New organized skill window

[Miya]

I\'ll start with the WHY this time, why not *ducks*

lol
Anyway the problem is with the skill window. It just isn\'t organized. All the skills are in one big list. Plus for some reason your hp and mana are on there too and nowhere else. And another thing, when you\'re trying to train a skill there\'s no way to tell how many PP it\'s going to take and how much it\'s going to cost per PP.

So my suggestion is to organize the skill window for training and just for viewing your own skills. How? Well, the first part is easy. Just take a look at the help window. You\'ll have a list of skill categories on the left with little plus buttons to expand into all the skills under that category. You could have Base Stats: int, will, cha, str, dex, end. Then weapon skills: sword, axe, daggers, fist, melee. The Ways, passive combat skills, Rogue type skills, etc.. etc..

Also somewhere in the training window it needs to tell you how many PP you need to spend on a skill to level it, and also how much it will cost to train in that skill.

-Miya

[acraig]

We are actively developing plans for a new skill window to have different ones for general viewing and a different one for training.  So if you have any ideas, now is a great time to post them.

[Seytra]

I\'d prefer a different way to do it:
Like the chat window, using tabs.
You\'d have the tabs for the catrgory, and the when clicking on one, the appropriate skills or the stats are shown. The help window is annoying because you have to close the categories or need to scroll.

[Neryam]

When you train you should be able to see tria and PP left in the training window.. Because right now you have to open up stats and the inventory to see it.

[DaveG]

Disable the filter in the training window.  You don\'t really want it to hide possible new skills to train, and it\'d fix bug 806.

[Miya]

Actually I like the idea of tabbed skill window. Only I would have the tabs long and thin and stacked vertically on the left. Click on the tab and it would basically filter the skill list to specific categories. It just depends on how many categories we can organize skills into. We could make the categories bigger, like instead of combat and weapon skills, we could just have combat that includes weapon skills and other combat related skills like body development, etc..

I still like the idea of having the train button next to each skill. It\'s not strictly necessary but it makes it nicer. You don\'t have to select the skill and then move the mouse to some skill buy button somewhere else on the window. It\'s much more visually associative to have the button right next to the skill you want to train.

[Krey]

Well to come up with a completely new suggestion on the appearance of training skills ...

I was thinking about leaving out the long overused and unoriginal bars of various colors and instead putting in a little animation looking like a book. Since we are talking about training theoretical knowledge.

You would basically have a screen with the name of each skill this particular trainer offers, next to that you see a small image of a book. The book would be closed, showing the front cover when you haven\'t started training the skill yet, open when you are training it and closed while showing the back cover when the theoretical training is done for that skill level. When you actually train (read: click the \'train this skill\' button) the image will become a small animation of the book with a page being flipped. You could put very simple symbols on the front covers of those books .. like for weapon skills a few pieces of weaponry, shield skills a shield, etc.

Then under the skill\'s name and book you would have some numbers. On the top would be cost to learn one page (=one PP), then on the bottom you have two numbers X/Y. X being the current progress or number of pages already taught and Y the total number of pages in that book (or the total requirement of PP\'s to have full theoretical knowledge for advancing that skill to the next level). Lastly when you hold your mouse cursor over the image of the book you would get a little box appearing with the skill info in it.
 That way you have all the information you need in a relatively compact form. Plus a goodlooking animation on top

For the practical knowledge we could then have a new symbol appear next to a full book, relating to the specific skill. Then this image could slowly fill up with a certain color .. similar to the color bar representations but a bit more original and appealing to the eye. Preferably no too bright colors but enough to see a clear difference from the background.

This could work along with the tabs suggested earlier.

[DaveG]

Krey, wonderful ideas.  Replacing the artificial looking progress bars in there would be nice.

Another main point:
For the love of crap, train by level and not point.  Partially purchased stats/skills are useless, and just serve to confuse newbies and make you click \"train\" too many times.  (969)

[Neryam]

Or the points could act as levels. See, in Real life people don\'t do something again and again and SUDDENLY.. they become better.

Instead there should be (if we are using the book idea which I like; but it will work fine with bars) just one big book with the max  for your race at the end of the book  and a certain page which you can\'t go past at the trainer maxes.
Basically there would be like 10,000 levels and each level does not cost much; neither does it produce noticable results with only 1 level, so then.. its not like steps but more like a plane if you know what I mean. More real-lifey.

And its unique too.

And about the practice, there would be like a jar or something showing how much experience you have, and that would have like 10,000 levels also. For damage and success in mining and things like that, it would be based on the amount of practice you have. The ability to do something (Mine gold or make a sword) would be based on the training. The practice amount can never go above the training.

So theoretically you could be very knowledgeable and are a blacksmith that CAN make claymores and huge swords but, say, since you could have litte practice and therefore the workmanship is very bad. Better, more unique and more realistic.