Starting skill level adjustment

[KankWhisperer]

I wonder sometimes do people enjoy the skill grind? Do they love waiting so long to become competent? Do we reward those who just wanna get those fails? Personally I think we should raise the starting skill level for people so they can spend less time trying to be useful and more time doing things that are fun and exciting.

[Marauder Moe]

Actually... yeah, for some things.  It lends a sense of accomplishment when you kill your first scrab, break even with a craft, etc.  Not to mention the re-vitalized sense of fear you get with a brand new character, alone in the world with shit for skills, friends, and resources.

Regardless, I think CCP for skill boosts sufficiently addresses this issue/desire.  Or, at the very least, let's see how things are once CCP are automated.

[whitt]

Downside of removing the grind is that it removes the OOC mitigation of just throwing away character after character.  That investment to get to competent from pathetic is the hump that makes repeatedly playing total throwaways less viable, IMO.

Agree with Moe that when you're not just throwing characters into the wind, the Skill Bumps should cover the skill you'd like to not start out at complete crap with.

[RogueGunslinger]

Eh. I don't really feel this would help the grind, it would just delay it or make it shorter. The problem I have with skill advancement in the game is characters in certain roles who can never train skills when they should be the ones getting superior training, or some skills that takes forever to raise or simply just wont raise unless you're punching spiders while drunk or some wacky shit.

[valeria]

Sometimes I think we all have different definitions of grinding skills.

When I think grinding skills, I think people who avoid other RP and so on in order to improve slashing or whatever.  They're skipping out on training to hunt things in the desert.  They never show up to the flavor events, because they're too busy trying to backstab everything that moves in the dark, not to kill them or mug them or whatever, but just to try to backstab and flee and move on to the next thing to try to backstab.  They're avoiding the bar and crafting all night because they think it will improve dildo_crafting.  Or whatever it is they're doing that isn't realistic to the game world or how people actually act.

I'm not thinking of the Byn Trooper that spars regularly, because that is their job and just part of the Byn RP.  I'm not thinking of the crafter that spends the morning working on crafts, because that's their job and it's part of the crafter RP.  I'm not thinking of people that make an excuse to use a skill as long as the excuse makes IC sense and they don't start avoiding RP to do it.

[Ender]

Eh. I don't really feel this would help the grind, it would just delay it or make it shorter. The problem I have with skill advancement in the game is characters in certain roles who can never train skills when they should be the ones getting superior training, or some skills that takes forever to raise or simply just wont raise unless you're punching spiders while drunk or some wacky shit.

Drunken spider boxing is a time honored tradition.

[ibusoe]

I wonder sometimes do people enjoy the skill grind? Do they love waiting so long to become competent? Do we reward those who just wanna get those fails? Personally I think we should raise the starting skill level for people so they can spend less time trying to be useful and more time doing things that are fun and exciting.

I think that some players misunderstand the grind from a design standpoint.

Along with the other benefits of the grind, the grind serves as Something To Do While You're Waiting For Your Friends to Log On.

If the grind weren't available, people would log off and then there would be no way of hitting critical mass.  

At least, this is why I like the grind - it's something to do.

EDIT:  In sharing my opinion, I'm not trying to take a crap on your idea.  Your idea may still be very much valid and workable.

[BadSkeelz]

There's grinders, and then there's the Grind. You've described the spam grinder, Valeria: someone who's just out for the next skillup to the dismissal of everything else. They're annoying but unless they're somehow leveraging their poorly-achieved code ability into real power all you can do is roll your eyes at them. It's bad play, but they're really just side effects of the system.

The Grind has a couple of facets that bugs me. A big one is just how long it takes to make a semi-capable combat character. Skill Bumps have definitely helped (a rockin' stat line to start helps too) but Combat Characters still require a lot of work to get decent in their roles. A combat character's going to need something like 10 days played (240 fucking hours!) of decent action before they're considered "Good"; an aide or merchant can become good at their role as long as you give them a bit of personality and a great ass in the mdesc.

And then people complain that there's no enough Murder Corruption Betrayal and 'Drop Pack,' when combat-PC players play cautiously so as not to lose their investments. If it didn't take a month or so of skill-up to make a decent combat PC you'd probably see people a lot more willing to throw down with them.

Another aspect of the Grind that's annoying is one RGS alluded to: that if you want to become truly great at combat skills you need to start doing stupid or insane shit to force that Miss. Combat's the only area of the game where people are punished for behaving realistically.

[Kismetic]

I'm mostly okay with how the grind works.  It takes forever to have a kickass PC, and once you do, it's unique, with what you bring to the game world, and how you got there.  One thing that I think would be cool is ...

Not necessarily limiting the power of magickers, because they should be super awesome, but making their skill progression like that of a combat mundane.  Those high tier spells that make your PC a worldshaker?  That's gonna take 40 days played, hang in there.

[BadSkeelz]

Just make every Magick skill-up fail come with a 1% chance of your PC exploding.

[CodeMaster]

I wonder sometimes do people enjoy the skill grind? Do they love waiting so long to become competent? Do we reward those who just wanna get those fails? Personally I think we should raise the starting skill level for people so they can spend less time trying to be useful and more time doing things that are fun and exciting.

I think defining "competent" is important in discussions like these.  if everyone new were to start where a ten-days-played character is now, that would be the new "incompetent".

if nobody participated in the grind and winked code tricks at each other our notion of competent would be different too.

on a mobile keyboard.

[Synthesis]

Combat skills are more or less the only skills that have a significant grind, and there's already a thread for that, if I recall correctly.

[KankWhisperer]

To put it in perspective. My character has sparred 5000+ times and still has mostly apprentice weapon skills, following a clan schedule.

[whitt]

To put it in perspective. My character has sparred 5000+ times and still has mostly apprentice weapon skills.

Stop winning?   

I think this is much more an indictment of the needing your opponent to dodge (to create a failure) in order for your weapon skill to advance than anything else.  Or you seldom pick up a new weapon for a round of sparring, which I doubt.

[Armaddict]

To put it in perspective. My character has sparred 5000+ times and still has mostly apprentice weapon skills, following a clan schedule.

There is already a thread up discussing weapon skills and their advancement.  I will say the same thing here that I said there, which is that if you're winning all your fights, I don't see what difference it makes.

[whitt]

I will say the same thing here that I said there, which is that if you're winning all your fights, I don't see what difference it makes.

Not sure which thread that was, but...  If you're winning all your fights but your coded skill is still crap?  You can't use the Teach skill to instruct a novice with a weapon.

Sure you could explain that as a poor ability to instruct, like - "Nope, I'm just that good.  I can't explain how I always win." But for a veteran in a military clan, that seems a bit out of touch with reality.

[RogueGunslinger]

To put it in perspective. My character has sparred 5000+ times and still has mostly apprentice weapon skills, following a clan schedule.

There is already a thread up discussing weapon skills and their advancement.  I will say the same thing here that I said there, which is that if you're winning all your fights, I don't see what difference it makes.

The difference is you're beating everyone in your tiny clan microcosm, the reality is you're weak as shit as soon as you step outside the gates or decide to train with the new recruit who decided to hunt for his first IC year.

[Armaddict]

To put it in perspective. My character has sparred 5000+ times and still has mostly apprentice weapon skills, following a clan schedule.

There is already a thread up discussing weapon skills and their advancement.  I will say the same thing here that I said there, which is that if you're winning all your fights, I don't see what difference it makes.

The difference is you're beating everyone in your tiny clan microcosm, the reality is you're weak as shit as soon as you step outside the gates or decide to train with the new recruit who decided to hunt for his first IC year.

Which...makes sense.  ALSO as discussed in the other thread.

[RogueGunslinger]

You're misinterpreting what I'm saying. Obviously a hunter should be a better hunter than a  soldier. But a hunter should not be a better soldier than a soldier.

[bardlyone]

I'm mostly okay with how the grind works.  It takes forever to have a kickass PC, and once you do, it's unique, with what you bring to the game world, and how you got there.  One thing that I think would be cool is ...

Not necessarily limiting the power of magickers, because they should be super awesome, but making their skill progression like that of a combat mundane.  Those high tier spells that make your PC a worldshaker?  That's gonna take 40 days played, hang in there.

So basically your idea to make the least fun shit to raise/play (warrior/combat) due to the frustration and headaches associated with raising/skilling... is to not only not change it, but also hey, lets make half the other guilds ALSO work this way?

And you think that this will make the game more fun or add to it in some meaningful way?

How? Why?

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Combat skills should rise faster from novice to advanced, and then slow to the current crawl from advanced to master, with one lone change - successes must have a small chance to advance your skill. This single thing would change most of the hatred associated with grinding.

[Armaddict]

You're misinterpreting what I'm saying. Obviously a hunter should be a better hunter than a  soldier. But a hunter should not be a better soldier than a soldier.

Ah, indeed misinterpreted.  Sorry.

[Delirium]

Combat skills should rise faster from novice to advanced, and then slow to the current crawl from advanced to master, with one lone change - successes must have a small chance to advance your skill. This single thing would change most of the hatred associated with grinding.

Agreed 10000%.

[Kismetic]

I'm mostly okay with how the grind works.  It takes forever to have a kickass PC, and once you do, it's unique, with what you bring to the game world, and how you got there.  One thing that I think would be cool is ...

Not necessarily limiting the power of magickers, because they should be super awesome, but making their skill progression like that of a combat mundane.  Those high tier spells that make your PC a worldshaker?  That's gonna take 40 days played, hang in there.

So basically your idea to make the least fun shit to raise/play (warrior/combat) due to the frustration and headaches associated with raising/skilling... is to not only not change it, but also hey, lets make half the other guilds ALSO work this way?

And you think that this will make the game more fun or add to it in some meaningful way?

How? Why?

I've always found the meteoric nature of magickers to be pretty bullshit.  Spammed that spell ten times?  Ok, you branch.  Next spell.  Go in the desert, spam spam spam.  Okay, next tier!  Five days played?  Oh!  Hey, Mr. Tek!  Can I help you with that volcano?  It's just the laziest, easiest way to accrue power in this game.  It has the highest power ceiling, and it has the easiest path to said power.

If you look at the other guilds, they really shine at the 40 days played mark.  I think it would be very cool if magickers took a little more effort to shape into a monster, not the token wink-nudge spamfest that we all know them to be.

As for Warriors and stuff?  Hey, I'm with you!  My 100-day Warrior never branched a special weapon because he had poor wisdom.  That was sort of my choice, to have really awesome other stats, but on the other hand, 100 days?!  That's 2400 hours!  That's more than two years at a part-time job!  I think even the dumbest warriors should be branching at least one special weapon at ~60 days, because damn.  Just damn.  Haha.  I like the old suggestion of making something like 1/100 attacks automatically fail.  It presents some risk to you, while still giving you an edge.  Maybe master weapons are immune to this arbitrary fail.

What I don't wanna see is like, every single damn body mastering their skill/spell sheets at 10 days played.  This game is already candy-ass enough, at times.

[Saellyn]

I clearly suck at skill grinding compared to some people.


Magickers have to offset the fact that as soon as you engage one in coded PVP, barring certain slim exceptions, you're going to walk up one side of them and down the other in five seconds flat without any effort.

Still, they do rise pretty fast. I just think that's due to you guys spamming the spell more often than not. It takes me a long time to branch out, and I received notes about spamcasting before. Trouble is, I was doing what my clannies were doing, and I got nicked for it.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just bad at magick!

[Kismetic]

Yeah, I didn't wanna start a derail, but it's a fairly confusing topic, the progression of magickers.  Maybe worth a thread of its own.

Anyway, my final answer is:  No, I really don't mind the grind, even though I agree it could be fixed in places.  It gives my character a chance to suck at stuff.  Sucking at stuff can lead to strange metaphysical interactions, like developing a personality.

[Armaddict]

This exact same topic was brought up in the past.

The fairly outright lean of the poll question is, in fact, disenchanting to empathizing with the OP's plight.  'Why reward grinders', as if this is some malicious plot that destroys roleplay and is just a bias towards people who...play more?  Who use their skillsets?  I'm not sure I understand:

Personally I think we should raise the starting skill level for people so they can spend less time trying to be useful and more time doing things that are fun and exciting

- That's like saying you should start neverwinter nights campaigns halfway through, aside from that there's no preset story to follow here, and the 'fun and exciting' comes about through exposure of the character to fun and exciting things, not through having skills that are capable.  If you worried less about being prepared for fun and exciting things, you'd probably stumble on more fun and exciting things.

The idea of starting skills higher to 'not reward grinders' is ridiculous.  Then everyone will start at a higher skill level, and the exact same issue remains, but at a higher level.  Skill levels are as they always were, and once again, we see this topic due to people getting overly fascinated with 'where they are' because of being able to see the skill levels in the first place.  It's irritating.  This was, for the most part, a moot topic very rarely discussed aside from contact and barrier, until skill levels were seen.

If you're in need of the skill, you'll be using it, and it will go up.  If you're not in need of it, it will take longer to go up, but will improve over time.  I've yet to see a compelling argument for it.  The closest thing has been 'It's frustrating to be something, but fail at it constantly', which is still not compelling, but is, at the least, understandable.  You do not start capable.  You start as just above the vnpc population, as a fledgling in your skillset...and I still think that's how it should be.

[bardlyone]

That's like saying you should start neverwinter nights campaigns halfway through, aside from that there's no preset story to follow here, and the 'fun and exciting' comes about through exposure of the character to fun and exciting things, not through having skills that are capable.  If you worried less about being prepared for fun and exciting things, you'd probably stumble on more fun and exciting things.

We're naturally at odds here. I hated the original NWN campaign. Give me the Hordes of Undrentide/Underdark where you get to prebuild your level 15 pc any time. I like the variety and array of abilities available at that point. I hate levels 1-7 in NWN.

[CodeMaster]

This was, for the most part, a moot topic very rarely discussed aside from contact and barrier, until skill levels were seen.

Interesting point.  I feel the trend in this thread is to worry about how your PC compares relative to other PCs, not to the environment at large.  The more powerful the PC population is, the more there must be this compulsion to grind so as to not feel completely outclassed.

If this really is the perspective everyone has, an equivalent solution would be to make everyone weaker across the board.  Which I wouldn't be opposed to, actually... I think 3 10 day warriors should wreck a 100 day warrior but I suspect that's not the case.

[CodeMaster]

Yeah, I didn't wanna start a derail, but it's a fairly confusing topic, the progression of magickers.  Maybe worth a thread of its own.

Anyway, my final answer is:  No, I really don't mind the grind, even though I agree it could be fixed in places.  It gives my character a chance to suck at stuff.  Sucking at stuff can lead to strange metaphysical interactions, like developing a personality.

Good point.  My fails have been some of the most exciting and nailbiting moments in the game.

[Armaddict]

That's like saying you should start neverwinter nights campaigns halfway through, aside from that there's no preset story to follow here, and the 'fun and exciting' comes about through exposure of the character to fun and exciting things, not through having skills that are capable.  If you worried less about being prepared for fun and exciting things, you'd probably stumble on more fun and exciting things.

We're naturally at odds here. I hated the original NWN campaign. Give me the Hordes of Undrentide/Underdark where you get to prebuild your level 15 pc any time. I like the variety and array of abilities available at that point. I hate levels 1-7 in NWN.

That was the point of the 'there's no preset story here'.  You don't like levels 1-7 because it's in the tide of an epic storyline.  On Arm, you're not.  You're milling around on a virtual world trying to make ends meet and progress a character.  Jumping up to journeyman doesn't 'jumpstart' fun and exciting things.  And I think, to be honest, being weaker might make the fun and exciting easier to find, since there is more of a sense of danger to even mundane things.

[Delirium]

The process of winning is more fun than actually winning. You may grind your teeth in frustration but you won't ever be bored.

Just like having a good enemy. You may hate that enemy with everything you've got, but without them, there's less conflict and things grow stale.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

I think you have a valid point, but I think the biggest argument here is about the dead-stop issue. This issue shouldn't exist. Neither should the "I gotta do something stupid to become better" issue. Dangerous, sure, but not stupid.

I think that any good solution to this issue will involve killing the dead stall, and I think that any such solution will involve making successes count for something. Just that single change, where a success can still offer you a chance at learning more, solves nearly every issue. It wouldn't matter much at lower levels, but it would mean a ton at higher levels of skill, particularly if all of the relevant skills are taken into account in such a adjustment of learning processes.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Oh, also, no, don't kill the grind. Just make sure there's content for all skill levels (there is), and danger too (there mostly is). But don't kill the grind. Just fix it so one can use common sense ICly and still satisfy OOC urges for "the codez'".

[nauta]

I'd get behind a way to make skillgains more gradual - it seems with most of my PCs I max out (or max out to a reasonable degree) after about a month played, or 1 IG year.  It'd be nice not to feel the plateau.  (A fortiori with magickers.)

[Delirium]

I think you have a valid point, but I think the biggest argument here is about the dead-stop issue. This issue shouldn't exist. Neither should the "I gotta do something stupid to become better" issue. Dangerous, sure, but not stupid.

I think that any good solution to this issue will involve killing the dead stall, and I think that any such solution will involve making successes count for something. Just that single change, where a success can still offer you a chance at learning more, solves nearly every issue. It wouldn't matter much at lower levels, but it would mean a ton at higher levels of skill, particularly if all of the relevant skills are taken into account in such a adjustment of learning processes.

Oh, I agree with that. Combat skills should raise faster, and successes should give you a percent chance of a raise.

Starting out at journeyman vs novice wouldn't solve that problem though, and it would take away much of the progression storyline.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Agreed absolutely. Barring the cgp system, I'd be angry with skills starting at higher levels.

[Hicksville Hoochie]

I think one thing that gets lost sight of, is that Arm isn't really a game about skills first. Skills are awesome and great, but raising them isn't really what I'd consider the focus of the game, so much as the journey of what happens in the time that skills are raised in coincidence with your individual storyline progression. This is absolutely my opinion, and not an accusation towards anyone, but I feel that when you go into a character thinking about skill progression over the story to come, you're setting yourself up to be unhappy with your pc in the short (and potentially long) term.

That said, not everyone likes to start out as a noob in the world of Zalanthas, which means adjusted starting skills would help make a concept work. I think the cgp system will honestly address this, and we really don't need too much more. As most people have mentioned above, the combat skillup system feels like it could use some love. I'm of the mind that the progression rate is fine, up until the point in which is nearly-stops, and the mentioned 'silly things' have to happen to skill up. I believe partial fails should absolutely add to skill gains in a minimal manner at this level. (so many partials for an increment, etc.)

Another thing that I think might help with skills, would be to make on-level challenges reward gains, even with success. If I'm a journeyman tailor, making the entry level stuff is eyes-closed territory. The things I couldn't make until I hit journeyman, though? Whether successful or not, you're likely to learn something from finishing up the project.

Lastly, I really would like for age to affect starting skills in a limited capacity. That is to say either small numerical gains for every so many years, or a 'pick and choose' so many skills for every xx years to get a one-stage bump (likely one bump max). might be good to help flesh out concepts. (The grizzled old military vet with novice swords is kind of silly, yes.) I do think cgp can address age-based bumps more or less, though.

tldr; Starting skill levels could use some work, but aren't too overly broken. And (imo) focusing on the story might alleviate skill-gain woes to a certain point.

[Saellyn]

I'd get behind a way to make skillgains more gradual - it seems with most of my PCs I max out (or max out to a reasonable degree) after about a month played, or 1 IG year.  It'd be nice not to feel the plateau.  (A fortiori with magickers.)

Go play a warrior and tell me how fast you "max out".

[Synthesis]

Yeah, the combat skill plateau is a bitch.

I got to journeyman, advanced, journeyman (from apprentice, novice, apprentice) in my important combat skills by 3 days 10 hours.

Still at the same spot at 11 days 18 hours.

[Saellyn]

Clearly some of us focus more on RP than others.

no, wait, I figured it out.

Get out of here with your elf wisdom!

[Eyeball]

Combat skills should rise faster from novice to advanced, and then slow to the current crawl from advanced to master, with one lone change - successes must have a small chance to advance your skill. This single thing would change most of the hatred associated with grinding.

Maybe the notion of some sort of partial fail could be introduced that only becomes available once journeyman is reached or so. A stance to try to target a particular part of the anatomy.

> target neck
Ok.
>
You strike at the neck but your blow glances off <victim's> shoulder! == partial fail

[Eyeball]

I've always found the meteoric nature of magickers to be pretty bullshit. 

My 100-day Warrior never branched a special weapon because he had poor wisdom.

You've unwittingly identified a part of it here. Magickers tend to have very high wisdoms. Don't want your magicker to advance so quickly? Make wisdom his dump stat. Want your warrior to learn faster? Prioritize wisdom.

[BadSkeelz]

I'd rather make their skill up just as miserable as ours, TBH.

[Saellyn]

Maybe not as miserable as mundanes, but maybe I'm the special case because I've had 20d+ magickers who haven't branched all their spells.

[Old Kank]

I wish there was a way to balance out the grind with time played.

I kind of like the grind, but if I only play 6 hours per week, then there's just no point playing the warrior class.

[Delirium]

^ yes.

[Barzalene]

I wish there was a way to balance out the grind with time played.

I kind of like the grind, but if I only play 6 hours per week, then there's just no point playing the warrior class.

I can relate to this.

[jhunter]

Some kind of tweak perhaps to cut down the grind a little. Faster progression at the lower to mid range and slower at the top end.

I don't honestly know after all this time if the code reflects it, but I think that the base offense and defense should have built in bonuses depending on what guild you are and what it is you are in combat with.

Warriors: Greater bonus to base offense and defense vs. humanoids. Minor penalty vs. non-humanoid.
Rangers: Greater bonus to base offense and defense vs. non-humanoid. Minor penalty vs. humanoid.
Assassin: Minor bonus to base offense and defense vs. humanoids. Minor penalty vs. non-humanoids.
Something like that.

[Malken]

Man, when I think of all the grinding I would have to do to get back to skill levels I enjoy I'm like looooool no way *plays MMORPG of the month instead*

Assigning a skill to train automatically when you are logged out would bring Armageddon so much into the 21st century.

[Barzalene]

If only it could be based on your average online times.

[manonfire]

Entitled kids!

#obamasamerica

#scrablivesmatter

[Dresan]

One of the problems with current skills is that journeyman sneak/hide are still practically useless. Unless you have mastered skills, which could sometimes take as much as 10 days of play time, you can't really depend on them which is kinda lame.

Sometimes I wonder how the game the game had less grind and classes could actually  do things such as sneak/hide/steal effectively right out of the box without having to play 2-3 months before being able to try petty stuff.

[FantasyWriter]

Special app skill bumps. Current Karma+3.
I played an older, skill-bumped pickpocket a while back (first sneaky PC I ever enjoyed).
I was pretty damn pleased with the results.  You should try it sometime.

[Alesan]

Special app skill bumps. Current Karma+3.
I played an older, skill-bumped pickpocket a while back (first sneaky PC I ever enjoyed).
I was pretty damn pleased with the results.  You should try it sometime.

If you have no karma, is this even possible at all?

[Dresan]

If you have no karma you can still get a bump of 3, but only three times a year.

However skill bumps is limited, and having played a max pickpocket, and lost a wonderful character concept to it(which i still regret),  I wouldn't waste my 3 per limit special app on boosting any of those skills personally.  Again though, that is my humble opinion, clearly FW has had different results.

Having used it already, I do have to agree with fantasy writer that it is great despite having to wait longer for it to be approved. Especially when you put it into combat, but then again I personally don't like joining clans in order to find people to spar with. At the end of the day, skill bumps don't really address the issue though. This is because skill bumps even with high decent karma are still limited use and there are a lot of skill on the skill tree which suck until you master them, much more then two or three.

Again it takes two to four months to get a character to be good and strong enough to do interesting things with them, and by that time I don't want to risk my character on small but interesting things that might make me loose all the progress. I try to save them up for something big. The same can be said if I have invested a ext-guild/skill-bump into the character.  The end result is a more boring game, and static world.   

[Alesan]

It's the same thing in any game, sadly. Every new character is a useless blank slate to one extent or another. There'd be no point to progress if you were capable right out of the box. Though I agree it can be depressing and discouraging to have to settle into the grind before a character concept becomes feasible.

[FantasyWriter]

Special app skill bumps. Current Karma+3.
I played an older, skill-bumped pickpocket a while back (first sneaky PC I ever enjoyed).
I was pretty damn pleased with the results.  You should try it sometime.

If you have no karma, is this even possible at all?

You can app for three skill bumps of your choice with no karma.
Extended subguild special apps and skill bump special apps, unlike normal ones, generally take less than two weeks. Most of mine have been in under a week.

[FantasyWriter]

Here's the staff post explaining the process, Alesan.

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,48618.0.html

Also... I want to date your avatar.

[Old Kank]

One of the problems with current skills is that journeyman sneak/hide are still practically useless. Unless you have mastered skills, which could sometimes take as much as 10 days of play time, you can't really depend on them which is kinda lame.

This is true of a lot of skills on Arm.  I think sneak, hide and climb are the worst offenders, because their failures tend to be absolute.  If I had a magic coding wand, that's what I would fix.  Most skills need varying degrees of failure, similar to ride.  "You try and shadow the tall, muscular man west, but feel eyes upon you and stop!"  Or: "You stealthily move west, but are forced to wait for a passing guard." <insert delay>  Or: "You carefully climb west.  You have trouble finding purchase here!  You carefully slide down."

[Alesan]

Also... I want to date your avatar.

[NemesisX]

I like to have to gain skills. One reason is because you get that sense of accomplishment from going from apprentice to master. Another is that you get attached to the character. Last thing we need is everyone coming out of the gates as a uber magicker or warrior supreme deciding to be raider killing everyone. I also know that you can ask for skill bumps via the resource tool for those of us who want that uber skill stat. I think it should be monitored. Again, this game is about the RP not about skills.

[nauta]

I like to have to gain skills. One reason is because you get that sense of accomplishment from going from apprentice to master. Another is that you get attached to the character. Last thing we need is everyone coming out of the gates as a uber magicker or warrior supreme deciding to be raider killing everyone. I also know that you can ask for skill bumps via the resource tool for those of us who want that uber skill stat. I think it should be monitored. Again, this game is about the RP not about skills.

I think the CGP skill bumps option finds the right balance. 

NemesisX makes a good point, on the one hand - and just to add, there is accomplishment in outliving those you started with, and knowing that the new ones - for the most part - coming in will have to prove themselves before they get into a position of coded power to muss things up.

On the other hand, every once in a while, it is nice to have someone come in out of chargen with a badass character they could use to muss things up.  Because, yeah, more muss!  Longer-lived characters tend to play things cautiously, which means there's less muss, and throw-away PCs used to muss things up tend to be short-lived because no coded power.

[jhunter]

I know that skill bumps kind of address this, I just wish that the new character creation system was implemented so I could just log in and go through the whole process including extended subguilds and skill bumps without having to have staff assistance.

[FantasyWriter]

That is the plan.  They gave the options to use through the special app system until the code can be finished to let us do it through chargen.

[jhunter]

Right. I get that. I am just saying that I wish it was in place already.

[FantasyWriter]

Cool, just wanted to make sure you (and everyone else in the thread) knew that was the original plan. As someone who likes spec apps, I wish it would get done as wells so that I didn't have to use up my spec app slots when I wanted a skill bump or extended sub.