Hoplology Suggestions

[flint harness]

I have leveled hoplology from 0 to 100, and it was a very fun concept that I enjoyed engaging with very much. However, I feel it needs improvement in two simple areas.
First, it would be much more convenient and less clunky to only highlight items that you haven't studied yet, for clarity. Barring that, I think it would be good enough to simply prevent you from using the recipe at all if the equipment was already studied, so you don't have to go through the whole 10 second craft time just to find out you've got that one.
The second suggestion is really more of a question. Why the five minute cooldown? I'm not sure of the purpose it serves. It feels like a deliberate choice but I can't figure out why it's needed.

[mellow bronze]

At the very least it should instantly fail if the object is already researched. That one seems like a bug.

[lyric epoch]

Id love it if it failed right away. I usually check the list but its gotten to be a loooong scroll now.

[jolly heart]

Agree, its tedious now.

[hot cloak]

something I've wondered for a while now in that regard: Does the "hide known" button in npc shops hide known recipes and/or known hoplology stuff? If it hides hoplology stuff, it means the required filter is already up and running ingame, meaning it should defo also apply to the skill/our inventory

[solemn jungle]

Hide known is recipes

[charred sun]

I recently got Hoplology mainly just because I want to get the syn bonuses from the skill. For the time being, I'm just trying to get it up to lvl 40 for the +1 in sword. But, it is such a slog as is and could really benefit from some tweaks that could make the whole skill leveling process better.

I like the idea of it only highlighting the gear that you haven't analyzed already. I started out checking the gear and got the skill up a few levels. Only after that did I find a list online to keep track. But, I got side tracked with some other stuff and forgot what gear I checked. I think it's just not very clear in game, or through the wiki, how to tell if you have analyzed a set of gear or not, unless you are paying meticulous attention to the online google doc check list. Is it based on the name of the item, or, item type distinguished by picture? Still not sure exactly.

Also, the 5 minute cool down is a bit steep. I don't get it either. I was recently grinding war caches to get better gear for my lvl and to sell for councils. It's kinda atrocious when you have a full inventory of gear that you want to analyze, but have to wait 5 minutes in between. There were a few times when I just sat around for about 30 minutes to an hour, just to wait for the timer so I could analyze all the gear in my inventory. Played the blatterhorn while I waited, but still a bit of unwanted down time. I got Hop up to about lvl 19-20, and got kind of tired of waiting around so I put it aside for now and went off to do other things.

[solemn jungle]

there is a report on the skill

so if you do it on some stuff but forget to check off your completionist sheet you can cross reference with the in-game report

agree that all of the above makes it cumbersome for sure, i'm 90 in it but only because i just try to do it to some stuff when i get loot or craft things and then go about the rest of my day

but for some perspective, as annoying as it is, 40 hoplology is actually a really comparatively easy synergy level haha

[charred sun]

Ah, right on. I didn't catch that for the Hop skill. I'll look in to it and try to check the list with it. Thanks.

And yea, I think by the numbers the skill is easy to level, with each item giving 20 exp and it only taking 50 exp per level. It's just very time consuming. I'm not sure why there is a 5 minute timer. Best guess is a balance issue, so that people don't level the skill too quickly, which I suppose can be an issue if you are using staff, and the armor regen makes someone op too quickly? But, if the choice for 5 minute cool down was done as a balance decision, I think I'd personally rather have a steeper exp per level curve, than waiting around 5 minutes to analyze another item.

[solemn jungle]

the steeper per level curve would mean having to analyze more items, which means getting access to more item types, so that would quickly become much, much worse. i'd say, think of the timer as a signal to go do something else rather than as something to actively wait for

the same way nobody waits two in-game hours just to drop a vendor fox

you'll very quickly get to a point where most of the stuff you're looting has been hoplologized so there won't be any impulse to blow through a whole stack of things

i think the 10-second wait just to find out if an item has been hoplologized part is the much more frustrating bit

if you could just quickly go through your loot pile like "oh i can get xp for this" the five-minute wait wouldn't be so bad, you just do an item real quick every time you get a loot pile (maybe save one for when you remember after the five min timer is up)

[charred sun]

Those are fair points, especially with the per lvl curve. At the very least, I agree that changing the 10 sec wait would do a lot to make the skill less cumbersome. Because, last I played about a week ago, I have tried to shift my tactic to, as you said, analyze as you go instead of analyzing in bulk. So, either getting rid of the 10 sec wait for items you've already analyzed or changing it to only highlighting items you haven't analyzed would improve the process overall.

[solemn jungle]

if you think about where the mechanic sits in the bigger context, it's clearly a different "way" of making teh skill take some investment. sometimes things take a lot of time via stuff to do ("gotta kill all the things!"), or via spending mats ("gotta loot/buy all the things!"). in this case, leveling the skill is 100% free (all the equipment you were probably going to gather anyway for other reasons), so the time gate is built into it by a usage gate. and you can see how that same idea got reused for e.g. weather witching, where at least one of the ways to increase your tempest energy max is to do a ritual that can only be done at most once every two hours. but it's less frustrating because you immediately know if your attempt at it is going to fail, and the trick is very clearly about remembering it as "a thing to do every once in a while" where hoplology makes that less obvious/more grating

[charred sun]

Variety is the spice of life! I do appreciate that kind of variety of ways to "invest" and explore skills through use and grind. I haven't really looked much into weather witching, but that makes sense to me. And I haven't looked too deeply into, or thought too much about, the hop skill. It's mostly just been a side thought of "I want to get the syn bonuses" for my build. But, yea, I would prefer variety of engagement with the game and skills, as you point out.

[charred sun]

I leveled up hoplology further to 39 and have been thinking about the skill more. The 10 sec wait for items already analyzed definitely bogs the process down too much. Having only items which you haven't analyzed highlighted would be the quickest way to deal with that, or just have there only be a 10 sec wait if you have not analyzed a piece of gear already. Changing it so only items you haven't analyzed are highlighted would make the skill report redundant though, so I'm not sure that's the better choice and suppose it depends on if people want to keep the digitized classic pen and paper method of keeping track of gear with the list.

The biggest issue besides that is still the 5 minute wait. I've been using the "analyze as I go" method more frequently and it does reduce the time sitting around overall, but it's still an issue if you are doing dungeon crawls and picking up a lot of gear. I've been doing some dungeon crawls (solo) to collect gear to sell off for councils (need to raise some level 50 and 60 caps on a couple of skills). I'll fill my inventory and get a good chunk of it analyzed before I leave the dungeon to sell off gear, but, there is still a bit of sitting around and waiting to analyze because I want to analyze them before I sell them. So, I still have to take some time to sit around for 30+ mins to analyze the rest of the gear in my inventory.

Getting rid of the 10 sec wait for items already analyzed would help if you are grinding the same dungeon getting similiar kinds of gear. But, what I was thinking is maybe a way to fix the issue is if instead of a exp curve per level as I thought before, there were bonuses as you level up the skill that would reduce the 5 minute wait time. So, as you increase the skill level you don't have to wait so long to analyze more gear. I can see how when you get to the higher levels of Hoplology that the 10 sec wait would be the bigger issues because you've already analyzed a bunch of different kinds of gears. But, in the early to mid levels for the skill, the biggest issue is waiting around for 5 minutes after each piece of gear, especially if you are dungeon grinding for gear. Reduced wait time as a level up bonus would mirror irl learning because irl the more you learn, the quicker and easier learning and analyzing gets.

[lyric epoch]

I use the in game list and see which ones have been done already while I’m waiting on the timer and move the already done ones to a different bag. Then just do the new ones as the timer runs out while doing other things.

[solemn jungle]

I have probably only once bothered hoplologizing an entire loot pile, and then stopped bothering. Even if i know there's probably a lot in it that's hoplologizable, it's just not worth the inventory slot inconvenience. It still goes up just fine

[charred sun]

I too have been moving the gear around in my inventory to separate the ones I've already done. The list and report are both useful, and I'm getting a better sense of how the study/naming scheme works so I can distinguish the types by name. I wouldn't say that the list and report should be gotten rid of, I mean, I still use pen and paper from time to time to take notes or sketch out plans even when I play single player games. And I could see, even if they changed it so that only un-analyzed gear was highlighted, the list and report could help some players not just for meta, but there are probably definitely some people out there who would set a personal goal of analyzing all the gear just because they can.