The problem with Discipline isn't just having to learn focusmind. You need at least Fabled (preferably Trans, of course) Discipline to do well against any class capable of paralyzation. Several classes can paralyze-on-demand. Lowing Focusmind to Expert would be nice because you'd be able to get Focusmind sooner, but you'd still need to learn up to Fabled+ to be effective against mages/warriors/monks/druids/hexens.

Or a Guardian with Elohora's or Luciphage's symbol. So yeah, just about everyone.

Discipline's necessity for curing paralysis is overrated unless you're a monk (since monks need to be able to cure it fast to have it not break forms). I did fine as Ciban with very low discipline. That said, I agree with the sentiment of the OP, environment is a pretty craptacular skill and I mostly regret bothering to learn it to mythical.

What of those who've spent the credits/lessons to trans both skills however? How do you propose making it so that they aren't shafted for paying much more to trans two skills which ended up becoming one and those who pay less to trans that same one once? I'm all for combining, sure, but not if my lessons end up being wasted. Unless, of course, reimbursement of lessons/credits is possible for such a change.

Think they could just do what they did when Glamours/Phantasms came out. Everyone will get all their lessons from environment and discipline back and relearn the new skill from the beginning.

This just can't happen as simple as that becase galmours and phantasms replaced one existing skill, but this would required two seperate skills to be made into one. Which, as already been said, will cause a bit or trouble for those who have transcended both of the skills (or invested lessons at least). First of all they are from different lessons pools, to which pool will the lessons be returned (if not in common pool) also, keep in mind that there are Omnitrans people who just won't be able to use them anyway, even if they come back in common pool.

Then there is the problem that despite the fact how much the staff loves us, Lusternia is still a commercial mud. Why would they want to earn less money (more people could stick around is not really a valid argument since no one can promise that).

Yes, it would be nice. Yes, environment is pretty useless. Yes, there could be more people interested in PvP with Focus Mind in Expert (honestly, would this be enough? after half a year people would be asking for 1sec focus body at expert as well).
Will anything change? I don't think so...

Normalizing focus body time has come up on the envoy wiki a few times. I can't think of what happened to the last attempt.

Easy! Create a new common skill, call it Enviscipline. It is a straight merger of both skills, and new players start with it. At the same time, Environment is switched to the Willpower lesson pool.

Older players can forget Discipline and Environment. The standard (Non-full!) lesson refund would not necessarily get everyone all of their abilities back, but everyone would come out of it with more abilities than they had before (Except maybe a few borderline cases.) Anyone with both Tumble and Focus Mind would not only still have both, they would have more Environment skills.

Then correct the biggest flaws in this game's combat: Move Focus Mind down to Master and make the focus body speed benefit ramp up faster with diminishing returns at later skill ranks.

Problem solved. No need to thank me.

Rejected as being "confusing" I think.

...try again, then, that's a pretty inane-sounding reason.

There have been worse reasons

It's pretty bad/crazy that Lusternia is the only IRE game that requires you to trans a skill to effectively cure one affliction.

Just make focus body the same amount time for everyone. It's pretty silly that it's not already like that.

Then I'd want some credits back

Oh! Now I remember! We envoyed it to scale based on skill ranks instead of lessons invested and brought up the inept time.

Shouldn't EVERYTHING scale like that, though? Otherwise why would anyone learn, say, less than 600 or so lessons into Resilience or Magic, etc.

Yeah, and no one liked it or something. It was on my "notes" page forever under "things I wish I could get implemented," but it never went through. If I remember right, Roark didn't like the idea.

I agree. That is all.