Feedback on new progression system

[PhoenixRizin]

Because there is a strong RP community here, maybe there can be a storytelling approach to this. Perhaps the quests are what level up the skills or even stats (ie if you get a quest that makes you carry something heavy over a long time, you get points in strength and endurance, or a combat quest gives you points in the weapon/armor/magic school of your choice). This way, you get a few skills that level up faster (your primary skills), and the others can develop more slowly in the background for balance. You can even have the current trainers be the ones that offer the quests. As long as the quests are fun (I can see a love/hate relationship involving leveling intelligence and solving riddles XD), they turn the training from an issue of grinding or not to having an interesting story to follow. And it's alt friendly because you can have different quests for different skills, so leveling a strong, plated axe-wielder won't be exactly the same as leveling a fast, sneaky-sneaky dagger stabby guy.

[MishkaL1138]

A final thing, which I think everyone has overlooked. When you are grinding, you are wasting time. You are training an imaginary character and spending more time on his skills than your own. You could be outside training your own skills. You could be learning something. Instead, you are focusing your time on a character that does not exist. This is why I completely support AFK grinding and don't care if another player is botting.

And that's how I found out that, the more I study, the better grades I get. Don't expect me back in PlaneShift until this summer! Unless I get a job, then don't expect me back at all.

[Mouli]

And that's how I found out that, the more I study, the better grades I get. Don't expect me back in PlaneShift until this summer! Unless I get a job, then don't expect me back at all.

* Mouli waves

[Pierre]

Love the new system.  Still takes ages to train up weapons, which I don't like at all but is probably appropriate and good. 

Issues:  Too easy to kill me.  Too hard for me to kill.  The trepor in the plaza nearly killed me last night, cut through maxed skill 50/50 plate armor like it was butter.  Spiders nearly killed me in the dungeon.  They also treated my armor like it was paint.  Level 70 axes did not hurt them much.  Level 42 dark way taste of death also did not.

Still too hard to get pp.

Tria less of an issue, and people who have mentioned there is nothing do do with their tria have obviously maxed stats.  Stats take ages to level up and tons of tria.  Other tria burners:  Players sell glyphs.  When there is a party in the tavern, the spread is extremely good.  Hydlaa is inviting to beggars and gamblers now.  I love having tria in my pocket and in the bank.

All in all love the changes.

[Glaciusor]

Ok, I've been watching the game since I left, and even once tried starting a new character so I could provide feedback... immediately I noticed that it's *excrutiatingly* painful for new characters to get PP and tria, and I just sorta gave up... it was too aggravating to try to even get past level 10 of anything and I lost all motivation to continue.

I literally applauded at my screen when I saw you don't have to spend PP (and associated Tria) to train skills. That removes not only the pain of spending hours trying to make money and PP to spend it on 1-2 levels, but trying to hunt down the trainers. This also is much, much easier for newer players to understand; I nearly quit after a week as a new player (about 4 years ago) because of the PP/Tria problem and it wasn't nearly as bad back then. As for stats, it makes sense to pay for those still, and keep a use for PP.

Of course, as with every change to a codebase (especially in a MMO), rebalancing will have to be done. The Way quests would need revision as mentioned, for example. Tria and PP may also need to be watched since demand for both have reduced, as well as the rate at which PP gain is reduced due to skill levels. Regardless, I personally think this is a big step in the right direction and removes tons of the unnecessary monotony from grinding that keeps players never wanting to pick up a sword, tool, or glyph. That said, I've yet to login and try it out; I have to go to work soon...

I'd also like to say thumbs up on the various other 0.6.1 improvements. The stability and memory usage is a HUGE thing; I know people who quit because of this, and I'm not just referring to what happened in 0.5.0. I like the timing of the spawn rate fix for the gems and plants, when money isn't as huge of an issue (picking up plants was the only way I could find to pay for levels on my test char) and you don't have to go from the corner of the world your plants are in to some city far far away to train for one level of herbalism (same for mining). I was afraid of when that would get nerfed, that it would cause major issues for new players and some older ones, but the timing mitigates this. As well, there were a lot of medium/large other undertakings I saw that I'm glad to see done, and reviewing the bugfixes there's a lot of things in there I'm glad to see fixed or added.

I may poke around the game some when I get time. I honestly started giving up hope on Planeshift... I can't properly express how happy I am to see the changes in 0.6.1. The people involved deserve cookies!

[cdmoreland]

Nice improvement 

[geloren]

The new system is an improvement.. mostly for new players.
It's been mentioned above here that rebalance is needed and I do feel the same way. Progression Points become useless for people who trained their stats to the max. So I'd expect an adaptation to that.
Quests need to be reviewed, but I guess that's already a work in progress.

Rebalance the game and this makes a nice improvement.

[Adash]

The new system is good BUT when using the skill, it creeps up horribly slow when getting to the next level: From level 50 and on, it almost seems pointless to enjoy using the skills anymore : (   

If I have 5 + creatures attacking me at the same time, that bar better fill up fast.  Otherwise, I clearly have no clue what the point of the new system is.......

[Calmus]

[...] From level 50 and on, it almost seems pointless to enjoy using the skills anymore : (   

If I have 5 + creatures attacking me at the same time, that bar better fill up fast.  [...]

I overall like the new system much more than the one implemented before. 
But I agree that the leveling curve of skills up to lvl 100 or so should be lower than it is now.

Furthermore there is the issue with defense skills. IMHO If you fight multiple unchallanging creatures at the same time, there should be much less progress than if you attack just one challanging creature. Perhaps a way to solve this would be to make the defense skill progress similar to the body development progress.

On the other hand leveling stats might be a bit too easy now. But I don't play very much, so I'm not sure about this.

[Lucubro]

Maybe a little late but here's my opinion. I've always thought the "theory and practice" duality to make PS training unique and realistic, and I would be disappointed to see it disappear.

IMHO a good solution could be to allow players to train a skill without theory lesson from a master (like it is now) but boost the training speed in case he/she decides to do it. The boost could last few levels or a certain amount of time. The advantages:
1) It's certainly more realistic than both the old and the new system. There are plenty of self-taught musicians, artisans and sportsmen in the world, but everybody learn faster with a trainer.
2) No more "damn I leveled up and now I have to go back to the city".
3) Keeping training linked to an economical aspect can be interesting for the character progression strategy. One must "make a living" if he/she wants to progress at a faster place.
4) New players don't need to know about training at first.
5) Last but not least, it saves Venalan and Mordaan to spend hours and hours on correcting NPCs' dialogs (PS development can only benefit from this )

My two cents.

[cdmoreland]

One way might be to have quests from the old combat trainers at certain levels much like for the ways and crafting.