pratamawirya wrote:I wouldn't call it a "self-imposed challenge". I could learn a weapon skill before D:10 if I chose to do so; I didn't because I was waiting for a strong branded/artefact weapon. And this was doable especially because I started with higher than usual Fighting and Dodging and kept training those two (along with Armour, Evo, etc)*. Of course you can do that with other backgrounds, but new monk is simply more suitable for that.
*I guess the free Stealth also helped even though I left it at 4.0.
What do you consider a self-imposed challenge, if skilling badly on purpose does not qualify? Are you seriously suggesting that it is a good idea to skill monk in that manner? To reiterate,
every single background in the game can be played this way, including the old weapon start monk, the old unarmed combat start monk, and gladiator. Nobody who knows what they're doing skills this way with any background in a non-challenge game. New monk, for the record, is
less suitable for this kind of skilling than old monk or fighter or gladiator, because you are passing up cheaper levels of weapon skill for even more expensive levels of fighting and dodging compared to those other starts. The supposed differentiation here does not really exist, monk is a worse gladiator even if you skill both of them this way, and frankly I don't think that the supposed ability to play a background in an extra bad but different way is relevant. Backgrounds should feel meaningfully different from one another when they are played using good strategies.
If the intent behind the monk changes was to make monk a worse but more flavorful bad gladiator, then the changes arguably succeeded - but that isn't the impression that I got from the commit.