Guild Skills Restriction

[Starstarfish]

I'm sort of curious about the change to restrict people to only two guild skills at chargen. And have some thoughts/concerns with it.

Doesn't that increase the risk there is a time when there might be literally no one on grid at some point with a particular skill? If so, does that mean that then no one can learn it?

With the amount of Death XP that some people have mentioned having, with people unable to funnel that into crafting/more RP based skills, won't that encourage people to just use their plethora of RPXP towards a whole bunch of combat skills thus even further ramping up the divide between older players with beefed up combat skills from previous character gains and free XP and those who haven't been around as long?

Or people randomly knowing every language as a way to use up their extra RP?

Are we planning on adding any more non-Guild skills to spread out how that things could/should be spent?

Like say ... Gambling or some other more social skills? Or separating say ... social non-Troubadour Dancing as a non-Guild skill from Acrobatics? Or maybe a Hunting skill ro produce traps or decoys etc? Some skills for non-Guilding folks to do would flesh out character concepts without encouraging builds of folks knowing everything.

[Puciek]

I think that the idea is to simply limit self-sufficiency, thus boosting the need and use for traders/crafters. It's very easy to plonk ranks into trades in chargen, grind them to 36 and without ever needing another person be able to craft most things that you will need. Heck, if you have a buildup of EXP you could just 36 all of them in chargen if you so please.

I wouldn't worry that suddenly a trade skill will go away because if you are in the guild that provides said skill, you can learn it just like any other skill. The guild skills limitation applies only to out of guild characters. Additionally, if there are no, for example, woodworkers, merchants could always open an APP slot for one.

Combat skills are limited more by silver needed to train them than EXP for pools (trainers are damn expensive), but then having said gap is not a bad thing. Remember that it's all about telling a story, and losing a fight opens up new story arcs for you unless for some reasons it's fatal - but that's rather uncommon.

As languages, this can be done even now, nothing stops you from picking up all the languages. Though try to then explain ICLY how your character can speak in all tongues and yet has no real explanation where did he master them all. Enjoy the following pyre .

[Rabek]

Additionally, the reason given was that too many people were taking guildskills without it fitting backstory.

Does staff actually know it doesn't fit backstory? I didn't see any discussion with the playerbase about this beforehand, which is a bit distressing.

I frequently take quite a few, myself, but always to support my backstory.

Vavardi gentry characters, for example, can/should have a number of them based on Help Vavard Education.

[Starstarfish]

I know there are some projected positives, yes the one person knowing everything and not ever needing anyone else thing could be a positive for encouraging more PC to PC business. I can see where IC this plays out at times. However, there are some character concepts that makes sense for, arguably.

Would requiring a cnote of some kind about how you learned your character learned the skills they are starting with be a good idea if that's the concern? Because if it doesn't seem to be well thought-out or make sense then yes "YARRR grinding" might be a thing. Or wanting more people to app into roles and thus come in as Guild members in some capacity rather than just joining up after the fact.

Because otherwise, won't that require being clanned IC and then heading back to chargen after?

[Puciek]

Well, if you have a unique character concept you can always post a request to have it set up that way (if staff agrees that is), code rarely stands in a way of a fun concept (checkout help application) . And that doesn't require being guided, staff can simply enable/set this for a character.

@Rabek: I guess they looked at actual numbers of people with trade skills and decided based on that (and how that lines up with their expectations), rather than actual motives. In the end, it doesn't affect the already existing character, just newly created ones.

I quite like the change, but let's see how it plays out.

[Voxumo]

Honestly, I think this was a needed change. And even if your character could know multiple guildskills, it doesn't mean they have to. Honestly this encourages more ic interaction in the long-run and prevents people from abusing the system. You want to be able to craft your own paper, yet already know how to sing and wield a sword? Well I suggest you find somebody to teach you.

[Rabek]

This might make sense if guildskills didn't include things like "how to plant a tomato seed" or "how to sing" or if they didn't block you from learning them from 0.

It'd make sense if you could learn the lower levels of guildskills, representing what's publicly known or what you can teach yourself, and 36+ involves stuff you need taught or which are closely guarded secrets. But it's not set up this way.

As it is, it's just another example of sacrificing RP possibilities in favor of gamism and artificial, arbitrary, and unrealistic restrictions.

[Puciek]

How is that taking away rp possibilities? You can still roleplay tomato gardener without herbalism skill. The only difference is that you won't have actual IC tomatoes as a result of it, but that shouldn't really limit tomatoes RP.

[Starstarfish]

Because if you RP being able to do something but can't actually produce a result, people tend to assume either you as a player are ignorant/a liar or that your character is a liar. In a setting where being a liar about something simple can lead to a world of hurt (literally).

I'd personally agree about letting people take things to level 36 and have that represent sort of basic trained knowledge, but only let people be able to bump two (or a set number of) guildskills above 36 with QP.

That would mean folks could have enough skill to flesh out a concept, but can't max out insane numbers of things without joining the appropriate Guild ICly and/or taking a role etc. But currently a lot of skills as noted are codedly guilded even if realistically there's a lot of ways you could have learned those things at least to a basic level without being in the Guild.

[Puciek]

Because if you RP being able to do something but can't actually produce a result, people tend to assume either you as a player are ignorant/a liar or that your character is a liar. In a setting where being a liar about something simple can lead to a world of hurt (literally).

Emm, people roleplay items they don't have all the time, that doesn't get you pegged as a mage or a liar, but is a part of the fact that this is a roleplaying game and code only covers the very few aspects of it. Even the mentioned here tomatoes do not exist as a plantable plant, from what I can see, but we can roleplay having them in the garden just fine, without being worried about winding up on the pyre.

I'd personally agree about letting people take things to level 36 and have that represent sort of basic trained knowledge, but only let people be able to bump two (or a set number of) guildskills above 36 with QP.

That would mean folks could have enough skill to flesh out a concept, but can't max out insane numbers of things without joining the appropriate Guild ICly and/or taking a role etc. But currently a lot of skills as noted are codedly guilded even if realistically there's a lot of ways you could have learned those things at least to a basic level without being in the Guild.

That means having to reshuffle the skills around. If the point of those changes is to make people rely on merchants more, then any changes of that sort will leave those ranks available outside of merchants not capable of making any useful items anyway, which would make them a lot less attractive pick anyway, but a lot more annoying for actual traders to use.

Just to give an idea what a character with all trade skills picked can do, right out of chargen (from strictly advantage items):

1. Set of leather armour (not the best but way better than nothing)
2. Set of iron armour and weapons
3. Quite a lot of useful concoctions, not just for RP reasons
4. Grow plants for most of the above concoctions (with help of foraging)
5. Make perfumes, candles, soaps, oils, lotions.
6. All sort of clothes (if it's not silk/velvet, you can make it)
7. Treat wounds pretty darn well
8. Make finishing poles, practice weapons, archery targets, arrows
9. And probably quite a few other things I've missed.

As you go over that list remember that the only thing, before those changes, stopping you from being able to do all of that is making up backstory to make it fit (depends on how big of a stretch of imagination you are comfortable with) and EXP, which is relatively easy to accumulate as you keep playing the game. And just look at that list and see that even 2 of those skills take a lot of RP and usefulness from a lot of roles.

And if the skills were to be rebalanced, so the useful items are locked behind the guild skill tier, would you still care to have those trade skills? I seriously doubt it.