Meditation. Too Common?

[krelji]

*hopes for flying carpet*

No, he won't be flying on that one. He uses it as a substitute for a bed, since he
prefers meditation over sleep.

[Damanta]

Another idea would be that every activity in the room would have the chance of breaking the meditation. For example, every time someone says anything, there's a check if you continue to meditate, every time someone goes in or out, etc. The check would depend on your meditation skill. This would make it more effective for people to meditate where it's quiet (makes sense realistically) and could result in better roleplay (the character asking people to respect their meditation, searching out stiller places to meditate, not just plopping down in the middle of the marketplace to meditate. etc.)

These ideas could be used separately or together.

I support this second idea. It should be difficult to maintain the concentration (or really complete lack of concentration) when there are lots of things happening around you.

[ganandorf]

It actually would make sense for ironwill to help you recover at a faster rate. Best way for those who are heavily armoured to recover after a fight, practice some more.

Also this would balance things out, The clerical guilds all have something to help them recover at a faster rate. The non-clerics guilds don't have anything like that. But making ironwill have this function could help both the rangers and crusaders. (Can't say much about the other guilds, as i dont know much about them)

[Olrane]

It actually would make sense for ironwill to help you recover at a faster rate. Best way for those who are heavily armoured to recover after a fight, practice some more.

Also this would balance things out, The clerical guilds all have something to help them recover at a faster rate. The non-clerics guilds don't have anything like that. But making ironwill have this function could help both the rangers and crusaders. (Can't say much about the other guilds, as i dont know much about them)

For resting, thieves use "hide" and Order members use "kill <target>".

[luminier]

Olrane

Well said.

Krelji

I still think that those who aren't actually in the guild or were never in the guild should get a debuff to the skill and a debuff to learning it. It should also 'fall' faster. This would make joining and staying the Shao-Lin -extremely- attractive and also give more incentive to go in and stay in the Crusaders and Rangers.

IMO if you aren't in a guild that teaches something (iron will for Crusaders and Rangers, side kick/meditate/knock/any shao special) technically you would start to forget what your past teachers used to do and perform the move crappier and learn it slower.

To me thats a good idea. Comments?

[Olrane]

That's essentially what the old skill system was, Luminier. Each skill had predetermined bonus/malus values to its learning rate based on your guild. Thus, if you were in the Shaolin, you'd arbitrarily learn to meditate much more quickly than non-members. If you were in the Shadow Lurkers, you'd be able to learn to pick pockets etc. very quickly.

I understand the merits to that system, but there were a bunch of problems that came with it - the guildless were at a severe disadvantage, and especially if you wanted to be a guildless specialist without joining a guild, you had to suffer. There's no reason logically or gameplay-wise that a guilded thief could learn to pick pockets more quickly by practice than a guildless freelancer. It was just about the time that I learned of the guild bonus system that it was changed, so I luckily didn't have too much time to nerdrage about having an arbitrary disadvantage when I roleplayed a (very poor at it, I must admit) freelancing thief.

Edit: The current skill system supports specialization independently of guilds, so you can theoretically be a very good non-Shaolin martial artist. Characters such as Gojin should be allowed to roleplay without artificially imposed skill decay in their specialized skills. Even characters who aren't ex-Shaolin can get decent at martial arts, provided that it's still possible to learn by watching. I know that Olrane had two or three Shao moves under his belt before he joined.

It also forced people to feel like they had to join a guild if they wanted to advance their character's skills. If you arbitrarily learn your fighting skills at a faster rate just by being a member of a fighting guild, it is a dumb move from a power-gaming perspective to not join up with said fighting guild ASAP.
The current system allows guilds to be much more about roleplay because they're less of a necessity just to play with the rest of the MUD.

The current system feels much more truly "classless" than the previous one, which is touted as one of the unique features of Geas. Other than meditation, the use of guild skills by non-members has reduced drastically since learnbooks were disabled.

I don't want to see the old system reinstated in any way, even if just for a few skills. I'd much rather have there be other factors that encourage certain characters to try each activity, and a suitable variety of acceptable (if not optimal) alternatives.

One idea that I had was to have a piece of the Shaolin armour (the belt or robe perhaps) give a small magical bonus to the effectiveness of meditation. There could be a balance by reducing the general effectiveness of meditation (the armour check might be the best way to do this, even if it makes heavy armour wearers feel disenfranchised - after all, Shaolin would be harmed least by the armour check). This would allow for Shaolin to be better at meditation without arbitrarily changing the learning rate for any character.

[luminier]

Alright fair enough. Learning rate should be the same for everyone. But still I don't like the abuse of supposed "guild specific" skills especially if it's not allowed to be learned by watching anymore.

Oh and to Krelji
Someone would have to have iron will already to swap out meditate. But I suppose the person could relearn meditate which really wrenches my idea pretty much completely.

[krelji]

Oh and to Krelji
Someone would have to have iron will already to swap out meditate. But I suppose the person could relearn meditate which really wrenches my idea pretty much completely.

I'm well aware of that. My char learned it from a book when this was still possible.
He got it from a friend, who had a friend in another guild who didn't care too much
about sharing it with others.

[Abharsair]

Please check link.

As for now we decided to not use an armour/encumbrance check and used Chara's idea of making messages while meditating more cryptic. It's also more important to seek solitude now.

[ganandorf]

I think the changes that were applied instead of an armour check were a really great idea. Thanks.

[Olrane]

Abhs, you rock. Way to make it cool and improved without disenfranchising anyone.

Edit: Of course kudos to Chara too and all the other idea-spawners.

[Sairina]

This sounds reeeaaally good! Gotta go try it out Way more realistic then before!

[luminier]

I love you Abharsair and Chara

[Cuetlachtli]

Agreed. I love the changes made to meditation!

[Mogwai]

I love the details to meditation, especially the part about using it without being disturbed, superb

[ganandorf]

one minor complaint that i have is that it seems to be harder for a new character to learn meditate. But I don't know if it just feels that way after having 100 meditate for so long, or if it is actually harder.

[Abharsair]

one minor complaint that i have is that it seems to be harder for a new character to learn meditate. But I don't know if it just feels that way after having 100 meditate for so long, or if it is actually harder.

Only if your method of learning is to meditate and rise immediately, but then my sympathy is somewhat limited anyway.

[Angeal]

I'm having the same trouble as Ganon. I'm not sure what it is, but getting a meditate improve is turning out to be a complete bitch. I've been training for 3-4 hours on an alt, and my meditate is still 0, and I have only been using meditate to recover

and no I do not meditate/rise/meditate/rise etc. while I recover so I can get improves

edit: not to mention that a large chunk of that time is spent recovering rather than actually training; and the fact that meditate isn't improving is pretty annoying

[Abharsair]

I'm having the same trouble as Ganon. I'm not sure what it is, but getting a meditate improve is turning out to be a complete bitch. I've been training for 3-4 hours on an alt, and my meditate is still 0, and I have only been using meditate to recover

and no I do not meditate/rise/meditate/rise etc. while I recover so I can get improves

edit: not to mention that a large chunk of that time is spent recovering rather than actually training; and the fact that meditate isn't improving is pretty annoying

The chance of improving meditate hasn't changed a bit and the most recent skill improvement logs show attempted (but mostly failed) entries for many people. Like I said earlier, the only difference is that you now have to actually wait for meditation to start for real before the skill is being checked for improvement, and if that makes the skill harder to learn then it means that a large amount of people used the "meditate -> immediate rise" combo a lot more than previously assumed.

[Angeal]

I understand that you have to wait for the "you have reached a meditative state of mind" or w/e for meditate to actually take effect, but my char is almost 8 hours old and still 0 meditate lol. Though it may be just bad luck cause I've been using elbow/headbutt/knee and they're all 0 too. just kinda annoyed that I'm not getting imps lol.....hopefully it will pass