Change 3238

Originally Posted : Fri Feb 01 17:32:05 2008
Posted by : Razan
Title : skill changes

OK this change should be interesting. These changes are all intended to
address specifically issues with new players but we'll see how they
effect higher levels as well. Here's what I did:

First off, all of this is completely transparent and in the code behind
the scenes that handle it. If I say things like "+5 to skill" don't go
looking in "skills" or "skills full" to see it and think that since it's
not there, I'm wrong - this is hidden stuff.

Also, when I refer to a 'skill' here I'm referring to any ability -
skill, spell, prayer - they all go through the same piece of code to
ake a skill "level" and modify it based on the resistance of your
target, the room (recall terrain bonuses - see the 'mods' command),
things like that.

1: Level 1 players get +5 to all skills. This fades out by +1 point per
level so that by level 5 the bonus is entirely gone. This is
invisible,
again, but it should mostly stop skills from failing for new players
which I think is a very good thing.

2: You know that message that prints out that says
"You can't even seem to attempt it!"
That happens when a skill's level is so abysmal due to modifications
to +- mods or the room magical resistances. I have left that in
since I don't think new players will see it that often but I took out
where it makes you type "doh". Sorry, I didn't like that :).

3: If after all the mods to the skill level are applied and you still
are going to fail, then what we now do is replace that failure with a
level 1 in the skil. However, this only applies to characters level
5 or lower. Also this "crutch" fades out from level 1 to 5 and is
finally entirely gone by 6. Meaning, at level 1 you MIGHT still fail
here, which will help teach players hopefully. But by level 6 if
you're still not raising a skill you will certainly fail.

4: This one is pretty tricky, but the short of it is that we used to
reduce the power of a skill based on how long it took to cast. I
think this is beyond stupid. Meaning, skills that took multiple
rounds to cast were reduced progressively more based on the number of
rounds. That is entirely gone now.

All of the above are intended to help newbies with the intend being that
new players won't see skills failing nonstop until they raise their
skills since they probably are still trying to LEARN how to raise their
skills in the first place. #4 above might have effects on all levels of
players that use multiroud spells. Please please bug those that you
think are out of balance. It's likely that spells that take several
rounds to cast will be more powerful now. If you see anything too bs,
you need to report it.

Thanks and let's keep trying to fix things to encourage more players for
us all to interact with. Be it chatting, partying, cybering, or PKing!

- Razan.