Reading is overpowered - what can be done about it?

[kevin.granade]

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.

[Codeslamer]

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.

[Zireael]

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

another way to learn skills

[jcd]

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

another way to learn skills

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.

[CritMedic]

[quote=“TheFlame52, post:9, topic:11439”]I like things the way they are.

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

[Litppunk]

[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]

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.

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.

[jcd]

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.

[Malaxxor]

To be honest, I would really like to see skill gain through books be severly nerfed while at the same time the skill gain through crafting should be buffed a lot. The way I see it, books should be the slow but ‘secure’ way to gain skill, while actually training the skill should be the faster, but more expensive/dangerous alternative.

I think that this is much better resembling real life, as I can’t really see someone learning more about chaning a tire from a book than from first hand experience. Maybe in some other fields, like chemistry f.ex. learning through books should give a bonus, but most skills should really have a higher gain from “learning by doing”.

[Litppunk]

I was about to argue against this… but Since a lot of recipes are book-only, I guess this makes sense… although, seems to me like regular crafting is good enough and does not need any buffs.

[Weyrling]

Quite frankly, the speed that a character learns things from books is ludicrous.

I don’t know about you guys, but reading a textbook over the course of a day or two would not make me comfortable with most of the crap my character does on a regular basis: Home-made explosives, hacking into military bunkers, setting up mine fields, programming manhacks, etc
These are not things even a week’s worth of effort should let me do nigh flawlessly.

I assume there’s some level of time compression involved here, but the seasons don’t seem to be going by THAT quickly.

[Zireael]

If you’re using default construction time and seasons, one day is closer to one week IRL.

[Litppunk]

not to mention no one said anything about character being comfortable with these things. It is amazing what you can accomplish if you approach things as “this is something I can do, and I will learn it” instead of “OMG this is so overwhelming how I ERMURGD AGGGG so frustrating” Its amazing how much thought capacity people waste stressing over simple things instead of fixing/doing them and then moving on. If we consider that our characters fall into this category, possible a psychological accident on their part. Then the speed with which they learn through necessity makes more sense. Necessity probably teaches faster than anything.

[BeerBeer]

If you’re using default construction time and seasons, one day is closer to one week IRL.

Ah. There’s a time progression paradox right there - the day-night cycle is still 24 hours. You can easily read a book in that time in the game. Reading a book in a week might be doable IRL, but reading a book in a day is not. I for one can’t really play with the pretense that each day passed is an entire week.

I feel chapter length multiplier should be in the options. I think that would solve a lot.

[Miloch]

Random thought about it… How about setting up a hidden… maybe not hidden variable. Knowledge or whatever. As you read it gets filled up. When it maxes out you need to go do something else for a while and give all the stuff you learn time to process in your head. Maybe with a bonus for doing stuff with the stuff you just learned…? Aka the knowledge stat goes down faster if you use the mechanics you just learned from a book. Why? Cause actually using it would give you direct return and input on what you just learned.

[deoxy]

[quote=“jcd, post:6, topic:11439”]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![/quote]

Some time ago, I suggested breaking each skill out into “knowledge” and “application” (or some other such naming), with knowledge gained easily from books and application gained only from execution. When knowledge is higher than application, application gets a bonus to learning speed. When they are the same, everything is pretty much like it is now. When application is higher than knowledge, there is a skill gain penalty, BUT there is some small knowledge gain as well (such that a character with no books at all would keep knowledge a level or two behind just from execution). Skill checks are based entirely on the “application” part of the skill - knowledge is only useful for learning recipes, improving application skill, and possibly avoiding waste when failing to make something.

That would be a lot more realistic way to model it - book knowledge is quite useful but still completely insufficient on its own.

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.

While I agree that a nerf to the mp3 player is a good thing, I don’t think that really addresses what’s being discussed here. When I binge read in the game, my focus gets destroyed… but it doesn’t seem to hurt my learning from the book much, if at all, and I almost always sleep afterwards, anyway, so focus is pretty much irrelevant to me for book reading purposes.

I do tend to play high-INT characters (like 12+), so it’s possible that I’m missing some behaviour at lower INT levels where it matters.

[Zireael]

I believe “application” and “knowledge” was mentioned by Kevin as an ultimate goal of a skills rework, but said rework hasn’t happened yet due to intense work on Z-levels.

Also, patient treatment records seem to have a minimum intelligence of 0.

(And I also play relatively high Int chars + Fast Reader)

[Litppunk]

Since I play with full skill rust on, I have to play with high int characters Or I am doomed to early game. Probably.

[Synthetic]

I’m strongly opposed to anything that turns reading into even more of a grind. The “read books until you are capable” stage of survival is the most tedious stage of the game already. Anything done to make it seem “not worth it” will only make it less fun.

What I’d like to see is to have the player forced to gain a level through application for every two or so level gained through reading.

For example:
Lets say I start at a mechanics skill of 1. I then raid a library and score a ton of mechanics books. I read some of them and level mechanics up by 2, gaining a skill level of 3.
At this point, I should be forced to get to level 4 by putting that knowledge to use. Fixing cars etc. Once I have reached level 4, I can then read again to reach a mechanics level of 6, and so on.
One level of applied knowledge per each two levels of book knowledge.

This way, the player will gain a huge boon from reading, but also be forced to take breaks from reading to actually go out and survive for awhile.
This also has the added bonus of making your starting skills far more important, since it raises how much knowledge the first book that you find can get you.

[BeerBeer]

I’m strongly opposed to anything that turns reading into even more of a grind. The “read books until you are capable” stage of survival is the most tedious stage of the game already. Anything done to make it seem “not worth it” will only make it less fun.

You are right about that reading is a grind. That it is. However, some of that can be overcome by conscious preparation - a quiet reading spot and plenty of food. Being at a remote location, even an evac shelter basement gives a nice boost to game performance. Time just flies by when there is little environment to process. Although sometimes there might an ant nest nearby to slow down the flow of time.

I guess it would be nice if eating and drinking would happen automatically while reading. I find those two to interrupt my reading most often. Also, flicking of lights and timing the sleep properly.

I mean, really, if reading starts to feel like a complete hassle, you could always use the debugging functions to give yourself the proper amount of skills after you’ve found the books, thereby skipping the grind. Then let the time fly by and destroy some of your food.

Passive reading might be worth exploring too as an idea. Basically it’d be automated reading. You would carry a book around and the character would read it whenever, slowly over time. It’d be a nice companion to active and focused reading.

[Coolthulhu]

[quote=“Synthetic, post:31, topic:11439”]I’m strongly opposed to anything that turns reading into even more of a grind. The “read books until you are capable” stage of survival is the most tedious stage of the game already. Anything done to make it seem “not worth it” will only make it less fun.

What I’d like to see is to have the player forced to gain a level through application for every two or so level gained through reading.[/quote]

Read-grind-read would add a weird metagame part to reading, where you’d skip reading on “easy” levels and only read through the hard ones. You could lock yourself out of book leveling if you read it at wrong level.

Additionally, it would make melee combat skill books even less useful than they are now.