Skill system rewrite - Seko/Doug ideas

[SekoETC]

I think the skill system is unfair in that there are people who think being an expert fighter is all there is, which leads into people spawning characters and discarding the weak and clumsy ones. Cantr was supposed to be a game where everyone starts out equal but with the skills system, the equality has been lost. Based on pure luck you can end up doomed to be clumsy for the rest of your life or to be an expert without having to practice at all. It's just - plain - wrong.

I bet this has been suggested earlier but it doesn't have a specific topic. Well now it has. Screw the genes, let's make everyone spawn awkward. But what this requires is faster learning speed. Currently it's too slow. Be that I had a character go from efficient to expert when doing something for years, and it wouldn't be the only one, so maybe project based skills are decent - but fighting certainly isn't. So the experience gained from hitting someone should be greatly increased.

In addition I think that using high-damage weapons for training should give more experience than wasters because there is a risk involved, so it's more real.

Also the young should learn faster than the old people. This would actually give some initiative for town elders to let the young ones take part in more challenging projects because the future would be at stake: if the newspawns were only allowed to farm then in twenty years or so you would have a town full of expert farmers but no one would know how to make steel efficiently.

If you want to preserve genes then maybe, MAYBE they could be there in the background, making people learn certain skills faster than others - but it's just idiotic that a newspawn can figure out their fighting skill and future just by attempting to drag themselves.

Summary (in order of importance):

1. Increasing speed for development of the fighting skill
2. Implementing equality of all newspawns
3. Making speed of learning decrease when a person ages
4. Increasing speed for development of skills in general
5. If genes stay, they should affect learning speed, not initial values
6. Training with high damage weapons should give more exp. than low damage ones

[joo]

I wholeheartedly support this... to an extent. People who spawn should have a random chance to be anything between efficient and novice at a skill -- this is more realistic than people being born experts. The speed of learning should be slightly higher for skills which someone starts out better at, but they should still have the chance to become better at something they're bad at while they're young.

[Cdls]

I agree with this as well. Cantr is about being able to play any role you imagine, yet its not true when you are so limited by a random skills generator.

I like Seko's idea as it brings a balance to the whole thing.

[Piscator]

I ever considered the current system very lifelike. You are born and have to play with the cards you are dealt. That's always been perfectly OK for my style of playing.

I would like to see the possibility to teach skills if this suggestion is to be implemented. In that case it wouldn't be necessary to increase the learning rate (not that that would be a problem) and we would still have something similar to the genes. You wouldn't be born with your parents skills, but had to learn them instead.

[sem]

1. Agree. Fighting skill takes too long to improve at the moment.
2. Disagree. I like the fact that there's some variation, though I'd suggest changing the base from equal to the skill of one parent to half the average of the parents.
3. Agree.
4. *shrug* I can see an argument for it if 3 is implemented - otherwise no.
5. Disagree
6. Yes, but only for the defender.

[Talapus]

Jos wanted skills to be random and slow to improve (also invisible, but players argued that one away). I believe he didn't want Cantr to become one of those "training games". Improvement to skills should come so slowly that characters don't have an added incentive to train them, but rather their skills would slowly come to represent the career they choose for themselves. I also don't want to see Cantr become another Runescape...

That said, I believe that fighting/hunting/strength skills do not improve fast enough and that manufacturing skills should increase somewhat faster than gathering skills (since it is harder to spend as much time doing said activities).

[shapukas]

Well, skils that rises when you gather something levels up faster then fighting or hunting. One of my chars have been the worsest hunter in the world, it took him about 40 cantr years to become novice. So lets say i whant to have at least one good fighter for a change, but all my chars (for bad luck) spawns good farmers, but wery bad fighters. So what can i do? Try to make my char a thief and hope to be killed? And maby next char will be a good fighter? Now that all would be awkvard its a good idea. Fighting traning could be done wery good whith waster, but lets say only until skilful. After that only real battle whith real wheapon could improove the skills. Is that posible?

[Oasis]

I whole heartedly agree with this suggestion on the basis of fighting skills. No one should ever be born (spawned) being an expert fighter, it's just wrong. I am sick of the newspawns who check their skill, and the players who immediately abandon those who don't have good ones. I think this would improve the game immensely to have everyone start at awkward or novice. And yes, training those skills up needs to be faster, and training equipment such as punching bags etc. implemented, but I wouldn't want any delay in that to stop this from being changed.

High Importance
1. yes
2. relative equality, wouldn't have to be completely......could also still have variations of strength, but that as well should have to be built up to be a bit more realistic. (no newspawn should be able to immediately drag, by themselves, a fourty year old who has been hunting and fighting for twenty years)
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Lesser Importance, and not needed to be linked to above
3. not so keen on, since my chars are all so old lol, though it does make some sense
4. Agree completely, especially if skills start off much lower
5. Agree. It would be nice to see learning implemented, but not very likely in my lifetime.
6. Agree

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Talapus, I find that contradictory, that Jos wants skills to be random, yet their skills would slowly come to represent the career they choose for themselves. It hasn't worked out that way at all. A newspawn can arrive with expert smelting skills, and the guy who's been smelting for fifty years is still a novice. No one should start out as expert in anything. That's not choosing a career path, that's having it chosen for you. And that, along with spawning expert fighters, is what is wrong with the skills system.

Regardless that Jos didn't want this game to become a skills improvement game, the addition of skills made it so. And there is so much sparring going on by everyone, I don't see that it will be much different if the skills were lowered for newspawns.

[SekoETC]

Sounds like we're leaning towards not allowing anyone to spawn expert and probably not skillful either, but allowing variation on the awkward to efficient range. Remember though that if everyone spawned awkward, there could still be variation within the awkward category, you could start off with 0 points or 1999 points and not see the difference until through observation.

The reason a faster learning speed for young characters should be implemented is that if old characters could benefit from the suddenly increased learning speeds, they would start higher and thus have an advantage. This isn't about nerfing newspawns, it's about giving everyone an equal chance.

[Doug R.]

I agree with this wholeheartedly also.

1. YES
2. YES
3. No, because age is currently meaningless and should stay that way IMO
4. YES
5. YES YES YES
6. YES

Let me add one:

7. Unused skills atrophy over time. (slowly)

[Miri]

3. NO, or very little
all the others, including Doug's 7. - YES

...although I'd rather see starting range for skills as awkward-efficient, with genes or generated randomly from a distribution with higher propabilities for values around median (normal Gaussian for example), or for, lets say, first quart.
Spawning as anything more than efficient is just wrong...

[Cantryjczyk]

Jos wanted skills to be random and slow to improve (also invisible, but players argued that one away). I believe he didn't want Cantr to become one of those "training games". Improvement to skills should come so slowly that characters don't have an added incentive to train them, but rather their skills would slowly come to represent the career they choose for themselves. I also don't want to see Cantr become another Runescape...

That said, I believe that fighting/hunting/strength skills do not improve fast enough and that manufacturing skills should increase somewhat faster than gathering skills (since it is harder to spend as much time doing said activities).

I agree.

Actually, almost all skills are not so important. Any char can do anything, some just spend more or less time during that. I dont want to see cantr becoming game about leveling up and developing skills. More to says, now spawning chars, after some time and checking many activites propably find themselve good, even master in few. It is interesting, it give reasons to roleplay, to be proud, to plan future for people who have no better ideas.
Equality is not perfect. When you spawn, you have no items, food, anything. Older chars have it. If it will be the same with skills, I belive less players will stay in game after first contact with cantr.

Skills give now factor between +50%, -50% of work efficienty (I can be wrong). It affect only time. If it is to much, it can be lowered to 40%? 30? Mayby 25%?
Skill is in game as number, top is 10.000. Descriptions just give range of skill. For little faster learning I can say YES. Or eventually for random skills up to 8.000, not 10.000 at start, Above 8.000 only by trening IG. But nothing more drastic than that.

Unfortunetly, fighting and strenght are special skills, and it is true that these are to important for munchkin kind players. Killing char becose to low of these is not rare. But it is true also in case of spawning place location, some players abandon chars becose dont like not skills, but city, or isle. So what? All newspawn shoud spawn in the same places? Without any random? If equality, then everywhere.

For most of mentioned things (2. 3. 5. 6. 7. ) I just say strong: NO.

[Pilot]

I totally agree with that.
I stop looking at skills so many months ago that it surprises me when charries same age mines or older still worry about it (fighting and strength aside).
My worst cook is the one that more different kind of dishes has done. My best tailor rarely sews and so on. My charries do what they need to and try to work in teams when in a hurry

[Oasis]

I am not so concerned about the other skills, and indeed this could be split into two topics.

But to say that we shouldn't do anything to improve the system regarding the unfairness of strength and fighting skill because some don't like where they spawn is just ridiculous.

This has been a huge problem since the day it was introduced, and I think it imperative that something be done about it asap!

[sanchez]

Spawning everyone with low skills in combat I fear will only encourage more newspawns sparring obsessively with steel weapons. I don't want to encourage that.