(EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

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Rias
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(EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by Rias »

Time to experiment with skill decreases. As it says on the tin, this is a way for characters to decrease their skills. Simply use the SKILLS command to set a skill to decrease. For instance: SKILL DECREASE MELEE 5 to set your Melee skill to decrease by 5. Rather than an immediate decrease, this sets the skill to the "unlearning" state.

If a character has any unlearning skills, bucket experience absorption will be reduced by 50%. Each bucket drip (pulse, tick, whatever you want to call it) will cause unlearning skills to reduce by a small amount. The more skills a character is unlearning at once, the less unlearning occurs for each per drip. Additionally, the higher a skill is, the more it's going to take to unlearn - just like the cost to increase a skill increases at each 100 mark. So make your skill-decrease choices early if you can, or you're going to be spending a lot more time losing half your experience bucket absorption to unlearning costs.

There is no riln cost, and this doesn't have to be initiated at any particular location. This may change at some point to be a bit more involved, but for now I want the system tested out with ease.

NOTE: Skill unlearning decreases practice as well as the base skill. No flip-flopping and immediately skilling right back up to your previous skill level. You'll have to earn those practice points back again the hard way.

Skill unlearning can be stopped at any time at no penalty. Just type SKILL DECREASE <SKILLNAME> STOP to stop unlearning it any further.

Now the ugly part: I need help noting what all might possibly be broken, bypassed, or gamed by the ability to decrease skills. For instance:
- Known abilities that require a certain skill amount should be automatically set to "unlearning" when the skill requirement is no longer met.
- Farmland size should be decreased accordingly if the renter decreases their Farming/Husbandry skill.
- Learned languages (not implemented live) need to be forgotten accordingly if the Linguistics skill is decreased.
- We somehow need to handle what happens to known recipes if a person reduces their associated skill and now knows more recipes than they have points available for.

Stuff like that.

As noted, this is an experimental change. If it's too problematic, I'll have to take it out. One discouraging lesson I've learned in my time running MUDs is that if it's technically possible, someone out there *will* do it. So I can't rely on any kind of honor system to balance out any significant potential downsides here. Solutions need to be 100% coded and mechanical. So please help me discover, figure out, and prevent issues so we can keep this system and allow for some changing of minds when it comes to skills. I know the concept of permanent choices creates anxiety in more than a few people around here (and gamers in general), and while many have been relying on the rerolls as a safety net, those will be going away once we're out of the testing phase of the game.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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nobody
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Re: (EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by nobody »

Rias wrote: Tue Jan 05, 2021 3:18 pm - Farmland size should be decreased accordingly if the renter decreases their Farming/Husbandry skill.
I believe you had it in mind, but I also wanted to make sure it gets covered explicitly: land utilization also needs to decrease accordingly (it's presently possible to have more utilization than capacity for a number of reasons, I think). Maybe require land utilization to be pre-lowered to the new level before allowing farming/husbandry to be decreased. In particular this needs to check where both skills are/are projected to be and require utilization based on the projected higher of the two.
Last edited by nobody on Tue Jan 05, 2021 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Acarin
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Re: (EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by Acarin »

This looks really cool but just wondering how this impacts the 100 of a skill at cap thing. Seems like this immediately enables buying 1 point of each skill because you can just quickly drop them as you go... I mean, I like this but feel like it would invalidate the 100 minimum thing since you can just get rid of a full set of 1s somewhat quickly.
You reach toward ((DEV Rias)) ... Pull(d225([1]x)):214 vs Mark(d1100):714 = -500 (-222%)
You notice ((DEV Rias)) glance your way, causing you to quickly withdraw your hand from his wool
drawstring pouch (open).
Roundtime: 5 seconds.
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Re: (EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by nobody »

Thought of another issue, but I'm not sure how concerning it is. Metalworking pairs very well with metallurgy and pottery, and a smith could theoretically increase and decrease skill to create their own casting molds of everything that can be molded. This doesn't seem super concerning to me because an enterprising potter could already do that with the aid of an arbitrary number of other blacksmiths without ever investing in metalworking themselves.
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Re: (EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by nobody »

After reviewing all the skills I only saw one additional potential issue. Arcana grants glyph retention once per 33 ranks. If the rate of unlearning is such that arcana can drop more than 33 ranks per month, it would be possible to trigger multiple tiers of the ability to unlearn in an overlapping period (which may or may not function properly). Additionally, as retention lowered, glyphs would need to be forgotten appropriately.
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Re: (EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by Agelity »

Acarin wrote: Tue Jan 05, 2021 3:29 pm This looks really cool but just wondering how this impacts the 100 of a skill at cap thing. Seems like this immediately enables buying 1 point of each skill because you can just quickly drop them as you go... I mean, I like this but feel like it would invalidate the 100 minimum thing since you can just get rid of a full set of 1s somewhat quickly.
I was thinking about that and I had a couple of thoughts, one case for when skills are above 100 and one below.

Skills above 100:
Have the "floor" be 100. Reasoning being that you've invested enough time into the skill to learn the basics and have a hard time forgetting that rudimentary knowledge, barring something like an annual skills reset (could be less of a reroll than the current reroll and focused just on skills) or a shrine to Malfant that in exchange for being able to learn new things you must 1) lose knowledge in the chosen skill(s) and 2) suffer an additional penalty on top of it depending on how skill you have in the skill; Malfant wants your brains! Or you know, at least the knowledge within.

Skills below 100:
Time limit on how long the skill can be used before you are unable to learn back to 0 and must raise up to the minimum of 100 (to then be reset by the above), and perhaps specifically for skills that ALLOW skill gain (things like perception don't tend to directly help with that, especially sub-100 skill). Could allow additional flexibility for characters under level 10 or even as high as level 20, but once you've been established a while in game... hopefully the game's mechanics make enough sense to not make too many additional skill mistakes.

Still mulling over things like potential cooldowns between skill unlearning/relearning, etc. as to not spam forget/learn, could also have the logs be more frequently reviewed/monitored (much like death mechanics) so that if it looks like someone's abusing the system they can be reached out to see what they're doing (new player struggling to figure out commands, someone trying to abuse game mechanics for gain, etc.). Would hate to assume the worst in a player, but the chance for that sort of things to happen is sadly not zero.
Acarin
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Re: (EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by Acarin »

You could also charge a massive riln amount (25-50k per) for unlearning the last rank. This would hopefully prevent people from picking up everything just because they can.
You reach toward ((DEV Rias)) ... Pull(d225([1]x)):214 vs Mark(d1100):714 = -500 (-222%)
You notice ((DEV Rias)) glance your way, causing you to quickly withdraw your hand from his wool
drawstring pouch (open).
Roundtime: 5 seconds.
Acarin
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Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2020 10:49 pm

Re: (EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by Acarin »

It currently looks like skill unlearning does not let you unlearn the last rank of a skill or unlearn at all if you set unlearn to remove all ranks. Is this intended?

I mean you can set it but no decreases occur...
You reach toward ((DEV Rias)) ... Pull(d225([1]x)):214 vs Mark(d1100):714 = -500 (-222%)
You notice ((DEV Rias)) glance your way, causing you to quickly withdraw your hand from his wool
drawstring pouch (open).
Roundtime: 5 seconds.
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nobody
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Re: (EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by nobody »

Oh, that's good to know that you're already seeing impacts. I opted to unlearn one skill I had at 25 and it hasn't budged in hours. Time for tinkering!
Acarin
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Re: (EXPERIMENTAL) Skill Decreasing

Post by Acarin »

If you set it to entirely unlearn, it won't unlearn at all. If you set it to 1 rank, it unlearns really quick (around 0.45 per pulse when under 100)
You reach toward ((DEV Rias)) ... Pull(d225([1]x)):214 vs Mark(d1100):714 = -500 (-222%)
You notice ((DEV Rias)) glance your way, causing you to quickly withdraw your hand from his wool
drawstring pouch (open).
Roundtime: 5 seconds.
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