[Crossfire-wiki] [Crossfire DokuWiki] page changed: user:mwedel:skills

Sat Jan 29 00:24:14 CST 2011

A page in your DokuWiki was added or changed. Here are the details:

Date        : 2011/01/29 00:24
User        : mwedel
Edit Summary: 

@@ -15,6 +15,73 @@
  The new system is derived from many other games - skills don't gain experience, the character does.  In this revised system, all experience a character gains goes to the character total, and increases the characters overall level.  Each time the characters overall level goes up, they get 10 advancement points (AP), on which to improve their skills.  The skill level, just as now, determines the characters effectiveness.
  
  The cost of increasing skills depend on the skill and the class in question, as the basic sample table below shows:
  
+ ^ Class ^ Weapon ^ Armor ^ Wizard Spellcasting ^ Cleric Spellcasting ^ Notes ^
+ ^ Fighter ^ 3 ^ 3 ^ 7 ^ 7 ^
+ ^ Cleric ^ 5 ^ 5 ^ 7 ^ 3 ^ 
+ ^ Wizard ^ 7 ^ 7 ^ 3 ^ 7 ^
+ ^ Paladin ^ 4 ^ 4 ^ 7 ^ 4 ^ Paladin represents fighter/cleric hybrid ^
+ ^ Devotee ^ 7 ^ 7 ^ 4 ^ 4 ^ Devotee represents wizard/cleric hybrid ^
+ ^ Warlock ^ 4 ^ 4 ^ 4 ^ 7 ^ Warlock represents wizard/fighter hybrid ^
+ ^ Everything ^ 5 ^ 5 ^ 5 ^ 5 ^ Represents theoretical class that is a mixture of all. ^
+ 
+ The table above only shows the 3 major character types - classes like monks, thieves, etc, would have their own entries.  The table also does not show secondary skills, like item creation/identification - those would have costs related to how closely they match the class.  For example, fighters would get smithery at a relatively low cost, but thaumaturgy at a high cost, with wizards being reverse from that.
+ 
+ While the header above show broad categories, skill advancement is still on a skill by skill advancement.  For example, a fighter would have to spend 3 points to increase sword skill, and 3 points to increase missile weapons - they do not just spend 3 points to increase all weapon skills.
+ 
+ Brief description of those skill:
+ 
+ **Weapon** Ability to use weapons.  This would likely get broken down into several skills just as now (missile weapons, swords, etc).  Any class could pick up any weapon, but they might not be very good with it.  As weapon skill increases, the characters damage would go up, attack speed increase, etc.  Also possible that special effects (stunned, confused, etc) could happen at higher levels.
+ 
+ **Armor** Ability to effectively wear armor - just as anyone can use a weapon, anyone can put on armor.  But as armor skill increases, speed penalty could go down, and perhaps the effectiveness of the armor increases (gives greater resistance). This could also get broken down into a few categories (light/medium/heavy), but not sure if it is worth it.
+ 
+ **Wizard Spellcasting** Just as it is now, but maybe skills get redone or merged some, but it basically represents the pyromancy, evocation, etc, skills.
+ 
+ **Cleric Spellcasting** Basically they praying skill as it is now.
+ 
+ == Advancement ==
+ 
+ Whenever a characters overall level goes up, they gain 10 AP (Note that the value 10 here is arbitrary, and in fact, would probably be a settings file variable - some servers could have a higher value to make things easier, and as it stands now, 10 may just be too low in any case).
+ 
+ At any point after gaining that level, the player chooses how to spend those skills.  Ideally, there is some nice interface for this.  Unspent points can be carried over.
+ 
+ A character can have a skill level which is twice their character level.  So a 5th level fighter could be level 10 in swordmanship and still level 5 in armor.  If that same character decided to focus on wizard skills, that is poor choice - at level 5, at best they could be level 7 in spellcasting, and have no skill levels in anything else.
+ 
+ The skill levels range from 1 to 100.  Once a skill level reaches 100, it can not be advanced further, but the character likely has other skills they may want to advance.  A cap on skill levels is necessary because as designers, it must be known the parameters one works within.  For example, as damage goes up as weapon skill increases, a character that is level 1000 in a weapon skill may just do too much damage.  If effects of the skill are spread out over the maximum level, one may find that there are large gaps with no bonuses.  For example, if it is decided that at maximum weapon level, the character gets +20 damage, that means that if maximum level is 100, every 5 levels their damage increases - often enough to be a bonus the character notices.  But if maximum level is 1000, then every 50 levels the characters damage increases by 1, which would be pretty insignificant, especially if that level 1000 maximum was put in place just to satisfy a few players who work to max out characters.
+ 
+ However, I do not see any reason why a characters overall level can not be unlimited.  Any form of bonuses (hit points, item power usage, etc) may also cap at level 100, but the character could continue to gain levels if they so desired to increase various skills.  Given the costs and number of skills, it may be a character would have to be very high level before they would ever max out all their skills.
+ 
+ == New Characters ==
+ 
+ I have not extensively thought about new character creation.  It may be new characters get 20 or 30 AP points to populate some skills (exact value should be a setting).  So the fighter could decide to increase the level of their weapon skills, etc.  Note that a level 1 character would still be constrained by the 2*level cap for skills.
+ 
+ It is conceivable that custom class builder could be designed that lets the character choose a couple skills at cost 3, a couple at cost 4, etc.  Balancing that properly could be difficult - the player could properly decide that they will only use swords, so that is the cost 3 weapon skill, will only use pyromancy as second cost 3 skill, and take armor and praying as cost 4 skills - pretty much getting all benefits with no drawbacks.
+ 
+ == Why is this better? ==
+ 
+ These opinions are purely my own, but I do think it has some advantages:
+ 
+   * Classes now have more significance - choosing to be a fighter vs wizard has actual long term implications.  However, this still does not prevent any class from learning other class skills.  Note also that how much significance the classes has really depends on cost.  If a server admin decides to, they could modify the archetypes and make all skills for all classes just cost 5, so there is no advantage/disadvantage.  Tweaking the costs also would determine difference - instead of the 3/7 mix I have above, a 4/6 mix still has some advantage/disadvantage, but not nearly so much.
+ 
+   * This //fixes// problem of experience gains for skills.  Some skills right now do not gain experience easily - while this should be fixed, some skills just do not lend themselves all that easily for a balanced experience advance, either because they are skills that are infrequently used and would need to then give a very big (and seemingly out of proportion) experience reward when used, or the fact they may be considered too easy to use, and one does not want to give easy experience away.  Using skills would still gain experience, but it would got to the characters overall experience total.
+ 
+   * This adds more choices during advancement and can give some goals for players.  This is purely personal opinion, but I prefer having choices to make about character advancement - I don't want to do it every minutes, but when gaining a level is fine.  And if more effects are put in for skills (at level 20, I get a chance to stun opponents with the hammer), it gives more incentive for characters to get to those points.  Within current skill system, there are things you gain, but in most cases, a character is not going to really do much about them - if a character is killing things with their pyromancy skill, it is unlikely they are going to switch to using another skill because of a bonus they may get 4 levels later.  I will note that the choice here is little like dragon characters get to make choices on focus and slowly increase resistances, which may be one reason that is a more popular character.
+ 
+ == Loose Ends ==
+ 
+ The examples here really just focused on the 3 main character archetypes (fighter, cleric, mage).  Crossfire has many more than that, and I think this also helps them out.
+ 
+ For example, with such a system, thieves may be better able to improve their thief like skills - they don't care how they get their experience, so if they are able to sneak around and get a surprise attack for extra damage bonus on a tough monster, it doesn't matter where the exp for that kill goes.
+ 
+ Dragon characters probably get a different skill mix - for example, clawing and dragon armor may become skills they need to improve instead of armor being tied to overall level.
+ 
+ These changes do not directly impact balance, except so far as the characters skill level relative to overall level may differ.  But if the skills are properly defined for effects, eg, that at level 100 weapon skill, you get +20 damage bonus, one can work out appropriate power for other skills.  For example, one could assume that a person with 100 weapon skill would need to be at least level 50, and so may have a weapon that does damage 20, have another 10 damage from strength, and attack speed could be defined as at best being 2.0.  So that means that the character has damage 50 at speed 2.0, so would average 50 damage a tick (since damage is rolled as a random number from 1 to damage, and they get 2 attacks).  So one could then figure a spell of similar level should also do 50 damage/tick, but one might lower that average for large area of effect spells.
+ 
+ == Wrapping Up ==
+ 
+ This page was mostly just to record some thoughts that have been bouncing around my head for a while.  I don't know if/when it would ever get implemented.
+ 
+ Mark Wedel
+ January 2011
  
  


IP-Address  : 173.228.106.112
Old Revision: http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/user:mwedel:skills?rev=1296278452
New Revision: http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/user:mwedel:skills

-- 
This mail was generated by DokuWiki at
http://wiki.metalforge.net/

