Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

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Mephistopheles
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Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Mephistopheles »

So I know theres alot of casual players who simply cannot spend as much time ig as others. I see alot of proposals to change the skilling system, I'd say keep it as is because I'm comfortable with it, but out of respect for those casual guys who want a change but don't know how to change it.. well I had an idea that might help, pretty simple.

I hear alot about "keep it simple" or "This feature works well with other rpgs"

The Traditional way of skilling in just about every other game is to gain x ammount of exp for y action adding to a pool of exp needed to get to level z

This is alot more friendly and easier of new players, and every other player to understand. No work arounds, no idling, no bs, a reeally simple solution instead of this complicated but unique Illarion system.

the skilling action for fighting would be easy, say you need 100 exp to get from lv 1 to lv 2, you can fight a person or monster with 1-10 skill in defense generating you say.. 2 exp. 11-15 generates 4 exp etc etc, so this way you can skill on every monster. The required exp to get each level will obviously raise and progressively become harder.

The pro's of this are:

-Everyone skills the same regardless of time spent ig
-Easy to understand, no need to try and explain the mc system to noobs and older players etc
-casual players be happy

Cons:

- Might be more difficult to skill as fast because at higher levels 70+ the experience needed to get to the next level would progressively get larger
-Alot of work for devs


Also if any person takes an interest feel free to come up with an idea of how the stats would work. Perhaps more experience generated for the action supported by the favored stat?
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Jupiter
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Jupiter »

Our current learning system has one huge pro:
Wether you spent most of your time roleplaying and just a bit of your time skilling or vice versa, your skill gain will be the same.

Your proposal would bring us to a state where those skill best who invest more time in training. Those who use most their time to roleplay will be disadvantged. You may say that it is normal that those who do more stuff, learn more. But for a game that says it wants to promote true role play, the current way is the better option.

If you want a change, search for a solution that does not punish people who roleplay most of the time so severely.
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Mephistopheles
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Mephistopheles »

I must say that i personally prefer this form of skilling much more. However the casual players that want to rp and skill are stuck as you've seen many so many expressions of this in mantis, on the forums, and in irc.

I understand your point of view and i understand the casual players point of view, they simply want to see a constant gain when they are bored and no ones online or in general. Some people just want to see a consistency in skilling instead of some mad fluctuation.

My personal opinion is to keep as is. No need to change a system thats perfectly fine as it stands now. Unless of course it somehow makes things more difficult I thrive on challenges :P
Last edited by Mephistopheles on Tue Dec 09, 2014 2:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Kamilar
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Kamilar »

Our current learning system also has one huge con:

When there's no one online (which happens regularly) you have to stay online anyway idling to lower the MC. It's immensely boring and it really makes no sense to me to be required to play a game but not be allowed to do anything. When you're alone on the server trying to drain MC, the Illarion learning system is glaringly nonsense.

Those who spend more time training should be better. That's just sensible. I think the better way to support roleplay is to develop ways for players to find one another in game - warp to quests and character locating for example. Forcing players to log in and do nothing isn't promoting or supporting anything valuable.

I would favor the ability to turn skills on and off. That way when the server is empty but it's a convenient time for a player to log in, that player could turn off the farming skill for example and spend time growing crops. That idling is really agony.
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Mephistopheles
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Mephistopheles »

I've no idea if thats possible but it sounds good.
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Q-wert
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Q-wert »

Personally I like the way things are right now for me in terms of rewards on player activity. I for myself have not idled for more than a month and am very much enjoying the game.

My main character has at least one complete set of fighting skills on 100. Which paired with fighter attributes and a high-gemmed weapon allows to solo grind high level monsters while lowering MC. So anytime I don't feel like roleplaying or skilling I go and make money and lower MC.

The idea of skilling whenever you play no matter what you do is something I find very unique and great about the current state of Illarion. I would not want to be dismissed for something where time I spend roleplaying feels like I am missing out on the skill side of things.

For the endgame you have rewarding and interesting mechanics to lower MC that keep you occupied if no one is online or player interaction is just not what you want right now. The problem is that skill related activities can not serve this purpose in earlier stages of the game. I think instead of throwing the rp-promoting idea of time-based skilling out of the window, you guys should try to think of ideas giving non-endgame players interesting alternatives to idling to spend their time while lowering MC.

Exploring the map and looking for marker stones is one well done alternative we already have.
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Estralis Seborian »

Kamilar wrote: It's immensely boring and it really makes no sense to me to be required to play a game but not be allowed to do anything.
Perhaps I repeat myself: You do not need to have low MC to learn "fast" as in "skill per time". There seems to be a serious misunderstanding around how the system works. The more MC points you have, the more(!) you lose over time. Hence, there is no need to idle as you will generate the same "skill over time", no matter what you do. Of course, if you just log out, you cannot expect anything from your downtime. The best strategy to level up is to play the game, you do not need to follow any stupid "idle-work-idle-work" pattern anymore or stand around for hours, watching the flowers grow, before you can train again.

Anyway, the original proposal is absolutely not compatible to Illarion as it is now. And I feel somewhat sad that "you kill a monster to get 2 XP" is an actual proposal for this game, sorry.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Kamilar »

Estralis Seborian wrote:There seems to be a serious misunderstanding around how the system works.
Maybe I repeat myself, too. There's no misunderstanding how the system works. Rather, I think there's a misunderstanding how the system actually effects game play.

The system works great if there are other people wanting to roleplay and it works great for characters with maxed skills who can actually do something when no one is around as long as they don't mind mining or picking fruit for entertainment. It was better when the spider den was an option for solo fighters imo. When no one is around - which is really pretty often actually - or for low skilled characters the system is punitive and playing is boring.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Ragorn »

The current skilling system has only a huge pro for those people who are able to stay a very long time period online ingame day by day.
"Normal" people (like me - hehe), for example with a fulltime job, family and other boaring interests like sports, reading, etc. have no real chance to get anything up in this game.

The currrent mc-skilling system massively influences current roleplay. Players with bad mc ofthen concentrate on skills they have already mastered (mining for example is very very popular skill), or use actions where they stay at a certain level (melting ore, collecting fruits, etc.).

Here is a proposal, which is very simple to implement (because we already had it) and give all players nearly the same chance to skill their characters in the same time period as the powergamers do:
- re-establish the old "skill cap"
- adjust the recovering time after reaching the skill cap from 1 hour to 24 hours.

That easy can it be!
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by IsisV »

Estralis Seborian wrote:
Kamilar wrote: It's immensely boring and it really makes no sense to me to be required to play a game but not be allowed to do anything.
Perhaps I repeat myself: You do not need to have low MC to learn "fast" as in "skill per time". There seems to be a serious misunderstanding around how the system works. The more MC points you have, the more(!) you lose over time. Hence, there is no need to idle as you will generate the same "skill over time", no matter what you do. Of course, if you just log out, you cannot expect anything from your downtime. The best strategy to level up is to play the game, you do not need to follow any stupid "idle-work-idle-work" pattern anymore or stand around for hours, watching the flowers grow, before you can train again.

Anyway, the original proposal is absolutely not compatible to Illarion as it is now. And I feel somewhat sad that "you kill a monster to get 2 XP" is an actual proposal for this game, sorry.
One thing confuses me, and perhaps you or someone can explain. Why is it when I return home from work in the evenings, I can play for 2-3 hours and not gain even the slightest in a certain skill? Given I have been only focusing on that skill alone.
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Mephistopheles
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Mephistopheles »

What Ragorn suggests is a viable option but requires alot of rework, what I suggest is simple and universally used but also requires lots of rework, and then what Kamilar suggests is a simple solution.

My question is why the reluctance to use a universal leveling system if some of the staff are so hell bent on looking at what makes other games successful?

I know there is a concern for Roleplayers missing out but all in all they aren't missing out at all, because all the time players are online they are roleplaying, all the time players are not online they stand around bored and stop playing... duh. But if they knew they could constantly gain at a consistent rate they'd still play, leaving more chars online and more chances for rp! Idling is a drag, it really is, but I think I'm slowly starting to support my own proposal :P Even if it was a major drag to skill at higher levels people would still push to do it because there lies a consistency that we currently do not have. How is it fair that a char with maxed crafting or fighting can actually skill his other skills so much faster than a new char? It's not, in fact it's waay too easy to level up your character once you've maxed a few skills.

my sincere suggestion, make it universal like every other skilling system. Easy to understand and alot more beneficial overall for illarion. Note: make the exp needed for higher levels an actual challenge.. seriously.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Ragorn »

If I compare the average player count when I began to play, to the current player count, I am wondering, what success all that work (VBU, new client, etc.) had.

What I see *now*, is that the majority of the players is mainly focussed on skills, attributes and technical stuff.

What I am missing is a staff, that works on improving role play and playing together generally. *Online role play* is the unique characteristics of Illarion, maybe the only one.
Everything technical achievment can be dropped in a bin, since there is not the minimal chance to get this game on an adequate technical level compared to what you can play today, free of charge.
Kamilar already gave some good examples, how playing together could be improved. Others are "party bonus" (loot, exp, etc. depending on group size), group quests, free teleporting, ingame messaging, guild support (including guild depots), easy customizable houses, trading support (or just allow to move any sizes of stacks from an to a depot), etc.

But back to the proposal. The current skilling is unbalanced. It is completely based on online time. If you want to access only two handful of online junkies, then you are perfectly right.
But if you want to reach the normal players - for example if one player is ingame averagely 1 hour per day, which means 7 hours a week, or 30 hours a month - this already is a huge time amount (!), and want to provide them nearly equal chances to skill their characters, then you have to overthink a lot of the current game mechanics.

I still think the old skillcap with already mentioned adjusted regeneration time (1 hour -> 24 hours) would be a good thing.
And I am quite sure, that this will include not much work ;-)
my sincere suggestion, make it universal like every other skilling system. Easy to understand and alot more beneficial overall for illarion. Note: make the exp needed for higher levels an actual challenge.. seriously.
I agree. Could be a long term goal for that game. And not to forget, move the "master status" back around skill level 90 as it was before.
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Jupiter
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Jupiter »

Ragorn wrote:What I am missing is a staff, that works on improving role play and playing together generally.
We have way more quests than before the the vbu. That counts for GM made quests and even more for player made quests.
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Estralis Seborian »

Mephistopheles wrote:But if they knew they could constantly gain at a consistent rate they'd still play, leaving more chars online and more chances for rp!

(...) How is it fair that a char with maxed crafting or fighting can actually skill his other skills so much faster than a new char?
Uhm, I am confused about those statements. Skillgain/time is a constant for Illarion. You can grind all day or just chat and work whenever it suits you, same skill after the same time. I consider this pretty fair. A character that does actions that cannot result in skillgain has no skill related benefit from those actions. Lower MC does not mean faster skilling, just more skillgain per action.

The old skill cap was just retarded, sorry. The system forced you to stop playing and you had to play in weird idle-work-idle cycles or you did not learn anything. Without knowing the parameters of the system, one could not get anywhere.

The current system makes online time the main factor, not the number of actions you do. We can change that any time if desired. All in all, yes, we should work on enhancing interaction and provide more things to do while no other players are around.
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Mephistopheles
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Mephistopheles »

Ragorn wrote:What I am missing is a staff, that works on improving role play and playing together generally. *Online role play* is the unique characteristics of Illarion, maybe the only one.
Everything technical achievment can be dropped in a bin, since there is not the minimal chance to get this game on an adequate technical level compared to what you can play today, free of charge.
Kamilar already gave some good examples, how playing together could be improved. Others are "party bonus" (loot, exp, etc. depending on group size), group quests, free teleporting, ingame messaging, guild support (including guild depots), easy customizable houses, trading support (or just allow to move any sizes of stacks from an to a depot), etc.
These things are being worked on by the developers amongst other great things, but lets not digress :wink:

My focus here, is to stop player boredom. Roleplay is Illarion's primary goal. So we want to keep players ingame instead of them logging out through boredom when the skilling gets rough and theres little rp to be found.

When theres little to no rp to be found, currently players log off because idling is a drag. Then not only do they get to the desired skill but they are logging off thus ensuring they will not find roleplay. If they stay online to grind on a few skills other's will see they are online, jump online, and bam roleplay opportunity.

A simple effective and a big pro for illarion period.
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Mephistopheles
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Mephistopheles »

@ Estralis

You might gain at a constant rate but it's like say ever try leveling mining from 98 to 99 on runescape on tin?

It doesn't freakin work man, it'd drive even me nuts, so.. we idle or we do an action we are already maxed in. Thus making the maxed chars at an extreme advantage not through mechanic but because they have something to do.
Currently if you try doing multiple actions simply because you're bored your mc will suffer and then you really won't learn well at all, I don't know if you have tried to level up a character with say 1 mil mc being average for over an hour. After 30 mins you notice that you don't learn very much, 30 mins later you're like "bleh." log off, come back wanna go mining and ruin your mc further, very very soon you'll realize that the way you're going will take you much longer than skilling for a half hour each day and roleplaying/idling for roughly 1-2 hours. Assuming that person even has the time to spend 3 hours on illarion.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Q-wert »

I don't really see the benefit this is supposed to bring for players with limited playtime. So far the proposed idea is to basicly keep things as they are but to give the MC-multiplier a constant value and make skilling harder.

This means that the system would reward skilling all the time, while there is no reward for roleplay or any action not directly tied to gaining numbers. At least I for myself prefer actions I am rewarded for over those that I am not. Also, the difference between those players spending lots of time and those that don't will not be erased at all as the players with lots of time will have the quiet time of the day to grind up their skills.
That combined with the wish to make skilling on high levels more difficult (99->100 is already as much work as 0->95!) would leave those with little time at their hands (and anyone else) punished for everything they do asides grinding up their skills.

I think the problem with the MC system as it is right now is that you notice how skill gain noticeably drops and jumps up again depending on what you do. The very undesireable idling being one of those rewarding actions. Maybe a longterm focus (lets say (all player action points spent on skilling) / (complete player online time + 30% of 'active' offline time) ) to determine MC would discourage idling as there would be no immediate reward for it.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Kamilar »

Ragorn wrote:The current skilling system has only a huge pro for those people who are able to stay a very long time period online ingame day by day. The current skilling is unbalanced. It is completely based on online time. If you want to access only two handful of online junkies, then you are perfectly right.
Q-wert wrote:I think the problem with the MC system as it is right now is that you notice how skill gain noticeably drops and jumps up again depending on what you do. The very undesireable idling being one of those rewarding actions.
This is exactly what I mean by how the system impacts game play. Either players log in and find roleplay (yay!) or they log in to idle (boo!). If a player is working on a fighting skill above 97% another player is required (bigger boo!). If a player is working on fighting skills above 80% they can use high level monsters to earn xp but that's not realistic for most players solo (another big boo!). Illarion is not really playable without other players. There needs to be some accommodation for casual gamers and single player gaming until the online player base can support the Illarion concept.

I would suggest increasing the rewards for player run quests. Hand out small rewards to the participants and larger rewards for hosting an RP event. Let's call these quest points. After a certain number of quest points, a pop-up like what we get for finding those shiny rocks would be good with choices like magical gems, coins, skill gain and a percentage off the MC.
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Estralis Seborian »

Q-wert wrote: I think the problem with the MC system as it is right now is that you notice how skill gain noticeably drops and jumps up again depending on what you do. The very undesireable idling being one of those rewarding actions. Maybe a longterm focus (lets say (all player action points spent on skilling) / (complete player online time + 30% of 'active' offline time) ) to determine MC would discourage idling as there would be no immediate reward for it.


Very good input! I will evaluate this with some simulations. Last time I checked a similar approach, handling new players did not work out. For them, the system behaved very jerky. Any input and help is appreciated.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Shandariel el Lysanthrai »

If I may add my opinion on this.

I really would like to see a way that MC is lowered while being offline too. It does not even have to be lowered as fast as when you are ingame and do some RP or non-skilling actions.

My reasons for this proposal:

I started to play this game again after a long break of several years 6 weeks ago. I was very active in the first 3 weeks, playing up to 6-8 hours a day. Which is really alot! I enjoyed alot of great Roleplay, so the first time MC and Skillgain had not much an influence on my game. But once the holidays kicked in and the amount of chars ingame with whom my char could or would RP lowered drastically. I had to start focusing on practicing my skill or not playing at all. After 3 Weeks of that I simply stopped playing again :( .

Skillgain is a pain if you have a MC of 2 Million or higher (Starting Mc for your chars), so you constantly tried to lower your MC. Sure, Estralis says you don't have to, cause you will learn the same with 6 hours of MC lowering action (Like RP) and 1 hour of Skillgain, or 1 hour of Mc lowering Action and 6 hour of Skillgain. But that is sadly wrong in practice.
At the beginning it won't make a difference, but with time your Mc will raise to an amount which will lower your Skillgain so much that you hardly will learn anything at all. And we should not forget that many skills you want to practice involves Materials. So someone with a low Mc ALWAYS has the advantage when it comes down to crafting skills or something like Archery, cause he will need by far less materials then those with high MC. Materials they often don't even collect themselfs (I am playing a carpenter and I need not just wood, but iron, copper, gems and wool/leater or even Merinium too). Those Materials have to be bought from NPC's and Players. Often you can't find a player selling you the materials (I really tried), or you have to buy them for more than what the item you crafted is worth. Means with being poor you can't really start crafting.
As an example for this lets take Archery. With a MC of 2 Million I needed 500 Arrows against an enemy for my Skilllevel (65 Skill that time, against Trolls) to raise my Archery skill for 1 Point. With a Mc of 300 Thousand I needed 100 Arrows. This means 1/5 of time and item consumption. So for the same Skillgain I have with using 500 Arrows on low Mc I would have to use 2500 Arrows and atleast 5 times the time spent with a high MC. Sure, I could simply ignore my Mc and continue practicing. But arrows don't grow on trees (haha). So I also have to spent alot of time cutting trees to collect the material needed to craft the vast amount of arrows to be used on skillgain. This means even more Time consumption. And it becomes even worse on higher Mc than 2 Million. Also fighting Trolls as an archer on your own is a dangerous and difficult thing to do. Means you have to be concentrated and focused for a long time on a tedious task, which is not fun at all.
Now imagine that with a craft which needs alot of Materials which you can't or won't gather yourself (Not every carpenter has to be a miner or gemcutter too). Sure, you can just ignore Mc and start skilling. But with the Material needed you will be at a big advantage with a high MC. And for a low Mc you need time to spend ingame. And if you can't find someone to RP with, you will have to do tedious, boring gathering work. (I can't see the sheeps anymore...their shouts hound me in my sleep!). To lower my Mc from 2 Million to 300 Thousand I had to spend 2-3 days ingame with non-skilling actions for 8 hours a day. And working 30 minutes on my Skill to be trained raised the MC to 2 Million again. Sure, I could have spent the 16 or 24 hours whith just working too, but considering the Mc I would get by that I would need an immodest amount of Materials.

And that involves just a single Character. What I noticed also was that the current way how Mc is treated in the game limits your possibilities to play with several characters. You have to spend too much time on a single character and your other ones are neglected.
Sure, we need the MC system. It is a way to reward players for spending alot of time ingame with their characters and it is a system to avoid other characters to raise their skills too fast. But the current system also is a punishment for all those who don't have much time to logg in into the game due of real life and for those who don't have fun at many hours of boring gathering jobs when they can't find anyone to play with for many hours (Which is happening quite often currently). And it also limits your possibilities to play with several characters.

Thats why I say Mc should be lowered too when you are logged off with your char. I don't say it has to be as fast as with your chars being ingame and roleplaying. But you should be able to feel a difference in Mc when you logged in again after having been offline for a day (As an example, make it 1/10. So being offline 10 hours lowers your Mc the same amount as being nonskilling active for 1 hour). You may even make it a way that you won't lower your Mc anymore while being offline when you haven't logged in regulary. Lets say you will just lower your Mc for the first 3 days being offline. After that it won't sink anymore until you have been ingame again with that char.
We call it Mental Capacity. And resting or doing unchallenging work makes your char learning better again. And from the viewpoint of RP our chars don't just stop existing when being logged off. So it makes no sense that they return with the same amount of Mc once they "go to bed" or anything else when we logg out of the game.
This way Players who can't spent every day Ingame won' be punished for being offline while those who have alot of time for Illarion still have an advantage. And you will also have more time and fun playing your other chars too since you also won't be punished for playing one char but not the other. Diversity in the characters being ingame is good for the game itself anyway. Seeing the very same characters ingame every day is stagnation. And stagnation is not good for the playerbase.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Vern Kron »

Jupiter wrote:Our current learning system has one huge pro:
Wether you spent most of your time roleplaying and just a bit of your time skilling or vice versa, your skill gain will be the same.

Your proposal would bring us to a state where those skill best who invest more time in training. Those who use most their time to roleplay will be disadvantged. You may say that it is normal that those who do more stuff, learn more. But for a game that says it wants to promote true role play, the current way is the better option.

If you want a change, search for a solution that does not punish people who roleplay most of the time so severely.

When your character does not use the skills, they should not be as skilled as people who do. I do not understand why that concept is bad.

If you were targeting the 'casual' player, who only has a few hours, then slowing the skill gain doesn't make sense: They play less, have less time to increase or decrease mc, and if they do increase their mc, then they will always have higher mc then your traditional players.

If you were targeting the "rp" crew, that do not use the engine as much: It doesn't make sense to inflate the economy so hard, and reward not using skills.
"But players who use the engine a lot, vs players who only use it occasionally, skill at the same rate!" - True. I could sit IG for 3 months without using a skill and then catch up, or I could skill for the next 3 months and have the same skill gain. But that doesn't reward and doesn't respect the players who put in the effort to increase their skills. And it promotes people playing characters that they don't actually have. A newborn character should not claim to be a master sword's man, and expect to win every fight.

If you were targeting the "powergamer", those who use the engine skill gain system extensively: You would not have had every action in the entire game have some form of impact on the growth and development of a character. Everything IG effects a skill, so when you are specifically training something, you do not have any desire to do ANYTHING else, because it negatively impacts your current skill.


That being said, the level 99-100 is a pretty hard climb.

And I think we need to decide what is the 'proper, intended' way to play. Either using the engine lots, or very little.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by IsisV »

I'm sorry but here's my 2 cents:

I work 50-60h a week, 45k ytd. And when I get time to log in game, I shouldn't have to be "forced" to spend the 2-3hours i get after work at night to use a skill that won't gain me any skill points just to lower MC.. or wander around the map aimlessly to reduce MC points so I can learn faster. Why spend those few hours to lower MC so I get my substantial gains vs little gains I don't even notice?

Since when was Illarion to be played as a "forced tasking for lower mc and faster skill gain" game?

Why force anything upon a player given their circumstance? Notice the Online player count? Yea..me too

I'm not saying what suggestion here is right or wrong, but just listing my general day to day list of activities.

Sure is different since 2001.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Nitram »

In all this discussion... I hope it is clear to you that if we were to change the skill gain we had to set it to the speed it has now at very high MC. So the powergamers don't "finish" within hours, but in the intended time. And those who roleplay or explore every now and then... well they are out of luck. There skill gain rate for them will drop a lot.

Just to clarify what you are asking here.
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Estralis Seborian »

Four brief questions:

1. If MC lowers over offline time, in how far is it guaranteed that player behaviour and skillgain are decoupled and that players that invest the same time get the same reward?
2. How to handle characters that are not played for extended time?
3. Why do you want to lower MC while ingame by doing nothing? MC gets lowered over time, regardless whether you do something or not. Also, the more MC you have, the more MC you lose over time.
4. What demands the processing of vast amounts of materials if you can achieve the same skillgain with less material?

We can deactivate all this MC stuff within one second. But as Nitram stated, this means that we'd have to tune skillgain in a way that even the worst powergamer has to spend a certain amount of time and those who prefer not to skill all day long need significantly more time to get to the same level. I am not sure that this discussion really aims at an improved situation of the game for all but might be an expression of individuals not being satisfied with the overall skillgain speed. The system was designed in a way that it cannot be tricked by clever behaviour like the old system; perhaps this is not liked?

It is indeed true that player who spend more time will have more skill. At this moment, I cannot imagine any reasonable system that does not result in this. If anyone can, I think we should discuss this in a more mathematical way, using formulae and also simulations.
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Shandariel el Lysanthrai
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Shandariel el Lysanthrai »

1. If MC lowers over offline time, in how far is it guaranteed that player behaviour and skillgain are decoupled and that players that invest the same time get the same reward?
Please explain that a bit further. I don't understand what you mean with that, or atleast I don't understand what it has to do with MC lowering over offline time :/

2. How to handle characters that are not played for extended time?
As I said in my post already (did you read it completly?), this can be achieved by stopping the Mc lowering after a set amount of time in which the character wasn't ingame. Or, if that is not technical possible, you can make it like the amount of lowered Mc is based on your offline time once you logg in, and there is a maximum amount of MC lowered. So lets say you will lower a maximum of set % of your Mc in three days. Logging in again after 24 hours will lower your MC for x%, logging in after 48 hours of having been offline will lower it for x%+y%, logging in after 72h will lower it for x%+y%+z%, and this will be the maximum amount of Mc lowered. So if you logg in after 3 days, or 3 Month, the Mc will be lowered for the same fixed maximum amount. Once you logged in, the counter will be set to Zero again and it starts new. This way you still have to be regulary ingame, but you still won't be punished for being offline or having less time than others in RL. And since EVERYONE will benefit from this noone will be profiting more from it than others. Those who are more often ingame will still lower their MC faster.
The amount of time needed to be offline before the MC lowering is stopped can still be balanced. It doesnt have to be three days, that was just as an example.

We may also say that your ingame time deteramines for how long your char will lower his MC when being offline. As an example (The amount of times can and should still be balanced out): Having been ingame for 3 hours means that for the next 30 hours of being offline your Mc will be lowered too. Once you logg in the timer is set to zero. If you don't logg in for 30 hours you will have the same fixed amount of lowered MC (a % value of the current one) once you logg in again. May it be after 35 hours or 35 days. So lets say you where online for 2 hours. You are offline for 15 hours, you logg back in and your MC was lowered for those 15 hours. You play for 1 hour, and logg out. The next 10 hours your MC will be lowered again. You logg in after 15 hours and your MC will be lowered for those 10 hours from before.
3. Why do you want to lower MC while ingame by doing nothing? MC gets lowered over time, regardless whether you do something or not. Also, the more MC you have, the more MC you lose over time.
I never said that Mc should be lowered while doing nothing. I don't like Idlers myself. I hate it when I meet a char and start roleplay just to feel dissapointed once I realize, that the player is AFK. Thats really frustrating, especially with few players playing at all :( . Currently you won't lose anymore Mc once you haven't done anything for 5 Minutes, and that is good so. That shouldn't be changed. Characters being logged in but being idle are a pain in the ass for active players and their chars.
4. What demands the processing of vast amounts of materials if you can achieve the same skillgain with less material?
Thats it! If you DON'T lower your Mc you HAVE to process vast amounts of materials. So you are as good as forced to lower your Mc by stedious tasks. Either that, or you accept that you need much much much more Materials than other crafters for the same skillgain. And more Materials needed mean more time needed to gather or buy them. So honestly, Estralis, I wonder why you ask that question. It was you after all who said you don't have to lower your MC in this game to be as successfull as others who do that. And now your question here implys that it actually is important to lower your MC in this game.

At the moment that need for low Mc if you want to be a successfull crafter is a pain in the ass for any regular player who don't have several hours a day to play. And that is why those players are not anymore playing the game nowadays and why we have to few new players staying after they tried crafting for a while. If you have Mc being lowered while being offline too (I say it again, being 5 hours ingame or 5 hours Offline won't lower the Mc for the same amount. Being ingame still have a speed advantage, but being offline won't end with zero effect. So those who have less time will still be able to play actively, instead of as good as none at all)
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Estralis Seborian »

Thanks for answering the questions! Those questions were not meant to imply anything but real questions. The whole MC system's only and sole purpose is to decouple the player behaviour from the skillgain and guarantee that the invested online time is the only remaining scaling factor for skillgain. If this purpose is not fulfilled, we can as well scrap the whole MC system and have a more traditional, conservative way how to determine the skillgain. We can do this by a simplification of the current system, not by adding complicated MC handling if all those MC things shall not even fulfill their only purpose.

Thanks for pointing out how you'd handle characters that are offline for an extended time. I conclude that player behaviour will matter, not ingame but especially "outgame". There would be a difference between not playing for six days and playing two hours and not playing three days, playing one hour, again not playing three days and playing another hour. I am not convinced that Illarion should be a game that rewards certain "gaming patterns" more than others. This is just the reason why we changed the MC system from a system that greatly rewarded certain patterns (work till cap - idle one hour - work till cap... or work till cap - logout - login with next character - work till cap,...) and punished other patterns severly (work till cap - keep working - chat ten minutes - work on - do not work for two hours because of a quest,...).

The more I all read this, the more my impression is strengthened that this is not about any MC system but about the pure fact that the current skillgain/online time is considered too low by some who want to get to level 100 as fast as possible. The fastest way is as fast as any other, so again, there is no benefit in processing tons of materials OR idleing for several hours. You get the same amount of cookies. If the general speed of skillgain is too slow, we can change that. But we do not frickel around with the MC system that works just like intended. If the general intention of the MC system is not appreciated, we can also remove it. But please, no pfusch with things that are not very well understood.
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Shandariel el Lysanthrai
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Shandariel el Lysanthrai »

I am not convinced that Illarion should be a game that rewards certain "gaming patterns" more than others. This is just the reason why we changed the MC system from a system that greatly rewarded certain patterns (work till cap - idle one hour - work till cap... or work till cap - logout - login with next character - work till cap,...) and punished other patterns severly (work till cap - keep working - chat ten minutes - work on - do not work for two hours because of a quest,...).
But exactly that is happening right now. The current Mc system is alot rewarding a certain pattern and punishs those who don't follow it. Right now it is "Work for an hour, do actions not skilling for the next 2 days, work again for an hour". Those who follow this pattern are much more successfull and faster in their skillgain than those who just play and don't pay any attention to MC at all. Especially on higher skilllevels. And this comes from ingame experience. I tried both ways and I saw the difference. It may look differently if you just take the script as a base, but in practice it is like this. With the one pattern you can raise your skill to 90 in a fraction of the time you need compared to not paying attention to the Mc at all. And the amount of materials needed is at a huge difference too. And aslong as we have such a small playerbase, not working means you have to gather materials (without skillgain) for 2 days straight without any fun or RP involved cause there are too few players online to play with.
Also the current Mc punishs those who want to play several characters with skills. At the moment you have to focus on a single character for some time before changing to another one. But playing both regulary? Not really. The amount of time spent to raise your Mc to a certain level and the amount of time you need to lower it again is just too unbalanced in my opinion. It feels like 1:16. For one hour work you have to do nonskilling actions for atleast 16 hours. On higher skilllevels it feels even worse. A small amount of time spent raises your Mc to a level at which your skillgain is drastically reduced. To lower this you need to spend really ALOT of time ingame again doing no skillgaining actions. This is a big turn off for casual players. For those who have few time for Illarion. And that lowers our playerbase. Since I started playing again in novembre I usually just saw the hardcore chars ingame who spent 8 hours a day working(or fighting) and who have their gathering skills raised to 100. They gather materials for hours, work a bit, gather materials for hours. You hardly see any other ones. And if you do see them, it is just a few times in the week, if at all. Or they are from a RP group which follow a common and planed RP background (Like the Serinjahs).

I think the MC system needs some serious balancing. The difference between the two ways to play is just too big. Not following the "work short, idle long, work short" pattern feels as if you are punished for doing it the other way. And the amount of time needed to lower your Mc compared to the amount of time you invested to raise it to a certain level is too far apart too. Not forgetting that the current way Mc is handled also limits your possibilities to play more than one character.

The current way MC is handled may work much much better with alot of characters ingame since you find many to roleplay with so that your Mc will be usually low anyway. But with so few characters around to rp with it seems for me to be a big disadvantage, keeping the playerbase even smaller and working in contrary to our wish to raise the amount of players ingame again.


How about this proposal for balancing: Lower the amount of skill you gain in a hour of work but also lower the amount of time needed to lower your Mc afterwards again. Balance it in a way that the overall time needed to raise your skills like before isn't changed. But this way the time spent for skillgain and for nonskilling is more balanced and equal to each other. Those who spend alot of time ingame still will have an advantage over those with few time, but those with few time won't feel like running against a wall once they have a really high Mc from a little bit of work, because they don't have to spend the next week or weeks with gathering jobs if there is noone to RP with.
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Estralis Seborian »

*shrugs* All I can reply is that your base observations are not correct, sorry. I do understand the subjective impression ("feeling") you have, but objectively, with code and numbers, it is just wrong that any type of patterns is more rewarding in terms of overall skillgain/time. This is not theory but reality. Perhaps you will understand better if you evaluate the code in a spreadsheet?

Also, since the unaltered MC system is around for two years by now, I object against any implied influence on the recent player number.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by Uhuru »

I have to agree with Shandariel. This is why I rarely play my alts, as they have no maxed skills and nothing to do to lower MC. Everything they touch causes them to learn. Literally, everything. MC is, I'm sure, shockingly high. I spent days and days, just walking one character around the desert, not touching anything, picking up herbs. Just so I could see a bit of movement in a skill bar when she next performed an action, any slight movement at all.

Estralis, I know you believe in the math and the numbers, but spread it across all activities, not just one. All things a character can learn. Everything she is likely to touch in a day as no character touches just one skill. With MC well over 2 mill, more likely in 3 mill numbers. See if you ever learn what you are actually trying to learn. Then come back and have a real chat with our players.
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Re: Illarion skilling vs traditional rpg skilling

Post by IsisV »

Mods or gms may as well close this topic, because as much as Estralias says they are open for proposals on changing the system, they aren't. Because everything so far has been "I'm right, you're wrong". I know how it feels though because I program as well. No programmer likes to feel his code is wrong, there's a great sense of pride taken in every byte coded in. Maybe it isn't wrong, but it's aimed at giving results that act poorly towards a larger playing audience of a certain playing style and capability, which is what we are seeing now.

Now's the time to take in consideration what each player has said, and greatly introduce logic and common sense with how many skills a player will use per day, also with what EXACTLY they wish to do, instead of not wanting to do to lower mc for faster gains.
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