The Grind: A compromise solution

[Barsook]

I like the grind the way it is, I like the way it rewards effort and I like the endorphins I feel when a skill finally ticks up a level. I like it a lot. Please don't change it ever.

But...

Maybe there should be some passive way for combat since it's the slowest and it would the most realistic to do because of the virtual world. Which is already stated in above posts.

[Inks]

That would be awful. What is this, Haven?

Raising combat skills through training/hunting carries inherent risk, from other players or NPCs. And it is good.

Also due to changes over the last three years it so so much easier to be decent than it used to be.

Edit: I would be fine for nobles to start with journeyman weapon skills to represent training as they were educated from a young age by tutors, but believe they already are allowed skillbumps in their roles? Not 100% on this.

[Inks]

This is also something other MUDs have done, though - (reduced for size)
I think people who want all this stuff should try the alternatives to just see how bad they are, it makes it easier to be happier with Armageddon

Also this is spot on. Sorry for replying to myself.

[Halaster]

This would probably be a big coding project, but it would be cool if the 'base' level of skills were way easier to get up off the ground (to reduce the grind).  But to counteract that, you could add a growing penalty for not using a skill for a long time.  An RL day or two could be all that's needed to shake off the rust.

> skills
piercing weapons (master, neglected)  <-- a penalty
slashing weapons (advanced, familiar)  <-- a bonus, maybe?

'Rinth rats would always be sharp when it comes to stealth, whereas a commoner might have to practice up before a big heist.  Bynners would always be better than people who didn't spar daily.

I think an easier (coding) approach might be to have skills rise more quickly when they're low, and slower when they're high. 

[Jihelu]

By slower, do we mean current levels (Which I feel are pretty damn slow) or even slower than what we have now?

I feel like that's a decent solution.

I don't really care much about the grind situation, I don't particularly like it but it's something I just deal with. I can generally get a character where I want him in like....5-10 days played.
Which TBH is still kind of a long ass time but its whatever

[Dar]

Something changed. I recall raising weapon skills to advanced on my warriors and rangers off of animals that can no longer dodge me at apprentice. Do the new combat classes start with insanely high offense or something?

First of all, yes. The new classes do start with higher combat capability. Also the way one learns combat skills has changed. Basically if your opponent has low off/def, you will learn slower. Yes, they might be dodging you due to high agility, or whatever. But you'll still learn slower.  This was ment (and I think it worked) to encourage training with partners in clans. So if two people with the same off/def join a clan and train together. Their off/def both raises at loosely similar pace. While a greenhorn with low off/def training with a Veteran, will have their learning sped up incredibly until he gets somewhere near the veteran skill. Then their pace will reduce. This encourages veterans to help teaching the recruits as well. As the more people around him that are at his skill level, the higher are the chances he himself will learn. The learning pace of a veteran surrounded by only greenhorn is probably borderline non existent.

I cant say if that worked as swimmingly in practice. But I think it did at least somewhat.  Training off critters has been severely weakened in pace.

[Jihelu]

From my experience the heavy combat guilds are vastly superior to the old warrior/ranger starts.
I'd say old warrior/ranger is probably where light combat is now.

Playing a heavy combat feels like I've got a whole 5-10 days of offense/defense training in me. It's real nice.

[Nao]

Skill caps for weapon skills were raised. The skill levels all correspond to higher weapon skills, too. A certain level of "high Apprentice" used to show up as "Journeyman" on your skill list and this applies to all the tiers.

[Dresan]

This is a game where you can lose your RP and coded investments in an instant. You can't really compare it to other games especially modern MMOs with no concept of permadeath.

I want to recommend for out of game trianing(please note the numbers need refinement):

1. Every 24 hours an account gets 2 points. Clanned characters get 3 points. This is regardless of whether they are logged in or not.
2. Players can spend these points to fail gain at any skill on their list.
3.This does not interfere with any additional failures people get in the game except for the skill you leveled up depending on your wisdom. Just as if you had failed and successfully gained in that one skill.
4. There is a limit to how many points a player can accumulate. They need to log in and spend their points
5. However different skills have different costs for 1 fail at different levels. The cost for failing hunt at apprentice is different then failing 1 weapon skill at journeyman.

The staff just need to calculate how long they feel its reasonable for a player just using this system alone should be able to get to max levels of any particular skills. IN the case of weapons skills this could still takes weeks or months to get from journeyman to advanced, but you will get better as long as you keep playing.

I've thrown around some fake numbers, they need more refinement but this system:
-Encourages being in a clan.
-Encourages logging on to the game to spend your points.
-Reduces grind in controlled method so we don't have everyone running around with maxed combat skills.
-Eliminates the need for twinkish behavior just to get fails for certain hard to level skills.  You can spend your time RPing and your skills will eventually go up.

[Night Queen]

The problem with everything like that is it:

- Discourages taking risks, discourages adventure, discourages the potential for those accidental fun stories that Armageddon shines on creating, that adventure and risk are important to help create

- Discourages exploring when you can get maxed out without leaving the designated cheese-eating room

- Increases the amount of people with maxed or a-few-steps-away-from-max skills from just idling, when an important part of the process that makes skills valuable is the chance to die while trying to get them - not just from combat, but also stuff like failing climb and how other skills force people into dangerous places or conflict - it means people can get their skills without the chance, like Brokkr said, to be able to kill them. It would be just awful cheese to have people hiding in their clan cocoons until they come out the wider world with everything boosted up... This is already a big problem with some types of sponsored roles!

- Devalues the characters that otherwise might stand out, reduces the dramatic feeling of the game, kills the atmosphere - the end result would be other MUDs that make it easy for everyone to get skills and everyone ends up gods and it's very boring... The challenge is part of the fun

The unique stuff is what brings people back. The unique stuff is why this place still has regular 30+ players while every other RP mud is struggling, dying, or has moved away from RP entirely and doesn't resemble a realistic virtual world anymore at all, to just become stuff like suggested where everything is given out on a MUSH-like OOC basis instead of earned by the character's actions, which actually ironically turns it more into a skills-focused grind fest instead (I've tried both, and anyone that's tried the tabletop style online too knows that people start to just doing the minimum to get their points), just changing the way it's done, idle to victory, a suffocation of the game by pillows - The chance for dying or players to kill you is an IMPORTANT part of the excitement... Otherwise it's just another game it'd just be the same as the boring low-RP MUDs, and this game would LOSE players.

A few people said now don't change it, and I think that's because how it is is actually great: It's not made so no one dies, but that's kind of the point... It's what makes it an adventure when you know a character has survived the crazy stuff their friends fell to. I do think weapon skills seem to be so slow to be actually broken at high end but that can probably be made more reasonable without destroying the whole game world, as a few people said now, everything else seems to be pretty reasonable because it already got redone to make people start with a reasonable skill boost already

[Lotion]

This is a game where you can lose your RP and coded investments in an instant. You can't really compare it to other games especially modern MMOs with no concept of permadeath.

I want to recommend for out of game trianing(please note the numbers need refinement):

1. Every 24 hours an account gets 2 points. Clanned characters get 3 points. This is regardless of whether they are logged in or not.
2. Players can spend these points to fail gain at any skill on their list.
3.This does not interfere with any additional failures people get in the game except for the skill you leveled up depending on your wisdom. Just as if you had failed and successfully gained in that one skill.
4. There is a limit to how many points a player can accumulate. They need to log in and spend their points
5. However different skills have different costs for 1 fail at different levels. The cost for failing hunt at apprentice is different then failing 1 weapon skill at journeyman.

The staff just need to calculate how long they feel its reasonable for a player just using this system alone should be able to get to max levels of any particular skills. IN the case of weapons skills this could still takes weeks or months to get from journeyman to advanced, but you will get better as long as you keep playing.

I've thrown around some fake numbers, they need more refinement but this system:
-Encourages being in a clan.
-Encourages logging on to the game to spend your points.
-Reduces grind in controlled method so we don't have everyone running around with maxed combat skills.
-Eliminates the need for twinkish behavior just to get fails for certain hard to level skills.  You can spend your time RPing and your skills will eventually go up.

Encouraging people to be in a clan like that is very bad. The twinking advantage for clans is that it is often easier or safer to get your fails whether that is through near unlimited supply of craft materials or having a sparring hall.

If there are certain skills that are difficult to max it should be considered if they are meant to be maxed or if the methods required to max them are reasonable.

[Wday]

The grind is what fleshes out our characters.  Coming from nothing and learning, climbing rank and social ladders! I really hope we don't bypass the grind and become a world of starting out legends.

[Hestia]

I'm with Halaster on this.  The initial grind I feel is the most frustrating, especially for new players. They're not looking to be great, at first. They're looking to be useful.  They want to see some kind of reward for their efforts.

So rather than reward veterans, thus completely ignoring new players, I say reward new characters with a growing spurt at the very beginning.  Sure you start out crap with your main skillset. And then you use it once. You see how crappy it is. You buy a length of cloth and ruin the whole thing in the first try. You fail to bandage someone. You fail to parry that spar. You fail to flee from the rat and are stuck duking it out for 10 RL minutes until it finally dies of boredom!

And then - the next day you log in - you try these things again. And you discover you are actually capable of succeeding. You bandage someone badly - but successfully. You parry at least once during the spar. You can turn your cloth into at least one length ends up turning into the set of sleeves you're working on. Your third time trying to flee from the rat, you actually flee.

That initial boost can be enough to tell a player "okay so this is what success looks like, and I know to look for it in the future."  Rather than spending hours and days on end wondering if you'll even recognize it when it happens.

The rest of the progression would be no different than it is now.  It'd still be slow.  Your cap/max wouldn't change. But you'd get that initial boost, the reward for executing the skill shortly after the first time you use it.

[Halaster]

I'm with Halaster on this.  The initial grind I feel is the most frustrating, especially for new players. They're not looking to be great, at first. They're looking to be useful.  They want to see some kind of reward for their efforts.

So rather than reward veterans, thus completely ignoring new players, I say reward new characters with a growing spurt at the very beginning.  Sure you start out crap with your main skillset. And then you use it once. You see how crappy it is. You buy a length of cloth and ruin the whole thing in the first try. You fail to bandage someone. You fail to parry that spar. You fail to flee from the rat and are stuck duking it out for 10 RL minutes until it finally dies of boredom!

And then - the next day you log in - you try these things again. And you discover you are actually capable of succeeding. You bandage someone badly - but successfully. You parry at least once during the spar. You can turn your cloth into at least one length ends up turning into the set of sleeves you're working on. Your third time trying to flee from the rat, you actually flee.

That initial boost can be enough to tell a player "okay so this is what success looks like, and I know to look for it in the future."  Rather than spending hours and days on end wondering if you'll even recognize it when it happens.

The rest of the progression would be no different than it is now.  It'd still be slow.  Your cap/max wouldn't change. But you'd get that initial boost, the reward for executing the skill shortly after the first time you use it.

Maybe some kind of flag on the character so during the first 2 days played they gain 2x faster.  Or something like that, just tossing out numbers for example purpose.

[Hestia]

I'm with Halaster on this.  The initial grind I feel is the most frustrating, especially for new players. They're not looking to be great, at first. They're looking to be useful.  They want to see some kind of reward for their efforts.

So rather than reward veterans, thus completely ignoring new players, I say reward new characters with a growing spurt at the very beginning.  Sure you start out crap with your main skillset. And then you use it once. You see how crappy it is. You buy a length of cloth and ruin the whole thing in the first try. You fail to bandage someone. You fail to parry that spar. You fail to flee from the rat and are stuck duking it out for 10 RL minutes until it finally dies of boredom!

And then - the next day you log in - you try these things again. And you discover you are actually capable of succeeding. You bandage someone badly - but successfully. You parry at least once during the spar. You can turn your cloth into at least one length ends up turning into the set of sleeves you're working on. Your third time trying to flee from the rat, you actually flee.

That initial boost can be enough to tell a player "okay so this is what success looks like, and I know to look for it in the future."  Rather than spending hours and days on end wondering if you'll even recognize it when it happens.

The rest of the progression would be no different than it is now.  It'd still be slow.  Your cap/max wouldn't change. But you'd get that initial boost, the reward for executing the skill shortly after the first time you use it.

Maybe some kind of flag on the character so during the first 2 days played they gain 2x faster.  Or something like that, just tossing out numbers for example purpose.

I'd want it to be the first 2 days in which those skills are used, rather than just the first 2 days.  Some players don't get to use their skills for the first 2 days of play.  Unmanifested mages come to mind for that, in particular. 

But yes something like that.

[creeper386]

I'd want it to be the first 2 days in which those skills are used, rather than just the first 2 days.  Some players don't get to use their skills for the first 2 days of play.  Unmanifested mages come to mind for that, in particular. 

But yes something like that.

I know this is just brainstorming here, but I'd be curious at more thoughts. Would this be "x" number of failures increase faster? Because if it's days played, then potentially someone who is playing off peak may not be able to take the same advantage of it as someone off peak.

[Hestia]

I'd want it to be the first 2 days in which those skills are used, rather than just the first 2 days.  Some players don't get to use their skills for the first 2 days of play.  Unmanifested mages come to mind for that, in particular. 

But yes something like that.

I know this is just brainstorming here, but I'd be curious at more thoughts. Would this be "x" number of failures increase faster? Because if it's days played, then potentially someone who is playing off peak may not be able to take the same advantage of it as someone off peak.

Speaking for myself (Halaster might be thinking some other way) and not really understanding the code of progression:

However you progress in a thing - you would progress, how you normally do, however the code works to provide progression.

But the speed at which that progression occurs would occur 50% faster, for the first two RL days that you use it. Example:

An adventuring exploring type of character whose primary skills are utility rather than combat:  Spends the first RL day - let's call it Tuesday - of his character buying supplies, checking the gossip boards in the taverns, learning syntax if he's new, maybe meeting someone and interacting.  That day is not counted in his progression boost.

Amos doesn't log in at all on Wednesday.  On Thursday, he buys a mount and goes out adventuring near Luir's Outpost.  He learns he needs to have at least one hand free, so he tries riding with a shield in his off-hand.

During this ride, he has a 50% greater chance of getting skillups with riding.

He encounters a patch of ground that looks like it might contain edibles, or branches, or stone, and he decides it'd probably be handy to have a couple of these things.

He will have a 50% greater chance of getting skillups with forage.

He also runs into a little critter, which is hiding, but not very well. He started running his scan skill earlier, so now he will have a 50% greater chance of increasing his scan skill.

This would be a 50% chance of increasing, over and above the chance he would normally get, if this process wasn't implemented.

Amos doesn't log in again until Sunday. He spends that time hanging out in the bar, maybe getting a job.  No progression there.  On Monday he goes out with his new crew, which allows him the chance to try his luck with climbing in relative safety in numbers.  This is his second day of using skills that would progress faster.  And so he has a 50% greater chance of progressing climbing. And a 50% greater chance of boosting bandage when he tries bandaging his new boss, who sucks at climbing and falls every time.

The end of the second day of using skills that -would- progress faster, comes. And that's the end of his new-character skill bump opportunity.

[Night Queen]

Halaster and Hestia's idea sounds good but maybe make it a temporary bonus so it isn't just like kind of a power-levelling bonus for the first few days (I think that'd probably be a bit too heavily used by more experienced players) maybe instead..
- after the first real life day (not 24 hours logged in but the first actual real day they logged in) if they've failed something at least three times...
- The next time they login the newbie boost activates on those things and gives a few times extra a much higher chance of success (but not infinite, and not guaranteed so it's not god-mode and time to go on a crazy run that normally wouldn't survive etc, depending on what skills they were, maybe not apply to combat skills or other conflict/criminal-related stuff)
- After the teaser successes make the skills go back to what they would have been (no actual increase in skills, just increase in successes), the skill boost was hidden so people don't feel they had something that got taken away, it was subtly done to encourage, but without totally removing the newbie period of learning and making everything too easy (a new character having that early struggle is something that makes it more interesting)

[Maso]

If you boosted gains for the first couple of days.. most players would just zone in on trying to maximise combat fails for those first couple of days.. and probably get frustrated if they didn't find anyone to spar with, suicide and roll another character to get another shot at min/maxing their head start.

It could also widen the gap between peak and off-peak players in this respect, since peak would get 2x on that sweet combat for the first couple of days while off-peak would like still get nil point if they couldn't find anyone to twink with.

[Jihelu]

Honestly I already notice some people spend the first X days of their character grinding up then bothering to RP after, so I really don't see an issue of 'Everyone who makes a new character will just grind and not RP'

[X-D]

Yes to that point...But not so sure it is all about grinding in the beginning. I mean it is But only so you CAN survive. For me, that first 24 hours of play tends to be low on interaction with other PCs because I need to replace that starting coin and get the more important survival skills to some sort of usefulness.

Many of you need to change "RP" To "interact".   Somebody working to get the PC stable is in fact Role playing, Even if they do not interact with other PCs.

[Brytta Léofa]

I'd want it to be the first 2 days in which those skills are used, rather than just the first 2 days.  Some players don't get to use their skills for the first 2 days of play.  Unmanifested mages come to mind for that, in particular. 

But yes something like that.

Just do it based on the current skill level. That corresponds closely to "first 2 days in which those skills are used", but it doesn't require storing any additional state. And TBH it accommodates a wider range of players.

Like, e.g.,
   gain_skill(ch, slot, amount) {
     if (current skill < apprentice)
       amount *= 2;
     if (current skill < journeyman)
       amount += 1;
     /* blah blah blah do stuff */
   }

Double-speed gainz from novice; increased gainz up to journeyman. You maintain the dynamic of fail = gain, so it's a very incremental change.

[Greve]

Yeah, it should definitely be tied to skill level and not time elapsed. You don't want to create a situation where new characters are encouraged to log in, quickly check if there's an opportunity to raise skills, and then log out if not because the player doesn't want to waste their 48 hour boost waiting for someone else to show up for sparring or for stilt lizards to respawn. Simply make skills go up faster if they're below a certain threshold.

I'm not real keen on offline gains and things like that. It shouldn't be necessary. It's much healthier for the game if skills need to be used in order to increase them, and that's best solved by making them go up faster and more smoothly. Change the fact that some skills require increasingly bizarre activities to increase them. Increase the chance to gain in the skills that aren't guaranteed to go up on each failure. Make more skills go up by multiple points at a time like some already do. Maybe even make some skills less terrible at lower levels--foraging for anything specific with less than advanced forage feels borderline impossible, for instance. It seems more effective to just forage rocks until you happen to find jasper than to 'forage rocks for jasper.'

Aside from the early stages of a character's life where it feels important to just get to the point where you're no longer utterly incompetent, the grind also has some long-term problems. With some skills, it doesn't take a whole lot to get to the point where you feel stuck if you don't go to bizarre, twinky lengths to generate failures. Sometimes it can happen even at journeyman. The constant obstacles and fail-chasing is an annoying and unsightly part of the game, but due to the way skillgains work, it's pretty much necessary. It's probably a bigger change than what's on the table right now, but some day I'd like to see a shift away from the way you can only learn by failing. In real life, you very much can learn by doing it right. I don't think I've ever failed to change a tire, but I'm certainly much better at it now than I was when I got my first car.

With a smaller chance to gain on success, and with parameters similar to the way you currently can't gain combat skills against someone who's way less skilled than you, I think most skills could be given that treatment. It worked more or less that way on the games that ran the RPI-Engine codebase and it allowed characters to progress in a much more natural and realistic manner. The way it is now, those who are able and willing to do silly things will max out most of their skills while those who aim to play "the right way" often won't. That just doesn't seem reasonable. The code rewards doing things we're not supposed to do, and doesn't do enough to reward responsible play. While you probably can't completely eliminate twinkery, you can change the fact that it's almost required if one wants to get certain skills to a level where they're really interesting.

[Bogre]

I don't really believe in stuff like gain commands and ready-made skilled characters. I don't think that can ever be an ideal solution to the issue. Most of the skills that are problematic can be made less so with changes to the way they increase. If you take a normal everyday skill like sneak/hide or forage or any crafting skill that isn't gated behind material scarcity, anyone playing a character that uses these with any real regularity can generally max them out (or at least raise them to a satisfyingly useful level) in 3-4 days of playtime, and that timeframe seems very reasonable. The only real problem is with the combat skills.

Two changes that would eliminate nearly all issues with the grind:

1) Sparring NPCs in military clans. With player numbers what they are, this has simply become necessary. In order for a game of this scope to function at all, you cannot gate combat training exclusively behind PC-to-PC interaction, and characters in military clans are usually prohibited from dicking around alone in the wilderness to hack away at animals and bandits. Sparring NPCs would solve so many problems, and it's not some kind of unexplored concept that could introduce a bunch of new issues--other RPIs have done this before and it worked out great, with a few simple rules like "don't ignore other players in the room so you can spar the NPC" and "don't fucking backstab him." This also makes these clans way more attractive. A sparring NPC doesn't need to take you to <master> but it should provide the kind of training that at least matches what you can get from just hunting medium-risk animals or getting scummy in the 'rinth.


At the end of the day, the issue with the grind is that so much of your time is wasted. It's wasted standing alone in the sparring hall day after day, or it's wasted hunting for hours at a time without learning anything whatsoever. Whenever you actually can get effective training, your skills go up just fine. The problem is that effective training is this bizarre unicorn you hope to find one day, and until you do, most of your time is pissed away on a futile attempt to eke out a little bit of progress. This is why a one-time skill bump is no solution, nor do offline gains change the fact that there's little feeling of progression when actually playing the game. It feels like shit to spend so much time on something you know was pointless.

I think Greve yet again hits the nail on the head.

I enjoy steady progress, and achieving character skills and getting better is enjoyable. Grinding skills is a reason to play, it gets characters together and involved with each other. Players (and characters) should be rewarded for putting in effort. You don't want everyone to be maxed with no effort, or make the grind so trivial that there's no sense of accomplishment or power spread.

But again - combat skills feel so terrible. I hate having to worry about whether or not whatever I do in real or sparring combat is going to hamstring my character later down the road....(oh no, if I increase my offense too quick I'll never increase my weapon skills!"). Or how training exclusively with swords will make it 50x harder to train axes later on. Worrying about training 'badly' is one of the biggest fun-drains in the game for me.

The clan sparring NPCs do seem to mitigate that (though this doesn't resolve the situation for independents). I actually saw progress, it wasn't super fast but it felt like progression. And I think that's the key issue- its not a length of progression that is daunting. Players will log in and keep working to achieve the progression goals if they have a path to it, even if it requires some dedication. The thing people hate, I think, is spinning their wheels with no chance of reward.

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As an aside, I think that being able to start at 'private' level or whatever in some clans would be worthwhile, with reasonable starting abilities.

[Veselka]

Definitely not an aside. If I could start as Trooper/Private every other PC I would.