Heh... it\'s kinda of a hodge podge... agreeing with you both, and trying to apply it in some way to present it in a real life scenario to clarify how it might be used in the game.
It\'s difficult otherwise to move through life. You wouldn\'t want a chicken farmer, flying you across the ocean in a 747, any more than you want to get involved in combat with a seasoned demon slayer when you\'re still fighting rats. How we look at people, body language, and otherwise, let\'s us collect and categorize things to be able to tell difference.
Let me use another example. One of my brothers is severely color blind. This wasn\'t discovered for some time. A teacher asked him one day what colour a grannysmith apple was, and he said \'red\'... when in fact, we all know that they have green skins. Going through fruits and such, he began learning colours through association with objects. But what happened when something that was an \'Apple\' turned out to have the ability to be different colours.
This goes for character models in PS. You cannot tell what Dwarf is the \'red\' version of the apple, and what Dward is the \'green\' version of the apple. In my brothers colour blind, to associative state, he we have said that, because it\'s a Dward, it must be \'red\'. When he\'s really fighting a \'green\' dwarf and got his butt kicked.
Is it fair to let him his butt kicked because he was unable to differentiate the difference in colours? Any more than we technically can\'t see any labels of differention to prevent the same from happening to us with higher level characters.
Just because someone isn\'t fighting with a weapon, and wearing armour,doesn\'t mean they don\'t have super stats, and don\'t require those weapons to kill someone who may be a little seasoned and not even stand a chance (phew, run on sentence). This is a gross imbalance, created by trying to create balance.
The problem is locating what can and cannot be be discerned about someone. Now maybe you\'re getting into a different skill, or a traditional wisdom check. But how do you determine the criteria for a successful \'know character\' type check.
City records of some type? Or keeping track of who has trained with what NPC, and having the ability to query information about that person. A \'know character\', or \'read mind\', similar spell/scroll maybe.
There\'s only so much you can figure out from looking at a character. If you were a spy, or governement official, you\'d run there fingerprints, social insurance/secutity numbers, credit check, dig through there gabage, look up prior residences, talk there old neighbours, teachers, search public records, new papers, and otherwise. How feasible, or worthwhile anything like this would be in PS, is negligible, or questionable, or totall needed.
There\'s already hard coded guidlines, and turnbased style combat in a real-time environment. It\'s kind of mixing two totally different systems.
This results in you having to group to fight monsters, and monsters can auto group to fight you. But your ability to shift around, fight, and literally have limited if any actual control over combat is crude at best. It\'s a limbo between the two, that\'s likely going to create more problems that it solves. However, in all fairness, it\'s an alpha tech demo. And how much of this will change, or stay the same is a huge \'unknown\'. Blah, Blah, Blah.
As for the super levels... there are people in PS that currently claim to have level 70+ in sword training, which sounds very much like Diablo, superstatused. Hence, the wipe... In the alpha, there\'s not enough to do to self-balance an economy, for that matter look at the evolution of NPC trading. Kill rats, mine ore, or do limited quests, assuming they\'re working. There just aren\'t enough options to generate a viable quest system.
Further, with quests, you can\'t just stick a item somewhere in a random location, as some other than the person it was intended for may find it instead of you.
There\'s no dragons, so it rules out resucing the kings daughter, in a save the maiden type venture. Since creatures spawn, you can really do a farmer type thing, \'there\'s a group of goblins eating my cow, can you do something about them?\'... however...
In a viable economy, and properly laid out item system, something could be established to generate completely random actions and triggered quests based on supply and demand.
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Let\'s run through a different system that doesn\'t require so heavily on NPC\'s, it\'s entirely based on the natural evolution and human interaction with the world.
We introduce jobs. Hmmm... this is starting to sound somewhat SIMS like. But it\'s RP.
Alright... there\'s a town such as the Plaza. There\'s a few key NPC characters, maybe a Mayor/Appointed Official, School populated with NPC teachers who can teach skills) and the rest is left upto the inhabitants.
Based on skills, jobs require a certain base set of levels to apply for. The NPC can be moderated by GM\'s, and Jewelers, Magic Shop Keeps, Blacksmiths, and reasons to develop skills for a RP purpose in the game is born.
Merchant guilds, bizarres, and such, are created that mimic flea markets, and now blacksmiths need people to supply coal, iron, and might make a trip to the local magic shop because a PS player has requested the item be bestowed with a certain magical properties. Quests no longer serve a purpose, as they have been replaced by natural job functions.
Here\'s where the limited chat radius that has been implemented serves the best purpose. People can\'t hear what they aren\'t near, but you can kind of eavesdrop on conversations when you\'re in the vacinity.
Let\'s expand a little bit.
Player X who is the blacksmith needs ore badly, he might state he\'s willing to pay through a post, or inquiring around town that he\'s willing to pay Y amount of trias for Z amount of material. A quest can be posted to the local Town Crier that there\'s a required job/quest. Player X gives the reward money to the Town Crier so there\'s no funny business with people not paying up for the bounty, and it creates a economy driven quest system. When a player completes the quest, the item is given to the crier. Supply and demand creates the economy based on what cost for someone to create items.
This doesn\'t naturally negate the ability to use the \'Trade\' function already available. But the Quest comes into fashion that Player X knows he can\'t do task based on his skills, so he needs another player to do it for him.
Time to create NPC\'s has just be drastically shortened. And a natural law system takes hold. So now instead of populating 1000\'s of NPC, you can work on getting all the skills needed instead, which were going to be implemented anyways.
Leveling is now desireable, quests are generated automatically without having to worry about Player 1 broadcasting to all other players about how to finish a quest, because the players RPing int the game determine how the quest pans out.
Seems like a much more realistic system, and easier in a sense, than what\'s currently being developed. There\'s 1000\'s of people willing to play, let them evolve the game. It requires less interaction, and naturally you\'ll get villians and paladins evolving to maintain order and balance. It\'s inevitable, as it\'s cause and effect.
This went way OT, but kinda explores a new reason to study skills.
