for us so we didn't have anything to aim for in game.
Again, I like the sentiment, and reading your "hints" reminded me of when I tried to do something like this in alleyways, but that is understandably sketchy, most people could/would think it's just a situation where they would get ganked.
Just going to conclude with my original two thoughts:
- For those seeking an outdoor focused combat guild in Allanak, make Salarr (or literally any other merchant house) great again
- Public sparring completely resolves the issue of people being deprived of training opportunities in various contexts (small clans or independents) and is a better RP scenario than "let's spar in my apartment."
Quote from: triste on June 02, 2019, 11:52:49 PMJust going to conclude with my original two thoughts:
- For those seeking an outdoor focused combat guild in Allanak, make Salarr (or literally any other merchant house) great again
- Public sparring completely resolves the issue of people being deprived of training opportunities in various contexts (small clans or independents) and is a better RP scenario than "let's spar in my apartment."
I hope some people in the game decide to stop complaining about how nothing is possible and everything is boring because nothing can be achieved without staff support. And hopefully actually try to create these opportunities within the game.
[EDIT]: Sorry. This came across as more confrontational then necessary.
It gets tiring to see this regular cycle among the players (either on this forum, discord or other forums):
1) The game never changes.
2) The game's boring because all the changes are staff directed and created and players are just along for the ride.
3) It's too hard to try to achieve anything ourselves.
4) Staff never do anything.
5) Go back to Point 1.
This thread is pretty much squarely at point 3. I await the cycle moving back to point 4 and then back to point 1 and on and on the cycle goes.
The GDB is great for creating a sense of community. It's also great for inspiration. It's also one of the worst parts of the game.
Technically Tuluk had two. Sort of.
It is worthwhile mentioning the second one was closed, intentionally.
Quote from: John on June 03, 2019, 12:02:21 AM
It gets tiring to see this regular cycle among the players (either on this forum, discord or other forums):
1) The game never changes.
2) The game's boring because all the changes are staff directed and created and players are just along for the ride.
3) It's too hard to try to achieve anything ourselves.
4) Staff never do anything.
5) Go back to Point 1.
This thread is pretty much squarely at point 3. I await the cycle moving back to point 4 and then back to point 1 and on and on the cycle goes.
The GDB is great for creating a sense of community. It's also great for inspiration. It's also one of the worst parts of the game.
If we have a GDB rule not to discuss in game events, shouldnt there also be a corollary that posters probably did make an effort of some shape before posting in frustration?
I've played no less than six pcs, all more than a year ago, all more than 20days played each, who have tried to start a common sparring group or area, or even a sparring for pay job. There are some pretty large blockers to establishing one. Some of which are in clan docs, some are a lack of 16 hour a day access, and some are healthy IC paranoia. I'm not going to try again, especially given more than one attempt to get a warehouse for this and other purposes.
I'm not trying to be negative, just illustrate my earlier objection. Some of these topics cant be effectively discussed in this forum.
I am probably going to sound like a dick like normal, so I apologize beforehand.
There are thousands of public sparring areas, like every room outside of a city/outpost/village, or every apartment.
Quote from: Krath on June 03, 2019, 01:23:39 AM
I am probably going to sound like a dick like normal, so I apologize beforehand.
There are thousands of public sparring areas, like every room outside of a city/outpost/village, or every apartment.
Yes you can do this, but not the same roleplaying scenario, and they are inferior ones:
Sparring in apartments:
- dangerous, someone just needs to lock a door to murder someone
- Tacky AF. Time to roleplay skipping around the massive amount of junk you have in your room, etc.
- doesn't even make sense given some room descriptions but people do it anyway, I suspect, because it is one of the only options to avoid crimcode.
Sparring outdoors:
- dangerous, some scrab/raider/whatever just needs to roll up. If anything a raider shooting poisoned arrows at people sparring outdoors would be doing them a favor because...
- ...the roleplaying is again tacky AF. "Let's go camp and spar bro," I mean I don't know how to even pose this as an option without it again seeming strange and just an effort to get around coded constraints. Only exception to this is if you are a tribal and don't go into cities anyway.
It is telling and sensible that even the newest elven tribe has a sparring area in their camp. Why should any imm/builder go through the effort of building this when they could step one room outside to spar per your recommendation? Because it is a better roleplay environment to have a fighting pit right in the camp.
People are painting this proposition as one that comes of whining, but it is really about offering good circumstances for role play here, it's sensible and I am honestly surprised so many people are vehemently opposing it. In many ancient societies like Greece gymnasiums and areas where people trained like this were a key part of, if not central to, their cultures.
Quote from: Halcyon on June 03, 2019, 01:17:13 AM
If we have a GDB rule not to discuss in game events, shouldnt there also be a corollary that posters probably did make an effort of some shape before posting in frustration?
Sometimes yes. Often times no.
Quote from: Halcyon on June 03, 2019, 01:17:13 AMI've played no less than six pcs, all more than a year ago, all more than 20days played each, who have tried to start a common sparring group or area, or even a sparring for pay job. There are some pretty large blockers to establishing one. Some of which are in clan docs, some are a lack of 16 hour a day access, and some are healthy IC paranoia. I'm not going to try again, especially given more than one attempt to get a warehouse for this and other purposes.
Out of interest were you ever told OOCly that you would not be allowed to pursue this or that you would never successfully attain your goal due to OOC reasons?
Quote from: triste on June 03, 2019, 01:34:39 AMPeople are painting this proposition as one that comes of whining, but it is really about offering good circumstances for role play here, it's sensible and I am honestly surprised so many people are vehemently opposing it. In many ancient societies like Greece gymnasiums and areas where people trained like this were a key part of, if not central to, their cultures.
I'm not opposing it. I'm just saying that expecting staff to implement it is unlikely to occur and I'm encouraging people to pursue it via PCs instead. If I could think of a fun way to do it I might even have a go myself. But to be honest sparring is one of the most boring activities there is in the game.
Quote from: John on June 03, 2019, 02:42:09 AM
Out of interest were you ever told OOCly that you would not be allowed to pursue this or that you would never successfully attain your goal due to OOC reasons?
I was not refused.
My perception is that there are two blockers. The main one is that my pcs dont tend to last more than six months real time. Even when I have put a thousand hours of play on a pc in that time, I have a feeling of not being anywhere far enough along for several goals I've pursued (Lieutenant in a clan, new sparring organization, warehouse ownership, starting one of three lesser merchant thingies). Mea culpa.
Then I go back to skill-maxing. :-[
Quote from: Halcyon on June 03, 2019, 03:24:41 AM
Quote from: John on June 03, 2019, 02:42:09 AM
Out of interest were you ever told OOCly that you would not be allowed to pursue this or that you would never successfully attain your goal due to OOC reasons?
I was not refused.
My perception is that there are two blockers. The main one is that my pcs dont tend to last more than six months real time. Even when I have put a thousand hours of play on a pc in that time, I have a feeling of not being anywhere far enough along for several goals I've pursued (Lieutenant in a clan, new sparring organization, warehouse ownership, starting one of three lesser merchant thingies). Mea culpa.
Then I go back to skill-maxing. :-[
I would try to bribe Templars in game with staff assistance. Maybe they will put a price on how much coin it would take for a Templar to make a public sparring ring in Meleth's Circle or something.
Shoot a request in and ask for some guide ace and steps they would like to see to implement it.
Also have you thought of just getting public access to the arena? The arena is a anything goes area inside the town, why not just see about getting access to it via in game means. Perhaps paying the owners of reigning gladiators to have them train you? Then there is less infrastructure that needs built up and you just use what's available but in a different way?
Give the reigning something to do other than wearing silks and drinking 90 percent of the time.
Edit: It would be like public skate hours at the arena, come one come all with the magical melodies of DJ Tektolnes and his crew!
Gladiators are not allowed to touch commoners because they are slaves. Except of course during Arena executions.
This is both an IC and OOC issue as gladiators are boosted to extreme skill levels because they are flavor PCs who serve in a flavor role. They're purposefully not meant to mingle codedly in combat with other PCs.
Quote from: bynja turtle on June 03, 2019, 09:30:26 AM
Gladiators are not allowed to touch commoners because they are slaves. Except of course during Arena executions.
This is both an IC and OOC issue as gladiators are boosted to extreme skill levels because they are flavor PCs who serve in a flavor role. They're purposefully not meant to mingle codedly in combat with other PCs.
Way to rain on the parade...
So you're telling me you think it would be unreasonable for a slave owning noble or merchant house to allow their gladiators to train folks?
Forget the skill gap, that is like saying a 10 day combat character shouldn't train a one day because they are too buff for them.
I don't think anyone would expect to win against a gladiator in training or otherwise.
While gladiators cannot strike commoners as they are slaves, they're not boosted to levels where well-trained standard PCs can't go shot for shot with them in a spar.
Source: I misbehaved.
Wait that's a rule?
I have little to no experience with actual slaves in game. I figured if you order a slice to do it, they do it or they get whipped.
Training and Sparring should come with a risk.
That risk should not be "omg spider ran into the room".
That risk should not be "we left the apartment door open and a patrolling NPC Solider arrested us"
The risk should be "I'm entering into this place where death is a VERY real risk I am taking, at the opportunity to better myself."
The risk should be "If I open up a sparring gym, and someone dies, I am held responsible for their death, and the Templars better believe I had nothing to do with it (even if I did)".
Opening up a PC warehouse to the public as a sparring gym is totally doable, so long as you can provide the necessary constant coin donations to the Templarate, the Guild, and that one Noble who needs their pockets lined too for some reason, on the basis that your organization actually MAKES money off this venture.
So I guess... custom-craft linen-wrap shirts with your Sigil on the back. Bonus points if it is a coiled snake, extra points if your PC is named Johnny Lawrence.
Strike first, strike hard, no mercy.
You can spar in alleyways? Basements. Abandoned storehouse. Have you guys not seen Fight Club?
Quote from: bynja turtle on June 03, 2019, 09:30:26 AM
Gladiators are not allowed to touch commoners because they are slaves. Except of course during Arena executions.
This is both an IC and OOC issue as gladiators are boosted to extreme skill levels because they are flavor PCs who serve in a flavor role. They're purposefully not meant to mingle codedly in combat with other PCs.
Goofy justification. Would rather they ICly be known as badass fighters whom the powers that be obviously don't want the plebs to learn from.
Quote from: Namino on June 03, 2019, 09:43:32 AM
While gladiators cannot strike commoners as they are slaves, they're not boosted to levels where well-trained standard PCs can't go shot for shot with them in a spar.
Source: I misbehaved.
You must have had a skill level in the top 1% of PCs, then. I don't think an average PC is going to have that opportunity or ability.
Metek: It's a slave ownership issue more importantly. The OOC rules regarding are also to protect players. If Gladiators could be used fragrantly against the playerbase you'd see some gladiator hit squads out there, undoubtedly. It's tightly controlled because it can be game breaking to have temporary/special PCs with such boosted skills.
Quote from: bynja turtle on June 03, 2019, 05:20:31 PM
Quote from: Namino on June 03, 2019, 09:43:32 AM
While gladiators cannot strike commoners as they are slaves, they're not boosted to levels where well-trained standard PCs can't go shot for shot with them in a spar.
Source: I misbehaved.
You must have had a skill level in the top 1% of PCs, then. I don't think an average PC is going to have that opportunity or ability.
Metek: It's a slave ownership issue more importantly. The OOC rules regarding are also to protect players. If Gladiators could be used fragrantly against the playerbase you'd see some gladiator hit squads out there, undoubtedly. It's tightly controlled because it can be game breaking to have temporary/special PCs with such boosted skills.
Now that makes more sense, of noble fluffy silk pants gets offended and sends gladiator hit Squad to kill someone and misses the rp of hiring real killers to do it.
Quote from: bynja turtle on June 03, 2019, 05:20:31 PM
Quote from: Namino on June 03, 2019, 09:43:32 AM
While gladiators cannot strike commoners as they are slaves, they're not boosted to levels where well-trained standard PCs can't go shot for shot with them in a spar.
Source: I misbehaved.
You must have had a skill level in the top 1% of PCs, then. I don't think an average PC is going to have that opportunity or ability.
Metek: It's a slave ownership issue more importantly. The OOC rules regarding are also to protect players. If Gladiators could be used fragrantly against the playerbase you'd see some gladiator hit squads out there, undoubtedly. It's tightly controlled because it can be game breaking to have temporary/special PCs with such boosted skills.
I believe the real reason is that weaponskills for gladiators actually cap quite low. What makes Gladiators gladiators is that their skillgain for offense/defense and (possibly?) other fighting skills gain faster, because otherwise new gladiators would never catch the champ. But a raw PC has a much shallower slope, but it can actuall go just as high if not significantly higher.
But yes. My PC was very, very strong at the time.
Massive derail.
Quote from: bynja turtle on June 03, 2019, 09:30:26 AM
Gladiators are not allowed to touch commoners because they are slaves. Except of course during Arena executions.
This is both an IC and OOC issue as gladiators are boosted to extreme skill levels because they are flavor PCs who serve in a flavor role. They're purposefully not meant to mingle codedly in combat with other PCs.
Respectfully, they are not. High skill combatant fights look much different. The gladiators dont block and parry enough, and they dont hit hard enough.
Quote from: Halcyon on June 02, 2019, 01:45:32 PM
I am very much hoping that this new clan sparring mechanic will create social opportunity and value for highly skilled combatants. Those champions dont have to train everyone evenly. A shifting reality of favorites, favors, and prejudice could make for more interesting military clans. It also creates recruitment possibilities. Recruiting a Rink or an Ish now is absolute coup for a leader and the clan they lead, even if that veteran combatant only stays a game year.
As with mages, it just means the skills/knowledge will be hoarded and then die out (e.g. magickal reaches). And there's already enough ass-kissing in the game with Templars, Nobles and the rest of it, do we really need to add a new dimension of it?
Quote from: Brokkr on June 02, 2019, 09:01:07 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 02, 2019, 05:20:11 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on June 02, 2019, 04:33:50 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 02, 2019, 04:40:26 AM
Recently a change
You do realize this change is multiple years old at this point?
Ok, put it this way then: it's a change I only recently became aware of.
Quote
So I am going to turn this around. How do we give you what you want, but keep truly exceptional combat characters exceptional, where it isn't just a matter of putting in the time/effort to become exceptional, from a skill perspective?
Get the clan imms to change the clan schedule and ease off the sparring requirement. Here are a few ideas to replace it:
1. Pest control of giant rats and such in the city. Each body collected earns a few coins of a bounty paid by an NPC, or maybe a crossbow bolt.
2. Scheduled patrol of the road west of the city, with the purpose of giving visitors to Menos some security at a specific time they can know about.
3. Quarry duty. Stone for repairs to the compound. If the work isn't done, the degradation becomes noticeable and inconvenient.
4. Alley patrol. Put in some invisible object that detects when the AoD enters and rolls a small chance for some type of random encounter to be spawned. It can have a list of possible encounters it sets up.
5. Sewer patrol. Give the AoD access to a new, separate subsection of the sewers. (Maybe they hook up to the main sewers but the way is blocked by a grate). Like the alley patrol, put in chances for various encounters at various spawn points, but for a different set than in the alleys. They don't all have to be beast #19382. There could be rare odds of something good happening, like a gemstone was flushed and now catches a soldier's eye.
Things like that. Add interest and variety to the schedule.
This sounds mostly like stuff we expect clan leaders to facilitate.
A clan leader can lead a patrol when he's around, but the clan schedule is around 24/7.
A clan leader can initiate a change to the schedule, but it will vanish when that clan leader vanishes.
A clan leader can offer a bounty (out of his own pocket) on rats, but he can't make it an official city-wide policy nor introduce new vermin to be hunted down now and then.
A clan leader can make words about walls needing to be repaired or whatever, but can't provide any visual evidence of such or repairs when they happen.
A clan leader can lead an alley patrol but not set up a random encounter there.
A clan leader can lead a sewer patrol but not set up a random encounter there.
All of these were examples of the basic idea: cut sparring and give clannies something more interesting to do. The staff has the ability, the question is, will the staff do it?
The Clan Leader (and others) can, however, submit requests with ideas for these things. And if things are being pushed IC they tend to get picked up by staff, especially recently.
Also, as a note, if gladiators were given 'extreme' skills, the fights would be very, very short.
Quote from: maxid on June 03, 2019, 08:20:44 PM
The Clan Leader (and others) can, however, submit requests with ideas for these things. And if things are being pushed IC they tend to get picked up by staff, especially recently.
The thing is that, by setting up random encounters that occasionally trigger from a sizable list when certain conditions are met, a degree of surprise and unpredictability is added to the game that is in addition to whatever the staff does manually. Even small things, like getting a boot stuck in the muck and having to leave it behind, add variety to the routines and can be groused about to other characters. The lists themselves could be changed now and then to keep it fresh, but once in place, it really wouldn't require a lot of work.
Quote from: John on June 03, 2019, 12:02:21 AM
Quote from: triste on June 02, 2019, 11:52:49 PMJust going to conclude with my original two thoughts:
- For those seeking an outdoor focused combat guild in Allanak, make Salarr (or literally any other merchant house) great again
- Public sparring completely resolves the issue of people being deprived of training opportunities in various contexts (small clans or independents) and is a better RP scenario than "let's spar in my apartment."
I hope some people in the game decide to stop complaining about how nothing is possible and everything is boring because nothing can be achieved without staff support. And hopefully actually try to create these opportunities within the game.
[EDIT]: Sorry. This came across as more confrontational then necessary.
It gets tiring to see this regular cycle among the players (either on this forum, discord or other forums):
1) The game never changes.
2) The game's boring because all the changes are staff directed and created and players are just along for the ride.
3) It's too hard to try to achieve anything ourselves.
4) Staff never do anything.
5) Go back to Point 1.
This thread is pretty much squarely at point 3. I await the cycle moving back to point 4 and then back to point 1 and on and on the cycle goes.
The GDB is great for creating a sense of community. It's also great for inspiration. It's also one of the worst parts of the game.
I hope that some people quit complaining about people being discontent with the status quo and attempting to initiate, or further a dialogue about stagnation.
1. The game changes, but that doesn't mean the changes are good. Let's remove hunters from merchant houses. Now, let's change the economy so it's harder to sell items hunters would normally harvest to force them to interact with the merchant houses. Staff can't control the availability of the two players that can actually buy the materials though right? So hunters have to travel to sell basic materials because the vendor is full. Which gets irritating and boring and generally isn't super worth it. So they stop hunting for the merchants. The merchants don't have materials coming in so aren't producing goods and are having to wait on Staff to load stuff into the vendors.
2. How is this not true? As is usually true, aside from quality of life recommendations. Use the above example, they realized selling stuff was pretty much a no go after they made the merchant inventories persist through restarts and so had to code in selling a random item WAY to infrequently. They attempted to address the issue but in a very mediocre way.
3. Arm is filled with some of the least helpful characters I've ever experienced. They are all self motivated murderous assholes without a shred of altruism.
4. Staff does stuff sure. But 90% of the content they created is designed for, or kept from the rest of us by role call roles. They do some awesome amazing story stuff, and some dick in a position of authority kills anyone that knows about it and hoards all the information for his own personal bid at power. See item #3.
5. See item #3
Quote from: Eyeball on June 03, 2019, 09:35:48 PM
The thing is that, by setting up random encounters that occasionally trigger from a sizable list when certain conditions are met, a degree of surprise and unpredictability is added to the game that is in addition to whatever the staff does manually. Even small things, like getting a boot stuck in the muck and having to leave it behind, add variety to the routines and can be groused about to other characters. The lists themselves could be changed now and then to keep it fresh, but once in place, it really wouldn't require a lot of work.
Sure that's a neat idea, but you're now volunteering staff's time to code it. I don't disagree with you, and I don't intend this to shut down conversation about potential new ideas (I'm a huge fan of that sort of discussion!) but it sorta comes across as 'If I were staff I would simply code in new exciting ideas all the time.' Currently, its partially on leader PCs to work with staff on this stuff. If they just coded in 'sometimes you lose your boots when walking in this area' people would complain, endlessly, or just start taking off their boots to move through it then putting them back on.
Also, in response to Downer - #3 is like a huge theme of Zalanthas. I've seen plenty of people willing to work together, but that fear of betrayal sometimes gets in the way. And that's a big part of theme. If anything, though, I've seen people be way too trusting pretty often.
But this isn't super relevant to the sparring questions.
Quote from: downer on June 04, 2019, 07:16:04 AM
1. The game changes, but that doesn't mean the changes are good. Let's remove hunters from merchant houses.
I've come back from a 3-4 year hiatus and I had no idea this happened. I don't know how this could possibly be justified, warehouses aside. Salarr and Kadian house hunting was great. Now I am even more fervent on this point and I am glad some people agree.
(deleted uninsightful input)
When I returned as well one of my first characters was a Salarr employee.
Without giving anything else away I too was shocked that GMH hunters are virtual now.
I think the idea is sound as in, hey give Indy hunters something to do, supply Salarr and Kadius.
But in practice, the GMHs have such large stockpiles of material and so few crafters that require things, it's not really working out.
Sure everyone wants Kryl shells or Mekillot shells but there are few people who can take them down to supply that stuff.
My hope is that Shabagos armor mission gets more things desirable on the low to mid side more sought after.
Also there is a bit of a vacuum on people buying the said shit from GMHs. There is only so many people to buy top tier armor, or super silky silk.
I think the solution would be work orders from VNPC folks and groups to drive demand of merchant houses.
Because it's a delicate balance, you don't want every two bit hunter who can hardly survive a scrab selling shittons of chalton bits or rat hides for tons of coins, but you also don't want to travel across half the known world to get a shipment of wood or norther critter bits to be offered 500 coins for their time.
Demand drives supply and right now there is a shitload of supply on low to mid and not a lot of demand.
Quote from: maxid on June 04, 2019, 10:37:48 AM
it sorta comes across as 'If I were staff I would simply code in new exciting ideas all the time.'
Brokkr asked me what I thought could be done.
QuoteIf they just coded in 'sometimes you lose your boots when walking in this area' people would complain, endlessly, or just start taking off their boots to move through it then putting them back on.
The idea is to create a list of possible events and encounters that
occasionally trigger under certain conditions.
Small chance at a given time,
small chance that the boot event is picked from the list when it does happen. Not enough so that everyone is cynically ready for it. And it's just an example of the wide range of events that could be put in.
Or it could even be a stack of events instead of a list. The top of the stack is picked to happen, then it's removed from the stack. Eventually the stack is empty, except that more events can be added by the staff at their leisure.
I think one of the problems with schedule is that it works really well for newer characters. So a change that means less sparring might be viewed, by those newer characters that want to work on their skills, as a negative. While older characters might think of it as a positive.
I am not sure where a compromise is reached except where it is replaced with activity, which is generally the hallmark of a good clan leader.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 04, 2019, 08:10:16 PM
I am not sure where a compromise is reached except where it is replaced with activity, which is generally the hallmark of a good clan leader.
In this, we agree. I'm a twink, I love sparring endlessly so long as people are getting dem gainz off it. However, having been in the Byn a lot, one of the things a Leader CAN DO is make changes whenever they please.
Sure, every day its the same training with the same idiots, and it feels like there is no progression. However, my last Byn Sergeant sincerely felt that when a Trooper was unable to run Training that day, it was the Sergeant's duty to make sure people weren't dicking around.
It is entirely within Leadership's discretion to see who showed up for sparring and either train them personally (why not?) or decide that today we're going to go play Tag the Raptor. If you see someone who is on relatively consistently, you know they aren't getting good gainz, and you want to keep them around? Help them get gainz. Spar with them personally. Tell them someone paid you to beat the shit out of some drunk who slurred their mother. Make shit up, but give them something to do.
If they really aren't able to get gains, even with sparring Trooper+, then I think it might be time for a contract.
Quote from: Riev on June 05, 2019, 09:51:56 AM
If they really aren't able to get gains, even with sparring Trooper+, then I think it might be time for a contract.
As Riev suggests, getting them killed off is also a solution.
:-X
Sparring is basically the same as it always has been since the defense nerf.
Non-elf PCs typically don't have enough agility and base defense to dodge a jman weapon skill plus base offense (if you organically trained them together--i.e. no chargen skill boosts), and parries and blocks don't count as failures.
The only real difference between the "good" fighters and the "bad" fighters in the Byn is how high parry, block, and disarm cap...because offensively, everyone gets stuck around the same point.
Using RPTs as a way to generate weapon/style skill gains is a silly idea, because the only critters out there that will actually dodge jman strikes while getting dogpiled by Bynners (e.g. ankhegs) are so dangerous that they'll melt through every noob on the crew, and sacrificing three noobs so a Trooper can get a few dodges isn't worth it.
Contract:
Sergeant needs a new Cat-o-Nine-Tails to beat the useless Runners with.
Support:
Trooper BigBuffs, being recently promoted to Mercenary.
Orders:
Bring me the tails of at least nine turaals, and one solid wood haft.
Pay:
You get to stay in my unit.
I doubt turaals are quick enough to dodge jman when they start suffering from the multiple attacker defense penalty.
Even if they are, the sheer number of fails you need to get any appreciable skill gain for a weapon/style skill is staggering, and it has to be spaced out over time. You'd have to run the same contract every RL day for a couple of RL months.
It's just not logistically feasible.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 05, 2019, 03:27:15 PM
I doubt turaals are quick enough to dodge jman when they start suffering from the multiple attacker defense penalty.
Even if they are, the sheer number of fails you need to get any appreciable skill gain for a weapon/style skill is staggering, and it has to be spaced out over time. You'd have to run the same contract every RL day for a couple of RL months.
It's just not logistically feasible.
I think you are either missing the joke, or just willfully arguing your own point.
The idea behind it all, being you send that one Trooper/Mercenary out there to get his fails, but keep the rest all penned in.
Not "bring out 12 Runners to kill a turaal for a tail".
You initially suggested the contract idea in what sounded like a serious way, then you later suggested a specific type of contract, again in what sounded like a serious way...so yes, I suppose I missed the joke.
At any rate...back to fixing the problem, right?
I think having basic bitch sparring plateau everyone at jman weapon/style is probably okay.
The real problem, as I see it, is that the method to get beyond that plateau makes no sense. It doesn't make sense that to be an elite-tier warrior, the formula is: 1) basic bitch sparring until your "easy" skills are at master and your weapon/style skills are plateaued at jman then 2) critter-grind your weapon/style skills to master.
There should be a more realistic method of breaking through the jman plateau that doesn't boil down to either critter-grinding or simply more sparring. I have a bunch of different ideas, but every one of them would be guaranteed to piss people off more than the current system does. The balancing act between "everyone is awesome" and "everybody is a scrub" is pretty difficult, once you start trying to put it on paper.
I'd love to hear some of those ideas, Synth. Post 'em up that's what the thread is for.
Method #1: The 5%ers
Get rid of the jman plateau and refigure the learning curve so that anyone can reach (master) in a single weapon skill and style by playing realistically, but it will only happen in a timeframe where the actual evidence-based survival rate for PCs is like 5% or less. So...if only 5% of PCs survive for 25 days played or 6 months RL time (whichever is longer), set the curve so that it's impossible to reach mastery before that, but it will happen easily thereafter. Want to master another style and weapon? Another 25 days played/6 months RL time (or whatever the timeframe is). This is a hard ceiling: you can hit the top of (advanced) in every one of your combat skills as fast as you can do it, but you will not advance any further until you hit the days played/RL time played bar.
Method #2: Only Elites are Elite
Lock mastery behind clan/organization doors. The only way to reach (master) in a timely manner is by sparring inside specially-coded clan sparring rooms, where the skillgain rate is dramatically improved. This represents the presence of virtual kung-fu masters teaching you virtually when you're in a coded clan. If you remain an indie grebber or thug, you'll forever be scrub-tier.
Method #3: Fog of War
Get rid of visible skill levels. Nobody knows how good they are, so nobody can complain about being stuck at jman.
Method #4: Make Defense Great Again
Bump humanoid base defense (or change the calculations without changing the actual skill levels) so that jman weapon skill plus jman-ish base offense only has a jman-ish chance of actually hitting.
Method #5: Make Parry and Disarm Standalone Skills
Decouple parry and disarm from weapon skills. The main reason having a shitty weapon skill sucks is that your defenses are also nerfed. Change the calculations so that having maxed parry with zero weapon skill functions exactly like having maxed parry with master weapon skill. Same for disarm. You still might be stuck on the jman plateau for weapon skills, but it won't suck quite as much.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 06, 2019, 12:03:56 AM
Method #1: The 5%ers
Get rid of the jman plateau and refigure the learning curve so that anyone can reach (master) in a single weapon skill and style by playing realistically, but it will only happen in a timeframe where the actual evidence-based survival rate for PCs is like 5% or less. So...if only 5% of PCs survive for 25 days played or 6 months RL time (whichever is longer), set the curve so that it's impossible to reach mastery before that, but it will happen easily thereafter. Want to master another style and weapon? Another 25 days played/6 months RL time (or whatever the timeframe is). This is a hard ceiling: you can hit the top of (advanced) in every one of your combat skills as fast as you can do it, but you will not advance any further until you hit the days played/RL time played bar.
Method #2: Only Elites are Elite
Lock mastery behind clan/organization doors. The only way to reach (master) in a timely manner is by sparring inside specially-coded clan sparring rooms, where the skillgain rate is dramatically improved. This represents the presence of virtual kung-fu masters teaching you virtually when you're in a coded clan. If you remain an indie grebber or thug, you'll forever be scrub-tier.
Method #3: Fog of War
Get rid of visible skill levels. Nobody knows how good they are, so nobody can complain about being stuck at jman.
Method #4: Make Defense Great Again
Bump humanoid base defense (or change the calculations without changing the actual skill levels) so that jman weapon skill plus jman-ish base offense only has a jman-ish chance of actually hitting.
Method #5: Make Parry and Disarm Standalone Skills
Decouple parry and disarm from weapon skills. The main reason having a shitty weapon skill sucks is that your defenses are also nerfed. Change the calculations so that having maxed parry with zero weapon skill functions exactly like having maxed parry with master weapon skill. Same for disarm. You still might be stuck on the jman plateau for weapon skills, but it won't suck quite as much.
I approve of All methods mentioned here.
I have long been a proponent of #2.
Even if not locked behind clan-access, some sort of quest/approval system. If you've been hard-stuck at Advanced for years, or it is in your character's goals to really master the skill of the longblade, then it is staff-limited. Maybe they need to be 'taught' by a PC/NPC who already has Master, and like languages, sometimes it just doesn't take.
Or the clan idea of needing to be clanned into "Swordmasters", where you have been virtually, or actively, training to become a master of skill. This way it can be tracked by staff, and be something to play off of.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 06, 2019, 12:03:56 AM
Method #1: The 5%ers
Get rid of the jman plateau and refigure the learning curve so that anyone can reach (master) in a single weapon skill and style by playing realistically, but it will only happen in a timeframe where the actual evidence-based survival rate for PCs is like 5% or less. So...if only 5% of PCs survive for 25 days played or 6 months RL time (whichever is longer), set the curve so that it's impossible to reach mastery before that, but it will happen easily thereafter. Want to master another style and weapon? Another 25 days played/6 months RL time (or whatever the timeframe is). This is a hard ceiling: you can hit the top of (advanced) in every one of your combat skills as fast as you can do it, but you will not advance any further until you hit the days played/RL time played bar.
Method #2: Only Elites are Elite
Lock mastery behind clan/organization doors. The only way to reach (master) in a timely manner is by sparring inside specially-coded clan sparring rooms, where the skillgain rate is dramatically improved. This represents the presence of virtual kung-fu masters teaching you virtually when you're in a coded clan. If you remain an indie grebber or thug, you'll forever be scrub-tier.
Method #3: Fog of War
Get rid of visible skill levels. Nobody knows how good they are, so nobody can complain about being stuck at jman.
Method #4: Make Defense Great Again
Bump humanoid base defense (or change the calculations without changing the actual skill levels) so that jman weapon skill plus jman-ish base offense only has a jman-ish chance of actually hitting.
Method #5: Make Parry and Disarm Standalone Skills
Decouple parry and disarm from weapon skills. The main reason having a shitty weapon skill sucks is that your defenses are also nerfed. Change the calculations so that having maxed parry with zero weapon skill functions exactly like having maxed parry with master weapon skill. Same for disarm. You still might be stuck on the jman plateau for weapon skills, but it won't suck quite as much.
I'm a big fan of #2. Like an absolutely massive, huge, giant fan of it. #1, 4, and 5 are also good. I dislike #3 personally but see why it has a draw.
Thanks for your thoughts Synth!
#2, and..
#3 until you reach master, that way the masters know they are master.
I'm okay with all of these except fog of war.
Because you really don't need master to kill folks or most critters I've starting to realize.
#2 another suggestion for gimping indies, why am I not surprised?
If you people all want disposable bodies for your clans, why don't you just insist that you have to pick one in the chargen process and be done with it.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 06, 2019, 02:24:53 PM
#2 another suggestion for gimping indies, why am I not surprised?
If you people all want disposable bodies for your clans, why don't you just insist that you have to pick one in the chargen process and be done with it.
I don't think it gimps indies, at least in my mind.
Its not "join the AoD or you can't be a master" its "be codedly brought into the clan 'Swordmasters of Zalanthas'" and based on your role in that tribe, you can get to "master" levels.
I would hate if you could only be a master by joining Tor/Borsail for 10 IC years.
Advanced weapons skill cap is so far from 'gimped' that I barely know how to frame a response.
I do not like any cept fog of war. But then I remember when you could see the % and later when no skill levels. I prefer no skill levels to % or current.
I specially hate #1 and #2...Which you might find odd if you know how long I keep PCs alive in and out of clans. But #1 simply has too many issues, the worst being that to likely MANY in the playerbase it would feel more like a punishment then anything. And it should be which ever is shorter not longer. Otherwise it really is a punishment to people that actually play a reasonable amount of time.
#2 Is the least realistic of any of them and just means, join clan Elite swords, spar ass off...leave.
#4 Meh Don't really like when messing with such things....lost too many PCs to it.
#5 Fine with it, I do not think it goes anywhere to the issue, but meh.
Can you explain how 'join a clan that actually provides real training in (sword/axe/etc.)play in order to actually master it' is unrealistic?
In real life you don't become a master swordsman by swinging your sword at deer a lot, or by fighting without training. You can only really achieve mastery by actually learning tips from someone else who has dedicated themselves to learning a weapon. Learning from someone is vastly more realistic than becoming a True Elite Master by fighting random animals in the wilderness.
Quote from: X-D on June 06, 2019, 06:33:43 PM
I do not like any cept fog of war. But then I remember when you could see the % and later when no skill levels. I prefer no skill levels to % or current.
I specially hate #1 and #2...Which you might find odd if you know how long I keep PCs alive in and out of clans. But #1 simply has too many issues, the worst being that to likely MANY in the playerbase it would feel more like a punishment then anything. And it should be which ever is shorter not longer. Otherwise it really is a punishment to people that actually play a reasonable amount of time.
#2 Is the least realistic of any of them and just means, join clan Elite swords, spar ass off...leave.
#4 Meh Don't really like when messing with such things....lost too many PCs to it.
#5 Fine with it, I do not think it goes anywhere to the issue, but meh.
The idea behind #2 is that you're in a clan that you -can't- leave. The only clans that would have weapon masters would be d-elf tribes, the Guild, the AoD, and noble Houses. The Byn aren't "elite."
And #1 isn't a punishment at all for people who aren't critter grinding. Under #1, if you're just Byn sparring and you survive for 25 days or whatever the number is, after that 25 days, you start advancing much, much faster...so critter grinding shouldn't be necessary. Waiting 25 days is only a punishment for us folks who know how to master a weapon skill in 15 days played (or less, if you start with buffs).
Quote from: Synthesis on June 06, 2019, 07:44:08 PM
Quote from: X-D on June 06, 2019, 06:33:43 PM
I do not like any cept fog of war. But then I remember when you could see the % and later when no skill levels. I prefer no skill levels to % or current.
I specially hate #1 and #2...Which you might find odd if you know how long I keep PCs alive in and out of clans. But #1 simply has too many issues, the worst being that to likely MANY in the playerbase it would feel more like a punishment then anything. And it should be which ever is shorter not longer. Otherwise it really is a punishment to people that actually play a reasonable amount of time.
#2 Is the least realistic of any of them and just means, join clan Elite swords, spar ass off...leave.
#4 Meh Don't really like when messing with such things....lost too many PCs to it.
#5 Fine with it, I do not think it goes anywhere to the issue, but meh.
The idea behind #2 is that you're in a clan that you -can't- leave. The only clans that would have weapon masters would be d-elf tribes, the Guild, the AoD, and noble Houses. The Byn aren't "elite."
And #1 isn't a punishment at all for people who aren't critter grinding. Under #1, if you're just Byn sparring and you survive for 25 days or whatever the number is, after that 25 days, you start advancing much, much faster...so critter grinding shouldn't be necessary. Waiting 25 days is only a punishment for us folks who know how to master a weapon skill in 15 days played (or less, if you start with buffs).
Without critter grinding, you literally have to just spar forever or kill folks. Which is fine, but not great for training, cause you can only kill so many players before you run out.
Quote from: Cerelum on June 06, 2019, 07:55:44 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on June 06, 2019, 07:44:08 PM
Quote from: X-D on June 06, 2019, 06:33:43 PM
I do not like any cept fog of war. But then I remember when you could see the % and later when no skill levels. I prefer no skill levels to % or current.
I specially hate #1 and #2...Which you might find odd if you know how long I keep PCs alive in and out of clans. But #1 simply has too many issues, the worst being that to likely MANY in the playerbase it would feel more like a punishment then anything. And it should be which ever is shorter not longer. Otherwise it really is a punishment to people that actually play a reasonable amount of time.
#2 Is the least realistic of any of them and just means, join clan Elite swords, spar ass off...leave.
#4 Meh Don't really like when messing with such things....lost too many PCs to it.
#5 Fine with it, I do not think it goes anywhere to the issue, but meh.
The idea behind #2 is that you're in a clan that you -can't- leave. The only clans that would have weapon masters would be d-elf tribes, the Guild, the AoD, and noble Houses. The Byn aren't "elite."
And #1 isn't a punishment at all for people who aren't critter grinding. Under #1, if you're just Byn sparring and you survive for 25 days or whatever the number is, after that 25 days, you start advancing much, much faster...so critter grinding shouldn't be necessary. Waiting 25 days is only a punishment for us folks who know how to master a weapon skill in 15 days played (or less, if you start with buffs).
Without critter grinding, you literally have to just spar forever or kill folks. Which is fine, but not great for training, cause you can only kill so many players before you run out.
The idea under method #1 is that you -will- advance to master by doing normal things (sparring), once you pass the 5%er timepoint. There are a variety of ways to achieve that: 100% chance to skillgain on every fail, parries/blocks count as fails, skillgain on headshots, skillgain on hits instead of misses, etc. etc.
And I guess I should clarify: advancing to the jman plateau (whether it's low/mid/high jman) would take exactly the same amount of time. Everything would be the same as it is now, until you hit the jman plateau AND you pass the 5%er mark. This would prevent people from rolling PCs and never training them, then suddenly becoming masters simply because they stayed alive long enough.
QuoteThe idea behind #2 is that you're in a clan that you -can't- leave. The only clans that would have weapon masters would be d-elf tribes, the Guild, the AoD, and noble Houses. The Byn aren't "elite."
No such thing as a clan you cannot leave.
QuoteAnd I guess I should clarify: advancing to the jman plateau (whether it's low/mid/high jman) would take exactly the same amount of time. Everything would be the same as it is now, until you hit the jman plateau AND you pass the 5%er mark. This would prevent people from rolling PCs and never training them, then suddenly becoming masters simply because they stayed alive long enough.
In that case...I change my mind on #1.
Quote from: X-D on June 06, 2019, 08:17:32 PM
QuoteThe idea behind #2 is that you're in a clan that you -can't- leave. The only clans that would have weapon masters would be d-elf tribes, the Guild, the AoD, and noble Houses. The Byn aren't "elite."
No such thing as a clan you cannot leave.
QuoteAnd I guess I should clarify: advancing to the jman plateau (whether it's low/mid/high jman) would take exactly the same amount of time. Everything would be the same as it is now, until you hit the jman plateau AND you pass the 5%er mark. This would prevent people from rolling PCs and never training them, then suddenly becoming masters simply because they stayed alive long enough.
In that case...I change my mind on #1.
Well, I mean...a clan you can't leave without suffering serious consequences.
Can I add a #6 option here?
#6: At the Summit of Corpse Mountain:
Proceeding to Journeyman takes precisely the same time and amount of effort as it does now. Advancement past Journeyman is impossible or very slow unless specific criteria are met. Any time you receive a skill up tick in a combat skill, the game provides you a very small amount of skill advancement such that it would take a very long time to ever get to master, and then it stores the tick in a 'latent' variable. If the criteria are met, then the stored tick drops and you get a larger boost of experience more similar to a normal tick. The criteria could be anything in this scenario but I prefer them to be things that can only be accomplished with major risk to your character's life -- dealing at least 40hp of damage to a creature with a total hitpoints > 200hp, receiving or dealing damage in excess of 25hp from a non-sparring weapon in a a single hit from/to a humanoid enemy, being struck with a non-training arrow, ect.
I prefer this idea because it means you can get 'good' by playing it safe. But to become GREAT, you have to take risks, participate in challenging contests and survive. The greatest warriors would have to go to war rather than sit cloistered in a sparring hall to achieve greatness. You have to cut your teeth on the edge of battle and learn from it to become a true monster. And since fighting creatures with > 200hp (mekillots and others) or being in situations where some other player is dropping 30hp crits with a serrated sword or a gith squad is peppering you with arrows are very lethal events that kill people with good reliability, people who achieve mastery become rare because many people die. For every grizzled veteran who can kill you with a twist of his wrist, you know there were five more who died on the climb. Elites are elite, rare, and command respect rather than simply being elite by the onus of time and hiding from risk of death.
I like the idea of clan locking master skill gains, honestly.
Master warriors(tm) can then risk their lives if they want by leaving the clan (usually a life sworn position) to go open up their own dojo in the Grey Forest, teaching noobs.
Quote from: Namino on June 06, 2019, 08:33:30 PM
Can I add a #6 option here?
#6: At the Summit of Corpse Mountain:
Proceeding to Journeyman takes precisely the same time and amount of effort as it does now. Advancement past Journeyman is impossible or very slow unless specific criteria are met. Any time you receive a skill up tick in a combat skill, the game provides you a very small amount of skill advancement such that it would take a very long time to ever get to master, and then it stores the tick in a 'latent' variable. If the criteria are met, then the stored tick drops and you get a larger boost of experience more similar to a normal tick. The criteria could be anything in this scenario but I prefer them to be things that can only be accomplished with major risk to your character's life -- dealing at least 40hp of damage to a creature with a total hitpoints > 200hp, receiving or dealing damage in excess of 25hp from a non-sparring weapon in a a single hit from/to a humanoid enemy, being struck with a non-training arrow, ect.
I prefer this idea because it means you can get 'good' by playing it safe. But to become GREAT, you have to take risks, participate in challenging contests and survive. The greatest warriors would have to go to war rather than sit cloistered in a sparring hall to achieve greatness. You have to cut your teeth on the edge of battle and learn from it to become a true monster. And since fighting creatures with > 200hp (mekillots and others) or being in situations where some other player is dropping 30hp crits with a serrated sword or a gith squad is peppering you with arrows are very lethal events that kill people with good reliability, people who achieve mastery become rare because many people die. For every grizzled veteran who can kill you with a twist of his wrist, you know there were five more who died on the climb. Elites are elite, rare, and command respect rather than simply being elite by the onus of time and hiding from risk of death.
Ah yes, the Musashi method. I'm a fan.
Musashi only fought in like 1 war and spent the rest of his time 1v10ing people/solo dueling (and sometimes cheating)
It's the Arm Special. Musashi is an Armer.
Ultimately I think it'd be cool when so and so walks into the Sparring Hall and slaps the shit out of everyone 3v1 you know he got that good because he rode the lightning instead of laid down in a field with turaal. It's a lot more admirable to be strong in a game where strength comes at enormous risks.
Quote from: Namino on June 06, 2019, 11:29:49 PM
Ultimately I think it'd be cool when so and so walks into the Sparring Hall and slaps the shit out of everyone 3v1 you know he got that good because he rode the lightning instead of laid down in a field with turaal. It's a lot more admirable to be strong in a game where strength comes at enormous risks.
So wait, Turaal aren't acceptable training partners? While carrying logs from the grey forest?
Quote from: Namino on June 06, 2019, 11:29:49 PM
Ultimately I think it'd be cool when so and so walks into the Sparring Hall and slaps the shit out of everyone 3v1 you know he got that good because he rode the lightning instead of laid down in a field with turaal. It's a lot more admirable to be strong in a game where strength comes at enormous risks.
This idea only works the narrative assumes the "hero" wins. When playing in a game like Arm with a world of static threat levels, an enormous risk is not a controlled CR+3 over the party average.
One of my Bynners was on a ride returning from the canyon of wastes at least more than a year ago. A staff member was dropping six to eight spiders on us a time. We were puffed up and happy, making many globs of green gelatinous meat. Then Albie (our reliable half giant) had to log out suddenly for a phone call. The next wave of over twelve spiders smashed the group apart, separated us, killed a couple runners, and had the Troopers below 20 hp each when Albie logged back in.
Staff members dont exercise alot of fine control, for any number of reasons. Show me a long lived pc, and I'll bet they avoided "enormous risks" for a good long while.
Quote from: Halcyon on June 07, 2019, 02:11:59 AM
Quote from: Namino on June 06, 2019, 11:29:49 PM
Ultimately I think it'd be cool when so and so walks into the Sparring Hall and slaps the shit out of everyone 3v1 you know he got that good because he rode the lightning instead of laid down in a field with turaal. It's a lot more admirable to be strong in a game where strength comes at enormous risks.
This idea only works the narrative assumes the "hero" wins.
The narrative relies 100% on the hero losing. And losing a lot. That's the point. Fifty heroes go out, one comes back. That's what makes them the top 2% and gives their high level of skill significance.
Quote from: Halcyon on June 07, 2019, 02:11:59 AM
Quote from: Namino on June 06, 2019, 11:29:49 PM
Ultimately I think it'd be cool when so and so walks into the Sparring Hall and slaps the shit out of everyone 3v1 you know he got that good because he rode the lightning instead of laid down in a field with turaal. It's a lot more admirable to be strong in a game where strength comes at enormous risks.
This idea only works the narrative assumes the "hero" wins. When playing in a game like Arm with a world of static threat levels, an enormous risk is not a controlled CR+3 over the party average.
One of my Bynners was on a ride returning from the canyon of wastes at least more than a year ago. A staff member was dropping six to eight spiders on us a time. We were puffed up and happy, making many globs of green gelatinous meat. Then Albie (our reliable half giant) had to log out suddenly for a phone call. The next wave of over twelve spiders smashed the group apart, separated us, killed a couple runners, and had the Troopers below 20 hp each when Albie logged back in.
Staff members dont exercise alot of fine control, for any number of reasons. Show me a long lived pc, and I'll bet they avoided "enormous risks" for a good long while.
In this specific situation, I can imagine it is hard to come up with an "appropriate challenge" when you have Albie on your side, vs when you don't. Its not about not exercising control, its that "3 spiders" doesn't equal a static challenge rating, and they may have already spawned those creatures before the Big Good PC had to leave.
Admittedly, its being the one that survives that makes you good, but often its the cowards that survive. So I don't think the narrative of "only heroes return" fits the spirit of the discussion.
Quote from: Namino on June 07, 2019, 03:23:52 AM
Quote from: Halcyon on June 07, 2019, 02:11:59 AM
Quote from: Namino on June 06, 2019, 11:29:49 PM
Ultimately I think it'd be cool when so and so walks into the Sparring Hall and slaps the shit out of everyone 3v1 you know he got that good because he rode the lightning instead of laid down in a field with turaal. It's a lot more admirable to be strong in a game where strength comes at enormous risks.
This idea only works the narrative assumes the "hero" wins.
The narrative relies 100% on the hero losing. And losing a lot. That's the point. Fifty heroes go out, one comes back. That's what makes them the top 2% and gives their high level of skill significance.
People here don't seem to understand probability. How do you define risk? A 2% chance of dying seems pretty low risk, but the character will have to go out
thousands of times to grind up far enough to really stand out. Even a thousand "risks" at that low probability means the odds of survival are 1 in 594 million or so.
No one will ever stand out if that's what is required.
The probability of death isn't quantifiable like that in a game like Armageddon. It's related to how people handle the situation and limit their exposure and make smart plays while participating in potentially lethal exchanges. You can't do compounded probabilities (ie, your example of .98 ^ 1,000) on something without an actual probability. You can hunt a Mekillot in a way that maximizes your odds of success or maximizes your odds of failure. But let's say that even after everything is done, out of every character who attempts it, 1 out of every 1,000 achieves <master> in a skill and 999 ends up a corpse.
That's good. More character turnover, more props to that one guy.
Quote from: Namino on June 07, 2019, 05:11:31 PM
...
Probability nut here:
If the character takes even a little risk each time, it will compound and they'll be dead.
If a character figures out how to eliminate risk, the system isn't working as intended.
Something needs to change, right?
Not in this case, Midori (fellow probability nut). That compounded probability is only true for probability that is held relatively static. Let's say I hunt a mekillot in such a way that I have a 2% chance of death. On average, I will be dead in 50 mekillots. My probability of survivng 1 000 mekillots to master is 1.68296736E−7 percent. So not good.
Let's assume if I limit my exposure as much as possible and bias everything in my favor so that my probability of death is .01 percent. Now my probability of survivng in 1000 trials is 90.48328936 percent. So pretty fuckin likely.
So why are neither of these real? Because I'm human and fallible. Some days I'll hunt methodically and carefully (99.99 percent) and other days I'll get lazy or tired or surprised (98 percent). The real probability of death is a composition not of a static percent but rather a range of percents that I as a hunter have control over based on how I go about hunting. If I end up throwing in too many risky hunts, I markedly decrease my survival likelihood, but that occurence isn't a randomly drawn distribution.
Encounters are a series of events. They can compound upwards or downwards, depending on the event (meaning you have to use negative percentages for events that increase your likelihood of survival). At any point during the encounter, you would then have a probability for surviving the rest of the encounter. Other than fringe cases, each encounter would leave you at 100% or 0% of surviving the event.
So completely possible to achieve very high rates of possibility of death at specific points in time, while the overall survive rate isn't impossible.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 07, 2019, 05:54:17 PM
Encounters are a series of events. They can compound upwards or downwards, depending on the event (meaning you have to use negative percentages for events that increase your likelihood of survival)
Yes, this. You can fight an enemy and do dumb shit and negatively bias your outcome or you can do smart shit and positively bias it. The range of probabilities for your series of 1,000 fights is contextual to the choices you're making in the moment as a player. That's why doing compounded probabilities here is inappropriate because it's treating a fight like a coin flip or a dice roll when it isn't.
The way combat works...every PC trying to attain master would die if they had to go out and fight a mekillot to skill up. With Giuseppe...I had 3 weapon skills mastered, master shield use, easily the most overall-skilled fighter I ever had...defense was amazing...sword/shield/parry all mastered, extremely good agility. One time, I went out sword and shield (his primary fighting style) and I got knocked down to 2hp by a fucking SCRAB with two back-to-back freak neck shots.
In general, big-game hunting wasn't something I would ever do solo even with his skills already at master. Mekillots can nearly one-shot you with a lousy foot hit. If they hit your head or neck as a human, you're fucking dead instantly. With human agility, everything tougher than about a tembo has the ability to fuck your ass up if RNGeezus gives it good agility, good strength, and a couple of good rolls.
The idea isn't to set the bar at 1-in-a-million. 5% or so is probably good enough.
Now, I have only had a few good combat characters, and those have always been against wildlife.
It almost seems to me that there is a hidden talent for killing critters versus humans.
I can walk out on a trained outdoors guy and kill spiders all day long. But let me try and fight a gith and it's a whole different story.
I know they will probably neither confirm nor deny, but it almost feels like the more you fight a certain critter, the better you get. I can bulldoze through most average wildlife, but run into something crazy and it wrecks me.
Quote from: Cerelum on June 07, 2019, 07:50:53 PM
Now, I have only had a few good combat characters, and those have always been against wildlife.
It almost seems to me that there is a hidden talent for killing critters versus humans.
I can walk out on a trained outdoors guy and kill spiders all day long. But let me try and fight a gith and it's a whole different story.
I know they will probably neither confirm nor deny, but it almost feels like the more you fight a certain critter, the better you get. I can bulldoze through most average wildlife, but run into something crazy and it wrecks me.
Depends on which gith you're fighting. There are some out there that are top-tier, and if you fight them straight-up with a human...it's a 50-50 shot even if you're a maxed fighter.
Particularly with their scripts, meks would be too dangerous, yes. They're currently just the scarecrow I'm using to theory craft how the system would work as most people just know them as big scary monster rather than have an understanding of the mechanics of the actual npc.
The actual system wouldn't be mek locked - advancement 'triggering' would be distributed to events that could happen in a wider variety of fights, so long as the fight is a serious one in nature.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 04, 2019, 07:18:05 PM
The idea is to create a list of possible events and encounters that occasionally trigger under certain conditions. Small chance at a given time, small chance that the boot event is picked from the list when it does happen. Not enough so that everyone is cynically ready for it. And it's just an example of the wide range of events that could be put in.
Or it could even be a stack of events instead of a list. The top of the stack is picked to happen, then it's removed from the stack. Eventually the stack is empty, except that more events can be added by the staff at their leisure.
Should be noted that this idea could help make the world less static for off-peakers too.
It's difficult to argue that scripted events make the world /less/ static in my opinion. Especially ones where you're just handed a sudden random loss because you forgot to 'remove boots' for the 2 rooms where there's a 1/500 chance to lose them.
Quote from: maxid on June 09, 2019, 02:26:23 PM
It's difficult to argue that scripted events make the world /less/ static in my opinion. Especially ones where you're just handed a sudden random loss because you forgot to 'remove boots' for the 2 rooms where there's a 1/500 chance to lose them.
Yes, that's right, fixate on the boots example because nothing else could be possibly done. Like having NPCs appear or a scroll with a picture on it appear or many other things. No, only the boot event could be done.
Right now, everyone knows what to expect when they enter an area. The exceptions are (1) when manual staff intervention occurs, and (2) when PC intervention occurs.
Having triggered events stacked means PCs could encounter unexpected events in the absence of (1) and (2). So, yes, it makes the world less static.
If folks think getting their boots yanked off is something unique, apparently they don't know what to expect.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 09, 2019, 03:29:45 PM
Quote from: maxid on June 09, 2019, 02:26:23 PM
It's difficult to argue that scripted events make the world /less/ static in my opinion. Especially ones where you're just handed a sudden random loss because you forgot to 'remove boots' for the 2 rooms where there's a 1/500 chance to lose them.
Yes, that's right, fixate on the boots example because nothing else could be possibly done. Like having NPCs appear or a scroll with a picture on it appear or many other things. No, only the boot event could be done.
Right now, everyone knows what to expect when they enter an area. The exceptions are (1) when manual staff intervention occurs, and (2) when PC intervention occurs.
Having triggered events stacked means PCs could encounter unexpected events in the absence of (1) and (2). So, yes, it makes the world less static.
Having a list of pre-configured events is as static with slightly more parameters is my point. You'd do more by adding more echoes to rooms to play off of.
Ahem
IS IT YIN OR YING, YOU GUYS ARE DRIVING ME INSANE.
Edit for clarity: Eyeball started it as yin and then Mansa repaired it in his reply to be ying and since then we've been oscillating the name of the thread back and forth depending on who is quoting who.
Quote from: Namino on June 09, 2019, 06:21:13 PM
Ahem
IS IT YIN OR YING, YOU GUYS ARE DRIVING ME INSANE.
Edit for clarity: Eyeball started it as yin and then Mansa repaired it in his reply to be ying and since then we've been oscillating the name of the thread back and forth depending on who is quoting who.
It's "yin and yang". I started with "ying and yang", then corrected the title later.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 09, 2019, 05:14:04 PM
If folks think getting their boots yanked off is something unique, apparently they don't know what to expect.
I'm sure the fifteen or so staff members could figure out something more original to add in then.
Quote from: maxid on June 09, 2019, 05:53:40 PM
list
Stack. Stack. Stack!
The event happens, it's popped off the stack, it's gone. The Staff push events onto the top of the stack (LIFO) or bottom (FIFO) as they please. So it's like a staff run event except that it is delayed from when they implement it.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 02, 2019, 04:33:50 PM
You do realize this change is multiple years old at this point?
And even before that change, folks hit the plateau, which if anything shifted slightly upwards by this change.
So I am going to turn this around. How do we give you what you want, but keep truly exceptional combat characters exceptional, where it isn't just a matter of putting in the time/effort to become exceptional, from a skill perspective?
Shift the plateau upwards. Currently it's at low/mid journeyman, depending a bit on your stats and whether or not you went out of your way to restrict offense gains (BTW, PLEASE FIX THAT LOOPHOLE). To me, "exceptional" does not mean
vastly superior to everybody but rather just, you know, an edge. So why does the distance from plateau to max span easily half of the skill spectrum? Why isn't the plateau at, say, mid/late advanced? Why isn't <master> what's held as exceptional? Why is everything above "decent" exceptional? That's the whole crux of the issue: you want us to accept that everything above the plateau is "exceptional" and we're not supposed to care about it. But the plateau is too low. If you don't have some special trick or unusual privilege, like being clanned with a long-lived heavy-combat char with high agility who perfectly matches your playtimes and is willing to spar routinely, the point where you get stuck is so low that it's just... absurd. We're talking one skill level above where you start. That's when you begin to need special tricks or rare circumstances to continue gaining.
Olympic records are not 200% above the competitive standard. The best mathematicians are not 200% more knowledgeable than their colleagues. The strongest bodybuilders are not 200% stronger than the other professional bodybuilders. But the difference between someone who has a friend on Discord with a maxed out fighter and someone who doesn't ends up being in that magnitude. The plateau for ordinary play is so low that those who have access to tricks that surpass it can end up with master while others end up stuck at journeyman based on nothing other than that one arbitrary factor. The difference is just too big to expect everybody to accept getting stuck there. It would be much more palatable if it was high advanced vs. master instead of mid-journeyman vs. master. There aren't enough ways to become exceptional. Usually it's down to something completely random like playtimes and clan population, not the deeds of your character. It just doesn't reflect reality in any conceivable way, and it's extremely punitive to players.
Can you imagine a game where 99% of the playerbase is supposed to accept being stuck forever at journeyman sneak, or jewelrymaking? Scan? Anything except the one line of skills that has a whole category of classes and entire clans devoted to it? Clans that very much judge and reward you based on your coded skills. It doesn't reflect reality
and it's bad for gameplay. I'm still waiting to hear what's actually good about that system. Why isn't master backstab exceptional in the eyes of the code, or lockpicking, or fireball? Why is this one line of skills - the "sparring skills" - so uniquely locked down behind insane levels of regulation and anti-player code? Why this misguided notion of exceptionalism that deviates from how life works? It's way easier and safer to train
magic spells than swordsmanship!
I don't need to see <master> everywhere I look, but I certainly take issue with a PvP-heavy game that limits my combat potential to <journeyman> and effectively asks me to cheat to overcome it. All of us know that the things you have to do to get past the plateau are, in most cases (barring being blessed with the aforementioned long-lived agile sparring slave, improbable as it is), things we would literally get punished for if caught. Meanwhile, I can play a crafter, a pickpocket, an archer, a backstabber, literally anything but a heavy-combat class, and get to be "exceptional" at the skills that my chosen class revolves around through simply playing the game the way that makes sense for my character. This is not something you can ask me to accept as the best way for the game to be designed. It just doesn't pass the most basic tests.
If you want there to be a special level of exceptionalism that most players are prevented from reaching, make it follow the same rules that govern other cases of perilous exceptionalism: gate it behind karma instead of nebulous code that works some of the time, and punishes players when it does, but can be overcome if one is willing to weigh the benefits against potential punishment. I don't
want to fight mantis in the dark or whatever, but I have never in years of play enjoyed the privilege of being clanned with someone who had really high combat skills and was actually willing to spar regularly, which is what it takes to do it legitimately. It's not something that can be held as an expectation. The game simply doesn't work that way. One of the most important aspects of Armageddon is the fact that you can accomplish things in a variety of ways as long as it makes relative sense, and this does not qualify. The hoops you have to jump through to surpass the combat plateau are just too weird and illogical, yet simultaneously trivial if you're just in the right place at the right time (with the right friends).
Right now whats the chance of someone "average" in combat beating the best combatants, like approximately, no tricks.
I feel it's much closer to zero than it realistically should be.
Then again maybe having a lesser gap between the two would encourage too much risk-aversion on all sides.
Greve, here is what Brokkr posted about it:
Quote from: Brokkr
Many games, if a PC can get to 100 skill in combat, NPCs can get to 150 or 200 in that thing. That is not how it works here for some key skills. Instead of capping PCs at the 100 out of 200 mark, Arm has what you call the plateau. The game as currently designed leaves the ability to get more skilled than that, but it becomes more similar to how games with open ended skills work, although instead of decreasing benefit over a steady skill gain rate Arm has taken the direction of making skill gains harder and harder to come by.
Arm could have taken the approach of capping skills below what they currently cap at for combat. For 99%+ of characters, it would effectively be the same. It would also mean that the effective skill learning life of a character was much shorter, which is not good in a game where some characters have 100+ DAYS of playtime. You may throw rocks at the Arm design, but when you are doing so I see very little in the way of being on the same page as the gameworld goals. Like making it so new characters see real progression, but 100+ Day characters likely still have some potential for progression, without letting them become game breakingly powerful?
The problem with that is, if we want to give endgame characters a sense of progression, why is it exclusively fighting skills which require such an inordinate, PITA and occasionally RP-breaking amount of time and effort to achieve mastery in, while what would realistically be far more difficult skills, like weaponsmithing, armormaking, jeweling, or uh, MAGIC can be mastered in a couple of hours. Plus, those skills offer you significantly more weight and power in the world than "swinging a sword good" actually does. Combat skills are good, yes. Good enough to gate them behind hours upon hours of grind? No.
Not to mention that the equalizers of poisons and stealth kills can render the absolutely inane grind that has to be done to master combat skills moot anyway.
Technically, some crafting skill do have an endgame.
You ever crafted a steel dagger? No? Then you haven't become a master weaponsmith, yet.
I'm totally fine that like 1/10 fighters ever becomes Meso-level ridiculous, but the other 9/10 better be dead from the risk it took to get there.
Combat, magick and stealth are the 3 big PvP trees (crafting and trading can be PvP, but economic PvP is a whole separate issue). Stealth consists of poisons and shadowy attacks that prey on people being unprepared. Magick consists of being prepared and ready for the fight ahead of you, knowing what to expect. Combat is about being ready for "just about anything" and either being able to fight it, disable it, or run from it.
But for some reason, combat FEELS like it requires 40days played with a lot of luck and playtimes with the 'right people', whereas the other 2 trees can be done 100% solo.
Quote from: Gracchus on June 10, 2019, 11:53:11 AM
The problem with that is, if we want to give endgame characters a sense of progression, why is it exclusively fighting skills which require such an inordinate, PITA and occasionally RP-breaking amount of time and effort to achieve mastery in, while what would realistically be far more difficult skills, like weaponsmithing, armormaking, jeweling, or uh, MAGIC can be mastered in a couple of hours. Plus, those skills offer you significantly more weight and power in the world than "swinging a sword good" actually does. Combat skills are good, yes. Good enough to gate them behind hours upon hours of grind? No.
Not to mention that the equalizers of poisons and stealth kills can render the absolutely inane grind that has to be done to master combat skills moot anyway.
A couple of hours? What!?
Magick especially needs a very long and boring grind, too. Despite all the hate magickers get for "just spamcasting a couple of days and coming out as pk machines".
Quote from: Eyeball on June 10, 2019, 10:48:08 AM
Greve, here is what Brokkr posted about it:
Quote from: Brokkr
Many games, if a PC can get to 100 skill in combat, NPCs can get to 150 or 200 in that thing. That is not how it works here for some key skills. Instead of capping PCs at the 100 out of 200 mark, Arm has what you call the plateau. The game as currently designed leaves the ability to get more skilled than that, but it becomes more similar to how games with open ended skills work, although instead of decreasing benefit over a steady skill gain rate Arm has taken the direction of making skill gains harder and harder to come by.
Arm could have taken the approach of capping skills below what they currently cap at for combat. For 99%+ of characters, it would effectively be the same. It would also mean that the effective skill learning life of a character was much shorter, which is not good in a game where some characters have 100+ DAYS of playtime. You may throw rocks at the Arm design, but when you are doing so I see very little in the way of being on the same page as the gameworld goals. Like making it so new characters see real progression, but 100+ Day characters likely still have some potential for progression, without letting them become game breakingly powerful?
This is a derail so feel free to ignore it, but I categorically reject the idea that NPCs and PCs have to be on different scales or have different caps from one another in order to prevent PCs from running over the NPC environment. Speaking from experience, it is perfectly possible to have everyone on a level playing field while still keeping NPCs as a threat that challenges advanced players without instantly vaporizing new characters, while drawing from the same distribution of skills and stats as the player characters themselves.
The reason this happens in Armageddon is because DIKU is notoriously 'step-tiered' when it comes to advancement. On Monday, you're getting dunked by an NPC which is on a higher tier than you. Then you hit a breakpoint and draw level for a brief moment on Tuesday. Then on Wednesday you hit another breakpoint and that NPC never touches you again. It's the consequence of a jagged advancement rather than a smooth one and is an artifact in a game that was built before that sort of game development foundation was fleshed out.
I agree that sparring schedules in clans are uber-lame. Sparring is an activity that is, frankly, boring the longer you stretch it out.
If someone has complaints about how much sparring it takes to master, I have no empathy.
If someone has complaints about a clan trying to force them to master things, I have so much empathy and encourage you to play indies or set your own terms upon hiring. Most employers are in need of bodies enough that they'll listen to you and hear you when you say you don't like sparring that much.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 09, 2019, 09:03:08 PM
Quote from: maxid on June 09, 2019, 05:53:40 PM
list
Stack. Stack. Stack!
The event happens, it's popped off the stack, it's gone. The Staff push events onto the top of the stack (LIFO) or bottom (FIFO) as they please. So it's like a staff run event except that it is delayed from when they implement it.
You aren't going to change my mind by endlessly repeating your bad idea, we just disagree. It's ok that we disagree. I don't think a stack of 'you lose your boots' or 'a piece of scrap paper with a drawing on it appears' or whatever else could fit on those stacks add much. You do. We're allowed to disagree.
Also, actually mastering your magick takes for-fucking-ever. Not as long as bludgeoning (master) but it takes a looooong time. And it's even more boring than sparring. And it's even riskier too. Same with thievery/stealth skills. The only thing without an endgame is crafting, which just gets spammed to (master) as fast as possible, granting a few people who app into Clans to make more money than god.
Quote from: maxid on June 10, 2019, 02:41:41 PM
You aren't going to change my mind by endlessly repeating your bad idea, we just disagree. It's ok that we disagree. I don't think a stack of 'you lose your boots' or 'a piece of scrap paper with a drawing on it appears' or whatever else could fit on those stacks add much. You do. We're allowed to disagree.
I repeated myself in the hopes you would grasp the difference between a list and a stack.
So, given a choice of having the same old emptiness with the same old NPCs all of the time, and having that but with something unexpected occasionally happening, you'd choose the former.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The direction of development here has pointed away from exploration/achievement and toward social/killer for a long time now.
Yeah, we disagree.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 10, 2019, 06:42:36 PM
Quote from: maxid on June 10, 2019, 02:41:41 PM
You aren't going to change my mind by endlessly repeating your bad idea, we just disagree. It's ok that we disagree. I don't think a stack of 'you lose your boots' or 'a piece of scrap paper with a drawing on it appears' or whatever else could fit on those stacks add much. You do. We're allowed to disagree.
I repeated myself in the hopes you would grasp the difference between a list and a stack.
So, given a choice of having the same old emptiness with the same old NPCs all of the time, and having that but with something unexpected occasionally happening, you'd choose the former.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. The direction of development here has pointed away from exploration/achievement and toward social/killer for a long time now.
Yeah, we disagree.
No need to be a dick. Your stack idea is silly to me, and I don't believe it would add much because it would end up being just another list to maintain. Your idea isn't half as clever as you believe it to be, and your smug 'heh, well the development is moving away from cool exploration' is neither useful nor accurate. Let people have differing opinions. There's no real need to respond to me any further. I'm not going to be responding to you on this topic anymore either. You're off topic anyway.
Y'all two.
(https://i.imgur.com/y8Ea8jB.gif)
Quote from: Armaddict on June 10, 2019, 02:18:08 PM
I agree that sparring schedules in clans are uber-lame. Sparring is an activity that is, frankly, boring the longer you stretch it out.
If someone has complaints about how much sparring it takes to master, I have no empathy.
If someone has complaints about a clan trying to force them to master things, I have so much empathy and encourage you to play indies or set your own terms upon hiring. Most employers are in need of bodies enough that they'll listen to you and hear you when you say you don't like sparring that much.
It's not about how much sparring it takes, it's about the availability of it. You make a character and join a clan only to realize that there simply isn't anyone in that clan who's got high enough combat skills to get you anywhere beyond decent. That's what happens practically every time I've tried to play a heavy combat character. On its own, the time it takes to reach the upper end of the combat skill spectrum is not an issue at all, it's perfectly fine (maybe even too fast)
if you have access to effective training. But in most cases you don't, and have no way to seek it out because it hinges entirely on the availability of characters with the right skills and the willingness/permission to spar with you on a regular basis, or the freedom to pursue what we've surely established to be twinky "PvE" playstyles that nobody actually likes to engage in.
I've never had a clan try to force me to master things, but it's a common occurrence for people to judge and reward characters based on coded skill. This is natural, it's not something that needs to be fixed because it's just the way human civilization works. The problem is that the "sparring skills" have that arbitrary roadblock where, through no fault of your own and often with no possible solution that you can personally pursue, you're just stuck forever at a level that's too low to be satisfactory, or to even make sense given how skills otherwise work in this game regarding things like branching and starting levels. Heavy combat classes start at apprentice weapons; getting stuck at journeyman after three days of play, and still having journeyman after 20d+ of frequent combat, is shit. It's an unacceptable feature.
Bruhs what is all this about, do you guys not make friends IC or just have insane play hours?
Finding sparring buddies with similar skill shouldn't be a problem unless you have unusually high playtimes yea,
in so far as your playhours are X you're going to gain against other people you find with X, generally speaking.
By definition this seems like a problem that would affect players more the higher the higher their X is, if you can't find sparring buddies at your X, your X is high as fuck, it seems to me.
There might be a case to be made for rewarding the upper tail of playhours players, but whatever that case may be it still seems to be affecting the combat prowess of a small af set.
I like the normalising tendency of this system, seems more realistic and encourages grouping up (realistically the thing that is literally in humanoid DNA) even if the typical high-fantasy take is to have dispropriately OPPP chars driving the story.
The problem I've noticed with "sparring buddies" is that I'll meet random dude b.
Random dude B will invite me to spar with him before I even remember his name.
1. That's fucking weird and super twinky.
2. I've killed people on accident sparring before, you think I'm gonna spar with some random dude I met in the bar?
Quote from: Cerelum on June 12, 2019, 01:49:35 PM
The problem I've noticed with "sparring buddies" is that I'll meet random dude b.
Random dude B will invite me to spar with him before I even remember his name.
1. That's fucking weird and super twinky.
2. I've killed people on accident sparring before, you think I'm gonna spar with some random dude I met in the bar?
Agreed on both counts. Gotta be the change you want to see, but in this case if you're lazy about it your character becomes a monster way way faster than someone playing 'right'.
Quote from: Cerelum on June 12, 2019, 01:49:35 PM
The problem I've noticed with "sparring buddies" is that I'll meet random dude b.
Random dude B will invite me to spar with him before I even remember his name.
1. That's fucking weird and super twinky.
2. I've killed people on accident sparring before, you think I'm gonna spar with some random dude I met in the bar?
I mean, I'm not advocating that, I always thought people kill and loot in those situations.
Well, I know how my next "merchant" is going to earn bank.
I'd assume the IC and part OOC tendency to profit counteracts the (very human) but mainly OOC temptation to twink here, we're not reaching a reasonable equilibrium wrt to sparring?
I think that's the crux of it, Oggo. Do you take up every IC chance to spar that you can, because OOCly you know there's no guarantee you'll find someone willing for another long span? Do you only spar with people in trusted environments?
Do you kill your sparring partners once they are useless to you, so that you are king?
Doesn't matter how many people you spar with if none of them can dodge you. You could spar five times a day and accomplish nothing. There's plenty of PCs who want to spar and almost none who can actually get you past the plateau, both because it's hard to do and because those who manage it tend not to want to spar with mediocre fighters anymore. Last time I was in the Byn, after just a couple of weeks the sergeant was the only one who could dodge me anymore but I managed to get them to spar with me a grand total of twice the entire time I was in the clan because everybody else wanted to do the same for the same reason. The entire clan's weapon skill progress was basically gated behind access to sparring with a single PC.
I really dont get it. If nobody can dodge no one, means they get consistently hit. If they get consistently hit, they defensive abilities get consistently better. If their defensive ability get consistently better, they eventually begin to dodge. No? Or are combat abilities get to a point where even a maxed out defense cannot allow the character to reliably dodge?
Quote from: Dar on June 13, 2019, 08:05:43 AM
I really dont get it. If nobody can dodge no one, means they get consistently hit. If they get consistently hit, they defensive abilities get consistently better. If their defensive ability get consistently better, they eventually begin to dodge. No? Or are combat abilities get to a point where even a maxed out defense cannot allow the character to reliably dodge?
This was my experience, though it might be outdated. I found someone who was a no lifer like me and we never missed a training session together. I wouldn't say the dodges flowed like milk and honey but our growth was lock-stepped -- my defense waiting for his offense, then his offense waiting for my defense and vice versa over and over again. I branched advanced weaponry on my warrior against a fellow PC, who single-handedly took me from jman all the way to master.
The real victims were our clanmaters who had to watch us spar for 15-20 RL minutes because that's how long it took us to get sufficient training at the upper echelons.
Quote from: Dar on June 13, 2019, 08:05:43 AM
I really dont get it. If nobody can dodge no one, means they get consistently hit. If they get consistently hit, they defensive abilities get consistently better. If their defensive ability get consistently better, they eventually begin to dodge. No? Or are combat abilities get to a point where even a maxed out defense cannot allow the character to reliably dodge?
While theoretically other clannies could increased their defense to the point where they can dodge you again, I've
never had that happen. If someone already can't dodge you, the amount of defense they'd need to gain in order to be able to dodge you often enough to matter is so high that I have never seen anybody do that in the kind of timeframe where it helps you. Like maybe six months later they'll be good enough, but that's kind of pointless. If someone can't dodge you, them gaining five points of defense isn't enough. Going from zero dodges to one dodge every other spar isn't going to help you much. You need to miss several times per fight in order for the gains to be noticeable at all, or you need to somehow have the freedom to spar for IG hours in a row which no clan really facilitates.
Someone can be totally unable to dodge you but still avoid most of your attacks via parry and block. Seen that plenty of times. The PC who won the last public sparring tournament couldn't dodge the attacks of my 5-day fighter
at all, but I could barely land a hit on him because he'd block and parry everything. He was a vastly superior fighter but the code didn't interpret him as worthwhile training for me because everything revolves exclusively around dodging. Being a plateaued fighter means you're a monster against animals because they can't parry and block, but against parry and shield use, you won't be particularly impressive if your progress stalled at journeyman level.
This is also why strength is so broken. Doesn't matter much against animals because they just stand there until dead, but since parry and shield use are so trivial to max out, you'll be up against that anytime you fight another PC. If you only land one hit in five, doing eight damage is pretty useless. The defensive power of master parry and shield use totally dwarfs the offensive power of journeyman weapons, yet that's usually the constituents of any given PC vs. PC fight. Just look at arena fights, they often go on and on for minutes and couldn't possibly have resulted in death if the fighters weren't prevented from escaping--unless high strength is involved, which as we all know completely turns combat balance on its head.
The other annoying thing about having to fail to improve is that people are always saying (IC), "Hurr-durr, why are you hunting that thing you know you can't kill 100% of the time?"
BECAUSE IF I DON'T LET IT KICK MY ASS, I LITERALLY WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO HUNT IT, EVER, AT ALL, NO MATTER WHAT
The code has been changed so there is always a chance you will be dodged. Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.
Quote from: John on June 14, 2019, 01:17:22 PM
The code has been changed so there is always a chance you will be dodged. Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.
That is not entirely true. While yes, there is a chance to miss at all times, if your strength is high enough you only get like 5 swings against someone before they are either dead or running and that isn't enough attempts to proc that forced miss.
Quote from: John on June 14, 2019, 01:17:22 PM
The code has been changed so there is always a chance you will be dodged. Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.
I haven't seen that play out in a way that would be in any way effective for training, to be honest. Maybe it's rolling a natural 1 on a d100 or something? It's definitely not a d20.
Quote from: John on June 14, 2019, 01:17:22 PM
The code has been changed so there is always a chance you will be dodged. Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.
It's more like a 1/500 chance
Quote from: Synthesis on June 14, 2019, 05:49:18 PM
Quote from: John on June 14, 2019, 01:17:22 PM
The code has been changed so there is always a chance you will be dodged. Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.
I haven't seen that play out in a way that would be in any way effective for training, to be honest. Maybe it's rolling a natural 1 on a d100 or something? It's definitely not a d20.
I would disagree.
It was meant to address situations where folks had literally no chance to get a chance at learning, especially in clans where they were long lived. Not to replace the most effective ways of training overall.
So for a 50 day character in a clan, yes, this could significantly change their effectiveness.
Oh for sure, it grants a chance to continue skilling up. 100%. It's just not a good chance, And it shouldn't be a good chance either. It's entirely unrelated to skill level, you shouldn't be missing every few swings against an entirely untrained opponent if you have been in the Byn with a Fighter for 30 IG years and hundreds of days played.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 14, 2019, 08:09:53 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on June 14, 2019, 05:49:18 PM
Quote from: John on June 14, 2019, 01:17:22 PM
The code has been changed so there is always a chance you will be dodged. Therefore complaints about fighting opponents who cant dodge you seem outdated.
I haven't seen that play out in a way that would be in any way effective for training, to be honest. Maybe it's rolling a natural 1 on a d100 or something? It's definitely not a d20.
I would disagree.
It was meant to address situations where folks had literally no chance to get a chance at learning, especially in clans where they were long lived. Not to replace the most effective ways of training overall.
So for a 50 day character in a clan, yes, this could significantly change their effectiveness.
The definition of "significant change" with respect to "literally impossible" could cover a "significant range" of usefulness...beginning with "snowball's chance in hell."
I reckon if someone can only dodge you on that 1% chance or whatever it is, their defense is probably low compared to your offense and your chance to gain will be minimal/zero. Either way, it doesn't seem very impactful. Seems like it'll gain you one point per month if you're lucky. I mean, unless you're on some kind of absurd skillgrinding marathon, you don't actually swing your weapon that many times per day. It's not like the number is in the hundreds. To seriously get anything out of sparring, you need several dodges per spar/fight. One dodge every ten spars gets you basically nowhere.
The problem won't be fixed by these little fine-tuning adjustments. It needs a serious overhaul to combat skillgains. The reliance on dodges and the way your offense skill becomes your own enemy is what creates this whole issue, and since those things are neither good for gameplay nor anywhere close to realistic, I think it should be looked into properly. Right now, you can build an incredibly good foundation for your character's coded power by just using one of the several self-imposed methods, all of which are pretty egregiously twinky, to hinder your offense gains so that your other skills aren't held back by it. And then you catch up later with ease since offense is so simple to raise, which is why you get screwed over by it if you let it.
Every time you go to unarmed training or use an unfamiliar weapon, you probably gain a point in offense but without a corresponding gain in your main weapon skill, and that pushes the plateau for that skill down to a lower level. It's a game where the more experienced you are as a fighter, the harder it becomes to branch out to multiple weapon types. That's just the opposite of how reality works. Combat skillgains totally stop resembling real-life martial training around the halfway point.
Brief skills on.
Fixed.
Quote from: Armaddict on June 16, 2019, 10:35:39 AM
Brief skills on.
Fixed.
Brief skills on don't work when you're trying to branch backstab on an enforcer.
Speaking of which...it's been a while since the new classes went in. Has anyone actually managed to organically (no starting skill bumps, no subclass start) branch backstab on an enforcer yet?
Quote from: Synthesis on June 16, 2019, 12:46:49 PM
Quote from: Armaddict on June 16, 2019, 10:35:39 AM
Brief skills on.
Fixed.
Brief skills on don't work when you're trying to branch backstab on an enforcer.
Speaking of which...it's been a while since the new classes went in. Has anyone actually managed to organically (no starting skill bumps, no subclass start) branch backstab on an enforcer yet?
Pretty sure it's been stated numerous times that such a goal was to be considered extremely hard to reach. I think that pretty much says that reaching it through sparring/training is pretty in line with how it works currently.
Quote from: Armaddict on June 16, 2019, 11:01:27 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on June 16, 2019, 12:46:49 PM
Quote from: Armaddict on June 16, 2019, 10:35:39 AM
Brief skills on.
Fixed.
Brief skills on don't work when you're trying to branch backstab on an enforcer.
Speaking of which...it's been a while since the new classes went in. Has anyone actually managed to organically (no starting skill bumps, no subclass start) branch backstab on an enforcer yet?
Pretty sure it's been stated numerous times that such a goal was to be considered extremely hard to reach. I think that pretty much says that reaching it through sparring/training is pretty in line with how it works currently.
I think the point of the entire thread is that it's not "extremely hard." It's impossible unless you sell your soul to the powergaming gods and go out to do dumb shit.
If they don't understand that by now, they never will.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 17, 2019, 04:55:03 AM
I think the point of the entire thread is that it's not "extremely hard." It's impossible unless you sell your soul to the powergaming gods and go out to do dumb shit.
Its the "dumb shit" part that irks me the most. If you want to see progression on your combat character, you either have to move at a crawl and put yourself in immense Byn-Contract risk, or go do really stupid stuff to get your skills up. Even before we could see our skill levels, if you weren't being dodged, you were wasting your time. I don't even care if I branch, I want to make sure that the time I spend on this game is rewarding to me. Rewarding includes coded advancement or the perception of it.
So when you said:
QuoteI think the point of the entire thread is that it's not "extremely hard." It's impossible unless you sell your soul to the powergaming gods and go out to do dumb shit.
...I went back to the beginning of the thread to see what its point was.
Seems the point wasn't that it's impossible to branch backstab on an enforcer, or even to get master skills. It was the desire for sparring to be de-emphasized since the plateau of 'sparring ready advancement', even being higher than it was before, was just not that fun to push past.
As for stupid shit, I'm afraid that things like 'stilt lizard sparring' and such are not you being forced to do stupid shit. It's a mechanic workaround to an intended problem. You aren't forced into doing the mechanic workaround, you've just prioritized something so high that you're willing to do said things. By that classification, 'stupid shit' will always be done the moment that it's found as another mechanic workaround to the same intended problem.
Every person who rolls an enforcer, or any heavy combat type, or any combat type whatsoever, has the intention and desire for them to become the best they can get to in said combat. The whole point of rarity is that yes, dangerous shit will be required to actually get there. In an utterly danger-deprived game and a moving goalpost of what is and isn't acceptable danger, I can understand more and more as a non-player why things had to be made around time-investment-barriers than other things.
As far as the -point of the thread- though, I agree that sparring-heavy clans could use a healthy dose of 'slow your roll' to let people do other more inspiring things that naturally channel danger, progression, excitement, and story into a single seam.
Quote from: Armaddict on June 17, 2019, 07:15:40 PM
So when you said:
QuoteI think the point of the entire thread is that it's not "extremely hard." It's impossible unless you sell your soul to the powergaming gods and go out to do dumb shit.
...I went back to the beginning of the thread to see what its point was.
Seems the point wasn't that it's impossible to branch backstab on an enforcer, or even to get master skills. It was the desire for sparring to be de-emphasized since the plateau of 'sparring ready advancement', even being higher than it was before, was just not that fun to push past.
As for stupid shit, I'm afraid that things like 'stilt lizard sparring' and such are not you being forced to do stupid shit. It's a mechanic workaround to an intended problem. You aren't forced into doing the mechanic workaround, you've just prioritized something so high that you're willing to do said things. By that classification, 'stupid shit' will always be done the moment that it's found as another mechanic workaround to the same intended problem.
Every person who rolls an enforcer, or any heavy combat type, or any combat type whatsoever, has the intention and desire for them to become the best they can get to in said combat. The whole point of rarity is that yes, dangerous shit will be required to actually get there. In an utterly danger-deprived game and a moving goalpost of what is and isn't acceptable danger, I can understand more and more as a non-player why things had to be made around time-investment-barriers than other things.
As far as the -point of the thread- though, I agree that sparring-heavy clans could use a healthy dose of 'slow your roll' to let people do other more inspiring things that naturally channel danger, progression, excitement, and story into a single seam.
Once again, you missed the point.
My point isn't about enforcers in particular. Enforcers are an example of a general problem. A problem which, clearly, the thread is about.
What would be a good alternative to the current system?
Quote from: Dar on June 18, 2019, 05:23:16 PM
What would be a good alternative to the current system?
It's hard to come up with any exact solutions without looking at the game's code, but here are the main problems:
1) Getting your attacks dodged is the only way to gain. Blocks and parries do nothing at all
2) Almost nothing can dodge you once you hit the plateau, which occurs unreasonably early
3) Offense is your enemy because any points gained in offense are points you won't gain in weapon skills
4) Unlike all other skills, high levels of combat prowess are gated behind questionable ideals of "exceptionalism"
I could snap off easy-sounding "fixes" to all of that, but if it all changed at the same time, it would probably cause a bunch of problems. Based on my opinion on what's actually feasible, here's what I would see done:
Add blocks and parries to things that can raise skills, with a lower chance. We can keep the thing where your offense needs to be within x of their defense to gain, just so people don't max out on easy opponents. There's just no reason why only a dodge should work. This is the root of the whole problem.
If the above becomes reality, #2 is partially solved, but animals still tend to be really bad at dodging. This could do with a bump across the board. They don't necessarily need to dodge you all the way to master, but it's kind of silly how supposedly deadly wildlife becomes sitting ducks against any middling fighter. Feels more like fighting a walrus than a lion or dinosaur. And I would add something that makes fighting megafauna (meks, mets, etc.) effective for learning. It's silly that the most dangerous beasts are worst for skillgains.
Don't really know what to do with offense. There are so many problems with this skill. Sure, being great with a sword should mean you're also at least decent with an axe; but it shouldn't simultaneously make it way harder to get better with the axe. I liked it better the way it worked on Shadows of Isildur and its successors: offense is just half of your highest weapon skill, and is used when wielding a weapon whose skill you don't have or is lower than your offense value. Can still be used in scripts and skill checks. It'll then represent your general combat experience without interfering significantly with skill progression.
#4 is more of a cultural thing, but Armageddon needs to stop being so frightened of mundane combat. Swinging a sword accurately is
very far down on the list of mechanics that facilitate playerkilling. It's just not that perilous to the game if characters can become skilled warriors through normal, realistic means. There's simply no need for these insanely strict regulations and hamfisted notions of exceptionalism.
It makes no sense to hold weapon skills to such a harsh standard that anything above journeyman can somehow be called exceptional, especially when this is applied to no other skills in the game. You can max out things like backstab, archery, poisoning and spells with ease and nobody bats an eye when someone masters literally every relevant skill on their sheet aside from the combat ones. Hell, that almost happens automatically if your character lives for any length of time. Would you say that there's a perilous excess of characters with maxed backstab murdering people left and right? Well, it's both far deadlier than master slashing and much, much easier to achieve. So why the stigma against weapon skills?
At one extreme, you could have skills progress based on use (not failure) where the chance of increasing decreases exponentially as your skill increases:
chance = exp(-current_skill/skillgain_constant)
where skillgain_constant can be tweaked per skill to make that skill advance slower or quicker.
That's giving you roughly the same exceptionality, where the gate is simply a nonlinear function of "number of days sparred." It's not amazingly good (yes, as described fighting chalton for 100 days will make you a master), but it's not the worst thing imaginable.
Probably some kind of hybrid between this and the difficulty-based (fail-based) system would be pretty good. To my brain it makes a lot of sense to make the exponential power dropoff explicit. (That we don't do this is why crafting skills are stupid easy to master.)
Quote from: Greve on June 18, 2019, 06:18:23 PM
...
#4 is more of a cultural thing, but Armageddon needs to stop being so frightened of mundane combat. Swinging a sword accurately is very far down on the list of mechanics that facilitate playerkilling. It's just not that perilous to the game if characters can become skilled warriors through normal, realistic means. There's simply no need for these insanely strict regulations and hamfisted notions of exceptionalism.
It makes no sense to hold weapon skills to such a harsh standard that anything above journeyman can somehow be called exceptional, especially when this is applied to no other skills in the game. You can max out things like backstab, archery, poisoning and spells with ease and nobody bats an eye when someone masters literally every relevant skill on their sheet aside from the combat ones. Hell, that almost happens automatically if your character lives for any length of time. Would you say that there's a perilous excess of characters with maxed backstab murdering people left and right? Well, it's both far deadlier than master slashing and much, much easier to achieve. So why the stigma against weapon skills?
More and more I'm convinced that the weapon skills need to either have their prowess indicators removed or modify to be a different style of indicator, similar to shifting the 'appearance' of master down to advanced, and the advanced down to journeyman.
Based on proposed solutions, a lot of the playerbase would be happy if master was coded to appear at around the plateau and simply cap weapons skills a few points above the plateau.
Another solution is for players to stop obsessing over seeing master and being happy when they reach the point where they can kill all wildlife in sight. I doubt the vocal GDB posters will let that happen though.
Quote from: mansa on June 18, 2019, 07:25:02 PM
More and more I'm convinced that the weapon skills need to either have their prowess indicators removed or modify to be a different style of indicator, similar to shifting the 'appearance' of master down to advanced, and the advanced down to journeyman.
Yeah, great, the Byn, Garrison etc. become clans where everyone is a "master" swordsman after a month. That won't satisfy anyone, it will just feel extremely phony and turn the spar, spar, spar schedule into even more drudgework with even the sense of hope gone.
All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?
Quote from: Eyeball on June 18, 2019, 07:59:30 PM
All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?
Is the point to defeat all NPCs in the game?
Quote from: mansa on June 18, 2019, 08:06:43 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 18, 2019, 07:59:30 PM
All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?
Is the point to defeat all NPCs in the game?
Is the point to slog away in a repetitive schedule for nothing?
Quote from: Eyeball on June 18, 2019, 08:10:01 PM
Quote from: mansa on June 18, 2019, 08:06:43 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 18, 2019, 07:59:30 PM
All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?
Is the point to defeat all NPCs in the game?
Is the point to slog away in a repetitive schedule for nothing?
What are you trying to accomplish? What's the end state you're playing for?
Quote from: mansa on June 18, 2019, 08:16:16 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 18, 2019, 08:10:01 PM
Quote from: mansa on June 18, 2019, 08:06:43 PM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 18, 2019, 07:59:30 PM
All of this just so the staff can load NPCs that are sure to have the upper hand? Isn't there a better way?
Is the point to defeat all NPCs in the game?
Is the point to slog away in a repetitive schedule for nothing?
What are you trying to accomplish? What's the end state you're playing for?
I'm not going to write a thesis. ;) Bottom line: I want to have fun. Performing an enormously repetitive activity isn't fun after a while, and if there's not even a coded benefit to help with a character's goals, it doesn't help things to be fun later either.
EDIT: but here's one example. Let's say a character dreams of sailing the Silt Sea, but knows there are horrendous creatures there, and that to avoid falling off a skiff, it's necessary to take a certain step which inhibits the ability to defend oneself. Such a character will definitely want to toughen up sufficiently to face the challenge.
As a guy who plays pretty much outdoors types exclusively, with a magicker thrown in here and there.
I personally am happy once I can survive the standard critters in the game. Scrab, spiders, raptors, beetles ect.
I get scared everytime I fight something bigger and badder, because I know that's the only way to get my skills higher, but death is almost assured, which sucks.
I do wish you could train on NPC's better and with a more gradual scale versus the sharp incline you have to train with now.
Quote from: Armaddict on June 17, 2019, 07:15:40 PM
understand more and more as a non-player
Lol sick, dude.
Not sure why people who don't play feel the need to weigh in on game mechanics.
As for the discussion here: I'm glad it's finally being had in this capacity. Everyone knows the issues and everyone is unhappy with it one way or the other. The vocal minority who are fine with it are apparently not interested seeing a change because they can't understand the psychology of others.
Mainly the reason I want to make master "attainable" is so that you don't have unstoppable PCs who used the "one crazy trick you wouldn't believe- staffers hate him!" And now even though you have the strength of an entire clan behind you it's unfeasible to attack (or even cross them) because they are willing to twink and you aren't. It's laughably unrealistically. But the fact of the matter is that realism is just one of the scapegoats apologists of the current system will use. It immediately becomes an irrelevant concern once you point out how unrealistic it actually is and is promptly discarded in favor of a different argument such as the classic "what's the point of being strong?".
Honestly, why not gate the whole thing behind time? Master is completely achievable, but your PC can only learn so much in an IG year and then once lowsun rolls around again standstill is lifted and you're back to learning again until you hit your limit for the next IG year.
Hell! I'd even be open to gating and then allowing players past certain thresholds after certain staffers give a wave of the wand. That way anyone could have the opportunity to improve. That said that's one hell of a way to get favoritism accusations.
Is it true that a "good chunk" of master tier badasses are getting there by these uber twinking techniques this thread has allusions to.
Or is it the main issue that players are losing a sense of progression. So then the idea that progression can be done by dedicated twinkery is just salt on the wound?
The former has a pretty simple solution of closing these loopholes which afaik shouldn't be too hard.
Are folks talking about weapon skills? Or are they talking weapons+off+def? Very different conversations.
With weapon skills, the point of "master" shifted up with the new classes. It is roughly at the point that warriors used to truly max (vs seeing "master"). I probably should have left it where it was, but didn't want folks to loose potential they had with the advanced weapon skills.
So, roughly, now you have folks that used to see "master" see "advanced". Folks who see "master" now would be those who had maxed a weapon (or more), which was always a very low number at any one time, at least while I've been around (think less than 10 at any one time, usually less than 5).
Quote from: oggotale on June 19, 2019, 05:07:38 PM
Is it true that a "good chunk" of master tier badasses are getting there by these uber twinking techniques this thread has allusions to.
Or is it the main issue that players are losing a sense of progression. So then the idea that progression can be done by dedicated twinkery is just salt on the wound?
The former has a pretty simple solution of closing these loopholes which afaik shouldn't be too hard.
I guess, yes, some of it is what you consider bad ass, however there are PCs that can become some powerful that nothing you can throw at them will reasonably kill them. If a single PC fights off and kills an entire clan of other PCs (whether it was through twinking or not) is that realistic? Is it fun? Is it a good portrayal of murder, corruption, and betrayal? Is it within the realm of fair we are shooting for? I'd say no to most of those. Maybe it's fun for the meta-PC. But when five clannies can't figure out how to take down one mundane unaffiliated there's a problem, twinking or no. If it doesn't rest in how strong it one pc is it exists in how much sparring-mudsexing-sparring a clan must do to confidently catch up.
This was a real occurrence. Five PCs were terrified to take down one singular threat. What a boring PC it must be for that player.
<<SNIP>> Moderated by Delirium, please don't refer to specific PCs like that, especially semi-recent ones.
How hard is a poison backstab thoe.
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on June 19, 2019, 04:35:52 PM
Mainly the reason I want to make master "attainable" is so that you don't have unstoppable PCs who used the "one crazy trick you wouldn't believe- staffers hate him!" And now even though you have the strength of an entire clan behind you it's unfeasible to attack (or even cross them) because they are willing to twink and you aren't. ....
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on June 19, 2019, 05:39:12 PM
... however there are PCs that can become some powerful that nothing you can throw at them will reasonably kill them.
If a single PC fights off and kills an entire clan of other PCs (whether it was through twinking or not) is that realistic?
Is it fun?
Is it a good portrayal of murder, corruption, and betrayal?
Is it within the realm of fair we are shooting for?
I'd say no to most of those. Maybe it's fun for the meta-PC. But when five clannies can't figure out how to take down one mundane unaffiliated there's a problem, twinking or no.
If it doesn't rest in how strong it one pc is it exists in how much sparring-mudsexing-sparring a clan must do to confidently catch up.
This is a different conversation that I don't think has been brought up much in this thread. It kinda answers my questions of "Why am I trying to become powerful?" Is it,
"I'm trying because there are other characters who are powerful, more powerful than I, and I want to be competitive in combat and have a chance at defeating them?"The skill progression really is about - trying to be
better than than trying to kill x mobs.
Is that right? Player vs Player conflict?
To speak to GDM's point (I think) ...
If that meta-PC is one of a precious few who value story and narrative over "winning" then you're going to get some fun if they declare war on you/your clan.
But current game mechanics tend to lean into the powergamer becoming that meta-pc rather than the ones who value the character arc and narrative.
It's not a matter of karma. Some of the scariest hijinks I've been involved in I initiated with no-karma combos.
I want to be the best when I do something. If I roll out of chargen with some wretched horror then I wanted to be the wretchediest. If I roll out with someone weak but devious, I want to be the most devious. If I roll out with someone whose main thing is combat, then I want to be as good as I can reasonably get at combat. I don't particularly want to be the guy in the group everyone knows they have to rescue, unless I planned to be that way from the start.
Attempting to define why people want to achieve 100% mastery of their skill is immaterial in my opinion. The fact that people wish to do this is an inherent facet of humanity. People climb mountains because they're there, lift heavy ass weight too see what they can do, learn to solve rubix cubes as fast as possible, and so on and so on. The desire to push to the limits of the possible is absolutely inherent in the human psyche and that extends into the video games we play. People collecting all the optional stars in Mario games, going for S rank clears in Devil May Cry, or the insane Darksouls no hit speedrunners. People have an inherent desire to redline the engine of efficiency -- just to see what they can do.
This has been a very obvious aspect of games for a long time. Entire books of game design have been written on how to properly scale the challenge of your game with the skill progression of your players/their avatars in order to reward their efforts and encourage them to continue redlining what the game is capable of.
Armageddon has horribly failed to capture that basic tenet of game design and in many ways, has demonstrated an administrative policy of outright rejecting it -- rejecting a core component of what makes games fun. The fact that for the past year there has been constant discussion in dozens of different threads on this exact same issue should send a loud message that the game is failing to address the needs of its playerbase. An entire quartile of Bartles Taxonomy is dedicated to Achievers -- the mountain climbers -- for heavens sake. Why is it so difficult to understand that actively denying those basic components of gameplay widely acknowledge in the industry to support those players will leave them unhappy and drive them away?
Yeah, ignore what I said and just go with what Namino said. It's more coherent.
I feel like a lot of this would be solved if we, the players, knew some numbers ...
How many enforcers have branched backstab/sap? How many soldiers branched riposte/hack?
Or since the guild change, what has been the breakdown of combat-types who hit advanced and master?
Quote from: mansa on June 19, 2019, 07:38:57 PM
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on June 19, 2019, 04:35:52 PM
Mainly the reason I want to make master "attainable" is so that you don't have unstoppable PCs who used the "one crazy trick you wouldn't believe- staffers hate him!" And now even though you have the strength of an entire clan behind you it's unfeasible to attack (or even cross them) because they are willing to twink and you aren't. ....
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on June 19, 2019, 05:39:12 PM
... however there are PCs that can become some powerful that nothing you can throw at them will reasonably kill them.
If a single PC fights off and kills an entire clan of other PCs (whether it was through twinking or not) is that realistic?
Is it fun?
Is it a good portrayal of murder, corruption, and betrayal?
Is it within the realm of fair we are shooting for?
I'd say no to most of those. Maybe it's fun for the meta-PC. But when five clannies can't figure out how to take down one mundane unaffiliated there's a problem, twinking or no.
If it doesn't rest in how strong it one pc is it exists in how much sparring-mudsexing-sparring a clan must do to confidently catch up.
This is a different conversation that I don't think has been brought up much in this thread. It kinda answers my questions of "Why am I trying to become powerful?" Is it, "I'm trying because there are other characters who are powerful, more powerful than I, and I want to be competitive in combat and have a chance at defeating them?"
The skill progression really is about - trying to be better than than trying to kill x mobs.
Is that right? Player vs Player conflict?
It depends on what your gamer type is, generally.
An achiever might want to get to mastery simply because mastery is technically possible. Or yes, they may simply want to be able to "beat" anyone else.
An explorer might want to get to mastery because mastery = better defense, and better defense means you can explore without dying.
A socializer might want to get to mastery because being good means being useful, and being useful means being more able to get involved with other players.
Beyond that...there's the matter of the class system, where Enforcer trades off utility for being better at fighting than Infiltrators, and Infiltrators trade off utility for being tougher than Miscreants. However, the trade-off is fundamentally useless if everyone plateaus at jman. What's the point of being technically able to master piercing weapons and dual wield, when realistically your piercing weapons and dual wield skills will never even reach a Miscreant cap? What's the point of rolling an Enforcer with master backstab when realistically, you will never branch backstab?
I mean, fighter vs. soldier, you give up on the possibility of literally hundreds of thousands of 'sids in lifetime crafting skills: fletchery, knives, swords, spears, clubs, and axes. Realistically, you'll never be better than a soldier (or probably even a laborer) at anything except parry, shield use, kick, disarm, and bash--which admittedly are useful, but the difference isn't -that- great unless you're getting into some weird solo PvP situations or PvE'ing ubergith or mantises.
Or raiders vs. their lower-tier classes. You're giving up WILDERNESS QUIT and food forage for the vague promise of being better at combat, and hey, as a raider, you're "outdoorsy," so you have the excuse to go out and critter grind, so you can do that...but oh by the way, you're forced to burn a subguild for the lowly skinning skill, so you don't look like a chode out there spamkilling big game without even a fig-leaf to cover the skillgains.
So...the jman plateau is a slap in the face to basic game design, and it's even contradictory to the game's own internal class design.
It seems jarring to me that if it somehow was released that cutlery (spoons, forks, butter knives) could be used as weapons, but severely reduced your offense in the process as a trade off you would see a huge schism among players. You would see the total badasses stabbing lizards and rinthis to death with a clay spoon and then those PCs who would condemn them for that sort of immersion breaking activity while actually doing the same thing in private. Finally, you would see a tiny little group who stick to their values (and the socializer players) getting their asses handed to them because they're SOO so far behind the curve. I have a feeling the groups would be about equal in size, save for that final one.
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on June 19, 2019, 09:16:23 PM
It seems jarring to me that if it somehow was released that cutlery (spoons, forks, butter knives) could be used as weapons, but severely reduced your offense in the process as a trade off you would see a huge schism among players. You would see the total badasses stabbing lizards and rinthis to death with a clay spoon and then those PCs who would condemn them for that sort of immersion breaking activity while actually doing the same thing in private. Finally, you would see a tiny little group who stick to their values (and the socializer players) getting their asses handed to them because they're SOO so far behind the curve. I have a feeling the groups would be about equal in size, save for that final one.
You can already do this with trash weapons. Lower damage-per-hit means more swings-per-fight, and more swings-per-fight (assuming a dodge rate of greater than 0%) means more dodges per fight. If you don't care about training style, ep only.
Most game design isn't oriented towards running a RP game in a 25+ year old code base where the overall goal is role playing and not getting to level 100 or reaching 100 skill in X.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 01:25:53 AM
Most game design isn't oriented towards running a RP game in a 25+ year old code base where the overall goal is role playing and not getting to level 100 or reaching 100 skill in X.
The fact that Armageddon is a video game in a niche genre does not make it any less a video game and therefore does not place it outside of the bounds of the basic tenets of game design.
Bartle published his taxonomy
for his MUD, and it's pretty egregious to suggest the fact that people roleplay in Armageddon suddenly neutralizes the fact that a meaningful interface between progression and challenge is central to the success of a game. There is an entire bevvy of tabletop games (many of which much older than 25 years!) in which roleplaying is a central facet, and none of them toss their progression system onto the dungheap in order to do it.
But let's wander down your logical pathway for a moment.
Quote[...]where the overall goal is role playing and not getting to level 100 or reaching 100 skill in X.
Well, then, what is the overall goal? You seem to think there is one.
Is the overall goal to personify realistic characters with believable goals and motivations? Because
pushing the limits of ones abilities, including physical abilities, is one of the most common, relateable, and believable goals there is. It's why we admire people like Usain Bolt, Magnus Carlsen, Kurt Vonnegut, and Michelangelo. Those people decided in one way or another to push the limits of what was possible and if they found a way to type <SKILL> IRL they'd see 100/100 (or near to it) in sprinting, chess, postmodernism and sculpting respectively. They aren't any less 'real' or 'believable' because they drove themselves to the heights of their skills. If anything, they're more memorable a cast of characters for their singular focus.
You seem to think that having ambitions to maximize a skill and portraying a deeply textured character are fundamentally opposed goals. That is simply wrong. Most interesting figures from history are interesting because they decided to specialize and become extraordinary in a skill of their choosing, from diplomacy to quantum physics, either because they gained fame due to their skill, or because of what they were able to accomplish in the subsequent applications.
And, ultimately, the fact that we talk about this damn subject 2/3 times a fiscal quarter in threads with dozens and dozens of posts should be plenty of evidence that there's an underserved section of your playerbase who are frustrated, vocally so, with the current situation. Are you not interested in improving the experience for these players?
QuoteWhy is it so difficult to understand that actively denying those basic components of gameplay widely acknowledge in the industry to support those players will leave them unhappy and drive them away?
A handful of the same people clogging up the GDB for a year do not make a compelling statistical argument about something being a problem.
Man I hope the dissenting parties aren't in business, or I think things might not be going well. Armageddon is something of a creative work but the less it's operated like a business that takes into account popular opinion, the more people become bored or estranged by oddly defensive staff. "It's my baby and it works this way cause it always has." That's a terrible business model in any respects. Especially if you all would like to retain players.
I don't see what the big deal with adjusting weapon skill learning is. It would bring more people to RP and do reasonable stuff with their time. Why is that a bad thing?
Quote from: Is Friday on June 20, 2019, 07:21:18 AM
I don't see what the big deal with adjusting weapon skill learning is. It would bring more people to RP and do reasonable stuff with their time. Why is that a bad thing?
It could also really come down to a model like..
being parried is 1/5 less likely than a dodge to give gains
being blocked is 1/10 less likely than a dodge to give gains.
That alone could resolve a lot of these logistical balance issues of needing to twink ungodly amounts to even dream of being able to push off that plateau you're stuck on. Sure.. You'll still be twinking to get out of that spot, but it's a lot less grueling and opens up potential for you to end up doing more fun things with your time.
Exactly. The game design should promote more RP. Making it impossible to progress in a military clan forces some players to do unrealistic stuff.
Quote from: John on June 20, 2019, 06:51:04 AM
QuoteWhy is it so difficult to understand that actively denying those basic components of gameplay widely acknowledge in the industry to support those players will leave them unhappy and drive them away?
A handful of the same people clogging up the GDB for a year do not make a compelling statistical argument about something being a problem.
And yet polls, which would determine whether it is really just a "handful of the same people clogging up the GDB", aren't allowed on the GDB.
Quote from: Is Friday on June 20, 2019, 08:35:21 AM
Exactly. The game design should promote more RP. Making it impossible to progress in a military clan forces some players to do unrealistic stuff.
And the real irony is that the oft touted solution is for people to stop caring about progress, which is the most unrealistic response of all. People care about self improvement; it's a massive impetus. Our characters not being concerned with how good they are at the skills that determine their survival and place in society would make them utterly unrealistic.
But you don't have to train to do/interact with/see 95% of Arm.
In fact you literally never have to train to be a badass in Arm either. So I don't get why people act like training is a requirement, ever, except to be part of the Byn/AoD.
Quote from: Namino on June 20, 2019, 02:10:48 AM
It's why we admire people like Usain Bolt, Magnus Carlsen, Kurt Vonnegut, and Michelangelo. Those people decided in one way or another to push the limits of what was possible and if they found a way to type <SKILL> IRL they'd see 100/100 (or near to it) in sprinting, chess, postmodernism and sculpting respectively. They aren't any less 'real' or 'believable' because they drove themselves to the heights of their skills. If anything, they're more memorable a cast of characters for their singular focus.
You seem to think that having ambitions to maximize a skill and portraying a deeply textured character are fundamentally opposed goals. That is simply wrong. Most interesting figures from history are interesting because they decided to specialize and become extraordinary in a skill of their choosing, from diplomacy to quantum physics, either because they gained fame due to their skill, or because of what they were able to accomplish in the subsequent applications.
Usain Bolt isn't interesting because he decided to be the best and then went on to be the best. Usain is interesting because there were a whole lot of people who decided to become the best, that he then competed against and came out the best. Ditto the rest, although not necessarily in such an obviously competitive environment.
Most of your characters in Arm won't be Usain Bolt. Even though they are trying to be Usain Bolt. Lots of video games allow you to be Usain Bolt, unless they are something like FPS when your RL skills are vectored in.
Some folks (Thrain, Sujaal, Red Meso, Khann, Pearl, etc.) might actually end up becoming like the RL folks you mention. It is a small list vs the number of characters that have existed (or even long lived characters).
Quote from: Is Friday on June 20, 2019, 07:21:18 AM
Man I hope the dissenting parties aren't in business, or I think things might not be going well. Armageddon is something of a creative work but the less it's operated like a business that takes into account popular opinion, the more people become bored or estranged by oddly defensive staff. "It's my baby and it works this way cause it always has." That's a terrible business model in any respects. Especially if you all would like to retain players.
It functions on multiple levels more like a non-Profit than a for Profit. In that model, it is often the goal of the organization and ability to service it that takes the place of focusing on customer desires. As an extreme example, if a large majority of players suddenly wanted Arm to be a hack'n'slash, a customer focused organization would make the shift and a goal oriented one would not.
That isn't to say we aren't listening to your ideas. Those ideas have to be congruent the overall goals and experience we've accumulated running Arm. If you are coming in with ideas that serve a conflicting goals there is going to be less traction.
The repeated assertion/implication that being able to attain mastery by NOT engaging in poor play is somehow anti-RP is preposterous.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 12:16:41 PM
Quote from: Namino on June 20, 2019, 02:10:48 AM
It's why we admire people like Usain Bolt, Magnus Carlsen, Kurt Vonnegut, and Michelangelo. Those people decided in one way or another to push the limits of what was possible and if they found a way to type <SKILL> IRL they'd see 100/100 (or near to it) in sprinting, chess, postmodernism and sculpting respectively. They aren't any less 'real' or 'believable' because they drove themselves to the heights of their skills. If anything, they're more memorable a cast of characters for their singular focus.
You seem to think that having ambitions to maximize a skill and portraying a deeply textured character are fundamentally opposed goals. That is simply wrong. Most interesting figures from history are interesting because they decided to specialize and become extraordinary in a skill of their choosing, from diplomacy to quantum physics, either because they gained fame due to their skill, or because of what they were able to accomplish in the subsequent applications.
Usain Bolt isn't interesting because he decided to be the best and then went on to be the best. Usain is interesting because there were a whole lot of people who decided to become the best, that he then competed against and came out the best. Ditto the rest, although not necessarily in such an obviously competitive environment.
Continuing with the analogy, you've created a system where the only way Usain Bolt could become faster is by tripping and smashing his face into the track every time he ran. Running as fast as possible on the track would not increase his speed or improve his time, and his competitors who unlaced their shoes (ep vs etwo) or tied their shoelaces together (unarmed laying in a field versus a turaal) were much much faster than him on race day.
It's bad. It encourages bad faith play. It's not realistic. It delegitimizes people trying to stay true to their characters while also aspiring to excel.
The continued pushback in the face of something that is industry standard understanding is hilarious.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 01:00:26 PM
The repeated assertion/implication that being able to attain mastery by NOT engaging in poor play is somehow anti-RP is preposterous.
Backing this up.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 01:00:26 PM
The repeated assertion/implication that being able to attain mastery by NOT engaging in poor play is somehow anti-RP is preposterous.
That isn't what I am saying. Your personal perspective seems to be coloring what I actually am saying into an interpretation that self reinforces your own perspective.
Could the system be better? Sure. Have we figured out a way to do it that meets both our goals and your goals, and is within the technical constraints of C? No. Do the suggestions in this thread do that? Not really.
It's awfully convenient that your counterargument relies on a) a staff goal that is nebulous or frankly unstated, and therefore irrefutable and b) knowledge of the codebase that players cannot have, and is therefore irrefutable.
To me, that sounds like the last refuge of an argument that really has no legs to stand on.
a) Goals really. They tend to shift a bit as they are really an agglomeration of individual staff viewpoints.
b) I didn't say codebase, I said C. Here you go: https://www.learn-c.org/ (https://www.learn-c.org/)
...You understand that several of your players have experience in this regard? In fact, some of them hold advanced degrees in various fields of information technology and data science, which requires proficient and frequent coding? That many of them have professional careers that include (and even are primarily focused on) writing code? So just blithely linking to a learner course of C isn't going to throw anyone off?
There is NOTHING in C that prevents you from designing a progression system as has been described in this thread. The very codebase that Armageddon is already based off of, DIKUmud, allows for such a progression. The way DIKUmud operated in this regard inspired progression based MMOs such as EverQuest. Early MMOs such as Ultima Online were written in C (with some C++), and they had progression systems that didn't rely on failure. The way the progression system is set up in Armageddon is NOT the result of some dependency or library in C and to suggest that some hard-coded aspect of the language is restricting your hands is untrue.
The way this works in Armageddon is the result of a design decision, not a language limitation. Someone, somewhere, decided that this would be a good idea and implemented it. And then 30 years of code got dumped on top of it and now it's so badly entrenched in the system that in order to fix it would be an enormous amount of effort and likely require ripping the guts out of the system. I can only assume this is the case because of how much smoke and mirrors get thrown up about this subject.
But this issue has arisen because of Armageddon's poorly scoped implementation of an engine coded in C.
It is not because of C.
This entire argument is based off the assumption that it's impossible to get past a plateau in weapon skills.
That was never my experience in the past.
If it's due to the starting offense levels of specific new classes, couldn't we just lower that?
It'd make them less powerful out of the gate, but with more potential down the road.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 01:14:48 PM
Have we figured out a way to do it that meets both our goals and your goals, and is within the technical constraints of C? No.
Hey, some ideas we've had aren't really doable in C.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 01:20:37 PM
b) knowledge of the codebase that players cannot have, and is therefore irrefutable.
Apparently knowledge of the codebase is necessary to refute the concept that some ideas aren't that workable in C?
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 02:08:40 PM
b) I didn't say codebase, I said C. Here you go: https://www.learn-c.org/ (https://www.learn-c.org/)
What I said wasn't anything to do with the codebase. Here is your obligatory snarky reply.
Quote from: Namino on June 20, 2019, 02:39:39 PM
...You understand that several of your players have experience in this regard?
Hey! I apparently misunderstood this whole thing! Cause you can do lots in C and we could do what we want in C so it isn't a problem about C. Nevermind what Brokkr was actually talking about.
Quote from: Delirium on June 20, 2019, 02:44:27 PM
This entire argument is based off the assumption that it's impossible to get past a plateau in weapon skills.
That was never my experience in the past.
If it's due to the starting offense levels of specific new classes, couldn't we just lower that?
It'd make them less powerful out of the gate, but with more potential down the road.
Honestly though, one of the benefits is that you DO start out more competent, if you chose to be, which allows for quicker exploration or involvement in "kill all da spidahs!" plots.
I think the high start, with the rapid advancement in offense just leaves the weapon skills stunted without some odd behavior on the part of the player. You actually advance to this "grindy area" so quickly that it frustrates some people to be at 6days played and feel that they can't codedly advance along their main goal.
Quote from: Delirium on June 20, 2019, 02:44:27 PM
This entire argument is based off the assumption that it's impossible to get past a plateau in weapon skills.
That was never my experience in the past.
If it's due to the starting offense levels of specific new classes, couldn't we just lower that?
It'd make them less powerful out of the gate, but with more potential down the road.
Nobody said it was impossible.
We said it's impossible without resorting to some specific circumstances, the vast majority of which are poor play. And you have never (that I can recall) provided specific examples of how your seemingly unique experience worked. You always jump in and say "you're wrong, because it didn't work like that for me," without ever providing a single bit of explanation.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 02:58:49 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 01:14:48 PM
Have we figured out a way to do it that meets both our goals and your goals, and is within the technical constraints of C? No.
Hey, some ideas we've had aren't really doable in C.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 01:20:37 PM
b) knowledge of the codebase that players cannot have, and is therefore irrefutable.
Apparently knowledge of the codebase is necessary to refute the concept that some ideas aren't that workable in C?
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 02:08:40 PM
b) I didn't say codebase, I said C. Here you go: https://www.learn-c.org/ (https://www.learn-c.org/)
What I said wasn't anything to do with the codebase. Here is your obligatory snarky reply.
Quote from: Namino on June 20, 2019, 02:39:39 PM
...You understand that several of your players have experience in this regard?
Hey! I apparently misunderstood this whole thing! Cause you can do lots in C and we could do what we want in C so it isn't a problem about C. Nevermind what Brokkr was actually talking about.
Once again, you're entirely missing the point because of some bizarre fixation on semantics. You realize that the English language is both denotative and connotative, right? That you have to allow for a bit of fuzziness and overlap in meaning when attempting to interpret what other people are saying? Because they're coming from a possibly different linguistic milieu where the intent of their words may not have the explicit meaning that you're most familiar with?
In other words: English is not a coding language, and trying to interpret and argue with it as such makes you seem obtuse.
Well, what in the Seven Hells are you actually talking about? Because half of that post was totally incomprehensible to me. What idea have you had that is impossible in C? Because you never produce ideas in these threads. You just show up, play missile command against all of the concepts and brainstorming the players are collaboratively discussing, and then traipse off again and wait for the next time the same topic gets brought up (3 days, +/- twelve hours) so you can shoot things down again.
But you don't ever reveal even one iota of any solution or alteration or twinkle-in-the-eye you might have to address the issue, let alone why you think C can't be manhandled to solve it. All of your posturing is always done from a position of "we're not interested in changing it" or "your ideas don't do what we want them to". Yet when you get pinned into a corner by Synthesis' valid arguments about making claims that are irrefutable due to lack of transparency, you start throwing smokescreen about coding languages and that I totally have ideas I promise but they won't work and no I won't tell you what they are or why they don't work just trust me.
I'd like to steer the conversation to something productive, but sort of hard when folks like to take the negative interpretation of what you say. And then we end up at places like this.
So, technically (see Synthesis post on semantics) you can do most things in C. Some things are just Ugh. In a perfect world, we could compare your entire combat history vs the combat histories of all other folks to determine a relative soft cap for you. Weight overall world values to make it sticky, but not impossible, to gain beyond a midpoint, weighted in stickiness by number of folks beyond that midpoint (or alternatively, an number of points past which gains become stickier and stickier). Meanwhile taking into account all of your other combat values that determine combat in the particular scenario you are in, to weight towards stickiness the more effective you are in combat based on all the other factors that relate back to your skillsheet. Make it so that when you look at your skillsheet it is dynamic to point in time you type skills such that it searches through all PCs, alive and dead, to determine the word to put on your skillsheet in comparison to all those other PCs (so like, if you are within top 10% of pc's in a skill, you see "master", bottom 20% then "novice") for each skill, rather than based on which range in the total possible range you are in.
The failure system is fine, feels a bit like I'm playing Morrowind or the Burning Wheel, it's enjoyable. What doesn't feel good is that to attain even basic competence (and god forbid I get good) in weapons skills I have to subject myself to a grind so slow and tedious it's like I'm working an irl job, only to have those gains eliminated in the blink of an eye because it's a permadeath game. Which means now I have to do it again. It's frankly disrespectful of my time.
Even very simple bootstraps solutions recommended in this thread, like making parries count for skilling up. could alleviate this. I don't want an overhaul I just want to be able to get good without dedicating real life days to it.
Good. This is productive.
My understanding is that you're working on the backend right now to move the data management of the game into an SQL server, is that correct? Are values associated with active characters planned to be stored in this database? If so, I think the easiest way to produce something such as what you've described, Brokkr, is to manually set coefficients for combat skills. No, it's not empirical, but for the sake of efficiency, empiricism may have to go and it's a definite improvement.
So you look at the combat skills overall and determine subjectively what they're relative impacts are. For example, a skill like parry is very important, so it likely should have a 1.3 weight coefficient, while a skill like kick is very situational (unmounted combat, high str, ect) and may have a value of .7. The calculation would look like:
(https://i.imgur.com/GxZG3xr.png)
Where each skill is weighted by a coefficient that we think represents how much that skill plays a part and averaged, and then added to a separate function where the total number of combat skills a character has is multiplied by another coefficient, so that someone with 2 out of 2 combat skills at master isn't more proficient than someone with 10 / 12 combat skills at master. Then each character has a value for how overall proficient they are. C can handle all of this math without trouble.
I don't know how the SQL database is going to interface with the game, though. If it's possible, I would simply have a column for proficiency of active characters with more than 5 days played (more on this later), then have a rolling average of that column set the point of proficiency after which combat skills begin to slow down, preferably something like (((mean proficiency/maximum proficiency) * 1.2) * maximum proficiency). This can get over 100% of course but it requires a mean proficiency of like 85 at which point it seems fair that the whole playerbase can just progress to 100 without a massive slog.
Having your skills show up as relative can also be handled by the SQL database if possible, but it will require an entry for each combat skill which might become difficult, then simply divide the character's skill by the mean skill level and set your breakpoints from there (ie, >.5 < 1 = jman). Again, without knowledge of how the SQL database is planned and what values are going to be stored there, it's somewhat hard to sketch that part out. But to implement what you're describing, I think the SQL database will have to get involved.
It seems more straightforward to let parries, blocks, and armor-blocked blows be considered failures.
I don't know how simple that would be to code, but as a solution to sparring woes, it seems to have merit.
Consider decreasing the chance of skillgain as skill level increases (while providing more opportunities for skillgain, as parry, block, etc.).
Yes, that would solve the situation in a simpler way but I think the concern there is that it turns into a skill catapult, and it could be argued that skills thereby become too easy to increase indefinitely as being parried is very common, so I think it's valuable to see if there isn't a way to solve things more elegantly, even if the process is a bit painful.
On the codebase front, {C++, extern "C", -fno_exceptions} is a pretty damn gigantic gain in expressive power at no cost. (no_exceptions is weird but perfectly viable (https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html#Exceptions).)
(As an aside to whatever this discussion is. :D)
A different sort of tack than what I was talking about. First, it is essentially static. I think you'd end up with a bunch of really, really skilled folks under that system assuming folks lived long. Whereas I am talking about a system where folks end up pretty much where they are now in terms of combat effectiveness. For this example, lets say that is middle of the scale, at 50 in a 0 to 100 scale. It then decreases likelihood that you can increase past that point, but it isn't tied only to your static scores, but your entire history of combat vs the entire history of combat (at that point) of all people who have ever surpassed the point you are at. Based on that, maybe someone at 65 is a master, but two years later, maybe someone at 60 is at master.
Quote from: Delirium on June 20, 2019, 04:22:49 PM
It seems more straightforward to let parries, blocks, and armor-blocked blows be considered failures.
I don't know how simple that would be to code, but as a solution to sparring woes, it seems to have merit.
I am not sure we are defining the problem the same. The problem isn't how to allow people to progress and essentially turn it into a function of time spent. Or rather, that may be the problem from your perspective, it isn't from ours.
The problem is how to get most folks over time to competence, but only have a very few of those that take on more challenges to move significantly beyond that.
Quote from: Delirium on June 20, 2019, 04:22:49 PM
It seems more straightforward to let parries, blocks, and armor-blocked blows be considered failures.
I don't know how simple that would be to code, but as a solution to sparring woes, it seems to have merit.
I hate agreeing with Delirium..Seriously and here I go endorsing this idea. +100 to this.
Yeah, the fancy relative-to-other-PCs-dynamic-weighting-skillgain-percentage business seems way, way too complicated.
Part of the system "working" is that players can a) understand it and b) be able to make ballpark predictions about how it's going to impact their character. Frustration occurs because either a) you look at the grind, and the mountain is so tall that you question whether it's even worth it to begin or b) when you (reasonably) expect a certain result that doesn't materialize or c) the method of the grind is fundamentally at odds with the theme of the game. If advancement is predicated on factors that you, the player, cannot reasonably predict (e.g. the skill levels of other players, the number of other skilled active players), it's going to be just as frustrating as the current system.
Beyond that, the problem with "relative-to-other-PCs" gating is that you introduce a Highlander or crab-barrel mentality.
Overall, I think the best method is to a) make parries and blocks count as failures and b) gate the final steps to mastery behind longevity.
Then there are multiple ways to implement a longevity gate:
1) Single hard gate: If master is skill level 80, you can get to 79 as fast as you can possibly do it, but you will never get that skill bump to 80 until you pass the longevity gate. Worst-case scenario, you start at 79 at chargen, and never get a skillbump until you hit 20 days (or whatever the gate is). Worst-case scenario, you mudsex for 19 days and suddenly become a master at 20 days 1 hour when you suddenly begin training.
2) Skillgain timer gate: Your skillgain timer for each weapon/style skill is set at chargen, based on your starting skill and the skill level at which mastery occurs. If you start at jman (e.g. 40) slashing because of a skill boost, and mastery occurs at 80, that's a difference of 40 skill points. If the skillgain gate is set to 20 days played, the fastest you can get to mastery is 40 points in 20 days, so your skill timer for slashing is set for 12 hours of logged-in time. You can get a skillgain to slashing weapons every 12 hours played, so it will be -at least- 20 days before you progress to master slashing.
3) Multiple-step longevity gating: There are four "steps" on the way to master (apprentice, journeyman, advanced, master). Each of these steps is longevity-gated. It's not necessary for them to be proportional, but for simplicity of explanation, they'll be proportional for this discussion. 20 days divided by 4 steps is 5 days apiece. You can't achieve apprentice before 5 days. You can't achieve jman before 10 days. You can't achieve advanced before 15 days. You can't achieve master before 20 days. If you start at jman out of chargen, it will still be 15 days before you can hit advanced.
4) RL-time gating: replace each of the above scenarios with real-life time as the metric instead of logged-in time. This prevents padding the login clock by idling.
I think the longevity gate will work better for clan sparring, because once you hit the gate, you know that it's pointless to grind for yourself at a certain point. (I'd argue that the best "location" for the gate is right -after- the word-based-metric. E.g. you technically can hit advanced before 15 days, but it will be locked in at minimum advanced. This way, you know you hit the wall, and that it's pointless to grind until you hit 15 days.) Back to the point: if you know grinding for yourself is not going to be effective, you now have two options open 1) help your clannies grind, by being a good sparring buddy (much easier to do if you aren't worried about your own gains); or 2) go out and get into some shit instead of worrying about losing time not sparring.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 05:04:48 PM
Quote from: Delirium on June 20, 2019, 04:22:49 PM
It seems more straightforward to let parries, blocks, and armor-blocked blows be considered failures.
I don't know how simple that would be to code, but as a solution to sparring woes, it seems to have merit.
I am not sure we are defining the problem the same. The problem isn't how to allow people to progress and essentially turn it into a function of time spent. Or rather, that may be the problem from your perspective, it isn't from ours.
The problem is how to get most folks over time to competence, but only have a very few of those that take on more challenges to move significantly beyond that.
Defining "challenge" in a meaningful way is going to be an impossible task, I'm telling you that right now. Longevity gating isn't perfect, but in general it gets it right, because most PCs just don't live that long. There is the downside that it somewhat rewards being risk-averse, but the current system frankly rewards being a complete dipshit. I have to go out and fight things that I really could give two shits about, and invent fig-leaf excuses as to why I'm doing it...and I'm doing that instead of being involved with other players, on the promise that once I reach the skill level I want, I'll be able to get involved. I mean...I feel like that's way worse than being a master swordsman in the AoD who's really only ever sparred. It's too easy to get lost in the cons of a proposed system and lose sight of how much the current system really sucks.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 05:02:38 PM
A different sort of tack than what I was talking about. First, it is essentially static. I think you'd end up with a bunch of really, really skilled folks under that system assuming folks lived long. Whereas I am talking about a system where folks end up pretty much where they are now in terms of combat effectiveness. For this example, lets say that is middle of the scale, at 50 in a 0 to 100 scale. It then decreases likelihood that you can increase past that point, but it isn't tied only to your static scores, but your entire history of combat vs the entire history of combat (at that point) of all people who have ever surpassed the point you are at. Based on that, maybe someone at 65 is a master, but two years later, maybe someone at 60 is at master.
Can you quantify what you mean by 'history of combat'? What values or actions would contribute to that? Every time a person swings a weapon? Every killing blow they land? A variable could increment with either (both, or additive to many other things) and then the SQL database approach would work if you just show the top 10% of the column as master. Essentially you can build a distribution of the SQL values in the column from all player characters alive or dead and base people's current skill rankings off where they sit in the distribution before returning the value to the character. The distribution will naturally shift up and down as characters become more 'experienced in combat' (right shift) and new characters are spawned into the world (left shift) but I think the first step is to determine what factors of a character's existence or history you feel should contribute to their 'history of combat'. In my example the proficiency score is simply a function of weighted combat skills but it could be used to build this distribution. Based on your reply it feels like you think there's more to one's 'history of combat' than just skill. The formula could simply be altered to include as many factors as you like, ranging from number of killing blows to amount of HP damage received throughout one's lifecourse. It'd simply be a new variable * weight coefficient in the formula.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 05:17:31 PM
Part of the system "working" is that players can a) understand it and b) be able to make ballpark predictions about how it's going to impact their character. Frustration occurs because either a) you look at the grind, and the mountain is so tall that you question whether it's even worth it to begin or b) when you (reasonably) expect a certain result that doesn't materialize or c) the method of the grind is fundamentally at odds with the theme of the game. If advancement is predicated on factors that you, the player, cannot reasonably predict (e.g. the skill levels of other players, the number of other skilled active players), it's going to be just as frustrating as the current system.
...
Overall, I think the best method is to a) make parries and blocks count as failures and b) gate the final steps to mastery behind longevity.
Then there are multiple ways to implement a longevity gate:
1) Single hard gate: If master is skill level 80, you can get to 79 as fast as you can possibly do it, but you will never get that skill bump to 80 until you pass the longevity gate. Worst-case scenario, you start at 79 at chargen, and never get a skillbump until you hit 20 days (or whatever the gate is). Worst-case scenario, you mudsex for 19 days and suddenly become a master at 20 days 1 hour when you suddenly begin training.
2) Skillgain timer gate: Your skillgain timer for each weapon/style skill is set at chargen, based on your starting skill and the skill level at which mastery occurs. If you start at jman (e.g. 40) slashing because of a skill boost, and mastery occurs at 80, that's a difference of 40 skill points. If the skillgain gate is set to 20 days played, the fastest you can get to mastery is 40 points in 20 days, so your skill timer for slashing is set for 12 hours of logged-in time. You can get a skillgain to slashing weapons every 12 hours played, so it will be -at least- 20 days before you progress to master slashing.
3) Multiple-step longevity gating: There are four "steps" on the way to master (apprentice, journeyman, advanced, master). Each of these steps is longevity-gated. It's not necessary for them to be proportional, but for simplicity of explanation, they'll be proportional for this discussion. 20 days divided by 4 steps is 5 days apiece. You can't achieve apprentice before 5 days. You can't achieve jman before 10 days. You can't achieve advanced before 15 days. You can't achieve master before 20 days. If you start at jman out of chargen, it will still be 15 days before you can hit advanced.
4) RL-time gating: replace each of the above scenarios with real-life time as the metric instead of logged-in time. This prevents padding the login clock by idling.
I think the longevity gate will work better for clan sparring, because once you hit the gate, you know that it's pointless to grind for yourself at a certain point. (I'd argue that the best "location" for the gate is right -after- the word-based-metric. E.g. you technically can hit advanced before 15 days, but it will be locked in at minimum advanced. This way, you know you hit the wall, and that it's pointless to grind until you hit 15 days.) Back to the point: if you know grinding for yourself is not going to be effective, you now have two options open 1) help your clannies grind, by being a good sparring buddy (much easier to do if you aren't worried about your own gains); or 2) go out and get into some shit instead of worrying about losing time not sparring.
...
Defining "challenge" in a meaningful way is going to be an impossible task, I'm telling you that right now. Longevity gating isn't perfect, but in general it gets it right, because most PCs just don't live that long. There is the downside that it somewhat rewards being risk-averse, but the current system frankly rewards being a complete dipshit. I have to go out and fight things that I really could give two shits about, and invent fig-leaf excuses as to why I'm doing it...and I'm doing that instead of being involved with other players, on the promise that once I reach the skill level I want, I'll be able to get involved. I mean...I feel like that's way worse than being a master swordsman in the AoD who's really only ever sparred. It's too easy to get lost in the cons of a proposed system and lose sight of how much the current system really sucks.
I like the time gate advancement as long as
a) the gates are public knowledge
b) a combination of time played and real life time advancement.
If it was public knowledge what is expected of the combat players (eg journeyman is expected after 300 hours OR 3 months, advanced at 1000 hours OR 10 months, mastery at 2000 hours OR 20 months) then players have a goal to reach, and have reasonable expectations of their play time.
That could work in conjunction with increasing the "things to do in combat that can increase your weapon skills"
Quote from: Namino on June 20, 2019, 05:24:41 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 05:02:38 PM
A different sort of tack than what I was talking about. First, it is essentially static. I think you'd end up with a bunch of really, really skilled folks under that system assuming folks lived long. Whereas I am talking about a system where folks end up pretty much where they are now in terms of combat effectiveness. For this example, lets say that is middle of the scale, at 50 in a 0 to 100 scale. It then decreases likelihood that you can increase past that point, but it isn't tied only to your static scores, but your entire history of combat vs the entire history of combat (at that point) of all people who have ever surpassed the point you are at. Based on that, maybe someone at 65 is a master, but two years later, maybe someone at 60 is at master.
Can you quantify what you mean by 'history of combat'? What values or actions would contribute to that? Every time a person swings a weapon? Every killing blow they land? A variable could increment with either (both, or additive to many other things) and then the SQL database approach would work if you just show the top 10% of the column as master. Essentially you can build a distribution of the SQL values in the column from all player characters alive or dead and base people's current skill rankings off where they sit in the distribution before returning the value to the character. The distribution will naturally shift up and down as characters become more 'experienced in combat' (right shift) and new characters are spawned into the world (left shift) but I think the first step is to determine what factors of a character's existence or history you feel should contribute to their 'history of combat'. In my example the proficiency score is simply a function of weighted combat skills but it could be used to build this distribution. Based on your reply it feels like you think there's more to one's 'history of combat' than just skill. The formula could simply be altered to include as many factors as you like, ranging from number of killing blows to amount of HP damage received throughout one's lifecourse. It'd simply be a new variable * weight coefficient in the formula.
Making it relative on any "scores" from a "lifetime of the MUD" database will introduce an infinity grind: every player to reach the magic top 10% makes the grind that much more difficult for players coming behind them.
Making it relative on scores from a "current PC" database introduces a Highlander/crab-barrel mechanic.
I think these are worse than the "too many skilled PCs" problem that you're attempting to prevent.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 05:42:13 PM
Quote from: Namino on June 20, 2019, 05:24:41 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 05:02:38 PM
A different sort of tack than what I was talking about. First, it is essentially static. I think you'd end up with a bunch of really, really skilled folks under that system assuming folks lived long. Whereas I am talking about a system where folks end up pretty much where they are now in terms of combat effectiveness. For this example, lets say that is middle of the scale, at 50 in a 0 to 100 scale. It then decreases likelihood that you can increase past that point, but it isn't tied only to your static scores, but your entire history of combat vs the entire history of combat (at that point) of all people who have ever surpassed the point you are at. Based on that, maybe someone at 65 is a master, but two years later, maybe someone at 60 is at master.
Can you quantify what you mean by 'history of combat'? What values or actions would contribute to that? Every time a person swings a weapon? Every killing blow they land? A variable could increment with either (both, or additive to many other things) and then the SQL database approach would work if you just show the top 10% of the column as master. Essentially you can build a distribution of the SQL values in the column from all player characters alive or dead and base people's current skill rankings off where they sit in the distribution before returning the value to the character. The distribution will naturally shift up and down as characters become more 'experienced in combat' (right shift) and new characters are spawned into the world (left shift) but I think the first step is to determine what factors of a character's existence or history you feel should contribute to their 'history of combat'. In my example the proficiency score is simply a function of weighted combat skills but it could be used to build this distribution. Based on your reply it feels like you think there's more to one's 'history of combat' than just skill. The formula could simply be altered to include as many factors as you like, ranging from number of killing blows to amount of HP damage received throughout one's lifecourse. It'd simply be a new variable * weight coefficient in the formula.
Making it relative on any "scores" from a "lifetime of the MUD" database will introduce an infinity grind: every player to reach the magic top 10% makes the grind that much more difficult for players coming behind them.
Not necessarily. For example, for every person who hits master, there are two characters created who either never train, or die before they hit apprentice. The left shifting overpowers the right shifting in that example. Your fear is only realized if we limit the people contributing to distribution to those who achieve mastery. If we draw the distribution from ALL players, then master reaches a stable state equilibrium between newly created characters pulling the distribution back and highly skilled, longevity characters pulling it up.
It's not necessarily the way I personally would handle bracketing skillgain, but I'm working inside the bounds of the stated idea of the current administration.
QuoteNot sure why people who don't play feel the need to weigh in on game mechanics.
Why wouldn't they? If they care about the game and its success, appreciate the experiences they have, and have things to say about it, why shouldn't they? Do they simply cease to have relevant things to say? Why only for mechanic discussions? Do years of experience from ex-players (temporarily or permanent) have merit when applied to knowledge of the game world, but not for the interactive framework you use to experience it?
QuoteThe repeated assertion/implication that being able to attain mastery by NOT engaging in poor play is somehow anti-RP is preposterous.
It is. But just as much, the entire shuffle of mechanics in a direction to make it so that sparring->mastery is just as preposterous. The suggested changes always lead that way; I want to be able to safely skillgain to mastery. Even when other motives come into play, the suggestion leads to that being the side effect, and that is -boring-. The insinuation that I just want things to be hard for no reason or never want people to attain mastery is also preposterous (not saying Synthesis made this insinuation directly, I just responded to his quote before making a statement about how disagreement on this topic is treated from the other side).
I have always, always, tried to make it so that danger, risk, and calculation are as present within the game as possible. If your proposal was 'Hey, can we make more fauna that is dangerous and 'up to scale' with agility so that risk-takers have a skillgain benefit to risking death?', I'd be all for it.
But it's always about changing code to allow you to never have to face that risk. To make it so that by the time you face risks, you're already ready. And that's just not a very Zalanthan atmosphere, where everyone has plenty of and equal opportunity to get to that mastery. People should push and shove for it. Being head and shoulders above the others should be a true struggle in and of itself, a true dwarven focus.
Considering the Jman plateau makes for a pretty badass warrior altogether, insisting that it must change so that most everyone gets past it is ultimately degrading, not enhancing the game. All my quips about 'brief skills'? It's because the amount of people scrambling to get changes made to allow mastery has risen -exponentially- for little to no reason...the game is -less- dangerous than it was before, more predictable, and tamer in the pvp realm, but people got that twisted up into the need to continue progressing with their new-found consistent longevity.
It has nothing to do with slaps in the face, or (for me) code restrictions. It has everything to do with a (relatively) newfound need to be placated with how far you expect characters to be able to progress, or how much to attain, in safety. Just play a character. Make them a combat character. Stop saying things 'force' you to do things when that's the drive in you, not the game, that forces it. Direct that drive into the behavior that -does- work, and take the risks.
Quote from: Namino on June 20, 2019, 05:47:31 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 05:42:13 PM
Quote from: Namino on June 20, 2019, 05:24:41 PM
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 05:02:38 PM
A different sort of tack than what I was talking about. First, it is essentially static. I think you'd end up with a bunch of really, really skilled folks under that system assuming folks lived long. Whereas I am talking about a system where folks end up pretty much where they are now in terms of combat effectiveness. For this example, lets say that is middle of the scale, at 50 in a 0 to 100 scale. It then decreases likelihood that you can increase past that point, but it isn't tied only to your static scores, but your entire history of combat vs the entire history of combat (at that point) of all people who have ever surpassed the point you are at. Based on that, maybe someone at 65 is a master, but two years later, maybe someone at 60 is at master.
Can you quantify what you mean by 'history of combat'? What values or actions would contribute to that? Every time a person swings a weapon? Every killing blow they land? A variable could increment with either (both, or additive to many other things) and then the SQL database approach would work if you just show the top 10% of the column as master. Essentially you can build a distribution of the SQL values in the column from all player characters alive or dead and base people's current skill rankings off where they sit in the distribution before returning the value to the character. The distribution will naturally shift up and down as characters become more 'experienced in combat' (right shift) and new characters are spawned into the world (left shift) but I think the first step is to determine what factors of a character's existence or history you feel should contribute to their 'history of combat'. In my example the proficiency score is simply a function of weighted combat skills but it could be used to build this distribution. Based on your reply it feels like you think there's more to one's 'history of combat' than just skill. The formula could simply be altered to include as many factors as you like, ranging from number of killing blows to amount of HP damage received throughout one's lifecourse. It'd simply be a new variable * weight coefficient in the formula.
Making it relative on any "scores" from a "lifetime of the MUD" database will introduce an infinity grind: every player to reach the magic top 10% makes the grind that much more difficult for players coming behind them.
Not necessarily. For example, for every person who hits master, there are two characters created who either never train, or die before they hit apprentice. The left shifting overpowers the right shifting in that example. Your fear is only realized if we limit the people contributing to distribution to those who achieve mastery. If we draw the distribution from ALL players, then master reaches a stable state equilibrium between newly created characters pulling the distribution back and highly skilled, longevity characters pulling it up.
It's not necessarily the way I personally would handle bracketing skillgain, but I'm working inside the bounds of the stated idea of the current administration.
In that case, you could game the system by rolling throwaways.
At any rate, I feel like this system could not be transparent at all, or people would game it mercilessly. E.g. if you know that landing a killing blow on a carru gives you +10 points, you can just go out and spam sling-stones at carru until they're crit-wounded, then ride in and gank them.
Or if you know that each critter you kill gives you +1 to your final distribution rating, you can go out and spamkill level-0 mobs to boost your ratings.
There isn't a way to do the stat math in a transparent way that doesn't introduce new powergaming modalities. And if it isn't transparent, it's still going to be frustrating.
Quote from: Armaddict on June 20, 2019, 05:54:05 PM
QuoteNot sure why people who don't play feel the need to weigh in on game mechanics.
Why wouldn't they? If they care about the game and its success, appreciate the experiences they have, and have things to say about it, why shouldn't they? Do they simply cease to have relevant things to say? Why only for mechanic discussions? Do years of experience from ex-players (temporarily or permanent) have merit when applied to knowledge of the game world, but not for the interactive framework you use to experience it?
QuoteThe repeated assertion/implication that being able to attain mastery by NOT engaging in poor play is somehow anti-RP is preposterous.
It is. But just as much, the entire shuffle of mechanics in a direction to make it so that sparring->mastery is just as preposterous. The suggested changes always lead that way; I want to be able to safely skillgain to mastery. Even when other motives come into play, the suggestion leads to that being the side effect, and that is -boring-. The insinuation that I just want things to be hard for no reason or never want people to attain mastery is also preposterous (not saying Synthesis made this insinuation directly, I just responded to his quote before making a statement about how disagreement on this topic is treated from the other side).
I have always, always, tried to make it so that danger, risk, and calculation are as present within the game as possible. If your proposal was 'Hey, can we make more fauna that is dangerous and 'up to scale' with agility so that risk-takers have a skillgain benefit to risking death?', I'd be all for it.
But it's always about changing code to allow you to never have to face that risk. To make it so that by the time you face risks, you're already ready. And that's just not a very Zalanthan atmosphere, where everyone has plenty of and equal opportunity to get to that mastery. People should push and shove for it. Being head and shoulders above the others should be a true struggle in and of itself, a true dwarven focus.
Considering the Jman plateau makes for a pretty badass warrior altogether, insisting that it must change so that most everyone gets past it is ultimately degrading, not enhancing the game. All my quips about 'brief skills'? It's because the amount of people scrambling to get changes made to allow mastery has risen -exponentially- for little to no reason...the game is -less- dangerous than it was before, more predictable, and tamer in the pvp realm, but people got that twisted up into the need to continue progressing with their new-found consistent longevity.
It has nothing to do with slaps in the face, or (for me) code restrictions. It has everything to do with a (relatively) newfound need to be placated with how far you expect characters to be able to progress, or how much to attain, in safety. Just play a character. Make them a combat character. Stop saying things 'force' you to do things when that's the drive in you, not the game, that forces it. Direct that drive into the behavior that -does- work, and take the risks.
The current winning system isn't that risky, though. It's just grindy. There are several mobs out there that are super dangerous to a noob, but are really not that dangerous at all once you have master parry, master shield use, and master flee--even with a novice weapon skill.
Yes, those mobs will whip your ass most of the time when you're at master/master/master/novice, but they typically won't whip your ass in a way where you're legitimately at risk of dying. You just take your HP loss and go back to town to rest it off. Or you mitigate the risk by fleeing as soon as you get the 4 or 5 dodges you need to reasonably guarantee a skillgain. I mean, it's not rocket science here. I feel like people don't understand how legitimately bad the current system is.
Beyond a point, transparency isn't really desirable. Although obviously we have gone in the direction of more, that doesn't mean we need complete transparency, or that it would be a good thing.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 06:10:57 PM
Beyond a point, transparency isn't really desirable. Although obviously we have gone in the direction of more, that doesn't mean we need complete transparency, or that it would be a good thing.
The lack of transparency has always created two problems:
1) Shadow information: it always spreads through OOC channels, and Staff members are people who can be socially engineered. This also creates cliques: when one person figures something out, or gets secret information from a Staff member, other people want to create or maintain contact with that person.
2) Frog's-eye grinding: lack of knowing what works leads people on a quest to find the thing that works, meaning they spend a whooole lot of time and energy on trying to perfect the grind instead of playing well.
Overall, that produces dissatisfaction with the game, because everyone behind the curve is scratching their heads wondering why they suck so much. And as an empirical matter...I feel like there were way more hardcore powergamers back in the day when everything was super hush-hush, except in the private chatrooms on dalnet.
I think there is a direct relationship with a system's balanced design and the amount of transparency around it. A very well designed system can be fully understood down to the exact formulae involved and suffer not at all. It's only when the system is not well designed -- ie, when there are aspects of it that can be exploited in ways that are not intended -- that transparency has to be sacrificed.
For an example of this, take a look at EVE online. Aspects of that game are so well balanced that the formulae have been fully defined by the players and the game still doesn't suffer, because the systems are designed so that understanding them doesn't break them. The formulae behind the game design are so well understood, you can easily pull up mathematical explanations and graphs defining their functions at all possible values and the game still doesn't suffer. That's an ideal to strive towards, imo.
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Capacitor_Management_101#Graphs.21
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Falloff#Tracking
Contrast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
Quote from: Namino on June 20, 2019, 06:24:18 PM
I think there is a direct relationship with a system's balanced design and the amount of transparency around it. A very well designed system can be fully understood down to the exact formulae involved and suffer not at all. It's only when the system is not well designed -- ie, when there are aspects of it that can be exploited in ways that are not intended -- that transparency has to be sacrificed.
For an example of this, take a look at EVE online. Aspects of that game are so well balanced that the formulae have been fully defined by the players and the game still doesn't suffer, because the systems are designed so that understanding them doesn't break them. The formulae behind the game design are so well understood, you can easily pull up mathematical explanations and graphs defining their functions at all possible values and the game still doesn't suffer. That's an ideal to strive towards, imo.
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Capacitor_Management_101#Graphs.21
https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Falloff#Tracking
Agree.
Where I disagree is whether you'll be able to define a set of statistics that adequately captures the idea of "challenges faced," and is gaming-resistant, and doesn't require unusual behavior or methods to advance, in the context of ArmageddonMUD. I think that's a rabbit-hole you're going down to prevent what I believe is a bogeyman scenario: too many skilled PCs.
I mean...I'm old enough to remember the days when people were shitting all over proposals for a point-buy skill system to replace the class-based system, and the bogeyman scenario was "warrior with backstab and fireball spell." And now we can have Enforcer/Krathis.
(And nothing has significantly changed.)
Quote from: Brokkr on June 20, 2019, 06:10:57 PM
Beyond a point, transparency isn't really desirable. Although obviously we have gone in the direction of more, that doesn't mean we need complete transparency, or that it would be a good thing.
Right, but you don't need to say 'You need to have 19 more hours played before you can skill up again'.
You can say, "We have put into effect a system that has a progression of proficiency in weapon skills so that you should get to 'advanced' after approximately x days played"
The tricky thing is to tell the players - this is the expected ramp up of skills we want combat players to follow. Because right now expectations are not defined and it's a mad rush to find the quickest way to reach said goal.
QuoteI feel like people don't understand how legitimately bad the current system is.
For what it's worth, I don't think it's the epitome of all systems, but it -has- performed in its function for a pretty long time. Just like crimcode, it's nowhere near perfect but it legitimately adds its portion of mechanics to interaction with the world. That in no way says, 'Never change this', it just says 'any changes in it should enhance it in its function within the game.'
As I said, if people were coming up with ideas other than 'make sparring work more better', I'd be for it. But I just genuinely think you lose more as far as 'game enrichment' when you make it so that far more people are reaching a state of badassery from a state of relative safety.
Put those qualifiers into place that limit one thing from the other, minimize the side effect, and you'll probably feel a lot less stingy disagreement. Most of that disagreement, I think, stems less from 'We're fine' and more from 'Ehhh, these proposed fixes don't sit right with me.'
Here is my concern.
How do I become one of those vaunted few? We've said risk it for the biscuit, and that's cute, but I have zero desire to play something where it is luck of the draw or coveted knowledge to progress into a "master" type character. We can boast about how we've created a system that only makes a select few into something exceptional and that's great, sure. But if I, a layman, will not have equal opportunity to have one of those exceptional characters? Then you've made a poor system.
The things you seem content with, Brokkr, startle me. The fact that you are endorsing such a poor system happily most of which.
What should I tell a friend who would want to play? "You'll never be the best. No. You will never figure it out nor draw the golden ticket. But we need more bynners to die to spiders so you should check it out." Why would anybody waste their time with that?
On a related note; how much money have you spent on lottery tickets in your life?
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 06:43:35 PM
For an example of this, take a look at EVE online. Aspects of that game are so well balanced that the formulae have been fully defined by the players and the game still doesn't suffer, because the systems are designed so that understanding them doesn't break them. The formulae behind the game design are so well understood, you can easily pull up mathematical explanations and graphs defining their functions at all possible values and the game still doesn't suffer. That's an ideal to strive towards, imo.
I find EVE to be as dull as dishwater. It's too well defined. It's like playing a spreadsheet.
I don't care whether the system is well defined or not. Can we just get rid of the half-truths? How many asterisks have to go after "fight an opponent more skilled than you" for it to be true in this game. I don't care what has to happen so long as the end result is you can give me a simple direction to follow and if I continue to do it I'll get better. 0 other skills are as obtuse as combat skills. No one is laying down flat on their back in the desert glazing kalans to improve their cooking to master.
If we turned it into a simple spreadsheet everyone could understand maybe we could focus on the fun parts of the game like exploring, scheming, and socializing. I don't care what solution gets figured out. I'm just exhausted with the lies.
QuoteWhat should I tell a friend who would want to play? "You'll never be the best. No. You will never figure it out nor draw the golden ticket. But we need more bynners to die to spiders so you should check it out." Why would anybody waste their time with that?
If this is the way you think/talk about Arm, you probably weren't going to recruit them anyway. Not because you need to cover truth, but because you're clearly targeting an audience or aspect that is not historically prevalent in the game. This is at best hyperbole, and at worst a misconstruction of the premise of the game.
Try this:
"You'd probably want to join a combat clan, like the desert merchants or the mercenary group, since you like action. It's not like most games, they'll actually train you, and they'll -need- to train you, but as long as you don't do anything really stupid and your commander doesn't get into politics over their head, you'll hit a point where you're head and shoulders above most that aren't your buddies as far as combat goes. They have it designed so it's really an achievement to be legendary, but almost everyone who wants to makes it to being a known, capable soldier, and it's all about where you go from there. If you decide legendary swordsperson is the way to go, it's going to be -really- hard but you'll probably run into some killer stories along the way. Until you die. Muhahahaha!"
"Thanks, Armaddict! That's really cool! So is it like Skyrim where I can be killing dragons? How do I get to that point where I'm a total bad ass?"
Tell me. How do you get to that point? A totally reasonable question that I would ask. No one picks up a Fallout looking to be the most mundane wanderer.
Lastly, yes. I think not being a current player invalidates your opinion. It's like expatriating and continuing to vote. But I don't care to argue with you. I can't stop you from posting.
Uhm.
Aren't you killing dragons in skyrim long before being maxxed out? Before being a 'master'?
Shit. Killing braxat and dujat worms and siltfliers and giant spiders is pretty fuckin' epic dude.
Quote from: Riev on June 20, 2019, 03:05:57 PM
Quote from: Delirium on June 20, 2019, 02:44:27 PM
This entire argument is based off the assumption that it's impossible to get past a plateau in weapon skills.
That was never my experience in the past.
If it's due to the starting offense levels of specific new classes, couldn't we just lower that?
It'd make them less powerful out of the gate, but with more potential down the road.
Honestly though, one of the benefits is that you DO start out more competent, if you chose to be, which allows for quicker exploration or involvement in "kill all da spidahs!" plots.
I think the high start, with the rapid advancement in offense just leaves the weapon skills stunted without some odd behavior on the part of the player. You actually advance to this "grindy area" so quickly that it frustrates some people to be at 6days played and feel that they can't codedly advance along their main goal.
If there goal was more than "get master next to my weapon skill" I'd have a lot more sympathy. Becoming the best fighter in the Known is possible and it doesnt require seeing "Master" to do so.
Oh. The above is wrong. If you believe that then you will simply never be better than the people who do get to that point. I have no idea what point you were trying to make but this isn't the Karate Kid. Unless there's a hidden "heart" stat (lol).
No. Statistically if a guy is better than you, be it master or whatever, then he will be better at killing you. Out of more situations.
Please feel free to tell me how I can backstab said guy and pray that the poison takes effect before he etwo mercs me while I am paralyzed from the cool down.
Armaddict, you've dodged the crux of my question, but I can appreciate your point. Learn to appreciate the status quo. It's a very adult view and a valuable lesson. Probably not an exciting way to market a game though.
Why is having something be reasonably attainable such a battle? Currently it's closer to "see that mountain? You can climb it".
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on June 20, 2019, 08:02:48 PMNo. Statistically if a guy is better than you, be it master or whatever, then he will be better at killing you. Out of more situations.
But this whole thread is bitching about how people can't get past the plateau. Ergo if no-one gets past the plateau then the fact it says journeyman instead of master is irrelevant if your goal is to be better than everyone else.
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on June 20, 2019, 07:13:50 PM
How do I become one of those vaunted few?
Step 1. Join Kurac.
Step 2. Spar with Ruke, Bjergar, etc.
Step 3. Profit.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 21, 2019, 12:28:21 AM
Step 1. Join Kurac.
Step 2. Spar with Ruke, Bjergar, etc.
Step 3. Profit.
In a curious coincidence, Ruke himself posted this gem years ago:
(http://i396.photobucket.com/albums/pp46/antiwhipped/ragecomic.png)
Quote from: John on June 20, 2019, 10:53:30 PM
Quote from: gotdamnmiracle on June 20, 2019, 08:02:48 PMNo. Statistically if a guy is better than you, be it master or whatever, then he will be better at killing you. Out of more situations.
But this whole thread is bitching about how people can't get past the plateau. Ergo if no-one gets past the plateau then the fact it says journeyman instead of master is irrelevant if your goal is to be better than everyone else.
You can't get past the plateau
UNLESS YOU ENGAGE IN MEDIOCRE PLAY
How many times does it have to be said?
The entire point of the thread is that your character can be a longtime member of an elite military unit (the Tor Scorpions, the Borsail Wyverns, the Oashi Elite) and still be vastly codedly inferior to some idiot scrub who spent 15 days grinding tarantulas and disarming gith for no reason other than to git gud.
Quote from: Gracchus on June 20, 2019, 03:55:04 PM
The failure system is fine, feels a bit like I'm playing Morrowind or the Burning Wheel, it's enjoyable. What doesn't feel good is that to attain even basic competence (and god forbid I get good) in weapons skills I have to subject myself to a grind so slow and tedious it's like I'm working an irl job, only to have those gains eliminated in the blink of an eye because it's a permadeath game. Which means now I have to do it again. It's frankly disrespectful of my time.
Even very simple bootstraps solutions recommended in this thread, like making parries count for skilling up. could alleviate this. I don't want an overhaul I just want to be able to get good without dedicating real life days to it.
If nothing can dodge you (which is the premise of this thread) I would argue you have reached competence at a bare minimum.
---
Synthesis: So your argument is that because twinks are able to advance their weapon skills to master faster than intended /through safer play than intended, we should make it easier for everyone to get their weapon skills to master?
Just because you know how to abuse the code doesnt mean the code should be abused. Staff have outright said that master weapon skills are meant to be near impossible to achieve and furthermore they have added a recent change so that there is always a chance sparring can cause a skill up. Using those poor play techniques you boast about knowing doesnt make you a better player.
I look forward to your next long winded post with petty nitpiks.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 05:17:31 PMOverall, I think the best method is to a) make parries and blocks count as failures and b) gate the final steps to mastery behind longevity.
Then there are multiple ways to implement a longevity gate:
1) Single hard gate: If master is skill level 80, you can get to 79 as fast as you can possibly do it, but you will never get that skill bump to 80 until you pass the longevity gate. Worst-case scenario, you start at 79 at chargen, and never get a skillbump until you hit 20 days (or whatever the gate is). Worst-case scenario, you mudsex for 19 days and suddenly become a master at 20 days 1 hour when you suddenly begin training.
2) Skillgain timer gate: Your skillgain timer for each weapon/style skill is set at chargen, based on your starting skill and the skill level at which mastery occurs. If you start at jman (e.g. 40) slashing because of a skill boost, and mastery occurs at 80, that's a difference of 40 skill points. If the skillgain gate is set to 20 days played, the fastest you can get to mastery is 40 points in 20 days, so your skill timer for slashing is set for 12 hours of logged-in time. You can get a skillgain to slashing weapons every 12 hours played, so it will be -at least- 20 days before you progress to master slashing.
3) Multiple-step longevity gating: There are four "steps" on the way to master (apprentice, journeyman, advanced, master). Each of these steps is longevity-gated. It's not necessary for them to be proportional, but for simplicity of explanation, they'll be proportional for this discussion. 20 days divided by 4 steps is 5 days apiece. You can't achieve apprentice before 5 days. You can't achieve jman before 10 days. You can't achieve advanced before 15 days. You can't achieve master before 20 days. If you start at jman out of chargen, it will still be 15 days before you can hit advanced.
4) RL-time gating: replace each of the above scenarios with real-life time as the metric instead of logged-in time. This prevents padding the login clock by idling.
I think the longevity gate will work better for clan sparring, because once you hit the gate, you know that it's pointless to grind for yourself at a certain point. (I'd argue that the best "location" for the gate is right -after- the word-based-metric. E.g. you technically can hit advanced before 15 days, but it will be locked in at minimum advanced. This way, you know you hit the wall, and that it's pointless to grind until you hit 15 days.) Back to the point: if you know grinding for yourself is not going to be effective, you now have two options open 1) help your clannies grind, by being a good sparring buddy (much easier to do if you aren't worried about your own gains); or 2) go out and get into some shit instead of worrying about losing time not sparring.
OMG! This solution sucks! It's awful game design! How dare you make something that requires hours upon hours of play! I know a bug that lets me exploit the code so therefore the longevity cap should be removed! This is just bad game design and encourages idling! No-one will try to do anything until they reach the abritrary longevity hurdle! I might as well quit the game and come back in 1 year's time when I can finally reach master!
Yes, that's a bit over the top. But some of those points are very close to real quotes we've gotten from those who keep championing that the code be changed.
First everyone complained about skill levels not being shown, and then they were displayed.
Then everyone complained about how it takes too long to become competent, so the classes were overhauled and each class was made easier to reach competence.
Then there was a complaint that you just can't get a skill failure on combat skills no matter how much you spar, and so a change was introduced to give you a chance at skilling up from every sparring session.
Now the complaint is that it takes too long to get skill ups beyond a certain point and so it's being suggested that the amount of time required be reduced (or be codified to some OOC concept of playtime hours).
Guaranteed if the staff make the game easier to reach master on combat skills, then the next complaints will be:
1) The game is too easy.
2) You might as well not exist until you get master on all your combat skills.
3) There's no more game progression.
A good design team will listen to player feedback. A bad design team will let players dictate what changes occur in the game's design.
Every time staff has changed the game to address concerns, the old concerns have been replaced by new concerns. Some of these changes have been good for the game. I believe some of them have been a detriment to the game. I believe making doing any of the changes synthesis has proposed will result in more people leaving the game then we currently have.
I do think the game might benefit by having weapon skills be somewhat easier to master. But I don't know for sure. I do know that synthesis's solutions will simply make the game flat out bad.
Although I do expect to have this post met with a tirade by synthesis.
Don't change anything except skill display.
Club advanced and master as "expert" in the skill display menu, does this solve the problem?
A big part of the problem - as is a time-honored tradition on Armageddon - is that one side of the fence wilfully misinterprets all of the other side's arguments as "I wanna max out everything in one week so I can PK everybody! What is RP?" I'm on the verge of calling the code unfixable not because it's difficult to fix but because half of the community is too contrarian.
Several times I've seen people suggest that the skill caps simply be lowered to the plateau level so that people will shut up about it, as if the most important thing is to ensure that PCs' weapon skills remain as low as possible. Like that's some how the goal of the code. Why exactly is this a priority? We might as well not have combat skills, then.
I feel like it's more that they don't want folks to be able to kill everything.
Because if say a long lived hunter becomes a twink, they can spawn a Gaj or Mek on him and problem solved.
I don't think the pk part of it is really the huge concern. Because that gets noticed and you're supposed to wish up when you kill someone. So if you're being a griefer and going and murdering folks all the time it's gonna get noticed.
Now I don't know if killing all the salt worms or all the dujats triggers similar notice.
And again this is all just a feeling from reading these posts, do I know for sure? Nope.
But to me it feels like they want us easily killable as a control method.
That's a very poor reason to keep a dysfunctional system. Weapon skills don't even play that big a role in whether or not you can kill some big beastie. When it comes to things like that, there's very little difference between jman and master weapons because that mekillot won't dodge you either way. Your "damage output," for want of a better term, is pretty much the same at any skill level if the thing you're fighting can't dodge and parry you, which brings us back to the issue of animals being hilariously terrible fighters.
Quote from: John on June 21, 2019, 06:35:55 AM
Quote from: Synthesis on June 20, 2019, 05:17:31 PMOverall, I think the best method is to a) make parries and blocks count as failures and b) gate the final steps to mastery behind longevity.
Then there are multiple ways to implement a longevity gate:
1) Single hard gate: If master is skill level 80, you can get to 79 as fast as you can possibly do it, but you will never get that skill bump to 80 until you pass the longevity gate. Worst-case scenario, you start at 79 at chargen, and never get a skillbump until you hit 20 days (or whatever the gate is). Worst-case scenario, you mudsex for 19 days and suddenly become a master at 20 days 1 hour when you suddenly begin training.
2) Skillgain timer gate: Your skillgain timer for each weapon/style skill is set at chargen, based on your starting skill and the skill level at which mastery occurs. If you start at jman (e.g. 40) slashing because of a skill boost, and mastery occurs at 80, that's a difference of 40 skill points. If the skillgain gate is set to 20 days played, the fastest you can get to mastery is 40 points in 20 days, so your skill timer for slashing is set for 12 hours of logged-in time. You can get a skillgain to slashing weapons every 12 hours played, so it will be -at least- 20 days before you progress to master slashing.
3) Multiple-step longevity gating: There are four "steps" on the way to master (apprentice, journeyman, advanced, master). Each of these steps is longevity-gated. It's not necessary for them to be proportional, but for simplicity of explanation, they'll be proportional for this discussion. 20 days divided by 4 steps is 5 days apiece. You can't achieve apprentice before 5 days. You can't achieve jman before 10 days. You can't achieve advanced before 15 days. You can't achieve master before 20 days. If you start at jman out of chargen, it will still be 15 days before you can hit advanced.
4) RL-time gating: replace each of the above scenarios with real-life time as the metric instead of logged-in time. This prevents padding the login clock by idling.
I think the longevity gate will work better for clan sparring, because once you hit the gate, you know that it's pointless to grind for yourself at a certain point. (I'd argue that the best "location" for the gate is right -after- the word-based-metric. E.g. you technically can hit advanced before 15 days, but it will be locked in at minimum advanced. This way, you know you hit the wall, and that it's pointless to grind until you hit 15 days.) Back to the point: if you know grinding for yourself is not going to be effective, you now have two options open 1) help your clannies grind, by being a good sparring buddy (much easier to do if you aren't worried about your own gains); or 2) go out and get into some shit instead of worrying about losing time not sparring.
OMG! This solution sucks! It's awful game design! How dare you make something that requires hours upon hours of play! I know a bug that lets me exploit the code so therefore the longevity cap should be removed! This is just bad game design and encourages idling! No-one will try to do anything until they reach the abritrary longevity hurdle! I might as well quit the game and come back in 1 year's time when I can finally reach master!
Yes, that's a bit over the top. But some of those points are very close to real quotes we've gotten from those who keep championing that the code be changed.
First everyone complained about skill levels not being shown, and then they were displayed.
Then everyone complained about how it takes too long to become competent, so the classes were overhauled and each class was made easier to reach competence.
Then there was a complaint that you just can't get a skill failure on combat skills no matter how much you spar, and so a change was introduced to give you a chance at skilling up from every sparring session.
Now the complaint is that it takes too long to get skill ups beyond a certain point and so it's being suggested that the amount of time required be reduced (or be codified to some OOC concept of playtime hours).
Guaranteed if the staff make the game easier to reach master on combat skills, then the next complaints will be:
1) The game is too easy.
2) You might as well not exist until you get master on all your combat skills.
3) There's no more game progression.
A good design team will listen to player feedback. A bad design team will let players dictate what changes occur in the game's design.
Every time staff has changed the game to address concerns, the old concerns have been replaced by new concerns. Some of these changes have been good for the game. I believe some of them have been a detriment to the game. I believe making doing any of the changes synthesis has proposed will result in more people leaving the game then we currently have.
I do think the game might benefit by having weapon skills be somewhat easier to master. But I don't know for sure. I do know that synthesis's solutions will simply make the game flat out bad.
Although I do expect to have this post met with a tirade by synthesis.
People have always been complaining about how long it takes to master weapon skills. Everyone knows that you branch when you get near your guild max for the skill. Everyone knew that warriors branched advanced weapons from weapon skills. So you could use this as a metric as to whether you were a "master" yet: as soon as you popped an advanced weapon, you knew you were pretty damn good. And everyone could tell what was going on: people stuck in clans, sparring, never branched advanced weapons. But if you quit your clan and went out to grind on pointless critters, lo and behold, you would branch advanced weapons. If you -started- by critter grinding, you could branch an advanced weapon in as little as 15 days, if you really put work into it and didn't waste time idling or talking to other PCs.
This is also why simply "renaming the skill levels" or "getting rid of being able to see how good you are" is not going to work. Everyone knows Enforcer branches backstab and sap from weapon skills, so all you have to do to judge the system is roll an Enforcer and observe how long it takes you to branch backstab organically. Then, this timeframe should apply to Raiders and Fighters (roughly). Soldiers branch riposte from slashing or hack from chopping...so you can use a Soldier PC to judge how long it takes to get to advanced. Beyond that...listen...if you've ever had a weapon skill at master, you can tell who's master and who's not, because the proportion of crit shots is DRAMATICALLY higher. Yes, at jman you can land a hit almost every time. But at master, you're either dropping head/neck/wrist crits or solid body shots -every- -single- -hit- (slight exaggeration). Hiding skill levels might bamboozle the noobs, but it's not going to fool anyone who's been playing the game for awhile.
That being said: this thread is not complaining about how long it takes. This thread, again, is about how it is nigh-impossible to even get it done, if you don't resort to critter grinding.
I don't think the "parries-blocks-count-as-fails + longevity gate" solution is the ideal solution. I think it's a compromise solution that accomplishes a few important goals without introducing a lot of weird mechanics or gaminess. It ensures that you -can- attain mastery by playing reasonably, but it also -limits- the number of PCs who will attain it, by setting the bar high. And the only way to game it is to idle (if it's a days-played timer) or by not logging in at all (if it's a RL-time timer). Hell, you could make the timer an AND timer instead of an OR timer: you have to be 20 days played in-game AND six months old RL time. I feel like there
probably are not enough players out there who are so sociopathically patient that they would be able to game a longevity gate.
(And listen, 20 days played/six months is just my rough guess about how long PCs live. It might be 30 or 40 and 9 months or a year.)
I've mentioned this before, but when we added in the new classes we added in the ability to decouple the branching point from the max skill level of the skill you worked up to branch from.
To give an extreme example, I would *rofl* if you judged Soldier that way.
Quote from: Cerelum on June 21, 2019, 09:02:09 AM
I feel like it's more that they don't want folks to be able to kill everything.
Because if say a long lived hunter becomes a twink, they can spawn a Gaj or Mek on him and problem solved.
I don't think the pk part of it is really the huge concern. Because that gets noticed and you're supposed to wish up when you kill someone. So if you're being a griefer and going and murdering folks all the time it's gonna get noticed.
Now I don't know if killing all the salt worms or all the dujats triggers similar notice.
And again this is all just a feeling from reading these posts, do I know for sure? Nope.
But to me it feels like they want us easily killable as a control method.
That's absurd.
Even completely maxed out, fighting a mekillot solo is an absolutely stupid idea, so there's no reason to keep PCs nerfed to prevent them from doing it. A mekillot can easily OHK a humanoid, and the only thing stopping that is your defense, not your weapon skill. There is no level of PC-attainable parry and defense that will reliably protect you from getting hit by a mekillot, and one hit -will- eventually kill you if you make a habit of fighting them without magick or an HG to tank.
Beyond that, if you're being such a dickweed that staff feel compelled to take action, they aren't going to shadow-gank you with a random spawn. They're going to let you know LOUD AND CLEAR that what you're doing is unacceptable.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 21, 2019, 01:15:14 PM
I've mentioned this before, but when we added in the new classes we added in the ability to decouple the branching point from the max skill level of the skill you worked up to branch from.
To give an extreme example, I would *rofl* if you judged Soldier that way.
Oh yeah, forgot about that. Point remains that since it's a fixed point, it's still a metric.
Quasi-Facetious idea:
People plateau around high Journeyman. Downshift the skill level indicators for this, so that they see Advanced.
Make them use a karma point for a subguild called "Master [Combatant]", or Master Swordsman, whatever. Make a player decide that they don't just want to be "good at combat", they're specifically sacrificing utility and other skills to MASTER it, sort of like crafting.
Then make it cost a karma point/special app slot to talk to staff when they get to Advanced to get the last 10-pt skill bump they're looking for. Is it a quest? Fight this NPC and win? Logs?
Let me sacrifice utility and crafting to signify that, yes, I want to be a master combatant. I'm looking for top tier weapon skills here. When I am ready for them, I have to spend even more karma.
That certainly will limit how many people get to that point, will let staff more easily monitor who is at that level, and Fighter/Crafters will still be VERY good at their jobs, as good as a master combatant, for a time.
Quote from: Riev on June 21, 2019, 02:10:02 PM
Quasi-Facetious idea:
People plateau around high Journeyman. Downshift the skill level indicators for this, so that they see Advanced.
Make them use a karma point for a subguild called "Master [Combatant]", or Master Swordsman, whatever. Make a player decide that they don't just want to be "good at combat", they're specifically sacrificing utility and other skills to MASTER it, sort of like crafting.
Then make it cost a karma point/special app slot to talk to staff when they get to Advanced to get the last 10-pt skill bump they're looking for. Is it a quest? Fight this NPC and win? Logs?
Let me sacrifice utility and crafting to signify that, yes, I want to be a master combatant. I'm looking for top tier weapon skills here. When I am ready for them, I have to spend even more karma.
That certainly will limit how many people get to that point, will let staff more easily monitor who is at that level, and Fighter/Crafters will still be VERY good at their jobs, as good as a master combatant, for a time.
Why would you need a subguild to get to the maximum skill capability that the Staff have already decided is appropriate for a Fighter, Raider, or Enforcer?
Picking Enforcer, Raider, or Fighter already -is- the sacrifice. Simply going one tier down in each column opens up absolutely massive improvements to utility, playability, and overall fun. I mean, yo...raiders don't even get skinning or wilderness quit. I can't look between the raider and scout skill sheets without feeling a little sick. Soldiers get NINE crafting skills. Infiltrators START WITH BACKSTAB, and Enforcers don't get poisoning or city hunt. What? What?. Picking top-tier is an up-front kick in the nuts, and then a pat on the back wishing you luck for a 20-day grind before you ever see the upside of it. The idea that what we really need is a kick in the nuts AND an atomic wedgie is preposterous.
If the maximum skill capability is too high, the obvious solution is to just nerf the max. Not implement some bizarro-system where everyone looks better than they are, but then you have to beg staff to let you git gud.
QuoteIf the maximum skill capability is too high, the obvious solution is to just nerf the max. Not implement some bizarro-system where everyone looks better than they are, but then you have to beg staff to let you git gud.
Uhm.
Then you'd be in the same boat, but with no capability of reaching the legendary status. All that would change is the little (text) after the weapon skill.
Normally I'm with you as far as weapon skills branching things, I thought the advanced weapon skills could be moved lower down to be more attainable, but the only place where this still exists is enforcer backstab, right? (I might be totally mistaken there). It was stated that such was intentional.
So I'm really confused why that solution is so appealing. It's literally a string of characters pissing people off if that's a better solution in your head. If that was just total tongue-in-cheek, ignore this.
QuotePicking Enforcer, Raider, or Fighter already -is- the sacrifice.
While I agree with the sentiment...if you recall, when the new classes came out, I was talking about how too many skills were crammed into too many guilds, and we needed to do away with extended subguilds to balance it out...the heavy combat tier is probably the main reason to keep extended subs in place. While they sacrifice a lot in the utility skills, those are, in specializations, available through extended subguilds which makes me really not worry about them having skinning and such. They can get it, if they're just a more martial version of their survivalist counterparts.
Keeping up with the thread, do not gate weapons skill behind irl time, PLEASE...that's just obnoxious, there's already tons of content gated behind karma and such that requires playing the game awhile irl, there should not be timesinks for simple stuff like being good at swords.
What -content- exactly is 'gated' by master weapon skills?
Quote from: Armaddict on June 21, 2019, 06:42:11 PM
What -content- exactly is 'gated' by master weapon skills?
Being the very best, the best that ever was.
(I'm (mostly) joking, don't @ me)
Quote from: Armaddict on June 21, 2019, 05:54:50 PM
QuoteIf the maximum skill capability is too high, the obvious solution is to just nerf the max. Not implement some bizarro-system where everyone looks better than they are, but then you have to beg staff to let you git gud.
Uhm.
Then you'd be in the same boat, but with no capability of reaching the legendary status. All that would change is the little (text) after the weapon skill.
Normally I'm with you as far as weapon skills branching things, I thought the advanced weapon skills could be moved lower down to be more attainable, but the only place where this still exists is enforcer backstab, right? (I might be totally mistaken there). It was stated that such was intentional.
So I'm really confused why that solution is so appealing. It's literally a string of characters pissing people off if that's a better solution in your head. If that was just total tongue-in-cheek, ignore this.
I'm not arguing in favor of this. I guess you missed my point, there. I think the whole thing is stupid, but it would be -less- stupid to simply nerf the caps, if you were dead-set on implementing something stupid. You should've quoted Riev's post, to make it less confusing.
Quote from: Armaddict on June 21, 2019, 05:54:50 PM
QuotePicking Enforcer, Raider, or Fighter already -is- the sacrifice.
While I agree with the sentiment...if you recall, when the new classes came out, I was talking about how too many skills were crammed into too many guilds, and we needed to do away with extended subguilds to balance it out...the heavy combat tier is probably the main reason to keep extended subs in place. While they sacrifice a lot in the utility skills, those are, in specializations, available through extended subguilds which makes me really not worry about them having skinning and such. They can get it, if they're just a more martial version of their survivalist counterparts.
Yes. And? The 2nd-tier classes get all their extra utility shit, and they still get a sub or extended sub, so the existence of subguilds is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. But...at any rate...since the 2nd and 3rd tier classes already have so much utility, the extended subguilds can -really- open things up for them, in terms of versatility, especially for the sneaky and outdoorsy columns. Also, already having versatility lets the 2nd and 3rd tier classes take subs and extended subs that are niche, without remaining functionally a one-trick pony.
If you paid attention to Riev's hot take, he was suggesting that in order to access the "master" level of the top-tier combat classes, the only sub you could take would be a new "master combatant" subguild, which would be the equivalent of the "custom crafter" subguild, so under that proposal (which I think is terrible, just to be clear) the top-tier classes would have no subguild skills, as a "cost" of being awesome at combat. So I felt the need to remind everyone that there is -already- a heavy cost.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 21, 2019, 12:00:33 PM
That being said: this thread is not complaining about how long it takes.
This thread, again, is about how it is nigh-impossible to even get it done, if you don't resort to critter grinding.
I'm considering it the same thing, because the game considers it the same thing. Weapon Skills do not go up on every failure. They take into account the offense/defense and other tings. The game is designed to slow your skill gains as you get more and more proficient. This is the time gate.
However, something is off, and players are left to try a billion options in order to maximize the failure rates. Some players figure out
that one trick the doctors hate and it gets patched over time, in order to have a standard skill progression that the producers of the game designed for.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 21, 2019, 12:00:33 PM
I don't think the "parries-blocks-count-as-fails + longevity gate" solution is the ideal solution.
...I think it's a compromise solution that accomplishes a few important goals without introducing a lot of weird mechanics or gaminess.
...It ensures that you -can- attain mastery by playing reasonably, but it also -limits- the number of PCs who will attain it, by setting the bar high.
...I feel like there probably are not enough players out there who are so sociopathically patient that they would be able to game a longevity gate.
I wish the game designed expectations of average playtime in order to reach certain weapon skills were public, so we could try and see if those aims are aligned with actual players experiences.
So, I'm going to assume that the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a valid failure (full miss and sufficiently close in offense/defense) is currently a constant (perhaps based on class). Except lowered if the foe is less skilled.
Here's an idea:
1. Make parries and shield blocks into partial fails (lower chance of a skill increase than a miss).
2. Make the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a fail/partial fail taper rapidly as the level of skill increases (like, asymptotically).
3. Leave the offense/defense clause in.
There would be no plateau. Progress would just get slower and slower.
What do you all think?
Quote from: Brokkr on June 21, 2019, 01:15:14 PM
I've mentioned this before, but when we added in the new classes we added in the ability to decouple the branching point from the max skill level of the skill you worked up to branch from.
To give an extreme example, I would *rofl* if you judged Soldier that way.
Unless staff is willing to alert the playerbase of which skills don't branch near the maximum point for that class, mentioning this at all adds nothing to the conversation except to say "I know more then you do so I'm going to laugh at you when you make inaccurate assumptions based on the knowledge available to players. Ner, ner, ner, ner."
Quote from: Eyeball on June 21, 2019, 10:40:47 PM
So, I'm going to assume that the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a valid failure (full miss and sufficiently close in offense/defense) is currently a constant (perhaps based on class). Except lowered if the foe is less skilled.
Here's an idea:
1. Make parries and shield blocks into partial fails (lower chance of a skill increase than a miss).
2. Make the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a fail/partial fail taper rapidly as the level of skill increases (like, asymptotically).
3. Leave the offense/defense clause in.
There would be no plateau. Progress would just get slower and slower.
What do you all think?
What is the intended outcome of this change? When do you envision weapon skills reaching their maximum? 1 RL year? 2 RL years? 3 RL years? Assuming average playtimes.
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 12:52:44 AM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 21, 2019, 10:40:47 PM
So, I'm going to assume that the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a valid failure (full miss and sufficiently close in offense/defense) is currently a constant (perhaps based on class). Except lowered if the foe is less skilled.
Here's an idea:
1. Make parries and shield blocks into partial fails (lower chance of a skill increase than a miss).
2. Make the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a fail/partial fail taper rapidly as the level of skill increases (like, asymptotically).
3. Leave the offense/defense clause in.
There would be no plateau. Progress would just get slower and slower.
What do you all think?
What is the intended outcome of this change? When do you envision weapon skills reaching their maximum? 1 RL year? 2 RL years? 3 RL years? Assuming average playtimes.
For someone starting at novice and spending half of his or her time sparring, maybe:
1. Apprentice after 5 days (total hours played).
2. Journeyman after 10 days.
3. Advanced after 30 days.
4. Master after 100 days.
5. Maxed out after 200 days.
Something along those lines.
I am not bothering with reading past posts.
Parry and block NEED to count as fail. Why...because they are. I failed to do damage to you. Maybe count them as 1/10 of a fail but they need to count.
No argument from coding or any other point applies. Did I do damage? No....was my intent to do damage? Yes...then By definition in any language..I failed. By Arm standards this means you get the chance to improve the skill. By not working this way...as is current...you, Staff are actually going against your stated standards and lying to the playerbase.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 22, 2019, 01:39:47 AM
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 12:52:44 AM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 21, 2019, 10:40:47 PM
So, I'm going to assume that the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a valid failure (full miss and sufficiently close in offense/defense) is currently a constant (perhaps based on class). Except lowered if the foe is less skilled.
Here's an idea:
1. Make parries and shield blocks into partial fails (lower chance of a skill increase than a miss).
2. Make the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a fail/partial fail taper rapidly as the level of skill increases (like, asymptotically).
3. Leave the offense/defense clause in.
There would be no plateau. Progress would just get slower and slower.
What do you all think?
What is the intended outcome of this change? When do you envision weapon skills reaching their maximum? 1 RL year? 2 RL years? 3 RL years? Assuming average playtimes.
For someone starting at novice and spending half of his or her time sparring, maybe:
1. Apprentice after 5 days (total hours played).
2. Journeyman after 10 days.
3. Advanced after 30 days.
4. Master after 100 days.
5. Maxed out after 200 days.
Something along those lines.
I understand what you are getting at here, but if a system like this was implemented, I would quit. Everyone learns at different speeds, even in real life. I think the way it currently is set up works if they add in parries and blocks as XD stated. I would rather have the system we have, than a timed system on when you can advance a level.
Quote from: Krath on June 22, 2019, 03:06:36 AM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 22, 2019, 01:39:47 AM
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 12:52:44 AM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 21, 2019, 10:40:47 PM
So, I'm going to assume that the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a valid failure (full miss and sufficiently close in offense/defense) is currently a constant (perhaps based on class). Except lowered if the foe is less skilled.
Here's an idea:
1. Make parries and shield blocks into partial fails (lower chance of a skill increase than a miss).
2. Make the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a fail/partial fail taper rapidly as the level of skill increases (like, asymptotically).
3. Leave the offense/defense clause in.
There would be no plateau. Progress would just get slower and slower.
What do you all think?
What is the intended outcome of this change? When do you envision weapon skills reaching their maximum? 1 RL year? 2 RL years? 3 RL years? Assuming average playtimes.
For someone starting at novice and spending half of his or her time sparring, maybe:
1. Apprentice after 5 days (total hours played).
2. Journeyman after 10 days.
3. Advanced after 30 days.
4. Master after 100 days.
5. Maxed out after 200 days.
Something along those lines.
I understand what you are getting at here, but if a system like this was implemented, I would quit. Everyone learns at different speeds, even in real life. I think the way it currently is set up works if they add in parries and blocks as XD stated. I would rather have the system we have, than a timed system on when you can advance a level.
Except this one isn't gated in time so much as that should be the expected times to reach those levels. At least from my reading of it.
That and the two systems seem identical, to me.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 22, 2019, 01:39:47 AMFor someone starting at novice and spending half of his or her time sparring, maybe:
1. Apprentice after 5 days (total hours played).
2. Journeyman after 10 days.
3. Advanced after 30 days.
4. Master after 100 days.
5. Maxed out after 200 days.
Something along those lines.
Advanced at 30 days seems pretty short to me. I worry it would become the new "competent" and people would bitch about the amount of time required to get to "competent".
30 days played is a fuck-ton of time invested. You think 700 hours in-game is short? You can already get to advanced weapon skill between like, 3-10 days played depending on your methods. Sooner with a skill bump.
That's like, god forgive me I'm about to try simple math, 8 months of OOC for someone who can log in for 3 hours every single day. Which I think most would agree is a huge investment.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 22, 2019, 05:45:21 AM30 days played is a fuck-ton of time invested. You think 700 hours in-game is short? You can already get to advanced weapon skill between like, 3-10 days played depending on your methods.
Out of interest, do you have to cheat or play poorly to get to advanced in that time frame?
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 06:09:21 AM
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 22, 2019, 05:45:21 AM30 days played is a fuck-ton of time invested. You think 700 hours in-game is short? You can already get to advanced weapon skill between like, 3-10 days played depending on your methods.
Out of interest, do you have to cheat or play poorly to get to advanced in that time frame?
Yes.
The fastest I've ever cruised to an advanced weapon branchpoint on legacy warrior was ~18 days played IIRC (which is between advanced and master on the scale above). And I was CHEESIN' that shit in an iso clan where I had nothing to do all day but cheese cheese cheese.
Why are people so wary of combat skills in the first place? Why is 30 days to hit advanced considered short? Almost any other skill will hit advanced in something like 1-4 days unless you don't really use it. 30 days takes me six months to rack up, and I don't think I'm scarce when I play. 100 days would take me the better part of two years. What's the rationale for wanting it to take 2400 hours to master a skill? Like, why should that be a thing at all? You can master fireballs and backstab and lockpicking and nearly everything else in under a month. Not saying that should be the case with weapon skills, but why are they treated like atomic bombs when much deadlier skills aren't?
The reason it sucks to get stuck on those skills isn't because it delays your progress toward becoming Drizzt Do'Urden, it's because it's the most direct measure of your progress as a fighter. Most of the reason to pick a heavy combat class is the fact that they get to master the combat skills, so if half of them are stuck at journeyman due to mechanical issues, it just feels terrible. All other character archetypes have a relatively easy time mastering the skills that they revolve around. Sure, you don't have to have <master> in order to be a functional warrior, but having several of your class-defining skills plateau at the halfway point feels every bit as disappointing and undesirable as a thief who's stuck at journeyman steal.
There are loads of valid character concepts where becoming a notable, famous warrior is a fair goal. Warrior RP is its own niche, and more than any other archetype, it makes a hell of a lot of sense for people who live by the sword to be very conscious of their own prowess. We have numerous clans and a whole category of classes devoted almost exclusively to the art of swinging a weapon. How the hell did this roleplaying community somehow manage to concoct the belief that playing a character who cares about being a good fighter is somehow against the spirit of the game? You'd think we were asking for the right to have our characters learn to fly or something. It's irrational.
We're literally dealing with a fundamental feature of the fantasy genre here. Let's take Game of Thrones as an example--how many prominent characters in that story have "good at fighting" as one of their defining characteristics? Something like a dozen? Would it have been a better story if they were all just vaguely decent and roughly equal? Or Lord of the Rings; how many times throughout it is war and combat a hugely important part of the story? My point is that this isn't some obscure niche of the fantasy genre that people have no right to expect anything of in a game like Armageddon. Why is it that you can play a miscreant whose concept is to be a professional master thief and nobody bats an eye, but if you want to play a raider whose concept is to be the terror of the wastes, half of this community acts like you're trying to sabotage the game?
Weapon skills aren't even that powerful. If you're worried about mundane PCs becoming capable of defeating every NPC in the game, it's defense and strength you should be critical of, not weapon skills. Weapon skills account for like one fifth of one's combat prowess. It's just that it doesn't make IC sense to care a bunch about your offense and defense skills, and you can't really do anything to change your stats, so it's entirely fair and natural for warrior PCs to be mindful of their skill with swords and spears. It's automatically going to be the main way that warriors are measured against eachother, because off/def are hidden and block/parry are trivial to max out. But when the system is designed to make everyone stagnate at roughly the same level, the entire "how good am I compared to those guys?" aspect of warrior RP is suppressed. Instead of fostering realistic warrior RP, it undermines it.
Very well put. I agree with above.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 22, 2019, 01:39:47 AM
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 12:52:44 AM
Quote from: Eyeball on June 21, 2019, 10:40:47 PM
So, I'm going to assume that the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a valid failure (full miss and sufficiently close in offense/defense) is currently a constant (perhaps based on class). Except lowered if the foe is less skilled.
Here's an idea:
1. Make parries and shield blocks into partial fails (lower chance of a skill increase than a miss).
2. Make the odds of a weapons skill increase upon a fail/partial fail taper rapidly as the level of skill increases (like, asymptotically).
3. Leave the offense/defense clause in.
There would be no plateau. Progress would just get slower and slower.
What do you all think?
What is the intended outcome of this change? When do you envision weapon skills reaching their maximum? 1 RL year? 2 RL years? 3 RL years? Assuming average playtimes.
For someone starting at novice and spending half of his or her time sparring, maybe:
1. Apprentice after 5 days (total hours played).
2. Journeyman after 10 days.
3. Advanced after 30 days.
4. Master after 100 days.
5. Maxed out after 200 days.
Something along those lines.
That timeline is way too hardcore.
In 20 years of playing the game, my longest-lived PC was around 60 days played. Longest-lived RL time was about 1.5 years (with maybe 6 months of that without logging in).
In 20 years, I've only had...I don't know...maybe 8 PCs even get beyond 20 days played.
Quote from: Krath on June 22, 2019, 03:06:36 AM
I understand what you are getting at here, but if a system like this was implemented, I would quit. Everyone learns at different speeds, even in real life. I think the way it currently is set up works if they add in parries and blocks as XD stated. I would rather have the system we have, than a timed system on when you can advance a level.
The idea of the longevity gate is to match the current rate of cheesy training to the rate of learning that would occur by sparring when parries and blocks count as failures. Eyeball's estimates are WAY off. Essentially the only thing that would change about the game is that you would get no particular advantage to weapon skill training by critter grinding. You could still critter grind, if you want to, but you wouldn't advance any faster. No reason to quit.
Obviously, all of this would be modified by wisdom scores, and perhaps by class. I left modifiers out of my initial discussion because talking about EVERYTHING up front makes it difficult to hash out the basic framework.
Quote from: Greve on June 22, 2019, 12:51:57 PM
Why are people so wary of combat skills in the first place? Why is 30 days to hit advanced considered short? Almost any other skill will hit advanced in something like 1-4 days unless you don't really use it. 30 days takes me six months to rack up, and I don't think I'm scarce when I play. 100 days would take me the better part of two years. What's the rationale for wanting it to take 2400 hours to master a skill? Like, why should that be a thing at all? You can master fireballs and backstab and lockpicking and nearly everything else in a week or two. Poisoning you could max out in like a couple of RL days if you have access to the right stuff. Why are weapon skills treated like atomic bombs when much deadlier skills aren't?
The reason it sucks to get stuck on those skills isn't because it delays your progress toward becoming Drizzt Do'Urden, it's because it's the most direct measure of your progress as a fighter. Most of the reason to pick a heavy combat class is the fact that they get to master the combat skills, so if half of them are stuck at journeyman due to mechanical issues, it just feels terrible. All other character archetypes have a relatively easy time mastering the skills that they revolve around. Sure, you don't have to have <master> in order to be a functional warrior, but having several of your class-defining skills plateau at the halfway point feels every bit as disappointing and undesirable as a thief who's stuck at journeyman steal.
There are loads of valid character concepts where becoming a notable, famous warrior is a fair goal. Warrior RP is its own niche, and more than any other archetype, it makes a hell of a lot of sense for people who live by the sword to be very conscious of their own prowess. We have numerous clans and a whole category of classes devoted almost exclusively to the art of swinging a weapon. How the hell did this roleplaying community somehow manage to concoct the belief that playing a character who cares about being a good fighter is somehow against the spirit of the game? You'd think we were asking for the right to have our characters learn to fly or something. It's just totally irrational.
We're literally dealing with a fundamental feature of the fantasy genre here. Let's take Game of Thrones as an example--how many prominent characters in that story have "good at fighting" as one of their defining characteristics? Something like a dozen? Or Lord of the Rings; how many times throughout it is war and combat a hugely important part of the story? My point is that this isn't some obscure niche of the fantasy genre that people have no right to expect anything of in a game like Armageddon. Why is it that you can play a miscreant whose concept is to be a professional master thief and nobody bats an eye, but if you want to play a raider whose concept is to be the terror of the wastes, half of this community acts like you're trying to sabotage the game?
Weapon skills aren't even that powerful. If you're worried about mundane PCs becoming capable of defeating every NPC in the game, it's defense and strength you should be critical of, not weapon skills. Weapon skills account for like one fifth of one's combat prowess. It's just that it doesn't make IC sense to care a bunch about your offense and defense skills, and you can't really do anything to change your stats, so it's entirely fair and natural for warrior PCs to be mindful of their skill with swords and spears. It's automatically going to be the main way that warriors are measured against eachother, because off/def are hidden and block/parry are trivial to max out. But when the system is designed to make everyone stagnate at roughly the same level, the entire "how good am I compared to those guys?" aspect of warrior RP is largely removed from the game. Instead of fostering realistic warrior RP, it undermines it.
I agree that it's the lack of progress that is incredibly frustrating (although I would say what's more frustrating is knowing that I have to engage in a particular sort of behavior in order to progress).
I disagree that master weapon skills don't matter. Your weapon skill feeds into parry and disarm, for starters. And as I've said before: just because you're hitting at jman doesn't mean you're hitting well.
All that being said: I'm not 100% convinced that it's really necessary to either limit the number of highly weapon-skilled PCs, or to make it take a long time relative to other skills. I proposed the system I've proposed because -other- people (including Staff) seem to think that it's important. Like I've said before, it's not my ideal system, it's a compromise system.
Quote from: Greve on June 22, 2019, 12:51:57 PM
There are loads of valid character concepts where becoming a notable, famous warrior is a fair goal.
Seems like a fair goal.
Quote from: Greve on June 22, 2019, 12:51:57 PM
Let's take Game of Thrones as an example--how many prominent characters in that story have "good at fighting" as one of their defining characteristics? Something like a dozen? Would it have been a better story if they were all just vaguely decent and roughly equal?
Let's! So...you obviously aren't playing any of those people. Think about the kind of people the characters you play would actually be equivalent to. You can get back to me.
I'll get back to you right away and ask how the hell you justify talking about exceptionalism thirty different times over the past few months if you don't think it's something players should be able to pursue.
Or should we all accept that characters of the same ilk as Bronn, Sandor Clegane and Khal Drogo are just beyond the scope of PCs? I'd hope not.
GoT, a story with a handful of POV characters (i.e. PCs), features a dozen or more characters defined by their martial prowess, and it plays a central role in the whole narrative. Do you think it was too much? That it should have been toned down so that only a couple of characters in the story were notable fighters? What about in a game that features two hundred POV characters per week? Where do you think the line is drawn when it comes to an undesirable number of PCs who are good enough at fighting to where it's a noteworthy characteristic?
Certainly we don't want every character to be the best swordsman or axe-dude in town, that goes without saying; but what's the rationale behind wanting almost nobody to be good enough with a weapon to where it's something that people will talk about? And why impose this almost totalitarian level of scrutiny and restriction only to a single category of skills? Why don't you seem to care in the slightest about being an "exceptional" archer, pickpocket, wizard, tailor, etc.? Why exclusively weapon skills? You have yet to answer this question.
The way it works right now, 99% of characters are equivalent, in terms of skill, to Random GoT Soldier #198132 in some arbitrary army that nobody ever notices or cares about. In a game where we're all the main characters of our own story, I don't think that's a good thing. I think it's total nonsense, in fact. We all get to be the best on the block at any and all things except the one category of skills that has, as I've mentioned, entire clans and a whole category of classes wholly devoted to it. Why? This is what I'd most like you to explain.
Of course, it gets a bit abstract if we continue to compare a game to a book. My bad for making that analogy. I thought I was just making a point, not inviting discussion on that particular topic.
Quote from: Greve on June 22, 2019, 06:09:22 PMOr should we all accept that characters of the same ilk as Bronn, Sandor Clegane and Khal Drogo are just beyond the scope of PCs?
What was notable about these PCs? The fact they had master next to their weapon skill? Or the fact they could kill everything in sight?
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 09:31:19 PM
Quote from: Greve on June 22, 2019, 06:09:22 PMOr should we all accept that characters of the same ilk as Bronn, Sandor Clegane and Khal Drogo are just beyond the scope of PCs?
What was notable about these PCs? The fact they had master next to their weapon skill? Or the fact they could kill everything in sight?
They were a step beyond the normal rabble. Granted, they had some Plot Armor, but their whole deal was they were fighters.
Bronn was a very good fighter, both upfront and with a crossbow. If you need someone dead, he's likely to be able to do it, because he's a fighter. I'd assume each of them had some sort of combat Mastery.
As opposed to Arm PCs, who will never be Bronn of the Blackwater. They MAY be one of the dead soldiers on the battlefield, who as far as the story is concerned, could never have done more than a cosmetic strike to these people.
The crappy thing about not having a master weapon skill is that if you're below exceptional strength then you suck, regardless of how high your offense is. nick nick nick graze solid. It would benefit low strength concepts if weapon mastery was achievable, because it greatly improves crits.
Not fixing this is really just furthering the dumb strength-over-everything meta, imo.
Quote from: Is Friday on June 22, 2019, 10:04:23 PM
The crappy thing about not having a master weapon skill is that if you're below exceptional strength then you suck, regardless of how high your offense is. nick nick nick graze solid. It would benefit low strength concepts if weapon mastery was achievable, because it greatly improves crits.
Not fixing this is really just furthering the dumb strength-over-everything meta, imo.
That would indicate that weapon skill increases damage dealt. Does it?
Quote from: Riev on June 22, 2019, 09:59:17 PMBronn was a very good fighter, both upfront and with a crossbow. If you need someone dead, he's likely to be able to do it, because he's a fighter. I'd assume each of them had some sort of combat Mastery.
I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have his weapons at max. You can be pretty deadly without max weapon skills. Especially when playing a dwarf.
Quote from: Dar on June 22, 2019, 10:21:50 PM
Quote from: Is Friday on June 22, 2019, 10:04:23 PM
The crappy thing about not having a master weapon skill is that if you're below exceptional strength then you suck, regardless of how high your offense is. nick nick nick graze solid. It would benefit low strength concepts if weapon mastery was achievable, because it greatly improves crits.
Not fixing this is really just furthering the dumb strength-over-everything meta, imo.
That would indicate that weapon skill increases damage dealt. Does it?
It's my experience that you hit in vulnerable locations more often with a higher weapon skill. I have no true data to support this, however, because game.
@John:
Yeah, let's just support more strength builds to reinforce character diversity instead of fixing weapon skill gain.
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 10:32:28 PM
Quote from: Riev on June 22, 2019, 09:59:17 PMBronn was a very good fighter, both upfront and with a crossbow. If you need someone dead, he's likely to be able to do it, because he's a fighter. I'd assume each of them had some sort of combat Mastery.
I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have his weapons at max. You can be pretty deadly without max weapon skills. Especially when playing a dwarf.
Increasing weapon skills appeared to increase the likelihood of landing a hit to the wrist, neck, or head which are increased damage localities. It appeared that way, anyway. As a dwarf, hitting the head or neck is nice for the bonus damage, but you can still kill just fine to the body because of your strength. And since strength doesn't need to be trained in Arm, you're gucci from the start. With an elf or weak human, as Friday pointed out, your low strength really hurts you. You struggle to get more than solids against anything but the wrist or the head. So increasing your offense/weaponskill for bodyparts that mitigate your low strength roll is good. But if you cannot achieve a high level of weaponskill, then you plateau well before you can reliability hit the soft spots.
Meanwhile the dwarf is suckling on their inherited strength.
Here's the problem with wanting to make maxing out weapon skills easy.
People keep saying "Why r u so anti-good at fiting! It makes so much IC sense". Except no-one has been anti-good at fighting. People have admitted that everyone can get to the "kill everything in sight" stage without seeing master. I don't understand the point of being obsessed with getting to master when you can already kill everything that should be fought one-on-one without getting anywhere near there.
There are of course those who want to "100%" a game. Except giving those people an easily achieved goal of reaching master would mean they literally have no reason to continue playing the game.
Finally, with Butcher Brons we can assume one of a handful of scenarios:
- Either he didn't have master and he wrecked stuff without getting to master which demonstrates you don't need to get to master.
- He was a twink who repeatedly engaged in poor RP to get to master. In which case there is no way he should be held up as a PC to be admired.
- It is possible to reach master without engaging in poor RP which means Synthesis is full of it, as are the people who parrot the same things he says.
@Namino: Are you claiming you've had a 30 day played heavy combat class who focused on combat who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag?
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 10:40:52 PM
@Namino: Are you claiming you've had a 30 day played heavy combat class who focused on combat who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag?
Me? Fuck no. I was laying down unarmed in fields with 5x turaals bouncing off my armor while dodging my punches. I could reel bahamet by the time I was done.
But there are people who find the concept of being as twinky as I was distasteful or bad play. Those people very often get to 30 days played with middling skill.
That's the crux of the issue, John. No one's saying it's impossible to skill up. It's easy if you game the system and decide you don't give a shit about what is realistic and just break the game.
The whole argument is that people who want to stay true to their characters IC behavior shouldn't get punished for it by plateauing forever.
Quote from: Namino on June 22, 2019, 10:46:27 PM
The whole argument is that people who want to stay true to their characters IC behavior shouldn't get punished for it by plateauing forever.
Quote from: Namino on June 22, 2019, 10:46:27 PMThe whole argument is that people who want to stay true to their characters IC behavior shouldn't get punished for it by plateauing forever.
So long as someone's concept of being true to their character isn't "safely spar with zero risk forever and a day and get to master" then I agree it should be possible to achieve that goal without engaging in poor RP. But if you reach the point where you can take on everything, you either need to accept your the best there is and can be, or you need to fight against more dangerous foes.
Or you can twink out and find all those little weird tricks that Synthesis loves to elude to.
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 10:57:47 PM
Quote from: Namino on June 22, 2019, 10:46:27 PMThe whole argument is that people who want to stay true to their characters IC behavior shouldn't get punished for it by plateauing forever.
So long as someone's concept of being true to their character isn't "safely spar with zero risk forever and a day and get to master" then I agree it should be possible to achieve that goal without engaging in poor RP. But if you reach the point where you can take on everything, you either need to accept your the best there is and can be, or you need to fight against more dangerous foes.
Or you can twink out and find all those little weird tricks that Synthesis loves to elude to.
The problem, John, is that
fighting against more dangerous foes does not increase your skill.
Mekillot, Silt Horrors. These are really dangerous foes. They are no better at dodging than your average sparring partner. The only effective and relatively reliable way forward ARE those tricks that break character, like Turaal hunting.
Once you plateau is a Mek a dangerous critter? Or can you take one down quite easily?
At plateau a Mek will kill you 100% of the time. Even at really high offense/defense a Mek will kill you 95% of the time. They have scripts that make them dangerous to everyone. When you plataeu, a large number of creatures are still dangerous to you defensively and take a long time to kill offensively if you're not a high strength race.
You COULD benefit enormously from getting your skills up more, if you could just find something that can dodge you. But you can't. So you sit, stuck, or get so frustrated that you break your character's identity and go lay down in a field with turaal.
Namino: How many "easy" foes have you taken on at once upon hitting the plateau? Instead of fighting one turaal or whatever the current stilt lizard alternative is, have you tried multiple spiders? In my experience simply increasing the number of foes you fight at once means that you start getting more dodges.
I think that Namino has fought everything, everywhere, in any multiple. These aren't unaccounted for variables.
Quote from: Greve on June 22, 2019, 06:09:22 PM
GoT, a story with a handful of POV characters (i.e. PCs), features a dozen or more characters defined by their martial prowess, and it plays a central role in the whole narrative. Do you think it was too much? That it should have been toned down so that only a couple of characters in the story were notable fighters? What about in a game that features two hundred POV characters per week? Where do you think the line is drawn when it comes to an undesirable number of PCs who are good enough at fighting to where it's a noteworthy characteristic?
I actually only read the first book and I hated it.
But the point was, for every Brons, how many normal red shirt soldiers that wanted to be the best were there? While from your PoV, this may be your story, from the overall perspective, you are much more likely to be a red shirt than a Brons. Not that there haven't been Brons. Those are the names we remember, like Thrain.
Quote from: Is Friday on June 23, 2019, 12:05:38 AM
I think that Namino has fought everything, everywhere, in any multiple. These aren't unaccounted for variables.
Friday has witnessed the firepower of this fully operational battle-twink first hand.
Quote from: John on June 23, 2019, 12:00:44 AM
Namino: How many "easy" foes have you taken on at once upon hitting the plateau? Instead of fighting one turaal or whatever the current stilt lizard alternative is, have you tried multiple spiders? In my experience simply increasing the number of foes you fight at once means that you start getting more dodges.
I've done it all. I came up with contrived reasons to fight in dark caves because blindfighting has a flat percentage chance to miss no matter what. I've fought up to 5 x groups of things. And one member of my D&D group who plays this game is even worse than me. He dragged a turaal into the kuraci arena so it would not only be dark, but he'd be fighting something super agile in the dark. The only thing I never did was try to fight something that had night vision in the dark because that is SUPER lethal, even if they dodge the heck out of you because you have negative penalties for being blind and they don't.
I've done it all.
I've been everywhere, man.
Well I'd be interested to hear what staff have to say. They've repeatedly stated that fighting more dangerous foes results in skill ups. If Namino truly has fought everything and hasn't been able to get past the plateau without resorting to those weird tricks, I'd be interested to hear what staff's thoughts are.
Quote from: John on June 23, 2019, 12:43:21 AM
Well I'd be interested to hear what staff have to say. They've repeatedly stated that fighting more dangerous foes results in skill ups. If Namino truly has fought everything and hasn't been able to get past the plateau without resorting to those weird tricks, I'd be interested to hear what staff's thoughts are.
The staff hasn't, to my knowledge, ever suggested the route to power is by fighting more dangerous foes. Foes with high agility and high defense are ideal, but none of the truly dangerous megafauna are high agility. They're all HP sponge/thick skin. If they tossed in more NPCs that speed-tanked by having crazy high agi and defense, then that would be valid. But as of right now, there's only a few animals that fit that mold and most of them aren't even that dangerous (Verrin hawk, Turaal, some spiders, stilt lizards, ect).
Quote from: Brokkr on June 23, 2019, 12:09:00 AM
Quote from: Greve on June 22, 2019, 06:09:22 PM
GoT, a story with a handful of POV characters (i.e. PCs), features a dozen or more characters defined by their martial prowess, and it plays a central role in the whole narrative. Do you think it was too much? That it should have been toned down so that only a couple of characters in the story were notable fighters? What about in a game that features two hundred POV characters per week? Where do you think the line is drawn when it comes to an undesirable number of PCs who are good enough at fighting to where it's a noteworthy characteristic?
I actually only read the first book and I hated it.
But the point was, for every Brons, how many normal red shirt soldiers that wanted to be the best were there? While from your PoV, this may be your story, from the overall perspective, you are much more likely to be a red shirt than a Brons. Not that there haven't been Brons. Those are the names we remember, like Thrain.
The thing about red shirts is that they're a part of a story (a brief part too) to make it fun and exciting for the central characters and the audience. Not themselves.
I dunno, I feel like the Byn is just a Star Trek spin off called 'Red Shirts', just as Star Wars was originally supposed to be 'Droids'.
Not saying it's good or bad, just an observation.
I grow tired of the Combat Grind, even though I like playing Billy Badass probably more than anything. I find other roles that have absolutely nothing to do with combat refreshing as a palette cleanse. I feel I can actually focus on RP again, the story, and the game, and my PC. When I play Combat PCs or Magickers, it's like there's an ever persistent Code Virus in my brain that I have to appease. Be better. Do better. Skill up. Get it. Git gud.
Do I think something is inherently wrong with the way combat skill progression works in ArmageddonMUD? Absolutely yes.
I think it's a little dated and silly for Staff (or at least Brokkr) to state that combat should be resolved among mediocre, sort-of-talented combatants when literally 80-90% of conflict resolution in the game is achieved through combat/PK. Should that be the case, combat should be even more deadly and unpredictable than it currently is. Engaging in combat, even if you are a master, should mean life or death every time you attempt it. That simply isn't the case. The plateau is quite real, and there used to be nothing more boring than similarly talented "Warriors" fighting one another.
All I know is that being a great warrior in ArmageddonMUD is a taxing affair. When I see a new RPG game come out that offers '60-100 hours of play through' I laugh a little, because in those games, you 'git gud' within the first few hours of playing it, and it's more about the journey through it. Take any AAA title, and what it boils down to is it's fucking fun. Being a Combat Class in ArmageddonMUD is a chore, and it has its moments of fun, but it's otherwise esoteric, hidden behind a veil of mystery. You could be doing it all wrong, if you don't know how to do it right. From a game design standpoint, it's bonkers, but hey, it's Arm, and it's fun for other reasons besides impeccably designed game functionality.
There's some interesting ideas for fixes in this thread. Honestly, when I feel like chopping people up with swordz, I'll just play Witcher 3.
Quote from: Namino on June 23, 2019, 01:08:09 AM
there's only a few animals that fit that mold and most of them aren't even that dangerous (Verrin hawk, Turaal, some spiders, stilt lizards, ect).
All spiders are extremely dangerous. Not sure what you're smoking. They are the manifested spawn of Ginka's own, the very colony of spiders which were born into and died within, the box we call Armageddon's server. I think just because of this inaccuracy, ALL spiders should be made even MORE dangerous. ;D
Quote from: John on June 23, 2019, 12:00:44 AM
Namino: How many "easy" foes have you taken on at once upon hitting the plateau? Instead of fighting one turaal or whatever the current stilt lizard alternative is, have you tried multiple spiders? In my experience simply increasing the number of foes you fight at once means that you start getting more dodges.
You don't start getting more dodges. You start getting hit more often.
I've soloed up to 3 sandy-brown tarantulas and won, but that was very, very sketchy.
With a little magick help, I actually solo-cleared both spider dens, heh. SUCK IT BYN.
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 11:34:08 PM
Once you plateau is a Mek a dangerous critter? Or can you take one down quite easily?
A mek at the plateau is a death sentence if you're fighting it to kill it. Even at master, it is absolutely stupid to try to fight one solo. The only thing being a master combatant does vis-a-vis a mek is to give you a longer chance to escape, assuming it doesn't instagib you on its first attack.
Quote from: Namino on June 23, 2019, 12:13:56 AM
Quote from: Is Friday on June 23, 2019, 12:05:38 AM
I think that Namino has fought everything, everywhere, in any multiple. These aren't unaccounted for variables.
Friday has witnessed the firepower of this fully operational battle-twink first hand.
Quote from: John on June 23, 2019, 12:00:44 AM
Namino: How many "easy" foes have you taken on at once upon hitting the plateau? Instead of fighting one turaal or whatever the current stilt lizard alternative is, have you tried multiple spiders? In my experience simply increasing the number of foes you fight at once means that you start getting more dodges.
I've done it all. I came up with contrived reasons to fight in dark caves because blindfighting has a flat percentage chance to miss no matter what. I've fought up to 5 x groups of things. And one member of my D&D group who plays this game is even worse than me. He dragged a turaal into the kuraci arena so it would not only be dark, but he'd be fighting something super agile in the dark. The only thing I never did was try to fight something that had night vision in the dark because that is SUPER lethal, even if they dodge the heck out of you because you have negative penalties for being blind and they don't.
I've done it all.
I've been everywhere, man.
I've sparred tarantulas in the dark, not gonna lie.
The only reason to fight something "dangerous" like a mek or a silt horror, is so that you DO get hit, raise your defense, and then can be someone ELSES training partner.
The really dangerous stuff doesn't use Dexterity to Dodge with a 26AC. It has 12 flat Damage Resistance and no AC. Unfortunately, you don't gain in your offensive abilities and techniques by fighting something with damage resistance, at all. You can only progress by fighting something with a high AC, and most creatures with high AC aren't dangerous.
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 10:32:28 PM
Quote from: Riev on June 22, 2019, 09:59:17 PMBronn was a very good fighter, both upfront and with a crossbow. If you need someone dead, he's likely to be able to do it, because he's a fighter. I'd assume each of them had some sort of combat Mastery.
I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have his weapons at max. You can be pretty deadly without max weapon skills. Especially when playing a dwarf.
This was so far from the point of the post I'm wondering if you are even on the same planet.
Quote from: Riev on June 24, 2019, 09:41:15 AM
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 10:32:28 PM
Quote from: Riev on June 22, 2019, 09:59:17 PMBronn was a very good fighter, both upfront and with a crossbow. If you need someone dead, he's likely to be able to do it, because he's a fighter. I'd assume each of them had some sort of combat Mastery.
I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have his weapons at max. You can be pretty deadly without max weapon skills. Especially when playing a dwarf.
This was so far from the point of the post I'm wondering if you are even on the same planet.
No it wasn't. There were specific examples brought up to highlight a point, and those examples were then scrutinized for relevance. I too found them irrelevant, because out of those names listed, there aren't many that I would call 'legendary' swordspeople. All of them received their own beatings, too. People became legendary in that series for a variety of reasons, the same way that you can in Arm.
Attaching the two, i.e. Saying that we are unable to make well-known notable characters like GoT because of how weapon skills go, is a faulty comparison, and thus it deserved the scrutiny.
It may be off the wayside of the discussion, but when examples are used poorly, it's worth noting that they're being used poorly.
Quote from: Armaddict on June 24, 2019, 03:51:55 PM
Quote from: Riev on June 24, 2019, 09:41:15 AM
Quote from: John on June 22, 2019, 10:32:28 PM
Quote from: Riev on June 22, 2019, 09:59:17 PMBronn was a very good fighter, both upfront and with a crossbow. If you need someone dead, he's likely to be able to do it, because he's a fighter. I'd assume each of them had some sort of combat Mastery.
I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have his weapons at max. You can be pretty deadly without max weapon skills. Especially when playing a dwarf.
This was so far from the point of the post I'm wondering if you are even on the same planet.
No it wasn't. There were specific examples brought up to highlight a point, and those examples were then scrutinized for relevance. I too found them irrelevant, because out of those names listed, there aren't many that I would call 'legendary' swordspeople. All of them received their own beatings, too. People became legendary in that series for a variety of reasons, the same way that you can in Arm.
Attaching the two, i.e. Saying that we are unable to make well-known notable characters like GoT because of how weapon skills go, is a faulty comparison, and thus it deserved the scrutiny.
It may be off the wayside of the discussion, but when examples are used poorly, it's worth noting that they're being used poorly.
You've mis-interpreted the point. The point isn't that we can't recreate the achievements of Game of Throne characters. You can be a Cersei, who politically wheels and deals and subterfuges her enemies. You can be a Jaqen H'ghar, who masters poisoning and stealth. You can be a Sansa, mastering tailoring (okay, fine she did other things but stfu least favorite character ever). You can master the things those characters mastered either through social engineering or by directly raising the skills they were good at (sneak, hide, ect). You can even be a Melisandre or Thoros if you have RPP to play a mage and get mastery in magical abilities.
What you cannot be is Tormund Giantsbane. You cannot be the Hound. Any character in the show/books who had <master> in their score sheet for weaponry based skills, their achievements requires seriously twinkery and out of character meta gaming in order to achieve equivalency in Armageddon. Even if you manage to find a great sparring partner and eek it out in a sudo-non-meta-gamey way, you still take orders of magnitude longer to max it than the skills enshrined by other character archetypes (crafting, magic skills, ect).
Why? Why do we apply this EXCLUSIVELY to combat skills? They're not even that gamebreaking. Any stunt you can pull off with a piercing weapon you can do 30x easier with mon level fireball or demonfire.
No, you missed the point of why it's a bad comparison.
You have attached (master) to everyone you thought was a badass in the show. Realistically speaking, though, and demonstrated by the show/books, the legendary swordsmen are far rarer than that and it's openly discussed as such. The guy Ned Stark 'killed' was known as a legendary swordsman, granting Ned Stark the humungous reputation boost. Barristan Selmy was known as a legendary swordsman. Jon Snow was known as very good, Tormund and the Hound were good enough to kill lots of red shirts, and Jaime Lannister is known as incredibly skilled with a legendary future.
The point is exactly what I said but you still insist it's -me- missing the point. Good at fighting =/= master, being known =/= legendary swordsman, and vice versa. It actually means something to reach that level precisely because of how it's set up, and people do reach it, albeit rarely, and it also means nothing to not reach it, precisely because of how it's set up.
If your entire purpose is to reach that point, it is doable. You can twink it and it will probably be frowned upon, or you can have it take longer and with constant risk-taking (i.e. Involved in lots of combat), but you can't just reliably get there just because you want your character to get there. As with those in the books, and most meaningful novels that express such superiority in combat...it's gained via time, experience, circumstance, and physical prowess.
Beyond Synthesis's point of a skill that branches, all of this is just the demand to be able to reach master, without any attached presentation as to -why- that is so absolutely necessary, and -why- every warrior who wants it should be able to get it, or how they suffer horribly if they don't.
Why is it necessary to reach mastery in fireball? Or a crafting skill? Again, we don't apply any of this logic to any skill that isn't a combat skill. You achieve 'proficiency' in those skills soon enough as well, where you can out sneak/out craft/out fireball a 'redshirt' crafter or magician. Yet people plow on to master without inhibition and we don't deride or resist their right to do so. Ser Arthur Dayne (the 'guy' that Ned Stark killed) was better than Tormund. But Tormund and co were not sitting at jman plateau levels.
Human beings achieve the best they can be for the sake of it. Again, people climb mount Everest. There's nothing fucking up there, yet they do it because it's the best thing that can be done. They want to see the summit. <Master> is the summit of a skill grind. People want to see the summit and if you tell people they can't climb any higher than camp 2 they'd be just as annoyed.
Also the fact we're using the term 'redshirt' like that's where we should aspire to end up on average while playing this game is hilarious. Redshirts were literally used to emphasize danger by killing someone who was not important, preserving the cast. So basically by saying that 95% of everyone can only aspire to be a redshirt, you're informing 95% of your playerbase that they can only ever aspire to be unimportant, a cast away trope to make the remaining 5% (most of whom are npcs) more special.
Again, we've fundamentally subverted the purpose of entertainment as a medium. People already feel fundamentally unimportant in their day to day lives, or at least average at best. And now we're coming up with this concept that we should be satisfied with mediocrity in our fantasies that we indulge in for fun?
And again, this bears repeating, none of these standards are held true for any other class of skills.
Quote from: Namino on June 24, 2019, 04:36:23 PM
Why is it necessary to reach mastery in fireball? Or a crafting skill? Again, we don't apply any of this logic to any skill that isn't a combat skill.
I mean, for the record--insofar as anybody knows / the documentation doesn't say--day 50 fireball is no more powerful than day 10 fireball.
(Try to not laugh too hard as I imply that magick is underpowered.:)))
Quotenone of these standards are held true for any other class of skills.
Uhm. And when is the last time you referred to anyone as a -legendary- sneak. Or a -legendary- swordmaker. Or a -legendary- tracker?
We say these people are good at what they do. You trying to standardize all skills is a weakening of the one class of skills where you -can- achieve notability, by virtue of it having a place that is above and beyond where most go.
The GoT analogies grow very tiresome, the whole point was that they were bad examples because they take people on a scale themselves, then just plop them all into the 'master' class because somehow that makes them lose the redshirt status, not the characters themselves, despite most of them being beaten in combat by one another or someone else throughout the show. The 'master' achievement doesn't do that, the characters and perspective following them does.
If you really think all warriors in the game are just redshirts, then I'd hate to be a clanmate of yours knowing how disappointing my character was as just another redshirt to you, because I didn't reach master level. That's really disappointing to me, so at least the feeling would be mutual.
Once again: Trying to fix things so that there are more pertinent encounters to gaining skill, or conducive ways to bring that risk/reward scenario into play, I'm all for. But as long as we keep on talking about 'fixes' that really just make it so that sparring gets you to master, I'm going to keep on emphasizing that mastery is special and unnecessary. Except for Synth's qualm with the enforcer backstab. Never-branching skills are always frustrating, though I believe this time it was at least done -completely- knowingly.
Quote from: Armaddict on June 24, 2019, 05:20:12 PM
Quotenone of these standards are held true for any other class of skills.
If you really think all warriors in the game are just redshirts, then I'd hate to be a clanmate of yours knowing how disappointing my character was as just another redshirt to you, because I didn't reach master level. That's really disappointing to me, so at least the feeling would be mutual.
It's not my sentiment.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 23, 2019, 12:09:00 AM
Quote from: Greve on June 22, 2019, 06:09:22 PM
GoT, a story with a handful of POV characters (i.e. PCs), features a dozen or more characters defined by their martial prowess, and it plays a central role in the whole narrative. Do you think it was too much? That it should have been toned down so that only a couple of characters in the story were notable fighters? What about in a game that features two hundred POV characters per week? Where do you think the line is drawn when it comes to an undesirable number of PCs who are good enough at fighting to where it's a noteworthy characteristic?
I actually only read the first book and I hated it.
But the point was, for every Brons, how many normal red shirt soldiers that wanted to be the best were there? While from your PoV, this may be your story, from the overall perspective, you are much more likely to be a red shirt than a Brons. Not that there haven't been Brons. Those are the names we remember, like Thrain.
Yes, let's overanalyze what he said to make it fit your narrative when the message is clearly 'It's much harder to reach being Bronn than being the normal warrior, and along the way you're with everyone else trying to be Bronn'.
Not that I agree with his wording; to me, redshirts are almost non-existent anymore. They existed when character turnaround was such that being a 30 day warrior was an accomplishment in itself because everyone was charging off into fights everywhere, and so you had 3 characters in a row that were short lived enough to be passing memories. Honestly, that was kind of a richer game, but that's a point that I understand there will be very vital differences on.
If you get to journeyman warrior, you're not a redshirt. You're too survivable to be just a redshirt, and you've survived long enough to be more than just a redshirt. Your character is special/notable to someone unless you've taken that grind so seriously that you've neglected to play any social or 'roleplaying with others' aspects at all.
What are the Byn or Gemmed except red shirts? Consistently they are brought into dangerous circumstances through no choice of their own.
You can't join the Byn and expect only to train, unless you actively avoid contracts by logging off. And if you do that, you get kicked out or become a pariah.
You can't be a Gemmed without getting swept up by Templars whenever it suits them.
Join the Byn? Die in a spider contract.
Become a Gemmed? After being commanded into a Templar's presence, die for being a witness to inter-Templar strife.
Join the Byn? Die following your Sergeant into the abyss.
Those characters were all at journeyman and above, by the way. Seems pretty red-shirty to me. In each case, you're just a pawn being moved by higher-ranked pieces.
If you think single events (deaths) determine if you're a redshirt or not, I'm not sure we're talking about the same concept.
Redshirts for me are concepts that exist purely for the sake of having someone to kill off.
If you're talking about every character being extra meaningful and having everything you want to happen happen, you're talking about an entirely different game concept.
Not to mention, that's a whole list of stereotypes. My last Bynner got paranoid as fuck about his own troopers trying to kill him off in the sparring room and left. The one before that breeded out hard after surviving a wild fire-gith attack. The one before that helped swarm meks, hunted rogue mages, and died in a raider battle (yes, this one was a long time ago).
None of those were redshirts. They would have been to any cross-sectional character who saw them for a brief second, but to the people in his clan, he did not exist solely to die, he was a living part of their day for a long period of time.
You guys have moved on to literally complaining about non-glorious deaths. It's very self-centered for a game like Arm where everyone is writing a narrative and pushing to make it come true at the same time.
Kind of what I was trying to allude to. Your character is the hero of their story, and have goals that are important to them and that they want to realize...
In the broader story, it is likely they are not an important person. That is fine. But you can't take literary references to the main, or key characters in a story and apply that to what should happen to you as far as the game. Because it is only in your own story that you are such a character. In the world's story, it is unlikely a particular character is (although there have been PCs that achieved that level).
We can alter the argument, but at this point its clear the discussion has veered to "Your argument is bad" instead of "Lets talk about your ideas".
Though I do happen to agree with the past two posts. None of us get to be big bad voodoo daddies. At most, without a sponsored role, all but the wtfomgstafffriendswow people (joking) get to be more than the lowest tier of "Officer" in a clan, and often not even to that point.
We can be big and tough, but the world will always be tougher.
The issue here is that not only are you (when engaged in combat only) required to resort to odd, not-very-IC behavior to increase your abilities, but that combat has homogenized to "Burst damage or they flee". In order to attain this 'burst damage' outside of backstab (which, coincidentally, is easier to (master) in a non-twinky way than any of the combat skills), you need to lie down in a field. Kick, bash, weapon skills, and subdue are all very slow to rise (maybe not subdue? I don't have much practice), but you can master poisoning and backstabbing in the same time it takes a Fighter to 'plateau'.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the vocal objectors keep coming up with ways for that plateau to either not occur at all, or at least raise the gradient slightly.
I personally don't mind spending 20days played in a combat clan, rising up through the ranks until I'm a Sergeant-ish with consistent sparring, and by the end of that 20days, I'm more than "capable". I just want there to be options to improve without resorting to OOC behavior, because my character WANTS to be better, but has few options.
Quote from: Brokkr on June 23, 2019, 12:09:00 AM
Quote from: Greve on June 22, 2019, 06:09:22 PM
I actually only read the first book and I hated it.
How dare you! how can you play the ultimate of all permadeath MUDs and not like GoT.