Category Efficiency

[Aerach]

Apologies if i'm being dense, but forum searches and a scouring of the Wiki are not helping me to understand this mechanic.

It implies (and ingame chat has said) that efficiency increases effective point investment, so having two points in a skill that has a 1.5 efficiency would give the the same bonuses as having 3 points in the skill. But spending my points in this way doesn't seem to... actually do anything. Certainly doesn't give the 3 point bonuses. I levelled a character and saved two category points, then spent quite a while messing around with how they were spent and could see no meaningful effect from spending them this way.

What am i missing? :<

[5k17]

Spending a category point on an unlocked category improves your mastery by 0.2. The effect of every point spent on a talent is multiplied by the mastery in its category (for most talent effects at least; for some, only the raw point investment counts). Masteries before category point investment range from 0.8 to 1.3, so the improvement is between 15% and 25%.

[Aerach]

TY. So I did understand it right, but for numeric bonuses and not tier ones? (Blinds targets at three points, becomes a beam at 3 points etc)

[Grey]

It can effect tiers as well. So 4 points in a talent with 1.3 mastery will give you equivalent 5.2 points in it, including effects that enable as level 5. The only time this doesn't apply is when it specifies "raw talent level".

[Frumple]

Though I think the game's still pretty bad about telling you which talents run off raw, and which off effective. The code's very clear cut about it, but the talent descriptions still hold out a bit on that distinction. The imbue and extract gem talents are particularly notable for that because so many people are confused by it, but there's others.

[lukep]

Idea for a solution: make "effective" talent level requirements have one decimal place? That would change the Phase Door description from:

Code: Select all

...At level 4 it allows you to specify which creature to teleport...

to:

Code: Select all

...At level 4.0 it allows you to specify which creature to teleport...

IMO, that would work for many (but not all) of the talent descriptions.

[Akaji]

I like the idea of including the decimal point for effective-level talents (it might also open up the possibility of enabling special effects at fractions of a level). Would changing the word 'level' for talents that rely on your effective rating help too? E.g.:

Raw:
"At level 4 it allows you to ..."
Effective:
"At [rating|skill|effective level] 4.0 it allows you to..."

[Dwindlehop]

talent level | talent power
Or perhaps:
class points | talent level

[bricks]

I think "effective talent level" is best, and showing a decimal place is a good idea. It would also be nice if effective talent level was displayed somewhere prominent so you can see it updating as you invest talent/category points.

[HousePet]

I thought effective talent level was displyed in an obvious position...

[bricks]

I thought effective talent level was displyed in an obvious position...

It's a single line of green text in a sea of green text that you can only see when looking directly at the talent.

[Aerach]

As a newbie staring at the interface, i did find the effective talent level - you learn to look at anything green that's changing. I think Frumple is spot about the problem that is continuing to trip me up, the only way to reliably know these 'raw' talents as a new character is to save up a cat and quite some skill points to spend in batches and experiment with. (i'm far too stupid to look through code :p)

The tutorial doesn't mention this aspect of cat points at all but as far as i see on the forum it's already known to be out of date so no point whining on that, the mouseover for category points is very clear except for not mentioning that there are exceptions to efficiency.

[aardvark]

Clearer terminology might be helpful. Something like "talent rank" for the number of points invested and "talent level" for what we currently call "effective" talent level.

Talent level -> Talent rank
Effective talent level -> Talent level

Maybe not those exactly, but a change to the noun used instead of just the adjective.

[Mewtarthio]

I like the idea of using integer values for raw talent level and decimal values (eg 4.0) for effective talent level. Just to be clearer, don't overload the term "talent level"; I say we should keep it when it refers to actual effective talent level and instead describe raw talent level as "points invested in this talent." I suppose you could also describe raw talent level with using non-numerical values, like one-to-five stars, domino pips, letter grades, text descriptions (Novice/Basic/Advanced/Expert/Master), etc., but that would wreak all hell on our interface and would probably be too much work for too little benefit.

[lukep]

Clearer terminology might be helpful. Something like "talent rank" for the number of points invested and "talent level" for what we currently call "effective" talent level.

Talent level -> Talent rank
Effective talent level -> Talent level

Maybe not those exactly, but a change to the noun used instead of just the adjective.

I'm...not sure. Any pair of terms that I can think of look like interchangeable synonyms to a new player, or else are quite cumbersome.