In another post you said

>It's been stated a number of times that we're not interested
>in . If we were, we'd just give everyone 100%

>everything and remove the INT statistic.

I don't know about removing int, but personally I wouldn't cry if practicing were removed. I don't find skill improvement makes the game more fun on the whole. I'd much, much rather see a system where your skill just goes up as part of your level gain automatically, modified by int, so I never have to worry about skill proficiency again.

* Yes I know being lagged is much worse. The point is that +1 round of lag on all your skills would be considered a harsh punishment, and severely hampering.

>Put another way, if I told you that if you spent 30 extra
>hours practicing, it would boost your PK percentage on that
>one character by 2%, would you do it? Why or why not?

No, I don't and I wouldn't because I can't stand spam practice,and I don't give a rat's ass about PK ratio.

But some things really do require mindless mashing if you want to have fun, PK ratio be damned.

Lore is a prime example. It's basically worthless at 75% which means you're either constantly annoying yourself loring things as you go, or you spam in your guild for hours.

Assassin kicks, if you rank normally you won't get your kicks.s.

Bards who don't spam won't perfect singing before feeling the lack of their second tier songs.

No, you don't *have* to bother but it's not fun being unable to ident (unless you already know all the idents, which I don't), or missing skills/spells because you haven't spammed the prerequisites.

Then there's things like disarm, shield cleave, neurological disruption, dispel magic. These are either usually impossible or just completely useless to use while ranking normally but are pretty important skills in PK. And yeah you can just accept ranking more slowly, but how is that different from sitting around spamming? You're still spend 7 hours getting to rank X and skill Y whether it's 4 hours real ranking and 3 spamming, or 7 hours ranking slowly.

>However, if you compare that to things like choosing your fights, >surprising your foe, gearing intelligently, making correct decisions, >doing something they can't or didn't counter, having competent backup, >the luck of the dice, etc.

In my mind, the practicing issue is one of tactics, rather than strategy. Choosing fights, surprising foes, and having backup are all strategic decisions, and it's not that they don't influence the fight, but more that for various reasons I don't think they pertinent.

Gearing and prepping are sort of borderline between tactics and strategy.

It's true that skill proficiency is one influence among many other important factors. But I guess I disagree about how much. Being bad at skills is a little like being lagged all the time*. It increases the average number of rounds it takes you to succesfully pull off a move. With all skills at 75% it's probably about like having an extra round of lag on all your skills compared to someone who has them at 100%, though that's just a wild, and possibly innacurate guess. This may not determine every fight, but certainly is significant.

>I'd believe the whole "I'm nothing without my 100%s!" argument

Just to be clear, this isn't my argument. My arguments are here:

1. Some skills are virtually unusable in combat at low skill percentages, or simply unattainable without mastering their prequisites.

2. This gives you a choice between lacking important abilities or boring yourself as you waste your life away practicing mindlessly.

3. There is a not-insignificant advantage to generally having skills mastered compared to having them at 75.

4. This makes the game less fun than it could be.