Change H/P Class Requirements to Bonus Providers

[Eldargard]

Title:
Change H/P Class Requirements to Bonus Providers

Summary:
Get rid of H/P requirements for classes and instead have them boost class abilities as appropriate.

Details:
1. Do not restrict access to classes using H/P requirements
2. Remove days in realm requirement for classes
3. Make a Courtier's bureaucratic work more effective as they gain H/P
4. Make a Diplomats ability to sway opinions more effective as they gain H/P
5. Make a Cavalier's H/P influence how many cavalry they can recruit
    a. Characters, even if a Cavalier, still can not recruit Cavalry until they have 5 Prestige or Special Forces until they have 10 Prestige
6. Make a Heroes H/P influence how effective their tell tales and recruit peasants abilities work.
7. Make a Traders H/P influence how effective their special abilities function (whatever those may be).
8. Make it more difficult for NPC's to catch an infiltrator with higher H/P that one with lower H/P or some such.
9. Simply remove any H/P requirements there may be, if any.
    a. Nobels still need to be a member of a religion to become priests.

Benefits:
This would eliminate the (often overly long) waiting period characters have to go through to access other classes and the coolness included while maintaining a means of progressing. Everyone wants to have the highest chance of success or degree of impact possible.

This would also allow some level of progression in ability that is outside of skill training.

This would also allow the seamless actualization of character concepts that do not include warriors or the like. Say I want to create a Noble who happens to be a peace loving priest. Under the current system (or from what I could recall at least), the character must first wage enough war to meet the H/P requirements before switching. With the new system a new character can quickly switch to the diplomat/courtier/trader class until the character becomes a member of a religion then switch to the priest class and thus maintain the integrity of their character concept.

Possible Downsides or Exploits:
Rapid shifting between classes to gain a benefit for the moment. I think there might already be limits on this but I can not recall. It is also possible that lots of players in a realm chose the same class and there will be more of that lass that would have been possible under he current system and some may view this negatively.

[Anaris]

I notice you don't mention the infiltrator or cavalier classes—the ones with the most stringent requirements, one of which also has a lot of potential power. What are your thoughts on them?

[Eldargard]

Points 4 and 8 are about infiltrators and cavaliers. I have to admit that the options may not be the best. I have rarely strayed from warrior or priest classes so I have a hard time laying out how H/P could best impact their abilities.

[Anaris]

Points 4 and 8 are about infiltrators and cavaliers. I have to admit that the options may not be the best. I have rarely strayed from warrior or priest classes so I have a hard time laying out how H/P could best impact their abilities.

*suspicious look*

Did you ninja-edit that, or am I just going blind? 

Anyway...

A lot of what you propose is already handled by skills, and honour already affects how much every class can recruit.

What would you think of, rather than having higher H&P straight-up increase effectiveness, it unlocks different options within the class?

I'm open to the idea of allowing anyone to become courtier, priest, trader, and maybe even diplomat. I don't think it's appropriate to completely remove the entrance requirements to infiltrator and cavalier, though. Those are meant to be advanced, elite classes.

[Eldargard]

Let me try to coble some thoughts together on infiltrators and Cavaliers. This will be limited based on my knowledge of the classes.

Infiltrators:
o start with, my understanding that the shift from ninja invisibility to plausible dependability has already taken some of the bite out of this class. Additionally I have heard it constantly said that gaining the class does not really allow much by itself and that the real challenge is getting one's swordsmanship and infiltration skills up and that takes time and money and is already a progression path by itself. In fact, I am willing to bet that many players are frustrated that, after having worked so hard to meet H/P requirements, they find that they have really gained little and must now start on the equally steep path of skills training.

In short, I am not sure that much extra needs to be done with the infiltrator aside from your chance of getting caught is lessened with high H/P and increased by low H/P. All part of the plausible dependability thing.

Cavaliers:
This is a class that I think really should benifit for having a high H/P and suffer for having low H/P. To start with, I would not change the H/P requirements for unit size and troop types. This means a character who immediately changes to Cavalier still can not recruit cavalry and still haves to deal with the classes restrictions. I would set a H/P baseline (probably the current requirement so 20P/50H or something better) If you have around that much H/P you gain the increase to the number of Cavalry or SF you can recruit. If you have half that, you get half the increase and so on.

This means a brand new 1P/8H character that switches to Cavalier will not see much mechanical benefit. They might gain in jousting during combat instead of swordsmanship, they have an excuse to not perform certain acts and have the right to RP their characters as they see fit from the beginning on.

I will also add that it is still possible to place a restriction preventing characters of players whose accounts are less that X days from changing classes if the dev team feels there really is value here. It might also be cool if old player with new accounts could opt out of the newbie protection benefits in exchange for losing any new account hindrances..

[Eldargard]

You most certainly must be going blind and you most certainly did not just see me tuck a ninja mask into my pocket...

I think that unlocking options sounds pretty cool. I am open to just about everything - I just like throwing ideas out. I can even think of a few more options:

Preserve the entry requirements for advanced classes and just just make the "base classes" insta-accessable. I do believe that a courtier is capable of gaining H/P with his bureaucratic work no? I also think that this would also still allow for some unique character concepts to be actualized. Join, switch to Courtier, and then continue along your silly pacifist path wherever it may take you. I think that the biggest lack regarding character concept actualization is a lack of path that does not include a warrior stage.

It might not simpler to just allow all classes to train all skills (though they can still only use the skills allowed by their class) and have skill level determine what classes you have access to. This would make skills a bit more prominent and characters an still work towards unlocking a class even when their is no war going on via the academy.

[Anaris]

Preserve the entry requirements for advanced classes and just just make the "base classes" insta-accessable. I do believe that a courtier is capable of gaining H/P with his bureaucratic work no? I also think that this would also still allow for some unique character concepts to be actualized. Join, switch to Courtier, and then continue along your silly pacifist path wherever it may take you. I think that the biggest lack regarding character concept actualization is a lack of path that does not include a warrior stage.

I've actually seen that complaint for years, though never commonly.

The reason for the restrictions on courtiers and traders is primarily newbie protection, as I've said elsewhere, and I think it might be worthwhile, at least as an experiment, to allow instant access to those and see where it goes. If people start trying to make newbies into region-maintenance-bots, it'll get reverted.

It might not simpler to just allow all classes to train all skills (though they can still only use the skills allowed by their class) and have skill level determine what classes you have access to. This would make skills a bit more prominent and characters an still work towards unlocking a class even when their is no war going on via the academy.

That might, indeed, be simpler, but that's not the game BattleMaster is.

[Eldargard]

I get the newbie protection thing and have a few questions thoughts about it. How are the characters bullied? I thought the IR should protect them in this. Also, should the experiment take place and fail, perhaps the "Can't change classes until the account is X days old" idea I mentioned above would be enough?

Thanks for taking the time to explain things to me and providing so much constructive feedback!

[skiarxon@gmail.com]

Infiltrators tend to lose H/P anyway and by unlocking some of their skills with H/P will make them useless.

[LilWolf]

The reason for the restrictions on courtiers and traders is primarily newbie protection, as I've said elsewhere, and I think it might be worthwhile, at least as an experiment, to allow instant access to those and see where it goes. If people start trying to make newbies into region-maintenance-bots, it'll get reverted.

It's not the same game as it was when the limits were put in place. Hell, these days realms get by with 1 courtier for every 5-10 regions they have and practically no one cares about traders. At the very least the limit should be changed to actual new accounts and removed from people like me who have been playing for years and know to tell anyone ordering me to a particular class to stuff it.

[Kai]

I don't think removing a few wait times is a significant benefit. This requires making H/P into a secondary stat system. It will be gamed because the most efficient way of increasing ability as a courtier is to fight. Academy training is fairly "bought" whereas H/P is much harder to increase specifically and just benefits old characters.