Casual Game Play

[Synthesis]

I would say the bigger problem for magickers is the fact that you have to wait for ages for some spell effects to wear off.  Hell, that pissed me off even when I had eight hours a day to play.

[Gimfalisette]

Good point. It would make sense for magickal effects to be reset during logged-off time like drunkenness is, too.

[Synthesis]

Good point. It would make sense for magickal effects to be reset during logged-off time like drunkenness is, too.

Well...that's a double-edged sword, really.  Better would be the ability to cancel said effects at will...but we've already unraveled that thread, let the kittens play with it, vacuumed it up, and let it burn out the motor.

[Gimfalisette]

It's at this point in threads where I long for 2.ARM, and then go play some Sims for the hour I have available.

[jmordetsky]

I don't see why time logged out isn't treated as time logged in. Concerning skills, regen, etc.

It's not like I can quit, come back in and be better, I would need to be quit out for the same period of time I was resting. While you're at it, let me quit in the desert as a non-ranger and have that penalize my health and stam.

[musashi]

I don't see why time logged out isn't treated as time logged in. Concerning skills, regen, etc.

It's not like I can quit, come back in and be better, I would need to be quit out for the same period of time I was resting. While you're at it, let me quit in the desert as a non-ranger and have that penalize my health and stam.

Probably because if I'm chasing you down trying to finish you off (lets say ... with arrows so that you aren't subject to the post combat quit delay) and you quit out, then log back in later fully refreshed and ready for a fight it's a bit unfair. Where as if you have to rest somewhere to heal up and stay in the game I have a chance of finding you.

It's exactly like you could quit, come back in and be better; not immediately of cours but still while you were quit out, no one has the ability to affect your character at all; you're more invulnerable than a 100+ days played defiler while quit out of the game.

The desert non-ranger quit thing is another story entirely, but since it isn't related to the thread at hand I'll leave it alone.

[Synthesis]

lol...so what are you going to do, "camp the spawn" where they quit out and hope they log back in wounded?

That's absurd.

[musashi]

lol...so what are you going to do, "camp the spawn" where they quit out and hope they log back in wounded?

That's absurd.

That is absurd, it's also ... not at all what I said.

But when a PC is wounded by something, anything, some folks probably feel like that PC should go about being exposed and vulnerable as they heal, the way things are coded to be now. Being able to heal up while quit out of the game negates that, and makes it a risk free activity ...  so I'd rather not have it, and keep the danger that comes along with trying to recover from near fatal wounds in game.

[jmordetsky]

lol...so what are you going to do, "camp the spawn" where they quit out and hope they log back in wounded?

That's absurd.

That is absurd, it's also ... not at all what I said.

But when a PC is wounded by something, anything, some folks probably feel like that PC should go about being exposed and vulnerable as they heal, the way things are coded to be now. Being able to heal up while quit out of the game negates that, and makes it a risk free activity ...  so I'd rather not have it, and keep the danger that comes along with trying to recover from near fatal wounds in game.

I think you have a valid point, I don't think it's absurd. But the way I see it there are two ways people feel about this, and they are both valid.

1) I'm wounded, I quit - I should go on feeling vulnerable.
2) I'm wounded, I quit - I log in a RL week later, why am I still fucked up? (more applicably to the thread, why haven't my skills progressed with my IC age?)

With #1 if I quit in desert and don't log in for a week, yea maybe I should still be fuct. (Unless I'm a ranger and at home in the wastes)
With #2 if I quit in my apartment and don't log in for week, do you really think I should still be fuct...I think not.

So it becomes a balance/playability issue because both 1 + 2 are realistic.

I would argue that quit rooms have a comfort factor. An outdoor cave quit, low. A wagon, medium. The bard's barrel, medium-high. My noble estate - v.high. What happens when you quit out should be sensitive to where you quit. I would also then argue (as I think it *is* applicable to the thread) that I should be able to quit wherever/whenever I want and that some rooms for non-rangers should carry penalties. (wastes, alleys, streets).

That really solves all issues. If I quit in the wastes, my learn timers will not reset, my health will not come back, poison will not subside, drunk will make me worse, my mana and stam will be reduce or stay where they are. If I quit in my apartment or a barracks, I will be fine. I can log in a the next day and train without having to "burn off time". Color all that with "unless you are a ranger". In this case all outdoor rooms have a neutral quit factor. Or I would argue, a burglar or assassin and then street quit rooms should be neutral as well.

A point about character age and skill - skills IMHO (which is always right) should be altered by age, not just stats. If I'm a 30 year old warrior who has never sparred in my characters OC life I should be better at it then a 20 year old who has never sparred in his OC life because ICly I've been at for 10 more years. The 20 year old maybe be faster, more fit etc, but that's game balancing again. The arm greeting has said for years "at this time, skills are NOT effected by age". Well, it probably time they should, and with the aging code that effects stats, have it effect skills as well.

For me, I don't play much - if that change went in I could spend more time RPing knowing that I will get some benefit for just keeping my character alive. Taper that with - if someone with the same age, stat, guild sparred everyday - they would be much better at fighting then me.

I hate having to think during the one or two hours I can play a week:

1) Man I better go practice my skills or I'm never going to keep this char alive
2) Where the hell am I going to quit?

Both changes would make casual players viable. I don't even play right now because I can't put "the time" in. Where in arm the time is your whole life.

[Qzzrbl]

Make arrows bring about the combat quit timer. Or better yet, add a five minute delay when quitting anywhere that isn't a quit-safe room.

Problem solved.

[jmordetsky]

Make arrows bring about the combat quit timer. Or better yet, add a five minute delay when quitting anywhere that isn't a quit-safe room.

Problem solved.

Yea I agree with that as well. As much as I dislike SOI - the quit mechanic there where you have a delayed "making camp" when quiting out of a non-quit room is pretty awesome. That and good hunters can detect traces of lingering camps, which I again think rocks.

[musashi]

Those are good points you brought up jmordetsky; and I'd be in favor of a system where quitting in certain areas had an impact on how fast you did or didn't recover.

I'm not really in favor of Qzzrbl's idea about needing a 5 minute delay to quit out of the game because to me that seems to be a suggestion for helping to combat the "twinks" who will quit out of an area to escape immediate IC consequences, and that isn't really what I was worried about in my origional post ... although my example about the arrows and what not could have been phrased better I admit.

My main concern was just that, when a PC is messed up so badly that they need to sleep in order to regain their health, it amounts to them needing to place themselves in a vulnerable state in order to recover and it's that state of being vulnerable that I was in favor of keeping, and not allowing a short-cut around.

Whether a person twinks out and quits with his enemies in hot persuit ... logging back in later, or whether he actually gets away from them back to his hidey hole ... I'd still like him to have to sleep, and enter into that vulnerable position in order to heal himself back up from his near death experience.

But jmordetsky had decent points too about logging out and logging in a RL week later to still be hanging onto life by a thread, and I think the idea he put forth was a good step towards finding a middle ground between one camp's worries and the other's.

[Old Kank]

Some stuff that wasn't about earning income while logged out.

I've probably derailed the quit-work thread enough, so I thought I would shift my train of thought back to this zombie thread.

Would it benefit people to have an "Experience" subguild, that would let players raise a single skill of their choosing by 10-15 points?  It would give a hefty bump to the skill you, the player, sees as most valuable to your character concept, but it would have an opportunity cost from the other skills you wouldn't get by picking a different subguild.

So, instead of having a ranger/weapon crafter, who would have his ranger skills and weapon crafter skills to make things with, you could make a ranger/experience (archery), who would start out twice as good with a bow than a newbie ranger.  Or you could start out a warrior with a Byn Trooper-like slashing skill, but not pick up listen, or sneak, or bandage-making.

[Synthesis]

10 or 15 points in a skill is probably only 20-30 practice sessions, for most skills, for PCs with average wisdom.

As such, it would only be useful for skills that are difficult/impossible to practice without spending exorbitant amounts of money.

Also, restricting it to a single skill would further enhance the tendency to use it on skills that don't require multiple supporting skills for success.

For example, if you were an assassin, you wouldn't put 10-15 extra points into backstab, because backstab is pretty easy to practice, and requires base offense, defense, sneak, hide, and piercing weapons for it to really be successful (at low levels).  Instead, just about every assassin would use the extra 10-15 points on poisoning, which is difficult and/or expensive to practice.  Warriors wouldn't have any reason to use this at all, as most warrior skills that an indie would use are really easy to practice.  Same for rangers.  (Rescue can be difficult at times...but you don't really -need- the rescue or guard skill if you're primarily soloing around.)  Burglars and pickpockets -might- use it on steal to decrease their initial chances of being caught by the crime code. (This is probably the only time I'd be tempted to use it...but even then, it's pretty easy to practice the skill enough to gain that 15 points the good old fashioned way relatively quickly.)

I don't think this is something that would really help casual players at all, in other words.  I think it would be really quite difficult to arrange the benefit/penalty balance of an increased starting skill scheme such that people would actually use it.

Giving up your subclass is a non-starter for casual players, because as an indie (which casual players tend to be, I suspect), 9 times out of 10, your subclass is how you pay for drinks/spice/apartment/etc.  Almost nobody wants to take a global hit to maximum skill caps, except perhaps maybe the subset of players who play quick and hard characters who rarely survive to 10 days played.

[Lizzie]

10 or 15 points in a skill is probably only 20-30 practice sessions, for most skills, for PCs with average wisdom.

How do you know what 10-15 points is, Synthesis? How does Old Kank know for that matter?

What "max points" is Old Kank basing his/her points on? If my subguild "listen" skill only goes up to 15 points max, then allocating 15 points to it, means I'm maxing out my listen skill for my character. Someone who has listen as a main skill for a main guild, might have a 32-point max. Or a 95-point max. Or maybe listen only goes up to 10 points no matter who's got it, and you could easily max out listen and have 5 points left over to allocate to something else if you want.

I'm not asking for answers to this question. In fact I'd rather you -not- answer. The point is, you really should think about what you're posting, because really, it doesn't matter how many points Old Kank typed in his/her post, it was the fact that he/she chose to come up with a suggestion of a point system at all.

I think the idea has merit. Wouldn't even need to be a subguild - maybe, everyone could have "ten points" to toss around, that they could apply to bumping skills. Or maybe, the option of bumping one main_guild skill 10 points, or the option of bumping your choice of two subguild skills an extra 5 points each.

WHATEVER those points end up meaning, which at the present time, mean nothing at all but whatever Old Kank has decided they mean.

[Semper]

Just to toss in my two sids, I think picking a subguild already gives a small bump to those skills. So a weapons crafter would be better at crafting weapons than a merchant who starts out with knife-making or whatnot, however how well you can get good at that particular skill is less for subguilds than the real guild. So is the impression I get when reading the docs, and I believe I heard a similar reply by a staffer.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

This is correct.

[Synthesis]

10 or 15 points in a skill is probably only 20-30 practice sessions, for most skills, for PCs with average wisdom.

How do you know what 10-15 points is, Synthesis? How does Old Kank know for that matter?

What "max points" is Old Kank basing his/her points on? If my subguild "listen" skill only goes up to 15 points max, then allocating 15 points to it, means I'm maxing out my listen skill for my character. Someone who has listen as a main skill for a main guild, might have a 32-point max. Or a 95-point max. Or maybe listen only goes up to 10 points no matter who's got it, and you could easily max out listen and have 5 points left over to allocate to something else if you want.

I'm not asking for answers to this question. In fact I'd rather you -not- answer. The point is, you really should think about what you're posting, because really, it doesn't matter how many points Old Kank typed in his/her post, it was the fact that he/she chose to come up with a suggestion of a point system at all.

I think the idea has merit. Wouldn't even need to be a subguild - maybe, everyone could have "ten points" to toss around, that they could apply to bumping skills. Or maybe, the option of bumping one main_guild skill 10 points, or the option of bumping your choice of two subguild skills an extra 5 points each.

WHATEVER those points end up meaning, which at the present time, mean nothing at all but whatever Old Kank has decided they mean.

I'm assuming that pretty much everything works on a 100 point scale, since that's the most obvious and simple base number upon which you would build a skill system.  It's not some super-sekrit knowledge...just common sense once you've been gaming as long as I have.  Now, once you have some experience with skill progression, you start to notice certain patterns over time (e.g. the first part of the skill curve is easy to progress through, while there's a long plateau for that last 10% or so...that is, the curve is logarithmic when you plot skill vs. time), and for most skills, a 10-15% initial boost that costs you your potential subclass skills just isn't worth it.  This is pretty much common sense/common observation for any experienced player, and it has nothing to do with secret knowledge of mechanics or any sort of IC info.

I would roughly guesstimate that, to offset the cost of potential subclass skills, you'd need to boost at least several starting class skills to at least 50% of their maximum for the trade to really be "worth it."  Even then, for some class/race combinations (especially elves), this would rarely be used, because you can already "max" them fairly quickly, even playing casually.  The initial phase of the logarithmic curve isn't the problem for casual players:  it's the long plateau you have to grind through once you've become competent.  In other words, front-loading the skill points really decreases their marginal value to the point where they're not worth it.  I mean, if you assume a 1-hour skill timer and a 1-point "tick," you can get 10 points in 10 hours quite easily in the initial phase of the curve.  However, with the same assumptions on the plateau phase, it may be nearly impossible to get an additional point at all, because the likelihood of abject, skill-increase-producing failure is so low.

That being said, I think this suggestion would be of minor benefit to the casual player.  It seems like most of the disadvantages such players face are rooted not in the mechanics of skill progression but in the culture and expectations of other players.  That is, few people want an absentee clanmate...few people want to deal with an absentee merchant...few people want to deal with the uncertainty involved in not seeing or hearing from a friend or colleague for a RL week at a time.  Most of these problems would more easily be dealt with by establishing legitimate, Staff-supervised means of out-of-game or mixed within/outside-game lines of communication between players.  For example, on clan forums, there are usually monthly "check-in" threads where you announce your playtimes, and threads where you can discuss when you will be gone from the game for a period of time.  If this functionality were expanded to include indie-to-indie interactions (just as an example), it might make things a little less frustrating.

[Lizzie]

Oh yeah, then we could just all be indies and play the forum version of the game instead. I'd be all over that like um...buckshot on a deer.

[Synthesis]

Oh yeah, then we could just all be indies and play the forum version of the game instead. I'd be all over that like um...buckshot on a deer.

It wouldn't be all forum-based.

Consider the following scenario:

Merchant Amos posts on the in-game board that he's a new armorcrafter in town, specializing in bejeweled scrab-shell codpieces.  He needs people to supply him with scrab shells and gems, and of course he's looking for customers.  At the end of the in-game post is his "indie forum" contact info.

Grebbers Malik and Talia go out and kill some scrabs and forage up some gems.  They contact Amos via the indie forum to arrange a meeting.  (P.S. this really isn't any different from finding someone's mind with the Way.  If you really wanted to arrange for the possibility of psionic detection, you could let mindbender PCs browse individual accounts on the indie forum, but that's kind of a stretch.)

They set up a meeting, trade the loot, and go about their business, but Talia puts in a special order for a garnet-nippled scrab-shell bustierre.

As opposed to, you know, Merchant Amos posting on the in-game board, but never getting a response (because he plays way off-peak or only 2 hours per week, and nobody can ever find his mind, so the post just gets buried under the daily "omg new Byn sarge" posts), then going out and ironically getting killed by a scrab while trying to forage for gemstones on his own.

Assuming this type of communication was monitored for appropriate behavior/usage, I don't see anything wrong with it.

[jcljules]

I like the indie forum idea.

[musashi]

I'd also like it if indies were held to account the same way other PC's are, as Nyr was talking about, but that was ah ... in another thread I think.

[Uberskaapie]

I dunno. This game cannot be all things to all people. I've gone through long stages of playing casually- your roles just adjust to your playtimes. I think that recently, too many people are defining "success" in terms of code. In clan leadership, I believe that consistency is much more important than quantity. Even if you've only on for two hours a week, as long as it's the same to hours (or close to it) and you make it known, you can get a lot done- and save the people relying on you from spam contacting all the time. There's a lot of focus here and in other threads about getting past noob skills- as if it's only then that your character really starts. Being a coded badass can be cool, but this game's fun-ness doesn't rely on it. If you don't play much, it will take you longer to get good. I'm yet to be convinced that that's a problem.

Furthermore. All this recent, endless discussion about skill points / skill maxing / game mechanics used to get you banned around here. What's going on?

[Oleupata]

Furthermore. All this recent, endless discussion about skill points / skill maxing / game mechanics used to get you banned around here. What's going on?

Point.