Making additional skill-sheet tiers?

Not so sure about Advanced and Master, but Grandmaster could need a bit more. Since Grandmaster is effectively celingless, it can get confusing on who is a better GM than who.

Yes, yes, and once more, yes. Back in the old days, the system going on now worked great. Now we have so many different characters and the whole powerscale has shifted around some. There needs to be more between those levels. On a different site, we created a system with numbers. It made everything a lot easier to quantify and compare--as well as allowing small boosts upon approval depending on what staff saw. Even if a number system is off the books, just adding more levels just makes it easier for a staff member to say "hey, I think this person has demonstrated enough in this application to get a bonus to this skill"

I haven't been here long, but an idea that I think could be interesting is a + system added to the 5 current skill ranks. Instead of going up a full rank due to an ability or upgrade from only a couple threads, you could go up like one + level. An example would be someone with Advanced+3 in general speed meaning they are 3 levels above an average Advanced but not fast enough to be considered Master. This would mean you don't have to keep adding new full ranks and it has a very clear progress indicator. Maybe cap it at like +5 and then let Grandmaster have a higher cap since that's the best of the best and it seems like there's quite a few Grandmasters out there.

i think as long as you hash out what each plus's perimeters would be there wouldn't be a problem with it. my question is however would abilities factor into this or is it simply their physical capability?

This is one of those things that a definitive yes or no is difficult to give simply because this is uprooting a whole lot of the previous conventions we've had and would, in part, require a lot of revamping everywhere as, specifically, some races are built around the 5 tier model we have right now. Right now we need to know WHAT it's getting changed to, are we adding arbitrary + monikers at the end of it like we do for tier?(these barely mean anything to begin with in practice) or are we adding a whole other tier like Adept--->Proficient--->Advanced--->Master---Grandmaster--->Goku?

The merits of the idea itself are entirely laid in how it is executed.

I am voting yes.

It will be a DIFFICULT change that EVERYONE will have to participate in. Updating characters after the change has been made will be a must and will take time. We'd have to seriously work as a team to get things done.

The reason I voted yes is because people like to compare characters. When fighting, you do it automatically. Having such a limited selection of skill level makes it hard to do a true comparison when "beginner" means like 5 different things. With the amount of characters on site, having a wider range of skill-levels would make it easier to really compare one character to the next. I mean, we have this really wide range of tiers that can show a difference with a mere + or -, but a very small skill sheet? It feels extremely out of balance. I'd want to bring it from the five we have to at least ten. This would include adding an actual "untrained" section as well since not every character even dabbles with something and "beginner" implies they have. The ones I listed below were the main ones I felt would be best:

1. Untrained
2. Beginner
3. Novice
4. Familiar
5. Trained
6. Intermediate
7. Adept
8. Proficient
9. Experienced
10. Advanced
11. Expert
12. Specialist
13. Master
14. Grand Master
15. Legendary

Though many of these words mean the same damn thing, we can describe them ourselves like it has been done up until this point. If you don't want to use 15 levels, then obviously drop it down. However, I think this many would help greatly and give a better character comparison for combat threads and such.

But how does this fix the situation? I know we want to be able to compare characters but, for argument's sake, let's take two people who have Grandmaster in Speed who we arbitrarily compare the speed of. We implement this fifteen tier system, how do we decide who lands where on that list? Because I can tell you right now, neither of them will appreciate it if they're lower and they have a right to have those misgivings since the reason will basically tantamount to staff discretion...which is not always fair. So if we put people on the same level, all that does it make it that much harder for lower tiered characters to catch up.

So evolution and change is part of every site, I've found that through my journeys in the world of RP forums that PH has an incredibly simplistic and open way of doing powers. That simplicity was actually one of the more appealing factors of when I was joining since:

a) Stat Systems were fucking annoying, always having to go back and forth to remember what it was my character could do with these numbers and also when they changed etc.

b) Most tier systems didn't actually add in a skill-based system and it was instead very... empty in that regard.

The simplicity of understanding the site's mechanics, its active and reasonably large memberbase - being one of the more active forums in the internet I have found - and finally its open-mind and acceptance of new and intriguing content since the site has gone much further than simply Bleach and the site has become something on its own standing realistically. So while I am rather neutral on the subject, and will still stick around no matter what naturally, I am going to say yes and no. The skill system can be tweaked and changed a little bit but maybe not a big/colossal change that makes it complicated or harder to understand.

@Andy

I understand what you mean. My input mainly had to do with giving a more expanded system to better separate characters that are so close in level to each other. For example... using the regular tier system, there isn't that much of a difference between a 0-5 and 0-4. A lot of that can go on skill, writing, plot, staff discretion and so forth... However, there is a notable difference between a 1-5 and a 0-4. By knowing the mechanics of the site, you understand that difference more merely by looking at it. With the current skill system, there really isn't that much of a difference because there are only 5 total levels of it. It wouldn't exactly "fix" the situation, but theoretically would just allow a better separation of powers for people when looking at the skill sheet. With what I put forward, there is a noticeable difference between being a beginner and being a master... not what is technically just 2 levels in between.