Teach

[Hymwen]

Could the teach command be fixed and made a more viable method of skill progression?

[Agent_137]

in what manner is it broken?

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Personally, I just feel like it should be used so often. People are terribly stingy with it, and I never understood why.

[mansa]

Personally, I just feel like it should be used so often. People are terribly stingy with it, and I never understood why.

I think that's a problem of people, and not of the game.

I know certain people use it frequently, and some people don't.

[Hymwen]

You can't teach diddly-squat with it. I had a warrior with under 5 days played who was taught slashing weapons by another warrior that I know has existed for over a RL year and is very skilled, yet I got "they don't seem to know any more than you do". Same thing happened in the Byn where my almost brand new warrior was taught something by their 30+ day sergeant, and most other times I've been the target of teach. Either the command is bugged or just way too restricted. I think I've been succesfully taught something twice in the entire time I've played.

[Marauder Moe]

Well, I think most people only like to use it after a good, long RPed out teaching session.  Not just:

Code Select Expand

>tell Amos Yeah, just kick him when you want to go and pull on the reigns when you want to turn.

>teach Amos ride

[Gimfalisette]

I know certain people use it frequently, and some people don't.

I use it if I think my skill is high enough to actually help the person out. Then, it also needs to be an appropriate RP context in which "teach" makes sense.

A friend and I were joking about going around, finding newbs who were knocking themselves out with the Way, and teaching them "contact." This actually isn't a bad idea. Everyone, teach a new character "contact" today! (Throw in "barrier" for extra Good Samaritan points.)

Perhaps we just all need to be in the "teach" habit more, though also I think it's unfortunately unclear how much or how little "teach" actually helps. I might do it more if I thought/knew it was really valuable.

[Gimfalisette]

You can't teach diddly-squat with it. I had a warrior with under 5 days played who was taught slashing weapons by another warrior that I know has existed for over a RL year and is very skilled, yet I got "they don't seem to know any more than you do". Had similar experiences in the Byn where my almost brand new warrior was taught something by their 30+ day sergeant. Either the command is bugged, or just way too restricted. I think I've been succesfully taught something twice in the entire time I've played.

There are also skills that "teach" doesn't work on, which really doesn't make sense. For example, languages; the fact that you can't "teach" a language actually discourages a good, interactive RP session in favor of just listening to the teacher natter on in the language. (Because a well-RPed language lesson involves a lot of speaking or Waying in a method that the student will understand...which necessarily reduces the quantity of interaction which happens in the language being taught. Thus, the twinky solution is to skip the lesson and just listen to the language.)

I also have never been taught successfully in a combat skill, by characters who were obviously much more skilled and should have been able to do so. So now we've (in a twinkish mindset) wasted a bunch of time on you RPing out stances and techniques for me, the teach didn't work, and we lost sparring time.

[Twilight]

From the helpfile:

Teaching only allows one to impart the 'basics' of a skill to someone;
if they have already mastered the basics, then they must proceed to 'hands
on' learning to gain additional insight.

That has definately been my experience.  It really is just the basics.  That said, for that purpose, I've found it fairly useful on both sides.

[Hymwen]

And I'd like to see that changed. Would it be so bad for the game if teach could do more than bring someone from useless to really bad? There should of course be some limitations to avoid over-teaching, but I would much rather receive my skill gains through roleplayed lessons than finding excuses to use the skill. I'm not saying you should be able to be taught up to a master level, but the fact that a warrior after just a few days played (with moderate sparring included) has already exceeded the point where they can ever be taught anything is a little dumb.

[Only He Stands There]

Honestly, I concur.

While I wouldn't like to see someone at Uberfacerape level of Backstab able to teach newbie assassin B all the way up to Uberfacerape, I wouldn't mind seeing them able to teach them up from Shittacular to Possiblymighthitsomethingonceeverysixtries.

[Marauder Moe]

Perhaps there should be huge delays between teaching for a particular skill?  Like, on the order of days played before being taught will be effective again.

[Morgenes]

For the record, the help file is slightly wrong.  Teach is best for teaching the basics, but it does allow you to learn even after the basics.  However the teacher must know a good bit more than you in order to get anything out of it.  I can't say the numbers, and they wouldn't make sense even if I did, but if you have a instance where there's an ancient warrior teaching a newb and you get that message, bug it or write an email to mud about it.  We can check the relative skills and verify if there is a bug or not.

Edit:  Amended TEACH help file posted

Teaching is most effective to impart the 'basics' of a skill to someone;
if they have already mastered the basics, then the effectiveness of the
lessons are reduced.

Edit: answer question about timing:

Perhaps there should be huge delays between teaching for a particular skill? Like, on the order of days played before being taught will be effective again.

Teach uses the same gaining algorithm as hands-on-learning for timing skill gains.  Spamming the teach command does not allow you to gain multiple times.

[Hymwen]

it does allow you to learn even after the basics. However the teacher must know a good bit more than you in order to get anything out of it

I would recommend revising and possibly changing those numbers. Like I said before, teach has often failed on me in situations where I cannot believe that my skill level was realistically too close to the teacher's for me to learn anything from a lesson. Having witnessed a character who would mutilate mine in a sparring match, a completely one-sided duel where I never hit them and they beat me in 4-5 consecutive attacks, and then seeing that "they don't know any more than you" when they taught me a skill the same day, makes me strongly believe that it should be looked into.

Apart from the coded inconsistency regarding the teach command, I would also like to see it used more often and more effectively in most groups that train people in combat. As it is now, the system promotes mindless sparring, and my experience is that (sadly) the combat-heavy clans tend to attract players who appear more interested in that aspect of the clan than any other. I know that I'm hesitant to join the Byn because the one time I did it, I was discouraged by people who seemingly logged in to spar and logged out afterwards, and only really roleplayed on days with scheduled contracts and such. I'm not saying that it's how the clan works or that they all play that way, but I certainly saw that happen more than I liked.

The problem with roleplayed lessons that aren't backed up by skill increases is that some people will be less eager to go out on a trip if they know that they're gonna be in trouble when they meet more than one scrab/gith/raptor/gortok. They might prefer that coded sparring match over an emoted lecture in shield usage because it will directly affect their chance of surviving a risky fight. I've played a couple of leadership-ish roles in combat-orientated clans and I saw a clear decrease in people showing up for training once I started introducing more intangible methods of training as opposed to traditional 1 vs. 1 sparring matches. Other players dislike sparring because it's boring and often results in less interesting and immersive roleplay since players tend to emote and speak less during coded combat. Finally there's an issue with the fact that you actually learn more from sparring with an equal opponent with the current code, and sparring a vastly superior fighter can be very unrewarding skill-wise.

As someone else suggested, and which I also had in mind, you could put a lengthy timer on the teach skill to prevent abuse. Or you could have it yield only an amount of skill equal to what you can normally learn within the time increment that is used for manual skill gain, but with a somewhat longer timer so that it doesn't become strictly better than sparring and make that obsolete. I don't want it to replace sparring, but I would love to see it as a viable alternative in order for a master to teach a student. It doesn't have to be for combat only, but that's probably what it would affect the most because it's one of the few areas where skill can be truly difficult to find opportunity to train.

[Armaddict]

I'd rather see combat-heavy clans train their members in combat-heavy ways than see teach used all over the place.

I dunno, liberal use of the teach command always kind of bothered me, particularly when you see people joining clans just because that one badass guy can make them badass really fast.

I -am- one of those stingy bastards with teach, though, so I don't know if this means much.  I just see too much of teach as more harmful than too little of teach.  I know that in the past, staff has commented on teach being used too much, and I think that's what made the shift back to its current stingy form.

Staff opinion?

[Maso]

I'm with Hymwen on this one. I think teach would allow you to roleplay out learning in a style that you wanted. I have had issues with teach where a very skilled character hasn't been able to teach my very new character anything and it never made much sense to me.

Whenever you *teach* someone something via a roleplayed lesson then you should be able to back this up the teach command. I think the gap between the teacher and the student needs to be made so it works with less of a difference. I would love to see this used more often - though it obviously needs to be done care to prevent abuse.

[jstorrie]

I am with Hymwen on this one too. I've had the recent annoyance of a 25-day warrior unable to teach a single thing to his new recruits, and it's a pain.

[V1agraKank]

FWIW, I agree with Hymwen's posts.  Both of them.

[spawnloser]

I, too, agree that teach seems much -less- useful than it should be, in some situations.  However, in some situations, there should only be so far that teach could go.

Seriously, for combat skills, you should only be able to get so far with someone teaching you.  You should be required to get practice to get perfect or even marginally good.  You can't expect to have someone talk to you for a while and become a reasonably skilled martial artist, could you?  No, you have to actually practice your martial skills to get good at it.

Crafting skills, for another example on the opposite side of the spectrum, I think you should be able to learn to a fairly well-skilled level by being taught, but that doesn't mean you should be able to excel just by being taught.

Then there are spells and psionic skills which I don't think the teach command should give ANY gain to.

[Hymwen]

I'm not talking about advancing solely by teach, but for it to supplement actual training. The idea is that it should still be possible for a master to teach something to someone moderately skilled. The majority of your progress should come from actual practice but I want to see teach as a possibility as well, both to make general training a little more interesting and to help those who can't advance through hands-on methods for various reasons. Coded limitations could easily be made to prevent someone from being taught too frequently or with too little real practice in-between, if they don't already exist.

It could even be made so that advanced teaching can only be done by people who have a special flag on their character, a flag given only to characters such as Byn sergeants, militia lieutenants, academy instructors and anyone else whom the staff decides should have it.

[bloodfromstone]

I've never seen a situation where someone just talked to someone else for a 'teach' lesson. From my experience, they always demonstrate, make the other person repeat the motions, practice the steps and critique whether or not the person is doing it right. Then they get hit with the teach command and persumably put this stuff into practice next time they're in a real match, and are that much better for it. Which, honestly, should be more effective two guys hitting each other with sticks with no guidance or instruction. The argument can be made that these lessons can be roleplayed out without coded assistance, and that's true, but it does feel silly to be taken aside by the sarge all the time and ask for one-on-one training from the best guy there, but still suck compared to the guys that just run at each other with sticks held aloft.

What I mean by this is that I agree with spawnloser that you shouldn't be able to get better just by hearing someone talk, but I disagree that that is what the teach skill represents.

Also, I'm all for anything that saves me from having to spar constantly to be decent.

[Tisiphone]

I have seen such situations, but that is a player-side bug, not code-side.

[mansa]

Perhaps everybody just sucks?

I mean, what can a grade 4 student teach a grade 3 student about calculus?

[Dakkon Black]

I dunno, liberal use of the teach command always kind of bothered me, particularly when you see people joining clans just because that one badass guy can make them badass really fast.

I know there are a good number of people who simply don't have the time to spar a couple times a day to get badass, but who do log on now and then and want to come out on missions, rpt's etc, without getting utterly slaughtered.

I don't think we hurt anything by teaching up to a certain level, and I see it as quite realistic that we do that. Military training is just as much in the classroom as sparring. Then people will hopefully feel more interested in rp'ing more then sparring over and over, since they don't have to worry about continually sparring to get their skill acceptable.

[bloodfromstone]

I, personally, like the idea that having a badass teacher makes someone badass faster. It gives some strength and respect to 100-day old Sergeants that can whip out some of the toughest Privates. It makes a military set up have some validity versus an indie hunter, who normally gets badass way faster than a clannie who follows the rules, from my experience.

In my opinion, I always thought it sucked that having a super buff instructor actually makes learning hard, because they obliterate you so fast in combat. Really, does it make sense for Amos the 5 day ranger to make a better and more efficient partner for Malik the 0 day warrior, in comparison to Broadshoulders, the 60 day warrior? Learning from someone who is experienced should be an advantage. And surviving and training that long should make you a better teacher that can create better fighters faster.