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[Deimos56]

Hmm...

So, the experience chart you made is kind of nice and all, original poster guy, but... I dunno about making dwarves forget what they've learned by screwing up, and I'd like to maybe adjust it a bit.

1) Perhaps a 'failure' should be two different things. First, a failure to gain experience (Losing experience seems... iffy), representing the dwarf's failure to learn something, which would be represented by the adjusted flavor of chart I'm going to throw out shortly, and secondly, an actual failure - botching the project, producing an object of inferior quality, and similarly affecting experience in some way - hard to say what way that should be though, as one is generally supposed to learn from their mistakes.
This second variant of failure should probably be based on skill level too - A dabbler with no master/teacher should fail to produce any particularly usable items at first if he has no idea what he's doing, whereas a grand master would rarely, if ever, screw up.

2) The 'failure to gain experience' chart. I'm thinking maybe it could be less of a straight line and more of a ... bell shape. So, dwarves would learn rather easily in the middle skill level range, but have trouble getting into a profession without teaching/books and similarly have difficulty improving their art past a certain point without drastic measures. I'm not sure where being mentored/reading about a skill would fall on this, though.

Thoughts?

[Escapism]

I think that dwarfs should have labor preferences, exactly as they have item preferences. That will give them greater exp gains and a higher
level cap in their desired jobs, as well as reduced exp gains in jobs they don't like.

Agreed. Motivation plays a huge part in what level of profiency someone can achieve in a skill. I posted a small thread about that some time ago, but only got one confused reply. The current "I like slate, raw adamantine, shields and rat leather" system is for the most part not useful and doesn't make any sense.

Basically, dwarves would have labours (and military skills) that they like or dislike. Liking a labour would result in them gaining more experience in it, getting happy thoughts and working faster with better results. Disliking a labour would do the opposite. To avoid the dwarven personality page getting too cluttered, you would only have maybe three or four likes and dislikes on average. A dwarfs likes and dislikes might correlate with their previous experiences in some arcane manner. This gives you further incentive to place the right dwarf in the right place.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Deimos56: I like the idea of failures, but what would they be? Negative-quality goods make sense, but what about fishing, mining, or making blocks?

[Manveru Taurënér]

Deimos56: I like the idea of failures, but what would they be? Negative-quality goods make sense, but what about fishing, mining, or making blocks?

Fun/!!FUN!!
In other words, a miner might accidentally collapse some rock over himself, sutaining minor injuries, a fisherman might fall or get pulled into the water by the fish he's trying to haul up, general small accidents for any profession involving sharp/blunt tools resulting in minor cuts/bruising.

[Phlum]

Hmm...

So, the experience chart you made is kind of nice and all, original poster guy, but... I dunno about making dwarves forget what they've learned by screwing up, and I'd like to maybe adjust it a bit.

1) Perhaps a 'failure' should be two different things. First, a failure to gain experience (Losing experience seems... iffy), representing the dwarf's failure to learn something, which would be represented by the adjusted flavor of chart I'm going to throw out shortly, and secondly, an actual failure - botching the project, producing an object of inferior quality, and similarly affecting experience in some way - hard to say what way that should be though, as one is generally supposed to learn from their mistakes.
This second variant of failure should probably be based on skill level too - A dabbler with no master/teacher should fail to produce any particularly usable items at first if he has no idea what he's doing, whereas a grand master would rarely, if ever, screw up.

2) The 'failure to gain experience' chart. I'm thinking maybe it could be less of a straight line and more of a ... bell shape. So, dwarves would learn rather easily in the middle skill level range, but have trouble getting into a profession without teaching/books and similarly have difficulty improving their art past a certain point without drastic measures. I'm not sure where being mentored/reading about a skill would fall on this, though.

Thoughts?

As I see it, you are worried that a dorf would never get past grand master because there the statistical inability for a dorf to gain levels past grandmaster. He shouldn't lose his grandmaster status because of the negetive EXP, I agree, and yes, there should be a way to get to legendary that isn't, "be lucky." maybe traits could allow for the loss of EXP to be lessened.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Deimos56: I like the idea of failures, but what would they be? Negative-quality goods make sense, but what about fishing, mining, or making blocks?

Fun/!!FUN!!
In other words, a miner might accidentally collapse some rock over himself, sutaining minor injuries, a fisherman might fall or get pulled into the water by the fish he's trying to haul up, general small accidents for any profession involving sharp/blunt tools resulting in minor cuts/bruising.

The mining one kinda makes sense, the blocking one definitely does (and should happen with otht crafting(, but fishers are hauling up tiny fish. Cavies are not small enough to be vermin; all fishable fish are. Being pulled in by such a fish would be, well...

Hmm...

So, the experience chart you made is kind of nice and all, original poster guy, but... I dunno about making dwarves forget what they've learned by screwing up, and I'd like to maybe adjust it a bit.

1) Perhaps a 'failure' should be two different things. First, a failure to gain experience (Losing experience seems... iffy), representing the dwarf's failure to learn something, which would be represented by the adjusted flavor of chart I'm going to throw out shortly, and secondly, an actual failure - botching the project, producing an object of inferior quality, and similarly affecting experience in some way - hard to say what way that should be though, as one is generally supposed to learn from their mistakes.
This second variant of failure should probably be based on skill level too - A dabbler with no master/teacher should fail to produce any particularly usable items at first if he has no idea what he's doing, whereas a grand master would rarely, if ever, screw up.

2) The 'failure to gain experience' chart. I'm thinking maybe it could be less of a straight line and more of a ... bell shape. So, dwarves would learn rather easily in the middle skill level range, but have trouble getting into a profession without teaching/books and similarly have difficulty improving their art past a certain point without drastic measures. I'm not sure where being mentored/reading about a skill would fall on this, though.

Thoughts?

As I see it, you are worried that a dorf would never get past grand master because there the statistical inability for a dorf to gain levels past grandmaster. He shouldn't lose his grandmaster status because of the negetive EXP, I agree, and yes, there should be a way to get to legendary that isn't, "be lucky." maybe traits could allow for the loss of EXP to be lessened.

Frankly, the concept of negative XP has negative basis in reality. We don't forget from our mistakes, we learn from them. It's nothing more than an irritatingly gamey way to slow skill advancement randomly, and has the additional downside of sometimes leading to dwarves lowering their skills by sheer bad luck.

[Neonivek]

Well I never really agreed with the ideas in this thread itself but more or less agreed with the concept that not everyone is going to become a legendary farmer no matter how long they farm.

Since people are capable of performing actions without learning or by learning very little.

Also Earning Negative Experience points makes sense just not the way anyone is handling it. Earning negative experience points reflects more or less learning the wrong things that hurt your progression through a field rather then helping it, yet something you don't immediately throw away.

It being caused by failure is odd to me unless these failures actually cause outright brain damage.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I still think that having dwarves have a 1/x chance to revert to a lower XP level makes no sense, however low the chance--and it's not that low if you just became, say, a master.

[Neonivek]

I still think that having dwarves have a 1/x chance to revert to a lower XP level makes no sense, however low the chance--and it's not that low if you just became, say, a master.

I agree.

It should be more about Dwarves either hitting their plateau or chosing to be satisfied with their level of competency.

[Manveru Taurënér]

The mining one kinda makes sense, the blocking one definitely does (and should happen with otht crafting(, but fishers are hauling up tiny fish. Cavies are not small enough to be vermin; all fishable fish are. Being pulled in by such a fish would be, well...

Well, these are the same fish that used to pull in and devour dwarves back in the day. It'd probably be more sensible to restrict it to fishing in savage biomes though where really large and potentially deadly fish might reside more often. And in case your dwarves are fishing down in the caverns there's all manner of large creatures that might either pull you in or get attracted and attack a fisherdwarf if they aren't careful. Lots of stuff that'd also make fishing more interesting as a whole. Getting slightly off-topic now though I guess ^^

[GreatWyrmGold]

The mining one kinda makes sense, the blocking one definitely does (and should happen with otht crafting(, but fishers are hauling up tiny fish. Cavies are not small enough to be vermin; all fishable fish are. Being pulled in by such a fish would be, well...

Well, these are the same fish that used to pull in and devour dwarves back in the day.

No, they aren't. Vermin fish have never done that.

It'd probably be more sensible to restrict it to fishing in savage biomes though where really large and potentially deadly fish might reside more often. And in case your dwarves are fishing down in the caverns there's all manner of large creatures that might either pull you in or get attracted and attack a fisherdwarf if they aren't careful. Lots of stuff that'd also make fishing more interesting as a whole. Getting slightly off-topic now though I guess ^^

You mean, being attacked by carp, sharks, pond grabbers, or whatever? That does sometimes happen.

[Manveru Taurënér]

True, forgot that carps etc can't actually be fished, but that's just something that needs fixing then ^^

[GreatWyrmGold]

Yeah, but it would take skilled or strong fishers to do that. Also strong line.

[SuicideJunkie]

Yeah, but it would take skilled or strong fishers to do that. Also strong line.

Fishing for carp? Military with high swimming skill and sharp axes. An underwater ballista might be useful too.

I note that there is an XP bonus for fighting someone much better than you, yet no penalty for fighting harmless things.

Seems to me there should be penalties for doing boring everyday things.
Once you've carved a hundred blocks, there should be no challenge left, and nothing to really learn about masonry in doing that task.  It doesn't even have quality levels.

[GreatWyrmGold]

You could learn efficiency, but not quality,. I agree with you overall, except for the underwater balista,