Training on Gust Balls . . . .

I am going to say it again - Training on Gust balls needs to be ZERO gain on any skill once it hits 20!

Why ? ? ?

There is a post in here about places that can be "macroed", and with todays keyboards and mice simple macros are EASY. Combine this with Auto Attack ( A whole other issue I will address shortly) there ARE places where a player can just sit there and kill over and over gaining exp, especially if they have enough skill to kill and can just lock ALL skills. Even if it is only 50 - 100 exp each kill, if allowed to just sit there, they can get 100s - many 1000 exp points easily.

So tonight I went out with some friends and used them to gather some EXP fairly fast. In a group we killed high level monster and I also ran a few more Exp quests, I gathered over 30k exp Yeah Me

So I went home placed the gust ball, since I was so worn out working my skills to the min 40 I wanted, and during the last 1/2 of the Game I raised my lowest skill (Knockback) from mid 36 - 40. I ran thru each of the 6 Bludgeon skills, hitting a gust ball for 0 they all raised fairly regularly.

The reason this needs to be addressed is there is NOTHING to stop me from going out training Auto Attack (and only auto attack) in a warrior skill, gaining an insane amount of exp and then just hoping back home and dropping a gust ball and training any number of skills that require some much more Intense training and just plain old "macroing" it.

If gaining on a Gust Ball (inanimate) target just stops gaining at 20 then this become non viable.

Please do not tell me about diminishing returns, it is irrelevant if I can gain 20K exp doing nothing.

If this is not addressed the game is going to be LAME, sorry but with this and Auto Attack there is almost no skill needed to master any skills :-( Nor is there any reason to, the game can almost play itself :-(

BTW I have reached 40 - 48 in my Bludgeon skills so now is the time to crunch the numbers again for Auto Attack and Skilled Attack

 

Captain Jack thinks that you could stop yourself from going out training Auto Attack in a warrior skill, gaining an insane amount of exp and then just hoping back home and dropping a gust ball and training any number of skills that require some much more Intense training and just plain old "macroing" it.

 

If that is the case, then something should be done to prevent it from happening. I would have thought it was fairly easy to detect when someone stays in one place for a long time. Perhaps the longer someone stays in the same place, the higher level the enemies become, until finally the Ghost Corpion appears and one shots them.

 

Totally agree Womby. I see where you are coming from Weins201( How do I pronounce your name? Is it Whines?) but I think Womby has hit the nail on the head for your issue.

 

I'd !humbly state that the OP is looking for the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

This since it only covers one use case of the issue, which only means that the base issue would still be unadressed and the type of behavior the OP is against would only move on to something else.

How about instead if:
-I'm in the same session killing the same type of mob, then after X nr of them I should gain 0 XP per kill. (Likewise with gathering).
-I'm in the same session using the same type of glyph, then after X nr of uses I should get 0 skill gain.
Then macroing and training on dummies would become much much harder and thus much less frequent and thus much easier to detect.

So if each avatar stores the last 10 types of kills & glyphs, Y++, if Y>X then gain=0.

Which means that you could after adventuring, go to the skills trainer, buy a new skill, go to the Training Dummy™ hit it a couple of times and get a few skill gain before the threshold cuts you off.
Which is OK and realistic. But you can't macro for hours to deplete the pool.

Also that would mean that you can't stand in the same spot killing the same mob over and over again, to gain XP or skills faster.

Instead to macro grind you'd have to run through cycles of mobs & glyphs, something Portalarium could easily detect and set stop to if they want.

 

@Spoon, I suspect you underestimate the extent to which people engaged in typical (non cheating) resource gathering cycle through the same glyphs over and over - especially those with a fixed deck. When mindlessly grinding resources most people start to resemble an automaton in their behaviour. Strangely, people like it that way. It lets them read the forums while chipping away at silver in Graff, for example.

There are however many possible solutions that don't rely on humans acting differently to macros. For example, we could look at:
- the amount delivered by a resource node (this could decay over time)
- the node/mob respawn frequency and location (location for nodes - this is already random in many cases; frequency for mobs - maybe they should stop respawning after a while, so you cannot get XP)
- the level of local mobs (this could steadily increase over time in SPO until they become invincible)
- don't let people pick up any more resources once their inventory is full (need to define "full")

 

I really like Womby's idea about escalating mob difficulty.

 

Even Thow Womby's idea addresses the issue with macro areas, which is another issue, already in another thread, it does NOT deal with the aility to train a skill to and at High levels on Gust balls, which in my opinion is a problem that needs to be nipped in the bud NOW.

Players should NOT be able to train a skill on a gust ball after the skills reach 20.

And sorry spoon your idea totally defeats training. I was out TRAINING my skills, the six bludgeoning skills and basically all I was doing was gong from 1 - 6 on my glyph bar while out fighting. This prevented me from using Auto , nor using other skills which possibly killed faster so I was very, VERY focused on my skill training. Your idea would break this.

All that needs to be addressed is simple, after a certain level a Inanimate object doesn't provide skill gains, not to hard, and VERY effective.

 

better yet have a menu to choose where to dump the points I've earned so I don't need to waste time on a gustballs.
Macroing Over

 

I'm personally against having both an XP and skill use system in place. It is annoying and more or less forces you to gustball train to use up the xp, or have skills being used without getting improvement in those skills. Yes I'm aware you can turn off certain skills in order to not burn xp into those, but at the same time, what's the point of turning it off in a use based system.

If we have a straight skill use system, let it go up by pure skill use and not tied to a random xp system. The only reason I see for not doing that is for freebie xp when questing (i.e. xp becomes useless so many quests have less purpose to complete).

Capping training on inanimate objects (gustball, training dummy, afk players, etc.) I don't believe addresses the underlying issue with xp based merged skill based training.

***edit*** yes I am also aware that it is probably done to minimize macro training to up skill use... umm... wait a second... guess it doesn't do that at all to have a dual requirement lvl system.

 

It doesn't bother me. I think wasting your time (or your non-time, if you're botting) on a inanimate object defeats the purpose of playing a video game in the first place. If you feel inclined to do it, be my guest... I'll just be over there having fun killing monsters my way and have a more tangible sense of accomplishment.

Then again, I'm opting out on any economy so I'm probably an exception being the least affected by this play-style. However, I can't help but roll my eyes on the idea of being "forced" to grind XP or farm "because it's more optimal this way". That's just your inner OCD kicking in

With that said:

I couldn't agree with you more on that note.

As much as I like the idea, the need to find a solution is greater in online than offline. Despite that offline CAN affect online, because some won't bother going in offline mode, the solution would need to affect both equally; meaning the system by default should be implemented for all modes.

I'm not necessarily endorsing the idea but :
Just make the activity affect your virtues. BLAM!!! problem solved (somewhat). If I'm being judged for looting corpses (truth), you should be judged for excessively repeated actions (courage?).

 

I admit I've done it however I was not a show off about it I would go SP, and hide in my basement. Js

 

OK guys this is only about Training on Gust Balls (or other inanimate objects)

My opinion is that training on them needs to be capped so that once a skill hits 20 there should be No, zero, bubtkus, gains while training on them.

I know about SP and all the other topics brought up here.

But the point is that if I can just get exp and then train skills that actually would require complex or complicated fight to train them players are just going to bypass that and use the "easy way out"

I was told this wouldn't be an issue because of diminished returns and other setups, but they do NOT work. There is nothing setup to prevent or discourage training on gust balls even at the Highest levels.

 

Forum polls indicate that if we drew a face on that Gustball and named it "baby alligator" this community would feel differently!

But I agree, it does seem silly whacking a ball to earn experience.

 

The point of my entire (previous) post could be summarized by: "So?"

Why?

Obviously this is something that people want to do, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it in the first place.

When you think about design, especially when it involves player behavior you have to ask yourself:

• what does this have to do with me?
• what does this have to do with them?

If you can give an answer that goes beyond the "this is the easy way out", then we'd be in business to discuss this and bring it up to the devs as being a design issue. Otherwise, it's just a rant about "I don't like it so everybody else should play the way I do"... at which point I highly suggest we let the game devs do what they want.

Trust me, if attacking a gust-ball for hours on end is not what they want their players to do, they'll change the game.

I'm more in favour of having consequences to one's actions rather than preventing it all-together.

 

So how do we use the excess pool of points? It builds and builds so I like to strenghten my main skills with a gustball. Magery needs all the help it can get!

 

That was kind of my point with the dual system currently being used. Magic is REALLY hard to level up without either being xp starved or having a massive glut and nothing to use it on.

I don't disagree with your complaint (I find it incredibly stupid to see tons of people standing around a ball in cities), but I would point out that it is kind of like real life. All fighters, regardless of the martial art, at the highest level still use training dummies to maintain and also improve skills (learning to strike same spot every time, advancing strikes, increasing speed of strikes, increasing strength of strikes, etc.). I would love to see it done away with, but I don't think the gust ball is the issue as much as an underlying issue of the entire skill system mechanic. And the gustball is just a stand in for training dummies or any other nigh indestructible training utility, so I'm willing to overlook a skin at this point in the build.

As for capping it at level 20, any particular reason for that arbitrary level? Why not 30 or 40? Or would you consider it a requirement to prevent skill decay to practice a certain amount on something in game? The fact so many people use it is proof enough that something is required to burn through the xp.

 

To the OP,
look if peeps want to sit there and macro skill leveling, they are going to find something to use to do it. If not the gustball (which btw is TOTALLY such an awesome idea/game/object to have in the game that I would hate it if it got nerfed for this stupid reason....js) then they will find something else.

The devs have already taken care of this problem by use of the exp pool. I'm guessing the OP hasn't done much skill raising using a gustball, so I would like to point out that one can go through 30k exp really, really fast and not raise much of anything once you start getting into higher levels.

Raising skills by being out adventuring really is the best way to do it, and I think most of the power levelers out there would agree with that. And while some players may use a gustball to train skills more than others, ultimately everyone has to actually go fight stuff to get adventuring experience.

 

One brilliant thing about this use based skill system - after I go do adventure type stuff and kill monsters or do quests, etc I've earned the XP that's been accumulated in my pool. So bashing on a gustball (read: training dummy) satisfies the need for people who do want to "macro" but once the XP is expended, their training session is over. Things work themselves out because of the limited amount of XP that is in the adventurer xp pool. If players macro over night and come back to their computer, their pool would be depleted and they would have to work up their adventurer XP pool again.

To add some spice to it, you could let the adventuring skill pool go into the negative. I guess that would be mean. This would make for a shorter macroing session because players wouldn't want to end up with -250k xp in their adventurer xp pool because they would have to bash monsters like crazy to regenerate it. You could take it one step further and tie it into the virtue system as well. Or not.

Is it realistic that your character would be gaining skill while you're not at the keyboard? I guess not. But if I go to sleep for 6 hours (you should sleep longer to flush neurotoxins out of your brain), then go to one of those things called "jobs" for lets say 8 hours. That's like 14 days worth of New Britannian time of my character basically doing nothing? I'm more in favor of automating the whole macroing scenario so I could choose what my character directed his focus on while I was sleeping (offline skill gain within reason)

Is it getting hot in here?

 

Personally, how does this really affect you or anyone else? If someone's burning their XP beating on a gustball, and that's how they like to do it, I say lettem.

I am against macroing/botting though, but that's an issue even without gustballs.