Progression Points and Artisans

[Aiselyn]

Alright, first of all. I've been trying to see if there were any other complaints about this in here and I haven't really seen any. If there was another I'm sorry about this post.

One thing I have been trying to do recently is come up with a good crafter/miner (like a lot of other people of course) and I started this character from scratch. Now, I am eager to go and learn about Metallurgy and Sword Making and all that, but there's been one delay: progression points. Now I know this setup has been the case for a while, so I'm probably not the first to complain about this, but should it be right, for a character who's not even supposed to be a fighter, have to:

1) earn very little pp while mining in which case they would have to make gazillions of tria by the time they are a good swordmaker etc
2) start fighting easy enemies and pretty much camp out at the few which do give good pp, which would be entirely ooc or
3) train in sword and light armour or whatever so they can run around killing trepors which would be even more ooc

Personally, I think there are people out there who don't really want to fight, but at the same time want to craft items. Should they have to go to the arena and fight to train in metallurgy? I think it would be nice if there was something better for artisans to actually earn pp from. Even if it would cause more pp for fighters to earn, a lot of the higher up fighters have thousands of pp, or can earn thousands of pp anyway if they don't. Perhaps giving pp when people make swords, make stocks, or adding more pp for when people mine. It's just a small complaint on behalf of my poor dwarf who just wants to have food and shelter.

Again, I'm sorry if it's been stated before, but I just think something better could be done.

[Josellis]

It is true that for pacific characters, there is no IC point for them to go an kill creatures.

When you train an attack skill, you attack something to get PPs, so I believe it should be the same when crafting: when you train a craft skill, each time you successfully craft something you get PPs. Of course, you would get more PPs for more complex items.

[drah]

^^ Brings me back to... why only gain experience from your successes??

Don't people learn from their mistakes still?

[John80sk]

This has been brought up before, though not in the complaint department. From what I understand progression points are more ore less a place holder for a more complex system.

[hitancrias]

I never understood why  progression points are needed at all. Especially in a ranking system which requires both practical and theoretical training.

[Under the moon]

I also have never understood PP, and never will. Nor will I understand any system based even remotely on them. They are a totally unneeded, irritating, unrealistic, overly complex, and redundant step.

Simple way to do it:

Purchase training with money, or get a book. (theory, NO PP involved)
Go DO the thing you just bought the training for.
Get better in that skill. Earn ZERO PP.
Master the amount of training you purchased, or begin to slow down exponentially as you reach its limit. Oops... you can't really train in this skill much more, as your map only goes so far.
Go purchase the next level of training. (still no PP involved)
And so on.

Simple, realistic, effective, and specialized. And no ‘orbs’.

[ThomPhoenix]

"Get better in that skill". But how do you measure that? You will need an experience bar, and experience points. You get close to PPs in that way.

[Under the moon]

Yes, you would still need those. PP are experience redundance. You simply don't need both.

[Aiselyn]

Well, although I agree that pp is probably unneeded overall, I still don't mind the pp itself. I just feel the way it's being used at the moment is a little unfair. As it is right now, in order to be a good crafter you also have to be a decent fighter. In real life, if you want to learn the piano do you go around and build houses?  It just doesn't seem right.

[bilbous]

This topic has been hash out repeatedly. Yes the training scheme is somewhat unbalanced and will likely change. All the same I would rather buy a sword from a smith who knows from long experience exactly what makes a sword good to fight with so I cannot buy the idea that someone who makes military equipment need not know how to fight. I would think that such knowledge would ultimately add to the final quality in an ideal system.

[Raleigh]

I doubt the weapons engineers of Colt know how to fight, but their products aren't a bunch of low quality weaponry either. Of course it's another age, but with enough technical skills and knowledges I believe it's entirely possible to develop a good weapon without ever seeing one in action. Medicine and basic knowledge of resistance of materials or primitive physics sounds to me more likely to have sinergy with weaponsmithing skills because of the implications of knowledge anatomy and knowledge of the toughness of armors for the development of an effective weapon.

Also for me, the complete elimination of the generic progression points and experience points is something I agree with, making development based only on practice points, theory, learning or self-learning and thus eliminating the gross of powerlevelling as skills develop naturally with practice.

P.S.: Oh no! I posted in the Complaint Department without even noticing it was a "complaint thread" this time, what a mistake! 
I will return to my boycott of this section now....

[Pale]

Could the reward for completing a sword or dagger or shield, composing a funky piece of music (I love my new pan pipes ), successfully digging up some rare ore or gem, or whatever, be tweaked so it's self-sustaining?

Fighters train, go out, kill stuff, earn lotsa PPs, loot enough icky dead things to pay for the next round of training (and so on). Can't the system be adjusted so that doing artisan-based things are equally well rewarded? If I spend an hour mining the ore, crafting the weapon, shouldn't that be worth something similar to an hour of /target clear; /target next npc; /attack 1 macro'd to a single key?

Just my two tria. And I love how quickly this got off-topic. American weapons manufacturing and a bashing of the current training system?  Focus.

[bilbous]

Rifles and handguns are not for fighting with, they are for killing at a distance. I doubt very much those weapon engineers you speak of have never fired one of their creations. If you do not know how to wield a sword you are very likely to produce one which is improperly balanced in such a way as to unduly fatigue the user if not outright break at an inopportune time. I might very well be wrong but this seems logical to me. Would you ask a tailor to make you a suit of chainmail? I do not think so, nor would you ask a pot maker to make you a helmet. They might very well be able to do it but how effective it would be is another matter.

Another thing to consider is that from time to time even Hydlaa is infested by monsters great and small and men of evil intent so it behooves one to have some knowledge of how to stay alive. Now if you can afford a permanent bodyguard that is something else.

I do think you should be able to get enough experience to advance your skills fairly consistently but one thing to consider about military skills is that there is a very real possibility of death in their practice and once there is some real penalty for dying, greater rewards for fighting will make more sense.

[Aiselyn]

I'm sure there were families of blacksmiths in the medieval ages and renaissance periods who would hand down their skills in sword making from generation to generation. In fact, I believe most professions were this case back then. it does not necessarily mean each generation learns how to wield a sword, yet each generation is able to learn about how to make a good quality swords. It's not just in guns where this happens.

Therefore, I still fail to see why an artisan to perform his/her own profession and have to fight enemies.

[Pale]

Bilbous, I don't think the issue is so much that artisans don't know how to wield their products, they will more than likely have some skill in the area.

But! Their living is derived from the crafting of such items, not the use of them. The rifle-makers, handgun-making, and other instrument-makers-of-death don't earn their living massacring the general population, they just provide the tools for it. Similarly, artisans in-game, if staying in-character, will be able to wield their wares, but won't be earning their living from doing so.

The original point was that the system is unbalanced. It's a game, and expanding the parts of the game that aren't hack-and-slash makes it a more enjoyable experience.