Don't know if this has ever been considered, and perhaps it's late to add now, but seems like all Unique items are for prestige or leadership bonuses.
Any thoughts on having things help your other skills? Might make them more than just oddities to RP about
That's not true. Although bonus abilities are rare they do exist.
e.g. http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Astonishing_Aegis_of_the_Dragonslayer
Or, for a more complete list:
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Property:Abilities
Unique items that provide a bonus to skills do exist albeit are quite rare.
Furthermore, an item without an ability may have one added to it by a lucky adventurer. It's just very hard and very uncommon to get the offer from a sage while also holding the right ingredients.
Nice! Knew it was a good idea ;-)
That list is nice - seems like there's a whole new avenue for RPing.
Has "steal a unique item" been considered as an infil activity?
Quote from: Miskel Hemmings on July 04, 2014, 01:27:42 AM
Has "steal a unique item" been considered as an infil activity?
No, but it
is a Judge ability.
Yes, that one I knew.
Might be something to consider (maybe I should rework this or make a new thread) for a new infil ability - Steal Unique Item.
Seems fitting, and now you could hire infils to go steal something you want - makes them much more a part of the nobles' game, rather than just a device to promote interaction between advies and nobles
Think it warrants its own thread?
Quote from: Miskel Hemmings on July 04, 2014, 02:06:38 AM
Yes, that one I knew.
Might be something to consider (maybe I should rework this or make a new thread) for a new infil ability - Steal Unique Item.
Seems fitting, and now you could hire infils to go steal something you want - makes them much more a part of the nobles' game, rather than just a device to promote interaction between advies and nobles
Think it warrants its own thread?
Infils are kinda unfun right now and I don't think the devs are interested in changing that right now tbh.
Quote from: Skiarxon on July 04, 2014, 04:45:00 PM
Infils are kinda unfun right now and I don't think the devs are interested in changing that right now tbh.
The devs are always interested in making things fun.
I have several ideas, both general and specific, for improving infiltrators. I just can't do everything at once.
What, specifically, about infiltrators is unfun to you right now?
This idea of stealing unique items is really great. Opens up new scopes of RPing at the very least! :)
Quote from: Anaris on July 04, 2014, 04:52:57 PM
The devs are always interested in making things fun.
I have several ideas, both general and specific, for improving infiltrators. I just can't do everything at once.
What, specifically, about infiltrators is unfun to you right now?
I'll get to that when I have some proper time to write.
Training... Endless training is the unfun part for infiltrators. too much time investment until you become good enough to actually do something.
Quote from: Lapallanch on July 06, 2014, 12:05:02 AM
Training... Endless training is the unfun part for infiltrators. too much time investment until you become good enough to actually do something.
That, I know about, and plan to change by introducing a variety of low-risk, low-reward options for training infiltrators (that still actually have some impact on the game).
Also it is hard to just stay as infiltrator as well due to honour and prestige loss. Eventually your honour and prestige fall too low for you to even stay as a noble. You become an outlaw and if you get caught you are out.
It would be nice to have something to replace honour and prestige for infiltrator.
Quote from: Lapallanch on July 06, 2014, 12:21:18 AM
Also it is hard to just stay as infiltrator as well due to honour and prestige loss. Eventually your honour and prestige fall too low for you to even stay as a noble. You become an outlaw and if you get caught you are out.
It would be nice to have something to replace honour and prestige for infiltrator.
You just have to fight some more battles. Or not get caught so much :-X
Quote from: Anaris on July 04, 2014, 04:52:57 PM
The devs are always interested in making things fun.
I have several ideas, both general and specific, for improving infiltrators. I just can't do everything at once.
What, specifically, about infiltrators is unfun to you right now?
Took me some time but better late than ever.
Right now infiltrators are a high risk low reward class. I'll try to make some points so that you can reply to each one if you want.
1)The H/P requirements are kinda high. I know that they are so high because infils tend to lose a lot of H/P but lowering them a bit (or making them obsolete for old players like it was discussed in another thread) wouldn't really hurt.
2)It takes a lot of time to train to be at least mediocre. Sitting in an Academy for around 3 to 4 irl months doing nothing but train sword fighting and infiltration is not the definition of fun. And let's be honest. Noone is able to train by using infil actions in his realm. If someone tries to train by doing low risk actions outside of his realm he would most probably get banned, then stay in the realm again, train harder, emigrate to avoid the ban, come back again etc. Something should be done to fix this. Maybe add some really low risk actions like "Steal gold from random peasants, assassinate a gang leader" etc.
3)The removal of invisibility at certain skill. I wasn't playing the game when that was a thing but I thing it hurt the infiltration business a lot. It's not like someone can go to another realm, stab someone and then RP his way out of the situation. Noone would buy that. If infils could be invisible again it could create some really interesting situations between realms etc.
4)This problem might have been fixed now but back then each time I ended up in a Testing Island something seemed to be broken. Either when I tried to stab someone and the game did nothing and had to try again and again and only working if I failed the attempt and got caught. The other was the escape option which seemed to have the same problem as the assassination option.
5)For this I am not sure but I heard that it changed sometime when I still had my char. The chance of success when in a region with a lot of CS. It seemed to have been really low regardless of the skill you had in infiltration.
That's mostly it for now. If I remember something else I will make sure to add it.
Quote from: Skiarxon on July 20, 2014, 10:19:28 PM
3)The removal of invisibility at certain skill. I wasn't playing the game when that was a thing but I thing it hurt the infiltration business a lot. It's not like someone can go to another realm, stab someone and then RP his way out of the situation. Noone would buy that. If infils could be invisible again it could create some really interesting situations between realms etc.
So... wait until there are more foreigners there.
Or wait until your target is the foreigner.
Or until there are people from several different realms there.
Or until a well-known infiltrator is also in the region.
If you set yourself up as the only logical culprit, then you deserve to be the only one everyone suspects.
Quote from: Indirik on July 21, 2014, 04:33:48 AM
So... wait until there are more foreigners there.
Or wait until your target is the foreigner.
Or until there are people from several different realms there.
Or until a well-known infiltrator is also in the region.
If you set yourself up as the only logical culprit, then you deserve to be the only one everyone suspects.
This, I had a infil character go unnoticed for more then a year by being very selective of my targets and my risks. Invisibility was always more useful for actually getting to your target region unnoticed then for plausible deniability at any rate.
I always assumed that due to the plausible dependability thing an infiltrator only lost H/P when they where caught doing something shady. Was my assumption wrong? If so, why would infiltrators lose H/P for actions no one knows where theirs?
You are correct. You only lose honor and prestige when you are identified as the culprit, whether or not you are captured.
Quote from: Indirik on July 21, 2014, 04:33:48 AM
So... wait until there are more foreigners there.
Or wait until your target is the foreigner.
Or until there are people from several different realms there.
Or until a well-known infiltrator is also in the region.
If you set yourself up as the only logical culprit, then you deserve to be the only one everyone suspects.
And then get randomly caught because there are many CS in the region or someone decided to do police work. What you say doesn't really work in reality.
Thats the same way it was when there were invisible ninjas, too. They still got caught by random patrols and police work, too.
And don't you get warnings when people have been doing police work?
Quote from: Indirik on July 21, 2014, 12:34:23 PM
Thats the same way it was when there were invisible ninjas, too. They still got caught by random patrols and police work, too.
And don't you get warnings when people have been doing police work?
The difference is you wouldn't have to wait for your scenario back then. And no you don't get a report.
Quote from: Skiarxon on July 21, 2014, 12:31:06 PM
And then get randomly caught because there are many CS in the region or someone decided to do police work. What you say doesn't really work in reality.
So why are you attempting something in a region that has more CS then your skill can comfortably deal with?
Quote from: Indirik on July 21, 2014, 12:34:23 PM
Thats the same way it was when there were invisible ninjas, too. They still got caught by random patrols and police work, too.
And don't you get warnings when people have been doing police work?
I thought you used to, in the text when selecting the action you want to perform. Not sure if it was their for every infil option but I certainly recall that some of them used to warn you about elevated threat levels due to police work.
Quote from: De-Legro on July 21, 2014, 12:48:01 PM
So why are you attempting something in a region that has more CS then your skill can comfortably deal with?
I never said that. My skill was always around 80% and higher. Getting caught by someone with a unit of 500CS should not happen.
Quote from: Skiarxon on July 21, 2014, 12:50:04 PM
I never said that. My skill was always around 80% and higher. Getting caught by someone with a unit of 500CS should not happen.
Rubbish. In the end you are one man. The chance might be slim but I see no reason it should be negated entirely.
Quote from: Skiarxon on July 20, 2014, 10:19:28 PM
Took me some time but better late than ever.
Right now infiltrators are a high risk low reward class. I'll try to make some points so that you can reply to each one if you want.
1)The H/P requirements are kinda high. I know that they are so high because infils tend to lose a lot of H/P but lowering them a bit (or making them obsolete for old players like it was discussed in another thread) wouldn't really hurt.
2)It takes a lot of time to train to be at least mediocre. Sitting in an Academy for around 3 to 4 irl months doing nothing but train sword fighting and infiltration is not the definition of fun. And let's be honest. Noone is able to train by using infil actions in his realm. If someone tries to train by doing low risk actions outside of his realm he would most probably get banned, then stay in the realm again, train harder, emigrate to avoid the ban, come back again etc. Something should be done to fix this. Maybe add some really low risk actions like "Steal gold from random peasants, assassinate a gang leader" etc.
3)The removal of invisibility at certain skill. I wasn't playing the game when that was a thing but I thing it hurt the infiltration business a lot. It's not like someone can go to another realm, stab someone and then RP his way out of the situation. Noone would buy that. If infils could be invisible again it could create some really interesting situations between realms etc.
4)This problem might have been fixed now but back then each time I ended up in a Testing Island something seemed to be broken. Either when I tried to stab someone and the game did nothing and had to try again and again and only working if I failed the attempt and got caught. The other was the escape option which seemed to have the same problem as the assassination option.
5)For this I am not sure but I heard that it changed sometime when I still had my char. The chance of success when in a region with a lot of CS. It seemed to have been really low regardless of the skill you had in infiltration.
That's mostly it for now. If I remember something else I will make sure to add it.
1) I'm ambivalent about this. Infil is an advanced class, I see no reason to protect the player from themselves by having H/P requirements to counter the "loss" of such, that is something people should be able to manage. Guess you just need a way to ensure that people understand this so you don't get back feedback from first time infils
2) I've trained two infils without using academies. The first was a cheat, since it was an old advy and as such had decent sword fighting. The second was 100% trained from actions. I doubt he had the sword fighting for much stabbing, wasn't really concentrating on that but he was at 75% ish for infil from doing all those little infil actions people seem to ignore.
3) As I've said before, my understanding about the removal of invisibility was to stop infils from being able to scout with little risk, and to stop them magically popping up in the rear regions of a enemy with little chance of any sort of warning.
4) Sounds like a bug, was it reported?
5) Yes if there is a lot of CS the chance is low. To many soldiers milling around increasing the chance of being spotted, and the chance that significant help is available if you are spotted. Is the problem you have that you believe it ramps up too quickly? I certainly see little problem with the idea that it is hard/near impossible to stab someone in a camp of 20k CS for example.
Quote from: Indirik on July 21, 2014, 04:33:48 AM
So... wait until there are more foreigners there.
Or wait until your target is the foreigner.
Or until there are people from several different realms there.
Or until a well-known infiltrator is also in the region.
If you set yourself up as the only logical culprit, then you deserve to be the only one everyone suspects.
My biggest issue with this argument is that the higher the "plausible deniability", the higher the risks, because these extra nobles usually have troops that will interfere with your activities.
Secondly, that plausible deniability is not important. The invisible status wasn't useful because it protected your identity, it was useful because it covered your tracks. You couldn't be actively hunted down and followed. In most cases, you are acting against enemies. If you are, who cares if you are identified? You are already an enemy to them. The main cases where you would care not to be identified are against targets that the game does not reward attacking: friends.
Quote from: Skiarxon on July 21, 2014, 12:38:48 PM
The difference is you wouldn't have to wait for your scenario back then.
So you're upset that you have to plan, instead of knifing random people on a whim?
I don't mind requiring people plan their activities and wait for opportune moments to strike.
Quote from: Chénier on July 21, 2014, 01:39:35 PM
My biggest issue with this argument is that the higher the "plausible deniability", the higher the risks, because these extra nobles usually have troops that will interfere with your activities.
Are you sure?
QuoteSecondly, that plausible deniability is not important. The invisible status wasn't useful because it protected your identity, it was useful because it covered your tracks. You couldn't be actively hunted down and followed.
That and the fact that you could sit around scouting, and no one knew you were there. Except the enemy infiltrators.
QuoteIn most cases, you are acting against enemies. If you are, who cares if you are identified? You are already an enemy to them. The main cases where you would care not to be identified are against targets that the game does not reward attacking: friends.
Infiltrators who hope to do cause real change, and affect the political status of the game world, will not hit enemies. What purpose does hitting your enemies serve? They're already your enemies. The way to cause real problems is to nail someone you wouldn't be expected to hit, and pin it on someone else. You can't do that if you're invisible.
I agree that the infil game needs some changes. Anaris has already outlined that this is on the long-term plan. But simply adding back invisibility is not the panacea that will suddenly make infils relevant.
Quote from: Indirik on July 21, 2014, 06:23:24 PM
So you're upset that you have to plan, instead of knifing random people on a whim?
I don't mind requiring people plan their activities and wait for opportune moments to strike.
Stop assuming things I did not say please.
Then please explain what you mean. Because that's really what it sounded like you were saying.
Quote from: Skiarxon on July 21, 2014, 07:38:57 PM
Stop assuming things I did not say please.
As I said in IRC to you. People can only respond to their understanding of what you type. If people are continually "assuming" something you believe you did not type, then I would suggest that what you typed is not a concise representation of what you were thinking. Neither Indirik nor I am attempting to extrapolate a tenuous position from what you said, we are honestly responding to what it appeared to us you were trying to convey.
Quote from: De-Legro on July 21, 2014, 12:48:01 PM
I thought you used to, in the text when selecting the action you want to perform. Not sure if it was their for every infil option but I certainly recall that some of them used to warn you about elevated threat levels due to police work.
Perhaps ensuring this message is presented for every appropriate infiltrator action would help players make informed choices? Maybe have risk level appended to each action link infiltrators click on to perform an infil action?
Or maybe remove the option from all infil action pages and add a new infil action: "Perform Risk Assessment..." that causes the infiltrator character to try and outline, in detail, what he thinks the odds of success for various actions. The accuracy of this report might even be influenced by his infiltration skill, though I would not want to have it be too bad out of the box as this skill would be meant to help inexperienced infils who are unlikely to have his infiltration skills. Of course, if such an action is already present, ignore this!
Quote from: De-Legro on July 21, 2014, 12:53:03 PM
Rubbish. In the end you are one man. The chance might be slim but I see no reason it should be negated entirely.
I can not say I agree with this argument. It has always been popularly held that it is far easier to lose one's self in a crowd. I think he most dangerous situation for an infil would be to attack in a low population region with only the knights/lord of that region present and all performing police work. This, I think would give the greatest chance of being caught as the soldiers should all know each other and the peasant population so well that a stranger, even in disguise, should stand out plenty.
I think the best opportunity for an infil would be to attack in a region with huge populations, and lots of troops including troops from various realms. With so many people it is already hard to spot the single disguised infil. With so many troops in the region who are unfamiliar to each other and the local guard force, things become even more challenging when trying to catch an infil.
Of course, this is assuming that my understanding of infiltrators is correct. I believe that the noble openly waltzes into a region and can be seen by all. The noble has probably provided an excuse fr his presence and has some official work to do. When that noble performs an infil action he disguises himself, sneaks out so no one knows he is not where he is supposed to be, does something shady, then returns back to where he is supposed to be and pretends he has been there all along.
This is also only addressing the odds of the infil being caught as he is traveling to the job and back and has nothing to do with the chances of the PC nobles present pinning the deed on him or not...
Quote from: Chénier on July 21, 2014, 01:39:35 PM
My biggest issue with this argument is that the higher the "plausible deniability", the higher the risks, because these extra nobles usually have troops that will interfere with your activities.
How is this not true? I have heard many say that it is best to wait and perform infil action only when there are enough nobles present to make singling you out for the PC nobles difficult. When you do this however, you seem to increase the chance of NPC troops or patrols capturing you as more soldiers are in the region. It seems a bit like a lose-lose situation to me. Of course, I have never played an infiltrator and am betting that I am missing something here!
Quote from: Scarborn on July 22, 2014, 09:01:12 AM
I can not say I agree with this argument. It has always been popularly held that it is far easier to lose one's self in a crowd. I think he most dangerous situation for an infil would be to attack in a low population region with only the knights/lord of that region present and all performing police work. This, I think would give the greatest chance of being caught as the soldiers should all know each other and the peasant population so well that a stranger, even in disguise, should stand out plenty.
I think the best opportunity for an infil would be to attack in a region with huge populations, and lots of troops including troops from various realms. With so many people it is already hard to spot the single disguised infil. With so many troops in the region who are unfamiliar to each other and the local guard force, things become even more challenging when trying to catch an infil.
Of course, this is assuming that my understanding of infiltrators is correct. I believe that the noble openly waltzes into a region and can be seen by all. The noble has probably provided an excuse fr his presence and has some official work to do. When that noble performs an infil action he disguises himself, sneaks out so no one knows he is not where he is supposed to be, does something shady, then returns back to where he is supposed to be and pretends he has been there all along.
This is also only addressing the odds of the infil being caught as he is traveling to the job and back and has nothing to do with the chances of the PC nobles present pinning the deed on him or not...
Yes, but game mechanics wise people want ways to mitigate the risk of infils. From a game mechanic standpoint one obvious way to do that is to allow increase CS to have an increased chance to capture them. Otherwise the best time to strike the enemy general is not when he is all alone in his estate, but when he is in the middle of the military camp marching.
You have to be careful with these things, it is easy to over simply the situation. Different infil actions would have different targets, different levels of risk etc. Burning down a warehouse for example, you could argue would be easy in big cities since there are more people around, blah blah. Conversely people would come back and say that since food is so important to cities, obviously their characters would make sure they are well guarded relative to other things in the city. In real life some military camps are relatively easy to infiltrate and lose yourself in the crowd, others have excellent security and procedures.
The game has to have a system that is relatively predictable, so the endless variables and considerations of real life need to be cut down in to a few easy to understand rules. In this case more CS = more risk. More CS performing police work = even bigger risk.
Quote from: Indirik on July 21, 2014, 06:28:12 PM
Are you sure?
That and the fact that you could sit around scouting, and no one knew you were there. Except the enemy infiltrators.
Infiltrators who hope to do cause real change, and affect the political status of the game world, will not hit enemies. What purpose does hitting your enemies serve? They're already your enemies. The way to cause real problems is to nail someone you wouldn't be expected to hit, and pin it on someone else. You can't do that if you're invisible.
I agree that the infil game needs some changes. Anaris has already outlined that this is on the long-term plan. But simply adding back invisibility is not the panacea that will suddenly make infils relevant.
So what about scouting? Even better! At least, when the enemy knew what you were doing, you could suspect "damn, they've got infils planted in position" instead of automatically going hyper-paranoid "WHO IS LEAKING OUR ORDERS!?!" Gave plausible deniability to your realm-mates, if you will. Indeed, scouting was a form of low-risk infil activity that allowed infils to make themselves useful after having spent months training infiltration, but before taking more months to train swordfighting.
The uses of striking enemies are numerous and need not be listed. They may not be the same as the ones you describe, but the game doesn't actually favor that. If hitting friends and allies was intended, then why does it not yield any training? Risks are higher and rewards are lower. It also doesn't go much in the teamwork spirit to go around stabbing one's peers. I do not believe that this was ever the intent behind the creation of infiltrators, even if that may be how to achieve the most impact.
Invisibility is indeed not the panacea, as you put it, but there is, in my mind, no denying that its removal hurt infiltrators and the game overall.
Quote from: Scarborn on July 22, 2014, 08:51:55 AM
... add a new infil action: "Perform Risk Assessment..." that causes the infiltrator character to try and outline, in detail, what he thinks the odds of success for various actions. The accuracy of this report might even be influenced by his infiltration skill...
Oooh! In order for the infiltrator perform a Risk Assessment, they have to first complete a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and a Hazard Harm Matrix (HMM). The output of those processes is used to create the overall Risk Management Matrix (RMM). If any risks are higher than the acceptable risk level, the infiltrator could assemble a cross-functional team and perform risk mitigation. If the mitigation succeeds then it results in the lowering of all risks to an acceptable level, significantly increasing the chance of success, and decreasing the possibility of serving any prison time should something go wrong.
The chance of success should probably be linked to his bureaucracy skill.
Crap. Maybe I've been at work too long... :(
Should this infiltrator topic be split from the Unique Items add/subtract skills thread?
One thing that chafes me about infiltrators is no matter how good you are you never just get to stab someone who is completely defenseless, they always manage to grab a dagger last second, making it damn hard to stab accomplished swordsmen. If you are the top infil around and your skill is maxed or damn near it, you should once in a while catch someone completely off guard and stab the living daylights out of them. Frankly infils are shockingly incompetent. Not one has ever killed a noble, and not one has ever completely surprised a noble, due to mechanics.
It's possible to completely surprise someone, the code allows it.
Quote from: Tom on July 26, 2014, 02:51:51 PM
It's possible to completely surprise someone, the code allows it.
As much as this doesn't really need confirming that is in the code since Tom has said it, I have managed to completely surprise people as an infil with between 40-60% infiltration.
I know what's being said, and I'll clarify my point:
Even when you completely surprise someone, they still get to fight back, albeit with an apparent penalty to sword fighting (as they only grab a dagger). My point is you should be able to catch someone completely unaware and the first thing they notice is your sword in their chest. I've never seen this.
Quote from: Stabbity on July 27, 2014, 01:19:06 PM
I know what's being said, and I'll clarify my point:
Even when you completely surprise someone, they still get to fight back, albeit with an apparent penalty to sword fighting (as they only grab a dagger). My point is you should be able to catch someone completely unaware and the first thing they notice is your sword in their chest. I've never seen this.
Isn't there that one message that says something about sneaking into a room and putting so-and-so down permanently? No fight ensues, but it's also not really "permanent". I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure I saw this at least once.
Quote from: Eirikr on July 28, 2014, 05:07:53 AM
Isn't there that one message that says something about sneaking into a room and putting so-and-so down permanently? No fight ensues, but it's also not really "permanent". I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure I saw this at least once.
The permanently refers to the severity of the wound. Stability is right I think, I know of two outcomes if you manage to reach your target,
"Silently, you sneak up on your target, and surprise [Name]. He awakes at the last second, drawing a dagger, but is barely able to slow your attack."
and
"Your target is quick and attentive, and spots you in time. You have no choice but to fight [name] one on one."