[CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft)

[Tim Rightnour]

On 20-Nov-02 Yann Chachkoff wrote:
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      I've difficulties to understand why slashing weapons skills would cost more 
     
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      than bludgeoning and piercing weapons (Clearly, spear is a weapon more 
     
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      difficult to master than a sword or an axe). Cannot understand why a bow 
     
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      should be considered an 'easier' weapon - I'd tend to say it is a more 
     
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      difficult one.
     
     
There seems to be some disagreement over the concept of a points system, and
the reasoning behind making things cost differing amounts of points than other
things.

1) Why a points system?

How else do you propose we dish the skills out?  I personally would love to say
"spend three months as an apprentice and you can learn 'foo'" but thats just
not very realistic in our game environment.  I think the points system is the
best way to represent the concept of someone wanting to learn a skill, and
having to spend some amount of time practicing his arts in order to do so.  The
points system also lets us arbitrarily give them out not only for levels, but
an occasional one-time-only quest.  I don't think it makes any less sense than
telling someone he has to go kill the blue dragon, who is the only person in
the universe who has the scroll of jumping.  It gives us a very customizable,
basically classless system, where people can advance over time, and constantly
learn new skills throughout the game, rather than all up front.  Right now, you
go collect all the skills, and there is nothing new to learn in the game
really.  With this, there would be a constant feeling of "I'm achieving
something" or "one more level and I can learn fire magic".  That really
inspires players.  The basic problem is.. this is a computer game, and we have
to figure out a way to present things that doesn't require writing a million
lines of code for an AI engine.

2) Why do some skills cost more than others?  It's not realistic!

You are correct.  It's not really realistic that swords are going to cost more
to learn than bludgeoning.  However, play the game, I'll bet you dollars to
dimes you are running around with a sword, because all the cool artifacts are
swords.  There are lots of skills in the game, that while really neat on paper,
just don't work out well mechanically.  Look at bows.  I mean, bows are nice,
and you can collect piles of arrows, but realistically, they are used very
seldomly, and only in wierd one-off situations.

If someone were to wave a magic wand of coding, and fix bows so they were
truely on-par with other forms of combat, then I would have no problem making
them equal cost.  And thats not something that would be restricted.  If a skill
was modified in some way to make it more useful, if anything it's points cost
should be edited to reflect that.  But until someone goes and balances all this
stuff out, we need to balance it by being realistic about the cost.  And the
reality is, if bows cost the same as swords, nobody would buy them.

---
Tim Rightnour <
     
     root at garbled.net
     
     >
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