On Skills

[Fellborn]

We're noticing a lot of 1 point wonders currently with the intent of unlocking as many activities as possible. Needless to say, this was one of the concerns with allowing skill decreasing and what the 100 minium was originally intended to help alleviate at cap before that went live.

We are actively looking into further ways to discourage this and make people who want to specialise in these skills more relevant again without punishing those just starting the game.

[Navi]

Are skills like riding, swimming, and tracking causing issue? I've had one point in these for a long while, with the intention of raising them to 100 eventually, but survival in the lost lands is expensive point wise, especially for adventurers.

[Firesong]

I likewise do similar with the idea that the things that take less priority for my character will be increased last as I crawl towards level 100. However, I just set those to 25.

[Guillaumo]

Is there a reason to not just make things move in 25 point increments?

That is how I have personally been spending my points. Generally I only have 25 only in skills I trained but haven't found a use for yet, like Meditation and Linguistics.

[Gorth]

There is, of course, an easy solution of not letting a skill (excluding combat skills?) not do anything until put to at least 25. Maybe having them be severely limitted until at least 100. Hyper limitted recipes and no repairs under scuffed for crafting skills, like eight second mount and dismount time for riding, heavy loss of energy regardless of Encumbrance for swimming, et cetera.

I will ponder and post a list of my thoughts for each one in a while, if people think a solution like this might be in order.

I agree. I think it's silly for people to pop one point into every skill and affectively be able to do everything they might need on a daily basis. While I understand one point is a small investment so that you can repair your own gear, or ride a horse, it doesn't mean that it doesn't invalidate people's feelings on the matter if they want to actually be helpful for some things. That's why I kind of like the idea of not being able to repair things under a certain threshhold if you have low skill; maybe I'll put that in it's own topic, though.

[Lexx416]

Is there a reason to not just make things move in 25 point increments?

That is how I have personally been spending my points. Generally I only have 25 only in skills I trained but haven't found a use for yet, like Meditation and Linguistics.

I ONLY train my points in increments of 25 as well, however certain combat skills (such as Melee, Ranged, and Dodge) have a special cap to them where you can only train 10 per level that you have. So that would mean a level 1 warrior couldn't train their fighting skills until level 3 (which is what I personally do, but I don't feel great about forcing people to level up twice before they can start training the skills they want to).

[Marcuson]

I have to admit that I'm guilty of this. I set Z's Metalworking and Pottery skills to 1 in order to gather data on crafting steps, since they vary by skill level. (Although I haven't gotten around to actually compiling the data yet...)

I understand why you'd want to encourage people to invest more in those skills, though I'm not sure of the best way to go about it.

[Fellborn]

A variety of options are being looked at.

Examples that have been discussed include, but are not limited to;
Crafting rolls - Effecting results and quality. Roll badly, cause durability damage to your weapon instead of repair it. Make an inferior item. No progress in making an item. Ruin a pelt, or get lower quality ones.
Item thresholds - Repairing a unique greatsword might have a higher threshold needed than a basic weapon. Difficulty of metal/crop could effect this.
Act as 100 at Cap - Act as X at level, where X is current level. At level 50, a level 1 skill will count for 50 of your skill points.

It will likely involve several things, not just one, as no skill is truly alike.

[Agelity]

Regarding recipes, I've definitely had similar questions before where I want to see what a recipe is like prior to investing into it (or because I want to pre-gather materials before contacting someone if I want to try and save a riln or two), but in order to look at recipes for skills you don't know it requires at minimum an investment of 1. So, less of a desire to abuse certain mechanics like repairs and the like for a single point investment and more a desire to look up information that's a little harder to come by otherwise (as I believe the recipes used to be reviewable in locations when the previous mechanics were active even if you didn't have the skill for it).

I believe we have recipes listed elsewhere for certain things, but an easier in-game method might be nice, especially for crafters. For things like investing 1 into arcana to get easy study spots or 1 into riding to get the same advantage as riding at 100... I'd need to mull that over a bit. One thing I thought of was giving some leniency in point allocation for those prior to level 10 or something so new players can get their foot in the door without feeling super gimped (and better try things out before committing), but once they hit level 10 or 15 or whatever need to start being more mindful of how they invest points and start including penalties (or at least lack of effective benefit) for skills they don't actually invest in.

Just an off-the-cuff thought, as I'm sure there are multiple ways to tackle the issue, but I'd like to at least be a little more mindful of newer players as I do recall how agonizing those first few levels can sometimes be before you really have enough skill points or abilities to feel "useful" in any sort of capacity, especially for certain specializations and skills.

[Lexx416]

A variety of options are being looked at.

Examples that have been discussed include, but are not limited to;
Crafting rolls - Effecting results and quality. Roll badly, cause durability damage to your weapon instead of repair it. Make an inferior item. No progress in making an item. Ruin a pelt, or get lower quality ones.
Item thresholds - Repairing a unique greatsword might have a higher threshold needed than a basic weapon. Difficulty of metal/crop could effect this.
Act as 100 at Cap - Act as X at level, where X is current level. At level 50, a level 1 skill will count for 50 of your skill points.

It will likely involve several things, not just one, as no skill is truly alike.

Related to this, I think I'd like it if you weren't able to decrease a skill lower than 100 without having to undergo some Weird Occult Practice by an NPC (that also serves as a riln sink) with some kind of penalty associated with it, with the following exceptions: Have a "newbie" flag attached to any account with fewer than 40 logged played hours. Until the 40 hours of play time (across all PCs, not counting idle time at the login screen) that lets you skill decrease below 100 without incurring the riln cost or the penalty.

That (for me) would make unlearning skills feel a bit less gamey and turn it into more of an IC journey, while discouraging people that are veteran players from 1 point investments in the short term when you also include the other things you've mentioned in this post.