Yet Another Progression System

[Draklar]

Right, i could post this in one of those threads about adding more realism to progression, eliminating power-leveling or whatever, but no, not really. This is an idea I got after merging my old one with some ideas I\'ve seen on various threads. Various, meaning I can\'t go around and post my idea of improvement on multiple threads, as if I tried to enforce my opinion upon others. So anyway, here it goes.

Everything starts with power-leveling. Heck, I\'m not even all berserk against it, basically because power-levelers don\'t annoy me all that much. People fighting on arena or hunting in wilderness isn\'t really something I\'d call \"ruining of role-playing environment\". So that\'s not such a big deal. Only that role-players are practically enforced to do it themselves if they want their character to keep the reputation of defender of the weak. Not so much of a defender of the weak, if some rookie who appeared in the realm just few days ago can beat the hell out of him. So someone who wants this to change, has to spend more time fighting monsters and possibly quit job or school or maybe divorce to get even more time. But I think that\'s not the point. People should have equal enjoyment out of playing such game, no matter how much time they have to do so. And think about people who have two (or more) characters... Instead of both progressing kind of equally fast, one of them suddenly slowed down because the other appeared in the realm. Oh yes, the realism. I actually have this problem myself. I simply dropped the idea of making second character, because I don\'t even have much time to play the first one.

So how about this: Characters would get exactly same ammount of experience points each day, only have them differently alocated. How? Depending on the diagram of used skills.
If we assume there are only 5 skills (Light Armour, Swords, Dark Way, Blue Way and Axes) then it would look like that:

Let\'s say
Light Armour = 25%
Swords = 38%
Dark Way = 19%
Blue Way = 9%
Axes = 9%
And let\'s say someone has 1000 experience points.
This way in the end the character has.
250 points for Light Armour
380 points for Swords
190 points for Dark Way
90 points for Blue Way
90 points for Axes
Which then would be converted to respective levels.

However, there are ideas about making it so characters will lose levels in skills they don\'t use. It can be cared of here as well.
Just make it that on first day character gains (for example) 1000 points, on second day 990, on third day 980 and so on. This way not only unused skills would reduce their level, but also character eventually would get to the stage when he/she/it can\'t progress any longer (with actual exceptions, which cover another idea, but that in a while). Quite frankly, character shouldn\'t grow in power to infinity. And still the levels would change after that (some growing on cost of others). Another problem solved.

How points turn into levels should be as it is now. The higher the level, the more points you need. With only difference that it should depend on race, also. Eventually it would be impossible for a dermorian to get to same level of body development as a well trained Ynnwn. Or just damn hard.

And back to the way of progressing beyond the normal limit. Role-playing, of course. You know the way adventurers are supposed to gain higher levels than the simple commoners in various tabletops? It can be made like that in here as well. Basically quests (and possibly other role-playing events) could give a decent number of experience points as well. This way you\'d have easily implemented \'role-play to experience\' system, which would pretty much encourage various forms of role-playing among the players. And there\'s just no freaking way a power-leveler would progress faster than one of those. Quite contrary.

Hmm... and one more thing. Old idea, actually. From Pogopuschel, which then was merged with my magic skills diagram. Don\'t know what happened with it after it was taken by the devs, but I\'ll just use it anyway.
Stats limitating skill levels. Max possible level of all skills would depend on various combination of stats. I guess it would be easiest to just show examples:
Max level of:
Swords = 2/3 Strength + 1/3 Agility.
Axes = 2/3 Strength + 1/3 Endurance.
Daggers = 2/3 Agility + 1/3 Strength.
Light Armour = 2/3 Agility + 1/3 Endurance.
Medium Armour = 1/3 Agility + 1/3 Strength + 1/3 Endurance.
Heavy armour = 2/3 Strength + 1/3 Endurance.

And so on; Same for mental skills.
If certain skill would go above such max level, then it would simply have to wait until we get our stats high enough. Not sure how stats could be raised, but whatever it may be, I would prefer likewise time friendly idea.

[SuburbanPlankton]

If I understand correctly, then these three characters will all receive the same amount of XP:

One who spends 6 hours camped out on the forest rogue, killing him over and over and over and over and...

One who spends 6 hours in a combination of tavern RP, hunting monsters in the wilderness, training in the arena, and mining

One who spends 6 hours standing motionless in the Plaza because the player controlling him is busy on his new Xbox.

I can\'t go for this.  In order to gain XP, you need to do something.

I do like the idea of limiting skills based on stats.  I think that, in and of itself, will help level the field and eliminate power-leveling.  If you want to gain obscene levels in sword, just fighting will not do it for you.  You will need to increase your basic stats.

As for how to raise stats:  any \"normal\" method will be subject to the same problems that we have in the current system.  Say you can only raise strength by lifting weights.  Fine, I\'ll just spend 8 hours (real time) \"power-lifting\" and raise my strength stat by 30.  Then I can go back to spawn camping to raise my sword skill.

We can solve tis by using the example you state for raising skills by role playing, but apply it to stats instead.  Make race-dependent limits on stats, and allow these limits to be exceeded only through quests.  Some quests could be solo efforts, so as not to \"force\" RP; others would be cooperative efforts (that would ultimately result in greater advances).

I recall a thread a while back that proposed getting rid of skills altogether, and basing everything on a combination of stat levels.  Instead of advancing \"sword\" to level 10, you would advance \"strength\" to lever 15 and \"agility\" to level 8, for example; the end result would be the same.  I don\'t think we should go quite that far.  If you have two people with equal stats, but one has chosen to learn swordfighting and the other hasn\'t. then the one should be a better sword fighter.  But I think that putting a cap on skills, based on the character\'s stats, and making race-based limits on stats, will keep most players on a roughly level playing field.

Anyone who wishes to rise above the crowd will still have the opportunity to increase their stats and/or skills via RP/questing.  Throw in some sort of skill decay, and this keeps most people roughly equal (which is realistic), and allows anyone to excel in a limited number of areas if they wish, but prevents anyone from becoming a superman.

[Draklar]

Originally posted by SuburbanPlankton
If I understand correctly, then these three characters will all receive the same amount of XP:

One who spends 6 hours camped out on the forest rogue, killing him over and over and over and over and...

One who spends 6 hours in a combination of tavern RP, hunting monsters in the wilderness, training in the arena, and mining

One who spends 6 hours standing motionless in the Plaza because the player controlling him is busy on his new Xbox.

I can\'t go for this.  In order to gain XP, you need to do something.

Well what should one role-play for? I don\'t think for stats.
Normally experience should never be a reward for anything. Exception from this rule is rewarding for role-playing which is one of the most common things in the tabletop games. But alone, experience isn\'t a reward. It shouldn\'t be. It\'s solely a form of a role-playing representation of advancement of your character during its lifetime.
A character that stands 6 hours doing nothing on the plaza? Should you assume that as a matter of ingame reality it\'s standing in one place non-stop for 36 hours? That doesn\'t seem realistic. As a form of role-playing you should assume that during this period of time this character was doing all sorts of things, including actual sleeping. And keep in mind I believe a character should gain exp even if it didn\'t log in at all.
You can either treat experience as a role-playing feature, or a hack&slash feature.
As a role-playing feature, it should grow flawlessly. More or less equal for all the characters (with the exception of those that venture on quests).
Treating it as a reward is going too far under the hack&slash feature in my opinion.
It isn\'t any different from all the other mmorpg\'s. If PS is intended to be a role-playing game, then it needs strong role-playing moves. This system won\'t appear to be unfair anymore, once players will stop looking at experience points like something that should be constantly collected. Something like that by all means isn\'t what I\'d call role-playing.


Edit: Some other things it fixes.
Someone has only one hour to log in and play some day. His character normally is supposed to spend 8 hours of sleeping, 5 hours of hunting, 3 hours of crafting and all the rest for various things, including relaxing in tavern. So this man decides that during this hour he\'ll role-play the tavern part. And so he does, having fun talking with some other characters. But how will system work in such case?
Curently: six ingame hours will have to do for actual 6 days of character\'s activity. That means while the tavern part is fullfilled, in terms of \'system to role-play\' the character did absolutely nothing during five days and on the sixth day had only part of its normal activities done. And it\'ll probably be carried on like that in the next days as well. Unless someone can spend time ingame almost non-stop.
With proposed system: The system takes care of everything else. Experience progresses as if the character had its normal activities.

Monster Hunting.
Currently: Monsters are hunted not only for the skins and such (as it should be), but also for experience. So even if some monster has lousy loot, it still will have lots of people after it if it gives enough experience. Pretty odd role-play wise.
With Proposed System: The only reward monsters could give would be the loot. As it normally is. Animals are hunted for such things, not for training. That would be rather sick, actually.

[Bebel]

I like Draklar idea about the skills system
I just want to suggest that it will be good with this system to add a limit to all stats depending of each races
I saw many efles with the same strenght of a kran
or a kran with the agility of a enki
What about to limit stats at the double of the begining , or fixed a maximum like begining stats + 50 ?
 i m really sorry for my english ...

[steuben]

i like the max skills concept. it is more \"realistic\", whatever that really means in the ps environment.

not to thrilled on the xp thing though. have to reread it just to make sure that i do have my head wrapped around it.

[Zellgadess]

Maxing out is stupid, so if I?m a blue wizard... i train and train to prefect my art, and then... opp! I?m maxed... can?t go any further, what!? You want Mr. Zellgadess the lemur to train in Strength???

Krans can have the same Agi as an Enki, if he trains in Agi and the Enki trains in strength. I know all the Krans have the same model at the moment, but realistically, you would have different shaped Krans, Some thinner and quicker ones, and some bigger slower and stronger ones.

Maxing out is the worst idea in the world, just training that skill gets harder and harder as it gets better.

[Draklar]

Zellgadess, I don\'t know if you have any connection with reality, but for example when you sword-fight, certain moves will be impossible if you lack strength and agility.
Just like a weak peasant won\'t do nearly amazing things with a sword as a strong and agile knight.

But looking at your example... I have absolutely no idea how you connected mental skill with physical stat. That\'s not flaw of the system, but your thinking I\'m afraid.

[Zellgadess]

What? I have no idea what you are talking about? How have I linked mental and physical skill? That?s another story, but all I have stated is about maxed skills, please quote...

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Zellgadess
Maxing out is stupid, so if I?m a blue wizard... i train and train to prefect my art, and then... opp! I?m maxed... can?t go any further, what!? You want Mr. Zellgadess the lemur to train in Strength???

[Ikarsik]

realism isnt really real in planeshift. haha but seriously i dont think it matters if an enki can kick a krans head off like a soccer ball, even though krans are meant to be solid, because planeshift is a fantasy game. maybe strength is a gift from the gods and can go as high as the gods let it go?

i dont think it would be a good idea to limit skills by stats. because you could probably grasp the idea of a technique like swinging at sword at someones neck or legs without being able to do it with control from strength. stats could just act as a modifier to the effects of skills, where having a skill way higher than a stat negates some of the skills effects so that getting another 100 levels in sword might really only increase your damage as much as the first 20 levels, but if you had like um agility or dexterity(is that a stat?) high enough to match your sword you could still be always doing max damage and maybe hitting faster.

i think what Zellgadess was saying was what happens if you max out strength for your race and max out sword and reach the maximum potential, so there is nothing else for you to do to make you a better fighter, but Zellgadess was talking about maxing out intelligence and blue way and not being able to become a better caster using blue magic. so its pretty much you max out and have nothing to do, which i guess would force you to stand around, talk trade and whatnot.

with the hunt animals for training, it doesnt matter if you think hunting animals is sick, the thing, the more you hunt animals the better you become(normally), so the more you swing your sword at something, the better you become at swinging sword, even if it is a defensless tefusang. it would be like eating carrots. the more carrots you eat, better you become at eating carrots (ok jk).

hmm i dont like the 1000 points per day thing because i mean experience points per day just seems so text based. but then again i misread your initial post so i am probably wrong.

wow who votes that watching planeshift develop all this rules stuff like character progression is exciting. These posts here should be like time capsules so that when Planeshift is in beta and some of this stuff is worked out (maybe) then we can like get a collection of all these posts where people were like saying how the game should be a then see who was actually right in predicting how the game would come out. like if Draklar\'s progression system was actually the future planeshift progression system, we could go back and say like \"wow Draklar was right, that\'s incredible\" and then all laugh.

[Bebel]

So why is there so much races if we could, after a long time playing, have the same stats ?
exemple :
i m a kran and i have 150 in each stats
i m a ylian and i have 150 in each
i m a elfes and i have 150 in each ....

what races supposed to be in the game so ?
Isn\'t it for the \"difference\"?  to be different than the other ?

do the races just for estetical reason ?

if you read the races description is it logical to have an elfe stronger than a kran ?

Or you r not agree because you wanted to keep you character overskilled and overstated ?

[Draklar]

*sigh*

Originally posted by Ikarsik
i dont think it would be a good idea to limit skills by stats. because you could probably grasp the idea of a technique like swinging at sword at someones neck or legs without being able to do it with control from strength.

You\'re missing the point that without agility you won\'t be able to aim your sword, while without strength you won\'t be able to keep it in the straight line for the blow. Just like without some decent intelligence, you won\'t be able to grasp the basics of logics.

Originally posted by Ikarsik
i think what Zellgadess was saying was what happens if you max out strength for your race and max out sword and reach the maximum potential, so there is nothing else for you to do to make you a better fighter,

Either you didn\'t read or just don\'t understand :\\
Assuming that someone has any skills besides sword, then he\'ll never max it out. He may try to have it as high as possible, but that\'ll never pass the 99.(9)% border. In result it\'ll keep advancing, even if after some time it\'ll be pretty slow. Plus I already said about possible additional experience from quests. That means by role-playing a character can avance even further. And you do realise right now swords skill can be maxed anyway, right?

Originally posted by Ikarsik
with the hunt animals for training, it doesnt matter if you think hunting animals is sick, the thing, the more you hunt animals the better you become(normally), so the more you swing your sword at something, the better you become at swinging sword, even if it is a defensless tefusang. it would be like eating carrots. the more carrots you eat, better you become at eating carrots (ok jk).

This time I\'ll just assume you don\'t understand... I said hunting animals for training is sick. It didn\'t happen irl, it\'s absurd and nothing but a hack&slash phenomenon

Originally posted by Ikarsik
hmm i dont like the 1000 points per day thing because i mean experience points per day just seems so text based. but then again i misread your initial post so i am probably wrong.

And text based games are so much worse than hack&slash games, right?

[Zellgadess]

*what Ikarsik said = D

well if they dont max out your system just seems to complecate a simpleprossess....

the more you do something the better you get, but the better you get the slower you do something,

I may be wrong but with your system, if i walk to the forest for a year, i\'ll get really good at walking, but then if i start clapping my hands while walking for a year, i\'ll become a worse walker untill both skills are even? oooaahh! \"realistic\" = D

You dont need caps, because the better you are at something, you need more and more and more and more xp to get better at it.

skills decaying is pritty stupid really... it does have a slight realism as when you dont do something in real life for a while, you arnt as good at it. But it\'s a freaking game!! so you would be perfectly alright in trainin to use a sword for a week, then doing some smithing and suddenly realise you dont know which way up to hold a sword? Loosing skills in games = not fun

Pointlessly complecatied in my eyes, but least your trying new things.

And Bebel, lets say your a karn and i\'m a lemur, you sit on your ass all day drinking ale and peanuts, going old, moldy and brittle, and I train everyday all day in the art of KI, Strenght, I would be stronger then you. By your logic all humans should have the same stats hey? then how come some are stronger, faster, fatter, slimmer, smarter or shorter?

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Zellgadess
the more you do something the better you get, but the better you get the slower you do something,

Was that supposed to be completely random, or did you mistake words \"do\" with \"train\"?

Originally posted by Zellgadess
I may be wrong but with your system, if i walk to the forest for a year, i\'ll get really good at walking, but then if i start clapping my hands while walking for a year, i\'ll become a worse walker untill both skills are even? oooaahh! \"realistic\" = D

Tell me, did you ever walk in a forest? Because you know, a skill that would allow you to move without making any noise in it would \"slightly\" decrease if you gave attention to clapping your hands. Now that really backfired, didn\'t it? And it would never become even. Bleh, maths!

Originally posted by Zellgadess
You dont need caps, because the better you are at something, you need more and more and more and more xp to get better at it.

Reading posts helps sometimes. Unlike the current system, my system doesn\'t have caps.

Originally posted by Zellgadess
skills decaying is pritty stupid really... it does have a slight realism as when you dont do something in real life for a while, you arnt as good at it. But it\'s a freaking game!! so you would be perfectly alright in trainin to use a sword for a week, then doing some smithing and suddenly realise you dont know which way up to hold a sword? Loosing skills in games = not fun

*sigh* Not only week isn\'t enough time to learn to use sword skillfully, but also if you\'ll use some maths, you\'ll notice that this system makes skills decrease very slowly even if you don\'t use them at all.

Originally posted by Zellgadess
Pointlessly complecatied in my eyes, but least your trying new things.

In my eyes it isn\'t even complicated. And in-game wise it would turn out less complicated than it is now.

Originally posted by Zellgadess
And Bebel, lets say your a karn and i\'m a lemur, you sit on your ass all day drinking ale and peanuts, going old, moldy and brittle, and I train everyday all day in the art of KI, Strenght, I would be stronger then you. By your logic all humans should have the same stats hey? then how come some are stronger, faster, fatter, slimmer, smarter or shorter?

How about we\'ll say the kran is actually doing some decent training. You people are terribly missing his point.

[Bebel]

And if the kran and the lemur train hardly as you said ?
( means to the maximum stats )
by my logic , all the humans will not have the same strenght if the maximum stats is : begining + 50 (for exemple or +70 as you wish) , you know that we don\' t start with the same stats due to history and childhood
...