I've made my first warrior since the practicing system was changed, and I noticed how much harder practicing in general had become.
Yes, I understand in theory that this is supposed to eliminate spamming and make people practice while ranking, but I've solo ranked/practiced from 11~18.

It took me 15 hours of pure ranking/practicing time, my defenses just hit the 90s, and my weapons are slightly less than half done. I knew the system had changed so I picked the optimal practicing combo I could think of, a high int warrior with great defenses. Under the old system I could have mastered defenses, every weapon and lag skill up to 15 in about 10. Even with a fire giant I did it in about 15+.

I've tried practicing on things that conned razor to things that conned easy kills, running all over the map to fight this mob and that. I've been to about 10~20 places but at least so far I haven't found a place where I could rank/practice more efficiently then I could before the changes. And I know it'll only get worse more I rank.

I did have good moments here and there, learning 6% off of 2 mistakes fighting the same razor mob, also seeing 2 weapon/1 defense improvement, but those moments were far and few in between, and I had my share of those kind of 'moments' practicing on easy kill 15xp mobs back before the changes too.

Of course... yes.. I can just forget about practicing and rank, but with a warrior the difference between a 90% sword/parry and a 100% is quite significant(berserk), and I've already died twice because dirt didn't work due to it being at 73% as opposed to a %100. I'm just one of those people who like having their stuff work for them when it matters.

And I'd rather not frustrate groupmates by tripping/bashing or trying to use axes while I'm tanking to practice. (And from what I saw practicing on razors, even hooded mobs, you still don't learn fast enough to justify doing that. I practiced for about 200 rounds on a hooded mob spending most of my time sleeping, learned weapons once in that time. Mastering axes/maces is important, but no one is going to have the patience to watch you try to master it if you need to be the one tanking. (Me, I'd just kill whatever groupmate trying to do that and find someone else.)

I wanted to ask people who've played fighting classes since the changes, does it get better? Does "no spamming, practice while you rank" work as well in action as it does in theory? Has anyone not practiced at all and just did it while ranking and still managed to end up with near perfect mastery on weapons/defenses within a reasonable timeframe? (lets say 35~40.)

Or is there just 'that one certain' mob in 'a certain' area you have to go to at 'a certain rank' to make it work? The same way you did before?



Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

There aren't any.

The chances and methods of improving at a skill are the same as they always were, with the exception that they are better when you're fighting tougher opponents, and worse when you're fighting weaker ones. No tricks. No fancy gimmicks.

Having checked the skills of mid-level characters for a while after the changes were made, they're about where we want them to be. Frequently used skills are mastered or nearly so.

As for: Under the old system I could have mastered defenses, every weapon and lag skill up to 15 in about 10.

It's been stated a number of times that we're not interested in that. If we were, we'd just give everyone 100% everything and remove the INT statistic.

As for: Has anyone not practiced at all and just did it while ranking and still managed to end up with near perfect mastery on weapons/defenses within a reasonable timeframe? (lets say 35~40.)


Check the Battlefield. Plenty of people have heroed characters and done quite well without ever stopping to waste time mashing the same skill 400 times a minute. It's boring, and the effects are vastly overrated and overly reductionist.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Since I know, now I can just stop looking for the 'magic secret practice spot' and try to get used to the new system.

Think of it this way : You can achieve gains without requiring to practice, thus adding to the fun. In real life, you will learn more from real experience rather then non-risk situations. I'll learn how to shoot someone better in 15 years of warfare then 3 years of target practice. How could you possibly master every weapon fighting wraiths constantly that pose no real threat to you? How could you be a master of all weapons, bash, trip, and all defenses at 22 years old without having done anything paramount enough to earn such skills? I hope that helps .

Is that staff's opinion on spell mastery the same as the rest...that it's
"not that important"? Spells are extremely important to have mastered
for the very reason that they could spell victory if they go off as they
are supposed to, and utter defeat/full-looting, and sometimes rage-deletion
when they don't go off and you are the one that ends up dead. Eh, just
wondering because no one wants to have their spell fail while that warrior
is merrily hacking the #### out of them, y'know?

Bizarro I'm helping!

Is that staff's opinion on spell mastery the same as the rest...that it's "not that important"?

My opinion is that you're exaggerating the effect. I'll go into what I referred to in the above as "overly reductionist", then.

Yes, you can propose situations where a missed spell costs you a fight. Obviously, landing spells consistently is better than not landing them in an absolute sense. My RL job requires fairly advanced math. I can handle that. 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., it's too minor of an edge when you account for its cost (time invested, risk of being ambushed during that time). In a relative sense, it's a boring way to gain a miniscule advantage. (This is the sole reason I pushed for and developed the Affinity concept. I get bored easily.)

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?

My experience with mortal Valguarnera was:
- Master didn't have a leader for a long-ass time, and I spent a lot of time sitting at 20 (the highest level they'd induct). I solo-ranked a big chunk of that because it was the first time I'd ever played a mage character, and I wanted to get a feel for how everything worked. ("Huh. Sleep sure lands a lot more if...") Any skill/spell I had at 20 was probably pretty high.
- After I got inducted, I was thoroughly bored of practicing spells. I worked my way to 47, and didn't perfect anything except Word of Recall. mostly because it cost 5 mana at the time, and I had a 23 INT plus Tome. I think that took 20 minutes. I know I hit Spectre with a mid-90's Parry, 80-ish Teleport and Crimson Scourge, 71% Power Word Kill, etc.
- I logged every time I died. I realized as a heroimm that zero of those losses were from failed spells or skills. I could have had 150% Parry and it wouldn't have mattered. They were due to getting outnumbered, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, making bad or risky choices, etc.
- I smiled because I realized I didn't spend a zillion hours staring blankly at a computer screen mashing the same command over and over. I dare claim I had fun my way.

As an immortal, I'd add:
- I like the idea of having a game where people go out and play, instead of trying to maintain erections via a steady flow of improvement messages. It's a lot more fun to interact, observe, reward, etc...... when the players are actually doing something.

I'd believe the whole "I'm nothing without my 100%s!" argument if I didn't constantly see the following:
- Skilled players with horrible %'s mowing down their range.
- "Skilled" players with 100% everything getting killed because they made bad decisions (*).
- Logs where the peanut gallery screams "your skills are awesome/crap and that's why you won/lost", and I check, and the guy's skills are crap/awesome, causing me to chuckle. Nepenthe invented that art, and damn if it doesn't keep delivering the laughs.

A long time ago I wrote an overly long post (like this one) called 'The Practicing Trap'. My oft-misquoted main thesis was:

- 100% skills go away when you type 'delete'. Fun memories, player skill, good stories, area knowledge, and all that other good stuff don't. As a new player, it's more important and more fun to work on those things anyway. Practicing skills is a waste of your time. If you want to be anal-retentive and micro-manage your skill set in a dark corner, go ahead. I'll be over there, having fun. And please don't complain later that the game is too grueling or that it feels like work or that no imms wanted to interact with you because you never do anything.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

(*): Example from yesterday: If you're an arial dagger spec, for gods sakes read the Dodge helpfile and stop carrying five tons of gear. You found some spare hours to spam up Dodge, but couldn't find 5 minutes to go through your pack and figure out that maybe you don't need 100+ pounds of freakin' steaks and two backup canoes? This is related to the "You don't get to claim dual axes (**) is the end-all-be-all tactic at the same time you complain that you're not parrying enough because your skill is only 90%." rule.

(**): All apologies to the Cült of Äxë. Keep on preachin' the good word, guys. It's like Duvall in The Apostle out there. Amen.

>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?

-Hell no. You got me wrong here. I don't care about my PK ratio. I
mean, sure, it's nice to look at it after you delete and go, "Damn,
I didn't know I did that well in PK's," but it doesn't keep me happy
in that Claudia Schiffer kinda way. In truth, I hate practicing, but
there are *certain* things that I do like to have above average.
If I'm a warrior, I want to get sword, dagger, axe, mace, hand to hand,
and spears all to 90%. I seldom succeed in that, because it sucks. But
if I have a mage character, I am going to want word of recall mastered.
No, not 99% (because that has killed me numerous times), but 100%,
because when you actually die because you lost concentration at 90 to
100%, well, you just kinda smack yourself and feel dumb. I don't like
smacking myself, Valg.

>My experience with mortal Valguarnera was:
>- Master didn't have a leader for a long-ass time, and I spent
>a lot of time sitting at 20 (the highest level they'd induct).
> I solo-ranked a big chunk of that because it was the first
>time I'd ever played a mage character, and I wanted to get a
>feel for how everything worked. ("Huh. Sleep sure
>lands a lot more if...") Any skill/spell I had at 20 was
>probably pretty high.

-Hey, we had Hifflio didn't we? Or is my timeline jacked?

>- After I got inducted, I was thoroughly bored of practicing
>spells. I worked my way to 47, and didn't perfect anything
>except Word of Recall. mostly because it cost 5 mana at
>the time, and I had a 23 INT plus Tome. I think that
>took 20 minutes. I know I hit Spectre with a mid-90's
>Parry, 80-ish Teleport and Crimson
>Scourge, 71% Power Word Kill, etc.
>- I logged every time I died. I realized as a heroimm that
>zero of those losses were from failed spells or skills. I
>could have had 150% Parry and it wouldn't have
>mattered. They were due to getting outnumbered, being in the
>wrong place at the wrong time, making bad or risky choices,
>etc.

-Sleep is the one that mattered most there, and you had that under
control. On the rest, I agree.

>It's a lot more fun to
>interact, observe, reward, etc...... when the players are
>actually doing something.

-Like dying to the guy that practiced? j/k hehehe

>I'd believe the whole "I'm nothing without my 100%s!" argument
>if I didn't constantly see the following:
>- Skilled players with horrible %'s mowing down their range.
>- "Skilled" players with 100% everything getting killed
>because they made bad decisions (*).
>- Logs where the peanut gallery screams "your skills are
>awesome/crap and that's why you won/lost", and I check, and
>the guy's skills are crap/awesome, causing me to chuckle.
>Nepenthe invented that art, and damn if it doesn't keep
>delivering the laughs.

-Eh, can't argue that. Tactics are the ####, but we all slip on the
doodoo sometimes.

Urden, now available in BIG....BOLD....TEXT!!

Limited time only. Prices may vary according to location. All
state and federal laws apply to the "Urden the Pleasure Doll" logo.
Copyright infringments will be prosecuted to the full extent of the
angry mob outside my house. I think they are using pitchforks. What
kind of lame-ass American Gothic crap is this? No one uses pitchforks.
Hah! That torch almost caught my pants on fire. Almost, bitches! You
can't kill the micro machine guy! Hah! HAH-HAH! *whiiiiizzzzz* *PLUNK*
ARGH! *!@#$^&......

Hello? Can anybody hear me? I-...I am alive...but I am very badly burned...
*BLAM*
*bows*

Bizarro I'm helping!

>In truth, I hate
>practicing, but
>there are *certain* things that I do like to have above
>average.

And if it's now harder to practice, the average value will be lower leaving more opportunities to be above average.

Note that I'm not saying it is harder to practice now, but if it was... that would be almost perfect for you. Albeit, still no Claudia.

So if practicing is harder, it's really easier?

Bizarro I'm helping!

I've only been playing for about two years. I can honestly say however that its been getting tougher and tougher to find decent warrior tanks even at mid levels (which is where I spend most of my time).

I have fond memories of people disappearing at 15, coming back a few days later and racing to 35 in no time flat. So the typical warrior lost 5-10 hours getting their defenses into the 90s (many sticking around to master). Now they're awesome tanks and can quickly rank themselves and their damage dealing groupmates into levels where the fun starts. Being able to start raiding cabals, getting past the hordes of zero roleplay lowbies, exploring, etc.

I almost never practiced defenses for the purpose of pk, and most of my characters are pk oriented. I got my defenses up so I could tank and get to levels where I find pk more fun. I agree with you that the 100%s across the board don't mean much in pk. Most pks last less than one tick. I'd guess they probably last less than 6 rounds. However, when you'll be fighting the same host of mobs for an hour or more straight, the difference of 5% in parry dodge and shield block means a world of hurt. Also not knowing your weapon well, or hand to hand will mean less damage, less parrying, and a lot more resting.

All of those things you want us to do? We'll get there faster and more efficiently if you let us have reliable skills. If someone's willing to take their time to get them, let them have them. I don't understand this war you have with people who want to practice. You keep stating it makes no difference. Fine, then stop making such a big deal out of it.

I don't understand this war you have with people who want to practice. You keep stating it makes no difference. Fine, then stop making such a big deal out of it.

Uh. I'm not the one starting these threads. But if someone posts what I consider to be misinformation or only one side of an issue, it's part of the staff's responsibility to answer. Also:

1) I helped design a system that lets you have much better skills without stopping to practice.
2) I came up with affinity so a hero invoker isn't a 200 hour ordeal.
3) I helped push for free points after most rankings, lowered prerequisites for things like shapeshift/warriorspecs/etc, and other things that make a zero-practice character a lot easier.
4) I've put a number of items in the game which boost either learning rates or current skill.

No one "wants to practice". No one logs on and says "Wow! I can't wait to mash a skill repeatedly by myself for 2 hours today!" I think my record shows that I'm more than willing to try to spare people those days.

If you log on and feel like spamming, you're welcome to. No one comes down from the heavens and smites you. We're fine with that, but we don't want it to be the only way to efficiently increase skills, and we don't want it to be so effective that you're at a big disadvantage if you don't do it. I think the current system accomplishes these goals.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

>1) I helped design a system that lets you have much better
>skills without stopping to practice.
>2) I came up with affinity so a hero invoker isn't a 200
hour
>ordeal.

Is there anything more planned for the invoker system?  It
still seems to heavily favor those that go for all or most of
the paths.  Eg:
Need water for cranial and geyser.
Need ice for pincer.
Need earth for killing people in the mountains.
Need fire for immolation.
Need ooze for quicksand and additional strategy.
Need air for killing preheros and for buffet.
So I will ditch lightning path since I can powerrank without
going underwater.

Going four or five paths is just like emptying out part of
your bag of tricks.  There really needs to be some kind of big
incentive to have a 10 affinity in something, like having your
earth/water/etc mastery based off of how many affinity points
you have in that element....

[i]There really needs to be some kind of big incentive to have
a 10 affinity in something[/i]

- Reduced mana costs
- Faster learning

That's plenty good for me.  As for your other cases, your
definition of "need" and mine are different.

There's more in store for the class, but it isn't short-term. 
There's other projects that need attention more.

[EMAIL]valguarnera@carrionfields.com[/EMAIL]

>I don't understand this war you have with people who want
>to practice. You keep stating it makes no difference. Fine,
>then stop making such a big deal out of it.
>
>Uh. I'm not the one starting these threads. But if someone
>posts what I consider to be misinformation or only one side of
>an issue, it's part of the staff's responsibility to answer.
>Also:
>
>1) I helped design a system that lets you have much better
>skills without stopping to practice.
-- and incidentally makes stopping to practice, should one choose to, much more of a chore

>2) I came up with affinity so a hero invoker isn't a 200 hour
>ordeal.
-- thanks, that actually was nice

>3) I helped push for free points after most rankings, lowered
>prerequisites for things like shapeshift/warriorspecs/etc, and
>other things that make a zero-practice character a lot
>easier.
-- You also started giving more and more mobs spec skills and then forced us to practice on higher level mobs to get skills to go up.

>4) I've put a number of items in the game which boost either
>learning rates or current skill.
>
>No one "wants to practice". No one logs on and says "Wow! I
>can't wait to mash a skill repeatedly by myself for 2 hours
>today!" I think my record shows that I'm more than willing to
>try to spare people those days.
>
No one 'wants to practice'. Everyone 'wants to live'. Not all of PK prep is gathering flight/return/etc potions. Part of it is getting trip, bash, cranial, etc up to a level where they hit reasonably often. People may not want to practice, but I bet if they had the choice between a little solo practice and spamming trip on razor/hooded mobs while ranking, they'll pick a little solo practice.

>If you log on and feel like spamming, you're welcome to. No
>one comes down from the heavens and smites you. We're fine
>with that, but we don't want it to be the only way to
>efficiently increase skills, and we don't want it to be so
>effective that you're at a big disadvantage if you don't do
>it. I think the current system accomplishes these goals.
>

According to you (read: the immortal staff) you're not at a big advantage if you do practice, and conversely not at a big disadvantage if you don't. Just look at the posts in this thread alone. If it wasn't broken, stop fixing it?

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.

nt

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

One comment-

Practicing "non-combat-beneficial" skills seems slightly more annoying now. E.g. tiger claw. If I'm fighting a tough mob I'm going to do any number of things before tiger clawing. If I'm ranking on that mob with a group, most likely it will die before I get through the list of "combat-beneficial" things to do.

Now, I realize this could be the desired scenario, and that I need to suck it up and just "deal" with slower ranking in order to get my {insert non-combat-beneficial skill} perfected, but that's sometimes a hard pill for groupmates to swallow.

If your groupmate gives you sass about tiger clawing the white pawns, then you may need to practice your assassin's skills in an alternate way. I heartily recommend wholesale slaughter of complaining groupmates. Afterwards, demand that they grovel and apologize to receive their paltry gear back and, probably, just destroy it right in front of them anyway.

Remember, chaotic evil means never having to say you're sorry.

Ranking is about ranking. If one member insists upon using a skill like tiger claw that impedes on the progress of the group, then that person had better be stronger than the other two members combined.

It depends on the composition of the group, which includes, but obviously is not limited to, alignment. In some groups you can get away with being a sub-optimal ranking partner; in some perhaps you can't. This is part of one of the many ways that different characters balance out.

If you're in a group composed solely of depraved sadists and murderers with no sense of decency or honor, I'd think that there are other important reasons to appear strong and useful to the others besides being free to practice tiger claw while you kill.

given to my idea of making these skills affect mobs, but only a little?

ie give a mob a 20% chance of failing a spell when tiger clawed, deafened, throat-hurled etc?

That way it isn't overpowered, but it isn't totally pointless either.

I'd say that even a 20% chance to cut off an NPC's casting ability briefly is indeed overpowered. Think about how easy certain NPC's would be, especially to a group of 2 or 3 assassins.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

I didn't mean 20% chance to render the mob unable to cast.

I meant, a tiger clawed mob will fail to cast 20% of its spells as a result of the injury to its throat.

I also was envisaging this as something that is capped at 20% (say). ie a deafened, clawed, mob with a dagger sticking out of its throat will still cast around 80% of its spells effectively.

So a group of three assassins would still face four spells out of every five on average. They couldn't just keep clawing until the mob couldn't cast at all.

.

I found it very hard to learn mule kick up to 91% since it only seemed to improve if I was fighting tougher mobs. Since this is my first time playing an assassin past rank 20 I don't know a lot about them, yet. I'm just curious if it has always been so hard to improve that kick, or is it because of the changes in the way practice works now? At the level I am at now I should have mountain storm kick, but because it took so long to learn mule kick, I am just beginning to learn crescent kick. Now I have to practice it up to 91% and then do the same with axe kick before I'll get the kick that is appropriate for my rank. This forces me to stop and make time to practice kicks, instead of ranking. I'm not complaining about it though. I'm just wondering if it is supposed to be this way. Maybe I just have been using the wrong skills or fighting the wrong mobs during ranking, though, I don't know. I can say I was VERY happy when I got mule kick to go from 90% to 91% though.


Smile - It can't hurt and might help.

Mule kick isn't any different than any other kick. We don't write special code for every skill. Anything that worked for one kick will work for the others.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Ok, and thanks for answering. I think it was just hard for me to find a place to actually do it. A place with more than one mob that I could kick at one that I wasn't fighting me. It was a real challenge, but it's done now so I'll just go on with practicing the rest.

Smile - It can't hurt and might help.

Defenses were left unchanged when the last practicing change was made.

Maybe you're a rager, but if not, that 15 hours could have yielded great results if you spent it in serious exploration. Much better benefits than those from parry being better.