Skill use based RPG advancement: preventing abuse
Author
I've been interested in use based skill improvement for some time. Having my bow skill in Oblivion increase while hunting deer has always seemed natural and satisfying. In addition, a system like this can allow for advancement without having to reassign “points”. If I decide to change the focus of my character, I simply start using the skills related to the role I want to play.
There are some drawbacks to this form of advancement however. Grinding is easy to do, and can be even more boring then grinding in an experience/level based advancement system. At least in an XP system, I actually have to defeat a creature to advance rather then just swing my sword at it. Use based systems can be abused even more in multiplayer games. If I team up with a friend, we can take turns attacking (but not defeating) each other. We both improve our attacks and health with no risk.
So the question I ask is how can a use based advancement system be implanted in an RPG, while preventing abuse like the example mentioned above?
Asking a question like this is kind of ironic, because skill grinding is how we improve in real life. If I want to get better at shooting hoops, I should throw a basketball around all day. However, in the kind of RPG I want to design, it's assumed that training like that happens in the background when the player is not actually playing the game. Advancement should take place from adventuring, not repeating a simple action over and over. So how can a use based system force/encourage adventuring for character improvement?
Thanks!
Well using your basketball analogy. If you sit two feet from the basket and practice that shot over and over you get better at that shot. That doesn't correspond to a one-to-one experience gain at three point shots or even making that same shot under intense defense.
Seems like you need to put the sword swing or whatever they are doing into some kind of context. Easier said than done, I know, but in many normal XP based RPGs XP is based on you level compared to the targets level. Same sort of thing can apply to a skill based RPG.
Seems like you need to put the sword swing or whatever they are doing into some kind of context. Easier said than done, I know, but in many normal XP based RPGs XP is based on you level compared to the targets level. Same sort of thing can apply to a skill based RPG.
In oblivion's predecessor morrowind it was annoying how defeating a dungeon boss and barely surviving gave my magic skill less points than shooting a low level spell in the air for 30 seconds.
You could have a combined skill and experience system where skill points come from using a skill, exp comes from completing quests or other objectives and they both influence skill advancement.
You could have a combined skill and experience system where skill points come from using a skill, exp comes from completing quests or other objectives and they both influence skill advancement.
Take a look at how the Discworld MUD works - They use xp and skills.
Xp is gained (by time online even, and monsters and quests), that xp can then be spent on learning skills - taught by either a higher level player or a npc.
Also, skills go up by using, but at higher levels that is so rare that it's not easy to grind it, at least not compared to just getting the xp.
The mix works nice imo, and at least a little bit make it harder to 'grind' the skills up.
Xp is gained (by time online even, and monsters and quests), that xp can then be spent on learning skills - taught by either a higher level player or a npc.
Also, skills go up by using, but at higher levels that is so rare that it's not easy to grind it, at least not compared to just getting the xp.
The mix works nice imo, and at least a little bit make it harder to 'grind' the skills up.
A couple of thoughts come to mind.
You can make skills only increase when successfully used. Such as when attacking, you only gain skill if you damage something. This prevents someone from just standing around, swinging their sword.
Additionally, you could add diminishing returns to activities you don't want the player to repeat to gain skill. For example, in the scenario with a friend attacking another friend you can have a diminishing return on skill gain by target by time. So, say by the 5th hit the neither player is getting any experience from attacking each other. You can have this fade away over time (like 60 minutes or something) and have it totally reset if the target is killed.
You can make skills only increase when successfully used. Such as when attacking, you only gain skill if you damage something. This prevents someone from just standing around, swinging their sword.
Additionally, you could add diminishing returns to activities you don't want the player to repeat to gain skill. For example, in the scenario with a friend attacking another friend you can have a diminishing return on skill gain by target by time. So, say by the 5th hit the neither player is getting any experience from attacking each other. You can have this fade away over time (like 60 minutes or something) and have it totally reset if the target is killed.
What if you gain archery skill by hitting a target above the level of your archery skill?
What I mean is that for each monster (and, possibly, for each combat stance or moment of that monster), the game has a table of what level of weapon skills could hit the monster.
For example, the archery skill listed for a Butterfly is 30, and the archery skill listed for a stationary target is 1. The game computes whether an attack would hit or miss based on the current skill level of the player character and the skill listed on those table. When the game computes that the arrow hits, the character increases in skill until the skill reaches the number listed.
So in the beginning, a player wants to start using a bow would shoot at a stationary target until he gets at least level 1 skill. He could start shooting at Butterflies right from the start, but he would never hit. So it would be impossible to level up archery skill on Butterfly in the beginning.
A Troll might have these skill tables:
Troll with club, but without shield, that is attacking you:
Melee: 15
Archery: 15
Troll with club, with shield, that is attacking you:
Melee: 20
Archery: 30
Troll with shield and not attacking you:
Melee: 7
Archery: 10
Troll without shield and not attacking you:
Melee: 5
Archery: 5
Troll with a its back facing you:
Melee: 1
Archery: 1
You could make this systematic for example, whenever an enemy equips a "wooden round shield", its Melee defenses number increases by +33%, and its Archery defenses number increases by 100%. When an enemy is not attacking you, its defenses becomes only 33%, and when its back is toward you, its defenses fall to 1's.
The difference between this system and other systems is that when you shoot at a Troll from behind, you could at most level up your weapon skills to level 1. That is useless. There is a tradeoff between how fast you want to kill the enemy and whether you are trying to increase your skill levels. In the situation above, it is actually very hard to level up your Archery skill fighting against a Troll when it is attacking you, because when you do that, your defense numbers are like this:
You, using a bow, while facing the enemy:
Melee: 1
Archery: 1
You have no defense. You could level up your archery skill while the Troll is running toward you, but when it gets to you, you will be dead if you are still holding your bow.
This system alone does not dictate whether killing a Troll would give you "Exp". It would work equally to a game with Exp and one that doesn't. If you are fighting a boss and no one in your party can land an attack frontal, then someone must hit him on the side or from behind. But if your Archery skill is comparable you could take risks trying to shoot at the Boss from the front:
Giant Evil Turtle:
Frontal Defenses:
Melee: 10
Archery: 10
Side:
Melee: 20
Archery: 20
Back:
Melee: 40
Archery: 40
These numbers assume that weapons don't have damage points and does not include armor values. You could stab the turtle at certain point on its back, but other than that it is invulnerable (Hitting the general back shell of the Evil Turble with the largest hammer you find will not inflict any damage unless you could hit that special spot). Overall, bosses are not good targets for leveling up skills because the risk is in general too high.
Evil Bat, flying:
Melee: (infinite)
Archery: 10
Evil Bat, attacking:
Melee: 5
Archery: 5
Mearning: Shoot at the bat while it is flying to level up your Archery. You could level up your skill up to 10. The process is positively reinforcing, if you have high Archery skill you can continue to level up your Archery skill by making shots that characters with low skills can't make.
However, if you cannot make the hardest shot you could still make easier shots without forcing the party to attack low level monsters.
Advanced Archery Skills:
Double Shot against one flying bat:
Archery: 15
Double Shot against two flying bats:
Archery: 30
Double Shot against two attacking bats:
Archery: 15
Curved Shot against a Troll behind a rock:
Archery: 20
Double Curved Shots against two Trolls behind a rock:
Archery: 40
Double Curved Shots against two Trolls behind two different rocks:
Archery: 60
Triple Shots against one flying bat:
Archery: 30
The meaning here is that the character could grind Archery skill on low level enemies by trying advanced skills. But this is time consuming because once you had shot at two flying bats and you miss, they will be attacking you, so you lose the opportunity to continue practising that advanced shot. During a normal adventure, the Archer would try harder shots when there is an opportunity. When it is too risky the Archer falls back to shots that he would not miss.
When the party is idle the Archer could be looking for Flies behind rocks. That would be a possible way to practice if his skill is already high. He would watch the fly and wait till it flies behind a rock before shooting it.
What I mean is that for each monster (and, possibly, for each combat stance or moment of that monster), the game has a table of what level of weapon skills could hit the monster.
For example, the archery skill listed for a Butterfly is 30, and the archery skill listed for a stationary target is 1. The game computes whether an attack would hit or miss based on the current skill level of the player character and the skill listed on those table. When the game computes that the arrow hits, the character increases in skill until the skill reaches the number listed.
So in the beginning, a player wants to start using a bow would shoot at a stationary target until he gets at least level 1 skill. He could start shooting at Butterflies right from the start, but he would never hit. So it would be impossible to level up archery skill on Butterfly in the beginning.
A Troll might have these skill tables:
Troll with club, but without shield, that is attacking you:
Melee: 15
Archery: 15
Troll with club, with shield, that is attacking you:
Melee: 20
Archery: 30
Troll with shield and not attacking you:
Melee: 7
Archery: 10
Troll without shield and not attacking you:
Melee: 5
Archery: 5
Troll with a its back facing you:
Melee: 1
Archery: 1
You could make this systematic for example, whenever an enemy equips a "wooden round shield", its Melee defenses number increases by +33%, and its Archery defenses number increases by 100%. When an enemy is not attacking you, its defenses becomes only 33%, and when its back is toward you, its defenses fall to 1's.
The difference between this system and other systems is that when you shoot at a Troll from behind, you could at most level up your weapon skills to level 1. That is useless. There is a tradeoff between how fast you want to kill the enemy and whether you are trying to increase your skill levels. In the situation above, it is actually very hard to level up your Archery skill fighting against a Troll when it is attacking you, because when you do that, your defense numbers are like this:
You, using a bow, while facing the enemy:
Melee: 1
Archery: 1
You have no defense. You could level up your archery skill while the Troll is running toward you, but when it gets to you, you will be dead if you are still holding your bow.
This system alone does not dictate whether killing a Troll would give you "Exp". It would work equally to a game with Exp and one that doesn't. If you are fighting a boss and no one in your party can land an attack frontal, then someone must hit him on the side or from behind. But if your Archery skill is comparable you could take risks trying to shoot at the Boss from the front:
Giant Evil Turtle:
Frontal Defenses:
Melee: 10
Archery: 10
Side:
Melee: 20
Archery: 20
Back:
Melee: 40
Archery: 40
These numbers assume that weapons don't have damage points and does not include armor values. You could stab the turtle at certain point on its back, but other than that it is invulnerable (Hitting the general back shell of the Evil Turble with the largest hammer you find will not inflict any damage unless you could hit that special spot). Overall, bosses are not good targets for leveling up skills because the risk is in general too high.
Evil Bat, flying:
Melee: (infinite)
Archery: 10
Evil Bat, attacking:
Melee: 5
Archery: 5
Mearning: Shoot at the bat while it is flying to level up your Archery. You could level up your skill up to 10. The process is positively reinforcing, if you have high Archery skill you can continue to level up your Archery skill by making shots that characters with low skills can't make.
However, if you cannot make the hardest shot you could still make easier shots without forcing the party to attack low level monsters.
Advanced Archery Skills:
Double Shot against one flying bat:
Archery: 15
Double Shot against two flying bats:
Archery: 30
Double Shot against two attacking bats:
Archery: 15
Curved Shot against a Troll behind a rock:
Archery: 20
Double Curved Shots against two Trolls behind a rock:
Archery: 40
Double Curved Shots against two Trolls behind two different rocks:
Archery: 60
Triple Shots against one flying bat:
Archery: 30
The meaning here is that the character could grind Archery skill on low level enemies by trying advanced skills. But this is time consuming because once you had shot at two flying bats and you miss, they will be attacking you, so you lose the opportunity to continue practising that advanced shot. During a normal adventure, the Archer would try harder shots when there is an opportunity. When it is too risky the Archer falls back to shots that he would not miss.
When the party is idle the Archer could be looking for Flies behind rocks. That would be a possible way to practice if his skill is already high. He would watch the fly and wait till it flies behind a rock before shooting it.
Quote:There are some drawbacks to this form of advancement however. Grinding is easy to do, and can be even more boring then grinding in an experience/level based advancement system. At least in an XP system, I actually have to defeat a creature to advance rather then just swing my sword at it. Use based systems can be abused even more in multiplayer games. If I team up with a friend, we can take turns attacking (but not defeating) each other. We both improve our attacks and health with no risk.
And how is that shocking?
You do realize that's how it works in real life right? People practice with each other, train, and that's how they get better.
Killing someone doesn't make you better at handling a sword. The only thing killing does is making you less hesitant about killing again, since you get used to taking lives.
Author
@ Dwiff, gxaxhx, and Wai: I like the idea of adding specific situations, as well as checks and balances. Calculating specific difficulty based on the local situation could be rather difficult, but may pay off. Diminishing returns for fighting the same enemy is a good check. Although, if a larger group of players organized, they could train off each other by switching pairs several times. Still, anything to discourage abuse helps!
I appreciate you putting up a fleshed out example Wai. All of that balancing seems tricky, but I suppose that's one of the things that makes game design fun.
Interesting... Character advancement could have a lot more strategy to it. Should I try for a hard shot, or go for something easy to save my health and arrows for the future? If the actual numbers were hidden from players, the system would be harder to abuse and easier to modify, although I'm sure there would be players who would complain.
Your idea of special attacks providing more advancement intrigues me. It seems a lot like getting extra points in a fighting game for using combos. This could work very well. The game is still an RPG, so skill levels help in fighting. But player skill can help greatly with advancement speed. That's a neat way to reward players who “know their game” without axing the whole idea of character advancement.
@ Kaze and JensB: Good idea with the hybrid system! I can imagine one working in interesting ways. For example, whenever a character collects experience, it is transferred into a pool. When a skill is used, a percentage (not a fixed amount) of the XP in the pool is used to improve the skill. Thus, although using a skill more increases advancement rates, it only does so with XP already gained. Standing in town hacking away at your friend doesn't do much. To advance more efficiently, one should go adventuring to gain XP. The skills used during the course of the adventure would then draw more experience, because the total pool size would be larger.
Thanks for the good ideas people. I think all of them could be used together to balance an advancement system.
If someone has more to add, please do so.
Edit: Perhaps the skills used should debt the pool instead, so the skills used before the XP was gained are trained. This discourages players from loading up on XP, and then heading to a safe area to grind skills. Maybe the pool would pay out based on a timer. Skills used during the previous hour or so gain pool XP based on the number of uses. The timer's length could even be set randomly to prevent players from abusing the system by timing skill use to when the pool pays out.
I appreciate you putting up a fleshed out example Wai. All of that balancing seems tricky, but I suppose that's one of the things that makes game design fun.
Quote:
During a normal adventure, the Archer would try harder shots when there is an opportunity. When it is too risky the Archer falls back to shots that he would not miss.
Interesting... Character advancement could have a lot more strategy to it. Should I try for a hard shot, or go for something easy to save my health and arrows for the future? If the actual numbers were hidden from players, the system would be harder to abuse and easier to modify, although I'm sure there would be players who would complain.
Your idea of special attacks providing more advancement intrigues me. It seems a lot like getting extra points in a fighting game for using combos. This could work very well. The game is still an RPG, so skill levels help in fighting. But player skill can help greatly with advancement speed. That's a neat way to reward players who “know their game” without axing the whole idea of character advancement.
@ Kaze and JensB: Good idea with the hybrid system! I can imagine one working in interesting ways. For example, whenever a character collects experience, it is transferred into a pool. When a skill is used, a percentage (not a fixed amount) of the XP in the pool is used to improve the skill. Thus, although using a skill more increases advancement rates, it only does so with XP already gained. Standing in town hacking away at your friend doesn't do much. To advance more efficiently, one should go adventuring to gain XP. The skills used during the course of the adventure would then draw more experience, because the total pool size would be larger.
Thanks for the good ideas people. I think all of them could be used together to balance an advancement system.
If someone has more to add, please do so.
Edit: Perhaps the skills used should debt the pool instead, so the skills used before the XP was gained are trained. This discourages players from loading up on XP, and then heading to a safe area to grind skills. Maybe the pool would pay out based on a timer. Skills used during the previous hour or so gain pool XP based on the number of uses. The timer's length could even be set randomly to prevent players from abusing the system by timing skill use to when the pool pays out.
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement