Skill judgement?

[Shanky]

to Kada-El: it was just seeming to me that some posts were implying a dev involvement in inter-guild affairs, i guess i missinterpereted.

And in response to Vengeance...
I would hope you don\'t base your entire decision of whether or not you group someone based on the item/title system, it just gives someone an idea about how they play though (if they dont know the character from experience) obviously in the middle to high end game people will have established a reputation for themselves as to their personality and ability to play their character, and these reputations are generally widely known, and should you make a mistake and someone you group leads to your fatality due to lack of ability, then you know not to group with him/her again, simple as that, i dont think it is reasonable to go into an area you know to be difficult and expect not to die, and if you dont, all the better.

[Tomaseth]

Well, I totally agree with you and that\'s what I have been implying.. (Vengeance) You can\'t really base it on reputation unless you know everyone on the server and you play all the time. People play at different times and you won\'t have a chance to meet everyone. I mean it might work but it\'d be harder.

[acraig]

Another option is to have the new player set an option that will allow the group leader to see his skills.

For example,

A group of fighters ( The A-Team )  is looking for somebody skilled in magic and stealth.  Their leader, Smith, is talking somebody who wants to join ( Face ).   Face then selects something like \"Allow Smith to see my Magic and Stealth Skills\".  

Smith can then take a look at these skills and see if Face is what he is looking for.   This can work both ways as well, since Face would probably want to know about Smith\'s Fighting skills.

 

[Shanky]

well, if the entire party is sharing skill info, they might as well be publicly known, mabye if your skills are kept private, or only available to people you choose in towns and traveling type areas, also PK areas if they are put in, but in zones designed for leveling, your skills are public domain

[TheGeneral]

Than how about a little message board, where travelers can come, and post who they are looking for. YOu can either choose to post about yourself, Just bu clicking several buttons, and the server fill in the rest of the information. OR you can chose to post who you are looking for, like thier skills, and so on. I think this would solve some of the problems. Maybe not... ?(

[Shanky]

A message board might cause some problems, like a person might post a message, and leave, or not respond, etc. what would work though is having like a corral for people looking for groups in or near leveling zones, mabye in the form of a bar or pub or shop...mabye something as simple as some long lost benches in an obscure zone, anything really where adventurers can congregate freely and safely while awaiting a party.

[Kada-El]

I quite like acraig\'s idea of having the ability to reveal your skills to an individual. That way there would be no doubt of your abilities if you needed to prove them in a certain situation, it would be like having a \'demonstrate skill in [insert skill]\' option, which also keeps things pretty realistic. You could even include a small animation for each skill to acompany that demonstation which would get more spectacular as your skill level increases - heh, or maybe not *imagines high levels players standing around demonstrating their faboulous swordplay skill, or fancy magic animation - showoffs  :rolleyes:

[paxx]

This reminds me of a post I made ?before I was on the dev team.


It is probably one of the reasons I am on the dev team?

However I really am split on this and it is one of the core, (role-play Vs. Game play) things in a game of this type.

How do people verify a lie, how do people know if a monster can beat them???

Some creatures at first glance should seem scary as hell?they would hardly be so if they conned as a insignificant gnat to you. there are creatures that have a bark that is much worse then their bite.

On choosing a partner?I?m also split on the best way to do this?resume/title/reputation might be something. Allowing people to see another?s stats, makes me feel like there is something very wrong.

I have a small problem having players know the stat of their own characters, allowing people to show others their stats makes this a pure hack and slash.

Hack and Slash?there is a term for you non-role-playing types :-)

People who know the term?well knowing the challenge rating of something and how good something is leads to this.

People who don?t?when a role playing game is reduced to number crunching?you are hack and slashing, I don?t care if it is having your character make a quilt or killing kobolds.  Hack and slash is when you reduce and challenge/confrontation to number crunching.

Venge, and everyone else, I know that in the end everything on a computer is reduced to 101010. But I feel it is our job to create an environment where the player can escape that reality.

With computers doing the number crunching, we can to a large degree get rid of much of the numbers?I know we can?t get rid of all the numbers (this was discussed a while ago)

But to give a real life experience?about 12 years ago while at a Rural School in South America?me and my class where walking back from a demonstration on Plowing techniques?and as most teen age boys do when unsupervised and surrounded by hand size clumps of dirt, we stated a dirt rock fight while we slowly made our way back to class. And as I was reaching for my next dirt rock I noticed a coiling up right in front of me?I put my foot on it.

Now about 3 seconds later I knew this was a stupid idea?while I had really sturdy steal toe work boots, I?d have to jump away eventually, plus me and the snake where on a mound of loose dirt, my time was short?worst of all is we verified the snake was poisonous, it was a Coral Snake, and being a 15 min run from the school and about a 20 min drive to the nearest hospital?my personal life expectancy had suddenly become very short.

However two of the 30 kids in my class made some good side money selling pelts and skins. And while they where the only voices of calm among a bunch of panicking kids, I personally had transcended to that stoic silence some people get when they are pretty sure the out come will not be favorable.

Well the end result was two kids too off their pants and we wrapped my lower legs with a thick layer of protection?and then I prepared to jump?all the other kids waited for my count?and stoned the poor snake to death.

The two skinners in the class where a bit pissed that we thrashed the snake, and I had a big bruise from where a stray rock hit me?I was happy with the result.

Point of all this: Well knowledge is power, those two kids formulated a plan based on luck and knowledge, as well as personal experience.  I was an outdoorsy type at the time, but I never encountered that snake before?and I was pretty sure that it was a false Coral, (thinking real Corals didn?t live in those parts) if I had not had the opinion of two people I felt knew more then me on the subject I would have probably have done something stupid.

Now in a game, how do we give this knowledge to the character, how do we impart life experience to the character?

I think we can do it with a very good faction/reputation/allegiance/acquired knowledge system. Is that realistic?not sure, should it be accurate?no. But a character with a ton of charisma and the right talk should be able to get a low mental stat individual to think he is a healer, when in reality he is a rogue looking to score the next big Loot run.

But this also comes down to the type of game we want to have.

As some of you know, I can go for either one, but if we are going for the best RPG to date?this is one area I strongly feel we should not allow exact information.

We should allow people to lie about how good they are, and what they have done. But we should also allow people to verify some things quickly.

I suggest a skill?Bullshit detector :-) that helps compare things?but that is just a suggestion. If we want a Real Con system we can have one, but a Con system that is cross referenced with character knowledge would be more up my ally, and being able to see the Stats of other characters is a total invasion?Like looking at another persons character sheet during a role playing competition.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the subject :-)      

[Tomaseth]

I think you have a great idea. A con\'ing system based on the characters personality stats. That\'s very unique and would make this game a strong roleplaying type. I guess that idea gets my vote.

[elKano]

That Paxx\'s post was really complicated for me to read, but I think he says what I wanted to say: people should be able to lie.
Moreover, that way good leaders can distinguish themselves by testing their party members before recruiting (I don\'t know how, perhaps a place of mini-quests can be inserted on the towns?).
I like the Kada\'s solution of inserting little animations for showing skills. This is a quite unacurate way of showing your skill, and is done only if you want.

The more I think on it, the more I like the mini-quests way...

[Tomaseth]

And another note was that you should be able to \'consider\' people, and if you have a lot of CHA, you\'d come closer to considering what they actually are. If you aren\'t familiar with considering, it\'s when you press a certain button and it displays a message usually in different font colors depending on the level range of the character. Like RED  if they are way too hard and WHITE  if they are about the same level and GREEN  if they are way too below your level. And the higher your CHA the better you would be at coming up with the write con.

[TheGeneral]

OR, we can just simplify all of this, and make it a trial-an-error process. If you try and kill a mob, fail, and die, you respawn, really pissed at that, but next time you will make a better judgement, plus you will know your skill limitations for now. And if you take a guy into your party, and he turns out to be the biggest n00b of all, you can just kick him out later on. I mean you would die in the depths of that dungeon, but you would be more carefull next time. :]
It all seems too complex to be fun... :O

[Shanky]

Or how about implementing a conning system which is skill based, as in you have a conning skill. When you first start out, it sucks and while a person in acctuality would be white to you, they show up anywhere from red to green. I think the conning should be based on your targets skills, as in how well developed your targets skills are. This would leave some essence of the \"lying\" part in the game, as it doesnt even touch on gear or skill of the player, but still gives you a representation of how developed he is. Also, this conning system should never be completly accurate even if your skill is maxed, because we all have room for error.Just my ideas  

[Vengeance]

The exploit for this is to make a new character (accounts are free, remember?), twink him with some or all of your items, and have him hook up with the people you are trying to get back at.  The newbie player twink convinces the group he is good at Skill X, and proves it with his uber equipment.  The group allows him to join and the group gets wiped in their first mob encounter.  The vindictive player gives all his stuff back to his other player and never logs in as him again.  It\'s another way to screw people over.

The ability to lie about abilities, steal from other players, or even gang up on them and PvP kill them are really all the same thing.  They all come down to whether you want to let jerks mess up the game for other people in the name of \"roleplay\".

Having objective facts out in the open, like skill levels, is simply a substitute for richer information gathering environments in the real world and more real consequences for misbehavior.  Having objective facts out in the open will make the game a *richer* RP environment, not a weaker one.

- Vengeance

[Shanky]

I think there should atleast be a way to hide your skills if you want to, and when you want to group, go unanon or dont get a group, but if skills were public all the time, you would go into a town and have the good chance of being flooded with newbies asking you \"hey, you are level 400 in swords, tell me what i should do in x situation or y circumstance. And there are always times when you just dont want people to know how developed your character is.