mehtastic
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Posts: 1,695
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Post by mehtastic on Aug 1, 2018 12:11:34 GMT -5
They could use the actual game lore that specifies areas where certain materials are scarce. For example, obsidian scarcity in the north and wood scarcity in the south, and build an actual trade system off of that, instead of having the lazy price multiplier for different item materials.
Then make north/south travel actually problematic all of the time instead of whenever a staff member decides to load an ubergith.
That doesn't fully address the issue of the staff taking away yet another avenue through which PCs can express their own creativity in adding to the game. Compare to a modern MUD such as Arx (yeah I know I mention that game a lot) where you can personally write the description of each item you craft, as you craft it. Why does Arx trust its players to maintain decent writing standards whereas Armageddon has a month+ long process for getting a single item approved, that just got even harder to participate in?
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tedium
Clueless newb
Posts: 164 
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Post by tedium on Aug 1, 2018 14:27:09 GMT -5
They already have an NPC in the north for buying lumber and an NPC in the south for buying obsidian. All you need to do is add each to the opposite locale, and beef the price way up. Suddenly, you have actual trade routes. You get lumber in the north, take it south, get obsidian in the south, take it north. Caravans and wagons actually matter. IMO, that should have always been the primary way that merchants make money, not by an endless pile of wooden chests and cloth sleeves.
Re: Arx vs. Arm, I think a lot of it is just rooted in Arm's 30 year old codebase and a lack of ability to rebuild from scratch.
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Post by lechuck on Nov 17, 2018 1:47:42 GMT -5
Was bored and thought I'd rate the new classes with a mind to their coded usefulness and potential.
S
Miscreant
Enforcer
A
Raider
Stalker
Infiltrator
B
Fighter
Scout
The heavy mercantile classes
F
Soldier
Craftsperson
Laborer
Adventurer
Pilferer
S: Miscreant and enforcer are just the two clear winners. One is the pickpocket/burglar hybrid people have wanted for years, plus reasonable combat potential, and the now very rare master stealth and scan. The other is basically a warrior with master backstab and passable stealth. These are the two classes that can just do the most and are the best at what they do, offering a unique level of power that the rest don't have.
Miscreant covers the entire spectrum of criminal gameplay and is the best at all of it except for assassination, which they can still dabble in with advanced combat skills, poisoning and backstab. Having master stealth and scan has become exceptionally valuable now that most classes don't get either. If you're looking for a non-combat criminal, miscreant simply has no equal. They're the best thieves and burglars, and their combat skills are good enough to where you can defend yourself properly and even become a genuine PK threat down the line. It's literally pickpocket plus burglar plus slipknife, all packed into a single class with room for a subclass on top to really polish it off.
Enforcer is a monster if you can branch its difficult skills or take a subclass that grants them. A full-fledged warrior with master backstab (or sap) is insane, even if it didn't have stealth at all, and with stealth it's just obscene. Advanced sneak and hide aren't failproof by default, but if you have camo gear or high agility, it's pretty reliable in crowd rooms. Master backstab is a truly frightening thing when combined with master combat skills, and the only weakness is the fact that you have to branch backstab/sap from piercing/bludgeoning and disarm from bash, both of which are difficult to raise. Staff changed the slipknife subclass to no longer give master stealth, which is a good thing because this combination would otherwise have been in an S+ category of its own.
A: These are the classes that are fine but have nothing particularly outstanding.
Raider is the obvious choice if you want to play a wilderness-based combat character, and master archery is very strong, though not as powerful as the enforcer's master backstab. They get the same advanced stealth as enforcers but for the wilderness, which isn't as good because the foliage bonus is smaller than the crowd bonus, and large parts of the wilderness have no foliage bonus while pretty much all of Allanak has crowds except for the 'rinth. Unfortunately, much of what the raider offers can be obtained via subclasses, so it doesn't have much unique power.
Stalker narrowly gets an A for being one of the few classes with master stealth and scan, which is way better now than it used to be since most classes cap these at advanced; but without master combat skills, it's merely a decent class. If they had given it master archery, I'd consider it a potential S with a fantastic niche as a go-to desert elf class. The inability to master any combat skills does put a damper on the PvP potential of this class, but if you just want to explore and live the ranger life, it's a good choice.
Infiltrator straddles the border between A and B but is the closest thing to the old assassin, and I'm making the assumption that they probably get a higher backstab than enforcer (guessing 90 vs. 80) which gives the class a niche as the OHK king. Advanced stealth really hurts and I think this class should have been given master, but no such luck. I feel it has potential as a city elf class since their high agility can make advanced stealth fully viable. Elves don't have the stats for face-to-face combat so this class is a good fit and should perform basically like assassins did. I have no idea why this class gets advanced poisoning while miscreant gets master, but that's another thing that ought to be changed.
B: These classes are playable but have weaknesses, or lack the advantages of other classes that occupy the same archetype.
Fighter is a bit too generic to compete with enforcer and raider. They do have the advantage of starting with disarm instead of having to branch it from difficult skills (bash/kick), but a lot of subclasses give disarm, and fighters lack the icing on the cake that is the enforcer's stealth and backstab or the raider's wilderness aptitude. I guess it's a good choice for a "PvE warrior" kind of character, like a Byn sergeant, who doesn't need any particular PvP advantages. Riposte is something the other heavy combat classes don't get, but thus far it hasn't proven to be a powerhouse skill.
Scout is pretty mediocre, mastering basically nothing but archery. A scout class with advanced stealth and scan is just not particularly good, but it's still playable. Too few master skills. This class is almost strictly worse than raider who gets pretty much all the same skills plus the full master combat suite. Scout and stalker have become the new pickpocket and burglar: two classes that should probably have been combined because they just don't quite do enough on their own. In this case, stalker wins out due to the greater number of master skills.
The heavy mercantile classes are simply the go-to noncombat crafters that replace the old merchant. There's nothing exciting or awful about them. They've been given a few utility skills that merchants didn't have, but they pay for these with a limited crafting suite, and it's not like having a weapon skill at journeyman (and no parry) actually makes you any kind of combatant. If crafting and economy had a more well-defined place in the game, these classes would have more merit. Since that's not the case, they're just whatever.
F: These classes just suck. They lack any kind of synergy, power and meaningful potential.
Soldier blows. A combat class that masters almost none of the combat skills is just not a valid choice when you could pick fighter and get all the same shit at master minus a few meaningless crafting skills. Do you seriously need fletchery, bandagemaking and weaponcrafting badly enough to sacrifice a full skill level in parry, shield use, weapon skills, etc.? No. You can play this class if you don't actually care about your character's coded effectiveness and want to spice up the soldier role with some crafting, but then you could have played anything if that's you. This class should have had master scan so it had a niche in law enforcement.
Craftsperson's crafting suite is too limited compared to the heavy mercantiles, and the slightly wider combat skillset they get in exchange isn't near enough to make this class anything more than a noncombat crafter. If you want a crafting class, do yourself a favor and pick one of the good ones instead of this garbage. This class has no combat potential whatsoever so it makes no sense to give up crafting options for it. Without parry, you do not fight well, period. There's no value in trading a bunch of crafting skills for better combat skills if you don't get parry.
Laborer is another trash class. It's got a bit more combat potential than craftsperson but is an even worse crafter, to the point where the crafting part isn't even really valuable, and then you've just got a wishy-washy character that isn't good at anything. It masters almost nothing and has no niche in the world. There's no synergy between crafting and combat, so getting a random mix of both, all capped at advanced, is just not worth anyone's time. It is one of just three classes that get master scan, but what are you actually going to do with that on a class that excels at nothing? Scan is a PvP and hunting skill, and laborers are useless at both.
Adventurer is another one of those watered-down classes that have no focal point. Some wilderness skills, but not good enough at combat to actually play in the wilderness. A bit of crafting, but mostly the worthless crafts like floristry, toolmaking and tanning. This class isn't good at anything and doesn't really fit any role that actually exists. They get none of the good moneymaking crafts (jewelry, armor, cloth, picks) and get almost no skills to master. I guess if you're playing a desert socialite, it's a class that can be valid, but it has absolutely no coded potential.
Pilferer is just overshadowed by other classes. It hasn't got enough crafting skills to be a proper crafter, and all its criminal skills cap at advanced. If you want to be a crafter with crappy stealth and steal, take fence and get much better crafting options. If you want to be a thief, take miscreant so your criminal skills are actually usable. Pilferer is tied with adventurer for the worst class in the game, offering nothing whatsoever that matters.
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tedium
Clueless newb
Posts: 164
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Post by tedium on Nov 17, 2018 7:39:35 GMT -5
Something not mentioned here: None of the "hybrid" classes get Master Brew. Pilferers and Adventurers do. Brew was changed so that there are actually two skill checks. First you run the normal skill check to see if you craft the item or fail, getting a skill-up on a failure. However, on a successful craft, you then run a second skill-check to see if you have the minimum skill to create that cure or poison. If not, you successfully create a cure that does nothing. Those skill minimums go all the way up to Master, meaning that only a few classes in the game get access to all the cures and poisons. Brewed heramide and I believe peraine (both cures and poisons) require Master Brew. They can't be applied to weapons as far as I can tell, but the liquid form can be added to drinks and maybe foods. The solid form looks like any other cure, but applies a poison instead of curing anything. This means that Pilferers are the only class in the game to natively brew heramide/peraine, and have the stealth skills to apply it. A pilferer would make a great spy/saboteur, provided that staff were actually willing to acknowledge that you poisoned a clan's water supply before an RPT. Otherwise it's a super trolly class with easy access to a supply of heramide/peraine that can only be used to spike drinks. If they add things like loosetongue and saltworm poison to the game as brewed poisons, then they could become even more dangerous as a clan saboteur or troll, but still remain ineffective individual assassins.
You could hypothetically assassinate an assassin (mostly Enforcers) as a Pilferer in a super convoluted and risky way.
1) Peek their cures.
2) Make poisons that look like their cures.
3) Steal their cures, and plant your poisons in their place.
4) Hire them (possibly through a third party) to assassinate someone that you know has poisoned weapons.
5) Hope that they don't figure out their cures have been swapped before they try to kill the mark, hope that they don't one-shot their target, hope they get poisoned by their target, hope that they eat the poisoned poison cure in combat and not after, hope that they don't naturally roll resistances to it.
6) When they pull their tablets to cure the poison, they heramide/poison themselves and die to the person they're meant to kill.
It's not at all reliable, and I believe that infiltrators can tell whether their cures are actually poisons, so this would only realistically work against enforcers without the proper subclass or careless infiltrators.
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Post by Prime Minister Sinister on Nov 17, 2018 8:08:09 GMT -5
Something not mentioned here: None of the "hybrid" classes get Master Brew. Pilferers and Adventurers do. Brew was changed so that there are actually two skill checks. First you run the normal skill check to see if you craft the item or fail, getting a skill-up on a failure. However, on a successful craft, you then run a second skill-check to see if you have the minimum skill to create that cure or poison. If not, you successfully create a cure that does nothing. Those skill minimums go all the way up to Master, meaning that only a few classes in the game get access to all the cures and poisons. Brewed heramide and I believe peraine (both cures and poisons) require Master Brew. They can't be applied to weapons as far as I can tell, but the liquid form can be added to drinks and maybe foods. The solid form looks like any other cure, but applies a poison instead of curing anything. This means that Pilferers are the only class in the game to natively brew heramide/peraine, and have the stealth skills to apply it. A pilferer would make a great spy/saboteur, provided that staff were actually willing to acknowledge that you poisoned a clan's water supply before an RPT. Otherwise it's a super trolly class with easy access to a supply of heramide/peraine that can only be used to spike drinks. If they add things like loosetongue and saltworm poison to the game as brewed poisons, then they could become even more dangerous as a clan saboteur or troll, but still remain ineffective individual assassins.
You could hypothetically assassinate an assassin as a Pilferer in a super convoluted and risky way.
1) Peek their cures.
2) Make poisons that look like their cures.
3) Steal their cures, and plant your poisons in their place.
4) Hire them (possibly through a third party) to assassinate someone that you know has poisoned weapons.
5) Hope that they don't figure out their cures have been swapped before they try to kill the mark, hope that they don't one-shot their target, hope they get poisoned by their target, hope that they eat the poisoned poison cure in combat and not after, hope that they don't naturally roll resistances to it.
6) When they pull their tablets to cure the poison, they heramide/poison themselves and die to the person they're meant to kill.
It's not at all reliable, and I believe that infiltrators can tell whether their cures are actually poisons, so this would only realistically work against enforcers without the proper subclass or careless infiltrators.
lmao, i wouldn't even be mad if someone went through all the trouble to get me like that |
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Post by lechuck on Nov 17, 2018 8:23:54 GMT -5
Something not mentioned here: None of the "hybrid" classes get Master Brew. Pilferers and Adventurers do. Brew was changed so that there are actually two skill checks. First you run the normal skill check to see if you craft the item or fail, getting a skill-up on a failure. However, on a successful craft, you then run a second skill-check to see if you have the minimum skill to create that cure or poison. If not, you successfully create a cure that does nothing. Those skill minimums go all the way up to Master, meaning that only a few classes in the game get access to all the cures and poisons. Brewed heramide and I believe peraine (both cures and poisons) require Master Brew. They can't be applied to weapons as far as I can tell, but the liquid form can be added to drinks and maybe foods. The solid form looks like any other cure, but applies a poison instead of curing anything. This means that Pilferers are the only class in the game to natively brew heramide/peraine, and have the stealth skills to apply it. A pilferer would make a great spy/saboteur, provided that staff were actually willing to acknowledge that you poisoned a clan's water supply before an RPT. Otherwise it's a super trolly class with easy access to a supply of heramide/peraine that can only be used to spike drinks. If they add things like loosetongue and saltworm poison to the game as brewed poisons, then they could become even more dangerous as a clan saboteur or troll, but still remain ineffective individual assassins.
You could hypothetically assassinate an assassin (mostly Enforcers) as a Pilferer in a super convoluted and risky way.
1) Peek their cures.
2) Make poisons that look like their cures.
3) Steal their cures, and plant your poisons in their place.
4) Hire them (possibly through a third party) to assassinate someone that you know has poisoned weapons.
5) Hope that they don't figure out their cures have been swapped before they try to kill the mark, hope that they don't one-shot their target, hope they get poisoned by their target, hope that they eat the poisoned poison cure in combat and not after, hope that they don't naturally roll resistances to it.
6) When they pull their tablets to cure the poison, they heramide/poison themselves and die to the person they're meant to kill.
It's not at all reliable, and I believe that infiltrators can tell whether their cures are actually poisons, so this would only realistically work against enforcers without the proper subclass or careless infiltrators.
Yeah, but you can just get someone to make those things for you. Crafting skills have so little value unless you're simply using them to generate cash, which still isn't that great because money is largely meaningless after the first few thousand. It's trivial to buy cures from whoever is making them in your area, there's bound to be somebody who can make them all. It's the same reason armor- and weaponcrafting is a negligible character asset: you could just buy the same shit from someone, so if your class is weakened in important fields (e.g. no practical skills at master) because it has those crafting skills, you're worse off. Brew is like poisoning: it's convenient to have the skill yourself, but if your character is at a point in their life where making/using peraine is actually a thing, there's essentially no way you don't already know someone who could do it for you. While that does open up the possibility for information leakage, it's still something you can accomplish just fine without having the skill yourself, unlike all the combat and stealth stuff. The ability to make your own cures or half-assed poisons is such a miniscule benefit compared to getting class-defining skills to master instead of advanced. For instance, in your hypothetical scenario, a pilferer with an advanced cap on steal would have a very hard time planting the fake cures on a target. Planting into containers had a very real failure chance even for AI agility pickpockets with max steal, so it's not even worth trying with advanced. A miscreant with master steal could do it much more reliably than the pilferer, and all he needs is a friend who's a pilferer or adventurer. Same goes for enforcer, which some say is balanced by the fact that it doesn't have poisoning--but if you have master backstab, access to peraine/heramide, and are in a position to go around assassinating people, you're basically guaranteed to know someone who can poison your weapons for you. Probably someone in your clan or close circle who you can trust not to rat you out. |
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tedium
Clueless newb
Posts: 164
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Post by tedium on Nov 17, 2018 8:56:36 GMT -5
Yep. That's why I said they only deserve a slight bump to D. It's just something you can do on your own for the hilarity factor rather than any real effectiveness. You would do that kind of stuff on a throw-away character when you know you've got karma or a special app coming up soon, rather than someone you really want to dedicate time to. The only part of your post that I disagree with is where you say that you'll have a trustworthy network established by the time you max that skill. That applies to combat characters dipping into non-combat skills, like an Enforcer with poison, but not necessarily non-combat characters dipping into non-combat skills. Non-combat skills rise so fast that it's entirely possible to master brew and cap advanced stealth long before you have a network of people you trust to help you out. Of course, it's absolutely better in the long run to just play a Miscreant and build that network. Without question. Pilferers are garbage compared to Miscreants and most other classes. But Pilferers are fractionally better than every other garbage-tier class (like Adventurers), because they can do goofy stuff like that.
Edit: I just checked and Fence gets all those stealth skills at advanced, plus Master Brew. For some reason I thought they didn't get them all, or as high. RIP Pilferer, even at being a joke class you're only 2nd best. You have literally no point in this game at all.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 17, 2018 9:26:22 GMT -5
There are also three, or four tools that improve your brewing skill. Granted, you can only use two of these items at a time, but it may put you high enough to get those high end recipies.
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Post by yourvisiongoesblack on Nov 20, 2018 15:10:40 GMT -5
Yep. That's why I said they only deserve a slight bump to D. It's just something you can do on your own for the hilarity factor rather than any real effectiveness. You would do that kind of stuff on a throw-away character when you know you've got karma or a special app coming up soon, rather than someone you really want to dedicate time to. The only part of your post that I disagree with is where you say that you'll have a trustworthy network established by the time you max that skill. That applies to combat characters dipping into non-combat skills, like an Enforcer with poison, but not necessarily non-combat characters dipping into non-combat skills. Non-combat skills rise so fast that it's entirely possible to master brew and cap advanced stealth long before you have a network of people you trust to help you out. Of course, it's absolutely better in the long run to just play a Miscreant and build that network. Without question. Pilferers are garbage compared to Miscreants and most other classes. But Pilferers are fractionally better than every other garbage-tier class (like Adventurers), because they can do goofy stuff like that.
Edit: I just checked and Fence gets all those stealth skills at advanced, plus Master Brew. For some reason I thought they didn't get them all, or as high. RIP Pilferer, even at being a joke class you're only 2nd best. You have literally no point in this game at all.
i've put in a good amount of days on both pilferer and adventurer. Unlike you, I believe both around viable conepts For pilferer, mastercrafting clothes and jewelry is a golden ticket to infinite coins. Con: they must branch haggle from value, which is harder than it mght seem; plus, unlike adventurers, they don't get parry, at all.in But it's hard to make definitive statements because pilferer/adventurer might have bonuses/perks not overtly shown in the class release. Making "search" a more viable skill would be cool. |
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Post by lechuck on Nov 20, 2018 15:31:10 GMT -5
I just don't think crafting (or cash) is inherently valuable. You can make x amount of coins with crafting, but you have to ask yourself two things: 1) could you have made a similar amount of money in other ways? and 2) what can you really do with that money?
In the case of #1, there are plenty of ways to make money. Foraging, killing+looting, stealing, etc. If anything, stealing is probably the fastest and easiest way to make raw cash if you're willing to risk some raised eyebrows. Technically, you can make thousands every day just picking the pockets of stable NPCs, plus whatever else you can rake in. Meat, skins and looted gear can be quite lucrative as well. And if you really want to make crafting into your moneymaker, you can just pick a subclass that gets one or two of the good crafting skills. There's no need to spend your main class on it.
And for #2, you get to the point where money is just an arbitrary number in your character file. Bribes don't get you very far, because you can bribe templars as much as you want but they'll still fuck you over the moment actual roleplay gives them a reason to do so. Money is good up to a few thousand, after which it just doesn't have that many uses, so people don't put too much stock in the idea of getting paid off. I can't count the number of times I've diligently paid off templars, soldiers and so on, only to find that those expenses meant nothing whatsoever as soon as any other reason compelled them to ignore it.
Armageddon lacks venues for extreme wealth. You can try to get into the warehouse/clan-building scheme which takes RL years, but outside of that, there's effectively a limit to the usefulness of money. You can't sink twenty thousand into getting some kind of especially powerful item. You can't buy property or slaves, you can't purchase a position of power. Once your character has the best equipment money can buy, which is a fairly low bar, the usefulness of further wealth diminishes steeply.
With all of that in mind, it's hard to place much value in classes that are devoted exclusively to making money. In today's Armageddon, nothing is truly special except for the ability to kill other characters, because that's honestly what's left in the game. All else is immaterial fluff. Killing dudes is the sole remaining way to be really relevant, and classes that have no agency in that regard are characters with a hard limit to their potential; and while one could argue that money is a way to kill people, I don't even think crafting is the best way to accomplish that.
This is why I think crafting classes are a waste of time. Money doesn't come close to the usefulness and power of practical skills. When has anyone ever given the remotest of shits about a merchant who wasn't in a sponsored role, in which case the role was what made them relevant? When has someone made something happen by virtue of being rich, without being carried by other and more important factors? You can get rich without crafting, and you can be someone without being rich. In no cases worth mentioning has the possession of money alone really mattered. If you try to be someone based on nothing but your cashflow, odds are perilously close to 100% that someone will just murder you because it was something to do and they knew it was easy because you picked a defenseless class.
I would take master stealth or combat skills over a full crafting suite any day of the week. It'll prolong your character's life expectancy by 300%, and any experienced player will be able to make all the money they need in any variety of other ways. Crafting is a dead end in this day and age. A character devoted entirely to the acquisition of wealth, with no practical abilities to supplement it, is a wasted character. If you really want to craft, you're better off taking miscreant/jeweler or whatever and being undetectable whenever you wish, over pilferer/xxx and dying the moment someone decides that killing you would be funny.
Today's Armageddon is a game that comes down to surviving whenever the total absence of meaningful things to do compels someone to decide that killing you is something to do. The classes that are good at nothing but crafting are classes that lose that game. That's just reality.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 20, 2018 21:10:59 GMT -5
I agree with Lechuck.
Worse, there are very very few items a pc crafter can make that compares with the items a GMH member can get loaded. In my experience, House specific gear is a grade again above GMH ordered gear. This makes it annoying to play a merchant to make coin to outfit other pcs, because sooner or later the GMH characters will see you are a problem, even if you are shoveling coins at them. It also means that as Lechuck said, killing clanned pcs and looting them is a better source of high end equipment.
The day the volcano originally blew up in the south, House Tor pcs and npcs ended up fighting in the streets against the earth and fire elementals. It started becoming obvious that a pc was looting tor corpses and running, despite the presence of other npcs or pcs. If they had stopped with four tor bastard swords, they would have been home free. We caught them when they came back for bsword five and six. They got delivered to Lady Khem with their six "liberated" 1500 val swords. Yep, they got killed. The house didnt even let the house pcs use the swords... no one had enough rank.
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MartenBroadcloak
Displaced Tuluki
It's not a shit post if you spell check (tm)
Posts: 370
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Post by MartenBroadcloak on Nov 22, 2018 15:17:02 GMT -5
riposte seems like a big deal now that like fucking everyone gets parry from the start.
It's a free attack and it gets some kind of boost to offense or it penalizes the opponent's defense. Even without having the skill it still gets the bonus if you get success.
Getting critted with a sword to the neck every time you parry blows ass and there's like no dawdge because no one gets hit because of parry (lol)
And a lot of people take those middle classes because of scan/brew/hide/sneak etc. And they don't have slashing. So pm fucked.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 22, 2018 17:59:09 GMT -5
riposte seems like a big deal now that like fucking everyone gets parry from the start. It's a free attack and it gets some kind of boost to offense or it penalizes the opponent's defense. Even without having the skill it still gets the bonus if you get success. Getting critted with a sword to the neck every time you parry blows ass and there's like no dawdge because no one gets hit because of parry (lol) And a lot of people take those middle classes because of scan/brew/hide/sneak etc. And they don't have slashing. So pm fucked. I just want to clarify. You dont gain damage when you parry. You deal damage when you parry. Wasnt sure if you implied it differently in your post, or not. Wording is a little wacky |
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