IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Cathach, this is true -- however, it does NOT charge you skill points for the parts you already have.  All you get is new stanzas to combine.  This is a good thing, not a bad thing.  I.e. if the Action: SPELLX(4) which contains action stanza spellx(4)+counterparts time(2)+sap(5) costs 10 sp and the Upgrade Spell costs 3 sp, once you have bought the Upgrade the cost of Action SPELLX(4) with the same stanzas in it, is reduced to 7 sp.

For my part I feel that if you buy an action without looking inside it to find out what it has in it you are not practicing due diligence.  In this case, however, the game automatically saves you at least the cost of duplicating a stanza.

As for labeling Action choices as "skills" you run into nomenclature conflict with the actual skill improvements for primary and secondary attributes and the increase of level (commonly called skill level in an activity).

Remember, an Action is castable/usable as purchased (not necessarily in the most effective fashion, but it can be). An Upgrade buys you a stanza/brick that can only be used in combination with other stanzas to make a new Action.

This is what other people have been trying to say.

-- Bittty

P.S. Mjollren, you are right.
PPS Request for the buggy client support should go into Support forums or into a ticket for responce by the CSRs.

Now you are right about them functioning as designed, but ask any CSR how many issues are reported with, for example Heal Life, where the brick and complete actions are named similar but numbered differently from the icon titles and needlessly repurchased by the unsuspecting new player. Playablility is when I buy the upgrade, the icon is renumbered appropriately and the spells dissappear from the trainers list. This way there is no chance the noob player will make an error and waste valuable skill points repurchasing actions (which is irreversable).

I'm all for preventing irreversible maistakes, but in this case maybe it happens once in silan then you ask what the difference is between spell and upgrade... case closed, im sorry if you lost 7 or 10 skill points, there will be many more. even if you buy the full spell after getting the upgrade, you still get the new cedits

You can never purchase the same thing twice, the moment you have it, its cost is deduced from other stanzas available. At most, you buy something you don't particularly need at that moment.

You most certainly can buy the same spell twice! You can buy the magic upgrade, then you can purchase the whole spell for the same thing. I am trying to help you fix the interfaces to work for better playability. I am looking for an improvement here. Many of you see have a high tolerance for issues, because you are maybe used to them. I seek user interface improvements, and I do appreciate your criticism of my ideas.

I consider myself to be very intolerant :)

The difference between the spell and action upgrade is that the spell includes new credits, as has already been said. The spell version will remain if you have not purchased one of the credits that it contains. If you accidentially buy the spell after upgrading the action you do get those credits, so you haven't bought the same thing twice...

With all due respect, how was I using the upgrade in the first place? If you consider that this is happening to players, it is because they already had the credits. There are no improved credits given with a spell the any player did not already have at the upgrade. Again, I suggest that when the magic upgrade is learned, then the comparable spell be removed from the trainer's list as well. This will help eliminate misunderstandings of what a player has or needs. This is not such an issue with the other trainers, BTW.

-Bittymacod
Thanks for your comments. As far as the menu in the lower right, I only suggested "skill" to illustrate the problem. The word "actions" is used twice on the same menu. I would like to see another appropriate word choosen, along with the "minor" menu reorganization I proposed.

The problem is that many new players buy upgrades without knowing how to use it, just because it's cheaper than buying an action. But buying an upgrade doesn't update your actions automatically, you have to edit actions yourself to include the new upgrade. A pop-up should explain that fact when someone is about to buy an upgrade.

Exactly!

If you buy the stanza only, you do it from a tab called "Upgrades". You can see in the buy window that you are only getting a stanza. You can see in the "Actions" tab that you are getting some credits along with the stanza. Further, the sage tells you during mission 3 or 4 that you should tinker with the stanza system.

My 2 dappers is that Silan works excellently well, in that it weeds out people who don't pay attention.

I made a new Silan toon, leveled to 10 in magic.

Buying Heal Life 1 (stanza+range credit 2+sap credit 3) costs 23 skill points. Sap Gift and Stamina Gift cost 23 points too, but they use range credit 2; after you buy Heal Life, their cost goes down to 20. They still show that credit in their composition, but you already have it, and you are not paying for it.

Further, I buy Heal Life 2 (stanza+range credit 3+sap credit 7+time credit 2), costing 16 SP. Acid Damage 2 costs 16 SP before I buy Heal Life 2, and costs 7 skill points after that, to accurately reflect that I have acquired a number of the component credits.

You never pay for the same thing twice, although that thing might still be listed on the action and you seem to "buy" it. Again, people who don't read or pay attention, etc..

Kalean -- If you look at the Upgrade the description says exactly that.

everytime i get a new skill, craft or otherwise i find it filling empty slots in my hotbar, i dont' want this by default, i want to fill them myself, that might be fine for the first "page" to help new players in silan, but it shouldn't fill empty slots in "hidden" pages with 5 different jewel craft Q's (like when i finally got tryker plans, it filled almost an entire page with q10, q20, q30, all the way to q160, that's 16 slots that i didn't need filled. please look into this and correct it, surely there's no point in this.

wow just read the page back log, talk about "didn't pay attention in silan" or "i only did the fight missions in silan" issue, you shouldn't worry as much about ppl that don't do all of silan, they arn't as likely to stick with the game on the ML anyway, to be honest, i think you should have to do silan all the way through before you can leave, i know there are some that will say that's stupid for high lvl players that start over or create a new toon in a new slot or even make an alt, but let's face it (i know this is a fact i've done it) you can do silan from start to finish in less then 48 hours if you know about playing on the ml well, and why not kick back with the noob's that never have played and guide them while you make that new toon, not to mention this would cut down on alt's on the ML because let's face it, ML players don't like to do stuff like the silan missions, then they won't make alt's or bother to play anything but the mainland toon they already have, and honestly that's part of what hurts ryzom, because so many new players have to have so much help on the mainland learning the things they should have learned in silan, because you can choose with no warning that says "you will not be given this in-depth training on the ml at your own pace as you please" sure there are those of us that will help these toons to learn the things they missed in silan, but that's on our time, not theirs, where as the NPC's are ready and waiting for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (and just a note i've ran toons thought all of silan several times and then deleted them just to do it again to find out how long it takes, and that's not a solid 48 hours in real life, it's about 20 hours in real life for the experienced player.)

just my 2 dappers again.

No, the description doesn't explain that you have to edit actions yourself in order to use the upgrade. It just says the upgrade is a brick, and let's be honest that is not clear at all for someone who doesn't know the game. This system is very different from other games, this is normal that new players get confused.
I was thinking about a pop-up with more details about how to edit actions.There is a pop up like this that appear during missions, it should appear when someone buy an upgrade for the firs time.

as other's as well as myself have said, if they do all of the missions in silan and read what the npc's tell them, it's all explained there how to edit and such, however, i do understand now what your saying, and as a safeguard for players that do not complete all of silan i could see where a pop-up would help them to understand how to use the upgrade and what is required, but i can also see how another pop up could be an issue with players such as ourselves, given that we know how to do the edit and balance a stanza manually on our own, for those of us, we might get a little frustrated if the pop up required any interactions from the player, like clicking "ok" to remove the pop up to ensure it was read, which rolls right back around to paying attention in silan and doing everything there to learn it in the "training" sandbox. so it seams as i type this it's still about learning the game at the start of it, in silan, where these things are all explained by an NPC. note my quote about the cookie, if they don't read and do in silan, they are going to find that insted of a slap, it will be an all out beating.