Shattered Kingdoms

I could be wrong but I'm fairly sure D has acknowledged many problems that are caused in game by high character turn over rates. In fact, I believe that was one of the major reasons for increasing the difficulty of leveling the upper levels.

Lei Kung

Mastering skills and spells has nothing to do with turn over rates, and the turn over rate isn't established until ALL of an existing cabal/tribunal/religion deletes.

Anyway, if players still delete at a supposed alarming rate then changing it so that skills are easier to learn probably won't affect this because they simply do not care whether or not the skills are mastered.

It is a waste of resources to try to get people to stick with characters by making it more difficult for people to level or increase in skill levels. It is a limitation on tactics since it forces us to grind endlessly, and pointlessly on NPCs to the point where it just becomes mindless. That's not fun at all.

It also forces us to cut ourselves away from interaction with other players and characters in the game by forcing us to find time to go improve in these abilities, instead of being able to just arm a weapon and know that you will be able to get improvements at a steady rate by being with a group in whatever exploration/item gathering that they're doing.

Instead of coming up with hollow gestures to punish other players and make us feel better because we're sticking with a character, why don't we find better things to do with our time, like actually roleplay and adventure and PK.

I've GMed two characters since these changes have come into play, and both of them in under 150 hours. These changes don't affect the people that they're supposed to affect. Garanol and Peso can still roll their GMs in a fraction of the time it takes other people.

It does, however, make it incredibly difficult for a person starting out in the game to get anywhere.

Get out this thread with this stupid crap about turnover rates and finger pointing. Changing the rate at which players can master weapon classes will have no effect on any of this. Quit making shallow suggestions; each more useless than the last.

Why bother making so many weapon classes when its impractical to work with them all because of the mindless work needed to have a character become efficient with it. If he's using it then it should become easier for him to use it. If not, then he won't become better.

I can't believe people are argueing against you on this one Cyra.

Cyra's idea is good.

Cyra is still dead-on. Character recreation rates are, from everything I can see, entirely unrelated to skill mastery.

Cyra, I was just pointing out that high character turn over rates is a problem. As far as what you are suggesting, I’m undecided. I will say the idea that it forces us to cut away from PC interaction isn’t the case. It might pull from PK or exploration but nothing is stopping a player from venturing out with a crappy weapon and lower level character to perfect that those skills. And I believe there is some value in “players earning” those perfected skills, the same as enchants are random rather then selected.

But I agree it is a grind to perfect those skills which can/does take away from time that can be spent doing other things. And I believe there is merit in considering increasing the perfecting of certain “core” skills/spells. So I’m torn right now between reducing the grind and “player earning” those skill increases.

Lastly, I’m not convinced that player turn over rates have anything to do with the easy of skill perfection. I believe there are better ways of increasing character longevity that have nothing to do with leveling/skill increases.

Lei Kung

We're not discussing character longevity.

We're discussing learning rates of spells.

And you're wrong, you'll still have to pick up a weapon and earn those ranks, or use those skills to improve the ranks. It is not as if they're being handed to players on a silver platter.

No, no, skills should improve at the same rate as EACH OTHER (or scaled in a practical way by their power).

For instance: Tame. With no lag, you can master tame in a minute or two of spam. The Hammer horsie skill. When you call a steed before the wait period is up, it counts as a fail, which ticks the skill. Ok, maybe these are examples of (slight) abuse. How about shield block? I'm shocked at how easy it was to master. I rolled a dimwitted giant alt to test something, and he mastered shield block by jman.

Then, there's other stuff, which takes forever to master, either because the skill doesn't get checked very often, or because, as is the original point of this thread, failure doesn't have a chance of increasing proficiency. Cyra's examples, for example.

As for the other, tangential point I made, yeah, I guess it just seems a little arbitrary, as opposed to well-considered, and I think that the Grind, with a capital "G" ought to result not only in levels, but a reasonable level of proficiency in most every skill actually used during the Grind. My opinion.

Peace,
Bux

Spells aren't a problem, skills are. If you really want to master a spell, spam it.

IMO, mastering useful skills isn't a problem, because you have a reason to work for it. What annoys me are the useless skills. It'd be nice if there were some sort of incentive to master them.

Actually, I've a suggestion. After I started thinking about some other games I played, I remembered that on most, your skill mastery was proportional to your level.

For example. FFXI an MMO, basically you had caps as you levelled up. My samurai specialized in Great Katanas, and the levels were in numbers. (IE. G.katana skill 200). Now these aren't accurate, as I've not played in forever, but every time you levelled up, you could gain 3 points on the skil (Increases were in .01 .02 .03 up to .05 depending on how tough the NPC you fought was. If something was likely to destroy you, you'd get higher skill ups.) Once it reached it's cap for that level, it would stop going up.

So, with that in mind, why not make skills proportionate to a person's level / rank? Shield block say I don't know, becomes superb at mentorish or dodge. And You can't master skills until well...Master level? Or champion? To counter it, make the skill ups faster. It would decrease the grind, give people an incentive to level up and possibly promote grouping as the higher levels get harder to solo, right? Just my two copper.

-Kin

For some reason I put spells instead of skills.