More time to forget skills
Forgetting skills lets us experiment

A forget window of 30UE would, in fact, allow for about K skill level so if it was fixed to work as intended it should meet the requirements you're after.

If I am understanding what you are describing correctly, that's a major bug and needs to be addressed.

To be clear, you're saying that the limit is hitting the button X times instead of spending X UE, as it was intended?

If so that's a big problem, considering what a huge difference being able to pump 10 trains at the low end is like compared to pumping 10 trains at the high end.

@Grig

Respecs are subject to staff review and approval, and you should not assume that they will be granted. They might be granted, granted in part, or denied entirely. Generally, respec is a thing that I don't think is terribly well understood by people. Due to my own biases based on negative experiences submitting respec requests in the past, I personally believe they should be done away with and only granted in the cases of code changes to skills. That's a different topic though, and I'm not introducing new ideas on the OOC space going forward.

I'm of two minds on retraining. I originally proposed the idea and this is what became of it. I like the system, but it was solely designed to cater to the people who fat-fingered their UE spends and not for you to retrain or change your character organically. I still prefer my original suggestion on how to make the system.

That said, there is a real problem with a selection of the game being so laser-focused on minmaxing that enabling such a system means everyone would just be combat gods with one or two side skills, and there would be basically zero diversity.

The question is whether or not that is a better scenario than what we have now, where we have people with hyper-optimized characters because people know the equation to success, that information being fiercely gatekept, and then the rest of the game being left to flounder as people waste years of their lives to figure out basic shit doesn't worth the way they think it does.

There's no real clear answer. I'm a fan of open and transparent, but I've also played RP games where the rules were entirely open-book and it can get very ugly. Peeking into D&D subreddits can reveal the level of toxicity that kind of thing can bring about.

I do see an issue with changes being too rapid. As long as a character doesn't go from being a highly skilled doctor and mediocre Krag Maga practitioner to someone who doesn't know any medicine at all and a kick ass brawler over night, I'm fine. Make the loss take time. Learning is already paced.

With that in mind, I'd love to see the max sill level forgetable fixed or even raised.

Regarding respecs, things may have changed, but I was always told that they are for streamlining your character. Not completely changing them. And the more your character is known for something, the harder time you would have convincing staff to drop it significantly or remove it.

I would love to replace respecs with a more robust system for lowering skills, stats and specializations all gated by pacing as even with the restrictions to respecs I am familiar with, it was still possible for a character to change massively overnight, rendering mountains of work some put into learning the ins and outs of their competition. I feel rapid changes, even when limited by staff, are worse than drastic changes that take a long time so as to allow people to notice and adjust to changes as they happen.

Now, obviously it would not make Sense for someone playing Kenny the Cowboy, ace decker of Western Red to turn into Kenny The Killer ace muscle solo, but I think increasing the length it takes general to the letter grade is useful.

So, example. you are at every point above like D or C or some high end near the top? It should take almost FOREVER, because it was something till this point WAS you characters life. So them unlearning or forgetting something they would have dedicated a lot of their life study and time to would be something that is hard to do and makes forgetting it completely *difficult* but not impossible. But your like K or so at painting? You can forget a lot faster, because you spent less time at it.

The only area this becomes cheesy, I think, is someone forgetting skills to shove into physical stats. Because there is no way to lower or forget your physical stats, but I think at that point you've been playing for a few years and should have a concept of whats going on. But then thats looking at actually keeping and carrying the character for that long.

Would it be cheesy though? My sense is, thinking about it, that while it's true you it might slowly see characters lean more stat heavy over time because they could forget skills but not stats, I'm not actually sure that's really an advantage per se. If anything players would probably want to be cautious to keep enough skill UE un-retrained so they could maintain skills at a decent level.

I think adding the ability to forget X amount of a skill, instead of it entirely, and/or X amount of a stat would also be beneficial.