Dev Diary: Recap Episode #2 -- Skills, Arts and Characters

[kaka]

A 'realistic' psychology would reflect that a lot of people in fact do enjoy working.

Well, *what* kind of work they enjoy could be based on Personal Beliefs, or something like that.
I think Loftar mentioned that, but I could be mistaken.

[Jackard]

I like the idea of beliefs affecting gameplay more but not really sure about the other stuff

[Machenoid]

I like it very much in that one makes no binding choices at all (that matter) during character creation, and that all choices come as part of players' interaction with the world instead.

A binding choice isn't a binding choice if the player is given a way out of what they voluntarilly choose after the fact. Secondly, the player is going to be given a set of binding choices by the game in every case available, so there's basically no escape from that game-given set of binding choices.

Not being given any choices at the start may not hurt, but it doesn't help, either.

[Jackard]

I like it very much in that one makes no binding choices at all (that matter) during character creation, and that all choices come as part of players' interaction with the world instead.

A binding choice isn't a binding choice if the player is given a way out of what they voluntarilly choose after the fact. Secondly, the player is going to be given a set of binding choices by the game in every case available, so there's basically no escape from that game-given set of binding choices.

Not being given any choices at the start may not hurt, but it doesn't help, either.

why the hell are you always wrong, jesus

no binding choices at creation means new players are free to experiment, they dont become invested in a class that it later turns out they dislike. (no matter how pretty the starting description, you cant really get the feel of a class without trying it)

[Lothaudus]

Basically, to raise a skill you (and you only) need to craft an item who's quality exceeds your current skill and sacrifice the item to your ancestors.

Damn, I like this idea. Means if you want to increase your carpentry skill or something, you have to craft an item and sacrifice it. Makes it require some thought and resources to level up, in much the same way we use resources (in terms of food) to increase stats.

If the character development is too quick, you can add further softcaps like ancestors' attitude (depends on regularity and quality of sacrifices).

I'd think something like "Only 1 sacrifice allowed every 1 in-game hours or so of play" (like changing the belief sliders). Various things might be done to reduce the time requirement, such as sacrificing items to your ancestors the normal way. Otherwise everyone who joined today would have no hope of "catching up" or even being on par with someone who's played a lot longer. Still, those who spend more time in the game should get the benefit from that.

Exploration skill doesn't really do any crafting

Jars of rustroot or sacrificing high quality herbs that you've found?

and I don't even know where to begin when it comes to combat skills.

Swords, weapons, armour. Technically the item could be made by someone else and traded, then sacrificed by the person who wants to benefit from it.

Otherwise special "sacrificial items" could be added that can be crafted for each skill. So if you want to increase archery, you need to craft a "Sacrificial Archer's Bow" of a higher quality than your current Archery skill or whatever. Carpentry might mean carving a little wooden "Carpenter's Offering" statue, exploration is an "Explorer's Herbal Mix" maybe made of Chantrelle's, Blueberries and Rustroot, and so on. Each sacrificial item's Q would be vastly determined by your current skill and whatever is most appropriate resource-wise.

But it's just a rough sketch, and with some brainstorming could probably be turned into something functional. The only question is if it would be fun. IMHO, it's better than LP in that regard, but I'm not really sure if it's the funnest possible answer.

I really like the concept.

Downside: Working in the village will no longer mean having some bonus LP to spend afterwards.

Upside: Less grinding clay. It still allows player choice (in terms of what skill they want and when they wish to increase it).

Means levelling up would be a more specific, focussed requirement involving thought than just "picking 1,000 branches, lighting 200 fires". You'd have to work on increasing Quality of raw resources in order to make your sacrificial items (or trade for them).

[loftar]

[About sacrificing items to gain stat points.]

Having stat levling depend on crafted items is, to be sure, a very good idea in a lot of ways. The "having fun" idea may not be entirely far from this, since most fun items would probably be consumed upon usage, and regardlessly of how they are used, their quality would obviously matter somehow. To have the stats being limited by the item quality is not at all a bad idea (though it has the obvious bootstrap problem of crafting something better than you currently have stats, but I'm sure it can be resolved in one way or another).

One point I would like to re-stress is that I really would like to see that learning skill values is expressed as a psychological process in the character, and for that reason I don't really like the thought of levling them by sacrificing to the ancestors.

One thing I am concerned about is the fact that being part of an advanced village might accelerate character development too much, and I'm not sure how to stand on that issue. On the one hand, it is perfectly reasonable that one becomes smarter by being part of civilization, but on the other hand, it might make it too easy to create the infamous murder alts. That problem may be solvable in numerous ways, however.

[Chakravanti]

Basically, to raise a skill you (and you only) need to craft an item who's quality exceeds your current skill and sacrifice the item to your ancestors.

Damn, I like this idea. Means if you want to increase your carpentry skill or something, you have to craft an item and sacrifice it. Makes it require some thought and resources to level up, in much the same way we use resources (in terms of food) to increase stats.

Me too but the problem is that it is essentially thus impossible to raise skills beyond 9. It would have to be something like 1/2. SO I could effectively gain carpentry 20 just by sacrificing regular trees. After that I have to plant new ones.

1/2 makes sense because it matches the best available products with the skills to make them. Granted that this make be a bit grindy but I can see sacrificing 200 Q100 items and another 100 Q150 Smithed items to get 300 smithing.

It's also viable and NOT cheap at higher tiers. It means that player can quickly achieve skills based on teh resources they have.

That might seem to fast but I don't liek the idea of Scraping 20k items jsut ot raise one skill to viable levels. I can see 1k for 300 or 2k items for 400. maybe 500 for 200.

Maybe, like FEP the QL of an item doesn't have to matter but then you're talking about shittons of items. I'd rather it be significantly less items and to base them off QL and if you MUST arbitrate the timeline of development (RETARDED) then make fetch quests like AW (PLZOMGNO).

If theft is balanced to reflect this system and prevent nubs from stealing (TRAPS BASED ON QL) then we have a viable system.

Best Idea yet about LP. Love it. Please consider this. Great job Potjeh.

[Machenoid]

The problem with turning numen into the "new LP" is that it's still just a LP/XP system, you've just changed the operations. Yes the sacrificing of items to ancestors for benefits is a good idea, but you'll end up with old characters basically putting newer characters on a 'life support' of high quality raw materials and tools, just to speed up the process. Limiting the maximum and putting a timer on it still won't solve that problem of quantity (3 hour timer? ok then i'll just setup a bot to open H&H and login every 3.02 hours and open the appropriate container that's next to the altar, make the item, sac the item, log out, and repeat this until the container is empty and bam, more numen!)

Setting up a "who made this" and then making the game check every step of item creation would work, but only as long as the number of backsteps was sane (too high and the game would get pissy because you didn't make the stone axe you used to skin your animal kill) If it comes down to it, the game could just say "No, 90% of this item was made by someone else; they are the ones that get most of the numen from this sacrifice." But then that kind of dampers trading and 'character specialization' if most of your skillgain goes to the guy who made the metal bars you just used. (you'd want to make your own to prevent numen loss in this case)

put them in the forest without a compass, no choices

give them the option of starting with a compass before they get dumped in the middle of nowehere. if they don't want it or know they don't need it, they don't have to take it.

[Chakravanti]

...infamous murder alts. That problem may be solvable in numerous ways, however.

This, rather than arbitrating timeline of development.

[Lothaudus]

The problem with turning numen into the "new LP" is that it's still just a LP/XP system, you've just changed the operations.

I don't think so. I could just as easily make a macro that auto-eats food. Thing is, I need to have the food available. That means harvesting, sorting seeds, re-planting, mixing and cooking the food in the first place. Given the work involved in that, eating the food is easy enough to do myself and it's probably easier to do the cooking and farming myself than making what would become a rather involved macro.

To craft items I'd need the raw resources. That might mean mining ore, turning it into cast at a Smelter, turning the cast into wrought, then combining it with some other resource (perhaps a block of wood, which means cutting down a tree and cutting up a log). If quality matters then everything from tool selection to tree selection now comes into play. Sure, you can macro the entire lot if you want to but it's a little bit more involved than just "dig clay, make teapot, drop teapot; repeat; dump points into melee and become a great warrior".

If you see simply being able to trade for large quantities of items as a problem than the FEP system is horribly broken too. Anyone can get plenty of food together for a specific stat and simply grind that stat by omnomnoming that particular food. However I do like to think some effort and thought went into the production of that food in the first place (which is the point after all, isn't it?). Resources were organised and consumed in the production of it and somebody organised the trade and delivery of the items. A certain quality was likely sought which means high q resources were organised elsewhere for crops, ovens, fuel and so on.

Limiting the maximum and putting a timer on it still won't solve that problem of quantity (3 hour timer? ok then i'll just setup a bot to open H&H and login every 3.02 hours and open the appropriate container that's next to the altar, make the item, sac the item, log out, and repeat this until the container is empty and bam, more numen!)

The idea behind the timer was akin to the belief sliders. You can only change those per hour of "active" play. So you can't just "login" and sacrifice an item, you'd have to be online for those 3 hours. Easily enough to do with a bot clicking you around in circles for 3 hours quite probably but then again, everything in this game can be botted if you want to take it down to that level and hey, you always run the risk of coming in and finding your character dead (unless you want to bot that too).

One point I would like to re-stress is that I really would like to see that learning skill values is expressed as a psychological process in the character, and for that reason I don't really like the thought of levling them by sacrificing to the ancestors.

And how is that achieved by the proposal of "having fun" by "killing people", thus gaining "Spiritus" so you can level up a potentially unrelated skill?

If you replace the word "sacrifice" with "study", does it sound better? You can now make high Q items but instead of "sacrificing" them, you "study" them in the library (which consumes them) in order to have the "AHAH!" moment that provides a bonus skill point or three. Any item can be studied and perhaps items (much like food) might give different "skill experience points" that would level up certain skills when you've accumulated enough of them. Studying a bone might give a few points in survival, while studying a bone saw might give a few in carpentry. Studying a well-made sword might give some skill experience points in melee and smithing.

To me the key difference is the system is using a wide variety of different resources and the required thought to acquire the necessary quality required. Compared to the current LP system which consists of digging limitless clay (without thought for quality) or hunting never-ending bears. Maybe everything you do has the chance of giving "AHAH!" or "Eureka!" moments that provide "skill experience points" in the same way as eating food provides certain FEP. So you have to do or study the same thing for a while (just like you have to eat the same food) to increase that skill. And maybe like FEP, if you don't keep skills in balance, you end up making it harder to raise other skills, thus creating specialisation in characters at the higher end of the spectrum.

Suddenly macroing clay all day becomes "Oh shit, I've just naffed my carpentry skill".

One thing I am concerned about is the fact that being part of an advanced village might accelerate character development too much, and I'm not sure how to stand on that issue. On the one hand, it is perfectly reasonable that one becomes smarter by being part of civilization,

Being a member of a village absolutely should accelerate character development. I can tell you, every new alt I make or n00b that joins gets a few hours with the metal plow and teapots and then has most of the skills he needs. Tea, a metal plow and the metal to repair it is something I wouldn't have as a nub out on my own in the wilderness. There's also the simple matter of knowledge. When I first started, it took me a week to grind enough looms to get lawspeaking so we could found the village. Now I can get to lawspeaking in a few hours simply because I know what I'm doing.

but on the other hand, it might make it too easy to create the infamous murder alts. That problem may be solvable in numerous ways, however.

Murder alts will always exist and those that know the system will always be able to create them easily. I mean, people need to be able to level up right? If we can level up, we will level up.