Skill Decay

[Skah]

I must be looking at it narrowly, because I'm not getting that. I mean, if player X had 2000 skill points in a dozen different things, he wouldn't lose much to decay (because he/she wouldn't need to train much), but as Sadi mentioned none of us would ever be able to reach that point. That doesn't bother me personally, but I don't see how to model that out.

[Dorn]

I'm just thinking if there was caps and such put in, or if duration of zero gain had effects on how much you'd have to work a skill off and so forth.

It would be interesting, at least. Though I do wonder just what sort of numbers in skills are considered "ridiculous/grandfathered" considering the game is always expanding so it may be eventually possible for a lot of skills to eventually reach the levels of old characters who'd still find themselves impossible to get any gains.

[Barius]

For whatever solution ends up being implemented, it's important to remember that there's nothing more discouraging for a newbie than to hear that there are old characters on the game who have achieved heights of power that are codedly no longer possible to get. I left my last MUD when the admins set up a skillcap on all characters but grandfathered in skills that were above that cap-- we ended up with a clique of high-powered people with rank-20 skills absolutely stomping the crap out of everyone else who was code-locked at 12 maximum for their skills.

Funnily enough this was a topic of conversation I had recently with a couple of other players who used to be round. It's one issue with a small playerbase as well, because grandfathering then becomes really obvious.

Nice to see there is no desire for it.

Grandfathering skill levels and the amount of changes that have been made to skill gains is one big thing that demotivated me from really getting into playing. That, and other issues.

If there was a way to make it less of an issue, I would be very interested in seeing it implemented.

[Skah]

That makes sense Dorn, thanks. I misunderstood the idea and was fearing a situation where new characters couldn't reach the levels of old, and old characters would losethree skill points in decay for each they gained, so wouldn't play much. Clear overreaction, but I can be a pessimist!

[Lavi]

I personally like Skah's idea best, though the getting rusty at something could be interesting. My concern is if a person usually uses a sword, but occasionally has to use a maul to deal with heavily armored mobs from time to time, are they going to find themselves going well I got this skill in this area for this reason, but since I don't use it often that work in that area is not really useful? This probably has to deal with the rates at what something would become rusty like said.

Anyway, I'd rather see slower gains in an area, but no loss of skills. I guess my other concern is, what about the people who grind and RP? I mean this game is very flexible in that regard, which is why I like it a lot I feel that for the most part I can do both. Not usually at the same time, but I usually grind in the mornings when no one is around and then RP as soon as someone shows up who wants to do so.

Ultimately, it comes down to RP responsibility. I don't like the idea that a person might have a concept of being a good brawler, even though their guild isn't traditionally a brawling guild, and getting punished for that.

Just a few of my thoughts though. Not really an expert at balancing and things. I just play because I like how it is.