I'm not sure if its exactly what you're referring to, but learn-by-doing was implemented as recently as Skyrim - where continuously using a weapon or a skill made you become better at it.
There are players out there who did grind to improve their skill, but that doesn't matter in a single-player game (from all I've read, I'm still not entirely sure what Sinister is planning - single- or multi-player). It may be far more important and exploitable in a multiplayer game. But at least in a single player game like Skyrim, I haven't seen any major complaints about their weapon/skill leveling system.

perhaps not simply casting a spell, but something more involved which is difficult for the player to contrive

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casting a spells isnt simple for both the FFC user and the default player either. Cast time plays a big role ia weaving. Increasing your speed with the FFC would still cause it to be hard.

I wasn't really referring to the simplicity of casting a spell, but rather suggesting that perhaps events one level removed from the basic act of casting could make better experience triggers.

There are several factors which might influence the "grindability" of a system which rewards experience directly for casting. Maybe you could comment on the following:

• Time/difficulty of casting. The weaving system may not be simple or easy, but how long does it
  realistically take to cast a spell? I assume we are talking about seconds, rather than minutes, if the spells are to be used during combat? Perhaps if your magic system were more akin to those historical charms/curses/protection spells involving lots of preparation ("bury an unfertilized egg at a crossroads during a full moon, wait for 30 days, dig it up while reciting this spell"...) then it would make sense to award experience directly for the act of casting. If spells can be cast in a matter of seconds, the other factors become more important:
• Where/when can the player cast? Does the player need to be in combat in order to cast and gain experience? If so, are there a limited number of enemies around? Would it still be possible for a player to find a safe area and repeatedly weave a spell to gain experience? Are you ok with this? (I suppose it may be more realistic - mages probably spend long, lonely hours practicing - but is it behavior you want to encourage?). You may have covered this, but is there some scarce mana-like resource which would force the player to choose carefully which spells they cast and when?
• How much experience does a player gain for a successful cast? I contend that spells would need to take a very long time to cast / offer very little EXP reward before players would be completely discouraged from grinding them, and instead use them where appropriate. Can a player cast the same spell repeatedly and still get the same experience gain each time? What about a cooldown period (or would this encourage a weird meta-game where the player casts all of their spells as soon as the cooldowns run out to maximize EXP gain, as time spent with a spell out of cooldown is essentially wasted EXP)?

The alternative I suggest you consider is to award experience by detecting somewhat more involved events. These might correspond to milestones in the career of a warrior/mage, such as:

• The first kill
• The first kill with a particular spell/weapon
• The first kill without taking any damage
• Killing an enemy by using an elemental spell combined with something in the environment (e.g. electrifying an enemy in a pool of water)
• Incapacitating an enemy without killing them
• Recovering from potentially fatal wounds
• Saving the life of another character through healing

The idea is that these events are much less grindable as they are either one-time achievements or require situations which the player will not readily be able to set up for themselves. The player will naturally (even inevitably) find themselves in situations which allow them to achieve these skill milestones from time-to-time.

First off, I'd like to apologize (once again) to Sir Legendre. I don't like holding grudges nor do I feel you meant any disrespect (in restrospect) by WHAT you were saying even if HOW you said it came off a bit funky. I hope there are no hard feelings.

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@Milcho/Legendre: The "learn by doing" systems HAVE improved but yes, their implementations often lead to "grinding" behaviors that I don't want to particularly encourage and which I wish to thoroughly adress/innovate. The concept is so natural yet it is never properly done.

I think the responsibility is on you to fully explain your concept/implementation.

Agreed but I'm kinda worried about gettinh flamed for the length of my post which has been brought up more than once now It affects how detailed I get about things at times. I think I stick to topics quite well but I can't help the length sometimes especially when I respond to multiple people

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@Milcho/Legendre: To clarify, the game is intended to be largely single player but I do want to add multiplayer aspects (this is the sort of thing I'll consider but can easily cut out due to being realistic about implementation).

On grinding, the anti-macro code, and effective display/gain of expierience in skills:

Milcho hit the nail on the head about what I aim to do about displaying advancement in skill when he came to a few conclussions. In most situations the speed and nimbleness/dexterity (or lack there of) shown while carrying out a technique will be one of the indicators that show advancement/mastery and skill of said technique. This increased speed of exectution applies to all skills/techniques (melee, ranged [dexterous types] and spells) but the way I thought of it another method or two would have to be applied to spells if I were to stay consistant.

Spells gain additional animations as you become more masterful of them as well as damage and range/projectile speed (where it applies). A fireball may start off as a slow simple orb of fire without much flare/flash to it. Eventually it becomes a heat seeking, flaming mass of molten fiery goodness xD

I will answer some of the questions posed by WavyVirus and explain more about how expierience is tracked in my next concept post (the mastery/discipline system).

However, he brought up some good suggestions/questions which I'd like to address:

The weaving system may not be simple or easy, but how long does it
realistically take to cast a spell?

Simple spells would only take (estimation/example) .5-2 seconds to cast. Manual input would be the .5 example while "auto casting" would prop up a cast bar in a traditional sense marking the amount of time till completion of the spell. Casting speed increases with mastery of a spell (lets say 2.5 seconds for a fireball would end up at 1.5) in the "auto cast" method. The speed of a cast can take longer than intended in the FFC version but it is only limited by your comfort and familiarity with a spells motion. To balance casting speed of advanced mastery in a spell for the FFC versions I planned on implementing a "charge" mechanic to account for the strength/projectile distance of a spell.

The first kill
The first kill with a particular spell/weapon
The first kill without taking any damage
Killing an enemy by using an elemental spell combined with something in the environment (e.g. electrifying an enemy in a pool of water)
Incapacitating an enemy without killing them
Recovering from potentially fatal wounds
Saving the life of another character through healing

All great (amazing actually) suggestions which I will definitely take into account as bonus exp and/or achievements within game.

Thanks for that

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@Strewya I'll post a little more on what I'm proposing with the anti-macro code in my combat thread while answering some of Legendres' questions towards how I plan on trying to keep track of motions to implement it as well as generally bring about the mechanics in the combat system.

I mentioned it in my combat post under weaving.

The complexity and vulnerability of the mechanic is meant to act as a means to account for the enormous potential damage weavers can cause.

Woot for the nukers!

Once again, I hope this answered you're current questions. Those which weren't answered hopefully will be on other threads soon enough. Thank you all for your contributions/feedback/input.

Sin ?§• ??§?

Insofar as exploit detection and mitigation in games, that's hardly something one would get flamed for. If you throw up an algorithm and people start nuking it for fallacies and weak points, that's not flame...that's assistance. It's the kind of assistance you want. :)

My educational background is in software hardening and digital forensics. (My career actually landed me very far from that stuff...in NLP of all things. Life is funny that way.) Anyway, there are two books that I think you may find helpful if you're interested in the topic of exploits: Exploiting Software and Exploiting Online Games, both by Hoglund and McGraw. The latter one actually tackles the specific issue you face: macros and bot detection. Long-story short: it's a non-trivial problem that at least requires a devoted team and probably would do well outsourced. (Remember PunkBuster?)

Were I you, I would not even consider building anti-cheat stuff into the core of the code at first. It's always good to build code with hardening in mind but, really, you only have so many resources (time, money, etc.) and building a game is more fun than building a cheat detector. Build your game, man. Design, Build, Optimize, Harden, Q.A. In that order. <3

Thank you for the sources of exposure I'll be sure to look into them as well as try to limit my focus on the "anti-macro code".

This is to finish answering a very important question posed by WavyVirus that went unaswered and I felt didn't fit/belong in my most recent thread about skills/spells and their development.

Hope that helped further my point/clarify things

@Sir WodinOneEye: You still haven't said anything that hasn't A: made me think you're not some sort of genius xD or B: made me think that you just like hearing reading your own text.

Each time you've commented I've either felt strongly about what you said or have had a nice chunk to consider with my work. Thanks again, those suggestions/sources of exposure/correlations between my ideas and your expieriences are pretty good ones.

I'm not sure what you meant by:

A normal mechanism in the real world is that strenuous activity bring increased capacity and normal difficulty activity sustains the current ability ('normal' relative to the current ability).

Did you mean it as an opening to explaining how you suggest other methods of capping and allowing development should occur within my system? Good mentions regardless

A normal mechanism in the real world is that strenuous activity bring increased capacity and normal difficulty activity sustains the current ability ('normal' relative to the current ability).

SO not just any activity leads to growth, but exceptional activity.

I recall in Ultima Online withe their 100 point skill system (versus stats) that you only went up when you fought with swordskill against an opponent exceding your own level in that (or equivalent) skill. Defensive skill would go up when player was subjected to attacks at a higher level skill.