Skip Grinding

[Peter]

Give new characters Foraging, hunting, fishing, farming, and possibly carpentry, and mayyyyybe cooking. Maybe even add 10 in all the skills, to match the stats.
This would get rid of the first five or six hours of gameplay, which are quite obviously the worst.
Going hand-in-hand with this, increase the cost of the other skills from 200 to 1000 to match the new incremental cost of skill raising. I simply find it odd that it takes more skill and effort to become one iota better of a farmer than it takes to learn how to forge metal.

Suddenly, new players can be immediately assigned to work in the fields, getting LP that can be used to do other work. They can immediately start wandering the woods, looking for plants and herbs. They can immediately start having fun.

The greatest drawback to this is that alts could be created for mundane labor- but this is already a marginal practice, and while new characters would be capable of doing things like hunting and farming, they would still be nowhere near good at them. And even if this change doubled the number of "spam" alts, an extreme estimate, it would increase the number of retained new users far more.

[Nanothnir]

New folk in Brodgar are given a plow, told to plow the roads and fields, when they reach the first 200 LP they are to buy Fishing to feed themselves (rods equipment are normally aplenty) if the town stocks are low (which they normally are) then after the next 200 LP to buy Stone Working so they can finish the Roads themselves. After that they are told to get Foraging which then allows them to decide if they want to hunt for food or gather it. If they choose to Hunt they get that next, if not they continue towards Farming. Remember that Ant Hills are free raids if you don't have hunting. When they finally have the 400 to get Farming if they chose that path they are told to work on the Flax/Hemp farms to get some more LP while making the linen for the banners. After that they are really left to their own choices, as they would have been given a plot to work at and make themselves at home...

Well thats what I tell the new folk. I think everyone else at Brodgar Forget and just tell them to wait for me to come on.... Sigh....

[Jackard]

Reconsidering Skill Prereqs

Merge Foraging, Fishing, and Hunting into Wilderness Survival. Merge Plant Lore and First Aid into Hearth Magic - a single skill that covers the use of dreamcatchers, herbalist tables, drugs, medicines, inks, and parchments.


Click here to view the skill tree.

[Jackard]

Which creates more of a grind, LP or skill values? After starting from scratch several times, I'm inclined to believe LP is not the real problem with the current system, more a convenient scapegoat, and that we'd all be better off without skill values. They could be replaced entirely by attributes and mechanics like numen/wyrd.

[sabinati]

i'm not really sure how that would be able to replace skill values

[Jackard]

SVs are a repetition of attributes, not very interesting one at that. You could probably have the same benefits by improving Beliefs, Prayers and Rituals instead. Maybe some other stuff. When I look at suggestions like Timber Song and more buffs and equipment bonuses and farmers enriching topsoil and improved crafting mechanics, they seem a lot more interesting than forever plugging xp into a slot to raise your level and max quality by a fraction. It feels like we could do better.

also,

having a large gap in ability between novice and veteran characters is not really helpful for a team/stronghold/resource-based pvp game, especially a permadeath one

skill values are the player equivalent of animal levels. they elevate the importance of the individual over that of the group and the world

[ImpalerWrG]

I agree in spirit, skip that first hour or two but I think we could do something better and more flexible, start a new player with 1000 LP. Enough to get the basic wilderness survival skills (and even make a few mistakes along the way) if they are alone, but if your spawning in a settlement you can ignore all that and go strait into specialization and actually get a mid level skill or two.

[theTrav]

Jackards ideas are on the right path.

While skill values seem integral to the current quality system, they really aren't.

Skill values in the combat system, well, I've already had my big rant about them and animal levels and how I don't like character advancement in that space.

[Xilliah]

I like the first hours. There is a little grinding, but not much, and it's worth it because I know I can get cool stuff. I get cool stuff pretty quickly.

[ViciousGamer04]

Give new characters Foraging, hunting, fishing, farming, and possibly carpentry, and mayyyyybe cooking. Maybe even add 10 in all the skills, to match the stats.
This would get rid of the first five or six hours of gameplay, which are quite obviously the worst.

I know this is kind of knit-picking but if it takes you 5-6 hours of gameplay to get those skills(and even include getting each one to 10 points.)there is something wrong with you.