| Hey folks -
After a huge load of work, I think we've got the new circle reqs nailed down. Now, there's a LOT of things that went into this, and I want to go into detail on some of those things so that the process doesn't seem arbitrary.
So first, there's something that I will tell you, and I really hope I don't have to repeat it. I know I will, but hope springs eternal.
If you have too few ranks in your skills after the new reqs go into place, your skills will be increased to the minimum for your current circle.
Please re-read that a few times, because it's pretty important. If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this. It will make my life a lot easier when I'm moderating eleven different discussions.
Now, it comes with a few corrolaries:
- If you have lost ranks due to AFK scripting penalties, you may not receive these ranks. The change in circle reqs will not reverse the punishment that you receieved.
- If you've gained a circle since you lost your AFK scripting ranks, you are considered (for this grandfathering) eligible for the ranks.
- Your ranks will first drain from your skillset bonus pools created by the skill combination. If this is an unfamiliar notion, I recommend reading this post and the following discussion:
- If your skillset bonus pools end up drained, you'll still get the ranks. This means that power circlers will get free ranks, and potentially a lot, and I don't particularly like that. However, with the complexity of the changes we're making, this is the more palatable option than making a number of people backtrain potentially hundreds of ranks.
- When the system is deciding which skills to increase, it takes the one occupying that slot after the conversion.
Ok, now that that's out of the way, here are a bunch of things that I also want you to know:
Guild-Specific Skills
- All guilds now have a guild-specific skill (kinda).
- Historically, that skill has occasionally been in a secondary skillset.
- The guild-specific skill for each guild is NOW considered to be in their primary skillset. It's hard to justify something that only one specific guild can do, but they're mediocre at it.
- Because circle requirements often included this guild-specific skill, they have increased if they've also changed skillset.
- Not all guilds will have their guild-only skills enabled. As the skill for these guilds gets implemented and fleshed out, they will be released and ranks will be appropriately grandfathered.
Metaskills
That's right - PM is no longer allowable to fill as a magic requirement. It was silly anyway - It was almost always your highest magic skill because it was used for everything magic-related. No need for TWO skills that did that.
Skillset Size Changes
- Every skillset changed size. Because of this, every guild with an Nth requirement had to have those requirements re-evaluated. In many cases, the number of skills was reduced but the number of ranks per skill was increased.
- This means that it's easier to get experience in the skills you'll use to circle (you can swim OR climb to train Athletics) but you'll ultimately need more experience in those skills to level.
- A side effect of this is that people who trained everything all at once will, unfortunately, have their circling rates slowed down. This was not a stated goal but it's a side effect that I'm comfortable living with.
- I recognize that TF will have to re-evaluate their newbie night scripts. It'll give Methadone something to do while he's up at night waiting for the baby to quiet down.
Soft Requirements
- A number of what I call 'Soft Requirements' have been introduced.
- These are requirements for specific skills that also count toward Nth skill requirements.
- For instance, Clerics have a scholarship requirement that sits roughly in line with their 2nd lore requirement. However, a Cleric's scholarship skill could fill their '1st Lore' requirement instead, if they'd like.
- Soft reqs basically just mean 'This skill applies to your Nth Skill too'
- Hard requirements, such as Empathy or Trading, do NOT count to the Nth Skill reqs.
Skill Training
- Some activities will have undue responsibility for training a skill
- Examples include Astrology, Summoning, Bardic Lore
- These activities will have their learning rates increased until such time that the skill is more robust.
- It should be noted that this is explicitly a patch to get us where we need to go, and NOT a long-term solution
- The amount of experience that all activities grants will be regularly re-assessed in order to provide a more consistent experience as more content is released
- Other activities that teach too much may be reduced.
Mech Lore
- We will be enabling three skills from the Mech Split: Engineering, Outfitting, and Smithing
- Activities that formerly taught Mech Lore for these skills will NOT train these skills
- The appropriate crafting skill will still be used for the checks to determine success
- For example: Braiding grass will use your Engineering skill to determine your success rate, but it will not train anything.
- These skills can all count toward an Nth Lore skill. If you want, all of your lore skills can be crafting skills, and that's ok (soft requirements aside, of course).
New Skills
There are some changes with some of the skill combinations
- The new magic skills will be grandfathered as follows:
- Tactics will be a weighted average that is two parts Scholarship, one part Brawling, one part MO
- Your Defending will be an average of your highest armor and your MO
- Escaping will be merged into Athletics
- Supernatural skills for barbs will be increase to at-circle requirements or 1 rank / circle (whichever is highest), in the following order:
[table]
Inner Fire
Augmentation
Debilitation
Warding
[/table]
I'm going to spend the day or three answering questions about all of this before I post circle reqs. I would like to keep a constructive, informative discussion going about this, and once we've resolved the major issues I'll go ahead and post the reqs for each Guild.
I will not be answering any questions about specific circle reqs, unless they help prove a more broad point. I'm also not going to reiterate the various complexities of the skill combination, because that would hijack the conversation and just rehash known values. There is great information on Elanthipedia about the update, so if you need to ramp up, start there.
Please remember to respond in Abilities, Skills, and Magic --> The Experience System. This is the folder I'll be monitoring for this discussion, and I don't want others to get lost.
Let the questions commence!
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