Helping the casual gamer

HolyKnight · Post by **HolyKnight** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:42 pm

Going from the title the people that play this game only a few times a week obviously do not gain much skill less they spend all that time pging. I want to throw this proposal out there to see what the community thought about it. What do you think about placing an NPC ig that would train certain skills for you while you were offline. I do not know if this can be scripted but I really think this will keep some gamers around longer. Obviously there would have to be conditions to the system so an Upper level skilled character doesnt get a swirlie a day and a lower character only gets 1 swirlie every three days. Also there would need to be a grace period say 24 or 48hrs where the person doesnt gain skill. This keeps people who gain skill all day from going to the npc and buy more training so when they log they get even more skillz.

Comments

Elsi · Post by **Elsi** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:56 pm

I don't like this idea, really. It think it would shift the emphasis towards skill values, and penalize those of us who actually have our characters practice IC. If there must be something, then it should have a 'skill cap' beyond which it won't have any effect at all.

HolyKnight · Post by **HolyKnight** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:01 pm

That just it people that do not play that often do not have much skillz at all. I am not saying make every character uber after they been gone for several weeks... 1-2 swirlies per week for adequately skilled folks to 5-10 swirlies for newbies is not an emphasis on skills. It is helpful to those that are not able to play everyday.

Rosendil · Post by **Rosendil** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:10 pm

I like the base idea behind this proposal.

What I dont like is a NPC where you can buy "training".

I already suggested multipe times to define a "daily work unit" (( tagewerk )) which restricts the quantity of items a crafter can produce every day. Additionally the "amount of training" should be increase by factor 20 or more.

Tailoring Example:
1 difficult item per day (e.g. dress or hunting armor). training effect: factor 25 compared to the current state.
or 2 medium difficult items per day (e.g. robe, coat, hat)
or 5 easy items per day (e.g. shoes, bags, shirt)

An additional benefit would be that there is much more time for RP instead of stupid work and senseless mass production.

[The given numbers/amounts are abstract and have to be fixed by the developers and shouldnt be part of the continued discussion]

Juliana D'cheyne · Post by **Juliana D'cheyne** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:32 pm

I would not like a "daily work unit" or cap, or whatever you would prefer to call it. But I like the idea of a char not being penalized for not being ig. Also playing on a game that gives skill for time ig..... whether RP or not.. there may be some that actually stay ig to skill, I haven't found that I do that with my chars though. This may just allow more RP time to those that have only a little.

Vern Kron · Post by **Vern Kron** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:49 pm

I don't like either of these ideas, because there will be some people who hit their cap, then log out after asking to be trained and play anouther char. Also, I do not like the working unit idea, because there are not very many crafters ig at times and if that person just made a large deal, than those online later or earlier than the large crowd, are done for.

Llama · Post by **Llama** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 10:40 pm

Well, personally I'd use this method:

You have a character (you only get to choose one), you choose a skill for him, and every day, he gains a tiny bit of skill. This way, the 'downtime' he spends (when you're not logged on) assumes he's actually training instead of staring into nihil.

You can log him in, but he wont get the benefit for that day. I would also make it 'needed' for you to log the character in for X hours / week to get the benefit, that way you don't just dump a character in storage, and turn up 1 year later with a grandmaster of stuff

.

My two cents.

Post by **Nitram** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 11:47 pm

I don't really get what you are discussing about.

Who invests more time into the game, plays longer and has more skills. Thats the only way it goes. We are not going to give you a skillgain while being out of the game, since that would keep even more people lurking around on the boards, instead of playing the game.

Nitram

Lrmy · Post by **Lrmy** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 12:23 am

TGFN - Thank God For Nitram

At higher levels this is easily abused anyways.

Mr. Cromwell · Post by **Mr. Cromwell** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 1:08 am

I have this idea, maybe it could be a little bit useful:

Nobody is penalised. Those who pow.. "have their characters practice IG"

, still can do so like they can currently.

However, spending only small quantities of time at once for training will, on the long run, offer a better time-to-skill increase than spending a lot of time on long training sessions.

The numbers, multipliers and whatever else in the following paragraphs are purely fictional. I don't really know much about the limits and mechanics of the skill system, so they only serve to explain the idea.

You get, say, two times as much 'points' towards a new level with the skill once you only perform a limited number of such actions per RL day. Training just, say 1-20 "skill increasing actions" (whatever those may be) a day, would give the x2 skillgain for that number of actions. In order not to cause any stress the players ("omg can I chop down the tree without losing the bonus?"), there would be a small "buffer" which would not give any bonus, but where working would increase skill just as normal, before the bonus starts to diminish due to too much working (lets say, 50% of the base-action amount, so 10 "actions", maybe giving a warning.. maybe not.*). This would net you with the maximum of 50 points towards skill increase in one day without removing the bonus, at the investment of time for 20 such actions. If a person would work more than 30 actions, the bonus would quickly erode away.

30 actions = Counted as 50 "actions"
31 actions -4 points of bonus (+1 for the action) = -3 = 47
32 actions -4 points of bonus (+1 for the action) = -3 = 44
33 actions -4 points of bonus (+1 for the action) = -3 = 41
34 actions -4 points of bonus (+1 for the action) = -3 = 38
35 actions -4 points of bonus (+1 for the action) = -3 = 35
Thus the skillgain situation would quickly return to normal.

Maybe there should be an additional check for having to spend a minimum time online on that day for the 'bonus' to apply for real, in order to really reward those people who spend the time on doing other stuff ingame than skilling.

People who do hundreds of actions a day would still gain massively more skill on the short run, while on the long run this way the 'non-skillers' would have a better skills-to-time investment, IMO.

The bonus should be small enough not to encourage people to stop training and making stuff (thus not really giving a visible return at first), but large enough to make difference for those people who play a lot but find the skill system to be a pain in the ass. The balancing, multipliers and the actual number of actions allowed in the system would be left to be decided for nitters or someone who really understands the system in detail.

People are pretty clever when they seek to 'gain' something, so I'm sure someone would eventually find a way to abuse this system (too, like every other) so please don't rule it out immediately because of that.

Whaddya think?

*If the people are let to know the actual details of the system, then the a "warning" would maybe be unnecessary. However, if the staff wishes to keep the details of the system as a secret or a little unpredictable, then a warning ("You work a lot"/"You will soon lose the free skills noob!" etc

) randomly triggering anywhere between the actions 20-32 (in the example) would be nice, in order to prevent people from "counting" the number of actions to maximise the skillgain every day. We don't take that kindly around here!

Mr. Cromwell · Post by **Mr. Cromwell** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 9:46 pm

Nitram, you lazy bugger, comment!

Post by **Nitram** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 10:01 pm

Nitram wrote:I don't really get what you are discussing about.

Who invests more time into the game, plays longer and has more skills. Thats the only way it goes. We are not going to give you a skillgain while being out of the game, since that would keep even more people lurking around on the boards, instead of playing the game.

Nitram

wolfsword · Post by **wolfsword** » Sun Jan 20, 2008 10:27 pm

those are called BOTS

Post by **Estralis Seborian** » Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:24 am

@Boss: I doubt teh_nitterz even read your post

. I understand the basics of your suggestion, have a look at this: http://illarion.org/community/forums/vi ... 365#461365 - some posts below, there is a german addition that corrects one flaw of the idea (proportional decrease of MC-points instead of constant). I guess your idea and mine have a lot in common. A new skill system won't come anytime soon, even the current one, that is not bad, does not get tweaked in a satisfying way. One of the reasons is, it works without bugs. And there are a lot of bugs that need to get fixed before somebody starts to fix a inbalanced yet bug free system. So... if anybody is able to code C++ and has some basic knowledge about control systems, feel free to offer your help

.