April Fools...Skills..LOL

[Synthesis]

It was a joke, then it was for real.

[Lizzie]

I like to think of it as a religious experience. A correlation between the festivities and pseudo-symbolism of the Easter Bunny, and the biblical recollection of the Exodus and the revelation brought down from the Mountain in the form of the holy blocky chunks of granite.

I still think my [redacted] skill should be equal to or greater than my [redacted] skill though. Also, I kinda thought "like ur mom" was a fun rank to have.

[Twilight]

The more I look at my skills list, the more I realize that I am going to have to see what a newbie of the guild starts with to actually understand anything.  Like how one of my least practiced skills is at "master".  Until I do, all I have are my crackpot theories on how this could be.

Have to say I was fairly shocked this was implemented, though.  Was the decision made to do sort of the same thing in Arm 2, and then the imms decided it might as well be done for Arm 1?  Or is this a test, to see if it should be done for Arm 2?

[RogueGunslinger]

.... Whoah. Just learned some new things about skills because of this. Things that don't really make sense to me.

[AClockworkMelon]

.... Whoah. Just learned some new things about skills because of this. Things that don't really make sense to me.

I've learned that my 3 day character sucks at everything.

Except his language. 

[musashi]

There seem to be some skills this does not show up for 

[HailTheAbyss]

This has made me utterly utterly confused about the skills system. Some things I practice over and over are low, while others are great...

I thought it was far more fun and realistic to judge my skills by how well I actually perform ingame.

This addition will make people grind skills far more, so they can reach the next "level", which will detract from their RP, from immersion, etc. Makes powergaming far
easier. You might as well remove the ban on discussion of game mechanics on the GDB completely now, it's the same thing.

[Cutthroat]

I thought it was far more fun and realistic to judge my skills by how well I actually perform ingame.

You can still do this.

This addition will make people grind skills far more, so they can reach the next "level", which will detract from their RP, from immersion, etc. Makes powergaming far easier.

Powergaming twinks theoretically can't get worse, so let's give the addition to the game a couple weeks to see if good roleplayers suddenly turn into powergaming twinks. Some members of this community have a nasty habit of knocking changes to the game just as they're placed in, when in reality it takes time to settle and work out the kinks. You really don't know how good or bad a change is until you try it. So give this one a try. And basically, wait it out.

You might as well remove the ban on discussion of game mechanics on the GDB completely now, it's the same thing.

I'm pretty sure this is hyperbole, unless you can explain how that actually is.

[deviant storm]

Wow. I suck at some stuff. I'm okay with this change. I'm more liable to ignore my skill level and just judge my character on how she or he does in game, as I always have.

I wish I'd been here to see the actual joke, though.

[Sephiroto]

At first I thought what a slippery slope this could be.  For every good point I see a possible, negative aspect but since I choose to maintain a positive perspective I place my hopes that no player will not take advantage of the new feature, but enhance their RP with it.

One positive thing I like about the change is that it allows us to see how good, or bad we are at a skill.  It is easier to know the weakness of your character, and strengths.  When we know both, we know what to do to make our characters more well rounded.  It puts us into control of how the PC's personality dictates their actions, rather than false OOC cockiness dictating.  It allows us to screw up on purpose, or to be likewise cautious.  It removes the OOC ignorance factor.

When we know our PC pretty good at doing something or conversely, poor at a skill, we can chose our actions more wisely because there is some vague, teired value by which we can measure skills.  This eliminates the curious need to go wrecklessly "testing" how good I am.  Overall, I see this is a decision-making aid. 

How do we establish these skill levels?  Well, I think about those values as a comparison between what our PC's can do and what they see NPC's or VNPC's do that we the players never/rarely see firsthand.  This way we quantify our abilities through somethign that exists through RP, rather than having our characters intrinsically understand just how good they are.  "I am a journeyman at piercing weapons and a master at parrying!" is something I never want to hear a PC say.  However, "I think I'm pretty good at what I do.  I seem to be better than all but the best I've seen in the whole city.  I could probably be a drill instructor if I worked hard enough", doesn't sound so bad at all.

Overall I believe these skill designators allows us an opportunity to better roleplay our characters to what they are actually capable of.  It puts us in charge of the character a little more.  When we are in control and we make better decisions we can (if smartly played) live longer.  When we live longer, plots thrive.  Likewise it also allows us to play into character flaws and do purposefully dumb things that can enrich an RP scene or make life "fun" for our PC and those around them in a testy situation.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

This is a MUD, not a MUSH. A focus on skills is not bad form.

So I am very happy to see this change. Had it been more descriptive than this, I might have been a little angry, but this is just fine.

[solera]

Interesting.... maybe I'll just look at it every birthday though.

[Ghost]

i cant be the only one who liked the tags of the joke skill levels more than their serious counterpart?

[X-D]

Your not.

[Kol]

i cant be the only one who liked the tags of the joke skill levels more than their serious counterpart?

I too prefered the joke ones

[Gagula]

i cant be the only one who liked the tags of the joke skill levels more than their serious counterpart?

I too prefered the joke ones

Only because orgasmic sirish is the way to go.

[Saellyn]

I liked the joke ones better. Only concern was they rotated too much xD

[HTX]

"I am a journeyman at piercing weapons and a master at parrying!" is something I never want to hear a PC say.

I get the feeling that the descriptive words (novice, apprentice, journeyman, master) were picked to prevent exactly this from occurring.