Skill books. :)

Keikan Hiru · Post by **Keikan Hiru** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 11:41 am

@Cassandra
Each failure means frustration, at least to me. So, losing a rare item like a skill manual to nothing, just because the RNG showed me the finger, would frustrate me to no end.
Since I think Illarion should be all but frustrating, I don't like the idea of (complete) failure at all.

Maybe I did not make it clear enough in my last post, but I consider these skill books as very rare items, that will not boost a new character into mid-range in a couple of moments.
Unless you find someone unloading huge amouts of books on your character, but this can be limited by reducing the MC points with each book you read.

I still think the skill gain in this game is random, you just increase your chance, that your next dice roll will yield a positive result.
Chance is still something random for me, of course after some time the game shows mercy to you when you filled your fail-o-meter enough and awards you with a skill point.
Cushioned randomess, if you ask me.

@Juliana
I acually have no idea if you just agreed or disagreed with me.

Kranek · Post by **Kranek** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 11:51 am

maybe...those books are so difficult to read that ya only achieve to read one a day or so? if ya failure...the book remains...but ya have to try it again tomorrow?

Juliana D'cheyne · Post by **Juliana D'cheyne** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 12:01 pm

Sorry I wasn't very plain. Fighting skill gain is fun with the varied monsters, attempting to figure which armor is best, using different weapons. Crafting is not fun, very boring and not personally fulfilling making one throw away item after another usually having to stand at an isolated table to achieve anything. If the table is not isolated you usually have another crafter there and the roleplay is skimpy at best. Look at how many crafters in the game compared to fighting. Actually I don't think there IS a pure crafter yet you can find plenty of pure fighters.

Back to topic, I would like crafting to be made as exciting to do as fighting and think ANY idea to achieve this would be helpful. Keikan, yes, I would agree to anything that would result in that end.

Each failure means frustration

/agreed
Crafting SEEMS to hit the skill cap quicker then fighting due to the nature of the crafting.... you can constantly do this until cap where fighting it is waiting for a spawn, making sure you don't get ghosted in the process of training, finding food etc. IF there was the possibility of that rare instance of helping boost the craft in the never-ending grind it would encourage more players to try. Whether a "book" or one of the gods bestowing a reward for good work IMO doesn't matter.

Cassandra Fjurin · Post by **Cassandra Fjurin** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 12:02 pm

what is wrong with randomness?

Would you think its better:
1.) on every try to increase a value by 1... if this value is 100 you get one skillpoint.
you have to make 100 actions to increase the skill.

2.) on every try you increase your chance by 1.
if you have bad luck you have to make 100 actions to increase the skill. After 50 unsuccesfull actions you chance will be 50%.

P.S. we think about completely remove the whole mc system. If you think "the cap for crafting is hit to fast." tell this a member of the technical staff. The cap is not static. We can adjust it for each skillcategory. (We cant increase the cap only for crafting but we can reduce the points which you get for a crafting actions so the time to hit the cap will be longer)

Juliana D'cheyne · Post by **Juliana D'cheyne** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 12:40 pm

Just to interject and clarify, I don't think adjusting the skill cap of crafting would help at all. It is the boring part of doing the same click/make bad product/drop something/fail/click/made product. Adding an unexpected even rare thing like a book to look forward to would help.

Keikan Hiru · Post by **Keikan Hiru** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 2:10 pm

Cassandra Fjurin wrote:what is wrong with randomness?

This entirely depends how RNG is applied to something.

If RNG goes like:
You fail, better luck next time. (I give you a +1 on your next dice, so you need only to fail 99 times more to auto-win.)
Then, in my opinion, RNG sucks.

If RNG goes like:
You succeed. Lets see how successful you are.
In this case you are giving the player a positive feedback, he gets a reward for the action he just did and RNG is just used to set the amount of reward he recives.

Even if Illarion uses the later example, it does not carry this message over to the player and frustrates you when you think you just wasted another click/ressources/time/etc.

Tanistian_Kanea · Post by **Tanistian_Kanea** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 12:30 am

my toughts?

books or other items attainable by those that powergame? no

some way for non powergamers to not be blown out of the water and actually do something usefull in the game without needing to play the same character for more then a year? yes

ways of doing this? perhaps some equivelant to WoW sleep, which we sorta have already (concentration). though i think it would be good to go both ways, i know i can only train a skill for about half hour at a time if i'm watching tv or something (i hate skilling up, absolutely hate it, that goees for just about all skills)

the npc's are in work, i am currently working on one however slowly because if i can show i can do that maybe they will let me script more interesting things. this will do what the books proposed will do.

i have not read all posts, to long boring and full of nothing.

Alli Zelos · Post by **Alli Zelos** » Sat Oct 03, 2009 5:45 am

Hm... Maybe, instead of giving you skill directly, the books just speed up your rate of skilling? Or increase your cap? I'm not really sure how much good either of those would do... Me sleepy.

Cassandra Fjurin · Post by **Cassandra Fjurin** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:28 am

Alli Zelos wrote:Hm... Maybe, instead of giving you skill directly, the books just speed up your rate of skilling? Or increase your cap? I'm not really sure how much good either of those would do... Me sleepy.

I really like this idea.

Tanistian_Kanea · Post by **Tanistian_Kanea** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 6:30 pm

Alli Zelos wrote:Hm... Maybe, instead of giving you skill directly, the books just speed up your rate of skilling? Or increase your cap? I'm not really sure how much good either of those would do... Me sleepy.

has the same problem that powergamers can get there hands on it. this needs to be something powergamers won't be able to get. this way those that rp most of the time and do next to no skilling (people like me) can actually do SOMETHING ig.

Vern Kron · Post by **Vern Kron** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 4:57 am

... Like Roleplay?

Tanistian_Kanea · Post by **Tanistian_Kanea** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:10 am

@korn: while roleplaying a begger is all well and good i would actually like SOME money to spend on SOME things. you know what i meant when i said do something IG. someone who does not gain skill cannot even ROLEPLAY, a renown smith, be a baker, lead the army, lead the gaurd, without money you can not own a house or almost anything else for that matter, you cannot be a good carpenter, you cannot be a good tailor, you cannot be a miner, lumberjack or farmer. in fact without SOME skill you cannot roleplay much of anything IG. herbalism has apparently mass PG requirements, magic the same. without skill what exactly do you suggest we roleplay as?

the most stuff i get is given to me. besides. this game does (however much people do not want to admit it) work around powergaming (start most obvious flaming, yelling and usual histeria about how it doesn't... don't care) we really need something to help those that can only get on once or twice a week or less and still want to have a chance to be good at something. right now for instance it would be stupid for me to be a smither because it would take me like 10 years to get light green... as with alot of games (this one included) those that cannot get on regularly are left behind, i am saying anything along these lines should be here to help bumb them up. because otherwise it's just discouraging, coming on that one time a week and seeing your compitition 3 times farther then you when you started at the same time, or even worse when you started before him. am i the only one who has this problem? (and yes i spend the vast majority of my time roleplaying)

Athian · Post by **Athian** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:13 am

Tanistian_Kanea wrote:
Alli Zelos wrote:Hm... Maybe, instead of giving you skill directly, the books just speed up your rate of skilling? Or increase your cap? I'm not really sure how much good either of those would do... Me sleepy.
has the same problem that powergamers can get there hands on it. this needs to be something powergamers won't be able to get. this way those that rp most of the time and do next to no skilling (people like me) can actually do SOMETHING ig.

Impossible. Any character can can become a Powergamer and anyone can RP. so are we going to label some people PGer's and some people RPer's in ooc then only reward those who don't like to raise there skills through actual work?

remember, everyone has the OPTION to skill up or not skill up. Those who are choosing to RP more and never raise there skills cannot call foul, because they have every oppurtunity to do just the same as the skiller but they choose not to. instead we want to give the non-skiller a technical freebie when there is no technical disadvantage to why they can't raise their skills, and give the skiller a technical disadvantage(more or less a punishment) for doing nothing but using the technical part of the game that keeps us in the world above Text-based RPGs...

how about no...

Tanistian_Kanea · Post by **Tanistian_Kanea** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:18 am

Athian i have one question for. what about the people who can only get on 2 hours a week? what do they get..., oh to bad... you can't be a functional part of the ig community without skill and since your not here that much you don't have very much skill.. so sad for you... To bad about your luck...

LOVE THAT attitude. actually i don't. that was sarcasm. I ******* hate that attitude.

Edit: also Athian. your post seems to say the exact opposite everything else does on acting IG. this would include, powergaming is bad, roleplaying is good. i THOUGHT this was a ROLEPLAYING game. so why do you not want to ENCOURAGE people to ROLEPLAY by making it easier for them to skill. you apparently think it is a bad idea to encourage people to roleplay. GOOD SHOW... again sarcasm... so to say this plainly. Yes i think roleplayers should be given a break on be able to skill and yes i think powergamers should be short sided. and i'll check, but i thought powergaming was actually against the rules, of course, i could be wrong.

Edit: I checked. It is in the rules. it is number 11 in game rules "Powergaming". it states "Carrying out an action repeatedly in a way not related to roleplaying with the sole purpose to raise skills is called Powergaming, and is forbidden."

on a side note: you would still gain more skill from powergaming. this is simply to encourage ROLEPLAYING.

Athian · Post by **Athian** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:28 am

Tanistian_Kanea wrote:Athian i have one question for. what about the people who can only get on 2 hours a week? what do they get..., oh to bad... you can't be a functional part of the ig community without skill and since your not here that much you don't have very much skill.. so sad for you... To bad about your luck...

LOVE THAT attitude. actually i don't. that was sarcasm. I ******* hate that attitude.

I'm not seeing the problem. even if you only have that two hours a week you can skill a bit and still RP. I think the major problem is no one wants to be an "okay" carpenter or and "okay warrior."

They can't have 30% carpentry skill or 30% parry (something you can get in a matter of a week without trying)and be happy, they have to be the BEST carpenter as fast as possible. they have to be a super warrior as good as every other as fast as possible. The only thing good enough for people is being the best of the best, if not they could be happy with the slow skill gain over a long period of time.

If you can't play alot then yes i feel bad for you, skill a little bit each time you can and accept that maybe you won't have your super character right away. Your skills aren't going down over time or anything like that, even alittle bit of work can compile into reasonable amounts of skill. Short cuts don't seem needed to me

Vern Kron · Post by **Vern Kron** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:31 am

My reply to all of this:
If you are going to roleplay being a warrior, should you not do warrior activities? To PG would basically be doing something without reason, to kill time. To gather skill in the desired areas, while still considered pg'ing, can be just as much roleplay. Just get some one to go with you.

Tanistian_Kanea · Post by **Tanistian_Kanea** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:33 am

I cannot believe there is so much resistance in the illarion community to encourage roleplaying. what is there currently in place that does this?

Athian · Post by **Athian** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:37 am

Tanistian_Kanea wrote:I cannot believe there is so much resistance in the illarion community to encourage roleplaying. what is there currently in place that does this?

this idea isn't encouraging roleplay, its just ostracizing some players. Who is going to keep the invisible list that decides who skills too much to be considered a good enough RPer and can't have skill books? You?

I don't think this idea is fair at all

Vern Kron · Post by **Vern Kron** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 5:39 am

.... Its not against roleplaying. Its against people not roleplaying a journey. Everyone wants to be the best. And if everyone is the best, then we may as well all just quit. Fights will be even. Magic won't matter. Crafting will become rediculous because everyone wants to sell at the lowest price to beat out their infinete competition.

The effort you put in, is what you should expect to do. If you are not training to fight, but you claim that you are an amazing warrior from the mainland, then as time progresses your character begins to forget how to fight, and gets out of shape. Perfect RP reason.

If your are a mage, then if you don't use the memorized formulas, and so forth enough, then it will, ofcourse, be forgotten.

Roleplay IG is more than just the "Oooh! Look! I can do this really cool stuff!" Its also the, "I just arrived on the island, and have nothing. I will strive to become better."

Edit: Besides, what is the most fascinating story ever?

A character, who starts in the begining of the book, has abilities handed to him, has them mastered in a few days, and therefore is equal to many other characters in the book, and then leaves to go to other places at which point the book ends?

Or:

The struggle of fighting through even at sometimes slow progress. The pain and agony of defeat. The high of triumph. When that crafter, can smile broadly as he passes up the competition, or when that mage manages to cast a complete circle stone spell, or when the warrior defeats his first red skeleton, or his 100th lich?

Putting this in would destroy many points in many current systems. Who wants to make pins, when they know not many people want them, and when they do they won't get skill by making them -and- it takes hours to do?

Who would gather fur and entrails?

What would be the point in making something difficult, when you can just read a book and get it without a problem?

Instant gratification is not an excuse for handing out skill points. Maybe make the system easier to use/understand, but throwing skill points out to anyone who can roleplay would destroy the point of a skill system.

Tanistian_Kanea · Post by **Tanistian_Kanea** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 6:02 am

what part of. "powergaming (or skill regularly) will still give way more skill then this would" did you miss?

lets say i get 3 points a week (being generous here)

powergaming can get 30 (this probably isn't enough, idk)

what do i want?

for me to get 4, or maybe, crazy thought here. 5 points a week. which would be almost double what i would normally get but still 7.5-6 times LESS then the powergamer. now this is being generous. I might get 1 point a week as of right now, powegamer might get 50 but idk what they are capable of. so where a powergamer can be a good ____ in a month. it would take me a year or more. and you have no idea how frustrating that is when i don't even have the choice because i can't get the time to on. is this making sense to ANYONE else other then myself?

Athian · Post by **Athian** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 6:17 am

Tanistian_Kanea wrote:what part of. "powergaming (or skill regularly) will still give way more skill then this would" did you miss?

lets say i get 3 points a week (being generous here)

powergaming can get 30 (this probably isn't enough, idk)

what do i want?

for me to get 4, or maybe, crazy thought here. 5 points a week. which would be almost double what i would normally get but still 7.5-6 times LESS then the powergamer. now this is being generous. I might get 1 point a week as of right now, powegamer might get 50 but idk what they are capable of. so where a powergamer can be a good ____ in a month. it would take me a year or more. and you have no idea how frustrating that is when i don't even have the choice because i can't get the time to on. is this making sense to ANYONE else other then myself?

If you don't have the time to skill up then why don't you do that miracluous thing you love so much called Roleplaying instead. Skill gain is exceptionally easy in its beginning and requires very few actions to skill up (with most skills) as such there will never be a situation where you have so little time that you can NEVER skill, unless you plan to play 5 minutes a day once per week and even then you are bound to gain some skill.

So you can't fight the strongest monsters until few months in because you don't have alot of time.Why is that so terrible? So you can't craft the best armor after a month of play and someone else can. As you said the game is based on Roleplay after all, so it shouldnt' even matter that your character is slow going with skills.

What you seem to be saying is that you want to be able to have a chance to compete technically with other players but have the luxury of doing less work

And i'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. What i'm against is anything that is going to make an OOC distinction between players. PGer (skiller, whatever) is not a player race or a class, its simply someone who happens to have more time then a non-skiller. Are we to make a list of characters with most play time, then make a script that prevents all such characters from using skill books? Then when those character perhaps lose time to play we then have to disable this magical "anti" script so they may use books? All so you can get a little more skill?

lets not and say we did..

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:23 am

This is straying from the topic of skill books, but it's a point I'd like to address about skill gain in general. The short of it, I've always thought that characters should receive some amount of skill based simply on the character 'aging' (in terms of time since creation). Here's my idea for an execution that wouldn't be too sloppy. I worked out quite a few more details, but I think including them would be a bit overwhelming. Here's the basics.

Every day after a character had trained a skill, they would receive some fraction of that skill without having to use it, or even log on. The fraction would be determined by exponential decay. I think the solution covers all the criteria of what I would look for in a solution

-A player who gains skill every day will gain skill more rapidly than a player who gains skill only occasionally. Time spent is rewarded.

-Skills need to be used to be improved.

-Exploitation is limited, a character will gain no skill if not played at all.

-If 2 characters gain the same amount of skill through 'powergaming' the 'vetern' character will be more skilled.

-Players can gain skill without directly investing time. That time can be spent roleplaying.

-Characters are given 'credit' for time the player is offline. Someone who has played a carpenter for a year, but has limited skill building time, can still become a passable carpenter.

As I mentioned, I have quite a few more notions related to this idea.

Cassandra Fjurin · Post by **Cassandra Fjurin** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 9:49 am

I really understand both opinions. But i don't like a system where anyone who trains less than another can earn the same experience. Its like someone in RL wants have much muscles but hasn't enough time to train them. And crys around: "Why can't i get muscles by reading books" He can increase the chance by reading a book "how to train right" but he has to train. And not only 2 hours a week.

The second point here: If i had to train 4 months over several hours a day. Spend much time for my char. It would be unfair for me that someone who has not done this work will have the same skill.

currently i have no clues how to solve this problem. Some ways to gain some basic skill without training to much, will be implemented.

Juliana D'cheyne · Post by **Juliana D'cheyne** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 10:55 am

I am speaking of crafting only at present.:
I like the idea of a boost in skill gain to help a NEW player. Basically however, that and the idea of "I have to be tops in that skill" comes from the fact that anything lower brings no copper (has no reward). A char can barely survive having to constantly buy new tools, sell for meager profit if actually find where to sell to some NPC, going through tons of skill caps on low to average skill. In fact, most chars wind up having to pay more then they receive in order to "learn"

Fighting:
IMO needs no boost, it is not easy, but do-able to make a fighter and skill.

Mage:
I am hoping one day there will be an update to make the process easier.

As far as time in game and earning skill...the more a char is in game whether RP or skilling in their profession (which btw I understood was not considered PGing) the more that char should be able to learn.

Cassandra Fjurin · Post by **Cassandra Fjurin** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:00 am

Juliana D'cheyne wrote:I am speaking of crafting only at present.:
I like the idea of a boost in skill gain to help a NEW player. Basically however, that and the idea of "I have to be tops in that skill" comes from the fact that anything lower brings no copper (has no reward). A char can barely survive having to constantly buy new tools, sell for meager profit if actually find where to sell to some NPC, going through tons of skill caps on low to average skill.

This seems no problem of the learn process. Its more a problem of the current Illarion economy. Currently there where some decisions made to force a Player VS Player trade. (NPC's buy less items, sell only very bad items) But in my eyes this is a bad way. We have to less players to force such trading. The NPC's should be changed so they buy newbie products for a moderate amount of copper.

Juliana D'cheyne · Post by **Juliana D'cheyne** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:11 am

I agree, IMO the skills are not bad, it is the lack of reward to new players and those with just moderate skills. If the reward was greater some players may be more satisfied with "moderate" skills in order to buy a house or do other things they would like for their chars. Players wouldn't have to feel they had to be 100% skilled to enjoy the game. More reward and the possibility of "getting rich" should still be with the upper skilled but I think a LOT of players would be happy with moderate versus tops in some fields.

Whether using skill books for new players, or adjusting the NPC's giving more reward for time spent at the lower to medium end of a skill IMO would keep more players ig and encourage new players to stay.

Cassandra Fjurin · Post by **Cassandra Fjurin** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:26 am

currently i am thinking on something like "offline training". On the island you have different trainers. If you ask them to train you he becomes your master. If you log out, the npc trains you. You get some "training points" for each hour you had logged out. If you log in, you can spend money and you earned training points to have a large learn effect. This learn effect will be less than normal training. But for someone who can only log in twice a week its a chance to increase his skill.

Juliana D'cheyne · Post by **Juliana D'cheyne** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:37 am

But for someone who can only log in twice a week its a chance to increase his skill.

Others may disagree, however I think the time in game should be rewarded, and those that aren't/can't get in game or have more then one char they want to play so don't play one of them to skill that much still have opportunity to skill without an added feature. I know a few PO's that simply make RP chars not trying to skill due to the time factor.

Cassandra Fjurin · Post by **Cassandra Fjurin** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 12:03 pm

Juliana D'cheyne wrote:
But for someone who can only log in twice a week its a chance to increase his skill.
Others may disagree, however I think the time in game should be rewarded, and those that aren't/can't get in game or have more then one char they want to play so don't play one of them to skill that much still have opportunity to skill without an added feature. I know a few PO's that simply make RP chars not trying to skill due to the time factor.

You won't get any skills for standing around campfires and talk. If you want become better: train your char... maybe books will increase the training rate but nothing more. You cant estimate that doing nothing more than talk will increase your skill.

Alli Zelos · Post by **Alli Zelos** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:54 am

Maybe allow different leveled trainers aswell? The higher your skill becomes in something, the more you must pay a trainer to teach you. And then stop the ability to be trained altogether after a certain skill level is reached. Just a thought.