Yes, I can. It's really quite simple:

In a believable fantasy world (and also the real world, past and present, for what that's worth), characters learn a trade because they wish to ply that trade. Learning a trade with the sole intention of forgetting it immediately so that you are left with its reward item is metagaming, pure and simple.

Really, the characters themselves should not know how much Charisma they have, how much Health they have, how many lessons they have, and things of that nature. They should not know that they have a SC and STAT card. You do, but the character does not. This is roleplaying 101.

Similarly, the characters themselves should not know that they can forget lessons, or even know what lessons are.

Now, does OOC show through IC in MUDs like Lusternia? Yes, it does. It is inevitable. But the trans trade skill items are particularly blatant.

My character has forgotten dozens of skills. He is QUITE well aware that one can learn something and then forget it entirely to make room for another. All of his defenses from the old skill and items from it stuck around. Totally IC.

Rika wanted jewellery not because of the making jewellery part, but the tierstone itself. She would be quite happy to switch trades knowing she can keep the tierstone.

You can call it IC if you wish, but I am not aware of any fantasy novel, movie, show, or really anything else other than computer games where characters can magically forget an entire wealth of knowledge.

Forgetting skills (or re-specing, whatever) is there to give players leeway in what they can do with their characters, and the object of a game is to have fun. Being completely locked into a choice would not be fun for the player. Why you believe this translates to in-character knowledge of having 3,274 lessons to spend and/or being able to somehow forget an entire body of knowledge like changing clothes is beyond my reckoning.

It's fun to have lots trans trade items.

If realism is really the concern, then you're complaining backwards. Realistically, you should be able to study many fields. Plenty of people do. No one made me FORGET COMPUTERSCIENCE before I was allowed to LEARN 15 MUSIC FROM PROFESSORSCHULMAN back in college. I guess Felicia really wants us to expand skillflex to remove the limits on how many simultaneous skills you can have!

A lot of different things would be fun to have, but that doesn't mean that the methods used to obtain them are appropriate or aren't essentially metagaming.

Some people think it's fun to level up every class in the game on the same character, to play multiple characters at one time, or to discuss South Park in public chat. That does not mean that doing these things is appropriate or doesn't constitute metagaming (multiplaying, for example).

It is my opinion that collecting multiple trans trade items is an inappropriate, metagaming aspect of Lusternia that happens to not be against the rules. Being allowable or fun doesn't change that one iota.

I agree!

If the people with multiple trans trade items actually have those skills, I would be much happier. In other words, if Joe Mage learns and keeps several different trades, then it makes IC sense for him to have three trans trade items.

EDIT: Anyway, it's pretty clear that no one, myself included, is willing to budge their opinion. At this point, we are splitting hairs, arguing the issue down to a nub, and rebutting every statement trying to prove one another wrong. Since most of this stuff hinges on personal opinion (of IC and OOC, metagaming or no, etc.), not fact, that's futile. So, no more rebutting for me.

Repeating myself, but I'm all for allowing characters to have active knowledge in howevermany trade skills are available to them. It's no more disbelievable than someone holding multiple disparate degrees.

I wasn't being sarcastic when I made the suggestion.

I completely agree with you.

I would be concerned about the economy losing its interdependency, but I tend to think that the number of characters with multiple concurrent trans trade skills (and also the number of such skills said characters have) would remain modest enough not to cause any serious harm.

It's not about having them, it's about using them. A lot of people have them solely for the trans item or for convenience. I haven't ever actively sold my herbs or my alchemy, I just have it for philosopher's stone and doing my own refills. Relatively few people actually merchant, whether it be one skill or many.

It would still affect the economy. For every character who picks up an additional trade, there's one less character in need of purchases from that trade. Even so, I think the upsides far outweigh the downsides.

Ditto. There are, in general, too few around that actively trade their tradeskills. For instance, I've been asking for a lorecrafter for the last three or four days, and I constantly see people asking for brewmeisters and enchanters (mostly cosmic ones).

I'll do lorecraft if you're not Glom. Elemental enchanters are nearly extinct, though.

I'm Glom And glum.

That's part of my qualm with the way things are now, IC/OOC stuff aside: I dislike the concept of an entire skill set that gets used and then discarded like trash, just to obtain one desirable thing from it. That doesn't mean I dislike the players who do it, nor the administrators who allow it, nor even the producer who designed it that way... it is a minor thing, I agree, but in my mind the fact that it occurs it is disappointing and cheapens the game a little bit.

Why? Well, I suppose I would like to think that crafting is a grand and enriching endeavor not unlike joining a guild and/or org. There are a dozen or so trade skills to choose from, specializations, you can form Cartels, submit designs, run a shop, advertise on the market, and so on and so forth. That is an exciting feature of Lusternia, and revolving door trans items are a fly in the ointment for me.

That was the essence of my original statement way back in Simple Questions where this started, and that hasn't changed... well, not much. I have made several conceessions, one of which is that this isn't a massively game-changing issue.

Note: This is a rebuttal-free post. I'm making a statement, not disputing anything.

It's certainly my plan to practice the trades I'm taking on the way to also getting some hunting/combat/etc. boosts. That's why I wish we could 1) keep city/commune cartel trademaster positions, and 2) switch tradeskills more often, since it wouldn't have combat balance impact, just economic impact.

But I bet a lot of people will just get the bonus and then never touch the skillset. There already have been people doing that for years now, and in a more exploitative-ish way than skillflex allows. I think skillflex will probably reduce how many people learn trade skillsets just for the boost and then never use anything else.

As another new player, I admit that I'm surprised to learn this.



However, I am doubtful of this. Indeed, it seems that the more trades people have access to, the more 'even' it is, as two individual trades are not necessarily even.



I agree with this. The problem I see isn't about balance; it's just that the process of mastering a skill, getting the item at the end and then forgetting the skill feels illegitimate, especially in a role-playing game.



Bearing all this in mind, I'd like to make a proposal. Please bear in mind that any numbers I bring up, I do so without, you know, knowing the numbers (and have deliberately picked easy ones). However, I don't think that detracts from the principle of the idea - they're just there to serve as placeholders, because if the concept is good I have confidence in the administration's ability to balance the numbers.

Aims: 'Legitimise' multiple trade items by making multiple trade skills accessible at a time and either disabling or destroying trade items not supported by their trade skills.
Limits: Do not reduce IRE's revenue.
Basic proposal: Allow multiple trade skills to be active at a time in exchange for a lesson 'maintenance cost'.
Elaboration: A character may always have one trade skill active for free. If they choose to temporarily or permanently forget that trade, another trade can be active for free.
Assuming that the estimate that a decaying trade item will last for a single year at most is accurate, it appears that under the current system a player can be expected to 'renew his subscription' to a trade skill every year to the tune of 50 credits (assuming that he doesn't care what trade he ends up with and so does not make any superfluous activations.
Under the proposal for a 'maintenance cost', this 'subscription rate' will probably go up significantly, as the character no longer just has an artifact-like item, but multiple trades available to him at a time. Call it 90 lessons.
Making use of the in-game calendar, there are approximately 30 Lusternian years to a real year. Thus, if we charge 3 lessons a Lusternian year to keep a trade skill active and make sure that any relevant trade items disappear if the trade skill should go dormant, that satisfies the aims and the limits of the proposal. The method of charging lessons can be decided if the concept is accepted, but options include a 'lesson bank' that needs to paid into, or directly taking lessons from the skill.
Fluff explanation: Maintaining multiple trades at once is taxing to a character, who must expend lessons to keep their skills sharp.

I would just like to take a moment to thank newbies for speaking up on the forums and presenting their views. Whether we agree with them or argue with you or what, I know personally I really appreciate the point of view, since I haven't been new to IRE in a decade or Lusternia in five years. It's nice to see the younger generation speaking up!

I did consider this the other day, and it is actually a quite powerful counter-argument against my side of the issue, for more reasons than you've mentioned (I'll get into that in a moment). I would have brought it up sooner, but I was away from the computer when it occurred to me, and I forgot about it.

Yes, I will now be arguing against myself, which any halfway-decent debater should be able to do.

If players are limited to one trans trade skill item, then what might occur is a gross overpopulation of trade skills that confer the "best" trans trade items. So theoretically, if Magic Tomes and Splendours were considered to be the best trans trade items for combat, you'd have a lot of Tailors and Bookbinders walking around, and a dearth of everything else. This would be bad for the economy, and would cheapen Tailoring and Bookbinding, since everyone and their sister would have one or the other.

Even now, Artisans are quite rare, in part because of their "bad" trans trade item. This would be greatly exacerbated if Artisans had no access to any other trans trade items.

So as things stand now, people can more-or-less choose the trans trade item(s) they want, and may additionally choose which trade skill they would actually enjoy practicing.





...Did I just win an argument with myself?