Skill Progression Discourse: Time Spent vs Reward

[Squeak]

On discord this evening, I posed a random thought I had about skill gains - more specifically, an additional way to gain dodge and parry (yes, yes, I know. I forgot it was tied to the weapon skill itself) - when it was brought up that the suggestions idly posed could possibly speed up progression faster than intended. So this got me thinking; What is the intended skill progression for the average player? Five points a day? Ten? Twenty five? Sure, the reality of this will change from person to person and time spent grinding vs roleplaying, but I think most of us largely have an idea of where they'll be "comfortable" with their character's progression and want to get there as quickly as we can, whether it's to accommodate their backstory or put them in a comfortable spot for their current roleplay.

As a matter of reference, my Cogg character was level 80 after a year. He largely had middling skills, with some at the 400 max, and one or two above that. But I largely felt comfortable where I wanted him around the eighth month mark. He was in a good spot to tackle, with an abundance of caution, some dangerous mobs, but with a group, he could still handle himself pretty well at the highest tiers. Now, this is an apples to oranges kind of comparison, I know, but it helps make a point. Was that progression faster than the developers intended? On par? Well below? How does this relate to Clok's progression? What would the developer's like to see for the average character at the six month mark? A year? How does this relate to player perceptions and what they would like to see out of their characters in those same time frames?

I know we're in "Alpha" phase and Rias has a metric ton of things on his plate already, but I figured this would be a good way for both him, and us, to have an effective communication about what is "expected" to be doable and also help us as players identify out of the ordinary skill growth (either for the positive or negative) with more ease. And with abilities trickling their way back in, I'm sure this conversation will be largely superfluous in time, but at the moment, to quote someone from Discord ... "Playing for months and having a skill of xx in a game that goes up to 2500 does not feel great." I have to agree with this sentiment.

The other night I was so fed up with trying to train dodge and firearms that I gave up playing. Aside from a few days this week, I largely haven't even logged on (though when I have, the roleplaying has been phenomenal - I love you guys (you know who you are)). The part the frustrated me so much was that, on the first of the month, I had determined that five points a day would get me steady, easy growth in those two skills. Being the third or the fourth, I opted to backtrain the previous days where the roleplay was too good to leave. In the wee hours of the morning, I hammered out ten points in dodge in firearms ... and it took approximately five hours to do with roughly 3000 riln in medical costs and equipment repair. I tried again a few days later just thinking I was having a bad day (tm) ... I think V still has a 1500 riln debt in Morhollow from that excursion and I don't believe he'd even achieved the 5 points I'd "trained" up. Maybe he did, I don't remember.

All in all, I spend a lot of time while I'm at work playing this game; to enjoy the time spent with everyone in the early hours of my evening and then, as the amount of people logged on dwindles, spend the latter half using the time to skill up. As it stands now, it's disheartening to train at all as it seems more like work and less like a game I can idly play and still have noticeable growth. Not exorbitant growth, but noticeable. To feel like I'm actually making progress.

To reiterate, I know this is still Alpha. And I know, Rias, the you're pouring your heart into the game to get it up to where you, yourself, feel happy with it. I'm not posting this to disparage your hardwork and the time you volunteer for us. Because of that, I dislike posting negative feedback when all the work you do is phenomenal, for our benefit, and free.

[Zeldryn]

I don’t have two substantive a portion to add to this conversation right this second, but I wanted to pop in here and say that this doesn’t come off as negative at all. It was well written, and your sentiment as well expressed. This is always a conversation that inevitably pops up in any game of its caliber, even in the early days. So thank you for expressing it in such a down-to-earth and constructive fashion as opposed to a thoughtless one.

That being said, I can’t speak to the early game or new character experience presently, as it’s vastly different than it was when my character was in that phase of his life cycle. That being said, what observations I have made in regard to the skill gain and training that I have done, light as it has been, was that it does seem Slower. Eager to see what folks have to say.

[artus]

I honestly can't recall off the top of my head if it was faster or slower when Arty was still a youngling good at nothing. As of current though, and this is personal by the way, I don't really feel like it's very slow, though admitted it is sort of slow to get some stuff up, especially combat, like not the very slow kind of slow but the a little bit of tweaking to make it better is good kind of slow. I'm not a grinder type unless I'm bored or distracted or not in an rp mood and I have only two chars to maintain right now so I don't mind the trickle as long as I can casually and comfortably do it without fussing about how much it goes up. It does go up when I use it and doesn't go down anyway so it's still worth seconds to hours spent. I even like the 2500 cap because it does make me feel like the growth just keeps growing. You don't need to cap to be excellent in the mud. a thousand in anything is outstanding already, unless you're bored or strive for perfection and want to go further. Again, though, it's just my preference. The number of chars might influence the perspective too. I can see it being a pain with people who have 3 or more chars, for example.

[Ninetales16]

I can generally agree wit hthe statements expressed here and have to say that yes, indeed, the training does feel slow, especially when you are not the kind of person who spends a ton of time in grinding. my character is trying to pick up a new skill and I have not even managed to get decent at it in the little time I tried to raise it up. not to mention that, after a while, even necessity skills like combat ones feel like a pain to increase after a certain treshold. I do 100% agree with squeak and have to say that I, too do not like writing negative feeedback at all, given how much time this game helped me grow as a roleplayer.
I too want to feel that skillgains for a character are fluid and the growth they are experiencing is not too supernaturally fast, but neither sluggishly slow. and nowadays grinding for me feels more like a pain than actual enjoyment.

[Kunren]

Its difficult to judge the current state of the game pre-abilities, since they will be so instrumental in determining skill progression. I think the general answer to this question when I asked to Rias in voice chat was "TBD", progression is more of a question for after everything actually works.

TO be honest, its been holding me back from doing much playing as well. Kinda just waiting out the return of abilities/trainers and stuff.

[Sneaky]

I'm just going to put down a few things that I think are note worthy.

Let's assume we are gaining skill gains without study boosts, so just raw gains. We are only working on a single skill. Let's also assume we have successes each round, each round is 5 seconds, and every skill gain is the maximum we can receive, 0.025. We can gain a single point every 3 minutes 20 seconds or so. That is 40*5/60. 40, the number of rounds needed to gain a single point, times 5, the time per round, divided by 60, 60 seconds in a minute.

I'm not going to express the math here, but if we continue this for 2500 skill points, the result is around 5.8 days to obtain all of those points. That's 24 hours a day constantly getting successes every 5 seconds at the maximum progression.

Let's make this a little more realistic and say that we only grind for 4 hours a day. It would then take around 34 days. Now let's say we have a 50% success rate and we grind for only four hours a day, effectively doubling our time, that's 68 days. Now let's say for every 15 minutes of grinding, we have to spend 10 minutes collecting resources, healing, or whatever else. The time gets extended to 115 days, about 4 months. Now let's say for every 15 minutes of grinding, we have 10 minutes of healing or resource gathering, plus 10 minutes of dedicated RP. The times gets extended to about 162 days.
These numbers are really generous. This is also for a single skill and assumes a lot. In actuality it'd be more like 9 months, considering that gaining maximum skill gains throughout training just isn't possible, at least with combat skills. Also collecting resources for crafting would require much longer. This is just to give an idea. It's also just for a single skill. In combat, you're usually grinding multiple skills at once. Crafting, it's less so, unless you are making your own small components I guess.
Anyway, just wanted to share this, as it's how I look at grinding as a whole. Usually before a grinding session I try and have a goal in mind. TBH though, I've been grinding on CLOK and COGG for about 10 years or longer, and pretty tired. I just kind of don't want to any more.

[Gorth]

I maxed a character's combat skills in COGG. I almost did it twice. As the person who was, perhaps, the most familiar with that combat system from start to finish, I will say that grinding is going to feel a lot better for you guys once abilities get added in. Last time I really played, about a month ago, there were not even negative rerols in for being in roundtime, which makes a massive difference. So I'm just kind of going to wait until the game is at a point where grinding is more fair, and see how we feel.

[artus]

I wonder how crafting gain is going to end up, actually. From what I notice, and I honestly dread this, mining gain starts at like 0.01 something and then down to 0.009, which ticks almost every round, but insanely low. Metal type doesn't matter. It's the same. I tested. If you want to get 0.01 again, pray for gems to drop and successfully identified, otherwise rip.
I don't think it's going to be this way forever though once it's expanded on, but sheesh! Even someone who doesn't care much about grinding and number crunching dreads the gain I see. Mining is still fun though especially with the latest cave in QoL changes.