Better Skill Descriptions

[Kempeth]

I'm not sure if this belongs here or into the Wish List...

I would like to see more explicative skill descriptions. Especially for the combat skills I find it very frustration not to know what I actually training this for. All I know is that it - hopefully - somehow will make me better at fighting.

All it says currently is something like:

Light Armor
Your skill at wearing light armor.

Great! But what does it do? Will it protect me more? Will it allow me to wear better armor? Will it make my armor last longer? etc. I'm not looking for detailed formulas or lists what you can do at which level, but something to tell my why I might want to train this skill. Some skills like Strength already do this... I'd be happy to help revise some descriptions.

I have something like this in mind:

Light Armor
Increases your protection from attacks and allows you to act more agile despite wearing armor.
(I don't know it that's actually true, just an example!)

For the heavy-RP-folks I just want to add that I feel such a system would fit much better into the world. What kind of trainer or teacher would say:
"Come I'll teach you about Foobar. It'll make you better at Foobar"
"Sounds interesting but what does is do?"
"I'm not going to tell you, just give me the money and find out for yourself..."

They would say something like: "Come here and learn how to better handle your sword. You'll be able to do more damage to your foes and take better care of your weapon!"

[zanzibar]

An example, building on Kempeth's idea:

Code: [Select]

Light Armor
This skill dictates your ability to dodge, block, and deflect damage while wearing light armor.
Light armors include wearing no armor at all and wearing armors made out of lighter materials such as leather.

[khoridor]

I guess descriptions are laconic when the skills themselves are under construction, which is pretty much the case for most of them.
Although this thread can be a good place for people to suggest descriptions of skills they know very well, some dev still would have to update the text every time something is added or changed. For example, a light armor currently doesn't reduce your dexterity; maybe it will. Currently your light armor gets damaged faster when you are higher level, in my experience, because it takes more blows instead of your body; if true, maybe that will be balanced as well.

I do agree totally with the NPC part of your statement. For that purpose, there is a thread called "Think NPCs are dumb?", where you can suggest questions you would ask to specific NPCs. Out of the dialog and in the training system, there could be a little speech each time you learn a level of something; but again, this would be subject to many updates (and I believe the training system is under remaking anyway).

[Pizik]

RE: NPC dialogue regarding skills.

At the current stage of development the list of who trains what how high is still in somewhat of a fluid state. Certain NPCs may train something today, and when a new NPC is added that previous NPCs training ability becomes un-needed. It would be a rather tough job to keep on top of all the dialogue for all the trainers.

One idea may be to add a small bit of text about each of the skills to all the NPCs, but that maybe is a larger task than Settings would be eager to do ;o)

(may have been suggested elsewhere, may even already be like that, I didnt check)

[Kempeth]

I think there was some misunderstanding. I was not suggesting that npc's should explain these skills. It would be an interesting idea but I'd rater see a more meaningful description in the skill window. This way they only need to be changed when they skill's effects are changed.

Strength is imo the an ideal example on what I want. From mind:

Strength
Your physical power. More strength means higher damage in combat and a higher carrying weight.

First a little abstract stuff and then it says exactly what it does.

Or to build on zanzibar's example:

Light armor
Your proficiency in fighting with no armor or armor made from light materials such as leather.
A higher skill will allow you to dodge more attacks despite wearing armor and block more attacks with it.

Or another thing:

Armor Repair
Skill at repairing armor. A higher skill will reduce the chance to degrade the item and allow you to repair more, faster as well as repair more complex items

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

We can look into this for you.