Weapon Skills?

[Halvord]

I played a very old Super Nintendo game called \"Secrets of Mana\" and it had an interesting concept.  Your weapon basically leveled up, along with your character.  When it gets to a certain level, only that type of weapon can preform special moves.

  This sort of makes sense.  By fighting with a sword, you do not gain skills with a bow and arrow.  Nor with a heavier or duller sword.

  I know there are no levels in Planeshift, but how about a similar system?  What are your thoughts?

P.S.  I\'m not your average newbie. I have played Planeshift for a long time, and regulate thee forums usually as a guest.  I am after Tycho.  Which way did he go?

Edit: Sorry, I thought it was the wish list forum.  Can someone move it?

[Icefalcon]

Has anyone played Thesa Online? Its not a very good game but there was something I liked about it, you could upgrade your weapons. You get these upgrade stones which are fairly rare and you could upgrade any weapon using the right upgrade stone(s). pgrading your weapon made it do more damage more acurately and greatly increased its value if you sell it to a NPC.

This should be in the Wish List forums...

[DepthBlade]

blah thats like another game im trying to think what its called but you create your weapons with different rare items you find then upgrade them!

[Kiva]

How about staying on topic instead of going in a completely diffrent direction already with the first reply?

Anyway Halvord. The skills system will be somewhat similar to that. You gain skill from what you do, not simply because you select it when you go level up like so many other games. So if you fight with swords classified as a long sword, then you gain skill in long sword fighting, and the same with everything else.

[Xanaroth]

hmmm.... tought skills were done on points bases, since at the create character you start with points to distribute, and the points you have left will be saved for when you have more points, so i believe weapon skills will grow when you put points into them. but that is just what i think it would be

[Mage of Darkness]

hmmm the diablo sense isnt that bad if you look at it. It never created weapons only upgraded them like in any other game if you forge a bronze sword better it could become a silver sword and so on. So in turn we are really looking at upgrades and if there will be added effects but i doubt it will be like diablo. It will be along the lines of you have a skill at a certain level you gain such as psn sword which in turn you can add psn to your sword and etc. So thats how i think it will be!

[Wedge]

I don\'t think you will be able to level up weapons.  But you might have skill levels in certain types of weaponry, which is pretty close.  I do love Secret of Mana though.

Who are you by the way, and why are you after me?

[Kiva]

Originally posted by Mage of Darkness
hmmm the diablo sense isnt that bad if you look at it. It never created weapons only upgraded them like in any other game if you forge a bronze sword better it could become a silver sword and so on. So in turn we are really looking at upgrades and if there will be added effects but i doubt it will be like diablo. It will be along the lines of you have a skill at a certain level you gain such as psn sword which in turn you can add psn to your sword and etc. So thats how i think it will be!

Ahem, let me help you with that one.

First of all, Diablo is bad. PlaneShift and Diablo has nothing in common, except that you play either a man or a woman.

\"So in turn we are really looking at upgrades and if there will be added effects but i doubt it will be like diablo.\"

Diablo has weak upgrade skills that are of no use to anyone. PlaneShift will not be like Diablo.

\"It will be along the lines of you have a skill at a certain level you gain such as psn sword which in turn you can add psn to your sword and etc.\"

No, no and no... And no, if etc. is a statement as well. First off, you don\'t have any levels. Another point, you don\'t suddenly gain a skill for no reason at all, you learn it from a guy who knows how to do it. And third of all, if you want to add poison to your sword, you don\'t just rightclick and *pop* you have a green sword with mass poison damage. It takes skill and ingredients, and a failed poison sword can easily just result in your opponent getting a gooey pink wound instead of a bloody red one.

I hate to break your dreams, but PlaneShift simply isn\'t like Diablo in any way. It\'s not even the same genre.

[Azasello]

sounds like the system from \"Secrets of Mana\" is training based. you improve a (weapon) skill  by using that skill. such a system is used in one of my favourite games too (it\'s nethack *duck*) and its has its pros and cons:

+ you can\'t \"push\" a skill by using a completely different skill
(this was extremely annoying to me in \"Dark age of Camelot\" where people trained the PvP skills of their characters by using PvE skills that were totally useless in PvP)
+ use of a skill is an indirect measure of successful use. if you weren\'t successful, you wouldn\'t use that skill. therefore training based systems reward for successful use of a skill. seems realistic
- you can fool the system by using a skill without need
(example from nethack: casting \"Identify\" skill repeatedly improves your \"divination spells\" skill. even though you have nothing to identify. okay, this can be easily fixed...)

so you see neither the training based, nor the point based skill system is the holy grail. so are there any alternatives?

a friend of mine and I once thought of a system which combines the training based skill system of nethack with the point based system. the basic idea was that you have to spend points to raise your skill, but you can\'t raise a skill if you haven\'t also trained it. that is, your training limits the amount of points you may invest in a skill.

example: if you kill a dragon in a long fight with a two-handed sword, you gain points to spend on skills, and you get training points for using the two-handed sword. you may then raise your two-handed sword skill.

another example: you kill a dragon with one well-aimed bowshot between the eyes. before you got to the dragon you have used your lockpicking skill a lot of times to open doors. you have never used your bow except for killing the dragon. although the dragon earned you a lot of skill points, you may only invest it in lockpicking.
and it\'s realistic - your lockpicking skill killed the dragon. you wouldn\'t have got to him without it.

what do you think about this?

[Mage of Darkness]

i never said it was like diablo whatso ever i was stating that there could possible be weapon upgrades and i didnt mean like diablo it be in any such sort that you have a forge skill and the more you work with it the higher a lvl it gets and the better an item you can forge outa materails you have. so like you have a bronze sword and you melt it down and have like some other metals and whatever else there may be you forge it together and it has a chance to fail or succed based on your lvl of forging.

[Altharion]

what about something similiar to Onimusha

[Kiva]

Originally posted by Azasello
another example: you kill a dragon with one well-aimed bowshot between the eyes. before you got to the dragon you have used your lockpicking skill a lot of times to open doors. you have never used your bow except for killing the dragon. although the dragon earned you a lot of skill points, you may only invest it in lockpicking.
and it\'s realistic - your lockpicking skill killed the dragon. you wouldn\'t have got to him without it.

what do you think about this?

Well, dragons aren\'t exactly known for standing still while you shoot at them besides, an arrow couldn\'t possibly penetrate it\'s skull unless you were pretty close and it was shot from a pretty strong, magical crossbow. So A) You\'re either good enough to kill dragons like that all the time (which means you don\'t gain any skill from it) or B) ... You\'re lucky (and you don\'t gain any skill from that either). And besides, how can lockpicking kill the dragon? I mean, hopefully you didn\'t shoot it down while it was flying far away, on the other side of the dungeon because then you\'re pretty good at shooting.

[Azasello]

okay, let\'s modify the example so that it makes sense
the dragon is not approached by one uber archver but by a team of a barbarian and a thief. the barbarian slays the dragon in the old-fashioned way. the thief helped him to get there (by finding and disarming traps, picking locks, etc).
killing the dragon was some kind of quest and both share the reward (inpoints) for it. then the thief character would only be able to increase the thievery skills he used recently, whereas the barbarian would be able to increase his fighting skills.

such a system has many interesting properties:

 - if you participate in a quest where you are completely useless in, you get a reward for it, but you can\'t raise any skills
 - it is impossible to \"push\" other characters. they have to make themselves useful or they won\'t gain skills
 - still, you have to do things that you get reward for. using skills without need won\'t increase them

I hope it\'s clear now what I mean, and I hope the example above looks less ridiculous now