Question 1.

Why is it we have to pay a good chunk of cash for spells then have to spend roughly a week to train something. (depends on person)

Question 2. So some of us started higher rank how many spells do we get without having to train?

As mentioned before each user is limited in their choice of spells based on their classes. A class determines how much an user has to pay to unlock a spell slot. In the class descriptions 1x means that the regular price has to be paid which is listed below. Some classes are proficient in certain types of spells and only pay 0.5x of the regular price for spell of that type which is half. Some classes allow users to do other types of spells as well but since the user is not that proficient in them they pay 2x or 3x the regular price.

D-Rank Spell Price: 100,000J
C-Rank Spell Price: 200,000J
B-Rank Spell Price: 300,000J
A-Rank Spell Price: 400,000J
S-Rank Spell Price: 500,000J

Spells that are purchased need to be trained. Each spell has a different amount of words that is needed to consider it trained. The user may have certain items or perks that gives them a discount in the wordcount. Sometimes even a special location can give a discount on trainings.

D-Rank Spell: 500 Words
C-Rank Spell: 1000 Words
B-Rank Spell: 2000 Words
A-Rank Spell: 4000 Words
S-Rank Spell: 8000 Words

To learn a spell the user needs to create a topic in the Magic forum with their spells listed inside using the proper template below and filled in according to the rules. A moderator will review the spell first and once it is considered good it will get approved for training. When the mod approves the training they will also deduct the required jewels from the user. When the user has completed training the spell in a topic they must link their training topic in their spell topic for a mod to review. When the training has been approved, the spell will be moved to the closed approved spells sections. The user then simply needs to list their spell in their Character Sheet linking to the approved spell topic to make it their spell officially.

Suggestion/Concerns:

I get it you want to add some artificial longevity to stuff. But holy shit man that is a bit much to learn 1 spell. If someone wants to train it have a different count. Not spend a ass load, type a ass load for 1 spell. This is how folks get burned out right here. Sure there is a reduction but I am sure it won't be much. This is a bit overload. Even still that makes it lopsided cause say I get a good training item I will gain a significant advantage over folks for hyper training while they struggle. You put a artificial wall up when it comes to lower ranks encountering higher ranks because they are completely unprepared for it. You want some level of MMO play here but if folks have to spend a month or more just to be able to do part 1 of a single quest line. NOTHING will ever get done or happen. You said you didn want stat training but have this heavy dose of training with spells.

You need spells to do quests, but lack on spells because spells cost x amount of jewels + absurd wc. Only way to get money/items is from questing. So in return you encourage folks dodging any form of combat (pve and pvp) and just kind of make it a train grind which you did not want.

Welp, seeing as my message was largely ignored when i sent it i'll posted it here:

After looking at the spell cost and overall word counts it seems a tad extreme to actually acquire even a simple spell for instance a spell that has a x1 multiple for a D rank costs 100k, has a word count of 500 and a D rank mage needing to complete 4 D rank missions or the equivalent of 4000 words excluding other reductions resulting in a overall wc of 4.5k, where as an adventurer isn't required to create spells and complete the same amount of missions for 3600, this is just starting without multipliers and higher ranks, if you were to aim for a x3 spell as a D or C rank you'd be looking at writing a staggering 13k, with the wcs being very variable as an S rank spell for an S rank user at x1 is the same at 13k.

And if you're a C rank going after a x3 C rank you're going to rank up before you can get it with a staggering 12 C rank aka 25k and that's not including other hinderances like travel rules which will mean you're writing that on top to bunny hop to another location.

I understand you want to make things challenging and having spells be unique however this will detract so many potential new rpers who's abilities are undeveloped and would feel that this is impossible.

imo .75, 1x, 1.25 and 1.5 would be better for spell multipliers, though that doesn't solve other problems.

I feel that the point has already been shown by Roman and Kon but I want to show that I too find this to be a big problem. This is supposed to be a roleplaying site and whilst some people might find it fun to write up a giant sized training topic I and probably many others do not.

Konstantins solution was to lower the multiplyers but I have another suggestion. Remove the system of buying spells and instead make it so that you earn spell slots by ranking up. Training can still be a thing but lower the word counts making it.

300 for D-rank
500 for C-rank
800 for B-rank
1000 for A-rank
1500 for S-rank

Keep the x1,x2 and x3 things to give classes more individuality except make it be for only word count.

This will solve problems for new people and certainly will make the site more accessible for people whom have never roleplayed on a forum before.

Mmm wc's should never be used to gate players. There are several reasons why. 1) There is no right amount of words to explain why you know said thing. Why should it take 50 words or 5000 words to learn something? Why is it some arbitrary whole number that encourages your members to fluff and/or copy paste previous training to meet quota? 2) It adds absolutely nothing to the character most times. 3) It adds nothing to the game and creates extra work for no reason. You're now requiring your free volunteering staff to read through research paper length training sessions for no reason at all beyond gating them. 4) There are better alternatives. You're going for a mmo feel to the site but maintain none of the progression mechanics. In no game do you have to spend hours learning a combat skill or even traveling or doing a quest. Maxing out some arbitrary side skill like cooking? Yes. Learning fire blast? No. If you want to gate people behind training have them use the spell a few times outside of actual combat and focus it around the spells cool down instead of some random word count. And i literally randomly thought of this. I know if you had people think about this you would find better ones.

^ I agree with everything Teiho said, literally who has that much freetime to train spells by writing posts in the size of novels, that's too much effort I wouldn't be willing to put into it, lol.

While I can't answer this question, or rather will not as staff, I will give my personal input as a member.

I agree with the majority of points already stated, and I think that the solution should either be:

A: Reduce the WC's of quests so money is more easily gathered

B: Reduce the costs of spells so less money is needed to be gathered

C: Just have these spells cost no money, and having the class prices switch so they are for training instead, either dividing or multiplying the wordcount.

I say this just because I've seen stuff like this before, on this very site nonetheless, and all it came down to was nobody, not a single person doing requests. The site temporarily died, a few of us tried to fix it and it worked, so many came back and the site enjoyed life again. I know the answer could be something pertaining to events, but people wont have much motivation to participate in events if they don't even have a C-rank spell because of the grind leading up to it.

Just my personal thoughts.

I actually had a random idea for spell training. It's actually a call back to spell books and utilizes something that MMO's already do. So instead of WC's for spell training, you take the progression WC's from Requests and turn them into progression points. Since you're already going to have quests that give out stat points, have quests that give out progression points, and you can then gate spell ranks behind progression points. This reduces the amount of WC training people have to do SIGNIFICANTLY and actually has some sort of importance or flow to the game rather than just randomly stopping the game to learn some new skill or mechanic.

There are still other ways you can work this out but I figured I'd throw another idea at this.

Personally, to some extent while I understand the intent of this system is not just to ensure that people don't immediately start powering themselves to S or X-Rank and immediately proclaiming themselves to be unstoppable, as well as being one that encourages social engagement rather than solo topics (as made evident as well by some guild requirements and other remarks made which support the position), I don't believe this is the right way to go about. While some of the MMO elements might be out of place, my thoughts with the way the Magic system - and to some extent, the stance on WC as a whole - is structured isn't particularly one I agree with myself. It comes down to not just the costs of the spells (which I believe are overly inflated), but also the fact that you are requiring huge word totals just to train spells, more than what we - as members of this site over the several prior incantations of it - have seen outside of outrageous grinds or one-time only things (Kisuke's island anyone?). Asking for a person to invest 8,000 words into an S-Rank, whether they are or were someone who could pound out the words easily or even if they are the more casual individual who comes here to RP every so often, that's an incredibly tall order.

Speaking as someone who not only was one of those who grinded out incredible amounts of experience before, to expect that everyone will be willing to participate to that extent is - in my opinion - shortsighted. Realize that a good number of us who have been here, we don't all have the same dedication and availability to grind out the incredible amount of posts that we once did. I know for certain that I don't, nor would I dare to again. Even in just the quests, you are adding incredibly high word counts which again, well exceed what we've had in the past. I would wager that for the majority of quests, requirements could be met in a fraction of the words required - especially if we consider how quests in the past were made, how they were made during the Town Creation event, and how we generally completed quests before. Now, on one hand it does encourage team grouping, which obviously is a focal point this time around, but recognize that it not only penalizes those who either unable to be a part of a team due to their lack of guild affiliation or a lacking of members within their respective guild, but it would also penalize those who - as a result of how their character is - are unable to join due to it coming into conflict with their character. I recall seeing an example in one of the Regulation posts about a person who is serious shouldn't be cracking jokes. Shouldn't that same philosophy and stance be applied to an individual who is unable to trust and doesn't believe that teamwork neccesarily builds strength be forced to break character just for the sake of satisfying a word count? Should they be - in effect - penalized for RPing?

Back to the spells, given that you at least enable for an easier time for people to complete quests, you don't do the same for the spells, which begin to exponentially grow, especially at A and S-Rank. While I understand that S-Rank is supposed to be the "Oh my God" spell of our arsenals, 8,000 words is a huge amount for anyone, and let's assume that someone has a D-Rank spell, and they are looking to upgrade it to a higher rank (let's say a fresh D-Rank who just hit C-Rank and wants to upgrade their signature spell to a C-Rank), are they expected to pay the full amount for that rank? Where are the upgrade options that we used to have? Combine that with the fact that (say it is a Supplementary spell for a Battlemage) some classes already have higher coefficients on their spells, you're just imposing more and more grinds on people. Assuming that a person has one spell of their 5 starters that they want to upgrade with them as they progress, it will require them to type up 15,000 words, to go from D to S. The others, assuming they just want to get those to A-Rank? Another 28,000 words. 43,000 words, for 5 spells. And if they want more?

To that, if events are going to be the big thing that nets people their respective jewels or experience, what's your expected timeline for them? Unfortunately, history has shown that events move slowly on this site, be it intentional or just slow moving, but if there are months between each respective event with the solution being simply "Just wait for the next event", why stick around?

Unfortunately, this turned into a bit of a rant. I originally didn't care very much about this system because I don't expect myself to be as involved, certainly not as involved in it than last time around, but I do have concerns over what it's starting to look like. I won't speak for you as I don't know, but I would encourage those who don't have any issue with this to put themselves in the perspective of the player, or of someone new, who's excited to come to this site to RP, only to find people either solely focused on grinding out their next mission or they see the word counts and realize that that's not what they want to do. While it might be a good idea in theory, I don't think scrapping past systems with a new one - one in which I can't help but personally think is being implemented piece by piece without considering the impact of each new section - is the way to go. People want to RP, to role-play, to immerse themselves in their characters, not be bound down by infinite grinds. If people take forever to get to S-Rank, oh well, it takes forever. But I can't help but worry that people aren't even going to make it to A-Rank before they burn themselves out or leave.

I really think that this current system should be reconsidered, or at the very least, revised to some capacity.

Hello,

The answer to your question about how many spells you receive for free upon starting would be 5 D-ranks, regardless of your rank.

I appreciate the rest of the text, but at the moment I have no time and no interest in reading it entirely and replying to each concern. Quickly glanced through the first two and they are mostly personal concerns based on what the user likes and dislikes to do in order to progress. This is understandable but please do note that the way you'd like to see things is perhaps not the way I have things in mind. Besides that, I need a few months each time to analyze how the regulations affect everything and see if they affect it the way that I'd like it to affect things. In case I notice that it's not doing what I had intended I will of course update the regulations via patches. But for now I have no intentions to adjust anything till I see how it plays out.

Best regards,

Jyu