Why so few Infiltrators?

[Valast]

Noticed fewer and fewer Infiltrators around the islands lately.

It is my thinking that this is a result of no real good way to train in infiltration without basically becoming ostracized, disowned, and eventually left with no where to go but a new island....and training still remaining low.

Anyone else agree or have a different opinion? 

[Anaris]

This....is just one of the various issues that the dev team recognizes, and hopes to change, but since there's basically just me working on code right now, I'm afraid it's going to have to wait.

If you've got suggestions for how to rework the way infiltrator training works (and at this point, feel free to consider absolutely anything, including massive changes to the way the class functions, as long as they preserve game balance—bearing in mind that the balance may currently be slanted slightly against infiltrators...), I welcome more ideas.

[Sacha]

Probably flogging a dead horse here, but... give them their invisibility back? Or at least, for highly skilled infils?

[Anaris]

Probably flogging a dead horse here, but... give them their invisibility back? Or at least, for highly skilled infils?

At this point, I would say that that's unlikely, at least as a lone change.

I don't think it's something that's especially likely to bring back even as part of a more comprehensive package, though I won't rule it out entirely.

Part of the problem with invisibility has always been technical, not conceptual: catching every single place in the code where it is possible to determine the presence and name of a character in the region is not at all easy, and not being able to assume that every noble in the region can be seen by everyone else in the region causes more problems in adding new code than you might think.

[Sarwell]

Because, as I can tell you from somewhat limited experience, being an infiltrator is a very situational class. There are a few cases where it's incredibly useful, and the rest of the time it's either useless or downright detrimental.

And even when there is a situation where an infiltrator can make his mark, it requires a load of training - which I only found out about after Rosnan (the infiltrator among my characters)... well, epically failed at an attempt at stabbing someone.

He got slapped with a fine from the judge of his realm (I probably should have checked diplomacy settings before trying to kill foreign government members) which he had no hope of repaying. 200 gold doesn't sound like a lot, but this was post-blight Beluaterra, where land productivity was so dismally low that a region lord in, say, Enweil could optimistically hope for maybe fifty gold on tax day. The target was chosen solely because he had the highest bounty on his head of anyone remotely nearby. It was a monetary issue.

In fact, that's the only reason I made him an infiltrator - because as I found out one good raid on a foreign tax office could bring in more cash than a whole week of waiting on the estate. I later realized how reckless this was, but it's still incredibly safe compared with assassination attempts. I think that's part of it - infiltrators take huge amounts of training to hurt people, but almost none to steal money, which makes them more of glorified thieves unless you grind 'em at the academy sixteen hours a day with the expert tutor. Which, again, costs more money than Rosnan ever had. Vicious cycle.

So, to wrap up my obnoxious narrative attempting to justify playing my first character like a jerk, this is all a roundabout way of saying infilitrator training is a pain in the neck. I think that's one reason they're unpopular. They're just hard to play, and require a lot of dedication for comparatively little payoff. The only place where there's anything to gain other than money or a stay in the dungeon is when you're going "in the service of the realm", and in that case it's safer to just get a big unit and go to battle anyway. And the fact that most realms RP being above that, regardless of its efficacy, which can't be controlled.

I guess one thing is that if anything the infiltrator deserves to be sorta kinda very slightly just a tiny bit overpowered in terms of mechanics to make up for the fact that in most places they're completely anathema in RP situations and realm laws.

[Anaris]

Yeah; one of the things I'm thinking of doing is changing the risk levels of infiltrator actions somewhat (and possibly adding some more low-risk actions) so that there are some actions that are much lower risk than others, but with a much lower skill cap, as well—so, for instance, if you wanted to simply count the gold in the tax office, and you had a skill of about 35%, you would be pretty much guaranteed to get away clean (unless you got very unlucky), but the ability to steal gold might not even be available to you until 30% or so.

Or something along those lines.

[Sarwell]

Yeah; one of the things I'm thinking of doing is changing the risk levels of infiltrator actions somewhat (and possibly adding some more low-risk actions) so that there are some actions that are much lower risk than others, but with a much lower skill cap, as well—so, for instance, if you wanted to simply count the gold in the tax office, and you had a skill of about 35%, you would be pretty much guaranteed to get away clean (unless you got very unlucky), but the ability to steal gold might not even be available to you until 30% or so.

Or something along those lines.

I don't see how that would help. It's hard enough to get enough skill to do anything well as an infiltrator as is - there's the academy, which is a crapshoot (for all skills) to the point where it'd be easier to get more skill if you actually played craps for it, and there's actually going out and doing stuff, which is incredibly dangerous - and removing the ability to do certain actions at lower levels would only make it harder to do by this method.

Basically, another big problem with infiltrators is that it's a high-risk game even to get to the skill levels to actually play the intentional high-risk infiltrator game. It takes a long time to get up to respectable skill levels, but for that time it's dangerous and hard to do so to the extent where you might not survive to get to those levels.

[Anaris]

Basically, another big problem with infiltrators is that it's a high-risk game even to get to the skill levels to actually play the intentional high-risk infiltrator game.

That's precisely the problem the above is intended to solve: give low-skill infiltrators something worthwhile to do besides sit and train at the Academy, without a near-certainty of getting caught and banned.

Perhaps I didn't state it clearly enough, but I do think that it might be worthwhile adding some other infiltrator actions that don't (individually) do a whole lot, but do give you experience, and have very little risk of getting caught.

Not sure what yet, though.

[Gustav Kuriga]

That's precisely the problem the above is intended to solve: give low-skill infiltrators something worthwhile to do besides sit and train at the Academy, without a near-certainty of getting caught and banned.

Perhaps I didn't state it clearly enough, but I do think that it might be worthwhile adding some other infiltrator actions that don't (individually) do a whole lot, but do give you experience, and have very little risk of getting caught.

Not sure what yet, though.

Search for secret societies?

[Anaris]

Search for secret societies?

Now there's a neat idea

[Sacha]

Infiltrate temples/guildhouses to count their treasuries.
Destroy shrines.
Kill troops (basically the same as killing militia but you target nobles' units instead).

Just some ideas.

[Dante Silverfire]

Raid Guildhouses/Temples
(What this means: Literally attack the guildhouse/temple treasury. Chance of success is inversely proportional to the number of guards hired to defend the temple. If there are no guards, or if you successfully kill all of the guards, then you get to steal all of the gold.)

[Lorgan]

Three bans before you can be executed or deported.

Allow infils to be useful in a war without having to constantly migrate back in or chicken out after one ban (which is very easy to come by as has been established).

[Anaris]

Raid Guildhouses/Temples
(What this means: Literally attack the guildhouse/temple treasury. Chance of success is inversely proportional to the number of guards hired to defend the temple. If there are no guards, or if you successfully kill all of the guards, then you get to steal all of the gold.)

Well, you'd never get to just steal all of the gold (unless there was very little). Even if there aren't guards specifically for the guildhouse, there are plenty of others there who could catch you at it and fetch the authorities.

At a temple, you'd even be likely to find some who were unarmed, but willing to die for their faith just to delay you long enough to get caught

[Anaris]

Three bans before you can be executed or deported.

Allow infils to be useful in a war without having to constantly migrate back in or chicken out after one ban (which is very easy to come by as has been established).

This, I think is not likely. This is a balance issue.

However, it might (might) be possible to introduce different levels of maximum sentence based on the crime you were caught for. If you were only caught stealing chickens the first time, execution is a bit extreme.