However, I disagree on the implementation suggested here. I think that the jump rope could be a good measure for endurance with a certain number of hops before you get worn out. For agility, a treadmill could be used with your character being able to run x meters in a fixed amount of time.
Honestly, I see there being a lot of benefit in the addition to more gym equipment. It gives the option for people to better sell the idea of their character's physical condition improving through actual trips to the gym. Having in-character ways to measure, discuss, and brag about your character's condition would also go a long way in discouraging conversations that border on being painfully meta which pop up from time to time. I could also see this leading to some additional RP even if it's as simple as two people bickering about who can jump more rope or run further and then heading out to a gym to see who actually comes out on top.
Creating more RP and drawing people into the gym to do other stuff than just lift weights and beat up dummies was my original intention with the whole idea, which you wrote out perfectly.
I have a kind of personal distaste for openly granting knowledge of stats. It allows you to, over time, form some expectation for how you will perform with what investment. Worse… enough tests and metrics, you are literally going to end up with people passing around stat builds ICly.
i.e.
Joe was a really scary solo. He used guns, wore Xo5 and nobody ever beat him.
Joe got a score of 448 on the eye test, lifted 200kg on the bench, did 523 jump ropes in a row, ran 100 meters in 13 seconds, scored X on his IQ test, and a panel rated him a 5 in attractiveness!
From there you calculate how much UE you have available for skills, and work it out from there.
I'd really rather this wasn't a thing. I understand some of the frustration with the obscurity of stats, and how IC mentors are not always easy to come by, but I just really don't want to see the game shift in that direction.
After tens of thousands of flying checks I could probably tell which of my AWR or OUT was higher but it required a huge amount of knowledge and didn't really make me any better as a player, I was mostly just curious. But then I don't think substats should be obscured at all so that is my bias. Maybe players are telling one another how many blocks they need to drive to be at a certain level of physical performance, but I've never run into that.
Pass-fail checks are what was suggested. The integer value is the total number of successes versus fails, which is true of driving and roof jumping as well.
Any given check passing or failing really only gives players information about passing that check, being able to make thousands of driving checks in a row doesn't tell a player much of anything about their ability to roll high short blade weapon attacks.
I don't really see what information jumping rope would provide except as a way for players to contest one another doing that particular thing, which is true of like, billiards, dart boards, jumping, grappling, fighting, driving and flying, weight lifting, and so on.
Roof jumping has a relatively low threshold. Too low to create a character build template against.
The suggestion posed here, and in subsequent responses scales indefinitely. There is no cutoff where success no longer provides an objective analysis of where that character's stats are centered. The idea is literally not to just provide insight on a character's stats all the way up to Max UE, but to provide a relatively accurate idea of exactly where they've invested at all experience levels.
This is not remotely the same as roof jumping or driving.
For example, a carnival hammer strike game could be mostly strength, but also take into account melee skill, perception, and even agility. Then it's not really something that people can measure very well, while still providing something to talk about IC.
Those are the same checks you're seeing. Driving has two different checks total and one of them isn't going to happen continuously.
Most activities in the game just have one universal pass-fail check, two to four variable. It gets more complicated when contested checks come into play but I really think it's being exaggerated her how much secret data is being revealed to players they shouldn't know about combat by doing other things. If you don't know the weighting on the check you're making and the check you're trying to compare it again, you don't really know anything, and if you do know those you don't need to make them in the first place.
I feel like people will argue about literally every idea at this point. It's fluff, and a way of un-gameifying a stat. I don't dislike it, but it's not a big deal to me.
By Veleth at Mar 4, 2025 4:34 PM On the contrary, this will "gameify" stats even more. To an irreversible degree. I was not just throwing people sharing character stat builds IC out there as some absurd exaggeration of a possibility. That is literally what is going to happen. And honestly, I don't even like weight benches. I like the idea of having these playful sorts of competitions, and would honestly like to see things like arm wrestling coded into the game. I just don't want this creating cookie-cutter character builds that everyone follows to achieve success in their preferred archetype.
It took tens of thousands of checks just for me to be confident what stats were being check at all with some skills, never mind how much they were being weighted for or what the check difficulty mod was. The idea that players could jump rope five hundred times and be able to min-max their builds off that data is not a practical concern in my opinion.
The obsession with keeping data from players is nonsensical in my view, the idea that knowing anything about anything is somehow harmful to character building has never made sense to me. If anything the obscurity massively advantages players like me who got insight into some systems through helping with bugfixing and early development.
I've had fights where I thought I'd absolutely lose and came out on top, as well as the opposite. I don't even really interact with the weight benches that already exist so I am biased against the idea in general.
On the other hand if they were implemented I would be all for people using them, just not for the reason you'd think. I'd just prefer they weren't at all.
But… why would it even matter to know you were better at jumping rope than another player? I completely fail to understand where this concern is, there is a dozen little toys and games already that do this exact thing.
Unless a player has an object that makes an identical check to something like grappling, or dodging, or some other obscured check they'd want to understand better, it's only really going to be telling them how good they are at that thing and how much stats they have total versus any other character doing the same.
Well the posted idea was for agility + perception checks, which are the same stats checked for like half of all the checks in the game. Driving has the same substat checks as some weapons, I've never once heard anyone say driving was too revealing of combat performance because 1) the difficult mods are different, and 2) the spectrum of stats is too complex to intuit without a massive amount of work.
The difference is that DRIVING requires an UE investment.
It also adds the 3rd variable of SKILL.
Where as a jump rope is
1. Free
a. No UE or time investment needed
b. No equipment (car, bike, etc.) needed
2. A pure Stat check
Weight benches give you information about parrying, how many players could have learned that organically versus those that just have learned about game systems in other ways? There's nothing wrong at all in my mind about giving players meaningful access to be able to understand things like, how fast they are compared to someone else or compared to some arbitrary baseline. These sorts of things are common throughout the game and the idea that players can only learn about stats and skills through combat and danger is, in my opinion, a myth.
Shooting ranges are about as accurate as SHFL for determining how you're going to do against someone else and are a poor comparison if I'm assuming the jump rope will be implemented similarly to how weight benches were.
Succeeding at a driving check doesn't prove anything because that's a skill and not a stat. It also doesn't even have to be anywhere near as high as combat skills have to be for most things so any attempt to use driving to compare your stat sheet to someone else's would probably result in extreme inaccuracy and comedic failure.
The idea also mentioned that you could jump rope to compare your times to someone else's. You can't really do that with driving because failure after you're beyond a certain driving skill is so rare. You'd both just be driving until you ran out of ethicol.
A roof jump is skin the game. The character fails and a medic gets some RP. Gets chy. Etc.
You aren't going to "win" this one. Just stop.
I would recommend checking out Centralized Skill Checks and a bunch of the other threads discussing how checks got implemented. There's really a ton of popular misconceptions about how skill checks are made and how secretive they're meant to be and how obscure substats actually are in this thread.
Like not to put down anyone's experience but if players think they're going to learn about substats and checks through combat, they're really barking up the wrong tree because those are the places where pretty much no useful information is ending up with players in the end because there's so many checks and mods and randomization. Which is the point, the game wants two characters with identical stat spending and identical weapons to have different outcomes unpredictable to players.
Players are meant to learn how to fight characters by fighting them, but knowing about a stat or even several stats in isolation from combat, does not effect that knowledge at all.
But not everyone wants to play a combat character.
I have to agree though that too much obscuring is silly, if it's not obscured in real life, why should it be in Sindome?
I think batko makes some good arguments on how to mix up the results a bit, as well.
All of this knowledge came from experimentation with systems already in the game and from just being involved with the fixing or design process on other things. I know as much about vehicle combat as any other player or staff member and I've actually used that system once.
The idea that a jump rope is an egregious concession to non-combat learning is being pretty blind to how the game is actually designed. Players not knowing they can know things is not fairness or balance in my opinion, information is understanding is enjoyment. Having simple tools to help players understand their characters is not only something that was called for by Johnny, it's just good design and a good intent to have.
Even a system which is really, really, really close to exactly duplicating combat, doesn't end up being a tool of abuse or minmaxing, because the mods are just slightly varied.
Roof jumping doesn't even provide accurate numbers, it just lets you know that your AGI is high enough to make a certain jump.
Using the range doesn't give specific numbers either, it's very random.
Riot Gear would be another example of allowing players a chance to explore systems in a safe way that's almost useless when it comes down to figuring out how you'll actually do against someone.
The weight benches provide numbers that are accurate to your stats and that's what some of us are saying does not need to be revealed as easily for other stats. Providing a range or a test for a specific action is way different than just a stat vs stat competition.
I'm less concerned with min-maxing and more concerned that players are going to feel obligated to follow a specific template to succeed in a role, rather than branching out and experimenting. New players more than anything.
You acquired your knowledge through experimentation. I did the same, though it sounds like you took a more scientific approach, while I simply played the game and let things happen more or less organically. Perhaps the disconnect in our understanding each other is there? Do you feel like this sort of experimentation is tedious and unnecessary? That Sindome should be a game like large scale MMORPGs, fully theorycrafted, with everyone wearing the exact same armor, setting their stats the same way, specializations, etc?
I'm lost how a rope jump, making similar or even more complex stat checks, is different than this in your opinion, because to me these are both one or two factor checks with a mod that is hidden from the player. Likewise dart boards. Likewise billiard tables. Why would the players know the mod and weighting? It's not like it's going to be in the patch notes?
And Quotient I think all players should have reasonable access to information on what their character can do and how to build them to that purpose, while playing that character even if it is their first. Sindome hides stuff away but it doesn't do it in a totally consistent or coherent way and player knowledge ends up becoming much more valuable than characters knowledge, and I don't think it's necessary fair or good game design to advantage players who just happen to know obscure mechanics and now have a lifelong advantage against other characters who may have just as much in-character skill but just not as advantaged player careers.
What people are arguing against is to prevent a situation where two characters having a conversation that goes "so I can jump 134 times in a row!" with the other working off of that number, much like weight benches. I think people were simply voicing their opinion due to various ways the idea might be implemented, aside from what people suggested initially.
Roof jumping cannot be used as a stat vs stat comparison unless someone fails the jump. If you can both make the jump then all you know is that your AGI is high enough to make the jump.
If two players are going at jump rope that's implemented similarly to weight benches, then they'll be able to better gauge their stats by how much longer one person is able to keep jumping rope for.
Roof jumping is not equivalent because no matter how many times you both make the same jump you'll never know how much faster it makes you than the other person.
Weight benches don't tell players anything they don't already know, your strength is literally in your character sheet to an exact value. They just standardize something that players do anyway by finding increasingly heavy objects to compare themselves against, and they also do it with error margins so it's less explanatory than players are really suggesting.
Why wouldn't it make sense to know how much your character can pick up and compare against others? Why wouldn't it make sense for two people not to be able to easily tell between them who is faster by like, running, or any number of other simple concepts. I feel like players are running away with subtle ideas like you shouldn't know exactly how precise your outlook is on the world to apply to places where it makes no sense at all.
It's reasonable for a character to know if they can do things, and how to compare themselves to other characters who also do things. That some players think this is taboo insight is bizarre gatekeeping to me.
I guess I simply don't see the problem with that. We have player contests of skills and stats all the time. Racing, jumping, weight lifting, dart/sword throwing, sparring, Riot Gear, grappling (see if you can grab me). This is pretty normal and acceptable play.
Those are relative, not objective. Knowing that you can grapple Joe Blow, and knowing that you can grapple Joe Blow because his associated AE allocations for X, Y, and Z are this number, and yours are this much higher is different. And yes, I know there are other determinate factors in grappling. We do not need to debate on that specific point. It's an example.
I have never seen anyone fail a roof jump after getting their AGI past a certain threshold. It is almost impossible to fail a jump if it's high enough and if you do it could just be a bad roll, it's a horrible way to test how much faster you are than someone.
Billiards and darts are too random to serve as a test of anything. The example I have used consistently on this thread is the weight bench because the weight bench gives you exact numbers with barely any obfuscation in the way. They give away a lot, maybe more than some people may realize.
Why shouldn't a character to be able to use an object or a simple test to figure out how much faster they are than someone? It's because it's going to get players used to going to the gym and testing themselves against someone else using objects meant for specific stats and it's going to provide an advantage in a gamey way.
I can already see it:
Billiards and darts are too random to serve as a test of anything.
They're not random. They just weight something you probably don't expect, which is what 0x1mm was saying earlier.
No they're not, I gave examples of both fixed and contested checks. You can throw 'darts' with someone at a board all day and learn… well something, about your relative skills and stats, and at no point are you making contested challenge checks. Ditto driving, ditto a million other things.
I think this is just finding reasons why all the things that exist in the game are somehow different, somehow, but without a lot of basis to say there's actually a paradigm this is violating. Some players may prefer others not to understand their stats too closely but it's not something the game actually enforces, and I think character teaching -- having done a fuck load of it for skills that suck to teach -- relies heavily on being able to communicate coherently about relative ability in some way.
"Those are relative, not objective."No they're not, I gave examples of both fixed and contested checks. You can throw 'darts' with someone at a board all day and learn… well something, about your relative skills and stats, and at no point are you making contested challenge checks. Ditto driving, ditto a million other things.
Fair. Let me clarify. Your examples do not account for a universal objective comparison. Which is to say, how effective a stat is at a certain level when compared to the game as a whole. While just having some equipment in a room and people running numbers doesn't immediately create that objective high or low, over time it will inevitably emerge, and with it, character builds and templates will become a mainstay in a game that should be more about player to player interaction.
Like I just don't understand the problem here, there's so many assumptions being made that players know things about mechanics they don't know. If someone doesn't know what the stats and mods are for a dart throw, why would they know what they are for a jumping rope? Players are presuming they know the exact ingredients and structure of this idea before it even exists, and working backwards to say that information they imagine will exist is too revealing.
I know from experience how difficult it is to figure out out the AWR component of a AWR/QCK/CRD check, and that's when I knew those stats were being checked at all. The idea that players will just be able to casually intuit deep knowledge of unrelated game systems from one mechanic they know nothing about just seems incoherent to me.
Players mostly probably don't even know what stats get checked for driving, something they all do more than any other check in their entire playing careers. No one is talking about a rope that outputs AWR and CRD ratings and broadcasts them, and even if they were I can't imagine that information would even mean anything to the majority of players.
This allows the gyms to be fleshed out a little bit but negates the ability for the gym equipment to be abused in many of the ways described here. Some of the methods of abuse (such as sharing builds) would stick around but the damage would be limited to low UE characters.
"Keep at it until you're not even making a lick of improvement after a full week of practice" is something I've heard in maybe ten different contexts for combat training. There's nothing at all wrong with this in my opinion, we have to be able to teach one another without just saying 'who knows! we have no idea where the brain is'. What the game is asking of players is just to be authentic about roleplaying it so no one is saying the classic: 'you need to workout your eyeballs'.
In real life we have both intuitive and relative and fixed ways to compare ourselves to one another, measure our progress and achievement and ability, what is even slightly wrong about that in the game world?
Like this whole thread is about gizmos you can just look at and they will tell you flat out tell you how good you might be at something.
For a while you could just flat out look at aircraft and it would tell you how well you could fly them, it was only really removed because I kept complaining it was too inaccurate and would frustrate players who'd end up as craters. This is not a concept anathema to Sindome's design. We're not meant to walk around in darkness not knowing anything about anyone or even ourselves.
