Use it or lose it

[wimple]

My experience as an aging combat player: challenges to combat characters are already integrated with the code surrounding aging and have a more severe block. There is nothing I can do to maintain an edge on any combat skills that are limited by their maxed learn pool. Mastered skills at 74 are actually in the adept range code-wise and they are just going to fall lower and lower without me being able to do anything about it as my player continues to age. In order to keep my couple of grand mastered combat skills actually useful, I have to continuously train them, and that's just to keep them coming out as mastered in combat. I am champion in some of these, but it will never actually benefit me in a combat situation because a younger character that has it grand mastered will out-skill me. I can't even display I'm champion using the skill display with emote because it'll display what I am with my age caps.

If people are thinking combat characters need a challenge, perhaps lower when those age impacts start to hit from 46 to something younger.

[Starstarfish]

If people are thinking combat characters need a challenge, perhaps lower when those age impacts start to hit from 46 to something younger.

My only concern here is that encourages folks to start their chars as young as possible (which is already pretty common) to avoid that.

Personally? I think we should start to consider ways for characters/players to feel accomplished or meaningful just beyond skill levels as I think it would alleviate a lot of this "old character bad, new character good" vibe I've felt for a while.

[Deedee]

How about applying this idea to counteract age-based skill loss?

[wimple]

I did not intend my post to be a complaint about age and combat. I'm fine with it, because I should not be a combat monster at 55+. Being a combat monster at 55+ should be work. My post was mostly to show that combat already has restrictions on it in game for long-time combat characters and additional ones are not needed.

The proposed change means that combat characters would have to invest a huge chunk of time into their skills constantly - can't let a defense drop and even if you are sparring, may not be able to practice all the defense skills very effectively if people are using the wrong weapons against you. As a trainer, this would be a nightmare - I have all the skills and would have to constantly train all of them in order to be able to still teach people lessons - or take about ten weapons with me to the park street trainer and then go through a very exhausting and silly sequence of switching out my weapons/defenses every other attack so I can pool them all at once. I have limited time to be in the game and I want to spend it RPing. Hiring out for more trainers to avoid that is not currently feasible - I have had a job posting up for months (with a rumor), dropped I was hiring in RP, and have never gotten a response.

As a combat trainer, I also do not like the idea because I already have issues with people wanting to be spam-taught all sorts of skills or be taught and then not want to engage with me in a scene around the teaching (i.e. do not directly respond to my emotes/questions/scenarios or give very limited responses). Given how fast my character can teach, I think this would get worse with any sort of change that requires constant practice.

[mystry]

This is a tangent, but I would like it if the age decay on skills didn't apply when teaching. Wise old man passing on skills is totally a thing that I would do later in my character's life. If he lives that long.

[wimple]

This is a tangent, but I would like it if the age decay on skills didn't apply when teaching. Wise old man passing on skills is totally a thing that I would do later in my character's life. If he lives that long.

Age decay doesn't impact teaching, so no worries for you there.

[BlackSoul566]

What if there was a prestige or influence bonus for being the champion of a public skill, and it showed up somewhere? Because lets face it... We're all going to hear rumors through NPCs, etc, about who the greatest Swordsmen or Artist, or Tailor, or whathave you is, in Lithmore.