I'd rather see the skill level gains go towards skills which are less than 90%. Except for skills which I use all the time (which on there own will march towards perfection), ninety percent is about as high as I ever work on getting something. Putting the skill level gains there means fewer skills to work on.

>Would it be possible to make this affect only abilities used
>during the previous rank? It makes sense to work that way and
>would keep points from going to irrelevant skills.

In my opinion, having every skill check a player makes increment various counters stored in their pfile for each level to check for a small random bonus at advancement has a high enough "too much coding and too much weight in the pfile for too little payoff" factor to make this not happen, regardless of how intuitive it may be.

It's a neat idea, but the way I think (and I'm open to coder correction) the game is built that sounds as ugly as de-weirding dual wield as a project.

Sevarecan

1) I agree that if a skill is worth practicing, the extra points are cool. The system isn't meant for you to be able to funnel them all to your two favorite skills, and max them out by level 20. It's supposed to give you broad competency as you advance in your guild.

2) It would be a pain to define what you've "used". If you parried a mace once during that last level, did you "use" it? Your Mace sure got looked up. Fast Healing? Gets used every tick! Did you buy a pie? You just used Haggle! Most of your practiced skills would be in the pool anyway.

3) Adding a huge array to every pfile to track the 1000+ possible things you may or may not have used, to provide a minimal effect that many players wouldn't care about... sounds slightly more fun than groin surgery. I'm not sure I have have the skill to tackle the Dual Wield issue, but at least if I was banging my head against that wall, I'd enjoy the added convenience of being able to swap things in and out of my hands easily when I played mortals, and it wouldn't make boots take longer.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Two quick points. One, if they're irrelevant, why did you practice them in the first place? Two, it's a *bonus*, one which didn't exist not that long ago. So smile, say thank you, and enjoy the bonus for what it is.

>Two quick points. One, if they're irrelevant, why did you practice them in the first place?

Because practicing weapons up to 75% helps with the parrying. Anything beyond that less than 100% is irrelevant. There are plenty of other skills you practice that you dont really care about. Haggle is a good example. Anyway, if you have a pretty big skills set you find the irrelevant skills suck up the majority of the gains, which renders this improvement...irrelevant.


>Two, it's a *bonus*, one which didn't exist not that long ago. So smile, say thank you, and enjoy the bonus for what it is.

Well...thats a cop out, buddy. It is completely...irrelevant...to the point I am trying to make. Before you dismiss my suggestion, take a second to think about it. Imagine you are the player and ask yourself how you would want it. Then, imagine you are an immortal and come up with one good reason it shouldnt work this way. You guys are patted on the back enough for the fine, fine work you do. I'm just giving a little constructive criticism to the system.

Well, what you consider irrelevant and what I do are two different things. I don't practice any skill or spell I don't plan to use at least a little. Id est, I don't practice haggle unless I hit hero and find I have that one practice left. So, again, if you practiced it in the first place, you had to want it, or need it, for some reason. And I am a player. Since the bonus system went in I've seen it in action with a few mortals, and I can honestly say that by hero the bonuses spread out quite well. Did I mind the bonuses spreading out across weapons I never use? No, I figured, "Hey, bonus, little better with that weapon." I'm sure there are players who would want all their skills maxed at level 1, with a nice eq set. As an immortal I can certainly come up with a good reason for that not to happen. The reason I come up for this? Because the bonuses were meant to help people not feel the need to spend so much time practicing, not to take all the effort out of it. If they're the skills you use anyway, they'll go up naturally, with maybe a little boost from bonuses, random bonuses that is.

>Because practicing weapons up to 75% helps with the parrying.
>Anything beyond that less than 100% is irrelevant.

So 75% and 99% are practically equivalent in your eyes, but 100% is so much better?

Yes, 99% is a lot better than 75%. Although anything that is not mastered will fail at the absolute worst times. Trust me. Aside from that, if you play a warrior 99 = 89 and 100 = 100.

99 almost as good as 89, both better than 75, 100 better than either.

Although with certain skills, I hate to agree with Josiah on this and maybe it's just superstition, but there seems to be "effectiveness thresholds". For example crescent kick will start disarming mobs regularly when it's 91%, and almost never will at 75%. I always consider the fluctuation points to be around the same as lore - 76, 81, 86, 91 all seem to be more than just 1% gain in results.

>99 almost as good as 89, both better than 75, 100 better than
>either.
>

89 almost as good as 99

Lower-tier assassin kicks come to mind. Going from 91% to 94% in wheel kick is basically a non-gain.

As for coding, doesn't seem like a big deal. But then again I've never seen a pfile. You'd only need to record the list of *used* skills in the pfile, which shouldn't be more than 30-40 for a given char. Come up with a unique ID for each skill (if one doesn't already exist).

But...maybe you're right. Not much bang for the buck.