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Learning and Lessons
In an effort to make things easier, we are contemplating revising how learning skills work. Currently, you need to find a tutor and put 1-15 lessons towards learning a skill, which takes about 30 seconds to run through a dialogue with the tutor. Some things we can do:
We could remove needing to find a tutor; rather, you could increase your skill from wherever you want.
Change the number of lessons you can put into a skill in a learning session, possibly 1-100 lessons (or more?).
We could remove the dialogue while learning. The learning texts are interesting but get repetitive and don't usually give extra information on how to use the skill that's not found in the AB files.
Of course, making it super easy may detract from RP so the question is how much RP is really necessary for learning your skills. Thoughts?
We could remove needing to find a tutor; rather, you could increase your skill from wherever you want.
Change the number of lessons you can put into a skill in a learning session, possibly 1-100 lessons (or more?).
We could remove the dialogue while learning. The learning texts are interesting but get repetitive and don't usually give extra information on how to use the skill that's not found in the AB files.
Of course, making it super easy may detract from RP so the question is how much RP is really necessary for learning your skills. Thoughts?
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(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.
Comments
I have no real opinion about the number of lessons used for one set; learning is a tedium, period. With skillflexing, it's not even needed from a balance perspective; you learn your skills once, and then you can keep them and flex into them with relative ease.
Keep the dialogue while learning. Sure, it's only read once, but it does provide a fair bit of atmosphere nontheless. While they don't mention things that aren't found in ABs, keep in mind that people aren't always trans; newbies will want to see what to expect further on in the skill! One thing I'd love to see happening is to have the messages vary depending on how far along in the skill you are; it doesn't make much sense that you get the exact same lesson when inept that you do when you're nearly trans, although that would be a rather major undertaking.
"But paradise is locked and bolted...
We must make a journey around the world
to see if a back door has perhaps been left open."
-Heinrich Von Kleist, "On the Puppet Theater"
EDIT: Idea that just hit me - Have denizen trainers remain at a maximum of 15 lessons (or maybe increase denizens to 30-50 lessons maximum at a time) but increase the amount of lessons that one can learn from their mentor to a maximum of 100 lessons at a time - gives an added incentive to find a mentor and interact with other people nice and early.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
That doesn't really add much to the game (encouraging people to do something else instead). Even newbies learning their newbie lessons could benefit greatly, just having to do one set of each suggested lesson plan at a time instead of going "I need to do 15, 15, then 5? Wait, 5, not another 15?" You wouldn't believe how many novices 'overlearn' by accident simply because they don't quite understand how leveling up skills works.
Edit: Basically, more lessons at a time means less dialogue repetitions means you keep the flavour without introducing as much of the 'boring, repetitive' element. Learning from a tutor is fine, too. The biggest problem to me really is the lesson learning cap of 15.
Not all of us have mentors. Well, I have one, but she has been inactive for over 4 years. Why should a newbie get to learn faster than me simply because my mentor doesn't play anymore? How does that even make sense?
"But paradise is locked and bolted...
We must make a journey around the world
to see if a back door has perhaps been left open."
-Heinrich Von Kleist, "On the Puppet Theater"
I like the new message for when you get a new ability.
I think 100 lessons at a time is plenty.
A config option seems like unnecessary extra work in this case. The best fix is the simplest fix in this instance; up to 100 lessons learned at a time, not much else needs to be done!
Edit: Though seeing how many lessons to the next skill rank would also be a nice change and hopefully not too difficult.
Someone somewhere suggested that all skills under a given skillset should be viewable, but highlighted in a different colour if you haven't actually learned them yet (maybe red?). This would make it a lot easier for new players to at least preview what is ahead for them, without having to be directed to a wiki or the like.
Can check how many lessons to get a new skill, how many lessons invested total, able to see the full skill abs no matter what, and they can learn up to 60 lessons at a time(though requires a city upgrade), and a few other things I've forgotten.
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You still get the RP lessons, do you need them more than once? 100 is definitely a good step, and obviously better than what it is now, but I wouldn't be opposed to learning as much as you wanted.
It's essential for healthy combat to be able to understand what your opponent's skills do, and for envoys to submit informed reports and comments that do not rely on third party websites with AB files that can be wildly out of date.
Also, definitely standing alongside the people who have mentioned that their learning 'RP' amounts to 30 seconds writing a trigger and going away to watch a movie while it does its thing for a few hours. The few times I have RPed learning a skill, we actually only mechanically did one or two sets of lessons, because the repetitive learning messages kinda got in the way of what the teacher was actually emoting. Maybe make it so tutors have the messages (since I too do like reading them all at least once), but make learning from other players use a different system entirely?
If you wanted to encourage RP, I could see something like allowing the tutee to specify any number of lessons they want to learn from the other player, then every few seconds have a handful of lessons move into the skill with an unobtrusive message like "As you discuss [skill] with [tutor], you feel your understanding grow." until the lessons learned hits the total they specified. This way, the two players are able to RP the learning process freely, and as they go through their RP the learner will find their skill increasing over time automatically.