The Tavern

What is this "enhanced skills" sorcery shown in my m screen?

And why doesn't it show in version notes?

http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a=commit;h=7c1a5597fd584d7b42c61b9cbf5a88e1c8f43a0b

Code:: Convert crosstraining into an enhancer bonus Remove traditional crosstraining. Replace it with a 20% skillpoint enhancer bonus.

How does this work then exactly?

At a glance, it seems like the old GURPS system. If you have 10 points in short blades, you are buffed 2 points in Long Blades.

skjarl wrote:At a glance, it seems like the old GURPS system. If you have 10 points in short blades, you are buffed 2 points in Long Blades.

That sounds interesting and like a much simpler/common sense method. Is it graded though? I mean getting up to 20 short blades for 4 long blades is a pretty bad exchange compared to getting a +4 on training.

I'd say that a level 25 skill should reach about 10-12 for buffed skills.

Skill points are not the same as skill levels.

The bonus is mediated by receiving skill aptitudes, that's sure:

5.2 staves at 0 apt -> 2.0 M&F at 0 apt and 1.8 polearms at -1 apt

duvessa wrote:Skill points are not the same as skill levels.

Elaborate plz?

5.2 staves at 0 apt is about 810 skill points. 2.0 M&F at 0 apt is about 150 skill points. 1.8 polearms at -1 apt is about 150 skill points.

26 axes on a human is 27000 skill points. 12 each of fighting, dodging, armour, charms, spellcasting, and translocations is 25994 skill points.

My High Elf currently sits at:

Short Blades: 12.9 with +2 aptitude. This gives him Long Blades: 5.8 effective skill, again with +2 aptitude. It's nice that it works on skill points instead of levels.

This sucks.

At 6.8 staves and 4.0 polearms, the bonus to polearms has shrunk from 1.8 to 0.9!!!!

What the...? I put more points into staves and the bonus halved?!

I'd like an explanation.

Edit: as the gap between the receiving skill and the enhancing skill closes, the bonus to the receiving skill gets smaller.

Psiweapon wrote:This sucks.

At 6.8 staves and 4.0 polearms, the bonus to polearms has shrunk from 1.8 to 0.9!!!!

What the...? I put more points into staves and the bonus halved?!

I'd like an explanation.

Edit: as the gap between the receiving skill and the enhancing skill closes, the bonus to the receiving skill gets smaller.

Yeah I don't think that is very nice. But hey... nerfed.

And you still get some small benefit from training the wrong skill. (Training more than one in a game is even worse now.)

It goes the other way around too: The larger the gap, the higher the bonus:

Staves +2 / 15.2 -> M&F +2 / 0+7.1 and Polearms +2 / 0+7.1

that's 0.5 shy of a 50% bonus!

O___o

If the antitraining equivalent is as harsh as this is good, I don't wanna see it.

Psiweapon wrote:as the gap between the receiving skill and the enhancing skill closes, the bonus to the receiving skill gets smaller.

IMHO, that's kind of lousy.

Psiweapon wrote:
duvessa wrote:Skill points are not the same as skill levels.

Elaborate plz?

Skill points are to skill levels as experience points are to experience levels.

But... why?
I think that, aside from some silly scenarios where it was more efficient to train a skill with a large positive aptitude in order to crosstrain to a skill with a worse aptitude, crosstraining worked well.
This new system seems pretty useless in practice (aside from the very early game when skill levels are in the single digits): if I have 12 short blades and I find a nice double sword, it doesn't really matter to me that my short blades skills boosts my long blade skills from 0 to 4 or whatever it might be; I'm not going to actually use the double sword until my long blades skill is significantly higher, at which point the "crosstraining" bonus has shrunk to a negligible amount (or, in fact, until my long blades skill has surpassed my short blades skill).

asdu wrote:This new system seems pretty useless in practice (aside from the very early game when skill levels are in the single digits): if I have 12 short blades and I find a nice double sword, it doesn't really matter to me that my short blades skills boosts my long blade skills from 0 to 4 or whatever it might be; I'm not going to actually use the double sword until my long blades skill is significantly higher

Well, the game doesn't really need to help you when you make bad choices.

wheals wrote:Well, the game doesn't really need to help you when you make bad choices.

If switching weapon types is a bad choice by definition, then why is there crosstraining at all?
More importantly, though, why does it have to be a bad choice? I'm familiar with the idea that the only choices that matter are the ones made in the first few floors, but that doesn't seem an ideal state of affairs, as demonstrated by the frequent complaints that Crawl is too long, let alone one worth emphasizing.
On the other hand, I do think that the old crosstraining bonus was too strong for the specific case of switching from short to long blades, but that's only because there is a legitimate reason to make that switch: namely, that short blades are typically inferior to other weapon types for "regular" combat. And even then, I don't think many people used that option on a regular basis, because in most cases it's totally unnecessary. Lowering the bonus to +2 or whatever would fix that specific case (if there's anything to fix in the first place), and would more importantly also fix the issue with merfolk training polearms because they found a lajatang they wanted to use.

OK, I apologize.

I was pointing out that you were basically saying "the new crosstraining bonus is useless since it's different from the old system." In your example, if the new weapon really is better quickly, then you want to use it right away; if it's not, even with either type of crosstraining bonus it might be the wrong choice to switch. I don't understand why you would refuse to use the bastard sword if you acknowledge it's good, and I don't see why you think this new system is _fundamentally_ bad: if you think the current numbers are off that's another matter.

wheals wrote:OK, I apologize.

I was pointing out that you were basically saying "the new crosstraining bonus is useless since it's different from the old system." In your example, if the new weapon really is better quickly, then you want to use it right away; if it's not, even with either type of crosstraining bonus it might be the wrong choice to switch. I don't understand why you would refuse to use the bastard sword if you acknowledge it's good, and I don't see why you think this new system is _fundamentally_ bad: if you think the current numbers are off that's another matter.

Oft times what makes a feature "bad" or "awesome sauce" (there is no margin between the two) are the numbers. Even if we don't actually understand the wizardry behind them at all...

What is good about this system is that if you want to swap weapons for a cross-trained weapon, the given skill level will make it effective quickly. The diminishing returns when adding skill point to both, though, are crap.

and I don't see why you think this new system is _fundamentally_ bad: if you think the current numbers are off that's another matter.

Tavern posters have proven, even in GDD--where there is absolutely a reason to try to do so--to have difficulty separating design-perspective concerns (e.g. "the way this spell works is bad for the game" (see rmsl, twisted res)) from player-perspective concerns (e.g. "this spell is weak" (see lots of discussion everywhere)).

Perhaps I should write up a post about this at some point because even if I'm not a dev I see a very important distinction (important for GDD; no reason to worry about it in DCA really) here that it seems most people do not even think about.

wheals wrote:OK, I apologize.

I was pointing out that you were basically saying "the new crosstraining bonus is useless since it's different from the old system." In your example, if the new weapon really is better quickly, then you want to use it right away; if it's not, even with either type of crosstraining bonus it might be the wrong choice to switch. I don't understand why you would refuse to use the bastard sword if you acknowledge it's good, and I don't see why you think this new system is _fundamentally_ bad: if you think the current numbers are off that's another matter.

I think the new system could be good, but I think you should continue to get some bonus from your crosstrained-skill until you've surpassed it by about 50% or so.

What I would do would be (assuming a +0 aptitude in both) would be something like:

Code:: BonusSkill = MAX(0,(Higherskill*1.5-(lowerskill))/2.5) EffectiveSkill = MIN(27,lowerskill+BonusSkill);

With 10 trained in both longblades/shortblades you'd end up with an effective 12.0 in both, with 23 long blades and 20 short blades, you'd have an effective 25.8 long blades skill, with 20 shortblades and 0 longblades you'd have an effective 12 longblades skill.

If this is too strong or too weak the '/2.5' could be adjusted (to give a smaller fraction or larger fraction of the crosstraining skill) I picked 2.5 because I played with some numbers (starting at /3 ) and 2.5 looked better to me (/3 just looked too insignificant when I eyeballed it.).

Fundamentally, I think it's important that you're able to switch weapons and not be penalized for it too heavily. Crosstraining is/was great for this, because it meant that you didn't have to grind to get the skills up to being usable. You definitely want some trade off, but not so much that it takes all the fun out of finding better weapons. Basically, if the bonus is so small, you may as well not have one at all for all the difference it makes.

I agree with Siegurt's idea, you need some crosstraining bonus and it could be tweaked to get to a good mid-point.

Also, for anyone not aware, the idea behind changing how crosstraining works is that if you have two skills that crosstrain (let's use maces and axes), training maces to 10 then axes to 10 should always be exactly the same as training axes to 10 and then maces to 10. This was not the case in the old crosstraining system, and I assume it is the case in the new one. So from that standpoint (the design standpoint) the new system is a large improvement. Whether it is as useful for players is obviously still something to question.

I think that there's some misunderstanding of how the bonus applies in the thread. I've just checked with ##crawl-dev, so I'm fairly sure this is the correct mechanic.

Under the current model, whenever you gain skill points in a skill, any skills it cross-trains with that are at a lower level are also given 20% of those skill points. So, the bonus you receive from training the first skill (say M&F) does not reduce as you train the new skill (say Staves) -- No matter what you do with Staves, it will always have its skill level increased by the number of skill points it gained through cross-training while you were training M&F.

Practically-speaking, instead of getting a bonus to train the Staves up to the level of M&F, you just get a flat bonus to your Staves skill, which allows you to immediately wield Staves at a higher level.

Overall, this scheme has a better feel, since you start off with the new weapon at a less-shitty place, and it prevents the weird case crate mentioned. If the effect is too small, it can be tweaked, but the way the effect works is entirely an improvement, IMO.

Lasty wrote:Under the current model, whenever you gain skill points in a skill, any skills it cross-trains with that are at a lower level are also given 20% of those skill points.

There's no requirement that the crosstrained skill be at a lower level.

I think this is a much mechanically superior method and that not having it actually give all the boost the old system used to give is much better also. It lets people who don't know a lot about skilling understand that they have a boost to X weapon types and also makes them realize this boost isn't going to be scale massively from hugely trained skills, so if they were to benefit from said crosstraining system it becomes much more apparent that only a weapon with relatively low speed requirements that still grants a benefit over the current weapon would be a good idea to switch to.
It is also much more easy to understand, because the newer player still has a much better grasp on how fast a +2/+1/0 apt trains his skill at than this +6 one that'll only be +6 until he hits X level and then will drop to +2 again.

As I can't try it right now : How does it affect anti-training ?

Antitraining doesn't exist.

dck wrote:Antitraining doesn't exist.

RLY?

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