Coalition for the Change of Skill Levels (CCSL)

Drathe · Post by **Drathe** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 8:19 pm

Ok now I dont want to sounds like pauls lover, but I do agree with him on this. Maybe he does not put his point accross to well but to make it clear what he is sugesting is a new skill rasing system should be impliment/thoughtabout. This system is as follows:

Instead of the skills being x10 hared to raise compaired to old, untill maxed. The skill of a trade should be broken down into levels, each level taking more work than the last to progress through. (tho each leve does not need to be shown, the traditional skill bar could still be used so as to minimise skill talk.)

Now yet again Paul has tryed to approach this subject (all be it in a 'diffrent' way) and yet again (the 'snobs' of this game have stuck up thier noses and ridiculed him.
And this over loving of the makers of the game 'If the developers want, they stop the game. It is their game and their decission, what they will make with it. Don't forget, this game is in developping and we have the honour to test this great game. We have no rights on the game.'
Now come on, this maybe true but a little bit over the top maybe? (I do hope talk like this does not win browny poits with them.)
What game creator does not listen and take note of the players of his/her game. They ARE the game, they make the game what it is in substance. New idea should always be welcomed, and thought about. Instead of everybody thinking (some of the snobs) they know what the dev team think and wanst why do they ask them.
They are people not gods (as some of you seem to think) they do make wrong choices now and again.
Paul is not a trouble making player, just some one who thinks his idea might improove the game for all. Why dislike him for it? He has not 'flamed' (how I hate that word in this context) anybody, nor been stupid. (cept maybe for this fight the dev team for theskill change thing.)
I think paul you should have said....can we have a fair debate about this with the dev team please.

And if you think about it and way the pros and cons it would!

And heres why.
1) It keeps people intrested in their work, skills rising at a noticable but not super fast rate.
2) It will still take them a long time to become a master (as it should) but they can improove to a point in a fair time where they can support them selves finiancialy.
3) It keeps the variety of sale able things to a level, other than just black stones, chest and lumber axes.
4) It still keeps the urge to stay alive for fear of skill lost as Mishrack stated.
5) Players still live their character as the skills dont shoot up, but rise at an acceptable speed but yet enough to keep the worker enterained with new makable things.

The only one thing wrong I can think of with this system is..some one said that by having this x10 skill as it is, it stops new players having powerful waepons like wands and fire swords....noncens. These can be bought, begged or stolen..maybe even given as a gift (lucky person.)IF this is an issue it has nothing to do with trade skills.

Well...im done...think I got a bit caught up in the moment, still nothing wrong with a bit of passion in a man writting

Moyáve · Post by **Moyáve** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 8:23 pm

The Problem is that none of you really understands what the other Person is saying. You all just want to bring your point to recognition. When i post a criticizm on something that is acceptet by most other people i always recognize that you always just look for a weak point in my argumentation, and by taking this point and tearing it to pieces you say that my whole Posting is wrong. But you avoid to comment the true aspects of my argumentation. And therefore i always have the feeling that nobody has understood what i wanted to say.

"By the way, Paul gives not a single construcive idea, all he is doing is playing the stubbron little kid and spamming the forums with a topic that has been already discussed over and over."

No, it has not been discussed! Never truly. Person1 complainted about it. Person2, 3, 4, 5 ... made person1's arguments down! Just as it is here...
That's also why discussions like this often drift off from the original point.
What we're doing here is in no way constructive.
So please Paul, post a good suggestion of how to change the system here, or anybody will just go on....[/quote]

Caranthir the great · Post by **Caranthir the great** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 8:26 pm

So basically what you are saying is that it is not discussing if no-one or minority supports the idea, and those who don't share the poster's opinion don't have valid opinion themselves? Only supporting opinions allowed?

Moyáve · Post by **Moyáve** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 8:29 pm

Can anyone please translate Drathe's Post to German?

Roke · Post by **Roke** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 8:32 pm

I think, to change the skills it should be like a curve that gradually gets steeper... Thus, the steeper the curve, the harder it is to gain skill. Although, it is probably harder to program then to draw a graph... even if I was the one drawing it.

Adano Eles · Post by **Adano Eles** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 8:39 pm

From what I understand, the skills are already programmed this way. A little example where I observed this:
The Library Research skill used to rise quite quickly at the beginning. Just a few books it went up quite a bit. As my char uses to visit the library quite often, I got this skill up to a very high level. But it never maxed out, because in the end it barely rised at all.
Those are pre-change observations, but as now only the speed of the skill raising was changed, the system should still be the same.

Kringin · Post by **Kringin** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 9:53 pm

I suport paul's idea in some ways and I dont in some ways, I will just state that. I agree with Moyave and others who are sincere and not ignorant people who just jabber on and on.

Please why can't you people just post in small simple opinions? It will be a lot easier and will not make anyone mad and there wont be much time wasted and they wont have to go through paragraphs of crap if it is. Avoid foul language and for eveyone's sake respect others.

Have a nice day.

Setherioth · Post by **Setherioth** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 9:55 pm

I like the idea
Too easy = unrealistic
too hard = no fun
right now, i think it's too hard.

Simple enough, eh Kringin?

Kringin · Post by **Kringin** » Thu Jan 23, 2003 9:57 pm

paul laffing · Post by **paul laffing** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 4:27 am

paul laffing wrote:Okay, i shall answer everyone. What i meant is that, all the older people are experts in at least one field. The new people find it extremely difficult to become a master at a skill, and have to depend on the older people for supplies. I read a message that said something about skill difficulty that increases as you get better. I like this idea.

Did anyone before Drathe read this or did you all skip over it?

paul laffing · Post by **paul laffing** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 4:31 am

This forum is where i got my inspiration

http://www.illarion.org/community/forum ... highlight=

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 4:39 am

Yes, we looked at that. As Adano stated, it already appears to work like that.

paul laffing · Post by **paul laffing** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 4:44 am

But not to the extant that is should, if you understand me

Serpardum · Post by **Serpardum** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 11:27 am

So, what then exactly are you asking for?

Basically you want to become a master faster, right? Everyone you have said so far has been about having to buy "supplies" from masters. So, your goal is to become a master faster?

Pre-change you could be a master blacksmith in one day of playing.

I came in with one of my internet friends. We downloaded, installed and played at the same time. We both saw that skills went up EXTREMLY fast. So he became a master blacksmith, that was fun, then quit the game. No challenge.

People would play the game to watch those little bars grow longer.

Post-change you could be a master blacksmith in 10 days of playing.

In reality, however, people are not going to become master blacksmiths in 10 days, as they will find it extremly boring to do nothing but blacksmith for days on end. Which is how it should be.

Now people play, they start blacksmithing and.. hmm. this is going to take a while. What else is there? And walk around, and talk to people and... role play.

Now people dont' think about becoming masters in everything. They think about what their caracters "career" should be. Should I be a black smith? A carpenter, a cook...

Now we don't have stereotyped charactes. Everyone's a master blacksmith. Everyone bakes, farms, etc... Now people can find a niche and fill it.

Now the game is challenging and more fun.

When this change first came out a lot of people complained, a lot of people said they liked it. Over time, however, as people got used to it and adjusted their playing style, I think that the majority agree with it. It does make the game more fun.

As a side effect of this, PKing has dropped dramatically, although this is probably helped alot by the application system that was put into effect very shortly after.

Now when you die it's not a matter of 15 minutes to get back to where you were. Now if you die, it hurts darn it! I don't wanna die! So I'm not going to go pick a fight with someone and kill them because then I'll get killed...

It brings a lot of balance to the game in a lot of ways.

The only way we would "balance" the old players with the new players is by doing a character wipe. This will have to happen sometime in the future, but no one really wants it (the players or the GMs) unless absolutely neccessary. So the only thing you are pushing for is a sooner character wipe. Which I can guarantee you that at this point in time you won't find more than 2 or 3 people who would want that.

Your claim is that you just want to be able to learn faster in the beginning, this isn't going to help you become a master any faster, because we would make sure it wouldn't. And that seems to be your whole argument, that you don't want to have to buy master items from ohter players, you want to be able to make them yourself.

Dyluck · Post by **Dyluck** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 11:52 am

Perhaps there are some negativities in the current skill system, but I believe paul is approaching this from the wrong perspectives.

His arugment consists of "older players getting rich off new players" and "new people have to depend on older people for supplies". What advantage that older players have shouldn't have anything to do with the argument. Equality is not the issue.

His only other argument is that "it's too long and too hard to master a skill", which was exactly how it should be to become a master of something. He wants to get there faster.

So although there may be some good reasons for opposing against the current skill system (which some of you have pointed out), I don't see how some of you can defend paul by saying that he makes good points when he has no concrete reasons or arugments, that acknowledges the goals of this game, to justify his opinion of "skills are to hard to gain" or "I think skill system should be like this because..."

Caranthir the great · Post by **Caranthir the great** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 1:26 pm

Exactly, Dyluck.
I couldn't have said it better myself.

I'd like to also point out, that many of us old players have other characters, that stand in the same line than you 'younger players', so please don't think that we wouldn't know the diffrence between current and the previous skillgain systems.

About equality.
Thought it is not the issue in this topic, I'd like to point out few of my views on that matter.

"older players getting rich off new players"

And how are we supposed to do that?
Mind to explain? You are generalizing without any shame, by categorizing people like that. Not every 'Old' player is a merchant.
Some of us are, some are not. Perhaps you are referring to the fact that the prices have risen? Excuse me, but the prices of most items are still under decent. Everyone has afford to one, in the middle ages a chainmail was worth of a middle-sized village. Perhaps, you would want return to the old prices, when people paid twenty goldpieces for a platemail? Or threw them away? Where was the challenge, if you had the best set of items in the first ten minutes?

"people have to depend on older people for supplies"

This is like saying 'The milk drinkers have to depend on milk producers'.
This is the way, it will and should be, since if every young person is instantly able to support himself or others with items, it wouldn't make any sense.
In EVERY game there is a diffrence between old and young players. And I think this is exactly how it should be, there should be a diffrence between a player who has played for 1.5 years, and another who has been playing for 1.5 days.

Roke · Post by **Roke** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 5:03 pm

Paul, if you want money... cold, silver money there are easier ways to acheive it then to become a master at something.

older players getting rich off new players

With some materials being in such high demand this is not the case in my oppinion in fact, the "smart" players, for lack of a better word coming to my mind can easily get rich off the older players...

Well, I guess that is all from me.

Faramier · Post by **Faramier** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 6:47 pm

How about, it being very hard to get to master as it should be, but not very hard to get to a decent level. We want to roleplay yes, but for that we need to be able to roleplay. Everyone knows it is impossible to roleplay as anything if you have no skills, you either die or remain broke for years, however if it is easy to get decent then the new players will not always be stuck in a rut.

Therefore I propose there should be a curve yes, but the curve should be very very shallow to start with, perhaps not a curve, perhaps a perfect positive correlation line (straight diagnol one) would be better?

Just a thought

Guingalan,

Loki Feuerhaar · Post by **Loki Feuerhaar** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 6:55 pm

I realy dont know why you say that you need Skills to Roleplay.
My Character is a Bard, he is telling stories and plays some Melodies on his instruments.(Just an example, but a good one)
I never used any skills to perform this role.

A learning curve might be usefull, but i think it is already in the game.

Loki

Brendan Mason · Post by **Brendan Mason** » Fri Jan 24, 2003 7:00 pm

I agree with Loki (for a change). I rarely use my skills to initiate role play.
I'm only too glad that most of the people whom think roleplay is "big troll come smashy smash....we use power of magic club to mash biggybaddy and maky skills go up to second "r""

Muten Rôshi · Post by **Muten Rôshi** » Sat Jan 25, 2003 1:15 am

With the old skill system, many people were able to master every skill easily. That pretty much means that they could do anything on their own, so they wouldn't need to get anything from another player. I think the new skill system encourages player interaction, since it is much harder to master anything, which is the way things should be. Nobody can become a master at something with only a day or two of experience. Concentrate on roleplaying, not skill gaining. This isn't the game for you if you are only interested in getting good skills. I think a logarithmic learning curve for skills would be a good way for skills to be learned, making things easy in the beginning, then hard and complex in later stages.

paul laffing · Post by **paul laffing** » Sat Jan 25, 2003 3:18 am

Everyone is changing my words around!

I am saying that it impedes roleplaying if you just sit around and practice your skills all day. Also, i agree that in real life, you are not going to master things immediately becuase TTT(things take time). You should at least become decent at them though. You can only smith so many daggers before you want to learn something new.

martin · Post by **martin** » Sat Jan 25, 2003 9:47 am

this is a beta version.
things will change and will cause disadvantages to certain groups of characters (new ones, old ones, magic users, swordfighters, carpenters, brown-eyed dwarfs with beards longer then 20 inches, lizzards who can't say "soups suffer some supernatural strains!", pantomimes, illiterate poets, ...). yes, it's not really fair, but: there's no other way then this (except for deleting ALL characters).

calm down, bear it like a hobbit,

martin

Drathe · Post by **Drathe** » Sat Jan 25, 2003 12:26 pm

Now that...that was good, Cant argue with that.

Bror · Post by **Bror** » Sat Jan 25, 2003 8:54 pm

Moyáve wrote: And about that comment that i have already heard several times, even from Gms: "You can't achieve anything"
Oh yes we can! I'm sure we can! We can. If we are enough people, they must listen to us. The Gms can't make changes against the will of the community that plays the game. ("We are the folk") If nobody plays their game anymore, they have to ask for our opinions. What would Illarion be without it's Players?

At least I can only be convinced by arguments. If there are 30 or 90% of the players against a change in the system, I don't care unless they have better arguments against the system then the others have in favor for it.

I will only comment on the points that were new here in the discussion and havent been commented on in the other threads with the same topic

Drathe wrote:The skill of a trade should be broken down into levels, each level taking more work than the last to progress through.

It has always been this way from the implementation of the first skill on.

Drathe wrote: 2) It will still take them a long time to become a master (as it should) but they can improove to a point in a fair time where they can support them selves finiancialy.

How much money do you need to "support yourself financialy"? Food is for free (apples, cherries), so you might need some money for some cloth.
A newbie can't make enough money to buy some new cloth every month?

Drathe wrote: 3) It keeps the variety of sale able things to a level, other than just black stones, chest and lumber axes.

If I go out on the street in my hometown, it is a fact, that I find a Ford or Volkswagen dealer without much searching. I don't see a Ferrari dealer in every street though. So maybe it is just usual, that you can't buy the more exquisite items at every corner from everyone? Maybe not every person is supposed to buy/own a firesword and platemail?

paul laffing wrote:
paul laffing wrote:Okay, i shall answer everyone. What i meant is that, all the older people are experts in at least one field. The new people find it extremely difficult to become a master at a skill, and have to depend on the older people for supplies. I read a message that said something about skill difficulty that increases as you get better. I like this idea.
Did anyone before Drathe read this or did you all skip over it?

OK, You wanted it.

It is ridiculous that all older players are experts in a field. People who tended to make more roleplaying didn't have the time nor had the need to do this. As you heard here Loki as a Bard doesn't need any skill to play.

Yes, it is true, that new people will depend on older ones for a while if they need extraordinary items. What is wrong with it, that you have to buy things instead of building it yourself? I haven't build my car on my own. Anyway, do you realy NEED the things, only older characters can provide? Can't you live without a platemail?

The learning curve thing has been there from the beginning on.

If anything in your post has been left uncommented, please reply.

Gurik Elvenstar · Post by **Gurik Elvenstar** » Sat Jan 25, 2003 9:00 pm

))[/quote]
If I go out on the street in my hometown, it is a fact, that I find a Ford or Volkswagen dealer without much searching. I don't see a Ferrari dealer in every street though. So maybe it is just usual, that you can't buy the more exquisite items at every corner from everyone? Maybe not every person is supposed to buy/own a firesword and platemail?

good point bror about everyone owning a firesword or platemail, i think this will make them more rare and more expensive ( i hope

)

paul laffing · Post by **paul laffing** » Sat Jan 25, 2003 11:31 pm

You said you have not built your own car, but you can make enough money to buy a car(hopefully). In other words, you don't need to make a car because your other skills support you. I hope you se my points.

Dyluck · Post by **Dyluck** » Sat Jan 25, 2003 11:36 pm

If you're not a blacksmith, you can do other things to make money so you can buy a platemail, just like you can to buy a car. The better you are a doing something, the more money you can make, but nobody ever said it would be fast and easy.

Serpardum · Post by **Serpardum** » Sun Jan 26, 2003 4:53 am

paul laffing wrote:You said you have not built your own car, but you can make enough money to buy a car(hopefully). In other words, you don't need to make a car because your other skills support you. I hope you se my points.

Okay, go out and work for one day, and then buy a new car with the money you made. It seems that most car loans (in the US anyway) are for 3 years.

paul laffing · Post by **paul laffing** » Sun Jan 26, 2003 7:14 pm

I see your point serpardum. But then what about the stock market? People get rich ober night (I know i'm just hanging by a thread

)