Silent/Passive changes to character status and skills

[Impet]

Really enjoying puzzling out the game mechanics here. Wheeee!

 

So as I am checking out the 'passive affects' that doing actions while in a location provide, I noticed that most, possibly all of these affects do not appear in the history list of the things that have happened to you that day, though they do affect your character's information at least somewhat as their lore claims they should.

 

For example, the location "The Athletic Fields" supposedly reduces stress, at least sometimes, when you are there when you do any other action. I tested this by training study habits there, and it worked, my one point of stress returned to 0 stress. However, this was not mentioned in the history for that day, there was no visible change to stress that day at all, except on my actual character's Attributes.

 

"Public Practice Room #4" supposedly gives a 50% chance to learn several instrument skills at the same time. As of my 6th action taken there, I'd not yet landed that chance. However, I do now have Harpsichord listed under what my character can Research - and that wasn't mentioned in the history of whatever day I gained it on.

 

And my favorite place so far, "Admiratio: Vegetable Market" has given me a bunch of 'silent' skill gains to mimicry and a new language, "Oncestrian"! This is awesome, except... Is the detection chance of 0 for this location also a typo of a sort? I don't understand the Geography of this awesome fantasy world very well yet, but this place is in "The City of Mineta", that's a different island, right? How the heck is my character paying to get there, and why doesn't any of his teachers mind her running that far off each evening?

 

This stuff 'working as intended'?

[Legate of Mineta]

Impet;

 

It is yes- the feedback, in general, for your Preparation Locations is not visible. We're working on a few ways on how to make that more visible to you, including your daily summary, though.

 

The Vegetable Market does have a Discovery Chance (of 1), so you are *probably* OK to enjoy the bustle of the market there. You can always check the Discovery Chance by clicking on Lores, and scrolling down to the Location you want to review.

 

In regards to geography, the Academagia is actually (nearly) surrounded by the City of Mineta- one just has to step outside the gates of the University to be in the Upper City. While not technically forbidden by the Instructors, too much wandering around town is frowned upon as Students tend to trouble the cityfolk with sudden bursts of magic, which in turn leads to complaining by the Captain of Mineta and other powers they'd rather be on good terms with.

 

Thanks for the note on Public Practice Room #4. We may need to make some further tests here, unless you have luck of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.

[Impet]

The Vegetable Market does have a Discovery Chance (of 1), so you are *probably* OK to enjoy the bustle of the market there. You can always check the Discovery Chance by clicking on Lores, and scrolling down to the Location you want to review.

 

Under Lores, I see that specific location, Admiratio: Vegetable Market, has a Chance of Discovery: 0. Me character feels very very safe there, probably way to safe (the description makes me think press gangs and all manner of pirates should often be here, for that matter!) Dunno if that's intended or not, sounds like the 0 might be a typo.

 

Thanks for the note on Public Practice Room #4. We may need to make some further tests here, unless you have luck of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern.

 

My character picked up the 'seemingly permanent' 'temporary 33 bonus to success' bug very early, about the second week into the year. This also seemed to be greatly boosting her chance to get the 10% random language skill step at that Vegetable Market, and her college is getting tons of silent merit gains as well. I just rechecked that Room #4 three more times, and still did not gain any skills from the music group. Looking forward to seeing the 'may you never fail again' bug quashed too - while it's nice to never fail... our egos can take it, really!

[Legate of Mineta]

Impet;

 

The Discovery Chance is dependent on other factors, too- it can be raised and lowered. I'll double check, of course. I will pm you for a save.

 

The improbable success issue will be quashed in Patch 2, due this Saturday. I've also sorted out Public Practice Room #4, which will be addressed in Content Patch #1.

 

Thanks!

[knightav]

Here's another entry for the silent skill increase/decrease:

 

One-upmanship (such a cool ability!) properly mentions the decrease to Storytelling experienced by the participants, but doesn't mention the regain (although it does seem to be occurring) nor the random skill that is increased.

[Legate of Mineta]

Knightav;

 

We'll get that Description updated for CP1, thanks!

[Impet]

One other 'problem' with the silent skill gains, is that often a skill gain is associated with a gain to Lores and/or Locations.

 

And apparently, most of the time these silently gained accesses are not mentioned in the history.

 

Now, having realized that Locations are really useful to me, and their differences are really important to my character's growth, my list of Locations is very familiar to me. I can scan down it and easily pick out any silent additions, so I'm not losing anything by having additions there unannounced. And I've got reason to look at that list almost every game day, since there's no means of 'setting' my standard preference, I have to click a location for each action I make if I care where I am, and oh boy I do. So I see almost every change made to my Locations list almost immediately. Lore silent change are not really a 'problem'.

 

 

 

 

Lores are a totally different matter. Lores are interesting, I'd like to read each one, sure. But there are a LOT of Lores. And these don't seem to be connected to any direct advantages to my character, so they are not memorable to me like Locations are. And in scrolling down my list of Lores... I find I can't easily remember for every one of these great many (100? 200? More than that?) Lores if I've read each specific one or not. With these silent additions to the list, and my list of Lores being so long... It's to many to want to count! I am missing... an unknown number of silently added Lores.

 

Coupled with the fact that the Lores are 'merely interesting' (there's rarely any information within one that's changed how I play), and I don't review that list like I do Locations because there's absolutely no game-based advantage to doing so... I'm missing content! And when I try to check them, there's the issue of lag for each click forward to see each Lore, and more lag for each click back to pick the next Lore.

 

And I tried to go down the list and click on the titles I wasn't sure I remembered. But the negatives of the time delay and effort of trying to remember every Lore for the comparatively low reward (The only advantages I've found to reading a new Lore is that about half of them make me smile or laugh the first time I read them - but they don't actually add to or change how I continue to play the game for the most part, giving them almost no 'replay' value) wasn't worth the effort to me. So I stopped trying, and now wish I didn't have to miss these Silently Given Lores.

 

 

 

Some possible solutions I can think of.

 

 

Make all Lores not silent, perhaps?

 

Color-code Lores, either player set (ick, in this case, there's SO many with such low add to game play to color each one I read, since I probably wont read most of them ever again) or automatically have 'never read' Lores be one color or boldness, and have them lose this distinction if viewed?

 

Lace these Lores with some form of interactive game play value? *shudder* I can't think of a good thing to add to them that would affect ongoing game play, but we are talking about a list of 100(+) Lores to pick through for whatever 'goodies' might be added. I think it's a bad idea, this one.

 

Add a link to each Skill that shows the Lores (and Locations, maybe?) that were gained by each of the earned levels. This has the advantage of being very controllable by the player, and very selective, but makes the information in each Skill that much longer much longer (hey, I just saw that I learned a bunch of languages, lets check out these new Lores for each), and somewhat adds to the 'mechanical' feel, at least for me. Also, might be a pain to program, because you'd need 10 triggers added to each skill, to show the expanding list of Lores at each step. *shudder*

 

Classify the Lores not alphabetically, but by each Parent (and Subparent?) skill, achieving the player-side advantages of the suggestion above but with possibly less programming.

 

Maybe there's some other ways, but that's all I can think of for now.

[Legate of Mineta]

Impet;

 

Actually, your suggestion about Skills may be the best one. If, below all the present information you are shown about your Skills, you can see in order by the level unlocked all the various perks you have access to because of your level in the Skill, that might solve some of the issues here.

 

We'll look into it.

[Impet]

Thanks again!