Naturally Gifted Characters

[Kiva]

Originally posted by Waylander
Personaly I love the idea, the only problem is that there are those who have their background all worked out.  And they wouldn\'t like this (I would just change my background but, heh)

I\'m just curious. How can one already have their background worked out, if there is nothing in particular to have a background about? Sure you can decide to study magic, or learn how to use a bow, but that doesn\'t make you a master of that thing already. Besides, you have no clue how difficult/easy or weak/strong the thing you\'ve chosen is, and you might end up finding that it\'s not of your liking. A background isn\'t something you decide beforehand, it\'s something you develop as you play, thus a background. Not a prediction of your character\'s story.

[wertigon]

Originally posted by Draklar
Plus we usually get to know what we are good in from quite early years, not after many years of training.

Being gifted usually shows in stats. Sure you don\'t pick what you are gifted in, but do you normally choose what race you are?

Ok, that was for myth of realism.

Well, yes, but no.

How do you know you\'re gifted in cooking if you\'ve never cooked before? How do you know you\'re an ace pilot if you\'ve never flown before? Similarly, how do you know you\'re good at swords if all you\'ve ever done is to practice with a bow?

Originally posted by Draklar
Here\'s for the rp part:

ex char history: I quickly noticed that I\'m very good at using bows, thus I spent many years of training to enhance my skills in it.

But the char was gifted in cooking, not archery...

You know what? Scratch that... People only told me I\'m good at it, it turns out I\'m not gifted in archery at all...

Or, you could put it like this: I tried archery one day, and found that I loved it. It felt like I had an in-born knack for it, even though I didn\'t hit my target very often in the beginning. Hence, I spent many many hours to hone my skills to perfection. Then, one day, I tried cooking this deer I hunted down, and found to my surprise that it tasted delicious.

In other words, there is no way the character won\'t be good at archery if (s)he put some practice hours into it. But in the beginning, some people will pick it up faster than (s)he will.

And like previously said; these are just bonus points to give a little extra edge in the skills XYZ, for those first few hours of training. If you put lots of regular skill points in Archery... Well, you\'ll be good at archery.

So, say that you distribute the skills like this in character setup:

(150 SPs total)

Cooking: 10
Smithing: 30
Archery: 60
Swordsmanship: 10
Alchemy: 20
Magic: 20

And the bonus skills (30 in total) get distributed to something like this:

Cooking: 10 + 15
Smithing: 30 + 5
Archery: 60
Swordsmanship: 10 + 5
Alchemy: 20 + 5
Magic: 20

You won\'t be less good at Archery, but you will have an easier chance at Cooking. Now, let\'s say the maximum value of all these skills are 255 - As you can see, the numbers doesn\'t really matter all that much.

So, in closing, I think this is a good idea and definitely should be implemented, but only if kept at a level where it doesn\'t really interefere with the player\'s choices.

[Zellgadess]

Let?s Put This Simply
I am a Sorcerer... and i am suddenly have and \"edge\" in archery....
My Nemesis (robinmagus = P) is say a swords man and has an \"edge\" in swordsman ship
If we are both experienced evenly, he will still be better.
Thus, i have a malus
The Crap thing in RL is that you?re born a way, and you can?t change that. In RP you can be anything you imagine. I don?t want to change from something i love to something I\'m good at like in RL, I want to do whatever i want and STILL be as good as anyone else can.

[Frarda]

When you\'re creating your character and upping certain attributes for the start when you don\'t have any experience you ARE essentially choosing your \"gifts\".

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Gronomist
A background isn\'t something you decide beforehand, it\'s something you develop as you play, thus a background. Not a prediction of your character\'s story.

err no
background is something you make up, usually at char creation, to give you a better view on its past, motives, etc.
So Waylander is right.

Plus if someone wants to rp gifted swordsman, let him rp gifted swordsman.
If you want it realistic, make race and stats random as well... and see how many people will like it.

- Swords

[sashok]

Personally like this idea, but have few disagreements, or maybe additions.  Hope I\'m not repeatin anyones words.  

Ok, maybe there should be 2 gifts, one for combat, one for crafting.  This way seems fair to me, but if my words don\'t get through I don\'t mind really, just beware

Some ideas of gifts:

combat:
health regeneration
runs faster
stamina regeneration
quicker hit with a hammer(hammer being example of a wep.)
more damage with a hammer
when under healing spell, heals more because body is natural to healing magic (or something like that)
more evasive
pacifier(means that monsters will take much longer to start attacking, so their hostility towards you decreases, specially when you run away, monsters don\'t follow usually, unless really pissed at you )

crafting:
has more luck to find rare ores.
has more luck to get rare lumber
learns blacksmithy faster (or other skill)
has no failing chance when making leather armor
has no failing chance when making pottery
etc.

well post more ideas i guess

[Sunken]

it strangely seems to me that u aparantely locked the free character creations, just giving a advantage to some races, is almost the same of saying elfs can olny be herbalists, archer, druids, sorcer; and humans knights, swordsman, warrior... it sux dont u think, a natural advantage only can be set (and its already seted) is about some status like strenght stamina, breath under water, runing speed, this is a REEAALLYY natural gift, not something that will set the avaliable jobs that u can choice...

[Razorrudebwoy]

yea, its kinda more life like in a way but c\'mon if it would be more realistic this would be something you would NOT put in the game, what you are talking about is all random in life you have to keep working at something to get good at it but i do get your point, I think there should be a choice for it or no bonuses at all.

[ramlambmoo]

This is a good idea in theory... but not in the game.  Alot of people would like to be able to RP and choose what their character was naturally gifted at.  Most people have their heart set on doing on thing or another.  So if you were to implement this, it would just made some players randomly better at the start because they luckily get the natural \'giftedness\' in the same stats or areas they already chose, where as the people who wern\'t lucky are at a relative disadvantage.  I mean it would be more realistic too if we couldnt choose our races, wouldnt it?  You can choose what race you are even less then what you are naturally gifted at.   But i dont think anybody would ever consider implmenting that, would they?  Because people just want to choose.  There has to be a balance between realism and fun.  However if you did think of a way to do this fairly (and i cant), a good way to do it would be that the character learns out what they are naturally gifted at only after a certain number of hours of play, or when they reach a certain level.  This would mean you cant just re-create characters when it dosnt go your way, else it would take far too much work, it would just be better to go with what you get.

[Silverthorne]

I am going to agree with the original poster on this.  It helps develop the character.  

Examples:

A player decides that his elf will use a bow.  The game decides that he is good with a sword, or worse an axe.  He may never develop a skill in the sword or axe not knowing the game selected it for him.

A mage is getting hard pressed in battle, he is loosing ground with his magic and grabs a sword off a fallen enemy.  He finds that the sword feels right in his hand and he has instinctively some skill in it.

A hardened warrior, winner of many battles, has never even opened a spell book.  One night he is heading home from the tavern without his sword and runs into a group of street toughs.  He fights with them and gets stomped.  He goes to the temple the next morning and is introduced to healing magic, he finds that he has a knack for it and afterwords adds it to his skill list.

These are three possible selections.  Character made his character and did not think about anything else.  Later he finds out where the skills the game chose for him were.  

How about these examples.:  

The toughened warrior has to spend the night in the wilderness and kills a deer with a skilled shot from his bow.  He turns to deal with the kill and finds it comes easy to him.  He thinks about it and after eating a meal from a poor inn, that he could do better.  Turning his mind to learning the cooking skill.

A young mage yearning for excitement tries to pick a lock and finds that he can.  He quickly turns to a life of crime, as his skills that he never thought to develop were in the thief arts.

Then you get things like.:

The young fighter that hates animals sees a horse racing towards him at full gallop.  He dives to the side and notices that the horse in going to trample a nice looking young lady.  He throws himself in the way and attempts to calm the animal to make himself more interesting to the young lady.  He sees the horse calm and realizes he is good with animals.  

The young herbalist sees a bit of metal sticking up from the ground and digs it out, knowing he has always been good digging, it takes little time but is damaging to his plants.  The lure of mining does not appeal to him.  He reburies the ore and replants the herbs that had to be dug up to get at the metal.

[Seytra]

This is all very well, but these all are things that are RP-only. You can\'t force them. The player needs to decide these things, not the server. It is my char, my ideas, my backstory and my decision - solely. What if I actually would like to do such a thing (decide upon change in char\'s direction), say I\'m a warrior and wish to become a cook, but the server decided I am going to be a merchant instead of a cook?
You see, it looks all nice when you assume that it\'s going to be the way you envisaged, but the chances of it actually being at least somewhat like you envisioned are very slim.

[Silverthorne]

Role play.  If my character gets a foolish skill as a inherent bonus, Do I take what is given me and push on, yes.  I can still do every thing I want with my character, but my character has a knack for something.. Its part of role play to figure out what that is.  But I forget, leet players want everything their way, without any surprises.

If I offend do not flame me, think about what is said.

[Kiva]

Originally posted by Seytra
This is all very well, but these all are things that are RP-only. You can\'t force them. The player needs to decide these things, not the server. It is my char, my ideas, my backstory and my decision - solely. What if I actually would like to do such a thing (decide upon change in char\'s direction), say I\'m a warrior and wish to become a cook, but the server decided I am going to be a merchant instead of a cook?
You see, it looks all nice when you assume that it\'s going to be the way you envisaged, but the chances of it actually being at least somewhat like you envisioned are very slim.

Let me make an example, just for you, proving how very wrong you are...

Example one - Your way.
You are an archer. You have always been an archer because you like archering. You keep being an archer and you pwn every other archer in the game, as well as most other players.

Example two - My way.
Your character has a bonus in smithing. You don\'t know that because you have never tried smithing. You keep being an archer, just like you want. You STILL pwn everyone as an archer, and you think \"hey I\'m good at this\" and you just keep being an archer because you like it and because you decide that\'s the only reason why you want to play.

What you happen to not understand is that there will be NOTHING pushed on you. You have NO requirements that you have to meet, simply because you have a SMALL bonus to something. Stop being such a nitpicker, thinking everything is about Stat A and Bonus B, and if you don\'t have both you can\'t win. Get over it. The least you could do is provide some constructive critisism instead of saying it\'s a bad idea because then people will be better than you, or then people can\'t play what they want.

As for what I just said, please provide me with the statement I\'ve made, where it is obvious I\'m saying people can\'t play just the way they want, if this idea is to be implemented.

Originally posted by Silverthorne
But I forget, leet players want everything their way, without any surprises.

Exactly.

What d00d doesn\'t know about, d00d is scared of.

[E211]

Yes very cool idea that would make PS different from a lot of RPGs but I have found a Con- Luca in an interview said:

\"The choice we made long time ago was to have no classes, but a skill based system. This approach gives great flexibility during char creation and progression, where the player can choose the skill mix he prefers. A single character will be able to master magic and fighting at the cost of time. We are pretty sure that specialization will occur anyway as many players will choose to become more proficient in a few arts only or even just one.\"

--
They basicly say that they want characters to have a choice in what skills to use without over-empaphis on one. This means they may be against this \"strength of one skill\" even only for one user.
--

Please tell me if I am being stupid I am just a helpless Noob!

[Kiva]

Originally posted by E211
Yes very cool idea that would make PS different from a lot of RPGs but I have found a Con- Luca in an interview said:

\"The choice we made long time ago was to have no classes, but a skill based system. This approach gives great flexibility during char creation and progression, where the player can choose the skill mix he prefers. A single character will be able to master magic and fighting at the cost of time. We are pretty sure that specialization will occur anyway as many players will choose to become more proficient in a few arts only or even just one.\"

--
They basicly say that they want characters to have a choice in what skills to use without over-empaphis on one. This means they may be against this \"strength of one skill\" even only for one user.
--

Please tell me if I am being stupid I am just a helpless Noob!

Please tell me which part of my idea made you even think that people can only use ONE thing, if that\'s what they are good at. Please do that. I\'m dying to know what it is that\'s so hard to understand about this idea.