Change needed - for some skills, the new training system is "broken"

Lemuel · Post by **Lemuel** » Thu Sep 13, 2012 9:36 pm

Some of the skills I have received training in are moving slower than a snail's pace...for example, for perception and stealth, the new system is essentially "broken". There are so few actions for these skills to improve that I have been playing for days with little change in the practice numbers and this is tying me up from learning new skills.

May I suggest that a 24-hour time limit be put on these numbers, so that after 24 bells have passed, we are free to re-train ?

What really should change in the long term, is that every time you sneak by someone with stealth, your stealth should improve a tiny bit, and the same if you search a room, whether there is something there to find or not.

Jaster · Post by **Jaster** » Fri Sep 14, 2012 9:05 am

The problem with those two ways of training perception and stealth is that (if it were allowed) you would have people sneaking in and out of the same room with the same NPC over and over to gain stealth, and sitting in the same room searching over and over to gain perception, both with practically zero risk involved.

As for not being able to gain points in stealth and perception... you must be doing it wrong. If you are sneaking around and searching for hidden items then that is both impractical and ineffective. You need to ambush NPCs from hiding and search for hidden NPCs within your skill range for the best gains. Even picking an NPCs pockets will net you some stealth points if they have a perception skill close to your range. (Note: Picking an ACTUAL NPCs pockets.. not picking a crowd. Picking crowds will just make you end up an outlaw. >_< And I suppose I should add, picking a factioned NPCs' pockets will most likely result in the same, but from my experience none of them ever carry riln anyway.)

Post by **Rias** » Fri Sep 14, 2012 9:17 am

Jaster beat me to it. There was a time when some of those actions actually did raise your skills - a time when several skills could be raised similarly, and I trusted people to not do something as silly as script the same action over and over for hours on end doing nothing else. "Surely nobody would do that, it would be silly and boring, and other methods exist that are more interesting (with risk involved) and raise the skills faster, so those would be the preferred methods. These small gains would just be little bonuses as a character goes about their business, not dedicated training activities." Sadly, player after player have proved me wrong. I'm amazed at how many people will take the simplest, easiest, dullest, grindiest, most risk-free method of skillgain and script it constantly as a dedicated form of "training". In the end, I don't want that character who has a legendary 5000 perception to have gotten there from scripting "search;wait 5;repeat".

I'll look at more ways to gain stealth/perception and tweak the numbers (it's been an ongoing process). In the meantime, I'd suggest using some kind of ranged combat and sniping for stealth training, or ambushing for melee. For perception training, reverse it - enemies that snipe you are good. Icterus went through a while back and added a lot of stealth-using critters to help train up perception (the squirrels, raccoons, etc.) Just remember that as always, more challenge is better. If you've got 500 perception, you're not going to be getting much skillgain from spotting squirrels and racoons.

Skjotur · Post by **Skjotur** » Fri Sep 14, 2012 11:02 am

I train my stealth by sniping with my bow and attacking from hiding with my handaxe, it hasn't seemed too hard. Probably harder than other skills, but stealth is really powerful. For perception, I spent a lot of time with the poachers in the woodland trail area by Tarueka, some of them snipe and I'd get good perception gains from them for a long time.

Lemuel · Post by **Lemuel** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:48 pm

Ok, when you attack from hiding, do you type in

Kill <opponent>

or do you have to type in something else to get in an attack resulting in a stealth skillgain ?

Same with sniping, is it fire <opponent> , or something else ?

Lemuel · Post by **Lemuel** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:51 pm

One way around the mindless scripting, in theory, would be to permit only one search resulting in a skillgain per repop ('You have already searched this area"), but I imagine it would be a mountain to implement in practice.

Skjotur · Post by **Skjotur** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:52 pm

You just use FIRE or ATTACK/KILL from hiding to snipe or ambush.

Tian · Post by **Tian** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 7:36 pm

Or you could script walking from one room to the next and doing a search command.. It is rather simple.

Lemuel · Post by **Lemuel** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 6:17 pm

[quote=Skjotur]You just use FIRE or ATTACK/KILL from hiding to snipe or ambush.[/quote]

I tried this a number of times (attack and kill) and no change in stealth progression, it was still (Practice: 1) as before.

Lae · Post by **Lae** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 6:19 pm

I practice stealth (nobody crack any funny comments, okay?) and I've noticed that the times when I see a gain (and I'm studying it) is when there are the ! with the colors. Meaning, I think, that you got the jump on the creature and ambushed it.

Someone will totally correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, I am a monk. What do I know about stealth? >_<

Lemuel · Post by **Lemuel** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 6:37 pm

kill merc
You spring from hiding to attack!
You thrust with a masterfully-forged steel rapier with a gold hilt at an infested merchant! (!) (M:83 vs D:83)
18 pierce damage to the left arm!
You thrust with a masterfully-forged steel rapier with a gold hilt at an infested merchant! (!) (M:107 vs D:75)
3 pierce damage to the chest!
You slash with a masterfully-forged steel rapier with a gold hilt at an infested merchant! (!) (M:107 vs D:50)
11 slash damage to the left leg!

This resulted in no skill gain / no progression in Stealth, it's still at (Practice: 1) and I did this spring from hiding to attack numerous time with nio progression.

Should I bug this, or is someone in charge reading this ?

Post by **Rias** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 6:43 pm

Infested merchants have 0 perception, so it's likely not enough of a challenge for you to learn anything from it. Try going up against something that's a little more perceptive. If you don't get any skillgain, it doesn't count as practice.

Lemuel · Post by **Lemuel** » Wed Sep 19, 2012 9:34 pm

[quote=Rias]Infested merchants have 0 perception, so it's likely not enough of a challenge for you to learn anything from it. Try going up against something that's a little more perceptive. If you don't get any skillgain, it doesn't count as practice.[/quote]

Well, if they have 0 perception, why do they so frequently notice me when I'm hiding ?? Maybe that's what's broken.

Landion · Post by **Landion** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 9:55 am

Even with 0 perception, a creature will roll 0-100 against your stealth skill.

I tend to agree with Lemual actually, particularly with this example. There should likely be some type of skill gain here based on challenge, even with 0 skill.

How much stealth do you have Lemuel?

For example:

If you have 50 stealth and your opponent has 0 perception.

Edit: Oops, fixed numbers after Rias corrected me.

Hidden rolls will be 1-150 vs 1-100. (Still right around 1/3 chance to be spotted I believe.)

In my opinion that person should be getting skill gains in such a case, with gains diminishing as the skill range grow further and further apart. (Even so, such should sill grant minute gains of some sort.)

Post by **Rias** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 10:42 am

Not quite. Skill just adds to your maximum roll potential, not the minimum. So at 50 stealth skill, you'd be rolling 1-150 (your stealth roll, 1 to (100+50)) vs 1-100 (their perception roll, 1 to (100+0)). In that scenario, you should be getting skillgains.

The point of this system is so that you're never so good that you can't have bad luck and occasionally get beat by someone else, even at great skill differences. You'll never get to the point where Percy Perceptionless is never going to see you. You'll just be constantly increasing the odds in your favor as you skill up.

Post by **Rias** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 11:08 am

Lemuel, can you please copy and paste yourself checking your stealth skill, then making a successful ambush (with the (!) in it) and then check your stealth skill again? I've adjusted my stealth to the same as yours and am seeing skillgains and the Practice counter go down when I ambush 0-perception creatures.

Zelie · Post by **Zelie** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 12:00 pm

I train my stealth by hunting foxes and stags/deer. I'm not quite ready for the camp or trail yet, but I hope to be soon! If anyone knows of anywhere else I could go please post!

KianTheArcher · Post by **KianTheArcher** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 12:20 pm

I'd like to add that, the Infested Merchant area is a Plains area, so anyone hiding there without the Chameleon spell would suffer a penalty, and be seen much more easily.