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Hawkey
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More silly ideas . . .

 

In the Lore, there are several references to phemes being etched, carved, or written onto various objects, like clothes and whatnot. It seems like it'd be a cool ability, to either etch, carve, or embroider items (depending on their material components) with individual phemes. Have this as a combo of Orthography and the appropriate artisan skill, maybe. So, I could have an especially alluring hat, for example. Perhaps these are extra-detectable items, though, and they can easily get you in trouble - worth the risk?

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I haven't been able to keep up with the flood of suggestions, so this may have been mentioned already.

 

Given my love of the 'exotic' familiars, I would love to have some way of knowing what kind of familiar I have when I get to name it at the end of character creation. I'm starting to build a mental list of the names for the ones I've seen already, but would it be possible to have the familiar type indicated on the naming plaque below the input window? There seems to be enough space there to include the information already.

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As before I don't know if this has been mentioned before;

 

Would it be possible to make a selectable filter for the lore section? I really don't care about everything I know, but the list is so long it makes scrolling for locations tedious. Not to mention that if the list becomes to long you won't go back to the item you selected, but rather end up in the middle of your knowledge section. It would be a great help if we could select to display or not to display that with the click of a button/icon.

 

Also perhaps it is possible to make a filter for your locations whether they are;

 

* Passive Ability's (temporal)

* Passive Ability's (Permanent)

* You have to actually do something there.

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Well, one way would be to simply place Locations before Lores. Another is to make some kind of scrollbar. Scroll buttons are fine, but with a proper scrollbar you would be able to go almost anywhere on the list in one click. That would reduce the ammount of scrolling dramatically.

 

And yes we need some hot-list of abilities and actions. Most of the time you only use a few and finding them in the list takes time. I think when choosing an action for a part the day, the dialog should open not on "Choose Action" as now, but on some custom list of actions and abilities chosen by the player.

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Another idea I had about reducing the amount of clicking for choosing actions.

By the button that opens a dialog for choosing actions for the day there is enough space to place for two, maybe three buttons of the same size (although I don't know how hard it would be. but at least it is a very small change to the graphics). If it can be done, then by right clicking on these buttons the same menu for choosing an action could be opened. And that action could be "quick saved" into this button. By left clicking the button the saved action would be placed on the corresponding slot in the calendar. This way it would take exactly one click to place the three most used actions (usually train, study, gossip or some variants of them). Not a very elegant and less universal solution then a custom list, as some abilities such as libraries tend to disappear for a day, but it would be very efficient for some actions. I don't know, maybe there are some better ways to do this.

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Another suggestion then. I wouldn't normally make this one, since I haven't seen the code and really have no idea what I am talking about. But there is a small chance that I am right, and if I am wrong, well, it will take very little of your time.

Opening the history of a single day takes a lot of time. Closing it and opening calendar after that takes a lot of time. I see no reason why it takes so long, other then that every time it reads history using some complex query. Excuse me if I sound naive, but I really can't think of another explanation.

Perhaps this query can not be optimized, but why can't the game cache the results? History of the day, as the user sees it, is basically a glorified string. You generate it once at the end of each day. If you just keep it in memory, showing it once more shouldn't be any slower than showing a lore entry.

Calendar history is a sequence of choices. With the very limited amount of days in the year, it shouldn't take too much memory to hold it in an array. Then opening calendar should be much faster.

 

So, am I wrong, or am I very wrong?

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Schwarzbart;

 

Basia should not have been able to use 'Squealer' on you- that is the Ability of another Student. Are you positive she used it on you?

Ups I got 1 line to low when looking who was using this on me so it was a other student who has negativ Standing to me .... Sorry about this.

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Is it possible we could get the ability to see native vs boosted skill levels. I've noticed that boosting skills doesn't unlock everything, but if I think I've got a real 10/11 I don't try to train the skill up to max. (That and being able to see what group a subskill belongs to easily would be great)

My #1 request is that the location passives get reported, but I think that's already planned for the content patch?

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mhv3;

 

A very good suggestion: a few other Academgians have requested this, too. We are going to start by providing this information in a tooltip, when you hover over the Skill. The Parent Skills for all the Skills will also appear in Feedback and the Skill's Description. This may be as soon as Patch 4- not sure yet.

 

Thanks!

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I accidentally skipped detention. It's possible that I didn't notice, but I believe that this once, detention did not appear on my day, that day's third activity continued to show as rest. I was caught skipping a class, if that helps. No idea by who, of course, but the next week that detention was served with Contzel Ringraeyer, in case that helps figure out why I didn't see it (Am assuming it wasn't a mistake I made, though it could have been).

 

Interestingly, this detention skipping lead to me being grounded. I didn't know until I tried to do something for the next day. All I'd seen was that I'd been reprimanded for skipping detention.

 

This really confused me, as my Saturday was clear. No Hall Study - the calendar showed rest there. Opening up the selection for that day, I was able to switch it to hall study. Would have been horrid to innocently skip both of those too! But the fact that these were not visible on my Saturday, for absolutely sure, makes me more suspicious that punishments given by Contzel Ringraeyer may not be properly interlaced with whatever changes the calendar's defaults.

 

The following week the detention and Hall Studies were already on the calendar like normal.

 

 

Which leads me out of 'possible bugs' and back into Suggestions!

 

We need to know when we are grounded. Sure, we realize this when we open up our 'what we want to do', but as is, it really does look like something's wrong, and that something isn't that we messed up too much at the wrong time. We need to be told, explicitly, what we have done wrong and what we must do to atone, especially when the punishment is 'you can't play like normal, you are severely restricted and must wait.' This is in accord with 'good parenting' and 'good teaching' as well - if punishments and expectations are not clear, the feeling created and the student's focus tends to be on hostility towards the authority figures (or the game in this case) or on dislike of oneself, and not on 'what I should be doing, what I will do in the future'. This negativity translates into a strong urge to simply reload to before the grounding, recreate another character, or just play a different game.

 

Please reconsider the length of being grounded. A player tends to greatly exagerate the feel of the length of being grounded, especially when this grounding includes weekends and holidays - some weeks have more than one holiday, and missing every one of those chances for no chances at all is acutely uncomfortable, increasingly so with every day that passes without change. This increases more extremely upon seeing the next week, and seeing that there is still no chance to take voluntary actions, especially with no feel for when this truly player-and-playstyle-punishing-punishment might end. I would suggest giving things like a three-day grounding, a five-day grounding... have groundings initially only cover school days (and Study Hall days), with the 'free' days not included, unless students continue to mess up on these weekends or when the grounding ends.

 

Please reconsider Study Hall. As is, it gives awesome increases in Random Study expansions, and may lead to relationship increases based on those expansions. If you already have all of your study levels at 10, Study Hall gives nothing. Nor are you released from it, it appears to have no direct test associated with it. If nothing else, allow a Study Hall student who has mastered their subject(s) to offer tutoring to other students, either in Study Hall too or just studying (the Great Hall's description suggests that students chosing to be there mingle with Study Hall students among others). This may well lead to relationship increases, a 'something' for otherwise good students who end up with Study Hall - and thus currently have nothing to gain but lost opportunities.

 

Thanks!

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Impet;

 

In Patch 2a Hotfix you can already see if you have been Suspended, and in Patch 3 on it will be regularly reported.

 

Hall Sessions should end (and you should be able to test out of it!) but it tests the lowest of your Class Skills each time you go. If you have high Class Skills and their respective Studies, you should be able to test out very easily. If not, please pm me a RapidShare of your save, and we'll investigate.

 

Thank you!

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Nope, the skills are not high. The study for each is maxed. I can well believe that I'm failing the skills test there - but once grounded, there's no chance to improve those skills anymore save through the random and slow gains brought by attend class, and possibly by the detentions, if your detentions happen to be within your class subjects. The gains from Study Hall appear to come purely within study, though, and not skill gains. I've gained relationship increases during study and during Study Hall, but only until the study levels are maxed, so it feels especially entrapping on a character who already has the studies maxed. ;)

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Impet;

 

Very much so- what we will do to start is to make Hall Sessions a bit more targeted in terms of the bonuses it gives.

 

Ultimately, though, what I think we should do is give the Player a few more common ways to get out of this kind of punishment without removing the overall threat of Expulsion.

 

Thanks!

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