New Skill system idea

[Neryam]

Hehehe I suppose
Well there has only been one person to disagree so far.. But no authorities have commented yet  

[Nevhide]

I\'d say anything different from the current levelling system might be better. Now you have to buy theoretical knowledge for the whole level before you can even start practicing it. If you didn\'t, using the skill gives you nothing in return. And look at the amount of theoretical knowledge needed to advance magic skills. It\'s probably 5 times the amount you need  to advance in sword. It\'s probably more \"realistic\" but it\'s not playable. And again you should be able to advance easier in a few chosen skills. Right now there doesn\'t seem to be any penalty save for the initial stats when you stop to develop magic and start to funnel more exp into sword. That\'s actually what most people do in ps world. As for the numbers: without numbers and background formulae known to the community it would be difficult to plan your character development in detail. And this is a part which makes for interesting reading on some rpg fan sites.

[Nikodemus]

Originally posted by Neryam
Nikodemus:
My max I don\'t mean max in the best trainer, I mean max in physical ability. For instance, a Lemur would never be as strong as a well-trained Kran however much he trained, and a Kran would never be as good in magic. That max is physical only, therefore only for the practical knowlege bar. The theoretical bar would technically have no max, therefore in theory one could get more theoretical knowlege than what would ever be trainable by a trainer. (Perhaps that person could become a player trainer too!)

And your \"Level\" is the main overall character level, what I mean by \"level\" is, well, rank. You know, \"Rank 50 in sword\". Which is kinda confusing, I think those are levels. PS doesn\'t have and of the \"levels\" you talk about, only runescape.. :diamond:

Then, sure you can say \"I kill trepor in 4 blows\" but that\'s fine! You can say that in real life! And I didn\'t say it would eliminate powerleveling, I said it may even decrease it.. At least there would be no more people going \"I have level 22 in sword lvl wuts urs?\"

I can\'t agree with you in that case. Nobody know how strong/inteligent/agile/charismatic can he/she be. It is known fact that Lemur won\'t as strong as Kran if they both train hard strenght, but this don\'t give you right to set hard barriers like Lemur can\'t have strenght over 100 and Kran 140. And you need this barriers for your single bar (bar where is theoretical bar and practical bar).
Do you think the same way about skills? If so, then: What about skills which most part is theory? Do you think that being some race define your limit of talent as architect/teacher/spell caster?
You state that physical abilities define the amount of practice one can get. I state it is not truth. You could prove why do you think this way.
From other side you wan\'t the theoretical bar to be possibly longer than practical one what will eliminate the max which you need for the bar. In that case the proportions will change as the bar can\'t be infinitive.
That brings me another question. What with the proportions beatwen practic and theory? I might be wrong, but in your system the proportions doesnt matter and one can earn practice always same as fast what isn\'t dependent of the theory he have. (you havent explained that matter)

About level. As you see there are different ways to define this word. But fact is you can\'t just think level as the same thing as rank, because level is also somethink else. Even if it is only in few games, it is enough.
It is like you said animal is cat, because cat is also one of many kinds of animals.

Originally posted by Neryam
Numbers
Yea you both talked about numbers. Numbers would of course be used but wouldn\'t be visible to players.. Mainly for the reason that they would be very long as they are using purely experience (Like 4,281,321 exp). I don\'t think it would be that hard to \"wordize\" the numbers, just use connectable phrases. Each sentence would be composed of 3 phrases from 3 groups like this:
Opening: \"You need a lot more\", \"You need a little more\", \"You don\'t have close to enough\"
Stat: \"Strength\", \"Agility\", \"Intelligence\"
Close: \"To weild this sword\", \"to accurately hit the rocks with this pick\", \"to swing the axe\"

Very easy

Using numbers, they don\'t need to be written in long way, and single bar is for sure much longer way of describing thing.
You should have be more open on possibilities and look at things from different points of viev if you are going to make good system. I made a picture for you which shows comparison beatwen your idea and current way of visualizing the skill progress

To keep things simply i made only one bar of progress even if your system have two and current is even more complicated. Also the vertical lines at top aren\'t part of the bar, but are to show you connection beatwen the two.
As you see, if you want to keep the same level of details, your bar keeps growing, so at rank 20 it takes somethink ike 10 times more space, where space of current in-game bar with number will grow a little when it reach 100 rank, because there is one more number.
Sure, that system isn\'t perfect to describe someone who trains himself only with practice, but it encourage to learn basics which is theory. thats why the skill is segregated by ranks. Each rank is part of understood and tested knowledge. If add your idea of training only with practice or theory to current system, then the prectical or theoretical part altered in training with the other should be much harder to learn and it should process geometrically as i proposed before.
If you \"wordize\" numbers in the way how you wrote, it is nothing more what we have now, some weapons you can use and some not. If you are proposing to make tool/weapon for each part of experience progress which you can use only then, then it isn\'t good, as i don\'t want to have in my inventory lots of tools/weapons to see how trained I am. One will know some estimate how good he/she is without a tool. In real we don\'t have numbers to look at. In games we have. Maybe it would be good to think of system where if two people tell their ranks, the same numbers wont mean the same level of progress? And so, comparing their rank will give nothing.  There are few ways of doing so.

[Rage McCloud]

well you dont really need bars to tell you... because with no leveling up the bar would go on forever... plus all a bar does is tell you exactly how good you are... you shouldnt need bars to tell you that... you arent going to pull out your arm laptop and see your stats in bars... bars and numbers are not needed... the only reason they are there is to inform... which to be realistic like wanted you wouldnt know your exact strength... i mean you could but you would have to practice... you couldnt just all of a sudden know how strong you are or all of a sudden know how fast you are or all of a sudden know how great you can mine even if you have never mined before... bars and numbers are not neccessary...

[Neryam]

Hahah Rage so you think we should have NOTHING? Lol. Well, it puts on the same side for now.. we can fight Nikodemus together haha

\\/ Alright the rest of this post is to Nikodemus. \\/
Strength Limitations
No, they won\'t be hardcoded. When you create your character all the decisions will determine your maxes in everything, including the decision of your race. If there is no border, then how do you ever end the leveling up?! It would be unrealisting for someone to kill an ulber in one hit however strong he is (Well mabye with magic) so.. there would need to be a limit per character anyway.  
Oh right. I guess you can\'t use bars for theoretical knowlege.   Well we can use something else then, bars aren\'t my major point here, my major point is to scrap levels/ranks and use only experience. Which brings me to answer your next statement:

Numbers
There seems to be a major misunderstanding here. The entire point of this thread is no levels (Or stats or whatevery you wanna call them).
Here is my demonstrative skill list since you went to so much work:

As you can see, soon after you start training not only do the numbers completely lose meaning, they clutter up, and also the bar loses value. With the Max 49 million exp character, the small bar would look full but with the big bar you can tell that it is not quite full.
The numbers become quite annoying, and in the case of the \"bugged\" account at the bottom they become outright ridiculous. The chat window would be flooded with people trying to tell each other their experience, nobody would care because of the numbers and they numbers lose even more meaning. Vague gauging of experience is better, and people can estimate how strong they are and will be by how fast they defeat and make good weapons and also by how slow their bar fills up.
The bar would NOT stretch! I said this before, it not streching would help to vaguify your strength so that people wouldn\'t care so much. Strength in fighting battles and how slow your bar fills up is gague enough.

Ranks would still exist, but not in level/number form. They would exist in meadals, awards, titles of mastership as mentioned above and these would act to gauge strength successfully but vaguely enough that people wouldn\'t strive so much to become better than someone if they have the same rank.

I can see you really like numbers, and also the fact that you care so much about gauging your strength so accurately marks you as a minority in PS.. There would be plenty of other ways to estimate your strength without filling your inventory with weapons and tools (Those won\'t tell how much experience you need to weild them either).
Also about numbers not meaning the same thing between people, that would be using this system only without bars and a full bar would be 1000 right? I think that would be quite bulky..
Games have numbers but they don\'t have to and Unique is good, if it works. Numbers encourage Powerlevelling in a skill as it is so much easier to compare yourself with other people.

[Nikodemus]

Having nothing would be quite interesting. One would know his skills by using them through the effects. But then i don\'t see how diferent types of knowledge could be studied when they are dependent. Another thing is, in games people can train beyong this how good they would be in real. In games we have normal people and supermens who just trained certain things enough. The stats allow to see difference beawen so different in streght people. Both things are artificial and their existance is kind of dependent.

The current limitation of skills is made through a function of this type: y=x^(n/m) where n
the picture.
It is nice, but you haven\'t fully explained it and thus i don\'t see what it present. Like in the third bar i don\'t know why max is smaller than a number near shorter bar.
If you think that big numbers will stop people from telling them, then you are wrong. They will just say 497k or 23mln because in so big numbers only the first numbers matter.

It is not like i like numbers, it is only using them you are allowed to make somethink more complicated yet simple.
Filling inventory with amount of items only to measure strenght was kind of sarcasm, it is not somethink what i would done.

The thing what i\'m telling you is to fix following problems:
-max of skill advence which is consequence of your system
-a way to have both theoretical and practical knowledge
-dependence beatwen practical and theoretical
-ideas from other topics being part of this one
-things i have forgotten =P and minor problems

You develop your system but forget about above and i may be wrong, but you try to justify lack of solution for them, by your system having problems with these but better in other.

[Neryam]

Ah okay well this makes it easier to answer and justify thanks

Oh wait. Third one I missed 3 digits sorry. Add three digits to max. But don\'t you see how numbers would not be optimal.. And alright people will tell big numbers too all the more reason to hide all the numbers..

Max of skill advance -  Well, this isn\'t required, but I myself don\'t think this is such a big problem. More of  merit because its not just fighting that can get very high levels. Don\'t you think it would be kinda strange if, say, a lemur was better than a dwarf at smithing just because he trained more than a dwarf?
I mean, we don\'t have to use bars. It just seemed the most convinient. We could use that book idea that guy had earlier (Well than one has a max too). Why do you hate the skill max again?


Way to have both theoretical and practical practice - What? You can do that now. Theoretical and practical.

Dependence between theoretical and practical - Again, I see not having this as a merit. It\'s more realistic, and allows more freedom in training how you want so everyone\'s training styles are fairly unique.

Ideas from other topics being in this one - why is this bad? ?(

[Nikodemus]

Why can\'t you read my posts instead of asking the same questioins again? I reply myself one last time.

Numbers compared to this what you developed are more optimal. This doesn\'t mean they are best. But with visible numbers problems which must be solved, are solved. There are disadventages like PL screaming numbers, which spoils roleplaying, but two roleplayers can deal with that with no problems.

Max of skill advance
Now you say max isnt required, but in previous posts you say somethink else. Dwarfs aren\'t born smiths and miners. Thay may be a bit better, but it doesn\'t mean there can\'t be a Lemur miner/smith better that a Dwarf. The fact that some races learn better some thing doesn\'t mean they are all better in that than people of other races.

I can\'t agree with you in that case. Nobody know how strong/inteligent/agile/charismatic can he/she be. It is known fact that Lemur won\'t as strong as Kran if they both train hard strenght, but this don\'t give you right to set hard barriers like Lemur can\'t have strenght over 100 and Kran 140. And you need this barriers for your single bar (bar where is theoretical bar and practical bar).
Do you think the same way about skills? If so, then: What about skills which most part is theory? Do you think that being some race define your limit of talent as architect/teacher/spell caster?
You state that physical abilities define the amount of practice one can get. I state it is not truth. You could prove why do you think this way.

The theory is ours brains are used only in small part, so we can learn some skill very long and we don\'t know max.

Way to have both theoretical and practical knowledge Not \"..practical practice\" as you wrote. Don\'t change words, changing meaning of sentence.

Originally posted by Neryam
What? You can do that now. Theoretical and practical.

Originally posted by Neryam
Oh right. I guess you can\'t use bars for theoretical knowlege. Well we can use something else then, bars aren\'t my major point here....

If you plan to use somethink else, then develop it first. For now your system lack it.

Dependence between theoretical and practical

Actually practical and theoretical knowledge are dependent. That is why we have schools. To practice somethink you need to know some basics first.
Can you really find out all the physical laws and math by self? If you would, then it would be the same knowledge, but written in completly different way. Additionally it would take you a lot more time to find all this out. That is why theoretical and practical knowledge are dependent. Studying them in the same time, allow you to learn skill much faster.

Ideas from other topics being in this one

There are many more propositions and if gather them all and sort, then we would have the best idea.

Currently your idea is nothing more than one of the many, there are more, some better than your, some worse. Each isn\'t explained and good in 100%. To make your system better and prevent it from fading away as all the other, you need to at least take the efford and add to your idea ideas of others


I hope this will satisfy you and next time i will have something more decent to answer/comment. Don\'t be lazy if you don\'t want me to be too.

[Neryam]

By the gods. My browser crashed as I finished my 5th paragraph. Now I have lost all motivation. This is killing me. You better not call me lazy.

About numbers (Last time I\'m explaining this).
OKay, but you see, numbers may be optimal for other systems but not this one.
Look at the picture again. Do you really still think numbers are the perfect tool for expressing experience? Do you WANT to see 12 digits in your skill window?

(Remember in the third set of bars the max is missing 3 digits. Oh and the 4th bar is missing one digit. Oh well the point here is not accuracy it\'s only to show the way it looks.)

Now about interdependency, here\'s a news flash: Math and Physics are not learnt the same way as sword fighting and smithing!! 8o Both math and Physics are 99% theoretical knowlege, and of course you cannot learn the theorems all by yourself, they were developed over thousands of years by hundreds of geniuses! Gosh. A better comparison would be sword fighting with tennis and smithing with pottery.
In tennis you can learn fine by yourself with practice, but if you have a teacher you would learn techniques faster and would get better in the long run.
In pottery you can do fine by yourself and get tricks too, but you would get a LOT better if you were learning from a master. Not that you can\'t learn without.
I doubt DaVinci really had a real art teacher, but you think his Mona Lisa is \"Work done by an amateur with no teacher\"?


Now about maxes. This is not the place to argue about whether there should be skill maxes. Guess what! The planeshift FAQ CLEARLY lists that there WILL be maxes.
http://www.planeshift.it/razkran.htm \"Limit 8th rank for magic. Limit 8th rank for thief abilities and martial arts.\"

If you want to get rid of maxes, I suggest you post in this topic.


But if you want to get rid of maxes so bad, and if theoretical maxes are abolished on the use of this system (because of there being two separate values for theoretical and practical knowlege), I suppose I should give an alternate to bars that won\'t have a max and effectively hides numbers.

One way to do this would be to not use bars either, agreeing with Rage. The only way to get your skill would be to get rankings and awards like \"Blademaster\", \"Bladeweilder\", \"Skilled Axeman\", \"Magic Adept\".

Another way would be to have a spiral drawn by a fractual, and as you gain experiance it would spiral inwards, getting thinner and thinner as your level rises. It will never completely fill up as it is a fractual, and could in theory go on forever. When the line gets so thin that you cannot see the difference, you could be high enough in experience that getting any more would be pretty much meaningless.
Experience would not be the only determinant in crafting new weapons or making new magic, you would also find scrolls and stuff I\'m assuming. Plus, you yourself gave me that funny equation and said that after a point getting any stronger would hardly raise damage.

And if you see any good ideas that could be added to this idea, by all means stick it in a post insted of just killing all my ideas.

Have I answered all your gripes?


Edit:
Sorry if it is a little brash, I read over and felt rude. I was already ticked off by your post, but was hiding it like a good japanese typing into the box. Then my browser crashed and I lost 5 paragraphs of text and my dignity. I hope we can get over our differences and stay friends

[Nikodemus]

I also do hate when i lost post which took me like 1 hour of writing.

I look at the picture and i\'m still not sure what is what =P I don\'t want to see giant number, but i\'m satisfied by the way how the numbers are displayed in current system. But still current system isn\'t fully good.
I see some minor mistakes in your posts (mistakes in my opinion) but i\'m not going to comment them anymore as this would go to much off-topic.

There are different types of skills: fighting, painting, physics, ways of magic and many many more.
They are all studied in different ways. Some people are more talented in some of the skills and some aren\'t.
In real everybody are different and they learn very different.
In PS i expect the dfferences to be seen only among races, not different people of the same race. It is because most of this would be defined at char creation and this would cause people to create many chars to in the end have the one with best modiefiers to learning. I don\'t see it good.
Anyway, PS devs made experience be of two factors, theory and practice and defined their proportion for every skill. It is obvious that there are many more factors which define the way how different people learn some skill, but somehow i don\'t see some parts of your system to be better of the current one. Kixie proposed another factor to be watching others and gain some experience by this (thats from different topic)
Parts of your system are good in my eyes, but this what i was pointng out isn\'t.

I have gave you my thoughts not to flame your idea, but to  show what isn\'t good in it.
I gave some ideas, but they are same as hard accepted by you, as some of your ideas are by me.
And yea /kill -9 65276435NeryamIdea is more simple =P

I see you have got most of this what i have said, so for now i won\'t post here. And i\'m happy of this discussion. It wasn\'t somethink like arguing with Zanzibar (forgive me if it will cause a flamewar =P) what is kind of pointless.
I have never considered you as an enemy.  I may only sound annoying in my posts

[Pip]

Wow, my brain hurts after reading through this thread.

I think the current system is fine for skills; one pays for tutoring but learning requires a certain level of experience (expressed in PP).

However to buy strength, agility, charisma etc seems preposterous. I think your stats should gradually increase as you said Neryam

And then, the char stats (Strength, agility) would not be able to be trained and instead would inch up while you do all sorts of things. Hitting in combat, making things with smithing, and mining would all inch up your strength and some agility, other things would increase agility more. Using new spells and reading books would inch up mental stats.

Instead of numbers or bars you could have short phrases to indicate your rank eg ummmm errrr..................... well maybe a bar would be better.
which would link up with

Originally posted by Neryam
 I don\'t think it would be that hard to \"wordize\" the numbers, just use connectable phrases. Each sentence would be composed of 3 phrases from 3 groups like this:
Opening: \"You need a lot more\", \"You need a little more\", \"You don\'t have close to enough\"
Stat: \"Strength\", \"Agility\", \"Intelligence\"
Close: \"To weild this sword\", \"to accurately hit the rocks with this pick\", \"to swing the axe\"

So to conclude I say: use Neryam\'s idea for stats but leave skills as they are.

[Neryam]

/me embraces Nikodemus

Yay Pip But pray may I convince you that my skill system is better than the current one I\'ll be brief

If you read Gentar\'s thread , there would be lots of talk about why the current system is bad..
I mean it doesn\'t make sense to mine in order to raise sword level. The fact that \"you need to train with a trainer to a full level before training by yourself does any good\" is a little.. weird no?

[BaurakSered]

After reading this post from beginning to end my mind is about to explode with ideas, so i thought i\'d throw some of them out there. Forgive me if I repeat some things that have already been explained, but im trying to paint the whole picture as i see it.

First, let me say that I am absolutely fascinated by the idea of having no numbers/ranks/levels. It would enable the developers to implement an incredibly intricate experience system while imersing gamers in a fantasy world. numbers would exist on the server side, but not in-game.

There would be 2 factors that determine your character\'s overall ability in each skill:

Theory: this would be a measure of how much training/studying you have recieved.
-and-
Practice: this would be a measure of how much you have used or applied a certain skill.

Each skill would be determined by those two factors, but to varying degrees. For example, Inteligence would consist of 90% Theory and 10% Practice, and Strength would be 20% Theory and 80% Practice, Sword could be 30% Theory and 70% Practice, etc etc (obviously im just throwing out numbers here, the actual system would require an incredible amount of balancing)

lets say you have studied Sword all week and your Sword Theory is up to 13,473 but you have hardly done any swordfighting so your Sword Practice is a measly 1,217 this would give you an overall Sword Ability of 4,893
your friend has hardly studied so his Sword Theory is 1,217 but his Sword Practice is 13,473 that makes his overall Sword Ability 9796.2
In that example your friend\'s constant practicing payed-off more than your constant studying.

To make this more realistic you could tie the Theory and Practice together with \"soft limits\" for example, if Theory is greater than 2x Practice then all Theory training yields 1/2  the normal results and if Theory is greater than 4x Practice then theory training would yield only 1/4 the normal results.
This way you can study swordfighting and technique as long as you want, but your progress will be significanly slower unless you have also applied what you\'ve learned by getting out and using your sword. These \"soft limits\" would apply both ways, so if you only practiced and never studied then your practicing will become less and less effective.

Eventually you will reach an overall limit when you have learned everything that the highest sword master can teach,(lets say 100,000) and you have practiced up to 1,000,000 so any more practicing you do only yields 1/10 of the normal results. Again this would be a \"soft limit\" because you would very slowly reach the point where your character knows everything there is to know and he has mastered the craft.

Certain races would have advantages and disadvantages with certain skills. A Dwarf for example would learn mining much faster than a Klyro, and an Elf would learn magic faster than a Human. Therefore giving more credibility to the races. It would still be possible to make your Dwarf into a master thief, but you would have to work a lot harder at it than a Lemur would.

OK

so now on to another subject. as far as weapons and armor goes, if a certain sword requires 1,523 STR to wield it. A merchant should not know exactly how strong you are, but if you are obviously to weak, lets say 761 STR then he might notice that you wont be able to use it and he could warn you before buying it, or you could be see a message saying \"you are much to weak to wield this sword\". It would also make sense to say that if you have 1,400 STR you would be able to wield the sword but you wouldnt be able to use it effectively, so upon equiping it you would see a message saying \"the sword feels heavy in your hands\" and your attack speed would suffer severely. This way, instead of somebody(or the game) telling you that you arent strong enough, you will make that decision yourself. You will notice that your attacks are very slow, or that you are not fighting effectively and you will know that you arent strong enough for that weapon.
This would also be a very gradual limit though, so if you have 1520 STR you might only suffer a speed penalty of +.1 and get a message of \"the sword feels a bit hefty\"  but if your STR was 1450 you could suffer a speed penalty of +1 and a warning \"the sword is heavier than you\'re acustombed to.\"
You get the idea.

The same system would apply to the wieght you carry. You would see no absolute limit as you do now, but you might not be able to run if you\'re carrying too much. also the amount of weight you are carrying would effect how quickly your stamina is drained. Carrying lots of loot? dont plan on running to far. Carrying more than you\'re capable of? you\'ll have to drop some things before you\'re able to move again. However, carrying more weight would help your practice points in STR, so it would have its pros and cons as well.

I could go on and on and on, but you get the idea. All of the numbers and algorithms would be completely invisible to the player. The only bars you would need are your heath, mana, stamina, and fatigue. Your other stats could be shown with an indicator of the balance between Theory and Practice. That way you could try to keep your practicing and studying balanced. Or you could go to the extreme and not show anything at all.

I hope all that made some sense. If not I can try to explain a little better.

[Neryam]

Yess I do agree with everything you said. Wonderful post!
Yes that is quite presicely how I envisioned it..

I\'ll pay you more that $0.02 for that one how about $200.00

I wish some authoritave people would reply too..  :]

[BaurakSered]

Originally posted by Neryam
Yess I do agree with everything you said. Wonderful post!
Yes that is quite presicely how I envisioned it..

I\'ll pay you more that $0.02 for that one how about $200.00

I wish some authoritave people would reply too..  :]

the inspiration is all yours Neryam

*edit* spelling