Skill Rust - Which Option Do You Play With?

[Robik]

Off, because all variants are stupid.

Now, if there was a variant that worked like:

[ul][li]skills would accumulate rust over time, up to some reasonable cap [/li]
[li]rust would slow your training - crafting / reading would have to reduce rust before it would start to raise your skill by full amount again (you training ‘xp’ would be divided between skill gain and rust removal) [/li][/ul]

This would ensure that you never ever loose what you trained and that you would always get some benefit from training. You would just need bit more time to get into something, after prolonged pause.

[Tineen]

I use IntCap myself, I like the fact that skills will degrade and i’m of the opinion that it lowers fast due to the character simply not learning sufficiently from their experiences, makes sense. If I was stuck in a zombie ridden hell hole my mind would be on other matters then whether my last stitching session could have been marginally improved by a good cross weave.

But we all play with different settings so there’s no right or wrong choice just a gameplay style.

[Caprice]

I’ve always left it on. The Int-based version, anyway.

I generally play characters with decent Int, which’d more-or-less halve the rate I lose skill, and it can be a bit irritating to get those last few levels in Electronics if I want to make CBMs. My combat skills usually soft-cap at around 7. I haven’t found either of those to be a serious problem.

As to those complaining about the “realism” - if we were going to make things realistic when it came to skills, how were you planning on acquiring them in the first place?

[TheFlame52]

Off, because I like having 51 melee and 60 mechanics. I EARNED that shit.

[Mad_Jackal]

I always turn it off. It’s more annoying than anything.

[Valpo]

Off, because I like having 51 melee and 60 mechanics. I EARNED that shit.

If you achieve it with skill rust on you earned it more.

[Chaz]

I play with it off because I have a hard enough time surviving without adding on the possibility of losing skills. There was one game I played with skill rust on (note: this was before capped/intcapped were things, I think) where I lost a skill point in first aid on day 1, because I had no need to use it since I wasn’t injured yet.

I might consider playing with intcap, but first I need to learn to survive the new spring.

[Valpo]

Just started an normal scenario with 0.1 item spawn 2.5 monster spawn and skill rust to int cause cap is for the weak >:D. Named that survivor after my grandmother. 8 str 10 dex 12 in 8 per.
Good thing i started with some matches totaly starting raging fires to warm up and roast zombies :3

edit: i just found a flaming eye looking at me… well if i get the sporeinfectionby the induced telesickness i ll most likely die … rawr.

[Almightyquad]

I play with it off, since I mostly casually play it.

[BigLie]

Off. Completely off. I play with 91-day seasons and I cannot be bothered to practice changing a tire, bandaging wounds, cooking, tailoring, searching bushes, and fighting all at the same time to prevent my skills from degrading. In real life a person would not lose their skills and forget techniques that quickly, especially in an intense survival situation.

This.
I play with IntCap though. Considering to try playing with skill rust set to Off.

[Bonevomit]

It plateus at 7, so it’s not so bad for super high skills.

In my opinion, if you can handle making it so far in the game that skill rust actually matters, you can handle skill rust.

[Coolthulhu]

I played with IntCap up until now, but I realized that there is no actual reason to have it at anything but off.

It’s not challenging in any way, it’s purely a matter of re-doing some trivial-but-tedious actions every time you wake up.
It’s not a matter of playing casually vs. being a huge pro, it’s a matter of wanting to actually play a game vs. wanting to waste some time.

It only makes sense in early game when acquiring crafting ingredients is actually a problem, any fight can be the last one and light can be a rare resource guarded by powerful enemies.
By midgame you can stop all effects of skill rust by mindlessly re-assembling few items, missing zlave’s face (due to torso encumbrance) with a katana and then a morningstar, firing few guns, using a fire drill to start a fire, talking to a nearby NPC and trading something with nearly 0 value and taking a 5 second dive in the water.
Out of those, only last 3 skills have a requirement a midgame survivor will not be able to trivially fulfill (a NPC and a deep water tile). Unless you’re playing with no zombie rez mod (you should), in which case melee skill rust requires some more tedium (keeping a trapped animal/skeleton to miss) but no more skill.

[AngryFrenchKanadian]

What made you realize that even IntCap was too tedious? On the surface it seems like the perfect compromise.

[Coolthulhu]

Still forces me to re-train skills I care about after waking up. This is trivial and pointless in case of crafting skills.
With IntCap I just have to gather all crafting ingredients for one big crafting binge to level up. Or face the tedium of keeping it from rust.

For attack skills it doesn’t really matter, because early on skills don’t rust much and later on skill level isn’t an issue. So this time not tedious, but still pointless.

For me game design looks like this: if it doesn’t require skill and can easily be made automatic, it should be automatic.
Preventing skill rust is a low-cost manual action that requires no skill, so it goes against what I want from a game.

[raccoon]

[quote=“Bonevomit, post:31, topic:7911”]It plateus at 7, so it’s not so bad for super high skills.

In my opinion, if you can handle making it so far in the game that skill rust actually matters, you can handle skill rust.[/quote]

This is how I feel. I keep skill rust at the vanilla setting.

Aside from early on in the game, I don’t grind my skills. I just use them naturally, as needed, and let my character develop however his story has him develop.

The game is balanced so that having about 7 levels in a skill makes you an expert, and 10 levels makes you world class expert. If your character actually uses a skill naturally in his/her daily life, they’ll attain world-class skill in less than a year, and keep it. If you don’t use it all the time, then you still are able to get an expert level of skill, eventually.

Skill rust only seems annoying if you’re grinding and micro-managing those skills. If anything, becoming a world-class expert seems too easy.

[StopSignal]

Off. Like the game.

[Shadowchaser]

I prefer leaving skill rust off for the simple reason that it becomes irritating to maintain every skill during periods where that skill is not really applicable, thus just forcing me to waste time setting up artificial situations to “train” a skill my character has already mastered just so I don’t forget how to, say, change a tire or whatnot just because my car has sat undamaged for a week or two.

And yes, there’s the IntCap setting, which is a fine compromise, but I’ve more than once found reason to stop training a skill at a percentage for whatever reason. If I cannot find time to get back to it for a couple of days (say I had to manage an emergency food shortage after dealing with an unexpected wandering NPC stealing my stuff, or had to fight a running battle through a town because I attracted a monster I didn’t intend to and it took a day or two to be able to get back to my base and get set up again), I do not care to start all over and lose all that effort.

Or, heaven forbid, I forget how to make clothes because I spent a day cooking. With the new system for skillups requiring you to make high end items to increase high end skills, I don’t think I relish the idea of trying to maintain a bunch of skills at decent levels once the basics are done. And God help the person who suggests I should rebuild an entire shelter to relearn how to put up a wall or something.

In short… it’s less fun for me, so I turn it off.

Other people like the feature, so hey, great, I’m glad it’s there, but I’m more glad I can turn it off so it won’t bother me.

[Abbysynth]

Definitely off. Is it supposed to be ‘realistic’? it’s not. is it supposed to be fun? It’s not. I don’t understand why it’s a default setting if its entire purpose seems to be to increase the annoyance/difficulty level.

[Vorpal2]

Off.

On is too grindy for me. I don’t like having to re-grind my skills.

[Valpo]

obviously skill rust isn fit for the commen playstile. it apears like people want to achieve the highest possible skill and keep it forever. then skill rust will be a problem. i do not care about such things . if my skills degrade they do thats it… i just do not care to grinde against it. the game isn t forcing you to do anything directly… in the end your set goal is what forces your actions meaning yourself. to survive the game you ll not need to keep that many skills high up.
once i get the cbm i can lazyly get all skill i do not even need to master lvl… so easy. but i agree that standart settings should be fit for the common player.

although the system can probably be improved it still adds some more difficulty to the early game to me (in an interesting fashion not just tinkering with item and creature spawn which i do anyway :P)

perhaps i can suggest that intcap might be a nice middle way for people who wanna try the skill rust: you ll not forget something you where able to do just a day ago with this setting . you will however loose progress if you neglect your skills… think about it.