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WIP Making total skill bonuses from realistic items consistently +4

Tingyun said:
(The one exception being that inca wargod statue that gives +1 melee -1 luck. Maybe we should just remove the luck penalty then, and make it a straight bonus like the other statues)
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I do like the idea of "tradeoff items" though....
 
We could make the bonus +2 melee, -1 luck. That would make it a strong boost for landlubber, a fair trade for mariner (+1/-1), and a hard but situationaly valuable choice in difficulties above that, where the luck loss would be more than melee gain.
 
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I've tried it. Requiring 3 items for +1 skill means they're not worth the price, as they still cost the same. And there's no point buying the fourth item as it won't do any good. Even with a reduced price, the need to collect so many means that when I'm looking at what a trader has to offer, and it's a choice between buying a now almost useless book or buying a map, the map now wins out every time. If it's a choice between buying a skill item or keeping the money in case it's useful for something else later, then I now tend to keep the money.

Can we please try my suggestion where "Landlubber" and "Mariner" have no reduction at all, while "Seadog" and "Swashbuckler" require 2 items for +1 skill?
 
They would definitely be less effective, that's for sure.

I think the idea is that in the earlier game, when you're still levelling up relatively quickly, you won't be able to boost your skills very easily.
But by the time it all slows down, you have an option to pay some money to get an extra level, which by that time might actually be quite valuable.

Or am I misunderstanding something there...? :unsure
 
Pieter Boelen said:
They would definitely be less effective, that's for sure.

I think the idea is that in the earlier game, when you're still levelling up relatively quickly, you won't be able to boost your skills very easily.
But by the time it all slows down, you have an option to pay some money to get an extra level, which by that time might actually be quite valuable.

Or am I misunderstanding something there...? :unsure
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that was the idea yes
 
Early in the game when the bonuses would be useful, you have trouble getting them. Later on, when you probably have full skills either in person or via officers who are supposed to earn them twice as quickly as you, and you already own all the useful stuff, that's when you can afford to splash out on items just to get an extra +1 that you probably don't need by now.
 
At which difficulty are you playing now @Grey Roger ? You're saying needing 2 for all items would be good but 3 or more is to much?
 
Grey Roger said:
Early in the game when the bonuses would be useful, you have trouble getting them.
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Why would they be more useful in the early game? That is the stage of the game where you gain skill points quite quickly anyway.

Grey Roger said:
Later on, when you probably have full skills either in person or via officers who are supposed to earn them twice as quickly as you, and you already own all the useful stuff, that's when you can afford to splash out on items just to get an extra +1 that you probably don't need by now.
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It should take much more time and effort to get from 9 to 10 than from 1 to 2.
In other words: Is that not exactly the time where you WOULD be able to make use of it?
Having items that give you a +1 when you already have 9 might be quite valuable, no? o_O
 
Levis said:
At which difficulty are you playing now @Grey Roger ? You're saying needing 2 for all items would be good but 3 or more is to much?
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Exactly. I'm playing at "Seadog" level, as I always do. While I can agree that getting a few items early on boosts you too quickly, requiring 3 of them just to get 1 point is too much. Requiring 2 is tolerable, especially since "Seadog" is one of the higher difficulty levels.
Pieter Boelen said:
Why would they be more useful in the early game? That is the stage of the game where you gain skill points quite quickly anyway.
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It's also the stage of the game when you need higher skills to survive. Being at Melee 2 instead of Melee 1 can be quite significant, especially when you have little or no armour and only a basic cutlass. Being at Melee 10 instead of Melee 9 is of less significance, especially when you have gold armour and Nicholas Sharp's sabre.
 
Grey Roger said:
It's also the stage of the game when you need higher skills to survive. Being at Melee 2 instead of Melee 1 can be quite significant, especially when you have little or no armour and only a basic cutlass. Being at Melee 10 instead of Melee 9 is of less significance, especially when you have gold armour and Nicholas Sharp's sabre.
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Fair point.

I wonder if that situation might change if other things are also rebalanced.
If the enemy levels are no longer linked to the player, for example, you may be able to pick only those fights you intend to pick.
Would that help? Or could this serve to give an additional purpose to things that CAN give you extra fencing skill in the early game? Such as:
- Fencing practice on your ship deck
- Talking to random citizens until you find one who can teach some fencing

Just thinking out loud here....
 
I have a very different experience than @Grey Roger , which I'll share as well, in the hopes thst if we move to a more generous system we also keep it user configrable to the current setting for those who like it.

I play on swashbuckler. Skill gains are very hard, especially on later levels. Meanwhile, money is very, very easy. I can run a cargo delivery missions and make 20,000 gold with virtually no risk. I can buy a cargo of goods and trade for even more profit. This can all be done very quickly. If I were using the worldmap, it would be laughably quick.

20,000 gold means I can buy about 8 skill boost items, meaning maxing out 2 skill bonus. And it comes very quick.

I've honestly never found myself in this game weighing the price of an item I wanted to purchase. Gold comes so quick and so plentiful.

I like only getting to +1 on swashbuckler with realistic item bonuses, capping out at 9. Currently, seadog players who don't toggle on the ironman setting of only realistic item bonuses should be able to get +2 in almost all their skills, meaning they cap out at 8. It might be different if the bonuses allowed going above 10, or gave bonuses to the speed of skill advancemet rather than boosting the current skill, but I think caution is advised in capping out skill growth too early, lest everyone has the max in their skills from items when they should have a 6 in that skill, which is very easy to achieve. Continued advancement is the goal of an RPG, after all.

If we do decide to move to a more generous system, then the idea originating from @Levis awhile back, that the skill boost from items becomes proportionally smaller the higher the base skill, so that it goes down to +1 once the base skill starts getting to 7 or so, but starts out a higher bonus at lower skill levels, might be worth exploring.
 
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In addition to above, I would say I would not have any opposition to tieing this to internal settings rather than difficulty, so it would be user configurable. Maybe default it to 2, so /2 as @Grey Roger would prefer, and then users can configure however they wish (I could still set it to 4). Or maybe the default is difficulty, but if the player enters something other than 0 for the setting then that new number is used instead. I think there might be two very valid if different approaches to playing and looking at these skill boosts here.
 
Putting it in "InternalSettings.h" seems the best solution. That way you can have the overall game at whatever difficulty level you like and have the skill item bonus contribution set however you like as well. Default of 2 seems a reasonable middle setting between the original system which effectively setting 1, and the toughest setting which is 4.
 
I wonder if ther can be some sort of "game progression speed" setting that can be created. A lot of the discussions lately seems to come down to two points of view that are technically both quite valid.
Since they're both mutually exclusive, I wonder if some of the changes being proposed can be grouped into one "general toggle" to distinguish between the two approaches to the game.
 
@Pieter Boelen I am of the slow advancement variety, so the settings that stand out most for me are probably crew salary and prize ship money multiple amounts (for my personal mod, I have raised the former, lowered the latter), which influence the rate of economic advancement and accumulation of wealth, and rate of experience gain.

Of course, the problem with unifying into single settings is that measures would have to be taken to prserve seperate configuration on the basis of user settings, as some might prefer different speeds of advancement in different areas...

I think ironman is already sort of that kind of setting, in that it slows down sailing by turning odd the map and such. Maybe more things could have defaults linked to ironman, but the user could continue specifying each individually.
 
Tingyun said:
Of course, the problem with unifying into single settings is that it becomes less configurable on the basis of user settings, as some might prefer different speeds of advancement in different areas...
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Unfortunately there is one major problem with toggles:
Once you've got too many, you might as well not have them at all, because nobody knows, nobody understands and nobody uses them. :facepalm
 
Yes, thst makes sense. I would not want to see any of the ones I mentioned disappear or be unified though, they are pretty critical.

Currently, difficulty tends to slow everything down (reducing money gain from some quests, raising salary, and slowing skill gain). I think that mostly makes sense. The thing is, money is so plentiful and easy even on swashbuckler, that more the money difficulty from swashbuckler is only slightly felt.

One interesting thing is that the only thing that goes faster on higher difficulty is score gain for fame. But that is kind of nice, sid meir's pirates had the same system.
 
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