High Skill Characters and Loot

[Stranger]

A thought to ponder. This is a subjective thought so maybe some of you feel different, so please take it with a grain of salt.

If a combat oriented character wanted to earn money, they would go kill things for it, right? But if that character is max skill then they get little to no reward for killing low skill enemies. This sounds fine in principle but in practice this is far from balanced. Please allow me to explain.

New characters:
My, no skill, new character (with some decent starter gear) goes to the infested area to kill easy enemies, these enemies drop very roughly 20 to 60 riln per. It takes under 5 minutes per enemy to kill, not including the time to return to town for healing or supplies. I take pretty low damage from these newbie mobs and can hunt for a good amount of time earning some good profit and skill ups. Looking good so far.

Old high skill characters:
If this character goes to the lowbie area, the drops will be almost nothing. So, I go to the highest infested area to try for an even challenge. But, it turns out I am too high skill for even them, so I am still penalized and in so doing I also risk certain doom from the high damage, powerful enemy abilities and multiple death squads roaming the area. If I manage to kill one, I will often sustain major injuries, it often takes longer AND for my trouble I get very little riln because I am still considered more powerful. ....ouch Even if I was the same skill bracket they often only offer a slightly better loot table compared to the newbie enemies.

I assume the idea behind this is to encourage high skill players to move on to stronger areas but when my lowbie character is making better riln than my high one, something feels off. If my goal was to make money from looting, then I would avoid raising my skill as that would net a MUCH better return for far less risk. It feels very meta but sadly this is currently how the system is designed. It should be that the higher the risk, the greater reward. I should get a ton more riln for risking life and limb to kill a super death mob but in truth, it does not work out that way.

Suggestions:
- Change the 'challenging enemy' range to be much more forgiving, so that a character with 2500 skill can earn a decent reward from an enemy with above 1000 skill or so. (At those high ranges, it matters less anyways)
- Penalize fighting super low newbies enemies but not ones that are above 1000 or so skill. These are still tough, even for max characters and tend to pose a more significant risk.
- Create new areas with enemies to hunt that have high skill, but wimpy attacks. They would offer low loot rewards but allow better training and less risk looting.

Right now the best way for me to earn cash is to avoid combat all together and hunt, skin, metalwork or just anything else.

Ideas, thoughts, criticisms, jokes?

[Dorn]

I've only the experience from the top end of the equation currently (can't bring myself to roll a new character), but unless the target I'm going after offers something I can skin then it doesn't matter what I hunt. I simply won't break even. Even with some mobs that I can skin, due to their difficulty it can feel like a losing battle.

I would argue it is something that Clok has always struggled to make it feel satisfying/rewarding however, and that is the high-level play. At a certain point, the lethality of mobs overtakes the "enjoyment" of dealing with them. I tend to agree with the train of thought that things should get harder as you progress, but I feel hitting that point of fun while difficult often feels just a touch out of reach with the systems/mechanics in place even in this revamp.

Though, how we bridge that gap is another thing. Some actual loot for the danger would be a step though!

[Gorth]

Ideas, thoughts, criticisms, jokes?

A Stranger request I have never heard.

[Rias]

This bears further thought, and more discussion with suggestions/ideas is always helpful if anyone has any. I at least wanted to post and acknowledge this issue though, particularly after tweaking some mob AIs yesterday and making some of them tougher. I think lot of higher skill mobs are currently still tuned for the COGG era when there were generally more rerolls floating around and partial rerolls hadn't really become adopted yet, and also there was the expectation that not everyone would even be able to skill up high enough to reasonably face those areas, so they were more or less set up (both skill/reroll-wise and gear/maneuvers/spells-wise) to challenge the most optimized fighter type characters. That left us with mobs in the higher skill ranges that have a tendency to all be particularly nasty. While I like having some mobs out there that are just overall tougher and harder to fight, I do think it would be nice to somehow improve their rewards, while also considering some alternatives that aren't as tough but provide lesser rewards. It's a difficult thing to try and balance, though.

Tanglewood as an example: The knoll yeti should have their rerolls and be tough and utilize powerful attacks, being particularly dangerous baddies to take on - they're big scary creatures, they're supposed to be extra difficult to deal with, and hopefully facing them inspires a certain amount of extra wariness or dread. The mobs in the other Tanglewood areas probably shouldn't have all the inherent rerolls and the particularly effective gear/abilities that they currently do, as they're essentially meant to be grind fodder. Beyond just toning down the rerolls/gear/abilities of the other mobs in areas, something I'm considering in this case is to make the knoll yeti a rare spawn for its area so it keeps that "oooo, watch out for the big extra-scary monster" factor and flavor, but also have common spawns in the same area that aren't on the extra-dangerous level and serve as grind fodder. Knowing a yeti might spawn at some point still keeps people on their toes while in that area, but it's not all yeti all the time. That same kind of philosophy can be applied to other areas as needed, though that's not to say there might not still be some areas that are "Oops - all extra-powerful mobs!" because some areas might just be intended to be that way.

Because the fact of the matter is that I like extra-scary, extra-dangerous mobs. I loved the concept in the MUD I played before making CLOK. In that game, some areas had a chance of spawning an extra dangerous/powerful creature, and you'd have to decide whether to just avoid it, risk trying to take it down yourself, or call for backup. It was a really cool dynamic and I loved those moments where someone would call out for help on that game's version of ESP and people would go assist to take out the big baddie, leaving that area relatively "safe" for a while before another extra-tough mob could spawn. It's also just fun to design a creature that's not meant to be a mere punching bag for players. Big scary extra-powerful mobs with special abilities are just cool, and it's nice to put PCs on their guard every now and then so they don't get *too* smug and overconfident about their place in the world. But on the other hand: Yes, I can see how it can be frustrating when you just want to grind some skill or loot but the only options are all extra-powerful mobs that make it difficult to feel like you're even managing to break even with your time and effort.

[Kiyaani]

I think bringing back kill/cull tasks will help with this somewhat, especially if the payouts are adjusted based on mob skill level. If it's going to take a while for this to go in for individual guilds, maybe the towns can offer generalized ones in the meantime to keep the area safe.

For mobs that don't carry loot (like the wide variety of animals out there) maybe there could be a random loot chest kind of mechanic where after you kill a certain number (also randomized), something draws your eye towards a newly spawned cache in the room - gems, metals, random junk that's worth a lot at the university because of historical value, lore items, riln piles etc. These could be considered items lost by previous travelers and buried over time. Alternatively it could be something like crow's nests with all the shiny things they've collected. Then people in these areas who don't necessarily have skinning could still earn back their repair/food/healing costs.

[artus]

On the most primitive level of spawning, perhaps you could go for the same system as mob despawn after hunting or whatever so those mobs despawn on their own after a certain amount of time instead of sticking there waiting for the next unfortunate soul to get crushed unprepared, with significantly longer time between despawning vs player leaving the area, of course. Just an idea, though. The idea of unearthed loot is interesting too.

[Rias]

Then people in these areas who don't necessarily have skinning could still earn back their repair/food/healing costs.

I started on an idea to try and address that with "trophy skinnables" that creatures produce with very low challenge ratings across the board, so even people with no skinning skill can get them. Things like horns, claws, volmonk paws, stuff like that that have no mechanical use but exist just to be sellable for some money. I need to add them to more creatures.

[Vazbol]

Then people in these areas who don't necessarily have skinning could still earn back their repair/food/healing costs.

I started on an idea to try and address that with "trophy skinnables" that creatures produce with very low challenge ratings across the board, so even people with no skinning skill can get them. Things like horns, claws, volmonk paws, stuff like that that have no mechanical use but exist just to be sellable for some money. I need to add them to more creatures.

On the humanoid mobile side of things; maybe an approach that was done to some bristbane mobiles. A small chance for those mobs to just drop sellable valuables from the middle end of lockbox drops, like the sapphires from prospectors. It wouldn't be remotely common, but a bonus to your lockbox and riln scavenge from defeated mobiles that'd push things up more in the really hard areas.

[Rias]

On the humanoid mobile side of things; maybe an approach that was done to some bristbane mobiles. A small chance for those mobs to just drop sellable valuables

Hah, I actually forgot that was a thing! That's another good option.

[Lun]

I was saying this in chat, but adding tasks that help emulate daily living would be good. The cooking tasks in cogg were an example of simulated life tasks that I adored. I would probably recommend adding an energy cost to dissuade endless botting.

Example tasks:
(item) delivery, bring me x of items i don't care how you got them. Pay out average value of items plus like 100.
Fight this high value target (with skill scaled reward) and drive them away/kill them

You mentioned trophy skins and looted gems just now so I got not much else. I think there's a lot you can do directly with looting!

[Southpaw]

I enjoy a lot of these ideas I think they would be great. In particular the ones where a more difficult boss of sorts appears in an area. Heck that is something that I would love to see in the majority of the areas even if they would require multiple people to take them down. Not sure how the scaling would work but the idea is super fun.
Getting back to the point though I have noticed that with my high skilled duelist, it has become rather difficult to find places to train reliably. I usually have to rest twice before I can take down a defender in Tanglewood if I'm lucky and don't get broken bones multiple times before that. Either that or I run around Emlith getting shot full of crossbow bolts hoping to kill one or two before I have to go back to stop the bleeding. I have a guardian as well I can only train in the northern part of Valeria because if the only place that drops enough money for him to be able to keep his armor repaired. I think what we seem to be lacking are dangerous bad guys that don't also have a bunch of abilities. I think there would be a way to find a balance and put a bunch of bad guys that roll 3000, give decent loot, but don't come loaded with abilities that make it dangerous to fight them one on one. It would be awesome to go into a high skill area, fight a handful of tough but comparatively unskilled bad guys, then have a boss of some sort of spawn with a whole bunch of abilities at hand.
Tweaking the loot tables so anything over 2000 or 2500 still drops the same amount a loot would certainly go a long way as well.

[Ninetales16]

I struggle to maintain any kind of riln deposit with my character because I have limited myself intentionally, but combat is one area which I would love to see more improvements to in regards to looting. withount going off topic too much from the idea of high level characters and combat specifically, some menial tasks, like delivery would be great, as well! and area speciffic thougher enemies with abilities and offering a larger riln drop or loot drop when they fall would be absolutely amazing!

[Rias]

Something that would be useful would be for people to point out which specific areas seem particularly over-tough, and why they feel that way (mobs too individually dangerous, swarming, too much damage padding, too-powerful weapons/attacks, too many disruptive spells/abilities, etc). I've picked up on a few more specific opinions here and there, but having some more specific information to go on would be great rather than resorting to just looking over literally everything. I'd love some ideas of where to start to do the most good the fastest, based on the opinions and feedback of people who have been going through the experiences.

(I'm also poking at the loot reduction functions and calculations.)

[Southpaw]

One for me are the Defenders in Tanglewood. Unless I just ambush over and over, which is still usually met with 0 damage rolls, they're not at all worth fighting for loot or training. This is on a Duelist with max melee and near max dodge. Even mounted they ended up breaking my warhorses leg before I had them badly wounded.
I rarely hit them and usually when I do it's deflected or does no damage. They can be fun, just not grind worthy.

[artus]

I'm not sure which mobs are meant for grinding, but I'm going to second tanglewood anyway for the same reason Southpaw said. At 2k archery, 2k marksmanship, about 1700 dodge and stealth and 1500 something perception, even the hatchetmen pose problems. They're sneaky which is good. But then they hurt like hell with no access to healing area nearby or healing supplies anywhere.

[jerc]

It's not necessarily a high-skill-specific issue, but I've always felt that mobs with combat analysis punch well above their skill level since they pretty quickly ramp up to +4 rerolls on both offense and defense.

Someone was discussing where to grind on Discord today, and one of the responses was "lol, not the ebon pass bandits with combat analysis." The lower-level redleaf mobs (squires?) also come to mind as something that I tried once, and immediately went looking elsewhere for more appropriate fodder. The uncinipedes in bristbane, while now around half my skill levels, are analytical enough to be way more annoying to fight than the other mobs in the area. And then there are the wyrms that I've still yet to kill despite having had significantly less trouble with shardlings, which are quite a bit above them skill-wise.

[Rias]

Per the changelog: The mobs occupying the various areas in Tanglewood have been updated. Some have been made into rare spawns with increased loot, while the remaining common spawns have been adjusted to be less dangerous or difficult to deal with (but not less skilled).

For anyone interested in the details (may be considered mildly spoilery for those who prefer to go have a look themselves or just haven't been to Tanglewood yet - skip the rest of this post if so desired):
* Trail
* [x] infested loggers: now just basic weapon attackers, no abilities or whatnot
* [x] infested hatchetman: now a rare spawn with increased riln and lockbox chance
* Grove
* [x] infested ankrites: toned down bite and claw damage
* [x] infested rangers: removed rerolls, increased riln drop and lockbox chance somewhat
* Camp
* [x] infested defender: reflavored to infested guard captain, now a rare spawn with higher loot
* [x] infested bowman: removed rerolls, removed innate damage padding, increased riln slightly
* Retreat
* [x] infested knoll yeti: made a rare spawn, increased offense reroll, increased riln drop and lockbox chance
* [x] infested woodsman: added as common spawns for this area

[Adresin]

Would love to see redleaf reworked to make more of a feasible grinding area. I made a separate post on this but basically, bumping it up to 1000 to 1200 ish range, I'm told it used to be like that, would be great. If not changing the skill range, maybe back off the armor a bit? at the range it's at now, they're too tough to be worth it especially with the abilities they have.

[Rias]

"lol, not the ebon pass bandits with combat analysis." The lower-level redleaf mobs (squires?) also come to mind as something that I tried once, and immediately went looking elsewhere for more appropriate fodder. The uncinipedes in bristbane, while now around half my skill levels, are analytical enough to be way more annoying to fight than the other mobs in the area. And then there are the wyrms that I've still yet to kill despite having had significantly less trouble with shardlings, which are quite a bit above them skill-wise.

Yeah, analysis bonus really needs to be toned town significantly (sorry Duelists (and to a lesser extent Guardians)) but besides that, I think I got a little carried away with how many common mobs we have with tactics active. I'm definitely keeping tactics and fancy moves for the rares I intend to leave in a lot of these areas, but I can understand the pain with dealing with them constantly on common spawns. I don't want to have so many of them essentially going to waste by being generally considered not worth spending time on by players.

[Rias]

Would love to see redleaf reworked to make more of a feasible grinding area. I made a separate post on this but basically, bumping it up to 1000 to 1200 ish range, I'm told it used to be like that, would be great.

I'm poking at this area now. It looks like yeah, it used to have a higher skill range (and different mobs). I'll touch it up both skillwise and gear/ability-wise. Also it's interesting that there are two separate areas (on the west and east sides of the Wartorn Meadow) with different mobs, but both are simply called "Redleaf Hills." Weird! I'll fix that so each has a unique name to avoid confusion.

I'm also going over the overall spawn combat skill list and will probably be smoothing out some areas that have odd skill levels, like ... 37? Why not just 40? 345? Why not just be 350? 2985? Why not just 3000? (And I'm talking about skill levels here, not resulting combat numbers which won't be as even.)

And then there are a ton of mobs with uh ... "wobbly" combat skills. Like this one has 1350 brawl, 1300 dodge, 1450 hurled, 1000 melee. Another one I saw has 1200 brawl, 900 melee. I'm guessing this kind of thing might have been done for flavor/thematic reasons on the part of the GM (very likely myself for at least some of these), and that could be fine for named NPCs and rares and whatnot, but for the common "grindable" spawns I think it'd be a lot better to just have them be consistent with all their combat skills matching up perfectly. Makes it less of a pain trying to figure out what to practice on. Like a rare mob with a really high offense but really low defense, or vice-versa, can be interesting, but when it comes to common things to train against that kind of thing is just making it more difficult to find something to skill up on.

Anyway. Rambling at this point, but also serves to warn everyone that there will probably be a lot of mobs whose combat numbers will be getting tweaked to smooth their skills out and also to try and fit a better kind of standardized game-wide scale and close up the current gaps. Alas, poor mob with 1968 Melee skill, you are losing some of your unique identity.

But! I'll try to focus on higher-skill areas first, as that was the original subject of this thread.

[Ninetales16]

I am very, very excited! will my character's perpetual state of suffering and near constant empty pockets jingle will riln once again? this response seems to say a very loud yes!

[Dorn]

Men-at-arms, Footmen, and Dreadnoughts were the old collection. I want to say 400, 700, and 1400 skill range for Redleaf.

[Gorth]

... but for the common "grindable" spawns I think it'd be a lot better to just have them be consistent with all their combat skills matching up perfectly. Makes it less of a pain trying to figure out what to practice on. Like a rare mob with a really high offense but really low defense, or vice-versa, can be interesting, but when it comes to common things to train against that kind of thing is just making it more difficult to find something to skill up on.
...

I will say that the occasional mob with lower dodge than parry is fun. It really made me feel like I was adapting, when I switched up how I was fighting a specific mob when I learned they didn't have super high dodge, which thematically made sense.

[Dorn]

... but for the common "grindable" spawns I think it'd be a lot better to just have them be consistent with all their combat skills matching up perfectly. Makes it less of a pain trying to figure out what to practice on. Like a rare mob with a really high offense but really low defense, or vice-versa, can be interesting, but when it comes to common things to train against that kind of thing is just making it more difficult to find something to skill up on.
...

I will say that the occasional mob with lower dodge than parry is fun. It really made me feel like I was adapting, when I switched up how I was fighting a specific mob when I learned they didn't have super high dodge, which thematically made sense.

I would totally say this, but as a whole Clok isn't a game that encourages actually beating your opponent so I also agree with what Rias said. In terms of grinding, having rolls at a base level just makes it easier for people. Guess you could save it for event mobs/special stuff (Drakolin) where people actually *do* want to kill the mobs and having ways to take advantage of their weakness feels impactful/useful.

[Southpaw]

I wanted to drop back in here and say that the updates in Tanglewood have made a huge difference. I've felt more progress in the last couple days here than the month before. Wanted to say thank you GM's!
I've been thinking about other high skill areas and so far the only other one that comes to my mind is Emlith. The bowmen there are very very similar to the ones at the Tanglewood Camp. they could use a bit of similar love and maybe even a melee mob or two. A Other than Salt Golems and the other mobs beyond them I'm not sure of any other high skill areas that could use a look.