Pooling Performing Skills

[Julea]

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.

So I did a search through all my logs over the last 6 OOC weeks, this is despite performing nearly every day, and being at performances/singing/acting/dancing/etc nearly every day the last 3-4 weeks... I've only had the bonus appear once, that was yesterday. Is it tied to Morale maybe? And now morale is a little higher it's kicking in.. a little?

Am I using the singing command wrong and not conveying it correctly? Do I need to use sing finish? I normally just do sing <emote>.

For me, at least, performing takes a lot of effort, usually a good few hours to come up with a piece, and how to approach it before even attempting anything on grid. And it often requires me kinda getting up super early just to be able to catch people at events due to being offpeak. But it's kinda rough seeing the gain on it so very slow. Especially compared to say, fishing, foraging, crafting, or really anything else. I would say it seems to be about 1/10th the rate? At a guess. And I'm not even grinding those crafts/etc.

To reiterate, I do not want to max acting, or any other Troubadour skill overnight, or in a week, or even in a month. I'm okay with slow progress. But the point is that it just seems a tad too slow compared to a lot of other skills. That might be because singing/acting isn't working as intended. I have no idea, I'm kinda too new to know.

[Satoshi]

The bonuses to rpxp might not show up visibly for new characters, because you already have a lot of things stacked in your way for raising rpxp--being cyan and around other cyans, playing with new people etc etc all bumps it up. If you are keeping up on hemotes and thinks, you might very well be maxed at Heroic and not see the difference. And yes, if you max out your student's pool quickly you will not gain much pool in the skill being taught, it is slower than normal pooling, and you get more with multiple listeners.

It may be worth having staff look into and confirm that all the performance skills have the same 'weight' so to speak when pooling. It is possible that acting is not giving the same pool as instruments when used.

RE: Mutter's point, this is specifically what I am talking about. Crafters solo-leveling DO have to put a lot of time and effort into raising their skills (though I am happy to tell you that failing a craft gives you WAY more pool than succeeding it, and you can save the items you make to sell later.) It takes a lot of time and effort on their part to do it alone, to get the mats and then craft the item. Even if it's just cooking or brewing, which are the homelier skills, it takes time, and that time and effort makes the things, particularly the high-level things they craft, more valuable.

Crafters also need to put in ooc effort with their items, to create the description and the short desc. Even learning what other players like and will purchase or want takes time as well. To me, 'spamming emotes in private' if that is what you insist upon calling it, since I suppose if you aren't going to put minimum effort in to change up your emotes or explore with it and you are just going for max mechanical reward, is not different from a crafter being required to make several items to raise their pool.

You keep saying that you 'don't want this instantly' or that it you don't actually care that much, but you cared enough to make a forum post. You cared enough to try to math out how many emotes it would take you to go from master to GM. As a newbie, I literally never thought about asking someone to change the system just for me, I just engaged with it.

You are insisting that the effort of people like me, who did this engaging with the system on its level, is somehow wrong, and bad-faith, and are saying that because you don't like the concept of 'practicing in private' or even 'shortening your emote' it is worthless and akin to cheating!

I think that you are hobbling yourself on-purpose and refusing to take any advice given to you. You don't even want to shorten your emotes so that, perhaps, more are required? Because while big multi-paragraph emotes are my thing, when you do BIG performance emotes, you still only get the reward for one emote. The system is made so you need to use the skill to gain pool, and to the system, you only did one perform, so it only rewards you for one perform.

However, staff might be willing to add 'crafts' like they have for other skills, that allows you to get pool by doing a threaded command, which right now would be the equivalent of practicing. And also, isn't the plot reward right now for the Bards NPCs that will train you in performance skills? So clearly staff are aware of the skilled-teacher issue in the Bards and are doing something. Maybe focus on getting that and then see how it works?

[River]

You keep saying that you 'don't want this instantly' or that it you don't actually care that much, but you cared enough to make a forum post. You cared enough to try to math out how many emotes it would take you to go from master to GM. As a newbie, I literally never thought about asking someone to change the system just for me, I just engaged with it.

You are insisting that the effort of people like me, who did this engaging with the system on its level, is somehow wrong, and bad-faith, and are saying that because you don't like the concept of 'practicing in private' or even 'shortening your emote' it is worthless and akin to cheating!

I think that you are hobbling yourself on-purpose and refusing to take any advice given to you. You don't even want to shorten your emotes so that, perhaps, more are required? Because while big multi-paragraph emotes are my thing, when you do BIG performance emotes, you still only get the reward for one emote. The system is made so you need to use the skill to gain pool, and to the system, you only did one perform, so it only rewards you for one perform.

Man, this seems like a super sketchy and not cool interpretation of a complaint that essentially boils down to "I'd like to be able to advance reliably by doing bard stuff in roleplay rather than emoting alone in a room to no one." I don't get "you're wrong, your way is worthless, it's akin to cheating!" from what they're saying... only that they believe the system incentivizes a behavior that is odd and less ideal than doing bard shit in public.

[Crayon]

Some added context: I have personally watched firsthand as somebody seemingly ground Herbalism from nothing to 75 in about a week flat.

I have not been actively trying to grind anything as I've used nearly all of the XP my character has gained to purchase wealth, but just from incidental activity over the course of playing my character and doing the things I want/need to do, I've gained about twenty times as much pool in herbalism and about double the pool in artwork (which I've barely used) as I have in acting which I use on a daily basis.

When used intuitively and not min/maxed specifically to maximize your gains through use of solo performance, performing increases at a vastly slower rate than anything else.

Maybe if you're focused on grinding it, it goes up at a vaguely similar rate to other things, but I'm fairly confident that I could grandmaster herbalism and several other skills in a week or two tops, that it would take only a month or so if I took off learn blocks and wasn't actively min/maxing or tryharding it, and that doing the same with acting would take substantially longer.

I don't think saying, "Hey, this thing pools way slower than all the other things," constitutes an unreasonable request and I don't really think, "But you can sit there in your phome making faces in a mirror for an hour before RPing," is really an answer to the issue.

[Mutters]

I mean I'm probably super unoptimized with 65s in every physical stat and 55s in every mental, but it made sense for the character to be well rounded. I can see where if I dedicated to foraging hardcore I could adept it quickly, and herbalism as an offset of that where you can quickly forage up a mass of items and then craft a bunch makes sense that you can gain levels quickly. Woodworking is timelocked by axes only having five swings, and blacksmithing by the time it takes you to forage a pile of horseshoes and wood for charcoal. In a related note, I've noticed that most crafts are super stacked from 1-60 (adept level) with master (74) and Grand Master (75) having really good stuff but not absolutely essential (Vellum/Falconry Gauntlet for GM Leather, Damascus Sword for GM Blacksmith, Restored Antique Wardrobe and Clepsydra for Woodworking) so it's very newbie friendly in the way of being able to get a craft to a level where it feels like you can make a TON of stuff, even just at level 36.

At the same time, bardic skills just feel like you don't get a lot out of them? And maybe I'm just not understanding the whole RPXP boost or something from bards singing and playing, but if there was some kind of roomflag that showed that bards are or have been performing there I guess? And the ability for Bards to see some sort of visible progression as they get better at a thing, I guess. For me, I know that every skill level I get is a few more items I can make and that's really rewarding, but when you show your singing or dancing and it's proficient and as you go up it's still proficient until you click over into the next bracket, so it's not like anyone else sees progression of a Bard honing their skills?

[Sparkles]

I've only had the bonus appear once, that was yesterday. Is it tied to Morale maybe? And now morale is a little higher it's kicking in.. a little?

I do know that Morale affects learning/pooling so that if it's low enough it could (possibly) be fizzing out things like the trickle of learning from teaching etc. I think ultimately we might need to get staff to clarify if:

- RPing while a bard is actively playing music, +1

Only applies to specifically to instruments (and thus things that use the Pmote command) or to all Bard type skills.

[Temi]

I believe we currently only have the ability to adjust skills' pooling rates by a single modifier, not different in different situations. Quite a while ago, performing skills got adjusted down because people were spamming it and getting skills to much higher levels at a rate that felt too fast to the playerbase in general, especially given that there was no investment in terms of supplies or risk, as compared to other skills. It's possible that performance skills could use some rebalancing for this, though it's also possible that that might take changing when performing skills pool, maybe making it so they can't pool without others around, which would encourage roleplay, but also remove the option for troubadours to practice during downtime. I don't know what's the right balance, and will put it down for more staff discussion.

QP and XP are designed to be available for those who want to invest in having a more impressive background, though we do intend this to be an increased baseline for coming in, not an option for accelerated training for cyans. In general, we find that people who invest more time in advancing their characters, rather than starting at higher levels, tend to have more of a connection to them and feel more value in those skills.

[monolu]

i don't intend to pick on anyone in this thread, but i've noticed a trend of new-newbies commenting that something's hard, or asking for one part to be tweaked a bit easier, and getting responded to with aggression and the assumption that they're asking for fabulous wealth and power and gm skills to be handed to them right out the gate. this definitely isn't the case, based on the cyan characters i've interacted with lately - i'd like to call for a bit more good faith across the board so we make them feel welcome and retain more new players (and if this is a game-unbalancing suggestion, staff will surely nix it).

I kind of feel like this has been my experience. I'm new to MUDs and this whole style of roleplaying, so maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like there is a pretty substantial lack of good faith. I'm coming from a background of TTRPGs where everyone at the table are friends who get along, and I get that that's not really the situation here, but it still feels a little jarring to have people assume that I'm after some kind of power when all I really want is to create something that's interesting from a narrative perspective.