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Personal Skills discussion

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robert
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Personal Skills discussion Empty Personal Skills discussion

Post by AxineeHearth Tue Apr 25, 2017 10:47 am

Only a handful of the Personal Skills raised through eating are of any real use Shocked  (I do not take into account Learning and Regeneration) None of the useful skills are gained from eating farming related foodstuff. 

Why would I bother discussing this? Well, right now it's a no-brainer what food I should eat (meat, meat, meat!). I would love to see a balancing that made my choice harder. If I only gained strength for instance, I'd become a thick-headed brute, and that should have some drawbacks for my character.

First of all, let us have a look at what Personal Skills that are worth raising by eating meals or drinking soup (and in some cases - reading a book).

They are, in descending "usefulness order": 

Strength - the best combat stat for non-event combat. Also helpful in physical labours, like wood chopping, mining. Meat is easy to come by mid-game

Physical Resistance - Very helpful combat stat early on. Reduces damage taken. Milk is easy to come by early on.

Constitution - Helpful over time - healing potions are more effective the more health you have, and more life helps in combat, mining and wood chopping. Cheap to raise - eggs are abundant if you have a few chickens

Agility - An OK combat stat. Increases hit. Leveling up combat is more effective early on. Poultry is a limited goods.

Luck - Probably a bit useful when herbing, digging, fishing and for finding gems. Expensive to raise.

Speed - Hard to raise. Expensive. Need 2 points for every 1 initiative gain, so not very effective. Can be ignored.

Decadence >20  - useful in mid-game, when food becomes abundant. Very expensive to raise. Useful in competitions for that extra potion, and for faster skill gains.

I would love to see some more benefits from the following Personal Skills:

Endurance (negligible benefit when mining)
Intelligence (negligible benefit when herbing)
Charisma (Negligible benefit when trading with the witch)
Patience (small benefit when forging iron ore into nails)

A question arises: Why would anyone bother eating potatoes, fish or vegetables? They are, as of now, only useful as weekly quest items. 



Suggestions: 
1) Make quests where Personal Stats matter! That would also make Charisma and Intelligence potions more valid.
2) Make agriculture foostuff way cheaper to produce (max 10 stamina per unit), so it'd be a lot cheaper to raise Charisma, Intelligence and Endurance. Right now, they are weak support stats, and should at least be cheap to come by.
3) Reinforce/improve benefits from having high Personal Stats in these areas. Have intelligence requirements for reading books for instance, or add intelligence to reading skill when reading. Charisma could be added to Mercantile skill for some skill checks. Endurance could reduce mood loss during reset, or perhaps allow a higher base mood (+10 for every 10th skill, so to allow a total of 1100 mood).

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Post by Hadrian Tue Apr 25, 2017 11:37 am

Great topic !

And i am also intrested in what is said .

To be honest i am thinking the same !

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Post by robert Tue Apr 25, 2017 12:37 pm

In relation to quests


I think having a personal skill requirement for a quest would be limiting and force people to play the game in a way to work on it, which many people don't want to do anyway.  I think if you want to incorporate it in quests and stuff it should just add some small benefits in the quest if you have higher intelligence or something, but not have a set  number you must reach in order to do the quest, or to certain actions within the quest


So maybe things like a percent increase in treasure found in the end based on a certain skill, or reduced stamina required for part of the quest for each 10 points in skills like patience.


Outside quests, I think Aro has been doing a pretty decent job adding small benefits from personal skills when he adds new things.  Some of these could maybe be a little more impactful, possibly just through bigger numbers, maybe through different effects


And I agree that farming these goods currently feels overly laborious for the amount of food you get.  With max farming skills  it takes me 600 stamina to put a field through a cycle, and I can expect around 30 veggies or whatever crop (with I think lvl 5 fields) which means it takes about 20 stamina to produce a vegetable.  
Eggs, for reference, require 100 stamina to breed a chicken and then 100 stamina to collect 10 sets of 2 eggs, so 200 stamina = 20 eggs means about 10 stamina per egg, At level 1 chicken attitude.  This scales to (I believe) 20 stamina to breed a chicken and 50 stamina for 10 sets of 2 eggs, so 70 stamina=20 eggs. ~3.5 stamina per egg.
I realize that eggs are supposed to be a cheap food, but the math their is a lot easier than trying to discuss stamina required for meat from pigs or even how much stamina a fish generally takes.  So I don't think crops should be produced at the efficiency of eggs, but the disparity here is pretty obvious, and economically shows.
I think to balance this stat food fields should produce close to double what they currently do, maybe through doubling all the numbers, but maybe just double the base number and let the gains stay the same.  I'd be hesitant to make the gains sharper while keeping the base low, as I think fields are already a slow payoff for newer players, and that would just drive the cost down while giving newer players the same small production starting out.
Also, to compensate you might require towns to use more crops in order to level up their field then.
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Post by Axel Ackland Tue Apr 25, 2017 1:45 pm

For personal stats you can more or less define then into combat stats and non-combat stats.  Many people are more interested in combat skills.

Anyone interested in combat should start with combat skills. With the exception of physical resistance, they all provide an additional bonus in some way to worked specific jobs.

The rest of the personal stats are related only to jobs and not combat, however some of them are used in the feast event to provide additional bonuses.  These skills can be more useful in normal realm life (excluding combat) than combat skills, such as intelligence, luck, and patience.  However, charisma seems especially lacking from my perspective.

I agree that the farming produces do not have enough production possible (in addition to poultry and possibly fish).  I suggest that produce be increased and time required for a field to cultivate being increased.  Right now you're spending 600 stamina every 10 days for x amount of produce.  I think changing it to 600 every 30 days for 2x amount of produce would be greatly beneficial.  A bit harder for new players, but overall better for the realm...  It actually makes having extra fields more useful as you'll actually be able to run more than a couple at once.

I really like the idea for quests to require so much of a personal stat to start, it's already Incorporated in some quests with normal skills.  The only problem is it'll severely limited those who can do the quest, which isn't a problem unless there aren't many quests, which there aren't.  Only a handful of people will be able to experience the quests that require it.

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Post by robert Tue Apr 25, 2017 2:17 pm

I do agree about the separation between combat and not combat personal skills.  The hope, in my mind anyway, is that non-combat skills are at least enticing to players who want to focus their attention on the non-combat aspects of the game.  The players who may entirely forgo combat, or pay little attention to it.  Right now, I think these traits are lacking a little in this, and so people who want to focus non-combat end up eating/drinking minimal amounts because the stat gain feels like it's never worth the money required to drink lots of soup or eat big meals.

Axel also touched on something I had forgotten to mention, the non-combat events.  I would like to see more of those or at least more involvement from these skills in those, but I also realize that the combat events are quite popular for people, and reducing those has it's drawbacks as well.

Contrary to axel though, I think month long field cycles would create a drastic barrier for new players and while it may help economically in some ways, I would much rather see it approached with changes that just increase production, or possibly lower stamina requirements also, so that more cycles can be done, which would also help with Axel's concern that having multiple fields doesn't really add much right now, because it is so hard to keep up with just a few.
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Post by AxineeHearth Wed Apr 26, 2017 10:03 am

First of all, I must admit I exaggerated a bit. There are a few more uses for Endurance, Intelligence, Charisma and Patience than I gave credit for. However, as the discussion shows, there are few real incentives for eating fish, vegetables or potatoes. (An honest exception is the rare case where a Seeker really does not want anything to do with combat whatsoever - which is fine of course!). I will present a few revised suggestions, inspired by robert and axel's many good inputs.

1. Quests. I agree that a lack of personal skills should not limit seekers from doing most if not all quests. I do like robert's take on it. Why not increase the reward depending on say Intelligence and Charisma? It must not apply to all quests, but some at least. There could also be a select few quests with personal skill requirements. THe reward from such quests could be skill points gained in the same skill for example. That would reward those who spend their time building these stats.

2. The 30 day farming cycle Axel mentions is great I think. With a 30-day cycle and double output, there will not be more agricultural produce overall, and it encourages people to use the waiting time to explore other options in the game. I love this idea because it makes Cultivation relevant beyond the 3 first fields. It also makes Endurance a lot more relevant, if stamina requirement for field cultivation can be reduced significantly by the Endurance skill (at least 1 stamina reduction for every 4 Endurance skill). This will in time make it easier to cultivate way more fields. It also encourages better planning if a steady agricultural output is wanted. With this 30-day cycle sheme, Patience can be used to reduce crop ripening (1 day reduced for every 10th point of Patience). A fun add-on to this could be to make the horse into a Perpetual Work horse instead of a War horse after 100 days training. The work horse could reduce cultivation by x amount of stamina.

3. Intelligence can be more relevant by giving a much larger Intelligence bonus when Writing books. Writing books is not well paid, and takes an awful lot of time. A lot more books could be added (unlocking quests or other features, like potion recipes) to the library for variety, if they can be written faster by people with high Intelligence skill.

4. Charisma. For starters, it can add a % chance to get a reduced price on animals bought from the Town. 1 % chance per skill point, for a 50 % reduction in price for instance. Over time, it COULD pay off (but probably not) - at least make it more worthwhile for hardcore ranchers Smile

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Post by Axel Ackland Wed Apr 26, 2017 11:15 pm

Thank you Axinee ^^ I've been sitting on that field one for a while and too thought it was great...  Ahem... Robert.. scratch

Farming should be hard for newbies, they've gotta work on other people's fields first and save up for their land  Wink 

I don't really agree with that charisma proposal, 50% reduction is more than any town makes in profit as far as I'm aware.  Maybe not sarmiz...

Here's the wiki for skills. http://the-grail-lords.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Skills

There are quite a few uses for each personal stat, maybe they aren't quite useful enough...  Intelligence and charisma seem to be quite useful for criminals ^^

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Post by AxineeHearth Thu Apr 27, 2017 5:44 am

Axel Ackland wrote:Thank you Axinee ^^ I've been sitting on that field one for a while and too thought it was great...  Ahem... Robert.. scratch

Farming should be hard for newbies, they've gotta work on other people's fields first and save up for their land  Wink 

I don't really agree with that charisma proposal, 50% reduction is more than any town makes in profit as far as I'm aware.  Maybe not sarmiz...

Here's the wiki for skills. http://the-grail-lords.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Skills

There are quite a few uses for each personal stat, maybe they aren't quite useful enough...  Intelligence and charisma seem to be quite useful for criminals ^^
First, to clarify the CHarisma 50 %: I mean that for 1 point of charisma, I will have 1 % chance of having the price of an animal reduced by 25-50 %. Let's assume 50 % here, for the sake of argument. If I raised my Charisma to 50 (which takes a lot of effort!), I would have a 50 % chance of a 50 % discount. That means that I'd have a 25 % discount on average. Only hardcore ranchers would bother raising the charisma to this level. If it shows that towns are losing income, the discount can be reduced.


I will still argue that eating grapes, fish, vegetable or potato meals give very little in return. Yes, if you want to be a hardcore criminal, high charisma and intelligence plays a small role. 

For all other purposes, the benefits from Patience, Intelligence, Endurance and Charisma are so small that it's not worth the enormous effort it is to cook soups, make cauldron, build the farm and maintaining the animals and so forth.  Let us look at Intelligence, a skill that is very useful in real life (benefits in-game are pasted at bottom).

Tax Investigations are so rare, that 1 stamina saved every forthnight isn't worth even 1 soup's effort. 
Searching herbs: A bit more useful, but it is also a miniscule bonus unless you get Intelligence up to 50+. For the effort of cooking etc., you could rather use all that stamina, we are talking thousands, to search for herbs. 
Writing books: Let's assume a Inteligence skill of 100. That means you will have a 5 stamina reduction to every writing attempts. That's not so bad if you want to write books - for 5 years straight! Otherwise it's a huge stamina sink to raise the skill. And you will be bored. And you will not be able to experience other parts of the game.

A combat skill like Strength also takes effort to raise, but it is extremely useful, if not absolutely necessary, in combat (and it certainly helps when mining/chopping wood). Constitution is another useful skill that benefits both warriors, miners, stone diggers, wood choppers, travelers and to a small degree farmers. 

It just don't make any sense that these two skills just mentioned are so crucial, while intelligence is not really needed. I get it, it's the medieval times, most people are dumb as bread, only a few knows how to read and write. But WAIT - everyone, even the numb-nuts with 1 intelligence skill (*cough, cough* ooops, that's also includes a dwarf), can read a book without ANY problem. We do not even have paper, but reading skills seems to be hardwired in Seekers' DNA! And a highly intelligent Seeker can't even come up with the idea to use a horse for plowing? Why not?

Endurance is another skill that MUST have been a crucial skill in medieval times. With Endurance skill of 1, fatigue should set in early on, limiting the amount of cultivation or plowing attempts one could do in one day, the amount of stamina that can be used in the mines and so forth. Combat should also be affected - after 5 combat rounds, fatigue sets in, and you start to miss more, or dodge less.

Charisma and Patience could be secondary skills. They are useful to have, but not crucial, like the ones mentioned above... bounce




Skill Effects:

  • Reduces the stamina cost for Tax Investigations with 1 stamina for each 10 points.

  • Increases the efficiency when working to reduce the prison time in the Town Jail.

  • Searching Herbs: Increases the chance to find ingredients with 0.05% for each point on the skill.

  • Chance of 1% for each point on the skill to reduce the stamina cost of writing books with 5 stamina.

  • Each point increases the chance with 1% to add 100 extra points when participating with the Town Games


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Post by robert Thu Apr 27, 2017 2:32 pm

Axel Ackland wrote:Thank you Axinee ^^ I've been sitting on that field one for a while and too thought it was great...  Ahem... Robert.. scratch

Farming should be hard for newbies, they've gotta work on other people's fields first and save up for their land  Wink 

See I disagree with that idea, I like that this game lets you go straight into pretty much whatever you want.  No experienced player would really recommend that a new player start out trying to run their own fields, or reading books in their first week.  These aren't lucrative and have slow pay-off as it is.  BUT the game allows a new player to do that.  If a new player asks for help we can say "You should start raising chickens, get a pickaxe, etc." But they can always say "But I want to farm." "I want to read all these books."  And we can't stop them.  So making huge barriers like this just prevents the new player who really really wants to farm from playing the game.  And if they can't play the game, they won't, because they wanted to Role-play their character, and if the barrier to that is too great, they will likely just not play.

I do agree that economically a system where fields have a much longer cycle, but also produce a little more could be super beneficial.  Being a full-fledged farmer could pay off a lot better then, and investing into several fields would make a lot more sense.  I just think it would turn too many potential players off from wanting to play this game beyond the first day.
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Post by robert Thu Apr 27, 2017 2:40 pm

Also axinee, I think the .05% herb finding chance is fairly reasonable.  It compares with the strength adding chances to find wood.

Searching Herbs: Increases the chance to find ingredients with 0.05% for each point on the skill.
Increases the chance with 1% for each point to yield an extra wood when chopping in the Forest.


Since woodcutting takes 20 stamina, and Searching takes 1 you really gain the same chance of finding an extra herb/wood for each 20 stamina at the same rate.
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Post by MissSandy Thu Apr 27, 2017 11:44 pm

Being a player thats not fond of combat. and hearing how dangerous it was outside of town,  I dove in to farming.  as newbie   took me 4 days to work each phase, 12 days of burning stamina, plus grown time took almost all month.

my take is for lower cost stamina for farming cycle.

Wheather that's halving the stamina, planting a bits less for lower gain.  then as you get higher you get to plant more.  not in favor of longer cycle.

Option 1
why cant one choose how many section they plant, before moving to next phase, 1 to 10,  so crop is less yield, if you choose 3 section, 3 plant, 3 sow& 3 harvest.  grow time stays the same.  farming does have xx.xxx can be broken down, vs full point


Option 2  more the grail scale
newbie cheap can only plant 4 sections then and and as your skill gains, you get to add another section up to 10 for full yield

then one can only sow and harvest number of units planted.
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Post by AxineeHearth Fri Apr 28, 2017 7:28 am

robert wrote:Also axinee, I think the .05% herb finding chance is fairly reasonable.  It compares with the strength adding chances to find wood.

Searching Herbs: Increases the chance to find ingredients with 0.05% for each point on the skill.
Increases the chance with 1% for each point to yield an extra wood when chopping in the Forest.


Since woodcutting takes 20 stamina, and Searching takes 1 you really gain the same chance of finding an extra herb/wood for each 20 stamina at the same rate.

On your other comment, I agree that we should be careful about limiting the game to new players, but at the same time there is more than enough to learn the first few weeks, so having a small barrier before being able to read for instance is just fine. By the time the player is ready to read, he/she has figured out that it doesn't pay off at all to start reading a book (which could put someone off playing). Small skill barriers could therefore serve as a guide!

Oooyhh, it takes a lot more numbers to confuse a lady with a beard! Here is how: When chopping wood, you have a 100 % chance to get the desired wood. On top of that, every STR adds 1 % chance for another wood.

When searching for herbs however, you will have say 35-45 % chance of finding a herb. Adding 0.05 % to this number makes so little difference, it is not worth it. It's less than 50 % effective than that of STR is to wood. Another important thing: STR is crucial in combat, a big part of the game for many players. STR helps with digging (necessary for quests). Intelligence doesn't do anything in combat, or other important areas (quests for instance).

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Post by Galth Fri May 05, 2017 11:07 am

You've got a good thing going here, so I'm inclined to join the discussion Smile

I was the mentioned new player most recently, and I can safely say that I wouldn't have a problem with being limited in what I could do at first. On the contrary, I would have preferred it, because it would have given me a clear path to follow and set milestones I could focus my attention on.

As it is, there are no traditional level ups in the game, which is a shame - they have been a staple of many a genre for a couple of decades already for a reason. In an ideal scenario, I shouldn't be able to jump straight into reading, blacksmithing and many other things and would, instead, have to go through proper channels - a type of apprenticeship, if you wish - before I could go my own way.

Regarding the personal skills thing, I mostly agree with whatever - any type of upgrade in which skills like intelligence and various "useless" foods like potatoes and vegetables would become more useful gets my vote.

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Post by Cpt_Coot Sun May 07, 2017 2:39 am

Galth wrote:You've got a good thing going here, so I'm inclined to join the discussion Smile
Same, but I won't.  I've been reading everything being said here with great interest.  You all have such great ideas going here I don't want to derail them with my own input.  Just wanted to say this discussion is awesome Very Happy

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