[CF-Devel] skill musings.

[Flying Pedestrian]

On Friday 15 November 2002 01:31 am, Mark Wedel wrote:
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        The main idea was to remove the idea of experience categories and have
     
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      each skill have its own exp and level.
     
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        In some sense, this actually makes the code much simpler.  It also means
     
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      that if at level 30, you finally learning smithery, your not an expert in
     
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      it.
     
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I kind of like this idea, though my personal ideal would be to take
a slightly different approach - get rid of the "overall level", and
keep the "categories" (ALSO keeping the individual levels for individual
skills - I like that idea.  The "Category Level" would just be a "cap" on the
maximum effective level of any one skill in that category e.g. if your
"overall physique" level is 5, even if your "melee weapons" skill is 7 it acts
as 5 until the category level rises to meet it.).  That would let
us leave, e.g., "Hit Points" tied to the physique category, spellpoints tied
to "magical", and grace tied to "wisdom".  It would also make possible a
broader range of exp awards for things other than killing monsters.  It would
also help the plight of the poor 1st-level schmuck who ends up with 2 sp and
spells that cost 5 xp each to cast (which goes up to 7 as the character ends
up at "overall level 6" from Physique as he hacks his way through monsters
in a vain search for a Tome of Magic Missile or Magic Bullet so he can kill
monsters to get his sp up to where he can cast the spells he started with...)

Yes, this would mean that someone who focuses exclusively on magic use will
tend to stay at fairly low HP...unless we introduce Physique-exp quests
(an idea I like, obviously.)  A quest that involves pushing a lot of boulders
around (whether it also includes killing a lot of monsters or not) ought to
be worth some Physique "Quest Comletion Experience", for example.

The reason for why I'd want such a strange thing is below:

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        The other main idea was to make it more difficult for players to learn
     
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      new skills, so what they start with is much more relevant.
     
     
I have a personal dislike of "heavy-handed" means of limiting character
development, so an outright ban or extremely strict controls on new skills 
seems a bad fit - especially as the system as it stands seems to be quite
flexible in its ability to deal with things.  Heck, the code already seems to
be implemented in Crossfire such that we could (if we really wanted to)
completely eliminate "class" as a concept - in the game, these are just canned
collections of starting skills, abilities, equipment, and stat modifications. 
An alternative (requiring, as far as I can tell, "merely" making the character
creation map be a series of "shops" with starting skills and abilities and so
on, and having new characters custom-make their "starting class" with their
choice of starting skills,  abilities, and equipment (and, e.g., Dragon
characters could even start with a "pick which elemental focus you want to
start with" choice by going through a particular teleporter or door.)
(I wouldn't necessarily actually GET RID OF the existing "hall of selection",
perhaps just add a "customize your character's background" path to the
existing "canned" classes.)

If it COST experience from the "appropriate" category to learn a new skill
(the experience cost being dependent on current level, number of skills in
that category already known, and "how useful" the skill is), skill development
would be 'self-limiting', without actually preventing someone determined to
generate a 'sage'-type of character.  The experience cost would reflect the
temporary distraction from your other skills necessary to learn the new one (I
say "temporary" because of course the character will eventually earn more
experience to replace that "spent").

The idea reducing or eliminating randomly-appearing skill scrolls but making
new skills available as a result of quests is a good idea I think though.
(Hmmmm...."vocational college" maps, anyone?)

Crossfire already seems to be developing nicely away from a simplistic "kill
monsters, get treasure, see who can get the biggest level number" approach - 
a lot of the quests and maps seem to have been developed with intricate
puzzles and interesting storylines that go beyond "there's a bunch of monsters 
here, kill them" - if this trend continues (in my opinion that'd be a good
thing) it'll be nice to be able to support a wider variety of character types.

(Yeah, yeah, I know - I pop in out of nowhere and start harassing all the 
people who have already done a lot of work on the system with my crazy and/or
heretical ideas.  I can't help it. :-) )