Topic

Possible way around longer skill learning times...?

So I'm sitting here wondering about the fact that now when you want to learn a skill, if you know many other skills, it would take longer to learn than if you didn't know any other skills at all.

What if I almost learn ALL of the skills I can but switch skills while there is one second left? Then, when all of the skills I can possibly learn have only one second left, I can essentially learn them all at once without having to experience longer skill learning time for any of those skills (which would have come from learning the other ones first). It probably doesn't shave TOO much time off but I gather that, at times, the time you save by doing this can be significant.

Or is my logic flawed? Lol.

Posted 19 months ago by Cerulean Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I think the second you started learning them, the time for the remaining ones would be extended, so the 1 second left would turn into a few hours left. I'm not sure though xD;
    Posted 19 months ago by Milx Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh nooooooo lol.
    Posted 19 months ago by Cerulean Subscriber! | Permalink
  • For every minute of something, a certain amount gets tack on for others. I think I think the amount is a few seconds. 
    Posted 19 months ago by KitkatCat Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, I think that might work. You'd have to be a VERY patient person though ... even unmodified there are a few weeks worth of skills to learn (and that number will increase) and you'd have to get all of the ones you wanted down to a minute or two before you pulled the trigger. And, you'd have to watch your time like a hawk to make sure you stopped in time. And, after you did decide to take the plunge, the very next skill would take foreverrrrrrr ...
    Posted 19 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Haha, I imagined the next set of skills you'd start learning would increase in learning time, dramatically, which is why I'd probably recommend only doing this once you're at the level you're comfortable with your skill set and can say "you know, I'm doing pretty well with these skills, and anything I learn from here on out may be out of more than necessity." Thanks for the feedback, stoot!
    Posted 19 months ago by Cerulean Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yeah, I've been doing something along these lines, with great success. I have like 6 skills at a few minutes left, and they stay that way, even when I finish other skills.
    Posted 19 months ago by Lord Tweedmouth Subscriber! | Permalink
  • To be clear, I don't know that it works: just saying it might :)
    Posted 19 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It does work, see the thread I posted in the forums under http://beta.glitch.com/forum/bugs/3495/. I even have a tool to automate the skill switching. :-)
    Posted 19 months ago by Taral Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I might just modify my skill queuer to do that.
    Posted 18 months ago by RobotGymnast Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hmm, need to get my brain around this, I am assuming you mean right at the end of each skill branch. I would have thought part completion would impact on ability to actually progress with some of the higher skills.  Maybe I need to read that other thread LOL
    Posted 18 months ago by ♥joby♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • seems like a bit of a cheat to me...
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It does seem like a bit of a cheat to me, with the obvious cure being to penalize pausing a skill, perhaps by tacking on any speed learning spent on the last skill as a time penalty on the skill switched to (so, I learned at double time for 5 hours on that last skill, now I learn at half time for 5 hours on the skill I just switched to)... or just add a straight penalty time for the switch to the new skill being learned.

    I know penalty is a negative connotation, and I don't mean to sound like a strict disciplinarian, but perhaps Glitch could use a little tragedy (your earlier decisions will impact your fate).
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's really not a cheat if you consider how long a person would have to go without learning any of those skills for it to be truly effective. The penalty is not being able to use the skills before they're done and not getting the quests and experience from their completion. 

    I don't think there should be an additional "penalty". If an organized and patient person can pay off the principal, in loan terms, and then only pay a fraction of the interest tacked on, why not?
    Posted 18 months ago by Folderol Subscriber! | Permalink
  • right, and that is true for using this strategy from day 1, when you don't have any skills at all, but I think later on when you have more skills and the penalty is really starting to add up, the strategy seems to me to be along the lines of obeying the letter, but not the spirit of the law.
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That may be true, but who is actually patient enough to pull that off? I consider myself to be a pretty patient person, but I can't resist learning a skill to completion just so I can use it to its full potential and see if there's a quest at the end of it. 

    Then again, though, I'm not using a skill queuer - I think that that may make it all much easier to "cheat", especially with modifications. I don't think the "way around" is something that should be regulated though.
    Posted 18 months ago by Folderol Subscriber! | Permalink
  • To me, "cheating" means that someone gets an unfair advantage by not following the rules.

    So far, I haven't seen any particular advantage here.  I can't line up all the levels in a skill tree, and then learn them.  This technique only works on a single level in a skill tree at a time. 

    Even if I learn 10 skills to the last minute, and then pay the 'penalty' for them, for the next level of EVERY skill tree, I've got the same penalty as I would if I hadn't used the technique. 

    And, as people have pointed out above, I am unable to use any of those skills until they are all 'learned'. 

    Perhaps the escalation of learning times needs a tweak so that  fewer skills increase the penalty, which would discourage some of this behavior.  But overall, I don't see that there's a whole lot of advantage for someone using this technique.
    Posted 18 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • yeah, that's why I said that it *feels* like cheating. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it was my gut reaction.

    it *feels* like it would be more fair if the time that you'd already learned wasn't recalculated as a percentage of the total time when the extra time was added, but that the additional time added to the requirement was all stacked onto the end of the unlearned time.
    Posted 18 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I'm with @WindBorn.  I'd rather have the skill and the benefits and quest that goes with it than go across each branch just to avoid a time penalty.

    Also, when this game goes live and months and hopefully years have passed, time penalties are not really going to matter, just like speeding up learning is not really going to matter.  We will eventually have all the skills, especially since we can learn them offline (which I think is a really cool feature.) So all these strategies are more of a product of our limited playtime and desire to maximize the amount of skills we can gain while we have the opportunity.
    Posted 18 months ago by Jepro Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It's a really interesting theory, but to me (especially once the game goes live) there will be no rush to learn the skills faster, like what Jepro said.  I won't be in any rush once I can play the game 24/7 because there is no need to anymore.  The reason I'm so rushed during testing is because I want to experience as much as I can before the game comes out so I know how beneficial a subscription would be for me.

    I also don't think this is a benefit necessarily like what WindBorn said.  You can only do it to one skill in a particular skill tree at a time.  So the time lost having the ability to use that skill while you queue up others is a trade off.  I personally would prefer to take more time to learn the skills and be able to use them and get the quests to not being able to use the skill.  But that's just my preference.  

    Very clever and interesting idea Cer and others who thought of it!
    Posted 18 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink