CLOK BBS

If a skill has been modified lower than 50% of a character's base skill, it is now considered too penalized and hampered to effectively gain any skill when practicing it.

The reasons for this being:

A) Characters shouldn't be able to intentionally gimp themselves in order to continue to gain skill from relatively low-risk activities despite having high base skill levels. This trivializes the purpose of the challenge system. We don't want fighters breaking their arms and legs and wearing armor too heavy for them to effectively fight in so that they can get skillgains in Tarueka despite having high-hundreds base combat skills.
B) Skill penalties shouldn't be considered a good thing.

As always, expect adjustments and tweaks to occur.

Although I see where you're coming from to a very minor extent, I find this to be extremely unrealistic and a detriment to the challenge system. If my legs become so damaged that I can barely dodge, I have a higher risk of being hit and dodging becomes a challenge. I am still putting myself in danger with each swing, so why shouldn't I learn from it.

This is why people use weights when doing bicep curls instead of just flexing their arms. Artificially increasing resistance results in greater gains. The same should be true in game.

I really don't understand these decisions sometimes. Realism and logic is generally very important until it comes to something like this. It's great to see that things like this getting adjusted within 4 hours of notice....

While I agree that characters shouldn't be able to intentionally gimp themselves by breaking limbs, I think that you should code in a "taunt" that would strengthen a creature to improve the creature's skills and increasing it's challenge level temporarily. Taunt would cause the creature to become aggressive to the taunting player, and it would return to normal state once dead or if the player dies.
The way I see it, it's highly difficult for high skill leveled players like Acarin to continue fighting since there's so few places for him to go.

I disagree entirely. I still believe that if the activity we are doing is challenging, we should learn from it. If my stealth skill is reduced to 50, then it's extremely challenging for me to hide. I'm not hiding at a 1000 level. That's it. It's hard for me to hide. I should be able to learn from it.

It's not realistic for a person to break his arms in order to train his fighting. Similarly, a person trying to be more sneaky shouldn't be wearing full plate armor and sneaking around. Stealth level is more of a representation of how well a person can perform a skill. Just because you're really bad at performing the skill at the time doesn't mean you'll learn better. A person trying to fight with broken arms will not learn anything about swordfighting even if he jumps into battle.

Acarin:

You can still gain extra challenge from skill penalties, up to 50%. Beyond that, you're considered beyond simply challenging yourself. Running with weights vs running with cement shoss and broken legs.

You claim you're taking the same risks. If that's true, why does this change upset you? Anyway, the risk isn't the same. Being able to selectively reduce your skills to generate artificial challengve can be much less risky. Reducing your attack skills while leaving your defense unaltered, for instance.

What upsets you about the response time? Should we wait longer after noticing something we consider unintended so that those observed doing it can continue to take advantage of it?

Lun:

Penalties up to 50% still increase challenge. If challenges are hard to come by for a skilled character, the solution should be adding further challenges, rather than giving ways to artificially increase existing ones.

Acarin still has creatures he can hunt to increase all of his skills, unaltered, except perhaps perception. I suspect he is upset over this change because he can no longer continue to improve high-hundreds skills on laughably-low-risk newbie creatures that he has been practicing recently on, such as infested carriers and the training warrior. Should someone of Acarin's capabilities be effectively increasing his considerable skills in newbie hunting areas?

Ahhh. I wasn't aware that's where he was training.
This post feels inadequate due to two sentence length.

I just wrote a super long post and then lost the whole thing, so you'll have to excuse me if this comes across a bit less pleasant than it is intended to be. I don't have the patience to candy coat it again.

Rias, skills are independent. Attack is independent from dodge. Dodge is independent from attack. Unless you have a way to make sure that all skills increase at an equal rate, there is no such thing as an artificial advantage. I've had artificial disadvantages before such as a stealth of 0 with a brawl of 900 when I first started Shar, and this was not something staff cared about. Why care now? Again, plate armor is far from cement blocks. Walking around in something extremely heavy and noisy would certainly teach me about how to keep quiet and improve my stealth. If I am being challenged in the challenge system, I should learn something, regardless of what I'm training on. My overall hunting prowess shouldn't factor in.

What bothers me most is that after Noctere made his comment to me that I didn't need to defend it and it would be evaluated, it was nerfed within 4 hours (this has happened how many times before). When I asked to speak to an SGM about it, I get this post on the board instead. Yet when I tell you or Landion that recent changes have completely killed my ability to perform some sort of task or there is something major that is having a very detrimental impact, it is weeks to months before it is considered, then a minor patch is done that leaves it equally ineffective (or worse). If adding more challenges is your solution in this case, then when is this expected to occur? Should I consistently wait a few months until it's time to add something that's a challenge once I outgrow the last thing?

I've been told on numerous occassions that voicing a complaint means that you will not work on the system at all since you work for gratitude so I generally try to keep quiet now. Well that's fine, but even I have a line. I, as other players, play this game for enjoyment. When I am not getting enjoyment out of it due to be accused of "taking advantage of the system", being singled out in some way (ragequit kills, new characters spawning in outpost), and having concerns not being addressed it makes me less likely to be nice, provide support, and play in general.

Having different ranges in base skills is one thing. If your base stealth skill was 0, I'd be (and I was) just fine with you training your stealth on newbie creatures, even if your combat skills were astronomical. The skill you're training and increasing is in line with the area you're training it in.

Being able to adjust your skills and therefore always be able to train on newbie creatures for your entire career is another thing. If you have problems with the stance that we don't want people with extremely high skills being able to continue to increase those high skills in newbie areas, I'm not sure what to tell you. That stance isn't going to change, and frankly, I find it difficult to believe that you disagree with it. No argument is going to convince me that someone should be able to go from 0 skill to 9999 (not that there's a skill cap) on a training warrior or infested carrier, when there's a whole wildernessful of other areas with increased challenges intended for use in working up the skill ladder.

This issue was fixed in short order because it was a simple two lines of code fix. Creating new hunting areas is a lot of work, and can't be churned out in a matter of hours. There's also the fact that we're in alpha, developing a slew of other systems at the moment, and so more complicated projects can take longer to get to.

If you've been told so many times that complaining means work doesn't get done, I urge these people to bring their concerns up with someone who has the ability to take care of it, rather than silently complaining amongst themselves. If we don't know an issue exists, we can't take care of it. If there's a group of silently dissatisfied players, I ask them now to speak up and make their concerns known. I'd be more than happy to address their concerns and work to take care of things. I hope they'll be understanding in that we don't necessarily agree with every issue brought up, such as the current one being discussed in this thread, but that we do very much wish to address player concerns and make the game more enjoyable.

Does it say in the skills and/or effects list when you are too crippled to be able to gain any skill?

Not yet. To-doed.

I've been told by staff (and I won't name anyone in particular) that complaining means work won't get done on several occassions BY SOMEONE CAPABLE OF TAKING CARE OF THE ISSUES (or alternatively that I am simply whining). I was certainly not silent until then. I have been since these occurrences until this last post.

I realize this is alpha and I know hard you are all working to keep this game fun and develop it and I honestly do appreciate it. Being alpha, I don't expect things to be perfect, I entirely expect things to be adjusted, and I realize you and I will rarely agree (This has at least been the trend so far).

That being said, I hope this clarifies that I am indeed a bit dissatisfied. If you would like more details about the main reasons we can discuss this as I didn't initially intend this to be a public issue until I saw that post and was unable to dissipate my rage due to the characteristics of my personalized ragequit command.

I'm not entirely sure what's unfair about Rias deciding that breaking one's own limbs in order to train at newbie mobs is a bug.

There's nothing 'unfair' about it. It's mechanics abuse.

Likewise with everything else Acarin has been complaining about. Being limited to Corvus with all alts is due to abuse. Having ragequit changed is due to constant and regular abuse.

Frankly Acarin is fortunate that he hasn't had skills reduced due to taking advantage of this and other bugs in the past. Perhaps he should.

[quote=Landion]There's nothing 'unfair' about it. It's mechanics abuse.

Likewise with everything else Acarin has been complaining about. Being limited to Corvus with all alts is due to abuse. Having ragequit changed is due to constant and regular abuse.

Frankly Acarin is fortunate that he hasn't had skills reduced due to taking advantage of this and other bugs in the past. Perhaps he should.[/quote]

Wow. I love you too Landion.

I'd love to know how I abused being able to make new characters in Shadgard or ragequit. I used ragequit to log out too many times and it benefitted me how? What benefit have I had from making alts in Shadgard? I've told you about several of these "bugs" that you meantion and you've told me to enjoy them because they'll eventually be changed. OTherwise I've seen very real consequences (Had to change guilds because of one). I did not see this as a bug and honestly, I still don't. That doesn't matter however. What matters is that I've never had a real issue with you Landion until now.

This is what I meant by taking away from the enjoyment of your players. When you tell them they're just complaining and go out of your way to put them down, it really ruins the game.

When I have an issue I generally try to discuss it with someone and I'm not an unreasonable person. If the staff makes a decision I may not like it, but I deal with it and potentially voice my opinion (although I haven't lately because I've been told not to as I'm sure you're aware). All I usually expect is a rational non-accusing explanation. This issue, as I'm sure you'll find out, has already been entirely resolved.

That being said, let me ask you something:
Is this the image you feel you should project as staff member? How do you think posts like this portray you to new players?

I don't mind a bit of teasing but if you expect me to give you respect (and I know you do since you've told me) then you should do the same to me. This last post of yours is really out of line.

While Landion has, once or twice, told me that something I've reported as a bug is working correctly, he is far from projecting the image of a cruel, evil tyrant.

Whenever I have a genuine issue with something that is game breaking, Landion has been incredibly helpful to me in the past, including with a bug that ended up causing trouble because of something I did on my own. Similarly, the MUD is ALWAYS welcoming to new players. And I do not, personally, know of anyone that has been run off by any member of the staff. Nor do I expect that to be the case, past present or future, unless the new player does something that deserves being punished (which I have seen happen).

If you want a rational discussion Acarin, then you might want to present a rational discussion and argument in place of exaggerating things to a gross and major degree.

Kian, its pretty clear that you will disagree with whatever I say just because you dislike me on personal level. You have made that very clear. There is no need for you to comment on this and it really doesn't involve you.

I've never had a real problem with Landion. He's a great guy and works hard and I'm grateful he's around. I do however find his response here uncalled for and unnecessary. He probably won't run anyone off with it but comments like that don't need to be made and reflect poorly on the "professionalism" of staff members who make them.

Before this spirals out of control, I'm going to close this topic. I've spoken with Acarin in-game and, when we were through, the issues brought up in this thread had been resolved. If anyone thinks the topic should be re-opened for further discussion because they think they didn't get to conclude discussing something constructive, they're free to contact me via email, BBS PM, in-game, instant message or any other means available to them.