Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

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Fourtcoer
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Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Fourtcoer » 27 Jun 2011 17:16

Many players often avoiding racial or guild choices that in theory should have excellent synergy with their occupational guild because of skill redundancy. Why pay tax for a certain skill from your racial/layman guild if your occupational already gives you that same skill beyond that level?

What might be nice is, in in the case of a layman or racial guild duplicating a skill already offered by another guild, the character received the benefit of being able to train slightly higher than the highest guild allows, even if just a level or two.

For example, as a Thornlin Militia Knight, I do not gain any benefit from being able to train in polearm, since I am already trained past the layman guild maximum, yet by the same token, the Militia is not considered as viable a choice for a knight as the Blademasters because as a knight I am trained more fully in sword. If perhaps by being a militia member I gain the advantage of being able to train polearm slightly higher than knight training allows, the militia might be seen as a more viable combat layman guild choice for knights.

Conversely if a Calian chose to be a Blademaster.

Similarly, this could allow racial/layman synergy that creates a viable option for a higher level character. Maybe as a rockfriend + shieldbearer, a dwarf can gain substantial enough skill in axe to sometimes be an axe-wielding knight, which from a roleplaying perspective is just cool. Currently the axe skill provided by those guilds would just create redundancy, and not enough skill in axe to ever really choose to use those weapons once one is trained occupationally. Wasted skill resources.

Maybe being a Herald could have more synergy as a ranger, allowing spellcraft to be trained slightly higher and rendering the ranger a superior healer, rather than creating some redundancy.

I'm no expert on game balance, but it seems imbalanced to have to pay taxes on redundant or ineffective skills, and the more diverse options for layman/racial guilds, the better.

Just a thought.

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Re: Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Amberlee » 27 Jun 2011 17:26

Personally i want MUCH more layman guild options in the game.
Neutral, evil, good.. ALL of them.
Layman guilds should be like the extra flavour you bring to the character, not something you pick just because it gives you that extra edge.
Would be nice if you could bring the flavour AND get the extra edge though.
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Fourtcoer
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Re: Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Fourtcoer » 27 Jun 2011 17:35

Amberlee, I agree entirely. Our in-game social group often centers around our occupational guild, but when everyone you most frequently travel with largely has the same skills, it gets monotonous. While more occupational guilds can spread a thin playerbase even thinner, more layman (and racial) guilds creates more diversity *within* occupational guilds, which enhances the experience.

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Kitriana
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Re: Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Kitriana » 27 Jun 2011 19:26

I've usually agreed on the point of more laymen.. as much as I agree we should have more racial guilds.... It creates more diversity without really thinning the playerbase. I like to know that when I team with my fellow Union members to hunt.. we're each bringing something different to the experience. Gives me more of a reason to team with more of them. For racial.. I just don't see any reason to limit this.

I also really like the ideas Fourt has put here above. It would definately add a little more dimension if it could be worked out balance wise.
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Re: Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Zar » 27 Jun 2011 19:28

Yeah, paying tax for redundant skill is imbalance. But usually imbalance is fixed only when it is in favour of player not opposite.

And sorry, I don't see any RP synergy of Knight and Militia.

I think that raising skill more will bring more imbalance to game that it is now.
I think that tax must be adjusted - that's all.

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Tarax the Terrible
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Re: Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Tarax the Terrible » 27 Jun 2011 19:31

This is the sort of idea that maybe makes sense in its theme but could cause unforseen problems.

Its not that big an issue currently in terms of taxes (being charged twice for the same bonus) as the tax that you would pay on for example your layman guild giving you sup journey in a weapon skill is very small. I would guess with a lot of cross over between occ race and lay and craft the max anyone can loose out on currently is 1% or 2% tops. The taxes used to be known for all guilds, and from that you could deduce weapon skills are cheap its the specials that get expensive.

The type of balance hmmmmmmmms I see are ones like.

Say you are a merc, joining a racial with some knife skills (I think some racial guilds give you sup journey ie halfway to guru) you could probably use that bonus to get your conf veteran or whatever basic merc knife skill close to sup guru in knife. Cool enh
But they get a bunch of other guru skills too.
Knife is a pretty restricted skill, if more people were able to get it to guru the amount of poison daggers there are would lead to a larger pvp threat especially given the other skills they have etc.
I can think of at least one racial and 2 layman guilds where the skill in knife if combined would be well past guru.
Lots of redundancy there but limiting the threat they pose as well.

Ie currently the Cabal thieves are one option for people looking to be a knife using assassin, but they are limited in other ways (and without having guru skill in knife they usually don't fight with the knife, just use it at the start). The change could
A) Increase the threat they pose because they could get guru knife and use it to fight with.
B) provide something similar to their threat without having to be in that guild at all and have their limitations to grinding power etc.


Some side points.
Knights have a lot of weapon skills, so redundancy is to be expected.
I personally think the glads should have all/the most weapon skills to choose from perhaps even two at guru at the same time.
Mercs should be more specialist in just one at a time, ie 1 above journeyman and they can switch.

Anyone switching skills it should take them at least 4 hrs killing time to get it up to guru.
I don't like the theme of your guru swordsman ok wait 30 seconds, you changed to guru axe user.

Old Calian system was too far the other diretion, think they had 100 or 120 points or something like that to spend between polearm and sword. That seems too rigid, as I don't think they could retrain, and few people are going to go for middle of the road in two skills compared to guru in one.

Now days for people playing their big characters skills below guru are very rarely used.
There is almost a case to say once you are in an occ guild remove all weapon skills from the lower guilds and refund the 1-2% tax.
I have sup journey weapon skills other than my main skill, chances of me using them aside from one off trying out an unknown piece of gear.
Zero.
(But I'd love to have guru/master knife as a sneaky secondary skill)
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Tarax the Terrible
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Re: Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Tarax the Terrible » 27 Jun 2011 19:32

zar wrote:Yeah, paying tax for redundant skill is imbalance. But usually imbalance is fixed only when it is in favour of player not opposite.

And sorry, I don't see any RP synergy of Knight and Militia.

I think that raising skill more will bring more imbalance to game that it is now.
I think that tax must be adjusted - that's all.
Amazing...
Zar said pretty much the same thing as me in 4 lines.
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Anahita
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Re: Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Anahita » 27 Jun 2011 19:57

Would love to see something like Fourtcoer suggests. It would definately increase the possibilities in the game. The alternative would be to lower the training offered across the board as reason to lower the tax, or perhaps set it so if someone can train more if they are without an occupation. Anahita was my first ever character and was a Traveler only for ages, then EW, and didnt join monks until she was a veteran. The trading skills and other few things the racial/lay offered made that possible.

I think racial guilds are most useful for the very young who haven't yet chosen an occupational guild. After that their benefits diminish greatly and are limited to a few things - titles, roleplay, emotes, a starting place if you for some reason dont want to wake up in your occupational guild. Unique offerings are very few.

(Unrelated: I still wish they'd bring back the old Traveler Titles! They're so boring now its sad.)

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Iliana
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Re: Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Iliana » 27 Jun 2011 20:46

When these layman and racial guilds are created the guild tax had to have been calculated using the skills provided.

So if I get skill X from my racial and skill X to a higher level from my occupational, why not drop the guild tax on my racial? whatever percentage of the guild tax for my racial that was generated by skill X could just be deducted from the total guild tax. This could be the same case for all redundant skills, the lower level skill is the one dropped. Just a thought.

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Fourtcoer
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Re: Reducing Layman/Racial Guild Redundancy

Post by Fourtcoer » 27 Jun 2011 21:20

Just dropping the tax would address the issue, I suppose, but it wouldn't add any fun or diversity.

I don't remember where I saw/read this, but at some point I vaguely recall a discussion about the possibility of all universal skills (sword, parry, etc.) being trained at adventurer guilds by allocating points earned over time, and player guilds being a place to only train guild specials - though the specials might have restrictions. Fling doesn't possibly make sense for anything but daggers, so Shadow Warriors would have every incentive to train knife as their primary weapon, but if a dwarven mercenary wants to fight with an axe as his primary weapon, why the hell not?

Similarly if a ranger + herald really wanted to, she could allocate all her points into her spellcasting abilities and basically play an occupational healer while relegating her stealth and/or fighting to a layman role.

I'm sure that would be highly difficult to balance and it wasn't my idea, but I thought that sounded really cool and allowed for a lot more diversity in guilds and essentially eliminated the redundancy issue. You'd be paying for your specials and your perks, period.

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