Is it still needed? The various races seem much more balanced than they were in the past for combat, but I think giants are perceived as a poor choice now due to the poor learning rates. Some are now going as far as to say they are useless compared to int/dex builds (shamans/warriors), though I rather think it is less of an imbalance as it once was. Removing the penalty to low int learning rates might tip them closer together again.

Can we have a base learning rate for all races now that stats are more balanced in other ways?

While I would rather have "great" learning rates for all of my characters, if you had 100% in all skills almost right away it would be pretty lame/boring. I would even almost rather have int be a more important factor. Or even drive it to where the learning rate on most skills is based on int where as others like physical skills would be based on something else since it is more muscle memory anyway.

However, I'd rather see the really difficult to learn/spam abilities increased in learning rate rather than make everyone have the same flat learning rate. For example, invoker spells like create water and create spring = boring spamming. I guess it is something to do while waiting for a group once you hit that brick wall that is mageness. There are other spells that do niche things in the invoker paths that I feel should learn faster too. Mostly things like earthquake (possible bonus when hitting multiple opponents?) and things like that. Where it makes them useful to spam in combat rather than in a field alone.

Even orc/fire giant learning compared to an invoker (with high int and average affinity) really changes your perspective. But I must say, it really makes that OCD side of you be like 100% skills! But it does suck spamming certain ones. Sorry, I'm rambling again.

As a side note, I'd rather have one of the lowest level water path spells removed and replaced with something other than creating water. :) But that is just me.

Good idea! It could even have a partial impact. Such as primary stat for skill + secondary stat from int/wisdom. Something along those lines.

Edit: Picked a poor example skill.

Most skills already have success/failure criteria that involve other stats. So an elf may have good technique (high Pincer skill percentage), but still won't Pincer as well as a giant with a much lower skill percentage.

In the long run, the giant comes out ahead, because the technique part (high skill) can be slowly mastered, whereas the elf has no way to make up the STR advantage.

Forcing everything to swing on STR isn't a direction we'll head in.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Giants have inherent 100% bash.

NEEEEERD RAAAAAGE

>Giants have inherent 100% bash.
>
>NEEEEERD RAAAAAGE

Pick your favorite STR-tilted skill and substitute. We need to stop using Bash as the example for every skill discussion anyway!

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Orcs start level 1 with their weapon skills not at 1%. For races that have both an int below 17 and a wis under 18 simply figuring out when you will be able to practice core skills is a challenge. a challenge that generally means using several of your early trains to get practices just to get the skills to a point you can develop them.

this is especially true of non warrior giants (I don't think a frost shaman can practice most of their stuff and ever max their stats with trains for instance)

Maybe just raise their initial rolling stats so they can dedicate more trains to practicing? You still got the major gap in how fast those skills will raise (and for casters your mana pool/regen) you just let them get to working on them a bit earlier.

A lot of skills have int/dex as their more powerful factor for warriors now. So while the fire giant is good at forceful attacks and parrying, the elf is good at evading, dodging, and more dextrous/intelligent attacks. They have become fairly even in combat prowess now. However, the giant still has a horrible learning rate while and elf/arial etc learns pretty darn quickly. Most now think that dex builds actually top out over str builds now. I, personally, think this might be due more to the fact that many giants don't get skills up high enough to be as reliable as the int/dex builds get and many just quit early as a result.

I won't push anymore on the idea though, if it isn't desired. I haven't even played a giant in over ten years.. mainly because of learning rates.

I agree that dex builds have a lot more going for them than they once did, and it certainly seems to be the case that where there's dex there's int. That said, while int obviously yields skill mastery soon and there's something to be said for that, it's no where near the factor that str or dex are in actual game mechanics outside of niche scenarios like STSF.

32% of the top 40 PKers of all time were low int and relatively low dex builds. That figure jumps to 52% if we only look at the top 25 warriors (again, all time). And in the case of all classes, that 32% would be higher if it weren't for builds like shapeshifters, for example, which probably aren't drawing their actual killing power from their stats directly.

I also disagree with the premise that just because we've (quite deliberately) made stats that were less mechanically interesting int he past more relevant now that int shouldn't continue to play a major part in learning rates.

At the end of the day it sounds like you prefer higher int builds and that works for you while a lot of other people seem to be content enough with their lower int builds to continue to play them and be very, very successful with them as well. I'm satisfied with that balance.

I'll also point out that while nobody has to be a domain expert in a particular subject or have a lot of first hand experience with something to pitch a good idea and be right, when it comes to game mechanics like this it does build credibility to have (recently) played the things one chooses to assert need changing because they are bad/broken/confusing/etc. Likewise, if the only thing someone plays is CE conjurer or very similar ranger builds, I'm much less likely to take their word for it that their go-to build(s) need more juice. Perspective helps.

.

>While I would rather have "great" learning rates for all of
>my characters, if you had 100% in all skills almost right away
>it would be pretty lame/boring.

Why do you think it would be lame/boring to have skills that are 100% right away? I'm looking for alternate perspectives.

There is no sense of progression otherwise. I don't know about you, but the skill gains make me happy. Progressing directly to 100% or starting at 100% would really detract from that to the point where you have no more skills/spells/sups/songs to work on. On the other hand, it can be really frustrating when a skill just wont go up due to RNG. I'm pretty patient though so it is not usually an issue.

As a potential lack of personal investment in character.

If you and many others are correct, and leveling is a time sink which is negative for the average (very busy) player, then it first warrants some study to attempt to quantify this effect in some way.

If you guys happen to be incorrect, and making skill learning rapid could be adjusting the game to the point of people being entirely uncommitted to characters. This could be extremely detrimental to the MUD. Rather than having any investment you would see characters rolled and deleted in a short space of time.

Where does the optimum point between a trade-off personal time and skill learning rates lie? Hard to quantify, but I think it warrants some attempt at quantification, or at least further exploration before tinkering with that specific in-game mechanic is even considered.

A lot of people seem to not have time to play generally, and believe that altering skill learning rates, or leveling speed, will be CF's silver bullet. I am not sure if that would be the case, and I don't know how anyone could retain their objectivity and maintain a position absolute certainty in that type of change being entirely positive.

So yeah, again, not disagreeing with you but it needs some kind of further study to reduce the risk of potential unintended consequences and to better understand the core factors for the overall community.

But more that overall stats are balanced now in a way that some races shouldn't be penalized compared to others for learning rates. Otherwise you could easily argue that a drow has no time sink since they can master everything. Therefore, no one would have an attachment to their drow? I don't see a drow being less favored than a fire giant in the game. I only was saying it might be nice, now that dex/int, are more important in general than they used to be compared to str, that the learning rates alone could be tweaked. People dread playing low int races now because getting any skills up takes a very very long time. Drow, on the other hand, are already quite capable fighters now and can master their skills quite quickly in comparison.

My argument would mainly be to make skill/spell learning across the board be more in line with eachother and not specifically int based now that int is useful for other things and most int builds also have high dex.