A request for harsher Challenge Based Skill Gain

[Kunren]

So, we had a LONG conversation yesterday on the BBS in regards to the current state of skill gain, what qualifies as exploity vs what qualifies as 'the expected game loop'.

I won't even pretend to have collected even half of the opinions presented there, though I welcome anyone to share their or other thoughts on this thread for discussion in addition to conversation on the solution I intend to present.

Before that, allow me to present some situations and thoughts from both sides on this topic:


THE CONTEXT:

In CLOK as of this stage in the game, and to a limited degree all forms going back in time, some of the most efficient forms of grinding have been some of the least 'lore accurate' or in character.

Argument: A player/character can argue that any training they come up with is legitimate, because of the 'If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a dodgeball' argument. Making things ludicrously difficult for yourself or your opponents in order to maximize skill gain is *insane* but legitimately an argument you can make in or out of character, because it works, and you can shrug off the consequences of such a high risk playstyle because of the nature of the game and your lives as big, tough, undying who don't care about their safety or mental health.


Counterpoint: We don't want every adventure into the lost lands to look like an optimized Gym session, you shouldn't be manipulating every part of your environment and your enemies in order to get your gains on. It's weird, and realistically, not the point. These are theoretically problems for the world and killing them en masse has the same effect on the world as slaying a bunch of animals might-they'll legitimately have a chance of disappearing entirely, which is the goal. We want to remove threats to the people, not find a buff infested carrier and box with him for days on end for Gainz.


Whats the solution to this conundrum? Well, the easy answer is 'Don't train in a way your character would feel is weird.'

If you're Tse Gaiyan, go kill as many infested as possible. If you're a Templar, eradicate problematic nethrim at speed. Kill as many enemies as fast as you realistically can, without putting yourself at too great a risk of perishing.

Unfortunately, the mechanics of the game do not incentivize this playstyle, currently. Right now, the best way to grow your power is consistency. Find a Mob that isn't too complicated, has few abilities, is bulky, and then hit it with your lowest damage weapon without aiming at anything in particular. Draw out the fight. Weaken it, and keep it weak. Spar with the thing until it drops from exhaustion, then find a new training partner.

My suggestion aims to disincentivize this playstyle and incentivize the 'cleanse the lands of problems' one.


THE SUGGESTION:

1. Make skillgain ratio to difficulty ratio uncapped, so you fight the hardest thing you can kill, as opposed to the hardest thing that gives you 0.025 per skillup.

2. Give a small bonus to skill gain speed based on the comparative differences to your relevant stats on killing an enemy. Example: if I have 500 Melee, 500 Sword, and 500 dodge, and I'm fighting with something that has 600 in each of those (or averages out to the same) I should get a lesson style boost to my skill progression on killing it, for like 1~ point of skill progress. If the difference is higher, the length of the boost should go up. If I use stealth in the fight, we also compare our averaged out perception/stealth skills to determine this progression bonus.

3. Make the lower end of skill progression harsher. I.e If you have noticeably higher skill than your enemy, you stop gaining skill at all as opposed to gaining *less* skill per success. I'm fairly certain this already happens eventually, but it should be within a relatively quick amount of time.

4. And finally, an incentive to not sit in easy zones: Determine an average 'Power level' for a zone based on combat skills. This is then checked against the level of combat someone displays in a zone. From the time a person first begins a fight in that zone, a timer is started-after roughly a bell, if that person is still in that zone, a Higher Level Mob is spawned and its target is you: Its on the hunt. It's going for the kill.

/Start example

Templar James notices that his perception is lagging behind his other combat skills by quite a bit, so he decides to find some Infested Squirrels to sneak up on him over and over.

He has hafted 1000, melee 800, Dodge at 700, Shield use at 1000, and perception at 50.

Averaged out, excluding perception, that puts his combat power at '875'.

Including perception, which it would in a zone that has stealthy enemies, that puts him at '710'.

He could theoretically manipulate this further by using a weapon he is unfamiliar with, ditching the shield, preferentially using parry only, and a number of other things-but it would absolutely be his real combat power at that time, and if he ever used a higher skill strategy, it'd only take his highest average shown.

Now, let's say he spends an hour in full kit vs these squirrels. He's gaining perception at effectively no risk for his time spent, as opposed to grinding it vs, say, Imps in a place we all know and love.

This is neither lore accurate nor a meaningful use of his time as a Templar, and so after an hour a Mob scaled enough to be SCARY for him spawns in Squirrel land, either murdering him or convincing him to leave. Shortly after he exits the area, it will despawn. If he manages to kill it, his timer is reset, and another will spawn eventually...

But! If he is in an area with a challenge rating higher than his shown average, rather than lower, he can grind in peace as opposed to living in fear!


/end Example.




FINAL THOUGHTS:


Debate the points brought up! Add your own suggestions and examples! Can this be adapted to non-combat situations? Do you have a niche circumstance that this would entirely nerf your playstyle in, and is that okay? Let me know!

[jerc]

Thanks for getting this started! I think you captured most of the main suggestions I remember seeing discussed.

1. Make skillgain ratio to difficulty ratio uncapped, so you fight the hardest thing you can kill, as opposed to the hardest thing that gives you 0.025 per skillup.

+1 to this suggestion - there are several skills that I'd like to work into my rotation, but in order to realistically train them up to the point where they're actually useful, I'd have to go grind them with weaker mobs in lowbie areas. And then to keep them at a useful level with my "main" skills, I'd have to periodically go back and do so again. Removing this cap would help keep things that you're actually using balanced, since if one starts to lag behind the others, it'll have a way to catch back up.

2. Give a small bonus to skill gain speed based on the comparative differences to your relevant stats on killing an enemy. Example: if I have 500 Melee, 500 Sword, and 500 dodge, and I'm fighting with something that has 600 in each of those (or averages out to the same) I should get a lesson style boost to my skill progression on killing it, for like 1~ point of skill progress. If the difference is higher, the length of the boost should go up. If I use stealth in the fight, we also compare our averaged out perception/stealth skills to determine this progression bonus.

Big +1 to this one, or similar kill-based practice gains. Money/boxes are not enough incentive to actually kill things most of the time. I can make riln much faster in other ways, so I rarely think about income when grinding, which leaves zero incentive to actually kill anything.

One argument against this though is that it leaves classes who have difficulty actually securing kills at a disadvantage, such as guardians. I would amend it as follows:

Mobs have a set amount of skill gain that a character can receive from them, scaled by some factor based on relative skill levels. This skill gain is paid out in two ways:

1. As skills are used against the mob in a diminishing-returns fashion. It would start at some per-skill-use cap and taper off as it approaches the max payout. This curve can/should probably be tweaked per-skill
2. On mob death. Some proportion of the potential skill gain is paid out on mob death. This would likely not be the full potential skill gain (or remainder after the on-skill-use portion has paid out) since that would again skew things more heavily in favor of the kill-things-quickly classes, but rather some percentage that can be assigned on a per-skill basis.

3. Make the lower end of skill progression harsher. I.e If you have noticeably higher skill than your enemy, you stop gaining skill at all as opposed to gaining *less* skill per success. I'm fairly certain this already happens eventually, but it should be within a relatively quick amount of time.

Yeah, this definitely already happens. It's more noticeable at lower skill levels where the "improvement range" is smaller since it's percentage-based. Not sure what the actual percentage is off the top of my head, but let's call it 20% for the sake of example. Against a 100 skill mob, you'd stop gaining once you hit 120 skill, but against a 1000 skill mob, you'd continue seeing returns up to 1200, meaning you could keep grinding it for 10x as long.

4. And finally, an incentive to not sit in easy zones: Determine an average 'Power level' for a zone based on combat skills. This is then checked against the level of combat someone displays in a zone. From the time a person first begins a fight in that zone, a timer is started-after roughly a bell, if that person is still in that zone, a Higher Level Mob is spawned and its target is you: Its on the hunt. It's going for the kill.

This sounds like fun, but some people pointed out the potential for griefing if the mob isn't solely focused on you. Even with that focus, I could see the potential for people intentionally trying to spawn these mobs for skill gain, loot, etc. Uncapping the maximum skill gain plus making the overleveled-falloff harsher may be sufficient deterrent to only grinding easy zones, and seem like they would be easier to implement.

Taking a step back from the specifics of systems/changes, I think "the spirit of the law" also needs discussion. This was tossed around a couple of times on Discord, and the part that I never actually saw defined was: What law? There's a "don't exploit bugs" policy, yes, but few of the things that we talked about being "goofy, don't do that" actually fall into that policy, since they're simply taking advantage of intended behavior, or the "bug/not bug" line is hazy enough that the behavior seems intended. But if they are against the spirit of that policy, it creates this weird situation where there's an unspoken "right" way to play and a "wrong" way to play, which doesn't feel great. It leads players to feel like they can't talk about ways to practice skills for fear that they'll be told that they're "doing it wrong" and be punished for it.