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So... the way by which we gain TDPs will be changing you say?
The last proposed model served to help alleviate the felt need to synergize as many skills training together as possible because TDPs were weighted more towards the top x skills in the top y skillsets.
What does the new system look like and how will it affect training, if at all?
__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.
So to recap, the method in Prime today gives you one TDP for every 200 ranks earned - If you rank from 199 to 200, you'd gain one TDP. The original proposed system for DR3 had it so that you'd gain one TDP for every 125 ranks earned for the top 3 skills in your primary skillset, top 3 skills in each secondary skillset, and top 3 tertiary skills altogether, and one TDP every 400 ranks of every other skill. The goal behind this proposed system was to allow people with less time to still gain TDPs at a reasonable rate, even if they couldn't train 20 skills at once.
However, after a lot of thinking, I've come to the conclusion that this won't really make things better for the 'part timers', as it were. The full timers will simply adapt their training mechanisms to optimize TDP gain, and will still scream ahead (perhaps faster!) of anybody that can't dedicate the time or training to get all of the skills moving. Additionally, there were a lot of people that were getting REALLY hosed with this model - Codiax was losing over ten thousand TDPs, some people (especially mages) were gaining a whole ton of them. After grandfathering, the average increase in TDPs was 50%.
So, I ran some models with new skills (including grandfathering) using the old "one TDP per 200 ranks" system, and it turned out that this punished people the least (on average), bonused people the least, and was by FAR the simplest to code. On average, people were gaining 1.5% TDPs, with an average of ~250. Some people are still gaining ridiculous numbers of TDPs, but it's far fewer, and the bell curve is very pleasing.
So, what do we do about trying to make the game a little more balanced for people that don't have the time to train everything, all the time? This brings me to something I've been tossing around, which will help level the playing field and also solve some other problems we've had. Basically, I'm looking at giving bonus drain rate if you're draining a few skills, and slowing the drain rate if you're draining many skills. This basically emulates the notion of cramming a handful of important skills vs trying to learn a whole bunch of things at once. Discipline will probably alleviate this somewhat.
Note that you won't be LOSING experience - It'll just take longer to absorb the experience you've earned in some cases.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
However, after a lot of thinking, I've come to the conclusion that this won't really make things better for the 'part timers', as it were. The full timers will simply adapt their training mechanisms to optimize TDP gain, and will still scream ahead (perhaps faster!) of anybody that can't dedicate the time or training to get all of the skills moving. Additionally, there were a lot of people that were getting REALLY hosed with this model - Codiax was losing over ten thousand TDPs, some people (especially mages) were gaining a whole ton of them. After grandfathering, the average increase in TDPs was 50%.
So, I ran some models with new skills (including grandfathering) using the old "one TDP per 200 ranks" system, and it turned out that this punished people the least (on average), bonused people the least, and was by FAR the simplest to code. On average, people were gaining 1.5% TDPs, with an average of ~250. Some people are still gaining ridiculous numbers of TDPs, but it's far fewer, and the bell curve is very pleasing.
So, what do we do about trying to make the game a little more balanced for people that don't have the time to train everything, all the time? This brings me to something I've been tossing around, which will help level the playing field and also solve some other problems we've had. Basically, I'm looking at giving bonus drain rate if you're draining a few skills, and slowing the drain rate if you're draining many skills. This basically emulates the notion of cramming a handful of important skills vs trying to learn a whole bunch of things at once. Discipline will probably alleviate this somewhat.
Note that you won't be LOSING experience - It'll just take longer to absorb the experience you've earned in some cases.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
>Basically, I'm looking at giving bonus drain rate if you're draining a few skills, and slowing the drain rate if you're draining many skills. This basically emulates the notion of cramming a handful of important skills vs trying to learn a whole bunch of things at once. Discipline will probably alleviate this somewhat.
.... I love it.
Weapons for Sale:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Caraamon#Wares
Hunta Talna Kortok, built by Gor'Togs, for Gor'Togs
http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/caraamon/home.html
Combat Balance List:
http://tinyurl.com/DRBalance
.... I love it.
Weapons for Sale:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Caraamon#Wares
Hunta Talna Kortok, built by Gor'Togs, for Gor'Togs
http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/caraamon/home.html
Combat Balance List:
http://tinyurl.com/DRBalance
>Note that you won't be LOSING experience - It'll just take longer to absorb the experience you've earned in some cases.
Can you give more details, Socharis? From that brief description, it sounds like bad news for a lot of people.
Markat says, "Pleasant people without moral faults, going to church every week and abstaining from sins such as vanity and zombies. Feh...."
Can you give more details, Socharis? From that brief description, it sounds like bad news for a lot of people.
Markat says, "Pleasant people without moral faults, going to church every week and abstaining from sins such as vanity and zombies. Feh...."
>>Can you give more details, Socharis? From that brief description, it sounds like bad news for a lot of people.
I don't have numbers to give you, if that's what you're asking for... 'few' will plateau around 3-5, and the reduction will have a low cap that makes sure you still drain experience.
>>Sounds like a better version of "mind murk" that we were told would come back at some point.
Sorta - This doesn't necessarily replace the idea that super long-term experience gain might also eventually be penalized.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
I don't have numbers to give you, if that's what you're asking for... 'few' will plateau around 3-5, and the reduction will have a low cap that makes sure you still drain experience.
>>Sounds like a better version of "mind murk" that we were told would come back at some point.
Sorta - This doesn't necessarily replace the idea that super long-term experience gain might also eventually be penalized.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
>>bad news
Eh, it's just a different system which gives a bonus to more focused training.
IIRC it just means that the more skills that you train past X(To Be Determined) # of skills at once means the less each of those skills will drain upon pulse. It will have a visual effect of all of your learning states going down more slowly.
__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.
Eh, it's just a different system which gives a bonus to more focused training.
IIRC it just means that the more skills that you train past X(To Be Determined) # of skills at once means the less each of those skills will drain upon pulse. It will have a visual effect of all of your learning states going down more slowly.
__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.
I am completely baffled by it all if I am honest.
What I, and certainly a bunch of people I know who play the game, want to know is what the hell is going on. Negative TDPS and Pools draining slower .. If I trained (therefore payed for it) why would it drain any slower than the next person imo that is just wrong.
Also will there be a bit more openness as to exactly what each STAT actually does. Sometimes its really hard to know the best stat to train because I am just not sure what difference training STAT A over STAT B makes in the big scheme of things.
Can you also explain with anymore detail what is going to happen with the bonus pools we are getting ? How
they will be drained how we know .. if for example i train 10 weapons and have a experience pool to drain
from LE and LB and whatever else gets combined, is that now worth less if my experience drains slower as I thought
that was going to boost it like and RPA type thing.
Some of us do not have the inclination or even brainpower sometimes to work out the permutations.
thanks in advance.
Words Words Words .. in the end thats all it is
What I, and certainly a bunch of people I know who play the game, want to know is what the hell is going on. Negative TDPS and Pools draining slower .. If I trained (therefore payed for it) why would it drain any slower than the next person imo that is just wrong.
Also will there be a bit more openness as to exactly what each STAT actually does. Sometimes its really hard to know the best stat to train because I am just not sure what difference training STAT A over STAT B makes in the big scheme of things.
Can you also explain with anymore detail what is going to happen with the bonus pools we are getting ? How
they will be drained how we know .. if for example i train 10 weapons and have a experience pool to drain
from LE and LB and whatever else gets combined, is that now worth less if my experience drains slower as I thought
that was going to boost it like and RPA type thing.
Some of us do not have the inclination or even brainpower sometimes to work out the permutations.
thanks in advance.
Words Words Words .. in the end thats all it is
>>If I trained (therefore payed for it) why would it drain any slower than the next person imo that is just wrong.
Not what he's saying.
Under his proposed method...
Say I have 340 total exp sitting in each of 5 skills which represents 34/34 learning state in each. They all pulse and drain 10 exp, bringing them to 330 total exp or 33/34 learning state each.
Current Method: I start training 5 more skills, so 10 skills in total. I get them all to the same 340 total exp, or 34/34 learning state. They all pulse and drain 10 exp each, bringing all 10 skills to 330 total exp or 33/34 learning state each.
New TDP Method: I start training 5 more skills, so 10 skills in total. I get them all to the same 340 total exp, or 34/34 learning state. They all pulse, but because it's more than 5(assuming 5 is the magic number) skills which are pulsing at once they each only drain 5 exp rather than the 10 exp from the example above. These 10 skills now reflect 335 total exp, which appears as the same 34/34 learning state each.
These are all merely made up numbers, but you get the idea. The size of the reduction in pulse size goes up the more skills you pulse simultaneously; however the reduction is capped so that you will always pulse experience regardless of how many skills you train.
__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.
Not what he's saying.
Under his proposed method...
Say I have 340 total exp sitting in each of 5 skills which represents 34/34 learning state in each. They all pulse and drain 10 exp, bringing them to 330 total exp or 33/34 learning state each.
Current Method: I start training 5 more skills, so 10 skills in total. I get them all to the same 340 total exp, or 34/34 learning state. They all pulse and drain 10 exp each, bringing all 10 skills to 330 total exp or 33/34 learning state each.
New TDP Method: I start training 5 more skills, so 10 skills in total. I get them all to the same 340 total exp, or 34/34 learning state. They all pulse, but because it's more than 5(assuming 5 is the magic number) skills which are pulsing at once they each only drain 5 exp rather than the 10 exp from the example above. These 10 skills now reflect 335 total exp, which appears as the same 34/34 learning state each.
These are all merely made up numbers, but you get the idea. The size of the reduction in pulse size goes up the more skills you pulse simultaneously; however the reduction is capped so that you will always pulse experience regardless of how many skills you train.
__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.
Wow I'm pretty shocked at this kind of mentality. Wasn't NewExp supposed to help fix the gap for people who didnt wanna train as much as others?????? And now people that train better than others are getting penalized, although I have to admit I think you'd have to try pretty hard to only train 3 skills at a time.
TBH I just see this as the beginning and the next step will be the whole "Oh you can learn 3-5 skills without penalty with a basic subscription, but I can sell you this mighty fine EXP penalty removal potion for $10 ;D"
>>I don't have numbers to give you, if that's what you're asking for... 'few' will plateau around 3-5, and the reduction will have a low cap that makes sure you still drain experience.
What about for skills whose actions also train other skills?
If I want to train perception effectively, I have to either HUNT or FORAGE. If I HUNT, I will also be training the stalking (stealth) skill. If I forage, I will also be training the foraging (outdoorsmanship) skill. If I don't want to train either of those, why should my drain be slower just because I want to train perception?
I guess we'll see how it is in practice, hard to say if I like it or not, especially if guild requirements require so many different skills to begin with.
Individuals, families, countries, continents are destroyed at the heavy hand of Vinjince.
-GM Abasha
What about for skills whose actions also train other skills?
If I want to train perception effectively, I have to either HUNT or FORAGE. If I HUNT, I will also be training the stalking (stealth) skill. If I forage, I will also be training the foraging (outdoorsmanship) skill. If I don't want to train either of those, why should my drain be slower just because I want to train perception?
I guess we'll see how it is in practice, hard to say if I like it or not, especially if guild requirements require so many different skills to begin with.
Individuals, families, countries, continents are destroyed at the heavy hand of Vinjince.
-GM Abasha
>What about for skills whose actions also train other skills?
Also, this system would pretty much penalize everyone who hunts, because it is practically impossible to train 5 (or insert low made up number here) or fewer skills while hunting. Or at least no one would ever want to hunt that way.
This sounds like system designed to reward a very specific type of game play that not everyone enjoys. I can understand giving a bonus to draining few skills, but a penalty to training more skills? Just doesn't sound like a good idea imo.
Markat says, "Pleasant people without moral faults, going to church every week and abstaining from sins such as vanity and zombies. Feh...."
Also, this system would pretty much penalize everyone who hunts, because it is practically impossible to train 5 (or insert low made up number here) or fewer skills while hunting. Or at least no one would ever want to hunt that way.
This sounds like system designed to reward a very specific type of game play that not everyone enjoys. I can understand giving a bonus to draining few skills, but a penalty to training more skills? Just doesn't sound like a good idea imo.
Markat says, "Pleasant people without moral faults, going to church every week and abstaining from sins such as vanity and zombies. Feh...."
I'm more worried about the number of people I have telling me there going to quit that any of the future more money to play issues. I don't think DR can survive losing a whole bunch of people again such as when the last major combat changes took place. Combat 3.0 alone has people worried now there getting a bunch of new information to try and makes sense of just .. "weeks" before release.
Come on please...
Words Words Words .. in the end thats all it is
Come on please...
Words Words Words .. in the end thats all it is
>> I can understand giving a bonus to draining few skills, but a penalty to training more skills? Just doesn't sound like a good idea imo.
Isn't this the same thing? Whether or not you provide a scaling bonus to the # of skills less than 30 that you train, or provide a scaling penalty to the # of skills you train over 5?
Both create the same scenario, so long as the speed of skill gain with bonus/penalty values applied is equal.
__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.
Isn't this the same thing? Whether or not you provide a scaling bonus to the # of skills less than 30 that you train, or provide a scaling penalty to the # of skills you train over 5?
Both create the same scenario, so long as the speed of skill gain with bonus/penalty values applied is equal.
__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.
>the reduction will have a low cap that makes sure you still drain experience.
>>What does that mean?
It means that the amount that your draining is reduced by training a lot of skills at once is capped at some number.
>>What I, and certainly a bunch of people I know who play the game, want to know is what the hell is going on. Negative TDPS and Pools draining slower .. If I trained (therefore payed for it) why would it drain any slower than the next person imo that is just wrong.
I'm not sure what to tell you? Since all of the skills are changing, the number of TDPs that you've gained is also changing - this has been discussed pretty heavily over the last couple years (archives of the important points are on Elanthipedia I believe). Pools draining slower has nothing to do with 'keeping what you've earned' - You're still absorbing all of the experience you've gained (except for that gained above Mind Lock, of course, just as it is today). Just at slower rate if you're learning a lot of skills.
>>Can you also explain with anymore detail what is going to happen with the bonus pools we are getting ?
Bonus pools are still going to work exactly as they always have in every description I've given - They will increase your drain rate while you still have bits in your bonus pools. All of the drain rate modifiers are % based, so you can multiply in any order and you'll still get the same result. It's definitely true that any slowdown caused by draining many pools at once will reduce the amount that you gain from any given skill, but your bonus pools will still give you the same number of bits in total, after they've been fully depleted.
>>Wow I'm pretty shocked at this kind of mentality. Wasn't NewExp supposed to help fix the gap for people who didnt wanna train as much as others??????
A few things:
- One question mark probably was enough
- It depends on what NewExp you're talking about. The NewExp from 2009 WAS designed to help close the gap between the casual and the power players. However, it's very very clear that this didn't work, because while casual players are circling faster, power players are circling WAY faster. This can largely be attributed to the fact that power players can keep upwards of 20 skills training at maximum speed, while casual players usually achieve far fewer than that for a much smaller span of time.
- Skills 3.0 never intended to help close the gap between the casual and the power player. The TDP changes associated with it were designed with that in mind, but analysis proved that it wasn't actually going to solve the problem, so those changes were mostly abandoned.
- Making the experience better for the casual player IS something we want to do in general, and the drain modifications discussed in this thread are a good way to give them a chance to focus on circles or more discrete tasks and be somewhat competitive against people training broadly for hours on end.
>>TBH I just see this as the beginning and the next step will be the whole "Oh you can learn 3-5 skills without penalty with a basic subscription, but I can sell you this mighty fine EXP penalty removal potion for $10 ;D"
Eh, I think you're misreading a slippery slope. This has nothing to do with what your account type is, and everything to do with the way that you train. If you currently train everything, everything will drain slower. If you currently train just a few things, you'll find that you're learning more. The goal here is to provide support for a wider variety of training styles. Right now, training 5 skills is strictly worse than training 30 skills (so long as you can keep them all above 1/34), because those other 25 skills give you TDPs if nothing else. These drain modifications make it so that sometimes, training 5 skills IS better, because you're trying to circle or reach a milestone or backtrain a weapon. It emulates the simulation aspect of cramming a small set of subjects vs learning everything at once, and it also provides support for more styles of play.
Yes, this IS a change from what's there right now. Change isn't always bad, but it IS different and it's not always beneficial.
>>What about for skills whose actions also train other skills?
There's no reasonable way to approximate this, unfortunately. Combat especially trains a lot of skills at once. Remember that this isn't a sharp cutoff - It's a gradual reduction in drain rate. It's not NEARLY as aggressive as the old 'super frozen' mindstate stuff was.
>> I can understand giving a bonus to draining few skills, but a penalty to training more skills? Just doesn't sound like a good idea imo.
It depends on your perspective. This could be phrased in three very different ways. Let's say that the worst penalty is at training 20 skills at once, and the best bonus is training 5 or fewer.
Perspective 1: Everybody training more than 5 skills has their drain rate penalized
Perspective 2: People training more than 10 skills have their drain rate penalized, and fewer than 10 skills have a bonus (any point in the middle, really)
Perspective 3: People training fewer than 20 skills have a bonus to their drain rate
What you're asking for is perspective 3. You can take it in any of three ways, but remember that any bonus or penalty to drain rate can be taken in any of them.
>>This sounds like system designed to reward a very specific type of game play that not everyone enjoys.
This is a change designed to put balance into a system that is horrifically unbalanced right now. Training 20 skills will still net you FAR more bits per pulse (overall) than training 5 skills at once.
>>I'm more worried about the number of people I have telling me there going to quit that any of the future more money to play issues.
I don't see how this is related.
>>getting a bunch of new information to try and makes sense of just .. "weeks" before release.
If you remember the last major combat rewrite, you'll recall that there was precious little information released prior to the the changes. The vast majority of these changes have been discussed heavily over the last two years, and a ton of input and testing has been done (and is still being done). I think equating the two is both premature and not supported by evidence.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
>>What does that mean?
It means that the amount that your draining is reduced by training a lot of skills at once is capped at some number.
>>What I, and certainly a bunch of people I know who play the game, want to know is what the hell is going on. Negative TDPS and Pools draining slower .. If I trained (therefore payed for it) why would it drain any slower than the next person imo that is just wrong.
I'm not sure what to tell you? Since all of the skills are changing, the number of TDPs that you've gained is also changing - this has been discussed pretty heavily over the last couple years (archives of the important points are on Elanthipedia I believe). Pools draining slower has nothing to do with 'keeping what you've earned' - You're still absorbing all of the experience you've gained (except for that gained above Mind Lock, of course, just as it is today). Just at slower rate if you're learning a lot of skills.
>>Can you also explain with anymore detail what is going to happen with the bonus pools we are getting ?
Bonus pools are still going to work exactly as they always have in every description I've given - They will increase your drain rate while you still have bits in your bonus pools. All of the drain rate modifiers are % based, so you can multiply in any order and you'll still get the same result. It's definitely true that any slowdown caused by draining many pools at once will reduce the amount that you gain from any given skill, but your bonus pools will still give you the same number of bits in total, after they've been fully depleted.
>>Wow I'm pretty shocked at this kind of mentality. Wasn't NewExp supposed to help fix the gap for people who didnt wanna train as much as others??????
A few things:
- One question mark probably was enough
- It depends on what NewExp you're talking about. The NewExp from 2009 WAS designed to help close the gap between the casual and the power players. However, it's very very clear that this didn't work, because while casual players are circling faster, power players are circling WAY faster. This can largely be attributed to the fact that power players can keep upwards of 20 skills training at maximum speed, while casual players usually achieve far fewer than that for a much smaller span of time.
- Skills 3.0 never intended to help close the gap between the casual and the power player. The TDP changes associated with it were designed with that in mind, but analysis proved that it wasn't actually going to solve the problem, so those changes were mostly abandoned.
- Making the experience better for the casual player IS something we want to do in general, and the drain modifications discussed in this thread are a good way to give them a chance to focus on circles or more discrete tasks and be somewhat competitive against people training broadly for hours on end.
>>TBH I just see this as the beginning and the next step will be the whole "Oh you can learn 3-5 skills without penalty with a basic subscription, but I can sell you this mighty fine EXP penalty removal potion for $10 ;D"
Eh, I think you're misreading a slippery slope. This has nothing to do with what your account type is, and everything to do with the way that you train. If you currently train everything, everything will drain slower. If you currently train just a few things, you'll find that you're learning more. The goal here is to provide support for a wider variety of training styles. Right now, training 5 skills is strictly worse than training 30 skills (so long as you can keep them all above 1/34), because those other 25 skills give you TDPs if nothing else. These drain modifications make it so that sometimes, training 5 skills IS better, because you're trying to circle or reach a milestone or backtrain a weapon. It emulates the simulation aspect of cramming a small set of subjects vs learning everything at once, and it also provides support for more styles of play.
Yes, this IS a change from what's there right now. Change isn't always bad, but it IS different and it's not always beneficial.
>>What about for skills whose actions also train other skills?
There's no reasonable way to approximate this, unfortunately. Combat especially trains a lot of skills at once. Remember that this isn't a sharp cutoff - It's a gradual reduction in drain rate. It's not NEARLY as aggressive as the old 'super frozen' mindstate stuff was.
>> I can understand giving a bonus to draining few skills, but a penalty to training more skills? Just doesn't sound like a good idea imo.
It depends on your perspective. This could be phrased in three very different ways. Let's say that the worst penalty is at training 20 skills at once, and the best bonus is training 5 or fewer.
Perspective 1: Everybody training more than 5 skills has their drain rate penalized
Perspective 2: People training more than 10 skills have their drain rate penalized, and fewer than 10 skills have a bonus (any point in the middle, really)
Perspective 3: People training fewer than 20 skills have a bonus to their drain rate
What you're asking for is perspective 3. You can take it in any of three ways, but remember that any bonus or penalty to drain rate can be taken in any of them.
>>This sounds like system designed to reward a very specific type of game play that not everyone enjoys.
This is a change designed to put balance into a system that is horrifically unbalanced right now. Training 20 skills will still net you FAR more bits per pulse (overall) than training 5 skills at once.
>>I'm more worried about the number of people I have telling me there going to quit that any of the future more money to play issues.
I don't see how this is related.
>>getting a bunch of new information to try and makes sense of just .. "weeks" before release.
If you remember the last major combat rewrite, you'll recall that there was precious little information released prior to the the changes. The vast majority of these changes have been discussed heavily over the last two years, and a ton of input and testing has been done (and is still being done). I think equating the two is both premature and not supported by evidence.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
>>So, what do we do about trying to make the game a little more balanced for people that don't have the time to train everything, all the time? This brings me to something I've been tossing around, which will help level the playing field and also solve some other problems we've had. Basically, I'm looking at giving bonus drain rate if you're draining a few skills, and slowing the drain rate if you're draining many skills. This basically emulates the notion of cramming a handful of important skills vs trying to learn a whole bunch of things at once. Discipline will probably alleviate this somewhat.<<
I can honestly say I dislike this quite a bit. Let's say I'm training to circle normally. Under new experience, just training one weapon, one armor and defenses I'd have these skills moving:
Parry
Evasion
Shield
Defending
Perception(due to stealth critters)
Light Armor
Bows
Missile Mastery
Expertise
Inner Fire
Augmentation
That's 11 with one weapon, which isn't even enough to circle with. This is the rest if I was training normally:
Large Edged
Small Edged
Twohanded Edged
Offhand Weapon
Light Thrown
Melee Mastery
Brigadine Armor
Chain Armor
Stealth
Appraisal
Debilitation
Tactics
Brawling
Keep in mind that outside of the new skills and magic that's exactly what I train now in prime minus Light Edged and MO.
The playing field is never going to be level and players(and possibly GMs) have to understand that. It's unfair to penalize players who train to circle. It takes long enough to circle after 150, if you make it more time consuming and tedious people are going to quit. Even if I hunt all day it's going to only get me .7 ranks of SB roughly. If it slows down because I train to circle and I get .5 a day, I can't say I'll be a happy player.
I can honestly say I dislike this quite a bit. Let's say I'm training to circle normally. Under new experience, just training one weapon, one armor and defenses I'd have these skills moving:
Parry
Evasion
Shield
Defending
Perception(due to stealth critters)
Light Armor
Bows
Missile Mastery
Expertise
Inner Fire
Augmentation
That's 11 with one weapon, which isn't even enough to circle with. This is the rest if I was training normally:
Large Edged
Small Edged
Twohanded Edged
Offhand Weapon
Light Thrown
Melee Mastery
Brigadine Armor
Chain Armor
Stealth
Appraisal
Debilitation
Tactics
Brawling
Keep in mind that outside of the new skills and magic that's exactly what I train now in prime minus Light Edged and MO.
The playing field is never going to be level and players(and possibly GMs) have to understand that. It's unfair to penalize players who train to circle. It takes long enough to circle after 150, if you make it more time consuming and tedious people are going to quit. Even if I hunt all day it's going to only get me .7 ranks of SB roughly. If it slows down because I train to circle and I get .5 a day, I can't say I'll be a happy player.
>>The playing field is never going to be level and players(and possibly GMs) have to understand that.
I'll do you one better and say that the idea of a level playing field is utter nonsense itself, with respect to power players and casual players. However, that doesn't mean that drastic imbalances should be left there just because it makes some people happy.
I'll probably remove the Mastery-style skills (Defending, PM, MeM, MiM) from calculation, though - Those are intended to be learned almost exclusively alongside other skills, and that's an easy line to draw. Since we're combining a lot of the common dual skills (hiding/stalking, lockpicking/disarm), this should be a bit easier.
But you're right - The way you train normally right now WILL lead to a reduction in gain if you continue doing it in the new world. If you're worried about training one specific skill, you'll want to focus on that skill and not muddy your mind with learning a bunch of other things at the same time. The changes being made in DR3 DO give us a different world out there (otherwise, why would we do them?), and anybody that wants to use their DR2-optimized hunting routines in DR3 will find that they're not necessarily optimal anymore.
There's fundamentally no way to change things without having people affected by the changes. All I ask is that you step back and understand that just as NewExp (circa 2009) changed how you optimally train, so does DR3. It's just not quite as.... gratuitously beneficial to optimizers as NewEXP was.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
I'll do you one better and say that the idea of a level playing field is utter nonsense itself, with respect to power players and casual players. However, that doesn't mean that drastic imbalances should be left there just because it makes some people happy.
I'll probably remove the Mastery-style skills (Defending, PM, MeM, MiM) from calculation, though - Those are intended to be learned almost exclusively alongside other skills, and that's an easy line to draw. Since we're combining a lot of the common dual skills (hiding/stalking, lockpicking/disarm), this should be a bit easier.
But you're right - The way you train normally right now WILL lead to a reduction in gain if you continue doing it in the new world. If you're worried about training one specific skill, you'll want to focus on that skill and not muddy your mind with learning a bunch of other things at the same time. The changes being made in DR3 DO give us a different world out there (otherwise, why would we do them?), and anybody that wants to use their DR2-optimized hunting routines in DR3 will find that they're not necessarily optimal anymore.
There's fundamentally no way to change things without having people affected by the changes. All I ask is that you step back and understand that just as NewExp (circa 2009) changed how you optimally train, so does DR3. It's just not quite as.... gratuitously beneficial to optimizers as NewEXP was.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
>>But you're right - The way you train normally right now WILL lead to a reduction in gain if you continue doing it in the new world. If you're worried about training one specific skill, you'll want to focus on that skill and not muddy your mind with learning a bunch of other things at the same time. The changes being made in DR3 DO give us a different world out there (otherwise, why would we do them?), and anybody that wants to use their DR2-optimized hunting routines in DR3 will find that they're not necessarily optimal anymore. <<
So basically anyone trying to circle is going to be penalized for doing so. Even taking the mastery-style skills out, I'm left with about 20 skills moving. This kind of change would honestly get me to stop playing all together(not a threat, just a fact). Even if I just trained the skills I absolutely needed to circle I'd have evasion, large edged, bows, light armor, light thrown, parry, augmentation, debilitation, and expertise to train(this is without the mastery style skills you listed). That's 9 skills at the bare minimum. Learning at high ranks is already tedious and time consuming, making it more so is going to lead to players getting bored and leaving.
So basically anyone trying to circle is going to be penalized for doing so. Even taking the mastery-style skills out, I'm left with about 20 skills moving. This kind of change would honestly get me to stop playing all together(not a threat, just a fact). Even if I just trained the skills I absolutely needed to circle I'd have evasion, large edged, bows, light armor, light thrown, parry, augmentation, debilitation, and expertise to train(this is without the mastery style skills you listed). That's 9 skills at the bare minimum. Learning at high ranks is already tedious and time consuming, making it more so is going to lead to players getting bored and leaving.
>>Learning at high ranks is already tedious and time consuming, making it more so is going to lead to players getting bored and leaving.
I don't disagree that it's time consuming and tedious. That's the very unfortunate nature of our end game right now. Right now, though, it's really important to consider all of the people playing that DON'T have over 1000 ranks in a lot of skills. Your concerns are valid, but to be completely honest I'm trying to find ways to make the game more fun for the other 99% of the players right now. We're working on figuring out things to keep you folks at the highest tiers excited about the game as well, but we all know that the ever-slowing rank gain game is hardly a sustainable solution anyway.
To look at it another way, the fact that so many people have ridiculously high skills is actually a symptom of a system that's been broken for over three years, and the expectations that that system has wrought are very high. To be blunt, everybody's been spoiled by an incredibly optimizable system in a way that REALLY doesn't scale. It makes the first several hundred ranks of the game, which is where most of the content is, almost completely meaningless as they blow by. The sweet spot in skill progression is in the several hundreds of ranks, which is a land nearly as barren of content as the 150+ region. I think we can all agree that flying past all of the engaging content that got us old-timers INTO Dragonrealms is a very bad way to keep people interested in the game itself. We have to slow things down, and for everybody that's already reached the incredible slog that Pendus is talking about, this is a blow to an already boring situation.
>>What constitutes "super long-term experience gain"?
Eh. We'll worry about that when we start thinking about implementing that, which will be post-DR3. Not a discussion I have the brainspace for right now.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
I don't disagree that it's time consuming and tedious. That's the very unfortunate nature of our end game right now. Right now, though, it's really important to consider all of the people playing that DON'T have over 1000 ranks in a lot of skills. Your concerns are valid, but to be completely honest I'm trying to find ways to make the game more fun for the other 99% of the players right now. We're working on figuring out things to keep you folks at the highest tiers excited about the game as well, but we all know that the ever-slowing rank gain game is hardly a sustainable solution anyway.
To look at it another way, the fact that so many people have ridiculously high skills is actually a symptom of a system that's been broken for over three years, and the expectations that that system has wrought are very high. To be blunt, everybody's been spoiled by an incredibly optimizable system in a way that REALLY doesn't scale. It makes the first several hundred ranks of the game, which is where most of the content is, almost completely meaningless as they blow by. The sweet spot in skill progression is in the several hundreds of ranks, which is a land nearly as barren of content as the 150+ region. I think we can all agree that flying past all of the engaging content that got us old-timers INTO Dragonrealms is a very bad way to keep people interested in the game itself. We have to slow things down, and for everybody that's already reached the incredible slog that Pendus is talking about, this is a blow to an already boring situation.
>>What constitutes "super long-term experience gain"?
Eh. We'll worry about that when we start thinking about implementing that, which will be post-DR3. Not a discussion I have the brainspace for right now.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
>I'm more worried about the number of people I have telling me there going to quit
When you don't have a leg to stand on, invoke the 'silent majority!' card.
I'd say calm down a bit, and wait for someone to break it down to simple logic/explanations. Right now it's basically the guys who crunch numbers for fun crunching numbers for fun with each other. Socharis isn't going to design a system that burns everyone.
Or at least he's going to design a system that burns everyone equally.
Adding nothing to the conversation since 1834.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, invoke the 'silent majority!' card.
I'd say calm down a bit, and wait for someone to break it down to simple logic/explanations. Right now it's basically the guys who crunch numbers for fun crunching numbers for fun with each other. Socharis isn't going to design a system that burns everyone.
Or at least he's going to design a system that burns everyone equally.
Adding nothing to the conversation since 1834.
I think the concept is a good idea, depending on how it is implemented. A reasonable format IMO would be:
- 1 to 5 Skills training = A bonus to the baseline drain rate
- 6 to 15 Skills training = No bonus / No Penalty to drain rate (business as usual)
- Over 15 skills training = A tiered penalty (potentially a sharper tiering and higher cap than has been discussed/proposed)
Anything over 3-5 skills getting the hit seems way too low to me.
Railz
- 1 to 5 Skills training = A bonus to the baseline drain rate
- 6 to 15 Skills training = No bonus / No Penalty to drain rate (business as usual)
- Over 15 skills training = A tiered penalty (potentially a sharper tiering and higher cap than has been discussed/proposed)
Anything over 3-5 skills getting the hit seems way too low to me.
Railz
This seems a big boost for those learning from teaching. You target 1 skill and get teaching and scholarship. That gives you 3, then you do something else, say work orders for 1 more and maximize your learning of the 1 skill you want to learn.
This learn down quicker for learning few skills at once seem to me a way to overcome having crafting as a tert skill for a barbarian. Will the "few skills" bonus give my tert lore and magic skill sets the absorptionon rate of a secondary or primary skill set?
______
Kertig Heart Magdar Bluefletch, Bit Player of M'Riss
This learn down quicker for learning few skills at once seem to me a way to overcome having crafting as a tert skill for a barbarian. Will the "few skills" bonus give my tert lore and magic skill sets the absorptionon rate of a secondary or primary skill set?
______
Kertig Heart Magdar Bluefletch, Bit Player of M'Riss
Love the concept.
I think one of the most important pieces to keep in mind, is what drain rates will look like at each of the tiers ( 1) training a few skills 2) training a moderate amount of skills 3) training many skills) compared to drain rates as they appear in game currently.
i.e. training 30 skills at ~1000 ranks simultaneously in DR as it exists right now, I can look to gain between 0.50 and 0.65 ranks in each of those skills if I were to train for 8 hours straight. What kind of rank gain should I expect to see if I were to train those same 30 skills for 8 hours straight in the new system?
__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.
I think one of the most important pieces to keep in mind, is what drain rates will look like at each of the tiers ( 1) training a few skills 2) training a moderate amount of skills 3) training many skills) compared to drain rates as they appear in game currently.
i.e. training 30 skills at ~1000 ranks simultaneously in DR as it exists right now, I can look to gain between 0.50 and 0.65 ranks in each of those skills if I were to train for 8 hours straight. What kind of rank gain should I expect to see if I were to train those same 30 skills for 8 hours straight in the new system?
__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.
<<When you don't have a leg to stand on, invoke the 'silent majority!' card.>>
Uh I'm pretty sure this person was in the same IRC I was in when people were saying it. Thanks though
And to say this change is being done for the 99% of people who don't have skills in the 1000+ area is neither a fair nor accurate statement (unless maybe youre counting the active subs of people who no longer play but forget to cancel)
I mean on a good day DR gets what 500 people in it maybe? 1% has skills in 1000+ area? Definitely not accurate and if that's the rational then i think DR is gonna be in for a rude awakening when a lot of these changes that penalize the higher level players hit
As it is you wanna give a 2.5* penalty to leveling past 150th and then a 5* penalty to training a stat above 100. So going from (as a human) 99 to 100 its gonna cost 297 tdps to 1500 tdps for 100 to 101..Ok it is what it is..Oh now we have a penalty to training more than others because others are lazy and choose not to
I think the point I'm trying to get at is you have a lot of players in the 100-150+ level area who have been grinding out skills in this game for a long time. The amount of brand new players is probably more in the 1% area. Instead of trying to penalize them for training hard at this game I'm sure they'd rather get some stuff that theyve actually been looking forward to for 15 years (ie. enchanting, crossbow engineering).
<<This seems a big boost for those learning from teaching. You target 1 skill and get teaching and scholarship. That gives you 3, then you do something else, say work orders for 1 more and maximize your learning of the 1 skill you want to learn.>>
I didn't even think about this till I saw it, but now it makes sense. The Age of the Scholar hath arrived! Penalize the doers and bonus the teachers.
Uh I'm pretty sure this person was in the same IRC I was in when people were saying it. Thanks though
And to say this change is being done for the 99% of people who don't have skills in the 1000+ area is neither a fair nor accurate statement (unless maybe youre counting the active subs of people who no longer play but forget to cancel)
I mean on a good day DR gets what 500 people in it maybe? 1% has skills in 1000+ area? Definitely not accurate and if that's the rational then i think DR is gonna be in for a rude awakening when a lot of these changes that penalize the higher level players hit
As it is you wanna give a 2.5* penalty to leveling past 150th and then a 5* penalty to training a stat above 100. So going from (as a human) 99 to 100 its gonna cost 297 tdps to 1500 tdps for 100 to 101..Ok it is what it is..Oh now we have a penalty to training more than others because others are lazy and choose not to
I think the point I'm trying to get at is you have a lot of players in the 100-150+ level area who have been grinding out skills in this game for a long time. The amount of brand new players is probably more in the 1% area. Instead of trying to penalize them for training hard at this game I'm sure they'd rather get some stuff that theyve actually been looking forward to for 15 years (ie. enchanting, crossbow engineering).
<<This seems a big boost for those learning from teaching. You target 1 skill and get teaching and scholarship. That gives you 3, then you do something else, say work orders for 1 more and maximize your learning of the 1 skill you want to learn.>>
I didn't even think about this till I saw it, but now it makes sense. The Age of the Scholar hath arrived! Penalize the doers and bonus the teachers.
>And to say this change is being done for the 99% of people who don't have skills in the 1000+ area is neither a fair nor accurate statement
Yeah in addition to what you said, this proposition isn't specifically punishing HLC's, it's punishing everyone who trains a lot of skills at once. So, everyone who hunts. Whether 1st circle or 180th circle, they will all have penalties.
Markat says, "Pleasant people without moral faults, going to church every week and abstaining from sins such as vanity and zombies. Feh...."
Yeah in addition to what you said, this proposition isn't specifically punishing HLC's, it's punishing everyone who trains a lot of skills at once. So, everyone who hunts. Whether 1st circle or 180th circle, they will all have penalties.
Markat says, "Pleasant people without moral faults, going to church every week and abstaining from sins such as vanity and zombies. Feh...."
<<I think the concept is a good idea, depending on how it is implemented. A reasonable format IMO would be:
<<- 1 to 5 Skills training = A bonus to the baseline drain rate
- 6 to 15 Skills training = No bonus / No Penalty to drain rate (business as usual)
- Over 15 skills training = A tiered penalty (potentially a sharper tiering and higher cap than has been discussed/proposed)>>
<<Anything over 3-5 skills getting the hit seems way too low to me.>>
<<Railz>>
I like your ideas. Railz. I think the ones that are worried about the loss of the potential TDP's are making a mountain out of a molehill.
DR-SOCHARIS from all his posts I've read really sounds very reasonable and if he thinks something is not right, keeps working at it until he is satisfied.
Let's all see how things work out before we start a fussing about the changes.
Bluefalcon
<<- 1 to 5 Skills training = A bonus to the baseline drain rate
- 6 to 15 Skills training = No bonus / No Penalty to drain rate (business as usual)
- Over 15 skills training = A tiered penalty (potentially a sharper tiering and higher cap than has been discussed/proposed)>>
<<Anything over 3-5 skills getting the hit seems way too low to me.>>
<<Railz>>
I like your ideas. Railz. I think the ones that are worried about the loss of the potential TDP's are making a mountain out of a molehill.
DR-SOCHARIS from all his posts I've read really sounds very reasonable and if he thinks something is not right, keeps working at it until he is satisfied.
Let's all see how things work out before we start a fussing about the changes.
Bluefalcon
ditto what Railz said.
The number of skills learning I was thinking to myself for any drain penalty to kick in actually was 15 also. Even tho it's way lower than the number of skills I currently usually have rolling (especially in combat!), I think that will change in 3.0, and 15 would be a good number.
Aluriaz
The number of skills learning I was thinking to myself for any drain penalty to kick in actually was 15 also. Even tho it's way lower than the number of skills I currently usually have rolling (especially in combat!), I think that will change in 3.0, and 15 would be a good number.
Aluriaz
>>I didn't even think about this till I saw it, but now it makes sense. The Age of the Scholar hath arrived! Penalize the doers and bonus the teachers.
Scholarship and Teaching are the same skill, now, so it's less accurate. However, you're absolutely correct that having a small-class mentor to teach you as you focus on a skill will teach you better than doing twenty things at once. Imagine it in real life - Imagine focusing your mind on five things vs focusing on twenty things, and then look at the quality of those five things vs the others. It's a fairly reasonable idea.
>> I can look to gain between 0.50 and 0.65 ranks in each of those skills if I were to train for 8 hours straight. What kind of rank gain should I expect to see if I were to train those same 30 skills for 8 hours straight in the new system?
To be honest I'm not sure yet - Definitely smaller. Not 20% and not 80%? Somewhere within that range, which we'll tune as we go.
>>And to say this change is being done for the 99% of people who don't have skills in the 1000+ area is neither a fair nor accurate statement (unless maybe youre counting the active subs of people who no longer play but forget to cancel)
You're right, I should probably ask somebody with access to the data.
>>Instead of trying to penalize them for training hard at this game I'm sure they'd rather get some stuff that theyve actually been looking forward to for 15 years (ie. enchanting, crossbow engineering).
For the betterment of your career on the internet and relations with others, I encourage you to consider this mode of argument as utter nonsense. Especially since we're neither penalizing people for past training efforts nor are we trading a 15 minute code change for a system that would take several weeks to plan, write, and QC.
>>Are we going to start getting TDPs for circles 150-200 now? If stats are being opened up from 100-200 at 5x the TDP cost, going from 100 to 200 is going to cost over 100,000 tdps. Currently, if every skill was at 1750, we'd still have less than 500,000 total tdps, which isnt even close to enought for capping the stats. So even if circles were to allow TDPs after 150th, we wouldnt be able to cap all the skills. So can I make the argument, that you might as well allow it?
Absolutely possible, but not a sure thing. I want to see where the numbers balance first.
>>Yeah in addition to what you said, this proposition isn't specifically punishing HLC's, it's punishing everyone who trains a lot of skills at once. So, everyone who hunts. Whether 1st circle or 180th circle, they will all have penalties.
The nice thing is, you have a choice as to how many skills you train at once (to some degree). I'm not punishing anybody - Training a lot of skills at once means that all of your skills will drain somewhat slower, and training a small number of skills at once means that your skills will drain faster. You have control over this, and it absolutely should be a conscious choice as to how you want to train. It is no longer the case that it is optimal to train all skills at once. This is a fundamental change to the optimality of skill training.
Again, the ranges haven't been nailed down yet. If you've paid any attention to the X3/DR3 talks over the last two years, you'll be aware that transparency and feedback are core values of this whole effort. We're not out to screw you, and we're not out to burn everybody out of the game. Without you guys, there's no game to work on and nobody to play with. At some other time (After we release), I'll be happy to go into great detail about the deep-rooted problems being solved that aren't very apparent on the surface - There were some very deep systemic issues with the way the game has grown from one scaled from circles 1-20 into one that scales from 1-150 and beyond.
DR3 is hard. It's a huge change, and maybe the biggest change the game has ever experienced. As the project has progressed, it's become clear that the fundamental goal of DR3 is to lay the groundwork for great things. It's NOT a fantastic new thing in and of itself, and it's not trying to be. It's a framework, a foundation, and an ecosystem built with today's game in mind, not last year's or last decade's. If we're going to be able to tackle the kinds of projects that give us the opportunity to keep this game awesome, we need this better footing because the one we've been standing on thus far is sixteen years old.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
Scholarship and Teaching are the same skill, now, so it's less accurate. However, you're absolutely correct that having a small-class mentor to teach you as you focus on a skill will teach you better than doing twenty things at once. Imagine it in real life - Imagine focusing your mind on five things vs focusing on twenty things, and then look at the quality of those five things vs the others. It's a fairly reasonable idea.
>> I can look to gain between 0.50 and 0.65 ranks in each of those skills if I were to train for 8 hours straight. What kind of rank gain should I expect to see if I were to train those same 30 skills for 8 hours straight in the new system?
To be honest I'm not sure yet - Definitely smaller. Not 20% and not 80%? Somewhere within that range, which we'll tune as we go.
>>And to say this change is being done for the 99% of people who don't have skills in the 1000+ area is neither a fair nor accurate statement (unless maybe youre counting the active subs of people who no longer play but forget to cancel)
You're right, I should probably ask somebody with access to the data.
>>Instead of trying to penalize them for training hard at this game I'm sure they'd rather get some stuff that theyve actually been looking forward to for 15 years (ie. enchanting, crossbow engineering).
For the betterment of your career on the internet and relations with others, I encourage you to consider this mode of argument as utter nonsense. Especially since we're neither penalizing people for past training efforts nor are we trading a 15 minute code change for a system that would take several weeks to plan, write, and QC.
>>Are we going to start getting TDPs for circles 150-200 now? If stats are being opened up from 100-200 at 5x the TDP cost, going from 100 to 200 is going to cost over 100,000 tdps. Currently, if every skill was at 1750, we'd still have less than 500,000 total tdps, which isnt even close to enought for capping the stats. So even if circles were to allow TDPs after 150th, we wouldnt be able to cap all the skills. So can I make the argument, that you might as well allow it?
Absolutely possible, but not a sure thing. I want to see where the numbers balance first.
>>Yeah in addition to what you said, this proposition isn't specifically punishing HLC's, it's punishing everyone who trains a lot of skills at once. So, everyone who hunts. Whether 1st circle or 180th circle, they will all have penalties.
The nice thing is, you have a choice as to how many skills you train at once (to some degree). I'm not punishing anybody - Training a lot of skills at once means that all of your skills will drain somewhat slower, and training a small number of skills at once means that your skills will drain faster. You have control over this, and it absolutely should be a conscious choice as to how you want to train. It is no longer the case that it is optimal to train all skills at once. This is a fundamental change to the optimality of skill training.
Again, the ranges haven't been nailed down yet. If you've paid any attention to the X3/DR3 talks over the last two years, you'll be aware that transparency and feedback are core values of this whole effort. We're not out to screw you, and we're not out to burn everybody out of the game. Without you guys, there's no game to work on and nobody to play with. At some other time (After we release), I'll be happy to go into great detail about the deep-rooted problems being solved that aren't very apparent on the surface - There were some very deep systemic issues with the way the game has grown from one scaled from circles 1-20 into one that scales from 1-150 and beyond.
DR3 is hard. It's a huge change, and maybe the biggest change the game has ever experienced. As the project has progressed, it's become clear that the fundamental goal of DR3 is to lay the groundwork for great things. It's NOT a fantastic new thing in and of itself, and it's not trying to be. It's a framework, a foundation, and an ecosystem built with today's game in mind, not last year's or last decade's. If we're going to be able to tackle the kinds of projects that give us the opportunity to keep this game awesome, we need this better footing because the one we've been standing on thus far is sixteen years old.
--
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true." -E.A.P.
>> So, what do we do about trying to make the game a little more balanced for people that don't have the time to train everything, all the time? This brings me to something I've been tossing around, which will help level the playing field and also solve some other problems we've had. Basically, I'm looking at giving bonus drain rate if you're draining a few skills, and slowing the drain rate if you're draining many skills. This basically emulates the notion of cramming a handful of important skills vs trying to learn a whole bunch of things at once. Discipline will probably alleviate this somewhat.<<
>> I can honestly say I dislike this quite a bit. Let's say I'm training to circle normally. Under new experience, just training one weapon, one armor and defenses I'd have these skills moving:
Tell me, why are the GMs so afraid of people training lots of skills with their bonus ranks(that they earned, to boot - not like those pesky MUs and their totally free grandpa'd ranks)? Wouldn't spreading pool out over many skills water down the effects thus decreasing the absurd scenarios than if say, someone pumped all their bonus ranks into 3 skills and blowing through the circle-stratosphere to 200th/1750?? I can tell you just from my perspective here that if I don't spread my weapon pool out amongst more than 4 skills(aka circle requirements - parry primary weapon second weapon tert weapon) and just focus those - I'll hit the skill cap before I run out of pool.
How is forcing people who train multiple skills(for whatever useless reason - it's not like 600 HE allows you to compete with the 900s-range people anyways) to comply with a 'circle-frenzy' mentality of focusing only core skills going to result in anything other than 'warp 7 to 1750/200th'? Is it really that important that someone with a slew of high rank mostly-useless-doesn't-make-them-more-effective skills be made to comply with everyone else to satisfy statistics? In fact, aren't the Mastery skills supposed to make you not suck at skills you would normally suck at? How is having an inflated amount of useless total ranks important enough to warrant such a nut-cracking change?
IM: Dannyboy00001111
"Fool proof system do not take into account the ingenuity of fools, nor the power of numbers."
>> I can honestly say I dislike this quite a bit. Let's say I'm training to circle normally. Under new experience, just training one weapon, one armor and defenses I'd have these skills moving:
Tell me, why are the GMs so afraid of people training lots of skills with their bonus ranks(that they earned, to boot - not like those pesky MUs and their totally free grandpa'd ranks)? Wouldn't spreading pool out over many skills water down the effects thus decreasing the absurd scenarios than if say, someone pumped all their bonus ranks into 3 skills and blowing through the circle-stratosphere to 200th/1750?? I can tell you just from my perspective here that if I don't spread my weapon pool out amongst more than 4 skills(aka circle requirements - parry primary weapon second weapon tert weapon) and just focus those - I'll hit the skill cap before I run out of pool.
How is forcing people who train multiple skills(for whatever useless reason - it's not like 600 HE allows you to compete with the 900s-range people anyways) to comply with a 'circle-frenzy' mentality of focusing only core skills going to result in anything other than 'warp 7 to 1750/200th'? Is it really that important that someone with a slew of high rank mostly-useless-doesn't-make-them-more-effective skills be made to comply with everyone else to satisfy statistics? In fact, aren't the Mastery skills supposed to make you not suck at skills you would normally suck at? How is having an inflated amount of useless total ranks important enough to warrant such a nut-cracking change?
IM: Dannyboy00001111
"Fool proof system do not take into account the ingenuity of fools, nor the power of numbers."
Not sure if its been asked, but my immediate question in response to the statement of Races making a huge difference in the new environment is:
If we chose our races based on outdated, no longer relevant information, and a TDP reset is happening. Will we have an option to change races as well? For all intents and purposes, our decisions need to be based on current game (read DR3) and not the old system. If Stamina is hugely relevant in DR3, whereas it wasn't (imo) in previous game environments, I am now completely screwed by being a gnome. Likewise with Strength, etc replace stats ad nauseam.
All the info i've read has basically said that Stam is going to be much more relevant these days, and I don't want to be working with a crippled character because the game mechanics changed after I made what I felt was a well-informed decision at creation.
In all likelihood the game will change so much i'll just run away. I don't like change, especially with something i've known my entire life.
If we chose our races based on outdated, no longer relevant information, and a TDP reset is happening. Will we have an option to change races as well? For all intents and purposes, our decisions need to be based on current game (read DR3) and not the old system. If Stamina is hugely relevant in DR3, whereas it wasn't (imo) in previous game environments, I am now completely screwed by being a gnome. Likewise with Strength, etc replace stats ad nauseam.
All the info i've read has basically said that Stam is going to be much more relevant these days, and I don't want to be working with a crippled character because the game mechanics changed after I made what I felt was a well-informed decision at creation.
In all likelihood the game will change so much i'll just run away. I don't like change, especially with something i've known my entire life.
>It depends on your perspective.
That's not really true. Unless I missed it, the EXP drain formulas aren't changing other than this, right? So it's a penalty if you learn less than you do right now with the same skills/stats.
Elemental Lord Opieus, Master Warrior Mage of Elanthia
"For a bunch of radical empiricists, the Philosophers' system relies on a whole lot of faith." ~Armifer
That's not really true. Unless I missed it, the EXP drain formulas aren't changing other than this, right? So it's a penalty if you learn less than you do right now with the same skills/stats.
Elemental Lord Opieus, Master Warrior Mage of Elanthia
"For a bunch of radical empiricists, the Philosophers' system relies on a whole lot of faith." ~Armifer
>>I don't disagree that it's time consuming and tedious. That's the very unfortunate nature of our end game right now. Right now, though, it's really important to consider all of the people playing that DON'T have over 1000 ranks in a lot of skills. Your concerns are valid, but to be completely honest I'm trying to find ways to make the game more fun for the other 99% of the players right now. We're working on figuring out things to keep you folks at the highest tiers excited about the game as well, but we all know that the ever-slowing rank gain game is hardly a sustainable solution anyway.<<
Making the game fun for the 99% of the players not 150+ should not involve making it less fun for those over 150. If it does, it's an utter failure. It's a game I won't be playing.
>>To look at it another way, the fact that so many people have ridiculously high skills is actually a symptom of a system that's been broken for over three years, and the expectations that that system has wrought are very high. To be blunt, everybody's been spoiled by an incredibly optimizable system in a way that REALLY doesn't scale. It makes the first several hundred ranks of the game, which is where most of the content is, almost completely meaningless as they blow by. The sweet spot in skill progression is in the several hundreds of ranks, which is a land nearly as barren of content as the 150+ region. I think we can all agree that flying past all of the engaging content that got us old-timers INTO Dragonrealms is a very bad way to keep people interested in the game itself. We have to slow things down, and for everybody that's already reached the incredible slog that Pendus is talking about, this is a blow to an already boring situation.<<
The game now has a hard cap on skills. People are going to catch up no matter what in a hard capped system.
>>Scholarship and Teaching are the same skill, now, so it's less accurate. However, you're absolutely correct that having a small-class mentor to teach you as you focus on a skill will teach you better than doing twenty things at once. Imagine it in real life - Imagine focusing your mind on five things vs focusing on twenty things, and then look at the quality of those five things vs the others. It's a fairly reasonable idea.<<
I work on multiple projects at once daily at work. When I was a hardware tech, I'd frequently be working on 18-20 computers at the same time and not have any issues doing it. This is a game, not real life. I'm not playing a game about dragons, magic and the supernatural for realism.
>>The nice thing is, you have a choice as to how many skills you train at once (to some degree). I'm not punishing anybody - Training a lot of skills at once means that all of your skills will drain somewhat slower, and training a small number of skills at once means that your skills will drain faster. You have control over this, and it absolutely should be a conscious choice as to how you want to train. It is no longer the case that it is optimal to train all skills at once. This is a fundamental change to the optimality of skill training.<<
No, you don't. Not if you want to circle you don't. If you hunt at all, you're hitting that number and you're going to be slowed down. If you want to ignore the 150+ portion of the argument, how is anyone going to catch up if they are required to train 10+ skills and they are all slowed down because they are hunting? Answer is they can't. Your solution doesn't fix the problem and it only makes a slow crawl at the top end even more tedious. I play DR for fun and relaxation, not for frustration and tedium. I have real life for that.
Making the game fun for the 99% of the players not 150+ should not involve making it less fun for those over 150. If it does, it's an utter failure. It's a game I won't be playing.
>>To look at it another way, the fact that so many people have ridiculously high skills is actually a symptom of a system that's been broken for over three years, and the expectations that that system has wrought are very high. To be blunt, everybody's been spoiled by an incredibly optimizable system in a way that REALLY doesn't scale. It makes the first several hundred ranks of the game, which is where most of the content is, almost completely meaningless as they blow by. The sweet spot in skill progression is in the several hundreds of ranks, which is a land nearly as barren of content as the 150+ region. I think we can all agree that flying past all of the engaging content that got us old-timers INTO Dragonrealms is a very bad way to keep people interested in the game itself. We have to slow things down, and for everybody that's already reached the incredible slog that Pendus is talking about, this is a blow to an already boring situation.<<
The game now has a hard cap on skills. People are going to catch up no matter what in a hard capped system.
>>Scholarship and Teaching are the same skill, now, so it's less accurate. However, you're absolutely correct that having a small-class mentor to teach you as you focus on a skill will teach you better than doing twenty things at once. Imagine it in real life - Imagine focusing your mind on five things vs focusing on twenty things, and then look at the quality of those five things vs the others. It's a fairly reasonable idea.<<
I work on multiple projects at once daily at work. When I was a hardware tech, I'd frequently be working on 18-20 computers at the same time and not have any issues doing it. This is a game, not real life. I'm not playing a game about dragons, magic and the supernatural for realism.
>>The nice thing is, you have a choice as to how many skills you train at once (to some degree). I'm not punishing anybody - Training a lot of skills at once means that all of your skills will drain somewhat slower, and training a small number of skills at once means that your skills will drain faster. You have control over this, and it absolutely should be a conscious choice as to how you want to train. It is no longer the case that it is optimal to train all skills at once. This is a fundamental change to the optimality of skill training.<<
No, you don't. Not if you want to circle you don't. If you hunt at all, you're hitting that number and you're going to be slowed down. If you want to ignore the 150+ portion of the argument, how is anyone going to catch up if they are required to train 10+ skills and they are all slowed down because they are hunting? Answer is they can't. Your solution doesn't fix the problem and it only makes a slow crawl at the top end even more tedious. I play DR for fun and relaxation, not for frustration and tedium. I have real life for that.
