Manual Pavillion OP

[Shemon]

You can literally learn other laws primordial or higher in here lol.

[Sol]

only tier 1 manuals, cultivators can learn tier 2 or 3 manuals which is basicly further investing iin a particular manual for extra bonuses, like talent points in mmos or some games.

there are things exclusive to each laws t2 and t3 manuals that are quite potent , especialy legacy artifact, and these things are going to be a major reason why you want a cultivator of a law aside from law percentage. Seven Slaughter has a bunch of artifact power and other artifact boosts, myriad artifacts has exclusive artifact crafting boosts that pretty much no other law can max out artifact crafting like a myriad can. Sun Refining will has spellcasting boosts, ect and i think some miracles may be exclusive to a law also.

[Halfshell]

Yeah its a pretty huge power spike once you learn how it works and to take advantage of it.

[VoiD]

Honestly I feel like it should be removed from the game, at least how it is.

To truly make the laws feel and play in unique ways.

There could be a mechanic allowing you to dib into other laws, but not this much, maybe 10% of your total attainement could belong to another law or something like that, it would make things more interesting, classes more unique, and minmaxing harder.

[Oskatat]

Not everyone will want that level of challenge. Instead of changing the mechanic of the manual pavillon, you could always impose such limitations on yourself. Or at least have it as a toggle in the difficulty settings

[BrownianMotion]

On another note, there currently is the orthodox, unorthodox system where the attainment of unorthodox skills cannot exceed 1/4 of your orthodox skills.

[Foefaller]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Honestly I feel like it should be removed from the game, at least how it is.

To truly make the laws feel and play in unique ways.

There could be a mechanic allowing you to dib into other laws, but not this much, maybe 10% of your total attainement could belong to another law or something like that, it would make things more interesting, classes more unique, and minmaxing harder.

If feel the sameness of the Laws has less to do with the Pavilion and more because most of the T2/T3 manuals for the basic laws are things that are either rather boring (though usually still useful) or don't show up until Primordial Spirit or even Demigod stage.

The advanced Gold Core Laws, like Seven Slaughtering and Jade Purity very much feel unique, and it's because of unique multi-tier manuals that show up early and often. (Or maybe just because by the time you unlock them, you should have GCs and PSs that can get them to T1 GC quickly.)

[SeraphLance]

The manual pavillion does kind of feel out of place. Like how learning skills at the pavillion is 25% cheaper, but the actual skills are dumped into an unordered list far inferior to the actual hierarchy in your character sheet that's clearly more developed (in terms of UI).

It would make more sense if the pavillion was a requirement for learning skills at all, and learning a skill on your character sheet would cost as normal and have the character path to a pavillion to learn it. Likewise, the pavillion itself should be able to show the class trees in addition to the blobby list that you have to search to find anything.

A "challenge mode" where cross-class skill learning is prohibited would be pretty interesting though, and force you to accomodate a bunch of laws even early on where otherwise you don't care about 2nd tier skills all that much.

[NixBoxDone]

The interesting thing would be to require golden core disciples to TEACH known skills outside of the other's law to their students.

That would further reinforce the whole generations standing on the shoulders of giants thing, as you couldn't just go to the library and binge on ancient, forbidden or lost lore to become super swole - you'd need a mentor that has comprehended the skill to personally guide you through the intricacies of the skill.

It'd also open up the creation of a mentor skill for inner disciples (which could govern how much inspiration experience reduction the mentor could apply) and utilize the learning speed of the student (make it take longer to learn so the potential penalty of having students grow older before golden core come into play more, maybe by pushing potential to diminish until they formed their golden core as opposed to right when they become inners?).

That way, as your sect progresses, each generation would have more manuals added to their bedrock cultivation law, making each generation of students more potent.
Heck, losing an important elder might cost you rare knowledge said elder possessed. Maybe one of the laws could be an expensive miracle to summon the spirit of a fallen Elder to tutor students again for a limited time.

I'd also be interested in seeing a limit to the manuals outside of the ones included in the law so you'd have to keep more than just inspiration experience and attainment in mind when teaching a new inner disciple.
Maybe have more of the more powerful manuals have some severe drawbacks as well, so you have limited slots (based on learning ability, potential and maybe intelligence?) and have to choose between manuals with more modest gains but no weaknesses and more extreme manuals that come with drawbacks you have to work around.
Maybe each elder that reaches a certain rank in his cultivation law could have the right to add a single manual to the catalogue of that law, making the base laws more formidable with each generation as well.
Heck, have them IMPROVE one manual as a choice instead. I want my myriad artifact elder to ascend to immortality and bequeath the sect with an improved version of a manual that makes their artifacts slightly more potent than that of any other Joe Blow that might happen to have the same one.

[Kain Yusanagi]

Originally posted by SeraphLance:

The manual pavillion does kind of feel out of place. Like how learning skills at the pavillion is 25% cheaper, but the actual skills are dumped into an unordered list far inferior to the actual hierarchy in your character sheet that's clearly more developed (in terms of UI).

It would make more sense if the pavillion was a requirement for learning skills at all, and learning a skill on your character sheet would cost as normal and have the character path to a pavillion to learn it. Likewise, the pavillion itself should be able to show the class trees in addition to the blobby list that you have to search to find anything.

A "challenge mode" where cross-class skill learning is prohibited would be pretty interesting though, and force you to accomodate a bunch of laws even early on where otherwise you don't care about 2nd tier skills all that much.

No, it doesn't, at all, unless you're entirely unfamiliar with xianxia/wuxia cultivation novels and how cultivation works in chinese mythology. Learning on your own is, as the window states, manual inspiration. That's you learning things on your own, which is always going to be the most difficult way to learn something. The manual pavilion has the written-down understandings of each law and secret art that you place within, which can be directly referenced to help form your own path in cultivation- which is why it takes less inspiration. Still, that is a static bit of knowledge, which does not compare to someone who you can directly ask for knowledge to illuminate you on the topic and answer your questions directly, which is why it's as cheap to do so, and even cheaper if they are your mentor/you are their disciple, because they are going to be more willing to open up about the more specific details of how they came to know that particular thing to their disciples.

Additionally, they aren't unsorted; they're sorted according to type group, subgroup, and then element within the subgroup. Randomly generated laws are more weirdly sorted, though, because they don't quite fit entirely; that catagorization is only accurate to orthodox (aka Supreme Law) manuals.

Lastly, just because it's more difficult to comprehend a law that doesn't match the one that you cultivate along does not mean that you cannot cultivate it. That's what the counteractive attainment and inspiration costs are about, as well; if you grow too wildly, you end up not being able to grow your cultivation within your own law anymore, let alone in general, without hundreds of thousands or even millions of points per manual. You can always "stay in your own lane" for an easy time, but nothing stops you from actually learning beyond it if there's something useful from another school (like the adventure flight speed manuals).

Remember, this isn't a, "each law is a different sect's studies" situation as much as it is an, "each law is a different facet of the Taiyi Sect's studies". This is why you're limited otherwise to the laws of attackers you convert or manage too pilfer from their souls and then transcribe. And yes, cultivators of a sect can literally go to their sect's library and read about their secret arts, just like you can in-game.

[NixBoxDone]

There's a search button as well, so if you're looking for a specific stat and can't find it you can search for, say, "Qi Sense", then sort by elements that are neutral or connective if you wanna watch your attainment and off you go.

[Foefaller]

Originally posted by kainyusanagi:

Originally posted by SeraphLance:

The manual pavillion does kind of feel out of place. Like how learning skills at the pavillion is 25% cheaper, but the actual skills are dumped into an unordered list far inferior to the actual hierarchy in your character sheet that's clearly more developed (in terms of UI).

It would make more sense if the pavillion was a requirement for learning skills at all, and learning a skill on your character sheet would cost as normal and have the character path to a pavillion to learn it. Likewise, the pavillion itself should be able to show the class trees in addition to the blobby list that you have to search to find anything.

A "challenge mode" where cross-class skill learning is prohibited would be pretty interesting though, and force you to accomodate a bunch of laws even early on where otherwise you don't care about 2nd tier skills all that much.

No, it doesn't, at all, unless you're entirely unfamiliar with xianxia/wuxia cultivation novels and how cultivation works in chinese mythology. Learning on your own is, as the window states, manual inspiration. That's you learning things on your own, which is always going to be the most difficult way to learn something. The manual pavilion has the written-down understandings of each law and secret art that you place within, which can be directly referenced to help form your own path in cultivation- which is why it takes less inspiration. Still, that is a static bit of knowledge, which does not compare to someone who you can directly ask for knowledge to illuminate you on the topic and answer your questions directly, which is why it's as cheap to do so, and even cheaper if they are your mentor/you are their disciple, because they are going to be more willing to open up about the more specific details of how they came to know that particular thing to their disciples.

Additionally, they aren't unsorted; they're sorted according to type group, subgroup, and then element within the subgroup. Randomly generated laws are more weirdly sorted, though, because they don't quite fit entirely; that catagorization is only accurate to orthodox (aka Supreme Law) manuals.

Lastly, just because it's more difficult to comprehend a law that doesn't match the one that you cultivate along does not mean that you cannot cultivate it. That's what the counteractive attainment and inspiration costs are about, as well; if you grow too wildly, you end up not being able to grow your cultivation within your own law anymore, let alone in general, without hundreds of thousands or even millions of points per manual. You can always "stay in your own lane" for an easy time, but nothing stops you from actually learning beyond it if there's something useful from another school (like the adventure flight speed manuals).

Remember, this isn't a, "each law is a different sect's studies" situation as much as it is an, "each law is a different facet of the Taiyi Sect's studies". This is why you're limited otherwise to the laws of attackers you convert or manage too pilfer from their souls and then transcribe. And yes, cultivators of a sect can literally go to their sect's library and read about their secret arts, just like you can in-game.

That leads to a different question: why have manual/self-taught insparation at all? Or at least, why have the game teach you that as the "normal" way to unlock manuals when the pavilion is the hands-down better way, even for the manuals of the disciple's own Law?

And why would it be cheaper to transcribe a manual you found into the Pavilion and learn it via the Pavilion when you should be in essence essentially copying what the manual had word for word?

It seems pretty obvious in my opinion that the Manual Pavilion was added later in Development/EA and kinda stuffed into a system of learning that wasn't designed from the start for it. Granted, most of what it does you can do without it once you have disicples reaching Gold Core and being able to teach others (and not just the one they take as a student) so the broken min/max potential really only comes into play at the start, and afterwards it's purpose is really just QoL to not have to search for the one guy who has knowledge of that one obscure manual you want to teach to someone else.

That said, I feel like all it really needs is a distinction between transcribing full Laws and found manuals, and transcribing Knowledge. Having a GC or better disciple transcribing their knowledge and insight should be what activiates the cost reduction of the manuals they know (or perhaps even just the manuals of their Law+Books), rather than just being a given for anything stored there.

[Halfshell]

I could see this sort of thing modded for those that want it. Mind you I only skimmed through the discussion, the way I see it is (in this mod) the manual pavilion should be the most difficult way to learn. So double inspiration costs, make it take a long time, give chance of failure wasting inspiration, etcetera. Its an option and early on it would reflect being self taught fairly well. Also make transcribing cost inspiration with a chance to fail (both reduced by attainment). Make the intelligent perk completely ignore all that and it works as it does now for them. Anyway, it would be nice to have that sort of thing as a mod so that those that want no fuss can have no fuss and those that want immersion can go through the extra steps of mentoring.

Edit: New Laws to cultivate would be sick, can't wait to see what modders do with this game!

[BrownianMotion]

Originally posted by kainyusanagi:

No, it doesn't, at all, unless you're entirely unfamiliar with xianxia/wuxia cultivation novels and how cultivation works in chinese mythology. Learning on your own is, as the window states, manual inspiration.

I would rather not drag lore reasons into this discussion. As this is a big genre with many different things going on. This genre is similar to sci-fi or fantasy, and not everything in fantasy settings have to be consistent with one another. Then there is also the soft vs hard magic system comparison, like LoTR compared to Mistborn.

But yes in most xianxia novels, big sects will have a manual pavilion; basically a library of knowledge that the sect has gathered. And i do agree that the ui needs to be better, and some more QoL feature needs to be added.

It hardly makes sense that you should not learn skills from the actual skill tree, but rather go to manual pavilion to learn that skill, due to the cost reduction.

[SeraphLance]

Originally posted by kainyusanagi:

Originally posted by SeraphLance:

The manual pavillion does kind of feel out of place. Like how learning skills at the pavillion is 25% cheaper, but the actual skills are dumped into an unordered list far inferior to the actual hierarchy in your character sheet that's clearly more developed (in terms of UI).

It would make more sense if the pavillion was a requirement for learning skills at all, and learning a skill on your character sheet would cost as normal and have the character path to a pavillion to learn it. Likewise, the pavillion itself should be able to show the class trees in addition to the blobby list that you have to search to find anything.

A "challenge mode" where cross-class skill learning is prohibited would be pretty interesting though, and force you to accomodate a bunch of laws even early on where otherwise you don't care about 2nd tier skills all that much.

No, it doesn't, at all, unless you're entirely unfamiliar with xianxia/wuxia cultivation novels and how cultivation works in chinese mythology. Learning on your own is, as the window states, manual inspiration. That's you learning things on your own, which is always going to be the most difficult way to learn something. The manual pavilion has the written-down understandings of each law and secret art that you place within, which can be directly referenced to help form your own path in cultivation- which is why it takes less inspiration. Still, that is a static bit of knowledge, which does not compare to someone who you can directly ask for knowledge to illuminate you on the topic and answer your questions directly, which is why it's as cheap to do so, and even cheaper if they are your mentor/you are their disciple, because they are going to be more willing to open up about the more specific details of how they came to know that particular thing to their disciples.

Additionally, they aren't unsorted; they're sorted according to type group, subgroup, and then element within the subgroup. Randomly generated laws are more weirdly sorted, though, because they don't quite fit entirely; that catagorization is only accurate to orthodox (aka Supreme Law) manuals.

Lastly, just because it's more difficult to comprehend a law that doesn't match the one that you cultivate along does not mean that you cannot cultivate it. That's what the counteractive attainment and inspiration costs are about, as well; if you grow too wildly, you end up not being able to grow your cultivation within your own law anymore, let alone in general, without hundreds of thousands or even millions of points per manual. You can always "stay in your own lane" for an easy time, but nothing stops you from actually learning beyond it if there's something useful from another school (like the adventure flight speed manuals).

Remember, this isn't a, "each law is a different sect's studies" situation as much as it is an, "each law is a different facet of the Taiyi Sect's studies". This is why you're limited otherwise to the laws of attackers you convert or manage too pilfer from their souls and then transcribe. And yes, cultivators of a sect can literally go to their sect's library and read about their secret arts, just like you can in-game.

I think you're arguing from a "how Xianxia stories use manual pavilions" perspective whereas I'm arguing from a "smooth gameplay experience" perspective.

The manual pavilion interface, while technically ordered, leaves something to be desired. I don't think that's a very contentious thing to say. It's terrible having to cross-reference laws to make sure you've unlocked the pre-requisite. It's terrible that it doesn't show you cascading inspiration costs for queuing multiple skills. It's terrible that if you go over your inspiration allotment (which again is really easy because of the prior point) it just kind of "dangles" waiting for you to get more inspiration, until you leave the map to get more inspiration (the way 99% of people get inspiration) at which point it forgets everything you have queued.

The issue is that manual learning on the character sheet is by far a more useful visualization, yet is only supported for your character's own law and objectively inferior to using the pavilion and its clunky interface, so you typically open your character sheet, take a mental note of what you want, and then go to the manual pavilion to find it again just to save the inspiration.

That said, on the strict "accuracy to Xianxia" front, going off-law should be more penalizing than it currently is. A law in-game represents a fundamentally different approach to pursuing the dao, something common in Xianxia novels. The sort of thing that people in the novels pull from manual pavilions is more akin to one-off orthodox/unorthodox manuals you pick up rather than the separate laws. They do seem to kind of attempt to model this difference by prohibiting the higher-tier skills, but if that's the case then probably a lot more of each law should be locked this way. I'm not a huge stickler for all this because I understand that it's important to make sacrifices to make a fun game, but the interface should absolutely be better.

[Halfshell]

Well theres multiple aspects lacking interms of being accurate to how the novels portrait them in favor of a funner game. For instance, the trope of switching Laws isn't really present at all. I think it would be impossible to cover everything and what they have done is both fun and for the most part an accurate representation. For instance, what golden cores do for you seems very different than most novels I have seen BUT this way is still very fun and intuitive. If it was 100% accurate it would be extremely convoluted with dozens of factors (I wouldn't be opposed personally but the general player is already overwhelmed!). The mentor UI is also even worse than the Manual Pavilion UI so I guess we should be satisfied with that.

I think the point on costs could easily be modded but I agree that the UI could use a little work.