Public Discussion of New Classes

[Riev]

If you even get to that point. The only reason you would even need advanced in a weapon skill is for pvp.

There are no more advanced weapons.

[Delirium]

If you even get to that point. The only reason you would even need advanced in a weapon skill is for pvp.

There are no more advanced weapons.

He means advanced weapon skill level.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

Fence and Dune Trader sound good, though, like they are worth exploring to someone who has their heart set on Artisan.

I haven't really looked at ALL the others, which one(s) would you guys say is the new ranger? Is it Adventurer?

It's split between Scout and Stalker. Scout has the combat, Stalker has the overall competency and breadth.

[worldofsand]

I don't think miscreant looks that overpowered. It's pretty much just pickpocket and burglar lumped together, which is something people seem to have wanted for years; and then a slightly higher backstab than burglars got, and master poisoning. And when you get right down to it, having the poisoning skill yourself is kind of so-so. If you have access to the important poisons, you almost certainly have access to somebody who could apply them for you anyway if you didn't have the skill yourself. It's kind of like crafting skills that way: convenient to have, but it's not something that gives you a distinct advantage you couldn't get in some other way, unlike combat and stealth skills.

With no combat skills at master, there will be serious limits to the havoc such a character can create. It'll basically fight like a pickpocket, plus advanced backstab, which is really perilous to use in real situations. Backstab is a skill where missing against another PC very easily means your death. Depending on where in the advanced spectrum they cap, it may be barely usable.

I'm more curious about enforcer. It's basically the old warrior plus master backstab and advanced stealth. That sounds incredible. They even get climb, just to ensure that you're completely free to pair it with either slipknife for master hide/sneak and to start with backstab, or a riding subguild if that's the route you're taking the character. That's some crazy synergy.

And that brings up a concern I'm starting to have. It's clear that the subguilds were designed for the old guilds, where four out of six guilds got master scan. Now that only three out of fifteen get that, and most classes with scan cap at advanced, the subguilds with advanced or master hide have become way more valuable.

I think there's a potential problem here. Looking at enforcer, the benefits of pairing it with slipknife are immense. You get master stealth, which only two classes now get (and only one city-based class). You get to start with backstab instead of having to branch it from piercing at - apparently - just short of what it took to branch the unique warrior weapon skills of old. And hey, you get advanced poisoning on top, because why not.

I'm leery of the notion that there's a subguild that gives so much to certain classes. The difference between advanced and master hide is HUGE. If we're going from a game where two thirds of classes get master scan and stealth, to a game where one fifth of classes get master scan and a measly two classes out of fifteen get master stealth, I don't think there should be a subguild that gives master sneak and hide. This change of dynamic has made it too much of an asset.

[sleepyhead]

Subguilds are about to get reworked, according to Brokkr.

[Armaddict]

I don't think miscreant looks that overpowered. It's pretty much just pickpocket and burglar lumped together, which is something people seem to have wanted for years; and then a slightly higher backstab than burglars got, and master poisoning. And when you get right down to it, having the poisoning skill yourself is kind of so-so. If you have access to the important poisons, you almost certainly have access to somebody who could apply them for you anyway if you didn't have the skill yourself. It's kind of like crafting skills that way: convenient to have, but it's not something that gives you a distinct advantage you couldn't get in some other way, unlike combat and stealth skills.

Your opinion will probably change after I play one.  That skillset is ridiiiiculous.  You're a one (wo)man plague on any enemy, with little to no chance of being caught in anything, and even if you are, you're utterly competent at eliminating an attacker.  (Sidenote:  Removing parry from this guild is also an option.)

Other people seem to be voicing the same concerns about light combat vs mixed tier (i.e. The scout vs stalker) I think mixed, as a rule, needs to have its 'aggressive utility' skills dropped in skill level to not rival/beat light combat and light mercantile, people who will be utterly dependent on those things, or their combat abilities dropped to levels that make them very competent early, but somewhat vulnerable and more dependent on those things in rivalries.

Believe it or not, advanced poisoning vs master poisoning is actually a big deal, as far as how it unfolds in gameplay.

[Bogre]

I don't think Miscreant is OP. It's basically the 'rogue' role and I'm fine with it the way it is.

I don't know how the subguilds are going to get revamped, but I don't think I'd be a fan of anything making them weaker.

The Infiltrator, though, I could see getting master hide/sneak, so they can, uh, infiltrate. There's not much that this class gets to promote it above the Enforcer + subguild. With higher capped stealth skills that makes them essentially a more fighter-y legacy assassin and gives them a good niche.

[Armaddict]

I'm still firmly in the camp that miscreant should have advanced sneak, hide, and poisoning, and infiltrator should get those to master with a couple of their skills dropped (the peek on infiltrator weirds me out).

But whatevs, we'll see how it all ends up when everyone is rocking these badboys.

I hope the subguild revamp is true, because these main guilds look pretty close to fully-skilled out to me.

[JohnMichaelHenry]

I sorta had the same concerns but in another thread it was pointed out that advanced weapon skills on mixed are not going to get as high as advanced weapons skills on light combat. That will matter. Also, miscreant seems just right to me. Lots of thief action and real risky in toe to toe. As it should be.

Arma, sounds like you really wanna be a miscreant first.  Go for it.

[Hauwke]

Im not sure why everyone is obsessed with getting super high weapon skills. Getting to jman in slashing then spending your time getting sworded in the face is a far more productive use of your time to skill up because in the end, its the 'not getting whooped in the face' part that will save your character, not the ability to land every single blow.

[hyzhenhok]

I'm still firmly in the camp that miscreant should have advanced sneak, hide, and poisoning, and infiltrator should get those to master with a couple of their skills dropped (the peek on infiltrator weirds me out).

But whatevs, we'll see how it all ends up when everyone is rocking these badboys.

I hope the subguild revamp is true, because these main guilds look pretty close to fully-skilled out to me.

...I'll take Miscreant being overpowered to having burglars/pickpockets basically removed from the game for want of decent stealth. I'd just lower the caps on the combat skills and require Sleight of Hand, Hunt and Poisoning to be branched. And all the Infiltrator needs is better sneak/hide.

Now I just have to decide between playing a Miscreant or one of the new more casual-friendly heavy combat guilds for my first new class.

[Nao]

I'm still firmly in the camp that miscreant should have advanced sneak, hide, and poisoning, and infiltrator should get those to master with a couple of their skills dropped (the peek on infiltrator weirds me out).

Why would infiltrator get both better stealth and better combat ability than miscreant? The tradeoff in arm before this (and plenty of other games) was raw combat abilty for stealth/utility. Giving infiltrator the advantage at both doesn't make sense to me at all.

[Leudoberct]

Does anyone else find it odd that Raider does not get skinning whatsoever? It's supposed to be a wilderness class. I know that it could be argued that they lack skinning for balance, but I find it pretty hard to believe that someone who would be spending most of their time out of a city wouldn't at least know how to get a bit of meat off an animal to keep themselves going. I would say that them being able to perfectly cut something difficult, like a shik, is a bit hard to believe, but definitely not getting some meat off a chalton. I think it would be nice for them to get journeyman skinning, like current warriors, so that they can get some food from an animal, but not necessarily anything valuable.

[Hauwke]

Does anyone else find it odd that Raider does not get skinning whatsoever? It's supposed to be a wilderness class. I know that it could be argued that they lack skinning for balance, but I find it pretty hard to believe that someone who would be spending most of their time out of a city wouldn't at least know how to get a bit of meat off an animal to keep themselves going. I would say that them being able to perfectly cut something difficult, like a shik, is a bit hard to believe, but definitely not getting some meat off a chalton. I think it would be nice for them to get journeyman skinning, like current warriors, so that they can get some food from an animal, but not necessarily anything valuable.

Agreed, they are afterall a wilderness class. It kind of makes sense that enforcer, a city based class does not get it. But a class designed to spend their time outside needs at least a small bit of self sufficiency when it comes to feeding themself. It all stems back to the discussions that go around every so often about how its wierd that you can completely fail to cut up a man sized beast and not get anything to eat.

[JohnMichaelHenry]

I'm still firmly in the camp that miscreant should have advanced sneak, hide, and poisoning, and infiltrator should get those to master with a couple of their skills dropped (the peek on infiltrator weirds me out).

Why would infiltrator get both better stealth and better combat ability than miscreant? The tradeoff in arm before this (and plenty of other games) was raw combat abilty for stealth/utility. Giving infiltrator the advantage at both doesn't make sense to me at all.

Raider is a wilderness class yes, but they are also heavy combat. As staff has stated, you will need your friends dude.

[Harmless]

I just hope we always do have subguilds. There's a lot of good back and fourth here, I don't consider myself expert enough at a bunch of classes I have never played to be able to give a lot of feedback, but let's just keep subguilds around so that we can patch up the wonky holes in what we expect our characters to be able to do, please. Also, great work to all involved in this project.

[Brokkr]

Does anyone else find it odd that Raider does not get skinning whatsoever? It's supposed to be a wilderness class. I know that it could be argued that they lack skinning for balance, but I find it pretty hard to believe that someone who would be spending most of their time out of a city wouldn't at least know how to get a bit of meat off an animal to keep themselves going. I would say that them being able to perfectly cut something difficult, like a shik, is a bit hard to believe, but definitely not getting some meat off a chalton. I think it would be nice for them to get journeyman skinning, like current warriors, so that they can get some food from an animal, but not necessarily anything valuable.

Agreed, they are afterall a wilderness class. It kind of makes sense that enforcer, a city based class does not get it. But a class designed to spend their time outside needs at least a small bit of self sufficiency when it comes to feeding themself. It all stems back to the discussions that go around every so often about how its wierd that you can completely fail to cut up a man sized beast and not get anything to eat.

If you look at all the Heavy Combat classes, you may notice that none of them have any economic skills.  By that, I mean skills that can be used to generate coin.  That includes crafting and it also includes skinning.  That said, they are slightly better at skinning that other classes that don't have the skinning skill.  Such that if you kill a couple of scrab or a few chalton, you should be able to get some meat to feed yourself.

[Armaddict]

I'm still firmly in the camp that miscreant should have advanced sneak, hide, and poisoning, and infiltrator should get those to master with a couple of their skills dropped (the peek on infiltrator weirds me out).

Why would infiltrator get both better stealth and better combat ability than miscreant? The tradeoff in arm before this (and plenty of other games) was raw combat abilty for stealth/utility. Giving infiltrator the advantage at both doesn't make sense to me at all.

Because they won't have pick, peek, steal, listen, or any of the more utilitarian skills.  They have emphasis on themed combat, which is stealthy, which means they are specialized in it and thus GOOD at it, but at the cost of being less useful than the miscreant outside of combat situations.

Likewise, because miscreant gets to do -all- of the things that both infiltrator and pilferer do, outside of crafts, they are less adept at them.  Again, it's the jack-of-all-criminal-things, master of none scenario, where the way we have it set up actually has them more adept at combat through the majority of the average lifespan of a PC and with all the utilitarian skills to higher maxes, to boot.

[Nao]

I'm still firmly in the camp that miscreant should have advanced sneak, hide, and poisoning, and infiltrator should get those to master with a couple of their skills dropped (the peek on infiltrator weirds me out).

Why would infiltrator get both better stealth and better combat ability than miscreant? The tradeoff in arm before this (and plenty of other games) was raw combat abilty for stealth/utility. Giving infiltrator the advantage at both doesn't make sense to me at all.

Because they won't have pick, peek, steal, listen, or any of the more utilitarian skills.  They have emphasis on themed combat, which is stealthy, which means they are specialized in it and thus GOOD at it, but at the cost of being less useful than the miscreant outside of combat situations.

Likewise, because miscreant gets to do -all- of the things that both infiltrator and pilferer do, outside of crafts, they are less adept at them.  Again, it's the jack-of-all-criminal-things, master of none scenario, where the way we have it set up actually has them more adept at combat through the majority of the average lifespan of a PC and with all the utilitarian skills to higher maxes, to boot.

The Infiltrator get all the skills you listed, except steal, though.  Or are you suggesting taking those away and swapping them out for better sneak/hide? I don't know if I'd like that - none of them are directly combat skills, and pick can be just as useful for assassinations (the only combat scenario where stealth skills really come into play) as higher hide skill.

[Brokkr]

I'd say infiltrator, with skills like bash and a higher parry than assassin got, is more of a switch.  It can function as a straight up fighter to an extent, and it can function like an assassin, to an extent.  As opposed to be wholly one way or the other, which is where you would appear to want to shift it.

[Armaddict]

Infiltrator vs Miscreant:

Weapon skills:
Advanced 4 vs Advanced 2.
  The advanced 4 is mostly meaningless.  Using chopping or slashing when you have sap and backstab is essentially going to come down to depending on the defensive portion of that, which is really just emphasizing breadth training.  Bynners will do it, and that's probably about it, because training your primary skills will be important.

Combat skills:
--Parry (advanced) vs Parry (advanced)
  Why?
--Backstab (master) vs backstab (branched advanced), Sap (advanced) vs Sap (branched advanced)
  This is a boon in infiltrator's favor, to be certain, but when included with the other skills is not a -huge- boon.  Their stealth is more unreliable, making the opportunistic nature of it harder to manage given the drawbacks acknowledged by most who play the classes that have them now.
--Dualwield(master), Two-handed(master), shield use(advanced) vs dualwield(advanced), twohanded(advanced), shielduse(advanced)
  Unless the master levels are high on this, the high parry skills of both parties make this in favor of infiltrator, but not by a huge amount.
--Crossbow(master) vs Crossbow(advanced)
  Yay, I can use crossbows better in the city?  Does anyone ever actually see this being done in a way that people won't be flailing their arms around about after because they think it was twinky?
--Blowgun-use(branched master) vs Blowgun use(branched advanced)
  Haven't played with this skill enough to know how much of a boon this actually is, but I'm pretty certain getting it up to master will be both twinky and a long process.


Now, on to why the miscreant is actually stronger in combat, and why I actually kill people more as a burglar, currently, than I do as an assassin.
--Sneak (advanced) vs Sneak (master), Hide (advanced) vs Hide (master)
  Criminal engagement is largely based on opportunism.  You have to follow and watch people for opportunities to actually do what you want to do.  While I may have better backstab, I have to worry a whole lot more about actually having the opportunity to use it unless I'm just an alley brawler.  While I may have better throw, my ability to do it safely is greatly reduced.  While I may have better blowgun use, my ability to stay hidden doing it is less (<--Unsure of, again, I haven't used the skill much yet).
--Poisoning(advanced) vs Poisoning(Master)
  This skill goes up faster than combat skills.  Master is granted the ability to discern which poisons are being used.  Master is able to get to the point where expensive poisons are reliable and thus you aren't wasting thousands of coin to get a single dose applied.  It is more deadly using opportunism (i.e. Stealth and perception) than higher levels of backstab and sap with less opportunity to safely use them.  Master sneak and hide makes this powerful as hell.  Current poisoning levels on burglar make it deadly, but they have to waste doses, which they can luckily afford due to their broad skillset for money acquisition.
--Hunt (advanced) vs Hunt(Master)
  Miscreant is better at tracking down their prey, I guess.
--Scan (advanced) vs Scan (Master)
  Miscreant is better at finding hidden opponents, I guess.
--Pick(branched advanced) vs pick(master)
  Makes sense I suppose, though I think miscreant should get high advanced and pilferer be the master picker.
--Climb (advanced) vs climb (master)
  Makes sense, I can be alright with this, though if we removed listen and such utility/spy tools from the infiltrator I'd want this bumped up.
--listen (advanced) vs listen (master)
  I can be alright with it.  Again, kind of where I see pilferer being instead.
--scan (branched advanced) vs scan (master)
  Whut


So on and so forth.  Then weigh out the skills that one gets and the other doesn't in both directions...and it's just undesirable.  In other words, if you pit them face to face in the arena, yeah, you'll probably see infiltrator winning.  But as far as being the criminal combat-specialist vs the criminal 'mixed' tier...the ability to actually eliminate a target is leaning away from the combatant because it was decided to theme them -for- that, instead of making them an actual criminal-themed combatant.  They're a mini-enforcer, not the stealthy combatant.  We've made the miscreant the stealthy combatant and given them sheer potential for non-combat survival as well.

[hyzhenhok]

I would also note that in theory the designs seem to indicate that you're supposed to have to rely on your friends and work in groups sometimes. And I can see that in theory maybe you'd want an Infiltrator-Miscreant duo for sneak jobs that might involve combat. However, the Infiltrator's inferior stealth means the Miscreant is never going to want him to come along.

[Rumor]

I think people are undervaluing advanced sneak and hide with this iteration of the game,  perhaps. There's only three classes that are getting mastery level of detection skills, the rest are at advanced or lower. Meaning with equipment, you can potentially still get somewhat reliable stealth against players.

It also seems designed so that the "biggest" guy(heavy combat) you can sneak up on, still might be able to beat you down if you get the jump on them. We'll call it the "smaller" guys (mixed), has the best way to spot stealth and stealth themselves. This prevents some apex predator type character from being able to remain invisible while still seeing everything going on.

Theory crafting is interesting, but I'm super curious and excited to see how this plays out and how a meta-game will naturally take shape with so many options and variations. I also think with some clever use of subclass reworking, this system can potentially be incredibly fun and diverse. There's always going to be a hierarchy or meta-game that gets adopted by the player base, but I think with more variation, what is hopefully accomplished, is that we get more experiences from playing with a handful of people than what we currently experience now. Clans, gangs and merchant houses and the like will feel much more fleshed out. New characters joining up might bring about completely new elements to affiliations and that just sounds rad.

[lostinspace]

Okay sure, but will npc soldiers and guards be adjusted to have lower detection skills or fewer of them with current detection skills? You got to make it past the guards at the door before even worrying about other players detecting you.

[Rumor]

Okay sure, but will npc soldiers and guards be adjusted to have lower detection skills or fewer of them with current detection skills? You got to make it past the guards at the door before even worrying about other players detecting you.

Maybe with this discussion, they might. Who knows? Would be pretty cool.

Editing to add: I think it might make more sense for someone who's job it is to guard something to have the higher levels of detection, where-as someone just walking around or "generic" npcs like soldiers, random shop npcs, or flavor npcs wandering around on the street might be at the lower end of the spectrum or closer to advanced at best.