What are your goals, specifically?
What is the timeframe to accomplish those goals?
Firstly, thank you for asking. I apologize for what is going to be a long post but I think it's important I clarify why this topic is one I frequently participate in.
My goals are supportive of Greve's, but they are not in character.I am not in the process of skilling up a combat character, nor do I see myself undergoing that trek for the nth time in the future.
Rather, my goals are out of character. I would like to see a redesign or reconfiguration of the skill gain mechanic in Armageddon to one that is more supportive of the basic tenets of game design. I believe that a strong, focused effort in this regard will be beneficial for the health of the game, and satisfy the needs of a segment of the online game playerbase currently desperately under served by Armageddon (particularly
Achievers in the Bartle's taxonomy).
Achievers as a taxonomic group are interested in one primary goal -- the accumulation of strength/power for the sake of seeing how far and how quickly they can go. This is akin to mountain-climbers or marathon runners or power lifters, who are constantly seeking new challenges just to see if they can overcome them and punch through to the next challenge. In video games, these are the people who grind to maximum gear-score and levels, fight the optional bosses in JRPGs, and collect all the optional stars in Mario games. In Armageddon, these are the people who want to see a list flushed with <master> when they type skill.
I'll start with the easier of the two questions.
What is the timeframe [sic]?
I argue the timeframe is irrelevant. It could be significantly longer -- even an order of magnitude longer than it is now -- as long as the process of achieving high levels of strength was engaging, fun, and no longer stigmatized by policy. My argument is not, nor has it been, that it takes too long to skill up in Armageddon. Rather, my argument is that the process by which skilling up occurs results in two outcomes -- either the abandonment of the desire to achieve a la stopping at journeyman, or the continued drive to achieve at the cost of what is fun or reasonable in character behavior -- a la grinding on turaals or getting drunk before sparring, or going into the gortok den.
Since my motivations are not for any in character skill of my own but rather a system that the game will benefit from, I'll answer this
What are your goals, specifically?
from this perspective:
what aspects should a balanced combat progression system have?Aspect 1) The process of progression should be smooth and obvious. At no point during the process of skilling up should players be stymied by a lack of appropriate challenges to their skill. Smoothness, in this case, does not imply linearity. Advanced levels of skill can take many times longer to improve than at novice (consider the rate of increase as logarithmic of 1/nth exponential). However, at no point should a player feel discouraged that hours of effort could be wasted if their target does not dodge. Progression should
slow, not
stall. The degree it slows is up to the designer's judgement as to how long they want the climb to be, but a stall is associated with a general feeling of stagnation where players no longer feel encouraged to even bother trying. Achievers don't like putting effort in if their effort isn't rewarded.
Aspect 2) The process of progression should be tied to increasing challenge, and danger. In most conventional wisdom of game design, a level 50 enemy is significantly more dangerous than a level 1 enemy. Consequently, a level 50 enemy provides more experience than a level 1 enemy -- more than 50 times, in fact. While the amount of experience to go to the next level increases exponentially, the amount of experience increasing challenge provides also increases exponentially (albeit to a lower power). The ability to tackle greater challenges increases as skill improves, and
the incentive to tackle these challenges is also provided due to their inherent value. The former is currently true in Armageddon -- it is far easier to kill a mekillot with master skills than with journeyman. However, the latter is really where the system falls down for Armageddon, as there is no incentive to fight mekillots, as they do not provide any more 'experience' (in Armageddon's case, dodges) than a level 5 turaal. Significantly less, in fact.
To summarize, there's two goals of a system that replaces the current one:
1] There is always a target suitable for continued progress.
2] The target that is suitable for your current progress feels equal parts challenging, dangerous, and rewarding
The issue that follows is how do we accomplish this in Armageddon? The process will not be easy. It will require a lot of formulaic approaches and iterative simulations of the consequences of those formulas. When Armageddon was designed, the designers likely didn't have the means by which to simulate or formulate, and therefore didn't anticipate this problem. There is also concern that very highly skilled player characters may prove to be too powerful, which can only be solved by assessing the capabilities of in game threats so that no one ever achieves the threshold of 'immortality'. This also will require quite a bit of simulation and forward thinking.
But today, there are members of this community who do have this aptitude, who would be more than willing to assist in improving the engagement of this game mechanic, if only it were acknowledged to be the problem that it is.