Pooling Performing Skills

Specifically for code or policies you would like to see implemented.

Moderators: Maeve, Maeve

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Julea
Posts: 60
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:13 am

Sun Aug 21, 2022 11:15 pm

Sometimes it does feel a bit like: Here's this thing that I/we feel could do with a little tweaking. Here's some ideas for it. And that being translated to, we want all skills maxed, and a vault of silver. When that's not the case at all. And no matter how much we reiterate, it isn't taken in good faith. It can be... a bit frustrating.
Julea/Lien/Ashe/Adaline

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Satoshi
Posts: 39
Joined: Tue May 14, 2019 4:08 pm

Sun Aug 21, 2022 11:33 pm

I am not certain what you mean by 'ladder pulling' since that appears to mean 'removing opportunities that you had from others' which... asking new players to engage in the same system that existing characters do is not. It's actually asking them to use the exact same circumstances.

I have had champion of drums and dance on my very first character. Getting both, naturally at a mix of roleplaying with others, the occasional five-minute session of testing out how I would describe a new dance or performance until my pool was full, and then haring off to roleplay while the pool drained, took me maybe... a few months? I hate grinding, personally, so being the absolute best means very little to me. But it didn't actually take me very long, and I hardly noticed, because I was engaging the game on the level that was available to me as a new player, with the resources I was given.

I suppose the crux of the issue is: why is a time investment seen as such a bad thing to you? Why is it so imperative to very quickly max out a skill before playing your character? If it is so important, why are you upset when there are, in fact, systems in place to skip the 'grind' and time investment?

And re: speedrunning specifically, you can't actually. That's why your pool takes time to drain. It goes faster when you roleplay, to encourage you to *stop grinding* and go engage with the game.

I am not attempting to come off as too dismissive or too rude, but the systems are set up the way they are for a reason. This is, foremost, a roleplay game. You can actually make a character with no skills other than the language skills required to communicate--heck you can actually have ZERO language skills and still attempt to muddle through--and play the game without ever engaging with skills at all. Several people do it, and several more only engage very lightly with skills.

I think the issue I am struggling with is: why is it so imperative that you must max out your skills very quickly? Why is 'this takes some time' a bad thing? Why does 'it takes some effort' mean it is hard? Why, if being very good at something from the bat is so important to your character concept, are you against purchasing the skill? Why do you feel like you need to be skilled to engage with the game?

Crayon
Posts: 14
Joined: Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:39 pm
Discord Handle: Crayon#0824

Sun Aug 21, 2022 11:40 pm

Why is solo-spamming pre-written emotes that nobody else will see desirable behavior that needs to be incentivized while practicing with others and performing live is not? It makes zero sense in game design terms.

Natural RP will rarely if ever take your pool above the lowest possible tier of fullness for performing skills. If your pool is completely full, that's a mighty big chunk of spamming in private, and I don't think that's something that should be incentivized or that's good for the game.

Could you elaborate on how exactly spamming pre-written emotes and calling it practice is good for the game and needs to be the only way you can possible improve performing skills in a timeframe that isn't in OOC years?

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Satoshi
Posts: 39
Joined: Tue May 14, 2019 4:08 pm

Sun Aug 21, 2022 11:56 pm

1) Perform with other people then. The bards previously had 5-6 practices or more for their plays they put on. Bands practice together irl, bards can too. Focus on shorter pmotes to break them up and get the most from the session and keep the scene moving. I imagine this is probably the “intended” way but I have not had the benefit of always being online when others were.

2) in your initial post you specifically brought up 60 to 75 which is from Master to GM. A that level, frankly, you SHOULD be teaching other bards if you can, because that gives you pool in the skill you are teaching, and benefits them. Yes, complaining that it is hard to max out your skill does come across as “I want my skill now” when other people have put in that effort, as well as devalues Master, which is already very good at a skill.

3) Again, WHY do you NEED to be the very best there ever was, Pokémon, just to play your charcter and engage with the grid? You don’t seem to want to answer that.

4) again referencing your initial post, why is it that odd that a *retired* actor has lost some polish? It’s perfectly reasonable to explain that he is using outdated methods and needs to brush up on new things, or simply out of practice.

5) I already said it only took me a few months to GM both dancing and drums on my first character. I’m not sure why you continue to insist it will take literal years. However, the point would be to a) practice your emotes so that you have them ready for a performance or know what you will type/have partially pre written to ease the performance b) experiment by yourself while in game, also benefitting from pool, to see how you like things c) again practice with friends d) if you don’t like that then dedicate to going to idk every tavern or something and playing 5-10 pmotes so that you up the rpxp bonus, are on grid and actively engaging other people. Invite people to a tavern and hold a performance every night. Personally I would find this hard because I cannot come up quickly with new things that fast and the novelty would wear off, but it could work.

Im getting tired so lastly, the system is *balanced* so that people are putting in equal time to reach similar levels of mastery. A little effort for a bard means that the similar effort for other skills are equally balanced. I can’t think of a way to speed run bards without meaning that the other skills would have to be completely rewritten.

EDIT: also your pool size is based on your stats*. I don’t typically minmax so my pool is usually rather small at default. It doesn’t actually take that long to fill a pool when it’s small.

astronamika
Posts: 30
Joined: Mon Aug 15, 2022 5:57 am
Discord Handle: amika#6326

Mon Aug 22, 2022 12:02 am

Unless I'm misunderstanding Crayon, I think the core of the idea is is "performance skills are unique in that they're improved by emoting, so it'd be nice if interactive roleplaying was incentivized over solo spam grinding," and that's the idea being submitted.

I think the way I'd perceive it, a pooling bonus during scenes would allow performer characters to go out and put on shows for other characters in order to earn the ability to background a tedious thing (I had a dance champ character 5-6 years ago so I know the grind). The performers on-grid right now seem to be putting a ton of effort into making entertaining and thematic works, so I'd personally love to allow more time spent on that.
1) Perform with other people then. The bards previously had 5-6 practices or more for their plays they put on. Bands practice together irl, bards can too. Focus on shorter pmotes to break them up and get the most from the session and keep the scene moving. I imagine this is probably the “intended” way but I have not had the benefit of always being online when others were.
I think that's the issue - that sounds like a blast, but the slow improvement disincentivizes on-grid practice sessions.
3) Again, WHY do you NEED to be the very best there ever was, Pokémon, just to play your charcter and engage with the grid? You don’t seem to want to answer that.
I didn't get the impression anyone was asking to be the best, just remarking on progression speed, which might be why there's no answer.

User avatar
Julea
Posts: 60
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:13 am

Mon Aug 22, 2022 12:08 am

Sometimes it does feel a bit like: Here's this thing that I/we feel could do with a little tweaking. Here's some ideas for it. And that being translated to, we want all skills maxed, and a vault of silver. When that's not the case at all. And no matter how much we reiterate, it isn't taken in good faith. It can be... a bit frustrating.
Why is it so imperative to very quickly max out a skill before playing your character?
This is kind of my point, I don't think anyone is saying that we want that at all. Quite the opposite. And it is why it's so frustrating sometimes engaging the community with ideas or suggestions.

No matter how long the game has been around, there's always room for improvement.
Julea/Lien/Ashe/Adaline

Crayon
Posts: 14
Joined: Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:39 pm
Discord Handle: Crayon#0824

Mon Aug 22, 2022 12:10 am

1) Perform with other people then. The bards previously had 5-6 practices or more for their plays they put on. Bands practice together irl, bards can too. Focus on shorter pmotes to break them up and get the most from the session and keep the scene moving. I imagine this is probably the “intended” way but I have not had the benefit of always being online when others were.
If people are drastically altering their writing style to maximize their 'gains' out of a coded system it's probably a system that needs reconsideration.
2) in your initial post you specifically brought up 60 to 75 which is from Master to GM. A that level, frankly, you SHOULD be teaching other bards if you can, because that gives you pool in the skill you are teaching, and benefits them.
Actually, this is false. I have high level teaching in addition to acting. When I teach acting I do not pool acting. I have done this several times and have only pooled from using the perform command. The pmote command also doesn't seem to work with acting.
3) Again, WHY do you NEED to be the very best there ever was, Pokémon, just to play your charcter and engage with the grid? You don’t seem to want to answer that.
Because I literally never said this. I actually specifically said I don't need to be the best there ever was. But if a newbie who wasn't able to get the XP and QP necessary to boost their skill well and above 36 was genuinely trying to grind their skill up the only way to do it would be to embrace what I would call 'perverse incentives'. That is what it's called when mechanics incentivize undesirable behaviors. Like min/maxing your gains by pmoting one liners or sitting in your house spamming pre-written emotes until your pool is full.

ETA: Oh, and also I've been top ten activity every week I've played. Obviously I'm engaging the grid. Nice shot, though, sorry you missed.
5) I already said it only took me a few months to GM both dancing and drums on my first character. I’m not sure why you continue to insist it will take literal years.
Because I didn't say that. I said it would take you literal years if you weren't sitting in your room pmoting pre-written one-liners until your pool was maxed out every time you go out to RP.
Im getting tired so lastly, the system is *balanced* so that people are putting in equal time to reach similar levels of mastery. A little effort for a bard means that the similar effort for other skills are equally balanced.
Spamming pre-written pmotes to cap your pool isn't effort.

Sparkles
Posts: 108
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2019 3:52 pm

Mon Aug 22, 2022 1:16 am

I've not seen any bonuses from singing show up in the rpxp gain report?
That sounds like a potential bug. It's noticeable with instruments but the other things (Acting/Dancing/Singing) might need a peek.
Actually, this is false. I have high level teaching in addition to acting. When I teach acting I do not pool acting. I have done this several times and have only pooled from using the perform command. The pmote command also doesn't seem to work with acting.
Acting has it's own command "Perform." Also that's curious and wondering if that's stat based, Metrics based, some mix therein or something else as I've pooled performing skills via teaching before.

Crayon
Posts: 14
Joined: Thu Aug 18, 2022 7:39 pm
Discord Handle: Crayon#0824

Mon Aug 22, 2022 1:21 am

I suppose it's possible that my teaching skill is sufficiently high that I'm getting people I teach to capped pool faster than it can pool any acting, but I've tested quite a few times and have gained no percent in acting from teaching. I've gained multiple levels of teaching, though.

Mutters
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2022 5:02 am
Discord Handle: J. Beatnik#2106

Mon Aug 22, 2022 1:34 am

As the person who was #1 activity last week at like 44 hours, I can promise you that I'm not mastering any crafting skills in a week. In that week I foraged something like 250 horseshoes and chopped down like 2 dozen trees and made a mess of crafts. The best way I got skills was by being taught twice. And even then it was 6-7 levels to pool each time whereas if I had done woodworking or blacksmithing it would have taken something like 30 full crafts to pool to full, and the crafts that pool I keep failing at, so I'm torching mats like crazy just for a sliver of skill.

I think the underlying issue is the Bards have no one to teach them, but I agree that performing in front of people should be encouraged mechanically somehow. It's a weird place where all the social/bard skills are really scene encouraged and maybe they should run in a different scale than something like woodcarving? But also I can see the benefit of practice, but that sort of ends up with boring cut and paste scenes where you really aren't pushing story forward, only just running lines that you've run a bunch of times before, so I'm kind of mixed in this. Part of the magic of bards is "the reveal" where the player is putting some real effort into the art and practice kind of diminishes that where you've sort of spammed the whole magic out of the art that they're making, if that makes any sense?

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