The UrW Anti-RSI Campaign group. ARSI, for short.

[Bert Preast]

On behalf of struggling iron-age Finns everywhere, I have a couple of suggestions to reduce the risks of RSI and arthritis:

1.  Clothing should be at the bottom of the inventory menu, as I believe it is the thing we make least changes to.  No more scrolling past 25 items of winter clothing to get at the tool.  Though I do understand that getting at one's tool through so many layers of clothing can be time consuming.

2.  Let the examine herbs command apply to all herbs in the inventory, rather than having to herblore each one individually.  I like to have a decent herblore skill, but grinding it is quite literally painful.

3.  A suggestion I made a while ago regarding bow skill on the advanced game course:

"One task of the advanced game course is to increase your archery skill.  Should your character have above average archery skill already, this is a massive pain in the arse - I have just gone through six bowstrings (so about 600 arrows loosed?) which has taken over two days in game and two hours in real time!  T + Enter + Enter, repeat 50 times then go pick up the arrows and repeat, repeat, repeat etc.

It was not fun.

I am aware that the idea is that the player is encouraged to go bow-hunting, and the text for the task makes it seem that you need to be shooting live creatures for it to work.  However, some time ago I learned that shooting into the ground or anything really also work; and I am always impatient to get onto the Great Man of the Forest and Kaumo Furs parts of the course, which are great fun.

I think the task should be changed now that making bows is modelled better:  Make a bow and some arrows, then hit something that's alive with it.  This would still encourage the player to go bow-hunting and teach him how it works, and not leave the players with high archery skill crippled by repetitive strain injuries! "

Anyone else got ideas to reduce keystrokes?

[Galgana]

Point 1 can be resolved by editing [INVENTORY_ORDER] in urw_ini.txt
For example, this is how I have it customised:

Code: [Select]

[INVENTORY_ORDER:FOOD,PLANT,SKIN,TOOL,WEAPON,CONTAINER,FIREWOOD,VALUABLE,CARCASS,ARMOUR,VEHICLE]

[PALU]

As far as I understand the game courses aren't intended to be crammed through, but rather intended as activity guides. Yes, that means that it may take quite a long time before the archery skill is increased through normal game play, but there's a whole life to get through the courses.

[Tinker]

I already edited my inventory order and use TAB to select items groups, some things are still a pain though.

Auto equipping a paddle or sesta in your inventory when you try to get a watercraft moving would help as would setting a preferred tool for active fishing so that tool is auto equipped if you have it in your inventory and start fishing.

[JP_Finn]

Galgana, PALU and Tinker already covered all but one part.
It a character’s archery is already relatively high, one can always obtain a crossbow and use that for the skill increase.

[Bert Preast]

That's true; but I am usually based in the far north-east, so getting my hands on a crossbow is quite a major expedition!

[ineedcords]

On behalf of struggling iron-age Finns everywhere, I have a couple of suggestions to reduce the risks of RSI and arthritis:
...

Great to have a thread about anti-RSI, discussing issues and potential improvements, thanks for raising this.

As a very high level look at the game, I believe one major problem and perhaps the main RSI problem we have, is tied to one of the tenets of the UrW game design which boils down to "do action X, to get better at skill X".
This certainly is not good for RSI at all, especially when combined with the ever-reducing skill-increase-success-chance rates; such as shooting few thousand arrows to increase bow skill from 99 to 100, it does get bad.
Currently game drops player as a 16 year old and player is mostly in control of their destiny; there are no hard classes and no hardcoded paths. One, via dedication, eventually can become a swordsman, an archer etc. That dedication is currently paid with RSI...
One alternative to this is, not having that kind of development at all, with a more static class system in which you start as archer for example but do not change from there, much - I would not prefer that, personally.
Another alternative is keeping any-to-any skill development approach but allowing much quicker skill development, starting as archer, quickly becoming swordsman. This probably would reduce immersion.
I am not sure what to do on this, if you or anyone have a suggestion to improve this, I would be interested to hear that.

...
1.  Clothing should be at the bottom of the inventory menu, as I believe it is the thing we make least changes to.  No more scrolling past 25 items of winter clothing to get at the tool.
...

Now, focusing on item 1 in your list (quoted above), there are already anti-RSI features in the game to help with the "too many items in list 'issue. Namely, the auto-assigned item letter codes for instant-item-interaction, as well as the FILTER functionality located under the TAB shortcut key in inventory view.

If you have anti-RSI efficiency on your mind, and you look at your inventory list & see 25 clothing items and you wish to get past those to reach a tool, then in that situation, you should not be scrolling down 25 items in the first place, as it would be against the anti-RSI efficiency.

Just hit the TAB key (the FILTER key), and use the built-in feature to show tools only and press 'a' key to pick the first item in the tools-only view (or, if it is not the top one in this new/updated tools-only view, then just hit the corresponding item key, such as b, c, d, etc.).

You can check out this post from paz, for a run down of what's already available in the game: https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=1747.msg4824#msg4824

2. (Your herblore suggestion) I agree with the herblore skill speed up suggestion. While at it, wheatherlore probably should be bumped up too.
3. (Bow suggestion) This sounds good to me also. Hitting live animals/humans, to level up faster (rather than 600 waste shots). Note that the dev is a real life archer and probably been training for years, so they may not like a fast tracked approach. There is no harm in suggesting though, let's see what they say, probably in the next round of suggestions-mass-review.

[Bert Preast]

1.  As a player with a few thousand hours over about 6 years, I have some idea how things can be customised.  Other players with just a few dozen hours and a couple of weeks may discover the same, but the point is that it took me years to get it.  I, like many players, am an idiot.  New players especially are idiots; and yet they are the ones we need to draw in - rather than leave them with their knuckles crippled with athritis and weeping in bewilderment as to why.  The idea is the minimum keystrokes possible for noobs.

2.  The herblore thing is not to speed up the grinding, just to reduce the RSI involved.  I think weatherlore is fine as is, though I continue to wonder why it exists when there are many more interesting things that could take its place.  People who grow up in an area learn to read the skies and the seasons, it's not really something you study.

3.  Everyone seems to be ignoring the main part of my archery suggestion, which is that you have to make a bow and some arrows.  I know Sami is an archer and I lap up all of his Youtube videos, and I think he would agree that making a bow and some arrows will teach more about archery than just loosing a few dozen arrows downrange.

Just read this back and I come off as a little bit condescending.  That's not my intention!      

[Bert Preast]

Just remembered the most RSI activity of all - shopping.  Can villages not have a granary building where the food is kept, a smithy for metal stuff, a tailors for clothing, tannery for furs etc?  I think it would also help with the ambiance, storing stuff any old how is not how people do things.  Well, my wife excepted!

It's a lot of keystrokes trying to find that masterwork small knife or whatever you are shopping for.

[Bert Preast]

As a very high level look at the game, I believe one major problem and perhaps the main RSI problem we have, is tied to one of the tenets of the UrW game design which boils down to "do action X, to get better at skill X".
This certainly is not good for RSI at all, especially when combined with the ever-reducing skill-increase-success-chance rates; such as shooting few thousand arrows to increase bow skill from 99 to 100, it does get bad.
Currently game drops player as a 16 year old and player is mostly in control of their destiny; there are no hard classes and no hardcoded paths. One, via dedication, eventually can become a swordsman, an archer etc. That dedication is currently paid with RSI...
One alternative to this is, not having that kind of development at all, with a more static class system in which you start as archer for example but do not change from there, much - I would not prefer that, personally.
Another alternative is keeping any-to-any skill development approach but allowing much quicker skill development, starting as archer, quickly becoming swordsman. This probably would reduce immersion.
I am not sure what to do on this, if you or anyone have a suggestion to improve this, I would be interested to hear that.

My suggestion would be that when using a weapon out of combat (that is, nothing alive is in visual range that is not a domestic animal or companion), that you train with the weapon for an hour.  This should be tiring, and have a small chance of success and perhaps an even smaller one of damaging the weapon.  New characters will generally not have much time to spare for weapons training as surviving is the main issue.  Characters that make it through a season or two will have time to train weapon skills, and this method will let them do so without looking into Finnish law on causing all your fans to be crippled with RSI!

My thoughts on a class system would be that if you start the game at 16 years old, you are in hardcore mode.  Easy mode would be starting at 21 years old, with a large bonus to two or three skills in character generation to simulate having spent 5 years learning on the job before being cast into the wilderness.   

[Credit]

Doesnt really seem like a problem for the dev or a thing to worry about.

This keyboard fight and flight problem isnt new. It's not 2 years old or 10, it's almost 30 years old.

Maybe if you made a hefty donation...

[Bert Preast]

The suggestions are ways to reduce keystrokes, I know it is impossible to eliminate them!

I would love to make a hefty donation, but as an aging cripple I can barely afford new underpants 

[Sami]

Yep one can get RSI only by using a mouse, or even a single key, if just keep grinding enough.
But ways to reduce keyboard jockeying is of course naturally welcome for many.
Sometimes it's a matter of playstyle if you get into serious grinding just to increase skills, but yeah in the archery game-course it's truly a real problem if the skill is high to start with.
This is suggestion is also read and listened, and game courses are something we'll re-think anyway in the future.

[Bert Preast]

Another suggestion; making a hole in the ice is something I hardly ever do consecutively, so it would save a few keystrokes if it was removed as a [r] repeat action. 

[PALU]

I can give you one situation where you do want to smash ice repeatedly: Trying to reach a dead elk that went through the ice, but the ice starts to make cracking sounds even when you're crawling towards it. In that situation you can fetch a punt and smash your way through the ice to reach the carcass, haul it up into the punt, and smash your way back to shore.
Another case is when net fishing while the ice appears (or continue to net fish after the ice has appeared), as well as smashing your way to the shore if you're out traveling as the ice appears.