Discussion about the Warrior Experience

Peerless warriors of varying types, from hulking armored dreadnoughts to stealthy light-footed nightblades.
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Karjus
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Re: Discussion about the Warrior Experience

Post by Karjus »

Navi wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2023 4:59 pm Karjus echoes some of my own thoughts. Warriors feel like the main part of COGG.
I wouldn't agree with that, but they're definitely a class that has access to going a lot of places and doing so freely especially if they're built as a more exploratory type. One of the side effects of the combat grind is that it necessitates moving around, and variety of zones. It is the same grind, but with options. At the same time, you can technically cap out on crafting exactly the same thing and over again or mixing it up.
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Verel
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Joined: Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:35 am

Re: Discussion about the Warrior Experience

Post by Verel »

I very much enjoy the idea of non-warriors guarding certain areas. Would give us a reason to use that ladder next to the stables.

I feel like while warriors obviously should do the majority of the fighting, non-warriors should have their place as well and not that it's a lower place because warning people of incoming danger is arguably more helpful than actually killing the danger.

But me personally, I wanna go in, be told to kill 10 or 20 infested or nethrim, get out there, fight until I'm injured or dead, and if i'm successful, get payed a good amount of riln for all my hard work. Sounds simple and obviously as I get better at fighting, the mobs should scale because why wouldn't they? It'd give me a reason to explore, ask people to go with me or even just tell me anything I should know about the enemy I'm fighting, or even guard me because I know immediately I'm gonna get my butt kicked super hard if I don't have someone with me doing that even though I'm a warrior. It'll definitely increase the interaction in my view because I'll genuinely need help doing stuff.
Ezrynon
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Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2021 10:31 pm

Re: Discussion about the Warrior Experience

Post by Ezrynon »

Haron wrote:

Lastly, there's the player themselves. It's not necessarily the fault of the game if your interactions aren't going the way you want them to. The game can try its best to facilitate your IC, but if you aren't willing to invest yourself, mechanics can only do so much. If you can find a reason to need someone else, or antagonize someone else, it could very quickly lead to a good scene. It's just starting stuff is hard and takes effort. I certainly have a problem with this myself. It's just easier to watch the numbers go up sometimes.
I can understand this post, but I take issue with a few things in it. This however is the one I think I can address with a fairly straight forward response.

This post assumes that people don't want to rp the things above. Now in most cases it kind of ends up this way because, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's a what we have thing, Half the game want in-depth rp, while others just want to do the basics. But to say that if the game doesn't help you fulfill your goals, its you not creating things to make it possible. When I came here I would engage people in their time, I would try and rp a healing scene with a physicker, but then I get burned with the response of gimme riln, okay bye. It is very difficult to put time into rp when you don't have people wanting to be there outside of whatever is needing done. Metalsmiths want to get back to metalsmithing, Leatherworkers want to get back to leatherworking.

What option does that leave you? having mechanics that encourage these things. Now some of the suggestions in the post I believe could help in tackling some of these things. But, to say that people aren't doing their best to foster RP is in, my opinion, not the case. i play a grumpy unpleasant, yet trying to be positive helpful character, and in some cases folks enjoy it, in others, I'm somehow just being rude. That's not a problem, but it's not necessarily viewed as RP, or good RP, or RP that people want to take time to interact with. After doing the traditional way of RPing, hey how are you, what's up? how's your day, let's talk, and receiving nothing in the way of interaction, it's difficult to push for anything meaningful.

If we have an environment that individuals want a quick hey, how are you, and some activity to go do together, I think that's great for a game like Cogg. Cogg isn't a MUSH, or an rp heavy MOO, it's a code rich MUD, and I think people just have recognized that and do the little kinds of RP. People like its relaxing nature, because people don't necessarily want to write a scene, they want to have fun with the code that's available. So, how does the code allow that short interaction for Warriors that is meaningful that's outside of the activities listed above? It doesn't. I'd rather have a person come up to me and at least be like hey, help me with this, okay bye, than have people do a simple wave, see you later, and then what?

I don't mean this to attack this post, I just disagree with it, and I think given the nature of Cogg it may be just that I should adjust my expectation of the RP, but if the RP or short RP that surrounds mechanics is there, I suppose encourage that then. Either way, I don't believe that people don't want to rp, they feel limited or burned by trying it.
Gorth
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Re: Discussion about the Warrior Experience

Post by Gorth »

Kismet wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2023 4:44 pm ...

I remember when the town needed peat from the bog and people were getting together in gatherer groups with warriors to protect them. Maybe if there were more town-centric things like that going on where the items to be retrieved weren't valuable for crafting but helped the group as a whole that wouldn't trip up the crafters as much as "There are 37 jacalopes loose in the coal mine".

If there was an off-duty profession system that could give warriors more stuff to do in town that helped crafting professions and played off the warrior skills that might help. Maybe something like a blacksmith getting a Strength warrior to work the bellows to give them a speed boost.
I'm amazed this wasn't ever talked about in particular. It's not that people want content. It's that we want reasons for that content. Roleplay in my roleplaying game.

Lots of people know my usually harsh oppinions on massive groups of high-rolling mobs as an event. Time and place, usually not for me, but I do them anyway because what other events am I going to partake in?

I enjoyed the idea of the peat thing, and got to take a group out once. It was fun. Sure, I wasn't getting anything from killing the mobs there, but I was feeling useful to the people who didn't get to see me go out and kill D800 mobs and whatnot. And that meant a lot more to me.

I only took one group out because it was only a few people interested in the stuff, but still. The idea remains. Things like this are nice for those warriors who care. it encourages people to interact in a way that isn't super insanely demanding or stressful or even particularly mechanics oriented.

Ephemeralis wrote: Mon Apr 24, 2023 6:40 pm Got a few suggestions to try and help with this:
  • Combat-related tasks (such as kill 20 Dusklamp infested) have a small chance to spawn an 'elite' mob of that type with increased difficulty relative to the task-getter's skills when working on said tasks. These "elite" mobs have the potential to drop lockboxes with increased Loot Luck for the area, drop more riln, and grant considerably more practice.
  • Killing a certain number of "elite" mobs increases a tracked value, which Stormholdt then uses to offer ringleader or apex contracts. These contracts are group content - taking the task triggers a flag which when the person with the task enters a zone, causes a certain number of kills in said zone to bring a special ringleader or apex mob out of hiding. These apex mobs are a LOT stronger than normal and may have advanced movesets compared to normal, and they should be generally tailored to require multiple people to kill. Naturally, the rewards for them are considerable - not only would the contracts give substantial amount of riln (to be split across all group members), but also lockboxes with vastly enhanced Loot Luck, and potentially even unique pieces of degradable high-tier equipment a la quivering bowstrings.
  • Ringleader and apex contracts should have no upper ceiling. If you keep killing them successfully, Stormholdt keeps giving you harder contracts that numerically increase the ringleader/apex mob's stats. How high can you go? Add leaderboards in Stormholdt for people to check and compare the biggest, most dangerous apex/ringleader mobs they've dispatched or led the dispatch of. Someone will invariably get this to the point where a wechuge is stomping around with d1200 endrolls and the carnage will be excellent.
  • Add routines that periodically summon hostile patrols that bounce between certain travel junctions similar to how the Dominion patrols work. A tactics map in Stormholdt could give an indicator as to when these patrols are expected to appear, and if there are any currently on known roads. Killing these patrols could drop 'intelligence' items which can then be brought to Stormholdt or given to a warrior to hand in for a bit of riln and the potential to directly unlock an apex/ringleader contract.
Okay, that turned out a lot longer than I thought. I think there's a lot of potential to position warriors as the guild responsible for dragging people out into the Lost Lands together, with contracts as described above being a good way of getting that rolling.
Rias talked about how, once societies roll out, Stormholdt will remain there for mercinary types. That is why I go nuts for this suggestion, or some variation therein. It is very good, but is an opt-in, mostly, and that's a big distinction.

I do very much enjoy mobs on the road. Sometimes it's just a wolf, and I get to report it and feel happy that I did something helpful, other times it's a bunch of Liberi going out for a specific purpose and I get to feel good that I helped out and maybe saved someone a smearing. Except...

People in town don't care, really. And they'll object, but Liberi roaming out of Valeria does not hurt the town. Someone might stumble on them on the road, sure. But the vast majority of people will not care. This suggestion in particular doesn't address that, and I'm not sure it will change simply by nature of the beast, but I like to ramble.
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Keleran
Posts: 17
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Re: Discussion about the Warrior Experience

Post by Keleran »

I am not one to post on BBS, but this topic piqued my interest. My idea takes parts from other posts on this thread.

My thoughts on how this could look:

What if the town handed out a task where the rewards were so great that people would want to group to get them done? The difficulty could be based on the character's level. Anyone would have a chance to pull this type of random task. Let's say a level one character who is working to earn coin cleaning lamp-posts pulls this additional random task, and it requests 50 infested are to be culled within the town of Tarueka proper. The reward is 15,000 riln. The task mechanic requires that a warrior goes. If they take a warrior who is a guardian, there is a bonus. There would also be other recommended classes to take, where if they go, there is a bonus added to the task. Take a treasure hunter on this task and get an additional bonus. This type of task could be more regular for warriors as a weekly task of some type. A high level warrior pulls a task to take a group into Bristbane, and kill 50 spiders. The warrior must take 5 other people with him. To complete the task the warrior must take a scholar to study 20 dead spiders, that scholar must write the report for the warrior to turn in. Stormholdt needs this report to monitor the "Bristbane Situation". This task is worth 35,000 riln. If this scholar is a druid, there is a bonus. One of the other 5 must be a warrior. If it is a dreadnaught, there is a bonus. There could be additional recommended classes to take for bonuses. Physickers should always be a recommended class to take with you on tasks (and, yes, that is a shameless plug to take Keleran with you into combat).

The main thought is that if you get this type of task it is worth it to complete, and it would be worth it to gather the group to complete it. I could only imagine the amount of coding it would take to create the mechanics behind this. Also, there would be the issue of additional riln being added into the COGG economy. I was approaching this with the thought of how to incentivize people to want to group together whose characters might not know each other.

(edited for readability)
Jilliana
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Re: Discussion about the Warrior Experience

Post by Jilliana »

One of the above posts stated something along the lines of, "These are the Lost Lands. We've got enough trouble as it is. Asking for killing tasks is like wanting more more more.".

People often forget that things like aggressive highwaymen and other dangerous things happen to the regular people of the Lost Lands, if not necessarily to our players. Who's to say that just because my character made it fine *all* the way to Mistral Lake, that a couple of leagues back, a family wasn't robbed. Hmm. An idea for a task there.

One thing I appreciate about combat tasks is that they help me and encourage me to find and raise my numbers in places I wouldn't have found or tried otherwise. I for one need a sense of direction, even if it's with grinding, and guilds are really good for this.

In addition to the regular tasks out on the roads and wilderness areas, I'd love to see situations in which crafters are confronted with the wild come to town. It's the rainy season and spiders like to hide in nice warm places, AKA, crafter's nests, and so on.

I love the possibility of creating uncomfortable situations for all types of characters, especially the ones who can sit grinding for hours in one place.
(Rias says, "Happiness is accepting your past as part of who you are.")
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