Cantr II Discussion Forum

creepyguyinblack wrote: Genetic skills sound interesting.

Almost everyone despises them. That system is definitely on the long-term chopping block. Nice to see an old face again! Welcome back!

Doug R. wrote:

creepyguyinblack wrote: Genetic skills sound interesting.

Almost everyone despises them. That system is definitely on the long-term chopping block. Nice to see an old face again! Welcome back!

Noooooo! I've got characters that have busted their butt to become experts, and I don't despise the system at all!

Edit - Added by Doug R. during topic split:

gejyspa wrote:I don't despise them, either.

Don't worry, current skills will be retained (something they should have done the first time around). Sorry for getting off-topic.

Well, then I don't care. And actually, the genetic part I don't care about, an option to select them using some kind of point-based system would be alright, then you at least wouldn't run into a situation where you plan a character out a certain way only to have it completely not make sense what you find out what they are and aren't good at.

Right now, the plan on the drawing board is that all skills start at the same level (normal or awkward), and then advance in a non-linear fashion, making it much easier to become, say, skillful, than to become an expert. To encourage specialization, skills decay with disuse to a maximum of half the gained level (so, if you're an expert, you will never drop to awkward).

There's a possibility of retaining genetic "aptitudes," which affect the skill accumulation rate but are not the skills themselves. However, this has not been discussed in any detail, and it's not clear if there's any benefit to it. Perhaps introducing mechanics that affected these aptitudes could add benefit.

Finally, activities will use more than one skill. Each activity will use at least two skills, and some will use more, in a manner similar to how fighting and dragging take into account both strength and fighting skill. How much each skill contributes depends upon how many skills are used. This allows a character to train multiple skills at once to help offset the disuse decay (which, I think, would be like one hour of use offsets 8 hours of disuse, so it's a slow loss).

Skill-based item quality has been proposed many times, and I'm a huge fan of the concept.

The big hold up is the question of what the hell to do with combat? Combat skill advances too slowly now (always has), and the last fix applied to it still seems to not have sped it up sufficiently. However, with us wanting to overhaul combat, we didn't want to implement a new skill system that's based on an old combat system. However, the GAB seems to have lost it's will to debate on the combat system issue (myself included), so maybe this will go forward when we have available programmers.

My biggest issue with skill based item quality is so far we've only really discussed it with weapons, which elevates the benefits of only weapon manufacturing, leaving other skills as equally uncared about as they are now. How would say, cooking, tailoring, and machine manufacturing factor into this?

When we eliminate item repair, as planned, if quality added life to an item, quality would be more highly sought.

Wouldn't that also be a part of weapons though, on top of better attack/defense values? And I'm still not sure how this factors into cooking and tailoring, unless for the latter, clothing deterioration is added.

The best solution for tailoring would be to implement clothing wear. However, I think using good descriptive words associated with clothing would help. He wears a shoddy cloak, vs. he wears a finely crafted cloak. Which would you want?

Cooking...maybe there could be a modifier to spoilage?

Clothing wear would have to be slow or it would get very obnoxious, or otherwise increase resource gathering rates after universal decay is added.

Some of my characters might actually prefer shoddy clothes though. Or at least they would be more fitting.

I'd like a system where you cannot even perform certain activities if you're below a skill level threshold.
Like for tailoring, sawing a pair of hide pants requires less skill than manufacturing a silk robe. You'd have to be skilled to be able to work on the second one. Maybe you could work on a silk robe only as a helper to someone skilled enough (the sensei), and this helps increase your own skill faster.

Or fighting: fist and bone knife - ok; battle axe only for experts.

Surely not feasible to implement over the existing code, but it's something I like to think about.

Maybe cooking could kill you if it were bad enough (joking)! It could at least cause indigestion, sort of like food poisoning or something.

As for clothing wear... I'd only want descriptive words only if someone could mend it (except like loincloths and stuff)! And if it were mended by a terrible tailor, then it'd be noticeable that it's mended, and if it were mended by a good tailor, you probably couldn't tell the difference hardly (unless it were made by a terrible tailor- then it'd look better). Or maybe a way to be able to reuse it in another pattern after a certain state of disrepair (hey, maybe we could have quilts). Of course quality of material also plays a huge factor in whether something will hold up to the test of time and many cleanings and mendings.

My main thought that led me to mending is that some people that care about their appearance would take good enough care of a clothing item that it's not going to turn shoddy so easily (especially if it's not easily available to them to get another), while others won't care and will just wear it out until it falls off. Some will care enough and have the means to get new clothes rather than try to mend theirs well enough to make it continue to look good.

I think overall, I much prefer leaving it to the player to describe the state of their clothing than having a mechanic do it (which doesn't mean I'm against clothing wearing out eventually). Since we have character descriptions now, I really even hate the clothing items having descriptions (which I hated before, but was really glad when they put the name of the item and then the description on the character page). It just is so limiting... I wish we could fill in a brief description ourselves for the clothing items- maybe have the descriptions already there (as they're nice, just not what I picture for every character I have that wears a particular item) as the default for people that don't care about personalizing their clothing.

And I know, you can put it in your character description (which I've done), but then you have to hope that people are going to read a block of text about not only your physical features but your clothing and how it doesn't look like what the game says it looks like, and you have to change it every time you change clothes (thank goodness I don't have any clothing whores that change every hour- though that would be a fun part to play).

I think it would be a good idea if people could write an alternative freeform description for clothing items as long as it wouldn't go against the nature of the item. I don't think a description should add more material (such as long sleeves on a short-sleeved item) unless more resources were somehow attached but if the item remained the same size, it would be okay. Also current status should be separated from the basic description. The status would be things like stains, tears and patches, how the object is being worn, while the basic description was how it's structured. The basic description couldn't be changed after the beginning, unless maybe some time was invested in it.

But if it is a short-sleeved, long-skirted dress and you shorten the skirt, then use the material to make the sleeves longer, then you do have enough material (depending on how much you shorten it).

Not that I really think people should go specifically change something that says it's short-sleeved (short-sleeved shirt) etc, when they can make a long-sleeved version to begin with, but anyway, in some cases it'd be doable without using material they didn't have.

I'm namely thinking of the cases where the only indicator of restrictions are in the description already there, I.E. Cotton Dress which states in the description that it goes to the ankles and has flared sleeves (why is it under robes, anyway?). But the title, Cotton Dress, does not indicate exactly how long/short it is. Now if it were a Short Fur Skirt, then yea, I would say you shouldn't change the description on it to be much longer than maaaybe a couple of inches longer to adjust for height etc of the character, but you could make it shorter.

I do like the idea of a separate status line for items. I don't really like the idea of not being able to change the basic item description after the first time, mostly because of typos or forgetting to put in something, but I guess that it would make you more careful deciding on your wording for it. And at least overall, you ought to get the vibe you wanted for the piece. Maybe a preview of what the description would look like on the item would solve that issue? And then of course a warning that you can't change it after you submit it.

It'd be really fun to have something like that though. Then when people do find old clothes to put on, they can consider how it would actually fit their character after reading the description on it.

Absolutely, and it might actually cause less hand-me-downs to be used if they wouldn't suit the new character's tastes or body size.