Skill Training

[eddiex]

First and foremost, I'd like to thank the staff for all their hard work.  They have put in a lot of work to improve the player experience and they deserve a lot of credit for that.

This post is to suggest a drastic overhaul to the current way skills train.

Idea:
I think it would be a godsend if the staff would consider making all skills passively train from levels 1-30 where your skills automatically reach the maximum (superb) at level 30.

Why?
There are a number of skills for each class which are situational at best and do not realistically get trained in the course of leveling.  This results in players spending hours grinding skills when they could be doing more productive things like exploring, grouping with friends, or further improving their characters by reincarnating or ranking their medals.  Another hurdle is the skill learn cooldown which was implemented for whatever reason.  So even if you want to spend your time grinding your skill to superb, you have to wait 30-40 minutes to get another enlighten.  I really am at a loss as to how prolonging grinding skills (which will rarely/never be used) improves the player experience.

Example
Thief's hide skill has hit the v.good learn cooldown.  Thief now has to have someone (or their multi) to grab wandering mobs and drag them in and out of the room for 1 enlighten. Once they have received that enlighten, they go on their merry way only to have to do this again numerous more times in an intermittent fashion.

Ask yourself, how does this improve the player experience?

Suggestions
1) Make all skills learn passively from levels 1 - 30, automatically achieving superb skills at level 30
or
2) Remove enlighten cooldowns
and/or
3) Drastically reduce the amount of training skills need to improve

Below are a list of skills according to my own opinion that are situational or require excessive grinding (forgive me if I have left any out as it has been a while since I've grinded every class):
Thief: steal, case, plant, detect, disable, hide, throat punch, coup
Cleric: brew, scribe
Druid: brew, scribe
Mage: brew, scribe, arcane shell, pretty much every skill tbh
Barbarian: carve, mend, lore
Warrior: parry, disarm
Scout: hunt, camp, scout, hide
Shaman: spook, banish (no longer legend requirement), field medic, taunt
Paladin: not sure
Dark Knight: not sure

Lastly, if the concern is that it will be too easy to legendary, then perhaps again move the Ranks required for legendary up to something like 30.  I believe anyone would be hard-pressed to provide a convincing argument of skill grinding being difficult or improving the player experience.

[Gnua]

Would this still be important to you if the skill requirement for legendary were removed or reduced to very good?

[eddiex]

I think so:
a) Some skills are unnecessary to progress in the game beyond achieving legendary status.  They may be awful when you are level 30 because they are literally situational and unnecessary.  If achieving legendary skilling was moved to v.good it would still require a substantial amount of skill grinding.

b) Skill grinding does not improve the game, however, some skills can be situationally useful or necessary for players to move forward.  I guess in this regard, if a player chose to pursue certain things it would be on them to train the skill.  However, that doesn't change the fact that skill grinding does not improve the player experience so in my opinion the charade should be removed altogether.

That being said:
Your suggested change would be an improvement on the current system because progressing in the game for most (if not all players) is dependent on achieving legendary.

[Dafin]

Maybe some skills' enlightens can be sold in guilds for coins?
Let players choose what to grind: skills or coins.

[Shimopy]

I agree that skill training does not improve the player experience. Enlighten cooldowns don't make sense to me. Why are there periods of time where skill training does nothing (on cooldown)? Why do I have to zone or rent for a few hours before training again? Every wipe I finally get enough ranks to legend, only to be frustrated by one or two skills that just won't go above excellent, despite diligently training them while zoning. It feels terrible, and I'm sure no one enjoys this. Removing enlighten cooldowns would certainly improve the player experience.

[Gnua]

I agree that skill training does not improve the player experience. Enlighten cooldowns don't make sense to me. Why are there periods of time where skill training does nothing (on cooldown)? Why do I have to zone or rent for a few hours before training again? Every wipe I finally get enough ranks to legend, only to be frustrated by one or two skills that just won't go above excellent, despite diligently training them while zoning. It feels terrible, and I'm sure no one enjoys this. Removing enlighten cooldowns would certainly improve the player experience.

would this still be a problem for you if the skill requirements for legend were lowered to very good?

[eddiex]

I agree that skill training does not improve the player experience. Enlighten cooldowns don't make sense to me. Why are there periods of time where skill training does nothing (on cooldown)? Why do I have to zone or rent for a few hours before training again? Every wipe I finally get enough ranks to legend, only to be frustrated by one or two skills that just won't go above excellent, despite diligently training them while zoning. It feels terrible, and I'm sure no one enjoys this. Removing enlighten cooldowns would certainly improve the player experience.

would this still be a problem for you if the skill requirements for legend were lowered to very good?

I can't tell if this imm is trolling or is actually interested in the issue.

Gnua or any staff member: Can you elaborate on if you think the current skilling system improves the player experience and if so, how? I'd specifically like to know why staff think it's important to the player experience for people to invest hours into a monotonous task that is neither difficult nor interesting.

I'll recap reasons why it is an issue:
1) Legendary is necessary for progression in the game, skills are required to hit legend.
2) Some skills will not realistically be trained in the normal course of grouping.  Example: Throat Punch - 9 round cooldown on successful attempt. Most mobiles die significantly quicker than 9 rounds when grouping. Most thieves are fading and stabbing when soloing.
3) Other skills are not even used in the normal course of gameplay and are situational. Example: hide, scout. This is exactly why imms removed banish from legend requirement because it's so situational and relatively useless when most charmies are dispel magic able that it's not reasonably trainable in the course of gameplay. Why not look at the larger picture and ask yourself how does this improve the player experience?

[Shimopy]

I agree that skill training does not improve the player experience. Enlighten cooldowns don't make sense to me. Why are there periods of time where skill training does nothing (on cooldown)? Why do I have to zone or rent for a few hours before training again? Every wipe I finally get enough ranks to legend, only to be frustrated by one or two skills that just won't go above excellent, despite diligently training them while zoning. It feels terrible, and I'm sure no one enjoys this. Removing enlighten cooldowns would certainly improve the player experience.

would this still be a problem for you if the skill requirements for legend were lowered to very good?

For me, the problem would be resolved if the legend requirement were lowered to very good. I never have trouble getting skills to very good. The enlighten cooldown seems to kick in around there, and it's super painful beyond that point. That said, eddiex raises a valid point about skills that are not realistic to train while zoning.

Overall, though, I think removing enlighten cooldowns is the best solution. If I am willing to put in the time to train something to superb, why make the experience worse for me by adding a cooldown? Or, if the cooldown can't be removed, perhaps the cooldown timer itself could be displayed on the skill list, or queried somehow? Just to prevent me from wasting my time attempting to train a skill that is on cooldown.

[Gnua]

chose to pursue certain things it would be on them to train the skill.  However, that doesn't change the fact that skill grinding does not improve the player experience so in my opinion the charade should be removed altogether.

It was my (perhaps mistaken) understanding that the skill grinding for legend was originally meant to slow down the melee classes so they couldnt just rank to 20 and legend on day 1-2 of the wipe as that would give them too much of an advantage over the caster which had to pop spells.  as frustrating as the skill grind may be, it may or may not be worse than the druid essence hunt.

[Gnua]

It feels terrible, and I'm sure no one enjoys this. Removing enlighten cooldowns would certainly improve the player experience.

While there is a lot of hate for enlighten cooldowns, would you agree that it is an improvement over the previous situation where you had to actively skill for 2-3 hours to get the last set of enlightens?  At least this way you can take 30 minute breaks from skilling in order to zone or afk...

[Shimopy]

It feels terrible, and I'm sure no one enjoys this. Removing enlighten cooldowns would certainly improve the player experience.

While there is a lot of hate for enlighten cooldowns, would you agree that it is an improvement over the previous situation where you had to actively skill for 2-3 hours to get the last set of enlightens?  At least this way you can take 30 minute breaks from skilling in order to zone or afk...

The enlighten cooldowns are not transparent. Are they all actually 30 minutes? I honestly don't know. So therefore I have no idea when training skills will actually be useful. At least under the old system there was no wasted skilling, as long as you weren't level-capped.

To be clear, I do not prefer the old skill system. I just don't see how enlighten cooldowns are fun or useful in this game. Do I agree the current system is better? Yes, but there is still room for improvement.

[eddiex]

chose to pursue certain things it would be on them to train the skill.  However, that doesn't change the fact that skill grinding does not improve the player experience so in my opinion the charade should be removed altogether.

It was my (perhaps mistaken) understanding that the skill grinding for legend was originally meant to slow down the melee classes so they couldnt just rank to 20 and legend on day 1-2 of the wipe as that would give them too much of an advantage over the caster which had to pop spells.  as frustrating as the skill grind may be, it may or may not be worse than the druid essence hunt.

Ok, lets go along with the premise that skill grinding was meant to slow down the melee classes because they legend faster than casters.

Again, how does skill grinding improve the game/player experience?

It's not fun, interesting, or challenging.  It's a monotonous arbitrary bullshit roadblock and every class, yes even casters, have to go through it.  Please do not make the argument that getting legendary should be difficult, because again skill grinding is not difficult nor is ranking.  Skill grinding only serves to take valuable time (which this player-base has often indicated they have less of as they age) from playing the actual game.

If you want to make sure casters and tanks legend at the same time there is a much simpler solution, set a bar for ranks achieved (currently 25) could be 30 could be whatever.  Make all characters able to buy legend once they achieve this rank.  I'd not be completely opposed to that, but I would caution against that change because all legendary classes are not equivalent.  A legendary warrior is far less game changing than a legendary healer or shaman.

This is a simple QOL change request.  I hope there are other decision making staff members actually reading this and considering it.

[reed23]

Agreed with Eddie's original post.  I think skills, especially the BS ones, should train much faster, and the cooldown from V.good to Supurb is absolute BS.  If we want to slow down the time to legend, do so in a different manner that is not nearly as frustrating, etc.

If it were up to me, i'd make skills train 2x as fast and remove the cooldown.

[Neal]

One possible solution that I think dips into enlightened problem we face today but doesn't necessarily take away from the grind this game has always had us do, is to implement what other games call "bad luck mechanics"

I'm going to use parry as my example:

I have no idea on the chance to land parry and or how the enlightened currently gets calculated. But I would bet my paycheck it isn't progressive, and this is what that system would do.


Simply put let's say I land my parry and I have a 10% chance to get an enlightened as I use the skill. I didn't get my enlightened.

Next time I land my parry it increases to an 11% chance to get my enlightened

Next time I landed my enlightened at 12%. Now I go learn, and I may be back down to 10 percent or whatever that is determined.

This way we have a progressive skill system that still plays into the grind but additionally doesn't necessarily restrict us to a certain time frame in skilling. There would be no need to put any timer cool down like currently, and also if I used parry from level 1 to 30 I should be able to level it as I zones, group, rank and enjoy the game .

Overall Eddie is right, with an aging playerbase we could definitely look at improving how we level skills that in all honestly we may just level to get legend