[CF-Devel] New Skill System

Tue Dec 3 23:34:03 CST 2002

Todd Mitchell wrote:
>

      Ok, here's my idea -.

     >

      it is based on the premise that people would rather select skills in order

     >

      to play a certain way rather than play a certain way to get skilled.

  Fair enough point, of which I agree.

>

     >

     >

      1. you start with either a 'class' with a couple skills or get a equal

     >

      amount of 'skill gems' and there is a skill altar in the hall of selection.

  Idea of 'skill gems' or any object you spend to get skills bugs me - I'll go 
into more detail on that below.

  But having some race/class combinations as quick templates is fine, and player 
could choose advanced creation method where he has much more choice on he to 
make his character.

  The hall of selection map as it is now was a very convenient way to let class 
selection happen.  But IMO, all this should be built into the game as code 
selection for a few reasons:

1) The moving about on maps to create your character seems a bit hokey to me.
2) If done more in code, smart clients could present a much nicer selection 
mechanism (making selection quicker and probably easier as information would be 
presented in a better fashion)
3) Less likely for things to go wrong (eg, players picking up multiple classes, 
or forgetting to pick up a class, etc) - being in the code can basically mean 
there is no way to shortcut the process.

>

      2. you get general experience only

  Seems good to me.

>

      3. every level or so you get a skill gem

  See note above.

>

      4. you can learn some special skills (unlisted) at 'level 1' by scrolls

     >

      still.

  This (IMO) is almost a different discussion.  How to get new skills and how 
you advance existing skills does not really need to be related.

  My personal thought is that there will be no great agreement on the best way 
to learn new skills, so keeping it flexible is probably best (skill scrolls 
might appear, or the server admin may remove them from random treasure, or make 
them exceedingly rare, or you have special quest maps, whatever).

>

      5. you have to buy/find spell books to learn spells and learn them similar

     >

      way as now (int or wis and general level), but they are cast based on your

     >

      skill in that magic area (can't cast or less effect).

  This would basically seem to be the way things are, except there may be more 
magic skills.

>

      6. there are skill altars dotted around the world (and a little mini one in

     >

      the random maps) where you can use your gems to increase your skills (x

     >

      number of gems gives you a skill level depending on the skill -altar gets

     >

      input from player 'say list skills, say increase fire magic', checks for the

     >

      skill force and the skills table for cost or available levels - removes

     >

      gems...)

  Not sure the point of this.  I see several real things that may happen:
1) these altars are so random that using them to advance is nothing more than a 
minor inconvenience as you go to the building in town to use them, or

2) These altars are exceedingly rare, so players know where the 'fire magic' 
altar is and best way to get there, and so on.

  I'm not sure which point you were envisioning.

>

      7. skills are put on a table and redone to work on a level system (e.g.

     >

      level 4 in two handed weapon gives you x to hit..., level 12 in meditation

     >

      gives you x hp and sp back, level 9 praying gets you x grace back...)

  Fair enough.  All this doesn't necessarily need to be in a table, but the idea 
of skills of different levels giving different abilities makes lots of sense. 
Eg, if you decide to be level 20 bowyer, you can make magical arrows or whatever.

  I don't generally like the idea of skill gems or other 'spending' mechanisms 
for the character unless they are not done as objects.  The problem I see as 
doing objects the character spends are many fold: 1) They could give them to 
other characters.  2) They might lose them, drop them, sell them, whatever else. 
  3) The idea of gems just magically showing up in your inventory just seems a 
bit odd to me - it just smacks as too much a way to shortcut writing some actual 
code to do the same thing.  Point #1 can't be easily solved by making them 
startequip if you want the players to spend them on altars (as the startequip 
would have them go away before the altar would get a chance to process them).

  But I have a slightly different idea:

1) A large portion of all exp earned goes to general exp category, and the rest 
to whatever skill you earned it in.  Large portion >50%.  So if you get 1000 exp 
for killing something with a fireball, 500 goes to general, 500 to appropriate 
wizardry.  Exp in the general category realy doesn't count for anything.  This 
ratio is a tunable (so some servers could set it 90%, which means players have a 
lot of flexibility, and others might set it 10%, which is sort of how it is now 
- exp goes to the skill you get it in)

2) You move exp from this general category into whatever skills you want.  This 
is just done by simple commands (eg, move_exp wizardry 500).  Ideally, the 
client provides a nicer front end to it.

3) Each skill has its own exp total, and hence its own level.   All things 
related to the skill are based on the level you have in the skill (eg, attack 
bonus, being able to cast spells).  Some skills probably need to get cleaned 
up/redone.  EG, perhaps make sense magic and sense curse abilities of 
thaumertergy at certain levels, eg, level 5 you can sense magic, level 10, you 
can curse.  Some re-arrangement would need to get redone.  Some skills perhaps 
get broken apart, maybe 3 for weapon use, and others combined.  Deciding what 
skills remain, what new skills get added, what benefits are not really worth 
going into at this point, since this is just one point of a larger proposal.

4) Somewhat related to #3 above, perhaps add a bardic area of magic/skill.  This 
would actually use the charisma stat.  The bardic skill would also encompass the 
oratory and singing skills as certain level benefits.  Have the bard 'sing' 
spells, but rather than using mana, each has a longer casting time, and imposes 
some length of time that the bard can't sing again (this would be base on level 
of the bard, as well as perhaps things like what the bards con and cha is).

5) There would be a total that tracks the amount of exp the character has earned 
  for purposes of their overall level.  This is basically the same as exp in 
skills + exp in general, but since there may be different ratios, might not be 
literally the same.

6) Reduce max level to 50 for everything.  However, level 50 still requires that 
1.5 billion exp or wahtever you current need for about level 110.  Cutting the 
level range down a lot will make it much easier to balance/set up skills so they 
are interesting/useful as you keep gaining them (eg, have some level 45 spells 
for example).

7) No cap on total exp for skills - if a player wants, he can get level 50 in 
all skills - that is up to him if he finds that interesting.  However, I 
certainly think you would see characters focusing on just a few skills and 
getting really good in them, and not bother working on the other skills until 
they maxed out those.

  Yes, I know people say it is bad the characters get perfect in all the skills, 
but if your going to complain about that, shouldn't we also complain that all 
high level characters tend to find the same 'best' set of artifacts to wear? 
The simple fact that since crossfire is an open ended game, players will max out 
various things.  I personally wouldn't find it interesting to kill a bunch of 
things just so my alchemy skill is also level 50, but if players want to do that 
and find it fun/interesting, I see no reason not to let them do so.

  One other idea would be some form of retirement/final quest, but completing it 
means the character is gone (Ascended to heaven, whatever), but something 
notable is done (statue in town square?  Other recognition?)  That might inspire 
some players to go for that final quest.

  Alternative, move to 64 bit values for exp, and have exp needed for each level 
beyond 50 double from the previous.  Thus, a character could become level 70 in 
some skill, but it would take them gobs and gobs of exp to do so.

8) This proposal does nothing about how skills are learned.  Maybe skill scrolls 
remain.  Maybe you have to go to guild houses.  Maybe a benefit of being really 
high in a skill is that you can teach it to someone else.  Maybe you have to do 
quests.  Maybe it costs some general exp to learn a skill.  IMO, learning skills 
is just a very minor piece of redoing/cleaning up the skill system in general.

Phew.  So there is my proposal for people to tear apart.