Shattered Kingdoms

wow, that's good, Kin.

*shrugs*

If you see no incentive in mastering them, then don't. I'm not for making the skills easier to master. If anything, I'd be supportive of making them more difficult.

skill mastery is one of the most crucial things about game mechanics, when you make it so everyone can attain mastered skill sets easier, then the game becomes more mundane because -everyone- has -everything- mastered.

Whereas now, only those willing to grind hours or practice gain that reward. That effort/time is what separates those who benefit from those who do not from the mastered skillsets.

The same applies for enchanting, why don't you make enchanting easier? Or brewing? Or xp in general?

I'm just curious as to why skill/spells in particular are what needs to be made different? I'm sorry, but this is a path to watering down the mud further by equalizing all pcs across the board.

Easier it is to master fourth attack, the easier it is to level. The easier it is to master petrification, the easier it is to never fail in pk without putting that extra effort for of spamming it on mobiles.

I know what you guys are proposing, but the easier you make mastery of skills, the easier everything else becomes. I further suggest that it will decrease character longevity slightly at the aggregate level because rolling a new character will be less of an obstacle.


However, it seems that I am the only one against this, just like when it comes to CRS.

Enchanting and brewing are significantly different. They're services rendered by a small population within the game, and demand interaction between PCs. You can brew/enchant while doing any number of other things, too, so it's not as if you have to take huge slots of time away from everyone/everything else to get them done. I've had plenty of RP spawn out of chit-chat while brewing and enchanting for others, but you can't carry on a conversation while grinding away on NPCs. Brewing and enchanting bring people together. Grinding NPCs doesn't.

I think as stated before Skills do need to be made a little easier to train. But to make them check when you fail a skill is far to much of a change. Every time I dodge an attack I fail to parry E parry and riposte it therefore it would check to see if I improve. The change is too significant.

Enchanting is a good example training skills because the RP interaction of someone sleeping three quarters of the time and casting the other quarter to enchant my gear is not really very interesting interaction about as thrilling as sitting in a group of low level aggressive NPCs on mode stun accept doing that I can receive tells where sleeping I cant. When you think about it you could master it the old fashion way that was done when fountain RP was common duels thats PC interactions while skill training.

I would like to see enchanting made a little less random to improve the time "wasted" doing it on items that end up counter productive for your chars then need to be faded and re-enchanted.

Seriously what are the skills people having issue with. Myself I find Rally cry (Considering there is an advance trainer that has such a narrow improvement window) and Eparry (and parry before that) to be a pain all the other ones with a merc I can live with (mentors can cover all your low level skills). As a barb I found Fury stupidly hard to master considering even with it mastered it doesnt work 100% of the time. I havent played a swashbuckler for ages but I would assume Parry Eparry and riposte are still a pain to master. Looking at these skills I would say Fury and rally cry could use a significant boost in their training skill and Parry/Eparry a slight one.

I think easing up on how long it takes to train skills would be a good idea, considering that in the end it's your actual knowledge of game mechanics, reaction time, timing and ability to make quick decisions that actually sees you through in PK -- which you gain by actually PKing and not sitting there grinding on NPCs.

Thank you. It is possible to get to GM w/o knowing how to PK. The only way to learn how to PK is to get involved, though not by getting yourself killed repeatedly (unless you like being someone's punching bag). In my experience it seems that 'learning to GM'/mastering skills and 'learning the game well enough to participate successfully in PK' are two completely different beasts.

Being on the lower end of the totem pole, it is a bit of an exercize in frustration in trying to overcome the learning curve. Those players who have literally hours a day to explore the game and find the best gear & know the most people have a distinct advantage over the rest of us who play casually (and yet at least a dozen hours a week). I could argue and say bell curve for successful PK is broken, but having experienced other games, such as WoW, the same principle exists - put in the time, reap the rewards. The difference is, that I can tell, is you can still feel a sense of accomplishment just about every hour on the bigger games, whereas there is no real system in play within SK that helps bridge this gap between 'I know how to play the game and am GM,' and 'I'm successful at SK in PK.'

Is SK only meant for the zealot players? I agree you make the game too easy and there's no reward and no sense of accomplishment. How do you make the PK part of SK more accessible to players? Ought there be some kind of PK monitoring system & shouldn't leaders be held to some kind of standard before being chosen?

Proposal:
What if skills w/i cabals were only trainable not due to the experience point system, but some combat point system (based on PK and key faction NPCs). Something similar could be appliciable to tribunals, different levels having more effect over the law. Only leaders could promote (nothing mechanicly responsible, so its based on RP yet) but a leader could not promote someone who has not reached their combat points. I am aware this is a short summary of an idea. I'm willing to take the time and expand it if wished or more clarity is desired. The goal I'm thinking of here is a reward based system that is based on PK, not just levelling a character. Creates some incentive & leaders would be working hard to help members be more succesful to have a group with all its skills/spells in tact. May encourage more CRS and diplomacy all around.

In conclusion, I don't think its skill mastery which is the major obstacle in succesful PK. I do believe it is right that those who put in more time learning should have some kind of benefit/reward. But I do also believe the game needs fundamental mechanics and rewards to reach the PK success which the game is comitted to meshing with the RP.

And most of the skills you end up using in PK will end up being mastered by the time you get to Grand Master status. Furthermore, as it is, spellcasters have a huge advantage over melee classes in the ability to master their spells, as opposed to mastering skills with a melee class.



That's [REDACTED].



Do you have to delve into the completely absurd just to support your arguments? We're talking about skills, not enchanting and xp gain rate.

I'm just curious as to why skill/spells in particular are what needs to be made different? I'm sorry, but this is a path to watering down the mud further by equalizing all pcs across the board.[/quote]

This does nothing to equalize PCs. To suggest that just because someone has a skill mastered compares them to people that have been playing for years and have mastered game mechanics is simply absurd.



Oh give me a break. First I'm only advocating that certain skills get looked at, and not spells. The difficulty of mastering petrification is irrelevant, since all spells already do improve through mistakes. Fourth attack is also an automatic skill that mercenaries and barbarians will always be using so the chances of them mastering it are really just a matter of inevitability. These are poor examples at best.



That's simply untrue.

Actually, Grakus is right. By making skills easier to master, the turnover rate will actually go up. For there will be no incentive for them to keep going. And Cyra, you just made an argument for not making skills increase quicker. if most of the skills that you use for pk are mastered by the time you are Grand Master then there is zero reason to make it quicker.

Yes & no, though I don't have much of a melee background. The warrior I levelled up the ranks with however has a far more complete skill list than I, and their time far less. The advantage is the spellcaster can sit in the inn all day and get most of this done where the warrior is out there mindlessly beating things senseless. There's more conversation in the inn.


Were that ALL that separated the succesful PKers from the non, I'd be finding more time to play and learn PK by osmosis as proposed here. I agree with Cyra. It ain't the grinding that makes for good PK.


Considering my enchanting armor was mastered so very early on in training it. There's no shortage of players needing gear enchanted. There's no shortage of junk in bins. Similarly I think it only took a couple days RL to master brew because there was such a huge NEED for people to have this stuff done, and when you have a character who is starving as well to have the skill mastered, it's a mutually beneficial thing. Meantime, my skill in WoR and HW leave something to be desired.


Exactly. Being a GM with mastered lists does not mean you know the first thing of PK. Ok, maybe you know one thing: FLEE.



Well the easier it is to make a GM, the more likely a player is to explore the possibilities over a new character. But Cyra is right in the sense of 'so what if its easy to level, that's not the goal of SK.' We just went over how getting to GM and mastering skills does NOT make you the master of PK. The truth is the game needs a means to keep people interested in taking the game to the next level on the PK arena, with some rewardable means to get more players from a newbie to a worthy challenge.

The "boredom" I see from players is they get up there, the upper level of quality players in numbers is small, and oft imbalanced between alignments/factions, and things are so one-sided it just isn't fun for either side. For the winning side, boredom sets in. For the losing side, frustration. Easing levelling/skill master does give players a stronger incentive when bored to roll something new... but it does not solve the problems themselves, but allows them to proliferate.

Do you just enjoy coming and making baseless arguments?

It takes only 5 seconds for jackasses like you to take everything out of context.

The reason that most of the skills are mastered is because a mercenary or barbarian need only pick 2 weapon types, and other automatic skills like second, third and fourth attack are always in use so they master naturally. Skills like finesse and specialize are the same way.

This would only make it slightly easier to master skills anyway, you would still have to use a weapon or type in that skills command to use it, which means you actually still have to put forth effort to get the ranks increased in skill level.

You've still given no reason as to how this would influence people other than the age old and classic, "because I said so."