Reading is overpowered - what can be done about it?

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Reading is overpowered because:

  • It takes relatively little time for very high gain
  • You can read all day every day
  • Any focus or morale penalties can be offset with music, which might change the topic to “Music is overpowered”

I propose a two-fold solution:

  1. Put a hard cap on how much you can read per day. This could be a number of chapters limit. Three? Four? Eight? Or a simple time duration limit. This would substantially limit the skill gain speed, and it would force more routine reading. This could also be made completely optional, and implemented as a mod. The cap would manifest as a status effect, such as “Tired of reading”, and while that is active, you wouldn’t be allowed to read any books that grant skills or melee techniques, but you WOULD be able to read novels and such.

  2. Nerf music. Drop the max effect from 50 to 20. Or even start gaining negative morale after several hours of music. No one can listen to music the entire day, and one would eventually look forward to some silence. Status effect “Tired of music”?

Additionally: related traits:
“Book Junkie”. Anyone with this trait would HAVE TO read something every day or face penalties. (INT, PER, morale?)
“Heavy Reader”. Allows higher reading allowance (chapters per day limit).
Both would be incompatible with “Illiterate” but compatible with “Fast Reader” and “Slow Reader”.

2

Make skills level slower, reduce the number of recipes learned and//or raise the requirement for learning them, restrict how far a book can take you, and more focus drain, require practical experience to learn a recipe/level up, require books be read before you can try a recipe.

Books are safe though, but not exaclty OP. You try leveling up computers or high-level skills with purely applied lessons.

Make multiple copies or editions of a book that contain differing recipies. If more people turnd on skill rust, books would be a little more useful too. Topping of my knowledge is something I do regularly.

3

Against “tired of reading”.
It would most likely be tedious, as with all “oh fuck I forgot to x yesterday” (vitamins, NPC training). It would just mean the book binges would be book+crafting binges instead.

Music nerf could be good. 50 morale is what you get for snorting cocaine, music shouldn’t give as much as cocaine.
Vehicle music could provide a higher bonus because of all the pumping bass (that attracts all sorts of party animals).
No “tired of music”, that would be tedious to manage.

The book junkie trait would be very easy but tedious to manage. Reading novels takes 15 minutes or so, so negligible game time, but significant player annoyance.

Book nerf should involve strict limits, not time stretching. For example, each 2 points of intelligence below requirement dropping max skill level that can be learned from the book by 1.

4

This I agree with. Currently one could gain 1 skill point in 6 hours. Which makes 4 points in 24 hours. That’s a tad high. That’s assuming each chapter takes 30 minutes and you gain 8% each chapter (not exact math, but close enough). 1 skill point per day would be generous, IMO. That’s for entry/medium level books. Levels 6-10 could take 2-5 days per level, even longer, for normal/average readers.

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:3, topic:11439”]Against “tired of reading”.
It would most likely be tedious, as with all “oh fuck I forgot to x yesterday” (vitamins, NPC training). It would just mean the book binges would be book+crafting binges instead.[/quote]
OK, but that would happen only if we’d limit reading to a small amount. I just want to put a stop to endless reading. It’s just too easy to swipe a few books and a ton of food and isolate yourself, and bit later emerge either as an overpowered or unjustifiably advanced character. The reading limit could be comfortably high, too, like 8 or 12 hours. Then there would be only little “lost” study time per day. There are no time limits in the game either really, so why not take a week to finish a book. There is no hurry. It’s the mentality that “I lost reading time” that is slightly flawed, and should be combated simply as a principle. Or maybe I’m just a lazy bum. Also, Adderall, caffeine pills or energy drinks could reset that limit, or increase the allowance.

I admit that book binges would then turn into something else, but there’s plenty to do other than crafting or reading. Go scouting, repair your car, go hunt/fish/forage. Or simply wait a few hours staring at the corner until you’re sleepy! :smiley:

Well… I mean… Would I be annoyed if I unexpectedly met the daily limit? It might catch the player off-guard if it’s a hidden gauge. Even so, it’s just one day. I just might shift my reading habits to morning/afternoon aka starting to read right after waking up until limit is met. It’s a question of adaptation and accepting new routines.

I like the strict limits but we disagree with the time stretching. I would want both the strict limits and stretching (slower study). There’s also an issue, though. How to deal with INT boosting drugs? Should the reading stop as soon as INT drops below the limit or is it OK to finish the chapter or even allow reaching the next level? Or should we just look at base INT and ignore bonuses? Or allow the use of Adderall (or similar lasting drug) as a designed study drug?

===

Could it possible, as a quick fix, to make a mod that halves all reading speed, or doubles the chapter lengths?

5

Adding limits would cause the whole “I lost reading time” thing. There is a hurry - food limits, zombies evolving etc. If there was no hurry, there would be no reason to limit skill gain from books.
Having limits be high would also cause it not to really limit book gain by itself.

I admit that book binges would then turn into something else, but there's plenty to do other than crafting or reading.

That still sounds like an artificial limit. “Go do something else”. It wouldn’t solve the problem of holing up with books, only make it take longer. Book-locked skills would stay book-locked, low-level skill books would suffer, player would be forced to alternate between book reading and foraging taking more player time.

I’d rather just make it pure time stretching, with no artificial limits.

Also, Adderall, caffeine pills or energy drinks could reset that limit, or increase the allowance.

That’s also a special case where a more general solution would be better. It should be more about focus than specific items - that’s what focus is for.
I recall someone proposing Adderall to lock focus at some moderate level. That would work here.

How to deal with INT boosting drugs?

I’d use the base morale, maybe with the boost for bionic or some weird mutations (since those last long enough for player to adjust).

6

So, being able to become an expert in anything within a week just by reading books, is OP. Also it is not really realistic. For someone to reach the equivalent of lvl 6 onwards to any discipline, a week with is not nearly enough. It takes not only reading but practice (mind practice or body practice or both).

Implementing any ‘tired-of-reading’ mechanic will limit the speed at which a book can be read but it will also make book reading another chore as Coolthulhu points out.
And it will not solve the real problem, that just books shouldn’t be enough for world-class skill gain.

So keeping in mind all these, i would propose to limit learning books in a way where even after reading a book, you will not attain the skill unless you practice it!
Maybe the best would be to do a partial application of this. E.g. book learning until lvl 3-4 works as before. Training or books.
But for higher skill levels books will not be enough. Training will work just as before, but books will give only a portion of the XP needed to level a skill.

This will not be trivial to design and balance. Here is an idea to start from:
Two exp pools for each skill should exist simultaneously. Book learning will fill one pool while learning-by-doing will fill the other.
The sum of these will get added to determine a skill gain, and both are subject to skill rust (but at different rates).
If the book learning pool gets capped at higher skill levels, just reading a book won’t be enough to level up. Caps will have to be set manually and be skill specific (and sensible).

Also i will argue that there should be some kind of synergy between the book learning pool and the skill level. (meaning that having 100% book xp towards next skill level should increase the effective skill by one, thus reading that book will be making the application of the skill easier - but will not allow you to read the next book and go up to next skill level without practice)

EDIT - slight changes in form…

7

Back to the tired of reading idea, I think if it had a marginally increasing negative morale effect it could work better. The more you read the more increasingly bored of reading you’d become. This means music wouldn’t be overpowered after a certain point and would encourage other moral boosters or other means to gain experience.

That said, I think it would be a bad idea to have a strict cap on how much you can read. It’s like studying for a exam deadline. You get mega bored but you know you have to read regardless, much like if you get a nasty parasite in the game. You need to learn cooking 4 to make a nice drug and nothing would stop you from needing to read but you will always be bored reading a jargon filled book

8

i think reducing amout of skill what you learn from book will be enought
big problem with book reading is that its mostly better than practice (exception: mechanics, its easy, after you learn under the hood you are master at it because by just salvaging cars and constructing your deathmobile you will learn a lot)
worst problem is first aid because books are only sane way of learning it

9

I like things the way they are.

10

Neither do I have any big problems with learning speed really.

I think that what we really need is a better way to get practical skill, raising the crafting skills without books is practically impossible once you are past level 7 (mechanics is the exception).

Then we can consider serious nerfs to book learning

11

Mechanics doesn’t go by the same scale as other skills. I’m a level 69 mechanic and a level 30ish is what a level 10 is for other skills.

12

Give skill books a charge like regular for-fun books?

13

Two problems: that would mean consuming high-level books at low level would prevent using them to get high levels and it would mean copies of the same book would let you learn more (makes sense from gameplay perspective, but is not realistic at all).

14

I don’t think a mp3 player nerf is particularly controversial, so let’s go with that and see what that does to maintaining focus. Ideally studying should be un-fun enough already that you’ll run out of focus after a significant study session and it will be better to do something else with your time while your focus recovers.

15

I think a way reading could be reduced is if there were other ways to learn skills. For example, you can do basically nothing with a vehicle until mechanics skill 1 is reached. And I think anyone with enough common sence or IQ or atleast 5 should be able to disconnect a battery or atleast take off jumper cables, which were put on by said person in the first place.

16

If you have NPCs on, they can read to you, that’s

another way to learn skills

17

a really very OP way.
i mean, getting the trust of an NPC with one/more skills 6-9 is not that easy, but once its done, you will be gaining ~2 skill levels a day until he teaches you all he knows.
That’s faster even than books when you go over lvl 4-5 in a skill, plus NPC’s can teach you way more than a single book can.

Again i’d suggest making practice mandantory and teaching/books optional in order to gain levels. Combining teaching/books with practice should be much faster than just practice ofc.

PS. since we are talking about balance, IIRC the firefighters manual (the one that +fabrication) takes you to fab 9 and has a reading speed of just 10mins.

18

Neither do I have any big problems with learning speed really.

I think that what we really need is a better way to get practical skill, raising the crafting skills without books is practically impossible once you are past level 7 (mechanics is the exception).

Then we can consider serious nerfs to book learning[/quote]
^^^^^
The problem isn’t books, its just that every other way of learning is to slow and books are the only efficient way to learn them
Even combat skills IMO are better to learn through books

19

[quote=“HazDawg, post:7, topic:11439”]Back to the tired of reading idea, I think if it had a marginally increasing negative morale effect it could work better. The more you read the more increasingly bored of reading you’d become. This means music wouldn’t be overpowered after a certain point and would encourage other moral boosters or other means to gain experience.

That said, I think it would be a bad idea to have a strict cap on how much you can read. It’s like studying for a exam deadline. You get mega bored but you know you have to read regardless, much like if you get a nasty parasite in the game. You need to learn cooking 4 to make a nice drug and nothing would stop you from needing to read but you will always be bored reading a jargon filled book[/quote]

Though I personally thought books were fine the way they were I like this idea best if it needs nerfing ^
Early books might keep current moral stats while late levelers give increased moral penalties. (think of it as learning cool fun things about subject you are interested in vs pure textbook studying grad school style) Messing with the morale on either side of the equation sounds like the best first move, though… prob music nerf first.

20

Increasing morale malus of high lvl textbooks on top of music nerf would not hit the problem in its root, but may be good enough without breaking anything, i guess.