Melee and Marksmanship skillgains no longer quartered

[Rias]

Per the changelog: "When making standard combat attacks/casts, the more generalized combat skills (Melee, Marksmanship) will now gain at the full amount for the attack's challenge rating, rather than their skillgain amount being quartered."

As best I can recall, this is actually a return to the way things originally were in CLOK1. When converting to CLOK2, it was a fluke of how my lazy implementation of skillgains worked that caused Melee and Marksmanship to go up so slowly in comparison to the specific weapon skills. This should make it so people don't feel like they have to diversify with a bunch of different weapons just to get their general Melee or Marksmanship skill up. Happy combatting!

[jerc]

Is it intentional that marksmanship will now grow faster than the elements in a multi-element raw cast? It seems like marksmanship will rapidly outstrip them since your sorcery/cryomancy/whatever elemancers use will grow at half speed, while marksmanship grows at full speed, even though it only contributes 25% to the final roll.

[Rias]

I think that's all right. Any reason it should be further restricted when mixing elements? I figure it's kind of like if someone kept swapping between a sword and a mace each attack, their Melee would grow faster than either their Sword or Hafted skill.

[jerc]

Hmm, no, I guess that's a good analogy.

I think it just another instance of my other BBS thread on skill gains/proportional skill contribution to rolls where the current situation feels off. This situation is similar to, but not quite as egregious as if someone picked up a weapon they have zero skill in, but 2000 marksmanship, and being able to improve their already-far-overleveled marksmanship skill against ~d500 mobs.

[Dean]

I think that's all right. Any reason it should be further restricted when mixing elements? I figure it's kind of like if someone kept swapping between a sword and a mace each attack, their Melee would grow faster than either their Sword or Hafted skill.

My only comment on this in general is it is probably a good idea to reevaluate the formula that determines when mobs that drop riln when looted tapers-off that loot, as it is now very easy for elemancers and rooks to "obsolete" mobs in this way well before they are finished training on it. This was already something that happened before for rooks with just 2 skills, and this exacerbates that process for classes that naturally want to grind (and thus, train) far more skills than other classes that might only train a single weapon for the duration of their career.

The intent of that feature is, as I understand it, just to prevent players from "farming" mobs that are trivial/nonthreatening to them to amass riln directly without some manner of risk or other skills involved (skinning, lockpicking, etc).

[Rias]

Per the changelog: "The formula that estimates combat challenge rating between two characters (used for loot potential modifications among other things) has been updated to also consider the best of each character's directly combat-applicable attack skills (swords, archery, pyromancy, etc.) in addition to the Melee and Marksmanship skills."

By no means perfect, but better than it was.

The intent of that feature is, as I understand it, just to prevent players from "farming" mobs that are trivial/nonthreatening to them to amass riln directly without some manner of risk or other skills involved (skinning, lockpicking, etc).

Yep. One of my pet peeves in another MUD I played (as well as some experiences in earlier CLOK when I'd play my PCs) was higher levels essentially taking over lower level combat zones to effortlessly farm money. It was frustrating having to try and compete with them as someone who was actually supposed to be there based on level/skill. I don't love our current method of addressing the issue, but I think it's better than nothing.

[Dean]

Per the changelog: "The formula that estimates combat challenge rating between two characters (used for loot potential modifications among other things) has been updated to also consider the best of each character's directly combat-applicable attack skills (swords, archery, pyromancy, etc.) in addition to the Melee and Marksmanship skills."

By no means perfect, but better than it was.

The intent of that feature is, as I understand it, just to prevent players from "farming" mobs that are trivial/nonthreatening to them to amass riln directly without some manner of risk or other skills involved (skinning, lockpicking, etc).

Yep. One of my pet peeves in another MUD I played (as well as some experiences in earlier CLOK when I'd play my PCs) was higher levels essentially taking over lower level combat zones to effortlessly farm money. It was frustrating having to try and compete with them as someone who was actually supposed to be there based on level/skill. I don't love our current method of addressing the issue, but I think it's better than nothing.

Thanks for the rapid response on this one, Rias! My Rook was running into this issue even with the quarter-rate Marksmanship gains, so I'll keep grinding as I have been and report on how it goes to help refine it a bit.

My immediate thought is the formula cannot be linear, because the training grind isn't linear - experience gains cap out when your die sides exceed 1.33x your opponent's (or, they did before the recent threshold changes - that may no longer be accurate). This means the time spent training on a given mob increases as you go up in level, as each mob can provide practice for more total levels than the last, with each mob providing less practice than the last one did while your loot chances diminish with each mob, too.

If the loot formula doesn't account for this curve, we might end up with a similar early-obsolescence problem at the higher skill levels, which makes me wonder if determining loot based on the average of the skills involved in killing it might be a better long-term solution, to incentivize players to train more than a single melee and ranged weapon type throughout their career or at least support players who wish to do so without bankrupting themselves.

[Dean]

Having tested this for a few days, I can confirm - my Rook is rendering mobs obsolete before he reaches them. If he trains on a given mob until it no longer gives XP, his Marksmanship is so high (from training Cryomancy and Sorcery both) that the next mob after that drops minimal to zero riln.

I'll keep powering through this week to see if it continues to apply as the grind continues, but currently he's barely earning enough for food, and can't afford much of anything else - including training.

[Adresin]

I just want to say a huge thank you for this. All this time, I thought the very low melee and marksmanship gains were intentional. Annoying, but intentional. While I can't yet speak to the gains, Alia fights mostly nethrim anyway so loot and riln is problematic a lot, I can say that not having to use a pure melee skill against much lower mobs just to try to get melee to a halfway decent point is a huge relief. It also means that said melee only skills will soon be a lot less pointless to use against mobs that are more reasonable training targets. Of course it also probably means I'll soon outgrow the targets I've been using and have no clue where to go next, but it just feels much more balanced. So thank you!

[Dorn]

I very much want to use the meme, "You guys are getting paid?" It is possibly due to capped skills, but even against mobs that I'd consider "acceptable" for my skill range... well. I've comments about the wealth income in comparison to training/repairs/healing. The riln/drop system seems pretty broke in general.

EDIT: Shouldn't have used "Broke". I think it needs tweaking, concept is definitely worthwhile.

[Dean]

I very much want to use the meme, "You guys are getting paid?" It is possibly due to capped skills, but even against mobs that I'd consider "acceptable" for my skill range... well. I've comments about the wealth income in comparison to training/repairs/healing. The riln/drop system seems pretty broke in general.

It's incredibly disheartening to hear that a maxed-out character that put in at least multiple hundreds of hours getting there struggles with riln.

[Dorn]

I very much want to use the meme, "You guys are getting paid?" It is possibly due to capped skills, but even against mobs that I'd consider "acceptable" for my skill range... well. I've comments about the wealth income in comparison to training/repairs/healing. The riln/drop system seems pretty broke in general.

It's incredibly disheartening to hear that a maxed-out character that put in at least multiple hundreds of hours getting there struggles with riln.

I wouldn't say I struggle. I just have to do other things other than hunt to pay my way.