No skill limits for races

[Miya]

I don\'t think there should be any skill limits to the races. For example the player\'s guide says that kran\'s will have a limit of 7 to magic skills and lemurs will have a similar limit to armor and weapons. I think this goes against the basic goal of the PS skill system, that is that you are given freedom to evolve your character however you want, regardless of what options you choose at the beginning. Maybe you\'re a fighter that wants to dabble in magic, or vise versa.

Instead, I think races should have skill affinities and (insert word meaning opposite of affinity lol)s. They would basically take less or more PP per skill level. So for example Krans might take twice as many PP to learn magic ways as most other races. Lemurs would take twice as many PP to learn weapons. Nothrils would take half as many PP to learn blue way spells. Etc.. That way, you could potentially overcome a race\'s deficiencies, but it would take a lot of work and money to do so.

-Miya

[Seytra]

Aye. I envisioned this to kick in only when trying to exced the limit, but then more severely than just two fold, but in principle either system would be fine with me.

[Lordbug]

There must be skill limts for races... or you would end up with an uber mage kran... and krans can\'t control magic very well which causes them to be almost imune to it.

But there could be some special stuff... Like when creating the char, the guy was born with the possibility of passing the limit for... hmm... 3... but the player would hav to find it out, the oportunity could be wasted ^^

Anyway, at creation sometimes you can be born with 12 Dark Way... a Kran with limit of lvl 8 would be special already...

That way, you could potentially overcome a race\'s deficiencies, but it would take a lot of work and money to do so.

Race\'s defeciencies are in their metabolism... read the History and Racs and stuff and you\'ll know why.
Those defeciencies/advantages exist for a reason.

[Miya]

Well if you do skill limitations, you must do them for ALL races. Otherwise you will have a severe imbalance.

Race skill limitations for races like Kran, from a pure design standpoint, is to balance it\'s advantages. Unfortunately, those advantages are only in what stats and skills the kran starts with. They start with more strength and endurance. And that\'s it. You could start another character of a different race and eventually train up your stats to what the kran have. And then bam, you\'re a kran, with no skill limitations.

Now, if you had skill limitations for all races, you would make strength and endurance skill limitations for all other lower than kran, so that eventually kran could train to be stronger than all other races, in addition to starting stronger than all other races.

Personally I hate hard limitations. I like the idea of a lemur with lots of determination becoming stronger and learning to use weapons to defend his village, or a kran who isn\'t satisfied with the brute life and wants to learn magic.

So I like Seytra\'s idea because for most people, doubling or trippling the PP cost for levels after you reach the skill limitation would essentially make it unfeasible to train, but for the truly determined they could still do it. I also think that all races should have a list of skill switchovers levels to further balance things out.

[Karyuu]

I agree to an extent. I don\'t think hard-set limitations are rather realistic. It can make sense to find things harder to learn with time, as the studies hit advanced level, but it still should be possible for the most stubbornly determined. At least with things like strength, endurance, intelligence, etc.

Agility, I don\'t know. Try as hard as he may, a Kran should not be faster than an Enkidukai. I also don\'t know about Magic. Magic isn\'t something we are familiar with the workings of, IRL, so there is no real way to say \"Well everyone should have it and have equal access to it.\" I think it really depends on a natural disposition and natural talents, which Kran truly lack. They do not have the capacity to grasp higher magic, because it\'s not in their blood, so to speak. Or in their minerals?

[Miya]

Well I understand your point about, story wise, kran\'s not being able to use magic.  But remember also that the story is as changeable as the game code. And from a gameplay standpoint I just don\'t like the idea of hard limits on characters.

One reason why I don\'t like them is that I like the fact that there are no set classes in Planeshift. And yet, with hard set race skill limits, we end up having classes anyway. The Enki\'s are the rogues, the kran\'s are the warriors, the lemurs are the magic users.

[Karyuu]

Is that so bad, though? Some races/species are just better suited for some specialties. I think this is realistic. The higher-requirements-with-increases is probably the best idea, though.

[Miya]

Hehe yes I agree that some classes should be better suited to certain paths than others. I just don\'t think they should be hard set limited to those paths.

[DaveG]

What needs to exist is a distinction between skills and physical abilities.  Example: dwarfs would have a mining bonus.  This is a trait that is passed down culturally, so an elf raised by dwarves would have the same mining skill.  (assuming full societal acceptance)  However, by default elves would have lower physical strengths, needed to mine.  In other words, biological differences between the different species (races is a miss-use of the word; though granted, all are technically the same species, because inter-breeding is possible...) would influence the stats and skills heavily, but not dominate them.

[Ivniciix]

I have to say I fall on the side which thinks learnable skills should not have racial limits. I further agree that some races migh have to spend more time or effort training skills they are biologically less suited for. As with many other game variables, I think the solution is that these higher levels should not only require more expenditure to attain but also to maintain. This will prevent someone from reaching high skill in a field they are \"unsuited\" for and then reverting to using skills they have a greater affinty for.

If you want to be special, you should be allowed to be but you also have to constantly pay a cost in time and effort to remain special. I think this approach should apply to weapon and trade skills as well.

What, in game terms, does this commitment on a players part require? First, the near exclusive use of the power set. As an example, a race with high affinity for swords who instead chooses magic should risk losing magic skill when he uses a sword. Second,  of course is the increased PP cost to attain greater and greater ability. A possible third would be the need to get occasional \"reinforcement\" training from an NPC.

The trick in any MMORPG is creating balance amongst players. As near as I can tell, this is an on-going process for every single one of them. My only thoguht there is that it\'s better to set things high and reduce them if they prove to difficult. No one ever complains if things get easier while everyone complains about being \"nerfed\".

[Nikodemus]

I\'d like to contribute some math into this discussion.
I agree with idea of Miya, but i understand concern of Lordbug. But i don\'t see hard limits to be good solution.
Like in real world there are different kinds of people, in PS there are different races. We all know that someone talented in math, may have problems with writing nice stories. He/She will have to train more this in what is weak than this in what is talented. Like Kran talented in arts of fighting but totally untalented in the ways of magic.
Does that mean he won\'t go above some certain level of development? I believe not.

Current system, of training is kind of function of this type: y=x^(m/n), m>n, \"y\" is experience and \"x\" is rank.
Experience is both theory and practice.
It is same for everybody and looks similiar to this:

This function shouldn\'t be same for everybodys every skill. It should be race dependent
If you take some value of experience from function of Lemur magic skill and compare it to the same Kran skill, then you will see the proportion will rise with every rank(eg it was 1/3 and became 1/7). eg. to train 10 rank, Kran will have to spent like 5 times more time than Lemur and to train 30 rank he will have to spent maybe 80 times more time than Lemur.
This will cause this what we want. Most lemurs at given time will be stronger in magic than most of the Krans. It will happen that we will have Lemur who won\'t train magic ways at all and Kran who trains mostly magic. In this case Kran will be stronger in magic. But it is kind of obvious and there is nothing weird in it

EDIT: What a heresy! I Wrote my function using wrong symbol! instead of \"sqrt\" i should write \"^\" Fixing it in this and other posts right now.... Sorry for problems

[Neryam]

Yay! Nikodemus took my advice

You know.. I do agree with you. Mabye also the more your rank is past the\"max\" the less effect more ranks have.

[SuburbanPlankton]

I agree that hard limits are not realistic.  If we make the cost for exceeding those limits increase on a logarithmic scale, we will accomplish essentially the same thing.  But if someone  really wants to have a Kran who is an arch-wizard, then that is a possibility.

Regarding Ivniciix\'s idea: What if your unused skills slowly decline over time?  This would be realistic; you need to continually practice your skill sets or you lose proficiency.  This will pretty much force people to choose a limited number of skills to become proficient in, because there simply is not enough time in the day to keep in practice on everything.

[Nikodemus]

y=x^(m/n) isn\'t logarithmic kind of function, SuburbanPlankton

As for the skill decline idea. It is hard to implement, because nobody found out when the skills would decrease. If they would decrease after some time when not used, it would kill roleplaying, as people would keep training to not loose stats and there would be less time for talking.

[SuburbanPlankton]

Exponential! I typed \'exponential\', I know it.

And I was a math major, too  

/me hangs his head in shame...




As for the skill decline idea:

I don\'t think it would be so hard, at least from a player perspective.  

*  Skills would not decline immediately upon your ceasing to use them, but only after they had not been used for some time (1 week? 2 weeks?)
*  The decrease would initially be slight, but would accelerate over time.  Perhaps the rate would double after 1 month, then double again after 6 months
*  There would be a minimum level, beyond which the skill level would not fall.  Perhaps the average of you base skill level and your highest skill level attained

I honestly have no idea how hard this would be to implement from a programming perspective.  It seems to me that it should be fairly easy, but I am not a programmer, nor do I play one on TV.


The idea is not to keep people training so that they don\'t lose stats; the idea is to make the system such that one person cannot train every stat there is.  Under the current system, I can train to the max level in swords, then change to axe, then all six magic ways, then all of my physical stats, etc. etc.  There is nothing stopping me from becoming Superman if I want to take the time and money.  This is nowhere near being realistic.

The point behind skill decline is to ensure that one person cannot train to a high level in an unlimited number of skills.  Everyone would need to pick a certain skill set that they want to focus on, and concentrate on improving those skills, at the expense of others.  If you want to be the most powerful magician in the world, then you aren\'t going to have too much time to spend bulking up and practicing swordplay.  In theory (my theory anyway), this will result in less time training, because you will have a narrower set of skills to train in.