Militia uptune

[suron]

As solar wrote:

Some 30k worth of 'training money' per real life week is good enough pay for the most lowest of ranks... in a world where a piece of bread costs nearly three hundred... and doesn't even fill you up.

(Anyone with eyes can see that he said real life week not boot.)

I said 50k/boot when player was active. And yes, if this kind of tune would actually make someone reinc into a militia then be my guest, mission accomplished. Would any of you actually reading this post consider reincing into a militiaman if you could get some amount of money free training per day/week? (I wouldn't, not even if the amounts were fairly high and I consider 50k a low salary.)

...no...No matter how I try to think it over, If you implement this into the game and don't give reasonably high (for newbies) sum of salary. This tune is as meaningless as the salary itself, it doesn't bring anything of value into the game (I never thought I would say these words...) as the prices and economy is almost 6-zeros-based-system (items/things cost millions)

And even though it seems that poor Artic cannot make millions of silvers in a boot by doing money runs, I'm fairly sure that you can Felgand and It wouldn't even take a long time. 50k...ok I kill that mob once more and i have 50k+exp...

Money is just so easy to gather in this game, it's so easy even that I don't bother to do it. There isn't anything in the game that I would wish to buy anymore...well ok few private channels maybe.

This is just my opinion on the matter, everyone is entitled to his/her opinion and even voice it outloud to the world (Atleast in western countries...) And I'm the first to admit that I might be a bit out of touch concerning the current state of the game, but I don't think that it could have changed harder during these years, only easier.

[artic]

(Artic, Just because you can't make money isn't a good enough reason to deny others that chance. And why would you even care how the things are in Vaerlon? Aren't you a shadowdancer and have possibly no idea how boring a guild militia can be. They are _the_ suckiest. If it's so much of an insult, reinc and be a militia then, enjoy the benefits of army setting you up for life And about that reincing into the guild part... you don't get rank for "idling". So if you intend to idle, don't expect to cash in a fat paycheck, Also reputation already affects training costs and moneymaking rate in general, so no need to make the paycheck depend on the number of reputation monsters slayed.)
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In the original idea by Sunor there was no mention that you wouldnt get payed if you idle, neither was there any mention, if maybe a footman would get 50K per boot or a general (or what ever other rank soldier). It seemed to me that i could just reinc to that guild, sit around (play WoW) and collect the 2.4 Million i need for my shadowdancer dagger upgrade or the ~300K/1% of shadowstrike.
I have been a militia. personally, i only have good memories of militia- might have something to do with the two guys i partied a lot with- but i am not argueing that milita can become a bit boring over long beriod of time. In another post i also suggested some ideas for militia tune, to make it more interesting. But i dont think giving them money for nothing is a good idea.

P.S - Milita get free food. You dont need to buy those very expensive breads, that dont fill you up.

Also see belannaer post in this thread:

http://www.icesus.org/Forums/viewtopic. ... ht=militia

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And im not trieing to insult someone or take away someones chance to make money. It is just my oppinion, that if you get money, it should be for something that you _DO_. If you lead attacks against the enemies of vaerlon, you get payed- OK. Getting money so you would not say your guild sucks - not ok.
Giving militia more things to do, make it more interesting - OK.
Giving all who are in a guild they find boring more money- not ok.

[solar]

Ahem, don't get confused... I said training money, not money. And by training money I meant that 'this training money would be available for just training' - no pots of gold for you to 'really' spend... just 'cheaper training costs' with that (limited) training money benefits. So reinc into the army... but don't expect to get your 2.4m and be able to spend it somewhere else than training skills.

If you want to buy/upgrade eq you'd have to pay for them with your _own_ money, the army would only help you cope with the money cost for training _skills_.

Also, you mentioned that this money should be _earned_ by actually _doing_ something... Let me be a schoolyard kid for a moment and play a trump card: For the sake of roleplaying (gasp, no one does that, right?), we can safely assume that your character isn't some lazy fatass who happens to sleep all the time you are not playing him/her, right?

And my idea that the 'training money' would be tied to rank actually had this safety mechanism suggested along with it: if one idles (a verb, not a person), then rank won't go up. This means that his/her 'training money' grants won't get up either. Sure, that one person can idle and get those training grants... but it won't be as effective as when he/she parties and gets a rank increase. THIS IDEA WOULD BE ONE ASPECT OF THE ARMY ITSELF, LIKE RANGERS GET OWFIGHTING BONUSES, TEMPLARS GET SPELLS, SHADOWDANCERS MIGHT GET THE BEST POISONS, -> MILITIAS WOULD GET A REGULAR WAGE, BECAUSE THE ARMY TAKES CARE OF THEIR OWN. AND BECAUSE OF THIS, THE ARMY WOULD BE EVEN MORE ATTRACTIVE CHOICE FOR NEWBIES, WHO (IMHO) WOULD BE BETTER OFF AS RANGERS OR TEMPLARS ON THEIR FIRST LEVELS - BECAUSE OF THE CURRENT STATE OF THINGS.
(and no, this is not shouting, just don't skip this, this is important for the idea)

True, there are people in real life that just 'idle' and cash in their paychecks with little work whatsoever. We can't assume that our MUD would be a better place :>

edited: fixed one typo and changed 'guild' to 'army', because the army is not a 'guild', but an 'army' that can be joined by players :>

[felgand]

Taking your argument into context, Suron, it seems like you're trying to argue to put more money into an economy you recognize as excessively inflated...which would have the effect of making it worse. A change like this really should be supplimental income, not something that's able to pay for all of a milita's needs for a lifetime, that's just absurd...and open to very bad abuse. I think that 50k silver per week is a good maximum to strive for and would be in balance with the bonuses present in other guilds.

[aktaz]

Well the situation is different for a newbie, so since I am hopelessly one let me give you my point of view :

-Money is not totally worthless for newbies, it is actually very useful since you have to buy all your eq as you start. Getting money from guild would be useful, or maybe militia could reward with money you for killing some mobs that are considered ennemies of the city (these should be low mobs of course, not 40k thingies...). This would be much better than constantly looting. Of course, 50k per week really isnt much even for a newbie.


-Guild choices are much more limited (no sorceror, no psi...), so militia is much more of an option for newbies. However it is quite useless even at a low level, why would one choose militia over something like templar ?
I think it should be made more newbie-friendly, with for examples skills that are much cheaper to train. For expample instead of swords/hammers... they could get a skill like "weapons" which is somewhat less effective but is cheaper. This would benefit newbies, since they can get better for cheaper, but on the long-term would be a disadvantage since eventually it would be less good than having trained swords/whatever... (although they could get these skills in weapon masters/elite infantry if that's what they're called). [this would be nice along with the fast rising masteries]. Also, they could get 1%melee (or another skill) as part of the bonuses while levelling.

-Of course they would still be boring, but maybe they could get new skills (i think double strike sounds good). Maybe I'll think of some later, although I don't think it's possible to see al skills that are taught.

Well hope this helps..
P.S : if you really think money is that useless i could help you with getting rid of it...

[dunn]

Money is not hard - it's tedious.

Until you hit a certain level and can run eq parties fairly well, you won't have much of a cashflow from regularly killing mobs. That alone hardly pays for training and if you're in a skill heavy guild that alone can lower your exp rate if you have to go out of your way to do something other than killing.

Last time I checked, militia are a very skill heavy guild with remarkable uselessness in actually putting them into practice. Ok, you have the heavy races to choose from, but who's to say that's actually an advantage these days. Dumb and slow, but you hit hard! Congrats, I'll sign you up for an organ donor card.

I support the idea of getting a salary for militia. I don't see why this would be out of line, since an army is supposed to be paid. There should be something like payment for active duty, where some of that secret formula for figuring out ranking could come into play and actually let the player gauge how effective their playing style is.

Advancing in rank should also give you some bonus. In an economy ran by the millions (and player intelligence) this is hardly a trickle in the pot, but would give a heavily outdated guild some appreciation to its members.

In an economy where you can get 10k an earring nothing above that cashflow rate will either break or change the existing game balance.

[felgand]

I think part of being a successful party leader is being able to balance exp/money/eq to your party's needs. It's more interesting to need to take all these points into consideration than having a single thing (exp, for example) in your mind and just maxing that out. That tends to become a simple and monotonous task after a short time.

[valefor]

An idea for a subguild to militia: Spearmen.
Spearmen would have the ability to get special offensive skill which works only with spears. Also they could have possess skills that with a long spear they could make use of the fact that they have a longer weapon than their enemy. The skill would lower the offensive capabilities of a monster, keeping it at bay while the spearman could poke the monsie with some effect.
Don't know if this sounds reasonable at all but methinks it would bring an interesting job for the militia and the spears would be of some use in general.

[drakken]

This sounds like the horsemanship guild Belannaer once spoke of, and I think it would make a great sub-guild in the militia.

[chaosis]

Seeing as militiamen are members of a militia, and thus at least moderately skilled at cooperative combat, I think it would be great if militiamen brought a % skill increase to any party they joined. The whole idea of a militia is to have a unit that works on the 'help one another, to achieve that which one alone cannot' model, where soldiers cooperate, defending one another, and opening up opponents to easy hits.
Just as an example, lets say you have one militiaman in your party, for having them, every member in the party gains a two % increase to their offensive and defensive stats. For each aditional member, a one % increase is gained. If all nine members of the party were militiamen, each member would have recieved a ten % increase to their stats. This would be very useful against higher mobs, and give something unique to militiamen.
Lets face it, having a Sergeant Major along could really help those Air Priests figure out what the heck theyre doing.

[arkady]

I love the militia, I think that for what we are, the guild is nearly perfeectly in tune. First as a militia you need to gather some decent midbie eq, get some physical resist blessings and whammo, your a templar that doesn't worry about phase and elemental bonds. The only problem is that strike is not the cool stuff that it used to be. I never see any of my militia buddies strike to stun or wound.

I dont want to lose the current guild structure, it's very good. you start as an offie militia and then some time later you reinc into def militia. I would like to see the strike, and the belt tuned up to make the millitia more like the other two party melee guilds Templars and Shapeshifters. I think that basicly it's not that we need to be better deffies, but we need to be better at making damage.

I see the militia and to a lesser extent the rangers as dying guilds, this is bad. we need to make them more in line with the other guilds. I agree that the militia should not be the best tanks that honor should go to the avatar branch of the templars, but we shouldn't be a joke.

If tuning up the belt and strike is too unbalenceing then lets make the masteries more effective I nearly have a 50% in devastaing strike and I hardly see the mastery message, and it hardly does more damage, when a mage has arrow swarm to 50% or higher they rock and roll, so I think that maybe the easiest way to make the longtime militia players feel less like they are forgotten in a old guild. would be to make all the time we spend swinging out mauls and shield count for more.

So in retrospect, first option make strike and the belt more powerful, second option incresses the bonuses for masteries. This still wont deal with the cry of boring, but heck nobody said the militia was going to be a thrill a minute..

[kraven]

Mmh.. a little skill which would make militia a bit better guild to be in: Double strike... would allow one to pull another strike after first one. Ofcourse the latter would not be nearly as powerful as first one, but would allow one to do a bit more damage...
Maybe it could be got to low percents from basic inf. and maxed at elite or weapon masters...

and making army more usefull they should get some "features" that gives the ability to fight better in medium/heavy armour than other guilds...so there could be powerful full plated fighters here who could still hit more than 1hit/round

with that kind of skill/mastery they could somewhat competite with templars...well i dont think they never be good as templars anyway...