[CF-Devel] New Skill System

[Yann Chachkoff]

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       But I have a slightly different idea:
     
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     1) A large portion of all exp earned goes to general exp category, and the  
     
     rest
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     to whatever skill you earned it in.  Large portion >50%.  So if you get 1000  
     
     exp
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     for killing something with a fireball, 500 goes to general, 500 to  
     
     appropriate
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     wizardry.  Exp in the general category realy doesn't count for anything.   
     
     This
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     ratio is a tunable (so some servers could set it 90%, which means players  
     
     have a
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     lot of flexibility, and others might set it 10%, which is sort of how it is  
     
     now
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     - exp goes to the skill you get it in)
     
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     2) You move exp from this general category into whatever skills you want.   
     
     This
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     is just done by simple commands (eg, move_exp wizardry 500).  Ideally, the
     
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     client provides a nicer front end to it.
     
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     I find rather disturbing the idea of distributing general experience anywhere 
you want. It means that you'd be able to get a very high wizardry skill just 
by using a melee weapon for example. It does sound a little weird. 
On the other hand, I agree with the principle for skill fine-tuning - this is 
quite close to my own proposal.

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

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

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

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     6) Reduce max level to 50 for everything.  However, level 50 still requires  
     
     that
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     1.5 billion exp or wahtever you current need for about level 110.  Cutting  
     
     the
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     level range down a lot will make it much easier to balance/set up skills so  
     
     they
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     are interesting/useful as you keep gaining them (eg, have some level 45  
     
     spells
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     for example).
     
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     This is a difficult discussion. 
An experimental server ran about three months ago with a 'reduced' experience 
scale - Maximum level was around 30. Some players find the more challenging 
environment quite fun; on the other hand, others found the game too difficult 
and didn't like the increased risks.  
Probably the best way to deal with this and make everybody happy would be to 
define the experience scale in a configuration file instead of hard-coding it. 
This way, 'easy' and 'hard' servers could be both available at the same time, 
leaving the player choose whatever they prefer.

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     7) No cap on total exp for skills - if a player wants, he can get level 50 in
     
     
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     all skills - that is up to him if he finds that interesting.  However, I
     
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     certainly think you would see characters focusing on just a few skills and
     
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     getting really good in them, and not bother working on the other skills until
     
     
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     they maxed out those.
     
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       Yes, I know people say it is bad the characters get perfect in all the  
     
     skills,  
<snip> 
Here I again agree with you. I don't like much the idea of such an artificial 
limit (I know there was one in my proposal, but who said I always agreed with 
what I said ?)

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       One other idea would be some form of retirement/final quest, but completing
     
      
it
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     means the character is gone (Ascended to heaven, whatever), but something
     
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     notable is done (statue in town square?  Other recognition?)  That might  
     
     inspire
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     some players to go for that final quest.
     
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     Turning them half-gods with temples ? 
The idea of a 'final quest' seems quite interesting. You could even imagine 
(on a longer perspective of course) "chapters" of quests - Finishing the Last 
Quest would give you access to another world with new quests, items, and so 
on.

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       Alternative, move to 64 bit values for exp, and have exp needed for each  
     
     level
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     beyond 50 double from the previous.  Thus, a character could become level 70  
     
     in
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     some skill, but it would take them gobs and gobs of exp to do so.
     
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     Probably moving the exp to 64-bit is a good idea, even if the 50-levels-based 
system doesn't require it. I'm not sure keeping levels above 50 with doubled 
costs would be very interesting - I tend to think that those levels will only 
be more boring to play.

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     8) This proposal does nothing about how skills are learned.  Maybe skill  
     
     scrolls
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     remain.  Maybe you have to go to guild houses.  Maybe a benefit of being  
     
     really
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     high in a skill is that you can teach it to someone else.  Maybe you have to  
     
     do
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     quests.  Maybe it costs some general exp to learn a skill.  IMO, learning  
     
     skills
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     is just a very minor piece of redoing/cleaning up the skill system in  
     
     general.
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     True indeed. IMO, learning processes are not directly related to the 
experience/skills system.

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     Phew.  So there is my proposal for people to tear apart.
     
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     As this is pretty close to what I suggested, I'll probably not tear this 
apart. My only concern would be about the 'general experience', which sounds a 
little too 'general' for my taste. Apart from that, you definitely got a 
supporter :)

Y. Chachkoff
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