[CF-Devel] skill musings.

[Todd Mitchell]

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        The main idea was to remove the idea of experience categories and have
     
     each
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      skill have its own exp and level.
     
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       In some sense, this actually makes the code much simpler.  It also means
     
     that
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      if at level 30, you finally learning smithery, your not an expert in it.
     
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      The downside is that some skills will be very difficult to improve.
     
     

This could be very good.  If skills are too hard to improve to be useful or
are not being used very much in the game then this would be good to know in
any case.  Also if you had to do special quests to get certain skill
improvements that were hard to get during regular play, then that might not
be a bad thing at all.

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        The other main idea was to make it more difficult for players to learn
     
     new
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      skills, so what they start with is much more relevant.
     
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        Various ideas on how to do this:
     
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      1) Player only has skills they start with.  At some point, they choose a
     
     new
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      class, and get those new skills in addition to what they have.  But when
     
     you
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      choose a new class, your exp goes to zero.
     
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     Not sure I like this as I don't like the class idea in general except as a
starting point.  Class based skills are not so much fun as the mix and match
customizaton - I think the trend in roleplaying games was towards skills
over classes as people respond better and have more fun.

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      2) Put something in that you can only learn a new skill every 10 levels or
     
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      something.  Problem with this is that some skills would likely be
     
     completely
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      unused (I'm sure players would identify best starting race, followed by
     
     the best
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      skills to learn after that point.)
     
     
Not sure I like this - all skills are not created equally useful.  This
would kill some of the marginal ones.

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      3) Make skills available by completing quests.  Level of quests can
     
     basically
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      determine that you can get skill XYZ until your some level.  This means
     
     players
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      can still get all the skills, but may have to stick with what they start
     
     with
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      until some point.
     
     
This is my choice for a direction to go in.  It would not have to be a
wholescale switch, but I think it more fun and rewarding if skills required
more of an investment than just buying a skill scroll.  Not all these quests
have to be crazy hard, some could be as simple as 'go train with Ing, the
woodsman to learn woodlore and remember to bring him a bear skin'.  Some
little tasks would ensue.  The quests for magic or melee type skills should
be pretty stiff however as they add so much to your abilities.
Even if just some of the more powerful skills like melee, magic, sense magic
were a bit harder to get it would be an improvement.
I know the answer to this will be- someone will have to come up with these
quests.  When they do come up with one, we could remove the skillscroll from
the general circulation.


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        Note to do points 1 & 3 require that skillscrolls get removed from shops
     
     and
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      random treasures.   Point #3 could still have them be in special quest
     
     hoards or
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      the like.