Please balance skills progression

[Entevir]

I think a more important issue grasped at in this topic is the monotony. In my idea, quests that give skill experience make a lot of sense. For instance, Harnquist promises to show you a few tricks in return for helping him hammer out so and so many of such and such. I see no reason why that couldn't be implemented. It would not disbalance the game, but rather give some variety into smith work that is sorely needed in my opinion.

[bilbous]

It is already rather boring, Sarva,  and those crafting skills level so slowly that it is unrewarding. If Zynga has taught us anything it is that people are prepared to do boring things for as long as it produces something that appears to be a reward. If you don't want people to max out everything then set a limit on how many progression points a character can earn in a lifetime. When they hit 100,00 pps double the number required to level a skill over 100, when they hit 200k double it again and et cetera. When they hit 500k reduce the skill level to everything under 50. These numbers have been pulled out of my hat for the purposes of illustration, appropriate values may be quite different.

In real life some people have natural talent for a skill and learn it faster than others but this is not factored into the game system.

My character will never max out every skill and likely not even one because he is a bit of a dilettante and practices a bit of everything. He could max out an armor skill pretty quick but sitting in a swarm next to the trainer does not interest me very much.

[Bonifarzia]

I don't know if Chessire's idea is new, but I definitely like it.
An important technical aspect is certainly the refresh rate of the repeatable quests. I remember this timer was once global, such that the first player to catch the quest would make it unavailable for everyone else during a certain period of time. Much has changed in the meanwhile, so I don't know if this is still valid. But if we have a strong connection between skill practice and repeatable quests, such things will be very important.

As a side note, I think that even quests for progression with combat skills could work fine. I think there already exists at least one (eeeevil) quest where the character was moved to some isolated map instance, where no other players were found. In order to advance, an NPC had to be slain in a one on one situation. The same mechanics could be used within the setting of the arena, maybe picking the geometry of a single pit to form a small map instance with special rules (e.g. mute spells there - we already have different rules for item collision in guild house instances than in other maps).

[weltall]

global + personal

[Tlok]

It's a little unnerving to debate rules with a GM, so I'd like to emphasize this is a philosophical discussion regarding game design. Hopefully you're comfortable with this distinction, Sarva, and don't take it as a challenge to your GM authority

In real life all skills are not learned at the same speed.

But also in real life different people learn different skills at different rates, and while you might find combat easier to learn than smithing the reverse could be true for me. The important thing to remember is PlaneShift is supposed to be a game more than a model. It's important to make it realistic enough to be plausible, but it's also OK to make sacrifices to absolute realism for the sake of playability.

And when you make one skill harder than another you are effectively penalising players who put that skill in a more central role for their character concept than the easier skill, or even worse you push people toward the easy skill and away from a skill they might be better able and more enjoy role playing.

Having skill advancement skewed may make it more effective as a model of the real world, but so would removing magic. Both of those decisions can make it a lot less effective as a game. That's not to say that all skills should be exactly equal, you definitely get some flavor and RP mileage from having some difference, but 10% or 20% difference is more than enough to provide that while still allowing people to practically advance a skill important to their character concept.

Also if practice is made to simple then we are simply going to end up with a lot of people running around who have maxed everything and well that is going to be rather boring.

Don't we say people can RP with low skills? Would they lose the ability to RP because their skills went up? Why would a character with max skills be any less valuable to the community then a character with min skills?

I can't imagine doing it, but I can't see how it would affect anybody else if somebody wanted to max everything. It's a different playstyle than mine, but it seems a valid one, and who am I to tell somebody else how to have fun? It's not like they can walk up to me, beat me up and take my stuff, if they don't post on MyPlane how would I even know if they were maxed?

Just because something is possible doesn't mean everyone will do it, and especially in this game there isn't any great advantage in doing so so why would people spend the time? I know a premise of MMO design is not to let players advance too quickly, but seriously, PlaneShift is in no danger of that. The Federal Reserve doesn't push an aggressive anti-inflationary agenda during a recession 


In summary, I wouldn't want to see all skills cookie cutter identical, but I'd really like to see them all close enough to be in the same ballpark, and if the math on smithing is correct then a rebalance is definitely needed to achieve that goal.

[ketta]

Just to weigh in on the philosophical discussion, I agree that it would be boring to have a game with "everybody maxed at everything", but it is a game and it should be fun and it seems less fun when a person is faced with actual years of trying to build up expertise.  I have sometimes been heard to remark that I could get a RL college degree in the time it may take me to learn to craft 300Q plat-steel longswords.  However, the community benefits from having people who have dedicated themselves to a craft and have spent  a great amount of time, both actual and in-game, becoming masters of their craft and such "sages" are justly revered, as they should be, and their works and advice are sought by many.

However, what I find to be the least fun in training a skill is the amount of repetitive action to gain the practice to progress.  It seems that the best way to train is to do something totally repetitive in the least efficient way possible.  For example, to get the most pp's in training a magic skill, DON'T wear bracers or any other buffs so that it takes many more castings to accomplish a goal.   There are examples of this counter-productive behavior to be found in every kind of skill training, creating a game where a great amount of time is spent doing boring and useless things.

What I would like to see (since this is the "Wish List" section) would be more practice points earned for doing more advanced activities, such as more practice points earned for casting higher level spells, or making more complex items such as a Broadsword versus a Sabre, or actually finishing a sword rather than simply hammering on heated handles all day.  I think the entire complexion of the game would be changed and the emphasis in training and crafting would change from that of repetition to something more linked to making progress.

Ketta 

[Dau]

But also in real life different people learn different skills at different rates, and while you might find combat easier to learn than smithing the reverse could be true for me.

It would be kind of interesting to have skilling mechanics that reflected this reality.   So, say, you could pick two or three skills in chargen that your character will have a knack for, with resultant accelerated leveling, but only in those skills.   Might be hard to code, though.

[Talad]

I've reviewed the calculations for time needed to craft, and there was a bug related to secondary skills and time. Basically when a secondary skill was not involved the calculation was using the default time and was ignoring the skill. Plus some other tweaks have been made to make it a bit smoother. In particular:

1) Fixed a bug which was not reducing time for skills when a secondary skill was not required (quite often). In summary the time calculation works this way:

• Time is scaled by skill. Up to 50% of skill there is no change
• 50 - 150% skill time is scaled with 1 - 0.5
• Time cannot go below 5s

2) Changed the way time is calculated to include a weighted average of primary and secondary skill

3) Changed practice points to be related to time spent and not just to the transformation itself. Before every crafting was giving you one practice point, now it gives you one practice point every 2 seconds of time spent. So the longer the process, the greater the practice gained.

This change is pending a server restart, considering now is peak player time, we will do it tomorrow.

Please test it tomorrow and provide updated feedback. We are willing to change it until it's good.

[bilbous]

This sounds awesome.
Thank you.

[Gilrond]

Great, thanks for the update Talad!

[khoridor]

Balance is currently taken care of. That's all good. It's the most needed thing in the game (after bug fixes of courses, since they can flaw everything and waste the time of balancing devs).

There is also pruning being done. All good also. And an opportunity to consider getting rid of some skills as well. For example, only 1 Armour skill. For example, no more Repair skills, as repairing and making things should come together. Easier to balance, and more advantages.

Then, Crafting and Combat will still be unbalanced. One reason: training costs; money is way too important in the game.
- The way it is, trainers get uber-rich while players waste millions of tria so they can make their own 1000 tria weapon; also players can't concentrate on crafting as they need to spend half their time looting/mining/questing for Xp and money.
- The way I see it, you should either make money and buy your weapons, or don't make money and make your own weapons.

Suggestion: Pay a trainer a small fee and he will train you without paying more up to a certain level. Pay a master trainer one higher fee (or do a quest, or whatever) and he will train you up to a higher level. In short, you suscribe for a large number of levels.

Also, pay a smith to use his tools, i.e. unlock access for a period of time, and proceed as it happens nowadays. Or, he pays you some wages, and provides you with objects to make; you can't sell them but you train with them and don't need to invest in materials.

That wouldn't solve all problems - Combat XP would still buy you Cooking skills - but it's a start.