Who likes it being 10x harder to gain skills?

Warmie · Post by **Warmie** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 2:16 am

Who likes that its 10x hard to gain skills?

Astral · Post by **Astral** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 2:19 am

The idea when making a game is not to make it extremely easy to master. Tell me this, if every skill took two minutes to max, would you be happy?

Serpardum · Post by **Serpardum** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 7:24 am

Illarion is not a game of skills, but of doing. What you do defines you, not how skillful you are.

If you are interested in raising skills quickly and defeating the monsters quickly, then perhaps, to be honest, Illarion is not the game for you.

Some of the most respected people in the realm don't even fight. Or cast magic. I'm speaking of the merchants, the traders, the story tellers,

There is conflict in the land, to be sure, but a good portion of the time the enemy lies within and can not be beaten with cold steel or a powerful magic, but by foresite, observance and patience.

You have your own story, and it is not one of slaying many monsters, have you found it yet?

James · Post by **James** » Thu Dec 26, 2002 12:50 pm

it being 10x harder is abit of a bugger when you die but apart from that its fine

James · Post by **James** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 8:27 pm

maybe you could make them 10x harder to loose when you die to even it out

urk · Post by **urk** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 10:10 pm

i think 10x harder is just too much maybe 5x or something because it might be ok for traders and other peaceful people but if you are a warrior you might die a lot and your skills will be each time lower so its useless to be a warrior since you cant raise your skills without danger like a merchant.

i think its good its harder than before but this is TOO HARD.

vinizious · Post by **vinizious** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 10:19 pm

Serpardum said:

>llarion is not a game of skills, but of doing. What you do defines you, >not how skillful you are.

>If you are interested in raising skills quickly and defeating the monsters >quickly, then perhaps, to be honest, Illarion is not the game for you.

Well I can say that if you just want roleplay, a graphic environment like Illarion is not needed. Use a chat system for pure roleplaying.

RolePlay includes skill gaining. At least enough to maintain certain interest in working in things like carpentry or fishing...

Come on, thinks must be not so easy but I have been practising carpentry for an hour and no change seen in my skill. I do not mean to return to previous system, but making it so hard is not a nice way to make a growing community of people in a virtual environment like Illarion.

Well, if you want to be a closed comunity, this is the right way.

Please excuse my english, I am Spanish and my English language skill is not growing anymore...

Vinizious the Great.

Kringin · Post by **Kringin** » Fri Dec 27, 2002 10:34 pm

This new system rather disturbed me and many of my friends. I would be really unhappy if they leave this game. If you make it even 5x harder it would be a relief to many. Being a warrior and a merchant isnt very easy to come by, you die a lot you loose skill and the loosing skill weighs more than gaining even a little, which now would take weeks. If you wish to keep this 10x then stop people from loosing skill. It is too easy to lose skill rather then to gain even a shard. This is like mining and never finding a peice of ore.

Hermie · Post by **Hermie** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 1:28 am

@ Urk, I think that it being the supposed '10x harder' was aimed more at the fighters than anyone else. This is because of the problem with new players becoming warriors quickly then going on rampages . . . It is more realistic.

Warmie · Post by **Warmie** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 8:43 am

I agree with Kringin.... he has a point there

Hermie · Post by **Hermie** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 10:32 am

Perhaps different skills should have different levels of difficulty to improve. For example, Lumberjacking is an easy skill to improve on as all you need do is chop down a tree and cut off its branches and so on, but carpentering is difficult because (if you took woodword in school like me, you will find out) it is rather complex with many different tecniques to develop (and after 2 years I still suck at it!).

Lennier · Post by **Lennier** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 12:14 pm

@Kringin & Warmie

To max skills in short time is your target of this game? If gaining of skills becomes harder, illarion wouldn`t make fun? You & your friends would leave illarion?

- Nice... Good Luck to find a new game...

Caranthir the great · Post by **Caranthir the great** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 6:29 pm

I am all for making the skillgain more challenging.
Quite honestly the one-day mastersmiths/carpenters and mages were annoying me.
I see only one problem, the skill drop.
The skill drop might prove to be problematic since the skills are not so easy to gain anymore. People are expected to Roleplay, we do that.
We sit around campfires, drink, tell stories, trade, talk and have fun.
But after a while concentrating on the roleplaying aspects, our skills will go down. In order to re-gain them, we must use 10x more amount of time on just keep our skills, time which we could use to roleplaying. The longer time we roleplay, the longer time we must use to 'powergame'.

Yours, Caranthir.

Quain · Post by **Quain** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 6:32 pm

I agree with Caranthir, if your going to make it 10X harder to develop skills, you should at least make it somewhat harder to lose them also.

Warmie · Post by **Warmie** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 8:57 pm

Yeah cause wouldnt you hate it if you were minng and some sniper kills you and with the mining lag you cant get to the cross in time and most of your skills go down..

James · Post by **James** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 10:16 pm

i know how that feels thats happend so much recently that my skills have been reduced to nothing an im having to alot of the time leave my friends to try and return to at least a shell of my former self

Roke · Post by **Roke** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 11:34 pm

Skills go down when you talk to people?

Adano Eles · Post by **Adano Eles** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 11:35 pm

No, they go down when you don't use them.

Freaper · Post by **Freaper** » Sat Dec 28, 2002 11:37 pm

what??
really???
they go down if i don't use them?

Serpardum · Post by **Serpardum** » Sun Dec 29, 2002 12:53 am

I do know know where this rumor came about, but skills do not go down with anthrophy. Skills do not go down if you do not use them.

Skills only go down if you die.

Shi'voc · Post by **Shi'voc** » Sun Dec 29, 2002 12:58 am

at least for now

@serpardum: don't take away all the rumours

it's boring without them

and maybe some rumours come true sometimes...

in fact, i used to play tibia before (long ago

) and there was always the rumour of rings having effects on the wearer..
there was no such effect for years.. but recently the rings all got effects...

so at least the rumour turned true... (and it was often repeated among the players during the years of it being just a rumour

)

ps: somehow i seem to abuse smilies if i look at my post again.. well, who cares

Kringin · Post by **Kringin** » Mon Dec 30, 2002 2:52 am

Lennier.. i must say you are quick to "TRY" to predict what i think, well let me just say YOU ARE WRONG!

I have been playing this game for over a year, you really think i want to get skills quickly? This would make the game most definately boring. Might I suggest you to take increase you deducyion skills before you make someone mad you know

I came to an idea that when you die you loose skills you earned from your previous activities. I must agree with venizious about just having a text chat system if ya want only roleplay. I also favor the idea of Hermie making deiferent skills with different difficulties, seems fair to me. Then i can finally sit back and sell like the old days

even if I am not good at anything.

Yours truly Kringin, Ridder of the PK'rs and partial merchant and warrior

Sir Gannon · Post by **Sir Gannon** » Tue Dec 31, 2002 9:16 am

Bunch of light blinded fools. I LOVE the new skill decrease. You know why?
Because it helps to stop pk's, It DEFINITLY helps to stop powergamers, AND It adds a sense of realizm to the game. Think about it. When have you ever been able to become a master in days,,, weeks,, months or even YEARS, Comon people this IS a game ya know I mean think about it when we die in real we dead ssoooo why not when you die in a GAME loose a little skill its like being brought back has made you weaker. THATS how you have to think about it. Heck I hope the next thing that they do is make everything 10X harder to suceed in! like Instead of just making a potion cause youre high skill why not still have a chance you will miss over 3/4 the time that will solve the SMACC problem cause everything hard to make will cost more (( known fact )) And It would say stop powergamers from constantly guzzling potions. So all im saying is get used to it. This isnt the old Pk over run game we used to know.

And Sorry for spelling and being a little angry im just tired of hearing people whine about working a little harder.....

Cain Freemont · Post by **Cain Freemont** » Tue Dec 31, 2002 10:22 am

Here's the deal....Im pretty convinced (thanks to this system) that I am NEVER going to try gaining skills again...it would be ridiculous to bother...BUT however the problem STILL REMAINS in merchantry....With this system...only the merchants will have the upper hand in anything and the rich will only get richer, while the poor get poorer...Its like we are slowly being forced into some twisted set standard where fighters are blockheaded, steel-weilders and merchants are coniving, money-grubbers...It'll get old real fast being forced to play those kinds of roles...I admired Illarion's diversity where you werent forced by some system of that to only choose basically one profession..but where you could range in a nearly limitless variety of skills...For instance...you could be a druid, glassblower, miner, herbslore, and to throw something out there as a hobby...uhm....peasantry....why not? The way this is working..people will be forced to follow one profession their entire lives in hopes of acheiving some goal...Sure it may be realistic...but Role-playing isnt only about realism.... I hope you will not misinterpret me and think of my words as coming from some powergaming hack-n-slasher who has no regard for RP...which was implied by a certain GM..not so long ago..You know who you are..that hurt when you said that...

Sincerely yours,

Serpardum · Post by **Serpardum** » Tue Dec 31, 2002 10:41 am

Actually, Cain, I was thinking about that just today... that it would cause more people to specialize.

But, realistically, it is just as easy to get skills now as it was before, it just simply takes longer to get the same effects.

Yes, warriors are going to have a harder time of it, as they are the ones that die the most often. And this hurts my character a lot. Serpardum is a blacksmithing warrior. No magic, no druid potions. Though a series of experiments and such I wound up dying a number of times, devastating my warrior skills and other skills in general. But since I don't change my chars stats, I'm living with it.

And being able to make better items in blacksmithing now means a heck of a lot more to me than it did before.

At 10x the cost, it becomes 10x more rewarding.

Cain Freemont · Post by **Cain Freemont** » Tue Dec 31, 2002 11:25 am

Hmm..well..that didnt really offer much of a response to my "Rich getting richer/poor getting poorer" scenario...but I suppose it sure is better than having my words misinterpreted for being completely frank. I still think that skill difficulty is dramatically increased for the wrong reasons...I honestly doubt that it was implemented to add a challenge to the game, but more a way of screwing over powergamers (which is great, except it applies to all of us..) I think that the problem with the 10x is...even though it is more difficult to get powergamers stronger...it is more difficult now to raise skill high enough to fend off these elusive powergamers (who will powergame even more to gain their skill..). Therefore..it, in turn, becomes more difficult to oh I dont know...protect the town...like my character likes to do so much...Unfortunately..due to an untimely crap-over of my character's skills in a well-known quest, he can no longer protect as well as he did...actually, hardly at all now. He has to run around with two shields begging for people not to kill him practically...which of course he does not do, because he is full of pride and wants to defend his friends. So as you see...making things more difficult only proves to reveal the hiding problem...the fact that powergamers still lurk about like filthy parasites, ready to strike at almost any time. I am, honestly, all for the increase in the difficulty of skills..but the bar was raised much to high to meet the standards of...I'll just have to cope with the sadistic fact that I will never really be able to accomplish a regain of my character's skills without powergaming, which I do not intend to waste my mana potions doing!

Sincerely yours,

Serpardum · Post by **Serpardum** » Tue Dec 31, 2002 11:40 am

(( edited about 10 times ))

Cain: I agree that powergaming is a problem. I am just waiting for a list from the account person to turn the full application system live.

I agree, this will not get rid of 100% of powergamers, PKers, or powergaming PKers, but it should reduce it by a larger number.

Now if your character is banned/deleted you can no longer just snicker and make a new character and powertrain again. This should reduce the number of such "problem" characters by a factor greater than 10.

Skill gain reduction does seem to be a whole lot of side effects, however. And, as you state, merchants getting the upper hand does seem to be one of them.

I really don't think that the reason for making skill gain so much harder was ever intended to address any one issue other than gaining skills was too easy. It was just too easy to gain skills and hence boring/not as fun/rewarding/challenging as it could be. When I first came into the game and started mining/blacksmithing I found it rediculously easy to gain skills as a blacksmith. There are other changes in the works specifically designed for powergamers. This was not one of them.

I am sure that in the time to come the game is going to have to be rebalanced. The game is currently balanced based on the old figures of skill gain/skill loss. I do know for a fact, however, that it was desired to make death mean a whole lot more than it did before. There were a lot of other penalties planned for death to make it less desireable, but it seems that for a "normal" player this would not have to be done. In fact, it may need to be reduced a little. But this does not address young characters dying as they don't tend to loose anywhere as much.

This is a beta in development, and there is going to have to be adjustments made as desired things are added, undesirable things are removed. Each will effect some other part of the game.

One of the reasons that I died so much was to judge the effects of skill loss on death, and how bad it would effect characters. I can tell you, it effects you tremendously!

Cain Freemont · Post by **Cain Freemont** » Tue Dec 31, 2002 12:01 pm

.......

I was just *waiting* for you to actually cover all the bases in a topic I bring up...I knew you could do it!

Now that you did it though..I cannot think of a way to respond...I had it all figured out in my head of how to keep the heated discussion going...but now its all blank...maybe its just too early in the morning. Anyways, nice work with defending yourself...uhm..I think I am off to bed in a few minutes, so have fun!

Sincerely,
Your Master Debator, (yes, yes, pun intended)

Dyluck · Post by **Dyluck** » Tue Dec 31, 2002 12:22 pm

Just one thing. The "being easy to raise skills" is highly relative to the way the game works right now compared to roleplaying, in that you can make 10 swords in 20 seconds kind of thing. If you only made say 1 sword a day, you wouldn't find that it's so easy to raise skills. But the way the task is supposed to be roleplayed hardly matches with real time or the profit factor. Just pointing this out, not that I have any proposal for change.

Caranthir the great · Tue Dec 31, 2002 12:24 pm

Cain, you state that we merchants are getting upper hand, why?
Because we don't need skills to do our job?
Perhaps whay you say is true, but I think that this goes only to those merchants who mainly trade resources. (wood, ore, coal, nuggets, sand, ect)

That is because of one thing, these darn unbreakable items.
I admit it, most of my income comes from selling things to Eliza, and I never expect to sell all the weapons in my stock to players, ever.
Don't get me wrong, I do buy items from other players, even blacksmithed items that my stock is full, but I buy these items only from friends, and not all the time.
Resources are the thing that ha always demand, too bad that I deal them just occasionally.
So we need other stuff that gets broken, other than shovels and axes.

Sorry if I lost the point somewhere, or didn't even have one in the beginning, I am not a morning person.

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