Bad RP/Strategy (split from RP Praise!)

[Mykey]

I think, that you are not right. I can prove it. Write to me in PM.

[Nosajimiki]

someone already made this sugestion, but I'll bring it back up. Making training a skill depleat others. So lets say for the sake of arguement there are 20 skills, and you get better at one of them, you would get +19 points in that skill and -1 in all others. This way you can train one skill pretty quickly if you like, but you can't get over-all better. However you'd feel like you are because skills you cant use where you are that you dont know about wont register as they drain.
This way you wouldnt only see good hunders where you need to hunt and good farmers where there's lots to farm, but there would also be bad farmers where you need to hunt and vise versa so that skill sets as a whole would make a lot more since depending on your native enviornment.

[Bowser]

*casts level 1 magic missle at the post*

[Phalynx]

Mykey and Solfius...

[psymann]

Just read this now it's been bumped up the forum a bit.

I have one other idea to throw into the mix:

How about characters have two attributes:
- natural ability
- experience

Natural ability would have the same categories as current skill, ie from awkward to expert. But these would never change during the game. Thinking of it mathematically, you'd have a number of 1 to 10 for natural ability.

Experience would be based on how much you use the particular skill, sothey would change during the game. This would also range in a similar way from no experience to most experience - work out some nice words later - but mathematically you'd also get a number from 1 to 10 for experience.

You skill would be a sum of natural ability and experience.

So someone who is naturally gifted and works on it a lot would get 20 points and be very skillful.

Someone who is gifted but only sometimes does the skill would be on about 10, fair but not amazing.

Someone who is awkward but works hard could also get up to 11 or so with lots of practise.

Depending on the importance of natural skill and experience, the 1 to 10 could go up to 20 for one of them, for example.

I think this is reasonably realistic.

psymann

[psymann]

Oops, drifted a bit there... in an attempt to bring this back to the topic of the thread of bad RP, if I see another whole page of:

You see XXX entering YYY, coming from ZZZ
You see XXX leaving the central area of YYY going to ZZZ.
You see XXX pick up something.
You see XXX entering YYY, coming from ZZZ
You see XXX leaving the central area of YYY going to ZZZ.
You see XXX pick up something.
You see XXX entering YYY, coming from ZZZ
You see XXX leaving the central area of YYY going to ZZZ.
You see XXX pick up something.
You see XXX entering YYY, coming from ZZZ
You see XXX leaving the central area of YYY going to ZZZ.
You see XXX pick up something.
You see XXX entering YYY, coming from ZZZ
You see XXX leaving the central area of YYY going to ZZZ.
You see XXX pick up something.
You see XXX entering YYY, coming from ZZZ
You see XXX leaving the central area of YYY going to ZZZ.
You see XXX pick up something.
You see XXX entering YYY, coming from ZZZ
You see XXX leaving the central area of YYY going to ZZZ.
You see XXX pick up something.

without a single RP contribution, I will scream...! The number of times I log in to think "Ooh, good, something to read" and find it's just a load of people silently and uneventfully moving around and shifting things is depressing already. At least it only happens in a couple of places I've visited

Perhaps if it was easier to repeat the move without it taking all day, people would have more time to add some RP to it - so this could equally be fault of the game as fault of the players to be fair.

psymann

[the_antisocial_hermit]

When you've got 500kg + of things to move, it's rather hard to rp a lot while you're trying to move it. It already takes a long time just to move it and there's not much you can say/do while doing it anyway, unless you accidentally run into a door or drop something or trip maybe. I get distracted too easily, so I kind of just have to get it done all at once, not distract myself by trying to throw in random rp things in there with it (I'll rp something if I accidentally drop something or knock on the door or something like that). Sometimes it's all someone has time for at a given moment anyway.

It is frustrating to see a char light up and then just see something like that or some people whispering constantly, but really... it's not bad rp, it's getting [physical] stuff done that you have to get done when you have the chance in real life so that later in the day when you have more time to enjoy rp chances you can. Sometimes I feel like doing the technical stuff I need to do for a char and not much more. I don't think I'd really enjoy a lot of rp while someone was going in and out of buildings with stuff... by the time you saw they did something you would want to react to, they'd be inside again...

[Phalynx]

Nice Cheery Sig there Hermi..

[the_antisocial_hermit]

You know how I love to bring people cheer!

[psymann]

When you've got 500kg + of things to move, it's rather hard to rp a lot while you're trying to move it.

Indeed, I agree. Which is why I think that it would be useful if you can set the game to do something like that for you - at the moment I believe you have to:

Go to Objects
Scroll down
Pick up wood
Go to Buildings
Scroll down
Go into building
Go to Inventory
Drop wood
Go to Location
Leave building

And repeat that whole series everytime. It takes forever.

----

Be useful if we had option:

"Take XXX to YYY"

You see psymann take 10000 wood to The Hut.

This would take the resource and automatically go into the building and dump it on the floor in the first room. If you want to take it further, repeat the process from there.
This would also clear up the events page a lot.

----

Alternatively, if there was some way of saying "Repeat last XXX actions YYY times"

So that you could do the 10 actions above that it takes to move 10kg of wood, and just "Repeat last 10 actions 50 times" upon which it would (maybe with a bit of a delay built in to be realistic) start you off on that task without you having to click all the buttons.

----

Maybe ideally, a combination of the two:

Take 10000 wood into The Hut fifty times.

psymann

[tiddy ogg]

It's certainly not bad RP. If you want to give an apology, as my char occasionally does: Excuse me, I've a lot of dashing about to do, fair enough. I know it's frustrating having to shift stuff 10kg at a time and I agree that there is no reason why there shouldn't be provision for repeating the sequence as suggested, but maybe it's intended that it takes time, as it would in RL.

[Marian]

My chars usually warn people they're going to be running back and forth for a few minutes, and say something afterwards...but stop and talk in the middle of it all? No way.

Sorry your char got lighted up for nothing, but really you should just be grateful you're not the one moving the stuff, it eats up an insane amount of minutes.

And I don't really see the point of ""Take XXX to YYY" would be...yess it would save a little clicking at the expense of cluttering up the inventory screen with extra options, but the character would still be moving around and annoying you just as much.

[psymann]

Tiddy - I don't doubt it's intended to take time, and I don't mind if a delay is built into it so that as soon as I "Take XXX to YYY", it eats a few of my minutes and doesn't let me perform another action for a short while. Then we can have a labour-saving Take command without it becoming instantaneous to shift seven tons of stuff from somewhere to somewhere else.

Marian - the point of "Take XXX to YYY" would be two-fold.
One, it would make it easier for you moving the stuff - you've just said it takes an insane amount of minutes - and we're talking RL minutes as well as in-game minutes. The Take command, while still possibly (see previous paragraph) taking up in-game minutes, wouldn't waste half your evening doing ten times the number of clicks to shift stuff.
Two, it would be so much nicer for me to read. The number of lines on the event screen would reduce by three for each set of moving things, which means that it wouldn't swamp out everything else in a busy area.

So it helps both those moving and those watching have an easier time. It's not the characters lighting up in white that I mind, it's the insane length of the text that is generated by the actions - whole reams of text just because someone made a few trips to move a lump of wood into a building.

psymann

[Talapus]

[moving things] eats up an insane amount of minutes.

I have found that you don't actually need to wait for the page to load before you take your next action. For example, when you move into a new room and want to pick something up, just click on the objects tab before the new page loads (the object tab for the old room), and you will find yourself in the objects of the new room. Also it makes it much easier to move between many rooms this way (after you click to enter the new room, just hit the building or location tab instead of waiting for the events page to load).

[N-Aldwitch]

You actually don't even need to wait that long.
If you are running Mozilla, look at the loading bar when you press something- once it's half way, all the database/server communication is done, so you can do the next thing. This also applies to picking up tools- sometimes you don't even have to wait that long, just go down the list and click pick up on each one.