Quote:Original post by Platinum314
Your skill tree systems has similarities to one I have been working on. I have general skill groups, which have skills, which when coupled with one of the ability scores determines how well your character can do something. Points can be allocated in either the groups or the skills themselves.

I thing to watch out for. This kind of system looks pretty scary to gamers just starting your game, and it is more difficult to balance.

Also previously mentioned, a system where your skills improve by practicing them tends to be abused if there aren't any reasonable constrants. Many people consider the leveling system in Oblivion to be broken because how easy it is to 'spam' abilities and the ability to 'underlevel'.

To the point about looking scary: I'm not going to show you this huge list of every item that has skills attached to it. There is no point in doing that. The skill system will only show skills for the weapons that you have used. So in the beginning the skill tree will be very compact and short, showing only 1-5 skills.

Skills help the character do things better but in very small and indirect ways. This is the complete opposite of what most skill based games do. You don't have to have skills to be functional in the game but having the skills adds more flavor to it. So I really don't have to worry about people spamming their skills because it won't matter, if they consider that fun then by all means they are welcome to do it but this game doesn't make it mandatory to determine your characters strength/survivability.

Balance is a whole another issue and it encompasses a lot more than just a single skill system and goes into everything in the game which is more than i care to type :)

I am simply going off sliding scales like protection ------- agility or weight ----speed and many more. So you basically have trade offs like you do in real life where you can pick anywhere in the scale and you would have a 50/50 chance to beat another person. So take any gear, any skill, any whatever and you'd still have a 50/50 chance. This is the balance I'm going for with the x factor being the player (IE. skill of the player and his strategy)

Being faster doesn't mean you are going to win, being stronger doesn't mean your going to win, being in one gear that you think is better doesn't mean you are going to win.


@AngleWyrm

From the fuzzy math that I have worked out when i first made this system i went off the notion of 1 point every 5 minutes forever. (passive system). To max out a single skill would take 2 days and an entire weapon in about 14 days. The time to max out 100 weapons would take you around 4 years to accomplish. Given this is only the passive system you could take everything and cut the time in half given players will be gaining points from their active grinding.

I highly doubt that people would only stick with 1 weapon as the best weapon for whatever setup you are trying to run is very subject and dependent on your play-style. Weapons also have many pros and cons and the best will change depending on the situation that the player will be in, so they will have and use multiple weapons and those weapons will change as their play style changes.

Quote:Original post by Nikkon
Skills help the character do things better but in very small and indirect ways. This is the complete opposite of what most skill based games do. You don't have to have skills to be functional in the game but having the skills adds more flavor to it. So I really don't have to worry about people spamming their skills because it won't matter, if they consider that fun then by all means they are welcome to do it but this game doesn't make it mandatory to determine your characters strength/survivability.

I still think you're missing the point here - just because your skills have little impact on gameplay doesn't mean that this problem won't exist. A conditioned player of games will effectively have a psychological propensity to spam these skills because they are used to improving their character as much and as quickly as possible. They will not do it because they find it fun, but simply because they can (often to the detriment of their enjoyment of the game). It is the building of their character and seeing them become more powerful which attracts many gamers to the genre, and probably keeps the majority of them playing for any length of time.

The point is not that a player will spam skills and become too powerful, but that they will spam skills because increasing skill points is basically the point of many games - you say it "won't matter", but I think that players spamming skills is a problem even if it doesn't unbalance the game. Even if skills give little reward, many players these days will naturally attempt to "max out" their character - it is an almost uncontrollable urge.

Quote:Original post by WavyVirus

I still think you're missing the point here - just because your skills have little impact on gameplay doesn't mean that this problem won't exist. A conditioned player of games will effectively have a psychological propensity to spam these skills because they are used to improving their character as much and as quickly as possible. They will not do it because they find it fun, but simply because they can (often to the detriment of their enjoyment of the game). It is the building of their character and seeing them become more powerful which attracts many gamers to the genre, and probably keeps the majority of them playing for any length of time.

The point is not that a player will spam skills and become too powerful, but that they will spam skills because increasing skill points is basically the point of many games - you say it "won't matter", but I think that players spamming skills is a problem even if it doesn't unbalance the game. Even if skills give little reward, many players these days will naturally attempt to "max out" their character - it is an almost uncontrollable urge.

I get what you are saying WavyVirus but you are asking for a system or something to change the conditioning of the players from past games or experiences. The only way to truly remove this would be to completely remove it from the game, which is something I don't want to do. I went for the next best option of changing the environment and how the game is designed to encourage less importance on the skills and hopefully it will reverse that past conditioning. That and by putting the skills on 1 pt every 5 minutes of use I am actually forcing people to slow down without having it be too painful because I would like them to focus on other parts of the game.

Other than that I am working on other ways to actually show the player advancement that is more noticeable than just their improvement at controlling their character and use of strategic tactics. This has been a big issue since day one because we got rid of level dings or skill dings.

This type of skill system isn't the sort I'd like to see in a game myself - (I'm very particular of what I want in any type of cRPG system) - but it should work.

The one area I don't like the look of, however, is the method of learning the skills to begin with. In my opinion, anything that can get in the way of a player doing something they need to do in a game, especially for arbitrary reasons, shouldn't really exist.

In other words, I'd like you to take a step back and have another look at your system: split into two parts - one the player controls and one the computer program controls, and then see how they interact - which side is more important, the player, or the computer? If it's the latter, then that's not what we should be looking for...

(FYI I have my own cRPG system, in which I've tried to give as much power and influence as possible to the player, without making it imbalanced, and unfortuantely, have yet to see any system even try to do the same thing to the same degree elsewhere, but then, I'm very particular about what I class as a cRPG, (for good reason)).

Quote:Original post by DarrenTomlyn
This type of skill system isn't the sort I'd like to see in a game myself - (I'm very particular of what I want in any type of cRPG system) - but it should work.

The one area I don't like the look of, however, is the method of learning the skills to begin with. In my opinion, anything that can get in the way of a player doing something they need to do in a game, especially for arbitrary reasons, shouldn't really exist.

In other words, I'd like you to take a step back and have another look at your system: split into two parts - one the player controls and one the computer program controls, and then see how they interact - which side is more important, the player, or the computer? If it's the latter, then that's not what we should be looking for...

(FYI I have my own cRPG system, in which I've tried to give as much power and influence as possible to the player, without making it imbalanced, and unfortuantely, have yet to see any system even try to do the same thing to the same degree elsewhere, but then, I'm very particular about what I class as a cRPG, (for good reason)).

I've reread your post a couple of times but I'm not sure if I understand what you are trying to say...

You mention mention that you don't like how you obtain skills in the first place, are you talking about how you obtain usable skills by using a weapon which adds the skill to the skill list, moving the move/technique skills that have to be learned from npcs/player trainers, or the active and passive skill point generation where you get skill points for your usable skill?

Which one or maybe all of them you are trying mention but what do you find to be arbitrary, or gets in the way of what the player is doing? What does the player "need" to be doing?


Toward the splitting between the player and the computer, I'm not understanding how their is a difference because most of the game's actions are facilitated through the computer but I'm making it to where players can also become a source of content. The player is always more important because it is them who I want to have fun and enjoy the game. I am using the computer section though to extend the possible options that could be given to the player.

The game also doesn't try and give the player the most power (if you mean it in terms of strength) but maximum player freedom.

Quote:Original post by Nikkon

I've reread your post a couple of times but I'm not sure if I understand what you are trying to say...

You mention mention that you don't like how you obtain skills in the first place, are you talking about how you obtain usable skills by using a weapon which adds the skill to the skill list, moving the move/technique skills that have to be learned from npcs/player trainers, or the active and passive skill point generation where you get skill points for your usable skill?

Which one or maybe all of them you are trying mention but what do you find to be arbitrary, or gets in the way of what the player is doing? What does the player "need" to be doing?


Toward the splitting between the player and the computer, I'm not understanding how their is a difference because most of the game's actions are facilitated through the computer but I'm making it to where players can also become a source of content. The player is always more important because it is them who I want to have fun and enjoy the game. I am using the computer section though to extend the possible options that could be given to the player.

The game also doesn't try and give the player the most power (if you mean it in terms of strength) but maximum player freedom.

(Sorry it's taken me a while to respond - I've been far too busy...).

It's this part of your text I have a problem with:

Quote:These skills are taught by players and npcs. This teaching system works similar to a master/apprentice system. The rarity of the skills or the more "cool" skills will be harder to find (the npc) or the npc will have harder/stricter requirements for teaching the skill to you. Sometimes they just won't teach it to you for. Each of these trainers have 5 teaching slots.

When a player is accepted as an apprentice to learn the skill then the teaching slot number will be reduced by 1 thus only allowing the npc to teach 4 other people. If the player fails to learn or complete his apprenticeship in a given amount of time then they will fail the apprenticeship and it will give that 1 teaching slot back to the npc. Once all 5 or whatever # of teaching slots are all used up then that npc cannot teach that skill to any other players. The players that learned that skill can be given the option to teaching that skill to other players. This is entirely decided upon having a skill with teaching slots. Normally the skills are only teachable 2 times. The first being the npc that teaches the player, and the second being the player teaching another player. The third player who receives the skill will have no teaching slots and thus can't teach it to anybody else.

There are three things a game requires, (though most computer games have four):

1. Something for the player (or players) to control and write their own story with.
2. A setting within which a game takes place.
3. A set of rules binding the two together, adding an element of competition if not involving multiple competitive players.
4. (optional) An/some artificial players/entities which also compete with the player to write their own story.

Games are about, and are therefore defined by, the types of story a player WRITES, and the media used to do so where applicable - (which in this case would be the computer itself, and maybe it's operating system) - (i.e. the flip-side of art, which is defined by the types of story TOLD, and the media used to do so).

What you must understand, is that any story the game has to TELL within it's setting, i.e. anything that happens TO the player, apart from commentary, (i.e. reporting on something the game has done on the players behalf), must be interleaved with the story the player writes.

what you are telling me in the above paragraphs, is that when the player wants to write the story of his character gaining a skill, which he can do so according to the rules of the game, they then need to wait for the game to TELL them whether or not they can do so. In which case, the story being told, outweighs the story the player wants/needs to write. (Which shouldn't be the case for any game really - if it is, then it's just bad design - which unfortunately isn't anything new).