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#### Is Better Learning V worth it?

Some cursory math tells me there's somewhere around 11-13 learning days' worth of skills available in Glitch. Now, for Better Learning V to save you enough time that it "pays" for what it cost, you'd need to learn 14-15 days' worth of skills (that's before we worry about cutting 20% off). So, accounting for the fact that my math is pretty rough, we can say it might be worth it if you learned all the Better Learning skills before learning anything else.
This seems wrong, though, so if somebody could double-check my math and/or leave a comment, that'd be great.
My math was as follows:
Better Learning V takes about 2 days, 20 hours (according to my skills page) to learn. For it to "pay" for itself, 20% of all the subsequent skills you learn must be greater than 2 days, 20 hours (68 hours), meaning that you'd need to learn 14.2 days' worth of skills after getting Better Learning V for the 20% cut to justify spending the initial 68 hour investment. Rough totalling leads me to believe that that's about how much the total time is for ALL the skills is. More generally,
payoff_time = learning_time / learning_time_cut
Here,
payoff_time = 68 hours / 20% = 340 hours.

Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast | Permalink

### Replies

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- the question of what order is it most optimal to learn the better learning skills is interesting. does your calculation take into account the ability to speed learning? i think that if you take speedy learning into account, the mining skills might be more valuable to learn first as the gems you get will help you get lots of favor points to spend.
  Posted 23 months ago by katlazam | Permalink
- Yea when I started testing in November/December... I kind of just did whatever with the skills and took whatever was the Shortest time. As of right now, I have pretty much learned everything except Better Learning. IMO, Better Learning is not worth it, but only because I would rather be learning useful things like harvesting bonuses and stuff that reduces the amount of energy it takes to do a certain task. Yea, if you have BL5, it takes 4 hours off something that would normally take 24 hours... big deal, I probably won't be playing the game 24/7 anyway. Better Learning will be the last set of stuff I learn.
  Posted 23 months ago by Nine O'Five | Permalink
- I didn't factor in learning speed-ups, no =/
  Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast | Permalink
- that's a good point that you've got to take time between choosing skills into account. when the game is open less frequently, there are days or maybe even weeks where you can't play so you might as well learn the longest skills. but as the game is open more frequently, learning longer skills may be more of a pain, so better learning might become more useful.
  Posted 23 months ago by katlazam | Permalink
- I like to queue up the longer skills while I sleep/work, this is when I learned the better learning skills.
  Posted 23 months ago by Zaphod | Permalink
- @katlazam: I'm thinking more in the scope of the final released version. If this is roughly the skillset which will be available at release (when, I assume, the game will always be open), then Better Learning V would hardly ever be worth learning, since it won't take long until someone writes a firefox plugin to automatically select a new skill when your old one is done learning.
  Posted 23 months ago by RobotGymnast | Permalink
- I added it up. Better Learning as a whole would take 5386 minutes to learn (roughly 3.75 days), but it saves itself time as you learn the various levels, so it should actually take 4805.385 minutes (roughly 3.3 days), a savings of 580.615 minutes, or 9 hours and 40 minutes.
  After that, every other skill would take 20% less time to learn, so the benefit would be considerably greater. For example, all of the Animal Kinship skills together would take 44.475 hours without Better Learning V, and 35.58 hours with it.
  Whether or not it's worth your time is a personal decision. My guess is that new skills will be added as the game progresses, and that learning them more quickly will probably be to my advantage.
  Posted 23 months ago by glum pudding | Permalink
- better learning is sort of boring to learn, so i factor that into deciding when to learn it.
  i've been learning BL in the times between tests. this is so that there is less time spent learning "useful" skills during active testing.
  i don't think this is the most efficient way of doing things, but psychologically i prefer the skills i learn during the test to be ones that i can turn around and use right away.
  sort of anticlimactic to learn Better Learning while you're logged in and running around and wanting to do new stuff, you know?
  once the testing gaps go away and the game is always on, maybe i'll learn it when i'm sleeping and away from the computer.
  Posted 23 months ago by striatic | Permalink
- It will be worth it in the long run, because there will be many more skills (we'll be adding them continuously, as we go).
  Posted 23 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- After a few learning time adjustments to skills, I thought I'd revisit this subject. Assuming a person learned only the Better Learning Skills before learning everything else, and accounting for the actual time spent learning those skills...
  BL takes 15m to give a start value of 33d 20h 33m 42s
  BL2 takes 1h 28m 12s to reduce to 32d 23h 14m 6s (reduction of 14h 3m 5s)
  BL3 takes 7h 36m to reduce to 32d 1h 54m 28s (reduction of 21h 19m 37s)
  BL4 takes 22h 4m 48s to reduce to 30d 21h 28m 19s (reduction of 21h 19m 37s)
  BL5 takes 3d 21h 28m 19s for a final learning time of 28d 12h 36m (reduction of 2d 8h 52m 19s)
  Seems the break point is still BL3. Even by spending Giant favor to reduce the times down further, BL5 doesn't get there (BL4 does)... with drinks on top of it BL5 could technically be manipulated to pay off.
  Edit: The % change in the description is a total, not in addition to. If you'd like to check... the values for AK1 will show 9m 30s with BL2, or 9m 12s with BL3. That's a 3% change not an 8% change.
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- Any time you were hoping to save was likely lost while you did that math.
  Posted 20 months ago by Fizio | Permalink
- That math was a simple spreadsheet, and I lost 0 time doing it :)
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- I saw I had the skill learning math in my near future before the last reset, so I set my mind towards avoiding it. "I want to learn all the skills. Starting with the Better Learning skills will minimize the time to learn all the skills. It'll be prudent to mix a few skills between the BL's. I'll wing the mixing and prioritize mining." The math was avoided in a second! If I had other, smarter goals, I'd have done the math.
  Posted 20 months ago by Tingly Claus | Permalink
- Trav - I'm getting different numbers. Maybe my math is horribly off, but I am using your data.
  All of the skills, before learning anything, takes 35d 0h 39m 0s to learn.
  BL I takes 15m, reducing the total learning time of all the other skills by 0d 17h 3m to 34d 7h 35m 31s, a 2.03% change.
  BL II takes 1h 28m 12s, reducing it by 1d 2h 38m to 33d 4h 57m 18s, a 3.23% change.
  BL III takes 7h 36m 0s, reducing it by 1d 8h 32m to 31d 20h 25m 41s, a 4.08% change.
  BL IV takes 22h 4m 48s, reducing it by 2d 6h 21m to 29d 14h 4m 19s, a 7.11% change.
  BL V takes 3d 12h 28m 48s, reducing it by 5d 21h 21m to 23d 16h 43m 12s, a 19.91% change.
  Posted 20 months ago by Dave | Permalink
- The core data doesn't currenty account for the BL times themselves. The actual learn time on BL will always be 15 min, as there's no way to learn BL with a BL5 time so the table has to be adjusted a bit. I'll revisit the numbers though.
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- Unfortunately, you can't do BL III without an emblem of Lem, which requires 1000 favor points that seem to need roughly 10,000 energy or value units. So you can't assum(e) person learned only the Better Learning Skills before learning everything else,
  Unless you have a way of getting favor points at a high rate that don't require any skill, you have to learn some other skill without the benefit of BL III or higher.
  Posted 20 months ago by WindBorn | Permalink
- WindBorn... Favor can be generated a number of different ways. Donations of any sort work great, many can be obtained just by interacting with the environment. Petting and watering have no actual training requirement, so the assumption holds.
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- Yeah, as Stoot points out, in the long run more skills will become available and it will be valuable. At the moment it's borderline and hardly useful unless you burn through the BL tree right from the start. But I would, as someone else mentioned, learn it while you have nothing else important to learn. I run my BL learning if I'm waiting on favour for an emblem i need for something important (but lately I havent had that issue) or if there's just nothing much else i care to learn right away (I'm not focusing on cooking or gardening type skills much). Put simply, I consider BL a nearly bottom of the barrel skill at the moment but I'll work on it over other skills I'm simply not interested in yet. One day it may pay off.
  Posted 20 months ago by Cap'n Bob | Permalink
- With another game reset looming, it's a moot skill (unless the devs surprise us with a grip of new heavy skills in the beta).
  However, logically, knowing that one of the main talking points for the media right now is the revolutionary back-end that allows for speedier, on-a-whim (to a point) development, it is difficult to write it off as not worth it, ultimately, as the skill tree is liable to expand quickly and indefinitely. With it, another 3 day skill becomes 2.5 days (rough maths). It is certainly worth it if you have a mind toward the presumed future of the game.
  Posted 20 months ago by Lyndon B Johnson | Permalink
- umm..there is no reset looming any time soon. it was just reset, and it has been said that there will be no reset going into beta. it may happen in the future but it is far from looming.
  Posted 20 months ago by Cap'n Bob | Permalink
- I the Better Learning skills are worth the time, only if you consider time. If you consider the joy of playing the game, I don't think it makes as much sense. I'll try to outline my thought process:
  The value of Better Learning is higher the earlier in the game you learn it, because Better Learning only effects the skills learned after it, so you want to maximize the number of skills learned after learning Better Learning.
  In order to progress beyond Better Learning II, you need to spend an emblem of Lem. Emblems are gained by accruing 1000 favor, most of which comes from donations to a Giant's shrine. (normal activities give you favor too, but I don't understand the mechanics of which Giant you gain favor with for which activity.)
  I haven't tried, but I can not imagine it would be easy to gain 1000 favor points without any basic mining, animal or plant skills.
  So I see it coming down to either learning the Better Learning skills early in the game or putting them off. If you concentrate on learning them early, I see the game just being a grind. If you put them off, they quickly lose value.
  Posted 20 months ago by Zaphod | Permalink
- The point of generating the numbers this week was to account for skills that have been added in the last 2 months, and the lengthened time on others. Learning BL 1 & 2 in your first few skills reaps huge benefits. BL 3 is best learned as an overnight, and 4 & 5 are still best learned between tests. As for the favor, it's more about what you donate to which shrine.
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- And just in time too.... the skill times have changed dramatically! I feel almost like a badly programmed GPS now.... Recalculating....
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- The base times have not been changed, but, as discussed in some other forum thread a very long time ago, we finally switched to a system where there are "decreasing returns" — the more skills you learn, the longer it will take to learn further ones.
  Right now it is set up such that, starting with your 10th skill, each additional skill you learn will cause a (compounding) 5% increase in the length of time to learn another. So, skill #20 will take 63% longer than the base time and skill #40 will take 432% longer.
  The better learning skills also now have an additional benefit: starting with BL II, the increase the number of skills you can learn before that 5% increase starts ticking in.
  And soon we'll be adding "unlearning" skills, so you can once unlearn skills you don't want any more as you move up.
  Posted 20 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- It is now - they just upped all the skill learning times to ridiculous times like 46 days for tinkering 5!
  Posted 20 months ago by Malupin | Permalink
- The plot thickens! Math hurts.
  Posted 20 months ago by Joe Blow | Permalink
- So what happens if you were in the middle of learning a skill? I had started BL 3 and paused it with about an hour left...will the new increase translate or will I still only have an hour left?
  Posted 20 months ago by Gabi | Permalink
- the decreasing returns system seems like a good compromise to the balancing problem, but i have to say that the idea of unlearning skills makes my narrative bone hurt! ;)
  Posted 20 months ago by katlazam | Permalink
- Thanks for the clarification stoot (and saving me hours trying to figure out the math on the diminishing returns)... it'll be a fun project in my down time!
  One...ah ha hah... Two... ah ha hah.... Three... ah ha hah (this might take a while)...
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- @katlazam
  Think of it as having a tiny stroke in that brain area. You may remember that you used to know how to do it, but can't actually remember how to do it right now.
  Posted 20 months ago by WindBorn | Permalink
- so the new strategy is get all better learning skills asap, then make a beeline for all expensive skills before the modifier screws you over, then finally get all cheap dead end skills
  Posted 20 months ago by Jellyfish | Permalink
- Trying to figure out why a skill would be "unlearned". Maybe cuz we can only have a certain numbers of skills in our Glitch brains?
  Posted 20 months ago by GreyGoose | Permalink
- Wowza. I'm really glad I started learning Better Learning V at the end of the last test, because it will take me a day and a half to finish rather than ... (wait for it) ... 33 days. A month is a very long time to learn something!
  Posted 20 months ago by Dave | Permalink
- So basically, we'll have to be _really_ sure that we're interested in a skill before we learn it... what punishment for the intellectually curious! I hope more skill-independent quests will be introduced, and more projects; otherwise, there won't be much to do for days at a time. On the other hand, I won't be motivated to play as much, so Glitch addiction will be minimized.
  Posted 20 months ago by glum pudding | Permalink
- @glum pudding
  Those of us who are intellectually curious will slog through no matter how long it takes.
  The change doesn't stop you from learning. It just takes longer.
  Posted 20 months ago by WindBorn | Permalink
- Sure, but there's a huge difference between waiting until tomorrow and waiting until next month. If we were live, one could start a skill, let the subscription lapse for a month, and start again once the skill was learned.
  Also, if we can un-learn skills, can we un-learn Tinkering I through IV, for example, and just know Tinkering V, thereby keeping all of the abilities from the earlier skills? Or will we just be getting rid of individual skills, like penpersonship?
  Posted 20 months ago by glum pudding | Permalink
- Oops: don't wear out the calculator, Travinara. We had a little bug making the learning times even longer than they should have been. It'll be fixed soon. Oh, it is fixed now. Good.
  glum pudding: if the only time the game is worth playing is the period of time immediately following the completion of learning a new skill, then we are definitely doing something else wrong :)
  Posted 20 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- No worries stooot... I'm studying for an exam while obsessively refreshing the home page. Math will happen next time the world closes. ( I only got to eighteen ah ha ha's anyhow)
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- That's a bit better :) I will say that since quests are mainly tied to skill learning, and that there will now be longer lapses between them, it would be nice to have more quests that aren't tied to skills.
  Posted 20 months ago by Joe Blow | Permalink
- Stoot: agreed, but people generally enjoy having a purpose, which quests and projects provide. Projects seem to take much less time now, since there are so many more people around to contribute to them, so I'd hope to see more projects, quests, mini games, etc. to keep things interesting in between skill completions. Otherwise, those with patience will have plenty of time to harvest every last natural resource, and projects will complete in the blink of an eye. Those new skill times do look a lot better now than they did a few minutes ago, though... phew!
  Posted 20 months ago by glum pudding | Permalink
- Thank you, stoot .. was a bit surprised when I saw that one particular skill would take me 112 days to learn.
  Posted 20 months ago by Lellie | Permalink
- They did say storyline would be 'thin' for a while.... and we have been slowly getting more stuff to do outside of quests. There has to come a point though where players start to self-direct personal missions. Trick is finding the balance between introducing the game concepts and the longevity of interesting. Street Projects can be lengthened easily by adjusting the amount of stuff required rather than making the skills more difficult. Exactly how long would it take to gather 50,000 plain ingots as opposed to the lower amounts? It would definitely open the window for participation. I have the feeling there are more surprises left in store for us as far as balancing efforts are concerned.
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- When in comes to the projects, with many more people around, the rewards for being in the top 5 are much harder to get, and the value is lessened. I think some balancing may need to go in there or one of two things will happen. People will ignore projects as they don't see any real gain for them, or the high level players will take the lion's share of the work (because they can given more resources and energy) leaving the lower level playings feeling left out/annoyed by the whole thing?
  Posted 20 months ago by TheJuggler | Permalink
- :) I'm drafting up an About Projects post just now, actually, that speaks to some issues I see with projects as they stand.
  Posted 20 months ago by zeeberk | Permalink
- Travinara: "There has to come a point though where players start to self-direct personal missions." — yes, absolutely. And we have a lot of work to do to support that if we want it to happen. And we'll do it! This is really just the very beginning … even after beta, it's only 1.0. We'll be developing and adding stuff for many years to come (and are growing the team really aggressively right now in order to get it all done faster).
  Posted 20 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- imo the derivations I am seeing here are somewhat moot because they don't take emblem-earning into account. While you're working on that first emblem, you will be learning other skills at the BL2 rate. I don't think one could reasonably assume getting to 1000 favor with Lem before you start learning other skills. In fact, favor-generation goes much faster once you obtain skills that help you generate it. So in normal play people will have learned a bunch of things at BL2 rates before they can spend any emblems.
  I think a more useful question to answer is "should Lem be the first Giant you earn an emblem with?" I don't actually have an answer to that, but I lean towards Humbaba myself due to AK's ability to make the "feeding yourself" game trivial, which in turn makes everything else easier.
  Posted 20 months ago by mirth | Permalink
- stoot: ""There has to come a point though where players start to self-direct personal missions." — yes, absolutely. And we have a lot of work to do to support that if we want it to happen. And we'll do it! This is really just the very beginning …"
  That's VERY exciting to me, I have had numerous talks with friends about how games like this would work and am interested to see it in action!
  Posted 20 months ago by mirth | Permalink
- I hope Better Learning V is worth it because I am learning it right now. lol
  Posted 20 months ago by Sierra | Permalink
- Mirth the truncation was taken into account, that's why my numbers are shorter than Dave's. As for the favor... it can and does happen and in more than one way. You don't need the emblem until after BL2. BL 1 + BL 2 is almost 2 hours of learning. You can easily collect up 1000 favor in that time. Being the only requirement for Better Learning is Level 2... and many people have that from gifts alone, totally do-able. My husband did it, I did it, and so can others.
  As for BL5... yes the adjustments made to the formulas made BL5 very worth the effort.
  Posted 20 months ago by Travinara | Permalink
- I don't care about the whole "nothing to do between quests" issue in one way; I am happy to fiddle with projects and make up my own goals...to a point. I would really like to see more quests in one way: just because I enjoy the bloody things! :D Also, I was confused by the fact that some of the skills finished and there was no quest attached to them (penpersonship, and even more surprisingly, Bureaucratic Arts II). I'm guessing it's just "stuff that's coming"! On the whole is better learning worth it, I think I got through BL 3 before the lengthened times...and now since each new skill lengthens time on others...I am definitely not bothering with any higher-level better learning. Once we reset, I'll certainly want to do all of those early on!
  I'd like to hear a dev answer the question asked by glum pudding about whether or not if we have Tinkering V for example and unlearn 1 through 4, do we lose our skills or just gain time for learning other skills? If I have learned Cheffery 2 and unlearn Cheffery 1, do I lose the Cheffery 1 skills?
  Posted 20 months ago by RM | Permalink

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