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Sindome
a cyberpunk roleplaying game
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  • Forgetting skills lets us experiment

More time to forget skills
Forgetting skills lets us experiment

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Hey, I think it would be really nice if the limit on when you stop being able to forget skills was increased. At the moment, in the "help respec" file it says you can forget skills that you have 30 or fewer points in. In reality I've found that you stop being able to forget somewhere around the Q, P, or O skill levels. Does this match up to 30 points? I don't know, not really important. Regardless, I think this is really quite low.

Being able to forget skills helps us experiment with skills, so we can see how they work and what they're like without having a big commitment. I think it's decently well known that the majority of skills are almost useless for the first like, ten levels or so. Losing the ability to forget them well before players are able to get any use out of them doesn't really make much sense to me. There are a number of things IC that players have very little knowledge about how to use because they can't test it with skills without committing to screwing up their character a little.

I'm not really sure where the best point to have the cutoff would be, but I think having it at least around level L or K would be a good place to start. It's not like the average person can't forget anything, right?

By Emily 0
If it is actually cutting off at P rank (which is about 15 UE) then I strongly suspect (and have for a while but not been able to test it) what is happening is the same oversight that has been happening with the daily UE limit per skill for years: Instead of limiting to UE it's limiting to raises, which because a skill raise is 0.5 UE at those ranks, means that forget may have half the window it's supposed to have.

A forget window of 30UE would, in fact, allow for about K skill level so if it was fixed to work as intended it should meet the requirements you're after.

By 0x1mm 0
You can't forget anything past O. I am pretty sure.
By QueenZombean 0
I don't really understand the forget mechanic, since you don't actually get the UE back until your PC has maxed out their UE. At which point you're allowed a respec.. so you can just lose all those skills you never use and don't apply to your character… potentially. Isn't that right?
By Grig 0
Hm, I suppose that's true Grig. I don't think I really thought that far. Though I do think respecs take a little bit of time away from staff for them to approve them, so I guess letting players handle forgetting stuff might reduce that slightly.
By Emily 0
@0x1mm

If I am understanding what you are describing correctly, that's a major bug and needs to be addressed.

To be clear, you're saying that the limit is hitting the button X times instead of spending X UE, as it was intended?

If so that's a big problem, considering what a huge difference being able to pump 10 trains at the low end is like compared to pumping 10 trains at the high end.

@Grig

Respecs are subject to staff review and approval, and you should not assume that they will be granted. They might be granted, granted in part, or denied entirely. Generally, respec is a thing that I don't think is terribly well understood by people. Due to my own biases based on negative experiences submitting respec requests in the past, I personally believe they should be done away with and only granted in the cases of code changes to skills. That's a different topic though, and I'm not introducing new ideas on the OOC space going forward.

By TalonCzar 0
As someone who dumped a TON of UE into something, only to learn it was the wrong thing. I would be damn grateful to be able to change it.
By QueenZombean 0
I would personally support a forget for any upper limit, would help oldies slowly be able to re-invent themselves which would be kind of cool.
By JMo 0
To be clear, you're saying that the limit is hitting the button X times instead of spending X UE, as it was intended?

Yes exactly.

By 0x1mm 0
I also generally support much more flexible reroll/forget mechanics but my understanding is the 30 UE mark was basically a compromise the staff could unanimously agree on. It might be tricky to convince the senior staff of it, but I do think Sindome has fairly dated lock-ins for skills considering the enormous time investment it requires.
By 0x1mm 0
+1

Think this is a great idea for people to reinvent themselves a bit, and also for removing skills they never use. I imagine for some people, their skill sheets can get clogged with shit they regret.

Bad example but, I used to be an absolute GODESS at hula hoop-ing at 11 (as in, I could go for over 1000 spins). I am now 27 and can barely do 20. People forget shit.

By Veleth 0
@0x1mm That's scuffed. I assume you reported it already. That really needs to be fixed, the whole point of the system was to counteract the instant badass phenomenon, and it doesn't do that very well if you can, In fact, dump the entire UE cap into a skill in one sitting because you're at curve. I hope it gets fixed.

I'm of two minds on retraining. I originally proposed the idea and this is what became of it. I like the system, but it was solely designed to cater to the people who fat-fingered their UE spends and not for you to retrain or change your character organically. I still prefer my original suggestion on how to make the system.

That said, there is a real problem with a selection of the game being so laser-focused on minmaxing that enabling such a system means everyone would just be combat gods with one or two side skills, and there would be basically zero diversity.

The question is whether or not that is a better scenario than what we have now, where we have people with hyper-optimized characters because people know the equation to success, that information being fiercely gatekept, and then the rest of the game being left to flounder as people waste years of their lives to figure out basic shit doesn't worth the way they think it does.

There's no real clear answer. I'm a fan of open and transparent, but I've also played RP games where the rules were entirely open-book and it can get very ugly. Peeking into D&D subreddits can reveal the level of toxicity that kind of thing can bring about.

By TalonCzar 0
It sounds like something I would @bug but this was several years ago and, I seem to remember, on the old bug tracker. It's also possible that gojira was down at the time as it so often was so it may have slipped through the cracks. I'm not really in a position now to test this and @bug my findings so someone else may have to do so during their reroll.

I've never used forget so again, not in a position to @bug it, but if someone wants to verify that they're hitting the forget limit at ~P, then that would mean it's counting raises and you can @bug that.

I do think concerns about everyone gravitating towards microtuned meta builds underlays a lot of the lock-in about skills, but I have to say when the game was getting reworked and rebalanced underneath us while we stayed stagnant it was pretty frustrating. Now that things have stabilized it's fine but I think if there is going to be gameplay tweaks on the dev side to stable mechanics then better player adaption should be allowed for. Whether there will be tweaks to stable systems beyond bug fixing at this point though, I don't know.

By 0x1mm 0
Honestly, I would be fine with a character lowering and eventually removing any skill, stat and specialization given enough time (Well, can't remove a stat but you get the idea). I don't really see a need to lock anything in permanently.

I do see an issue with changes being too rapid. As long as a character doesn't go from being a highly skilled doctor and mediocre Krag Maga practitioner to someone who doesn't know any medicine at all and a kick ass brawler over night, I'm fine. Make the loss take time. Learning is already paced.

With that in mind, I'd love to see the max sill level forgetable fixed or even raised.

Regarding respecs, things may have changed, but I was always told that they are for streamlining your character. Not completely changing them. And the more your character is known for something, the harder time you would have convincing staff to drop it significantly or remove it.

I would love to replace respecs with a more robust system for lowering skills, stats and specializations all gated by pacing as even with the restrictions to respecs I am familiar with, it was still possible for a character to change massively overnight, rendering mountains of work some put into learning the ins and outs of their competition. I feel rapid changes, even when limited by staff, are worse than drastic changes that take a long time so as to allow people to notice and adjust to changes as they happen.

By Grey0 0
I originally proposed this feature as something without a cap. I wanted players to be able to grow and change over time as they use skills and then those skills atrophy and they learn new skills.

I don't particularly think we need to cap the level at which a skill can be forgotten. I can see an argument for a floor on how much a character could forget, say for instance you get to 13 a raise in long blade maybe you can never forget that skill entirely, but instead get it down to like 1.5 a raise (just an example).

However there was a lot of resistance to the idea of allowing blanket forgetting of skills and where we are now is the middle ground which serves the purpose of cleaning up a character sheet, and forgetting skills you never put much into or accidentally put UE in. It's not where I'd like it to be, but it's not my decision.

I'd recommend bringing this up at a future town hall or guided discussion so the staff that are against it can speak to their issues with it and perhaps have their minds changed.

By Slither 0
I think no cap would be good, because I don't think funneling characters in and out is really a fun idea and from most modern games- people attach to their character.

Now, obviously it would not make Sense for someone playing Kenny the Cowboy, ace decker of Western Red to turn into Kenny The Killer ace muscle solo, but I think increasing the length it takes general to the letter grade is useful.

So, example. you are at every point above like D or C or some high end near the top? It should take almost FOREVER, because it was something till this point WAS you characters life. So them unlearning or forgetting something they would have dedicated a lot of their life study and time to would be something that is hard to do and makes forgetting it completely *difficult* but not impossible. But your like K or so at painting? You can forget a lot faster, because you spent less time at it.

The only area this becomes cheesy, I think, is someone forgetting skills to shove into physical stats. Because there is no way to lower or forget your physical stats, but I think at that point you've been playing for a few years and should have a concept of whats going on. But then thats looking at actually keeping and carrying the character for that long.

By Meat 0
I have concerns about minmaxing too, but I think those concerns are less than my desire for characters, especially the combat ones where these stats and skills mean life and death, to be able to hone themselves over time.

But I'm still going to laugh at them when they vat and can't drive home. Quietly. From behind this other large person with a gun. I think it'd be funny for them to be pressed about their lack of skills in any other area and tease them about needing a skillsoft to toast a slice of bread.

I don't think we have a lot of strict min-maxers anyway and if they want to play flat characters, thats on them as long as they're playing to stats and not just brushing off their histories and are showing that they value and utilize other pcs when possible. I really do feel like people do that all around though already.

I'd be in favor of setting an upper limit to the total amount of xp that can be forgotten though. Sometimes its just time for characters to drift off into the sunset or spiral into total despair and embrace oblivion. People have some crazy stories bouncing around from here to there, but when a character ping pongs and "reinvents" too much maybe its time to go.

By Papertiger 0
The only area this becomes cheesy, I think, is someone forgetting skills to shove into physical stats. Because there is no way to lower or forget your physical stats

Would it be cheesy though? My sense is, thinking about it, that while it's true you it might slowly see characters lean more stat heavy over time because they could forget skills but not stats, I'm not actually sure that's really an advantage per se. If anything players would probably want to be cautious to keep enough skill UE un-retrained so they could maintain skills at a decent level.

By 0x1mm 0
Since it may not be apparent to players who don't check every help file update, this has been clarified that 30 raises (rather than 30 UE) is intended behaviour of forget. So under 15 UE is the forget range.
By 0x1mm 0
After reading through responses to my thread about increasing the UE cap, I feel that much, much more lenient (or even uncapped) skill forgetting would end up solving some of the issues I have with it.

I think adding the ability to forget X amount of a skill, instead of it entirely, and/or X amount of a stat would also be beneficial.

By zxq 0
Bumping this thread.

I think the forget system does need to be expanded, especially when the cut-off for forgetting skills is so low you don't even know if you'll ever use the skill until it's too late to forget it.

By Risikio 0
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