skill increase?

[Faceless]

hello all, as a newcomer i wonder about this:

o how does skillincrease work? does it take like 2000+ attempts to increase a tiny bit, or does it occur a lot more often?
o how much better can you get by increasing your skill, compared to its "normal" value?
o when a skill increases, are you notified somehow?

[Anonymous]

o how does skillincrease work? does it take like 2000+ attempts to increase a tiny bit, or does it occur a lot more often?

Typically questions like this aren't answered by the staff because it seems to be pretty much agreed by most that too much knowledge of how the code works in regards to skill progression can lead to players giving into the urge to modify their PCs behavior in unrealistic ways in order to manipulate the system.

o how much better can you get by increasing your skill, compared to its "normal" value?

Not sure how to quantify it but the PCs that I've played that progressed to a decent degree of combat skill were light years better than their newbie days.

o when a skill increases, are you notified somehow?

Nope, just like in real life you know you are getting more skilled at something by the results you can produce in Arm the better you get the more success you'll have.

[Demonaire]

Well, your question is very complex, to say the least.


:arrow: Skill increase contains various different factos ranging from wisdom, to the specific skill you're learning, and/or the frequency of its use. Example: You will not learn backstab as an assassin as quick as you may learn kick or bash as a warrior.

:arrow: Again, this will depend on a few factors. To take for example warriors; you can begin as a peddling hunter getting stomped by a tregil and progress into someone of great strength, and possibly untouchable.

:arrow: You do not receive an instant message detailing to you that you've increased in your skills, if thats what you're asking. However, to again use warriors as an example, you will notice the increase in how hard you hit your victim(s) with quite a few other visible changes to your character's skill in combat.




                  - Demonaire -

[Larrath]

Hello, and welcome to Armageddon!

1. Automatic skill increases happen as you use the skill.  It does not require you to go through unnatural amounts of practice before you get better, but it is also dependent on a few factors, one of which is your Wisdom attribute.  Also, trying to just spam-practice is both futile and capable of upsetting the staff.

2. Because no numbers are shown in-game, a 'true' answer isn't possible, but you can get a hell of a lot better.  Some Guild and Subguild skills will be capped however, meaning that a Pickpocket might be able to get their steal to 100% while a Warrior/Burglar could be stuck at 75%.

3. There is no notification when your skills increase, you just notice it over time.  This promotes realism.  You are also not notified when you branch a new skill - it simply pops up on your skill list.

[marko]

o how does skillincrease work? does it take like 2000+ attempts to increase a tiny bit, or does it occur a lot more often?

Something like that.  Depends on the skill really.  Some skills may go up with each failure while others go up as a basic percent of it being used (say, one time out of a thousand uses).

The reality of it is that it is very difficult to predict skill gains and thus it is best to just use skills in a 'natural' and 'meaningful' way and let the skill gains occur as they will in the background.

Typically, if you use a skill regularly you'll notice a definite improvement over the course of say, 1 - 3 days played.  Therefore, it is best to just use skills when your char would use them and focus on the environment, interaction, and roleplaying.

o how much better can you get by increasing your skill, compared to its "normal" value?

Let me put it this way.  A merchant (who has basically no combat ability) can end up kicking the ass up a newbie warrior if they fight enough.

The difference between a skilled character and a new character is _huge_ there is a lot of room to grow and to improve.

o when a skill increases, are you notified somehow?

Nope.  By not informing of skill-ups the focus fades away from skills to play.  The most enjoyable role I had in Armageddon to date did not use a single skill other than contact.  Literally, when he was retired (at like 24 days) his skills were still at their start values.

[adrien]

hello all, as a newcomer i wonder about this:

o how does skillincrease work? does it take like 2000+ attempts to increase a tiny bit, or does it occur a lot more often?
o how much better can you get by increasing your skill, compared to its "normal" value?
o when a skill increases, are you notified somehow?

lets make it simple

practice makes perfect just like in real life also i think you lose skill after a while to if you do it enough sorta like having a bad day making pizza when your a chief. but you go back up a little more then before sorta like the stock market

[Rhyden]

i think you lose skill after a while to if you do it enough sorta like having a bad day making pizza when your a chief. but you go back up a little more then before sorta like the stock market

Hmm, I seem to remember somebody saying that skills are never reduced unless immortals tweak them down. This right?

[jstorrie]

Skills have been coded in Armageddon in a way that follows common sense, for the most part. For example:

You learn more from mistakes than successes, and consequently learn more from things that are challenging than things you can do by rote.

Some people learn faster than others. Your Wisdom modifier here is part of it; some races are more or less clever than others, too. Check the helpfiles on the different races.

Some people are just better at some things than others: someone who's spent most of his life fighting, like a warrior, will pick up new fighting techniques easily, but if he's never made baskets before it'll take him a long time to pick that up.

Skills that 'branch' from others generally do so from ones they're related to. If you spend a lot of time sneaking around, you'll probably pick up some special tricks to make that easier. If you spend a lot of time clubbing gith into paste, you'll probably devise some uber gith-killing techniques, etc, etc.

Practice makes perfect, but after a certain point you get tired out, frustrated or just overwhelmed by what you're trying to pick up. In other words, practicing something all day might not be more worthwhile than practicing it for half an hour every morning.

The biggest thing to remember is that if you're focusing on upping one skill or another, you're probably not helping yourself all that much, really. If you want to be the world's greatest swordsman, don't just run around the desert killing things all day; that's counterproductive. You'll tire yourself out, probably tear up and ruin your muscles, and how much can you learn duelling with beetles, anyway? Do what you'd do in the real world if you were trying to learn: find a mentor, or some people to practice with, follow a decent (but not too grueling) schedule, and be patient. The more you worry about the code, the more star systems will fall through your grasp, or something along those lines.

[adrien]

i think you lose skill after a while to if you do it enough sorta like having a bad day making pizza when your a chief. but you go back up a little more then before sorta like the stock market

Hmm, I seem to remember somebody saying that skills are never reduced unless immortals tweak them down. This right?

they act like our skills in life we have times when our skills dont do so well.

[Bestatte]

Ah I think he's talking about -how- skills increase. We improve with failure, just like in real life. If you always do something correctly, you'll never get beyond that point. Correcting a mistake is how you get better at something, and if you never make a mistake, you'll never get better (or branch, in the case of Armageddon code)

[Cenghiz]

I have no evidence, but I do believe imms may gift you slight skill increases if you RP thinking about a way to make something in a better way, even if it's a subguild skill at its cap. I had a few instances where I felt great leaps in my skills after solo-RPing them in a fashion, either by using code or just RPing.
Also I heard skills lowered if a player's caught twinking a skill. But still both may be the ghost in the machine.