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Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:24 pm
by woo
Have to jump on board here with a big yes. Secondary skills get smashed with lvl 100+ deaths.
Even the or 3 lvl part of that is harsh, like Mulley said lockpicking getting nailed 3 lvl's is almost your lifes work.
Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2004 1:49 am
by Salathar
I personally do not see much point in splitting skills into primary and secondary. I mean primary is the skill that you spend most of your time developing therefore you are expected to have a higher level in it than in any secondary skill. Compare the percentage of your time that you spend killing and disarming traps for example, had you spend more time poking around chests you'd probably be much better at disarming.
Finding those chests is another point altogether, some skills maybe be considered to be more/less difficult to level up.
The point is, sooner or later the effects of permanent xp will kick in and you will no longer loose levels. Imagine a spellcaster who never held a sword in his hand, would it be fair if he was able to get away with loosing less xp in one handed weps ?
I like the idea of cf that "you are what you do". If you work on fighting skills you grow into a fighter, if you prefer other methods so be it. It would limit the potential of any player if they were constrained by the concept of primary/secondary. The only way I see it being fair is equal treatment of all skills.
Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2004 11:41 am
by Zortan
Like you said Sal, some skills are harder to level.. I would not care if I lost 1billion xp in lockpicking if I had a way to get it back that's at least half-as-easy as say pyromancy....
Believe me, when you finally go for your WDSM, you'll find some of your secondary skills fairly useful -- or not -- and then you'll learn the hard way (as I did, being the brute that I was the first time I tried it)..
Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:30 pm
by magikchicken
Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 1:42 am
by cavesomething
I suspect most of the problem with the lesser used skills is more that they don't scale well. Personally I find that find traps alone can get my starting characters most of the way to level 2. Having poked through the archetype files and some of the documentation, it appears that skills support an expmul value, that defines how the skill xp transfers to 'real' xp. This is from reading crossfire/doc/Developers/skills only, I have looked at skills.c but my knowledge of C is insufficant to grok it.
For example a patch like the one below would appear to allow lockpicking xp to be increased by a factor of 10 without affecting general xp at all.
I am going to go and test it myself now, I'll let you know if it works as expected. However since I need to compile a server, then learn how to act as dm and make lockpicks, I could be some time...
Code: Select all
diff -u -r1.151 archetypes
--- lib/archetypes 11 Jun 2004 06:21:42 -0000 1.151
+++ lib/archetypes 19 Jun 2004 01:40:16 -0000
@@ -35173,7 +35173,8 @@
subtype 1
editable 0
body_skill -1
-exp 10
+exp 100
+expmul 0.1
level 200
editor_folder arch/skills
end
Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:31 am
by cavesomething
Well, it actually messes up rather well. with that change lockpicking gives 200 xp per lock in the lockpicking skill, as intended. It still gives 20xp overall, as intended. but it mangles the level breaks. Output of skills:
lockpicking.............................lvl: 3 (xp:400/8000)
which is very clearly wrong.
It appears that expmul multiples correctly to assign general xp, but then /divides/ the xp needed to level-break. Is this intended behaviour? The documentation doesn't suggest either way. In any event, if it *is* intended behaviour then it breaks the 'skills command.
I have tried this now with two characters, one with exp 100 and level 200 and one with exp 10 and level 2000. Both appear to be equivilent in terms of xp gained
Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:49 am
by cavesomething
I really should stop replying to myself so much, but oh well...
I have been trying to debug the inconsistant expmul behaviour and found in object.h:
Code: Select all
double expmul; /* needed experience = (calc_exp*expmul) - means some */
/* races/classes can need less/more exp to gain levels */
which suggests that it is sort of operating properly, and therefore the skills display is wrong. Is this the case?
Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 4:02 am
by poof
cavesomething wrote:I have been trying to debug the inconsistant expmul behaviour and found in object.h:
You really should discuss code on the developer mailing list. Most of the CF developers do not inhabit this message board. Please go see
https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/l ... fire-devel.
Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 9:02 am
by cavesomething
ooh, not seen that before, thanks..... [wanders off to mailing list]
I'm tired of dying and finding my secondary skills' xp have gone down by so much it will take me a day to retrain them! 
