A modification to the LP system

[Oddity]

You can't really write a bot "smart" enough to kill a bear or deer.

False

I highly doubt anybody with a character high enough to easily kill bears would risk it doing stupid shit like that for so little LP.

Eh, there's people with tons of alts. I would probably do it just for chuckles if I had already written a script that could do it and still cared about playing W7.

[ChainedDjinn]

Their is another level of modification, one that I believe would benefit more through a bit of innovation.

In the game so far you have a variety of items conveniently dubbed 'Curios' that facilitate LP which promotes player growth. Though this seems to work for the least part their does seem to be a broken half to the system; Discoveries.

Curio's as their name derives are supposed to make you curious about something, but what? Most are either some form of plant life, an insect or and animal if not a piece of it. What are our characters actually learning per se? Are we learning to build planes studying dragonflies? No. Are we learning to cultivate new plants or breed them into something more useful? No. Are we examining the parts of animals to find vulnerabilities? No.

Same can be said of the created curios... Except one. The bark boat. With this simple toy your learning about buoyancy, air current and ship design. This curiosity actually makes some sense, sadly I have difficulty making any connections with others.

Which brings me to my thesis, if you give an underdeveloped individual/society something, how do they know to use it? The answer can be varied but typically it boils down to progression, or escalation. For instance, in the news I have seen tribesmen from south America leave their safe haven momentarily after facing conflict. Reaching civilization they at first checked if it was safe, were able to procure some rations... then stole a machete and an axe. Now granted, these individuals grew up in a setting that more then likely everything belonged to the village. The thought process of 'Hey that's mine' probably makes little sense to them. To them they don't see metal, they see 'really hard stone' that works better then what they have.

Now to the point, people don't inherently know how to just make something by purchasing a skill. If life where that easy I believe a lot of us would be a lot better off. So pondering on this I thought, how do you translate the accumulation of knowledge. Well, what I came up with isn't all that different then whats already there, just used a little differently.
Instead of having random objects giving atrocious amounts of points, why not derive points from the items themselves? Not much mind you, but enough to get a beginner off to a better start. But this also has another application.
A tier system, something for people to actually build their character with. Say you just begin, to pick up a stick and a rock... do you know how to make an axe out of them? No? Study them! This would make characters a little more personnel, as it actually takes some time learning things. Get to say, rank 1 with branches. You'd know it's hard and you can grab it, but it breaks easily. The rock on the other hand is harder in both function as well as use. But discovering how to get them to piece together, that's where things get more interesting as it unlocks more for you to do.
Some people more then likely spotted a hole with this. 'It'll take so long to do anything then' well, I have a fix for that... but it kinda goes off topic. This is about LP modification, which I have slightly deviated from.

The use of LP would be a little different as the system I thought of embraces preforming skills in contrast to buying them, in this build the LP would be use to purchase temporary 'Counters' which causes skills to progress more quickly for a duration. This way people who prioritize 'I'm gonna do this.' can spend some LP on a counter or two and get a boost while preforming that task, helping it reach the next level sooner which gets more difficult per level. This also means the individual is also taking a gamble, the more counters they buy the bigger the gain and for longer but only if they are using that skill for the duration. Which means if real life butts in, they lose out on the gamble.(I would lose so many times T-T) Yet it would also give people a way to measure their time as well. Like 2 counters would last for 2 ticks, that would be about 11 minutes in game to get the bonus during that particular task.
Not to rain on anyone's parade but their would be a counter to this, failure. This doesn't have to be looked at in a bad way though in accordance to the system I thought out, but sadly deviates from the topic. (I've been thinking of this crap for a VERY long time, I wished to use it in my own game but... yeah, didn't get anywhere with that.)

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Nutshell
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Trades out the traditional LP system for 'Counters'
Disables the ability to learn to do everything within a day.
Changes skills from being bought to being earned.

Well, that's a small piece of what I wanted to say on the subject in general. Sadly my thoughts are very grab-bagish so it makes it hard to really explain their entirety while narrowing the view of the subject. I'd try to make my own topic, but sadly the rules doesn't condone that sort of venture.
That's a portion of my take on the topic, I hope to see many more ideas on how this game may expand.
Till next time.

[TeckXKnight]

I was about to call your entire post scatterbrained and hackneyed, I really was, but the idea is pretty sound. It's a bit hard to follow your train of logic but the summation of it condenses into two ideas: instead of skills development is built off of the objects themselves and lp is used as a gauge of potential growth versus as a currency to buy growth. I disagree with the idea of failure for the sake of failure though. I also disagree with the arbitrary time limits. Just make the bonuses decay by a percent of their current value as you rise in levels with the associated objects. This way those that invest tons into studying something lose more in exchange for learning faster. This would cut RNG and finicky timing out of the equation to make it less annoying to deal with.

[ChainedDjinn]

I do apologize if what I say jumps track now and again, it's just how my mind works.
I try to state what I wish to convey within the limits presented, so it all kinda comes out wrong? Luckily you gleaned the basis of what I was gesturing toward, sadly I cannot go into as much detail as I'd wish for sake of the conversation. But I would like to actually correct a misunderstanding.

The failure aspect is actually a little more complex then just as it is at face value. My understanding is that with failure comes improvement. Therefore the inevitable build removes the necessity of the advantage.

Ok, lemme give a more direct understanding. Say your low on a specified skill, say carpentry, and your trying to make a wooden hammer. You gather the materials and initiate the process. At the end instead of a hammer, you get a botched attempt like 'Scrap wood' or something. You have failed to make the desired object. Yet you gleaned something from this, instead of the average of say... a 4 point value toward you skill, you instead receive a 7 point base bonus! (These numerals are of course figurative)
You try again, if you fail another time? 6.3 points, then 5.6 and so forth until your actually making less then if you succeed.
This is to give the player a boost even in hardship. It took Thomas Edison over 1000 tries to finally produce the light bulb correct? He simply stated he found 999 ways NOT to make one, this would make people maybe not get so angry at failure.(Myself included) The mindset that failure is bad corners us into the mentality that we must do everything right. This bonus though quickly fades out as skills progress and failures decline, so while every skill level you attain the failure aspect resets you'll fail less because of growth in abilities, which basically balances itself.
Now the flip-side to THIS is the grinding aspect, which I would love to use a feature already in place. The Happiness system, this thing has been sitting their for a while an no one seems to know what it's for other then to turn green punching baby chickens.(Who thought that was a good idea btw?)
This gear has more to do with the failure component as it keeps people from doing the same tasks repetitively by making the character stressed. If the character gets too unhappy, they can basically go postal; Throwing things around, flipping tables, ect. Basically F-U-N for the whole crew.
This could be possibly helpful in battle as it makes your character unpredictable.
(Maybe fight better then the people who play them? I may not be a savant but I've seen some bad fighters.)
So in the end a happy character would be able to preform better then and unhappy one, while if one gets too unhappy... lots of F-U-N things happen?
Adding some environment entities that help certain character types would also be a boon.
(Like waterfalls, fields of flowers... a graveyard? [THAT'S A COMPLETELY SEPARATE TOPIC!] oops.)

Oh fork I did it again... >.< Really need to curb that habit.

I was just throwing in the time measure as a counter-balance to the point growth, but you said something interesting. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your method would be spending LP for a counter which would boost growth to the stat but decay over use rather then time? Sounds exploitable, like someone could just spend more counters across a broad range and slowly whittle them down... though... that isn't exactly unplayable. Yeah! Actually now that I think about it, it sounds great! Though I wonder if that makes the use of the 'Learning Ability' obsolete? Speaking of which a lot of those sliders could use an overhaul... but I digress.

I'm sorry but I am unfamiliar with the term 'RNG' though, I can completely agree with the time out problem. Would hate to use some counters and then get the boot for hours, ^^; heheheh Didn't exactly look that far ahead, but then that's what these forums are for are they not? The anvil on which to hammer out ideas upon.
Well, it seems I've gone off topic enough. Sorry for indulging into this on my own, I just have so many ideas and I find them hard to coordinate at times.
Till next time.
(P.s. Made a lot of mistakes, half asleep, my apologizes.)

[TeckXKnight]

RNG is an acronym for Random Number Generator. Whenever a computer performs an operation that generates a success chance, it is using a random number generator to determine the outcome.

You must be from the bay12 forums. No one else calls failure fun but dorf forters. Okay, a system that doesn't penalize you and instead rewards you for your failures sounds cool. The issue then is balancing resource value versus skill value. In the way Haven works, this would encourage players to burn through tons of low quality materials before ever attempting to craft with their high quality materials. Mind you this happens in the current system as well, as people stockpile high quality materials early on until they have the skill to work with them, and I find this silly. It'd be nice if there was some kind of success multiplier linked in to quality -- like it's easier to work with better materials. Then again, you can always say fuck that and encourage the use of q10 materials. I don't know which would make for a better system.

I am not so sure that automation of character actions is a good idea and something that should be tied in to anything. It's definitely an idea unto itself but it would warrant a lot more exploration to determine if it was even viable, let alone if it would be good for the game. When I say a lot more exploration, I mean tons. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think it's something anyone has ever touched upon given the RPG nature of Haven. It'd be strange if after hours of grinding the same action over and over again, your character flipped their shit and developed temporary bulimia, randomly refusing to eat food, automatically gorging on everything edible in their inventory, and vomiting sprees which hurt their health and hunger simultaneously.

[jorb]

I know that jorb and loftar have no interest in changing the LP system...

Whatever gave you that idea? In no way do we consider it to be any shade of perfect. We have every intention of changing it.

Why should you be rewarded for ivory poaching?

Also this.

Simply allow each curio to pay it's LP over-time, based on it's study-rate, instead of a lump sum.

loftar and I have already discussed this at some length, and something to that effect will most likely be happening, yes.

[Duderock]

Their is another level of modification, one that I believe would benefit more through a bit of innovation.......................

Sorry, did you describe 3 different ideas or are they elements of one bigger one?

Because from reading your posts I've managed to pick out 3 different systems.
1. A system where LP is given from studying anything, but its split into tiers
2. A system where you buy counters that boost your LP gain rate
3. A system where LP is given for every failed attempt at a task (I like this idea)

Then you started mentioning a seemingly unrelated idea regarding happiness?

[ChainedDjinn]

Their is another level of modification, one that I believe would benefit more through a bit of innovation.......................

Sorry, did you describe 3 different ideas or are they elements of one bigger one?

Because from reading your posts I've managed to pick out 3 different systems.
1. A system where LP is given from studying anything, but its split into tiers
2. A system where you buy counters that boost your LP gain rate
3. A system where LP is given for every failed attempt at a task (I like this idea)

Then you started mentioning a seemingly unrelated idea regarding happiness?

Right for the most part, except the tiers aren't for the LP. The tiers basically apply to how proficient you are or how much you understand that particular object. This makes it so each character is a little more unique as one person might study rocks more then sticks, thus know a little more about them and how they can be used best.

(Edit; These are all small gears to a much bigger behemoth of a system shift)

The rest is pretty much spot on except your underestimating the happiness aspect, it's far from unrelated. To break it down, happiness would not only boost or hinder your Learning ability(Much like the peace slider) it would also be a factor in the success in the creation of item and their Q. Think about it, if you were actually upset, would you really bother with looking at a dumb branch? Or would you really be able to concentrate on a task? If you can then, wow... good on ya. Sadly most people don't do so well under stress, though in some cases this is actually reversed.
In the sense of a crafter, stress can hinder their production. In the case of a trainee, stress 'can' make them tougher and quicker to act.(Kinda like military training) In this kind of setting, their is no bad status, only things that are bad for specific types of players at certain times. What one considers a hindrance another considers a boon.

RNG is an acronym for Random Number Generator.

Ah, thank you for clearing that up.

You must be from the bay12 forums. No one else calls failure fun but dorf forters.

Ok, though I have and still do play DF I was hardly ever on the bay12 forums. People... weren't very nice over there.(¬_¬) I'd rather not talk about that.
That aside I believe the logic behind it is that it might possibly be a acronym. Freaking Unbelievable Nuisance/Nihilism.
At least, that's my take on it when things go completely fubar. - - - - - - - - - - - -(^Another F word comes to mind.)

Okay, a system that doesn't penalize you and instead rewards you for your failures sounds cool. The issue then is balancing resource value versus skill value. In the way Haven works, this would encourage players to burn through tons of low quality materials before ever attempting to craft with their high quality materials. Mind you this happens in the current system as well, as people stockpile high quality materials early on until they have the skill to work with them, and I find this silly. It'd be nice if there was some kind of success multiplier linked in to quality -- like it's easier to work with better materials. Then again, you can always say fuck that and encourage the use of q10 materials. I don't know which would make for a better system.

Well lets expand upon this, if they are going to burn through lower Q items... maybe lower Q items give less LP/Innovation for those items? That would make it more compelling for people to use higher Q things for a bigger boost. Also, instead of the items being destroyed outright, I have another solution. A three phase process that consists of either a successful study, a brash study or a failed study.

A successful study, the item is returned to your inventory to either be used to study again or used for another propose.
A brash study, the item loses some of it's Q with the heavy handed treatment it endured from your curiosity.
A failed Study, the item is reduced to a 'Scrap' item which can serve an alternate propose then it's original. (Scrap wood? Burn it. Scrap metal? Reforge and pray.)
(Failure would severely reduce Q far more then Brash [^Would get a lot of wall grade iron with this one!^ XP])

I also though that instead of over complicating the system by making tiers for every item, using the items base properties would probably be best. Like instead of gaining a rank on stone axe itself, studying it would raise both stick and stone to a lesser degree. This would allow the devs to concentrate more on what the items composed of then making individual listings. I would hate adding that much work for them.

I am not so sure that automation of character actions is a good idea and something that should be tied in to anything. It's definitely an idea unto itself but it would warrant a lot more exploration to determine if it was even viable, let alone if it would be good for the game. When I say a lot more exploration, I mean tons. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think it's something anyone has ever touched upon given the RPG nature of Haven.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't jorb stated repeatedly things about character progression and development? I'm just taking his view and skewing it a little, instead of players directly being the sole driving force behind the character, why can't they be more like a guide? Granted the direction I'm thinking is more "Megaman.exe"[Rockman.exe] in thinking, but handling even base emotions of want and need would be interesting to say the least.
I would find it hilarious that someone would be yelling at their character to do something and said toon absconding the mouse. Technically, the only way this would really happen is if the person in question lets their character become very very VERY unhappy and then keeps telling them to do it anyway, ignoring their distress.

Which also calls in a new take on the sliders, instead of messing with stats as much fun as it is, is seems... lacking? Personnel beliefs should be more about what makes the character happy or upset in my opinion.
Like what if killing animals doesn't make me happy? What if gardening does? What if the guy a claim over gets pissed off another cow was born? What if my buddy down the river really likes crypts with skeletons?
These are what the sliders should be for, that way instead of relying on a couple sliders (Peace and change) for the altercation of LA, we instead have the sliders represent that character in who they are and what they like to do while rewarding people for taking the time to customize them. Not everyone should be the same, nor should they be culled into becoming such. In this method, you'd have the farmer happy to see new life and the one pissed theirs another animal in the pen. This would be able to branch to other aspects as well, with the right touch.

CRAP! Got off topic again, SORRY! >_<

It'd be strange if after hours of grinding the same action over and over again, your character flipped their shit and developed temporary bulimia, randomly refusing to eat food, automatically gorging on everything edible in their inventory, and vomiting sprees which hurt their health and hunger simultaneously.

I don't think you understand just how much I laughed at that part there. I literally spent at least 10 minutes picturing this in my head and... their I went again. XD
Yes, I can imagine people heck 'I' would be distressed at the sad state of my character, but then I asked for it by ignoring what they wanted didn't I? IMHO it would give the character more personality, make them more then just the pixels on the screen.
Now I'm not saying for them to freakout completely to the point of becoming utterly uncontrollable, more like their mad at you an want reconciliation? Maybe clicking on the characters portrait a few times would calm them down. Other happiness boosters, like tea and hemp buds would make a good counter balance? It would depend on what makes 'YOUR' character happy and simply letting them have what they want... (Or drugging them the hell up till they don't give a flying fizzlesnik about anything.)
I have tried taking up being a writer, lemme tell you it is not easy. Especially when your characters argue with you about almost every little thing.
(I dunno, maybe I'm just crazy. But then, you show me someone who's actually completely sane and I'll check MYSELF in at the funny farm.)

As you can see, the most difficult part of making a topic for this discussion is the fact of how broad it is and how much it changes things. I also had an altercation to the attribute system a little bit as well as another attribute in general, but I won't get into that atm, at least preferably not here. I also had ideas to help with Q control for the environment that would improve the overall expression of the game, I think I'll be making that topic soon... I just don't wanna jump track in the middle like usual.
[PISSST How about instead of blubbering like a MORON you talk about something relevant to THIS topic, sound good?]

In any sense, I think that should cover... most of my thoughts on it? If anyone has anymore questions or ideas please don't hesitate as I did, holding onto things for a prolonged period just makes them harder to get off your back. [Dude. Topic. Change it.] Maybe we can smooth out our ideas while adding a few creases to our own think pans. ^;^ I don't think it would hurt to try to say the least.

Till next time.

P.s;One thing I'm happy about, I FIGURED OUT HOW TO QUOTE PEOPLE! Yay! XD
I was having a bit of difficulty with it but I think I've got it down. Hurrah's for learning new things! ^_^