Skill system rewrite - Seko/Doug ideas

[Ryaga]

I agree with Dudel the thing is though, that with this system if everyone sparred with wasters you could have a town with quite a few decentish characters. So when the one expert super strong fighter comes in, he gets ganked by 2-3 decent fighters and average strength, etc.

[YugoStrikesBack]

FIrst of all Dudel, screw you I only have one character who even spars and only because he isn't even that good of a fighter to begin with.

Secondly, I agree with Seko. Many newspawns pick what characters they want and kill the ones they don't and it usually comes down to fighting. There was a relatively new character hit me for 58 damage not too long ago and that player I guarantee you saw the strength of his character and was like whoa, I'm going to use this character to fight.

What needs to be done is we need to have different skills as far as fighting and the attributes of players are concerned. For example, Archery, Swordfighting, Accuracy, and Power could be considered.

A more athletic person may be better able to get good faster with sword fighting and power, but not get good as fast with accuracy and archery.

whereas a less athletic individual may be able to train their accuracy and archery skills faster. but not get good as fast with accuracy and archery.

This would balance out as the athletic person may be able to drag easier and utilize cheap weapons such as the saber to push their weight around, but the less athletic individual would be able to hit people with better accuracy and utilize the best weapon in the game, the crossbow, better than the more athletic person.

Perhaps we could also consider more categories than just athletic and unathletic. but figure out a way to balance it all out (for example, including endurance into the categories to allow some individuals to hit without becoming as tired as fast, or allowing some characters to carry more than others or block better than others).

We need to mix up the category of "fighting" for sure.

People may not want cantr to be a fighting game, but in the end, that's how the world works and it's a big reason why our world is structured the way it is. The key thing is, we need to prevent those idiots newspawns from killing off their characters just cuz they are weak and suck at fighting and instead make every character have its own advantages and disadvantages.

[Doug R.]

The key thing is, we need to prevent those idiots newspawns from killing off their characters just cuz they are weak and suck at fighting and instead make every character have its own advantages and disadvantages.

I agree with Yugo.

[Piscator]

I actually agree with all of yugo's post, not only the quoted part. If one particular skill is too important, let's split it. For the same reason burying could be merged with digging.

On a technical note, does the game keep track of your learning progress? Someone told me once that when it comes to passing down your traits to a newspawn, not your current skill levels are considered, but the ones you were born with. If that means that the game knows exactly how much you have trained your skills, a conversion to a new system as proposed should be possible pretty easily and without loosing all your skill progress (even though you might loose the advantage you were born with).

Concerning the application of skills, I don't think that making some tasks outright impossible if your skill level is insufficient would be a good idea. People would end up making 200 stone hammers to raise their skill to a level where they can make a soldering iron. I think it would be much more sensible to have something like skill weighting, that is, considering your skill double or triple in complicated projects. While clumsy person A takes twice as long to make a stone hammer as skillful person B, person A would take four times as long to make a soldering iron or eight times as long to make radio. In other words, even if you're a total dope, you would be able to build a radio, but it would take you an atrociously long time.

Having masterwork items would of course also be a fine idea, but this never would work for all types of project (you can't gather masterwork potatoes), so we have to support it with a speed based system.

[EchoMan]

On a technical note, does the game keep track of your learning progress? Someone told me once that when it comes to passing down your traits to a newspawn, not your current skill levels are considered, but the ones you were born with. If that means that the game knows exactly how much you have trained your skills, a conversion to a new system as proposed should be possible pretty easily and without loosing all your skill progress (even though you might loose the advantage you were born with).

From reading a few snippets of code:

Each character have a set of genes that you are born with, that depends (somewhat) on you parents genes.

As soon as a character use a skill for the first time, a state for that skill is created, depending (somewhat) on the gene. (Some older characters were spawned before there were "parents", so they get a random gene for each skill when using the skill for the first time).

Whenever a character uses a skill, i.e. training, the current state of the skill for the character is updated. So from my understanding, the gene for a skill is constant once set, and the state for a skill changes.

[Piscator]

Hmm. That would make a conversion a little more complicated and less elegant, but I guess it could still be done.

[Drael]

Archery, Swordfighting, Accuracy, and Power

This is basically where I was going with my intial post (before I saw this and edited). I think "Ranged", "Melee" skills would be better, because its more general (Yeah not totally realistic, but better. You could always divide into "Thrown", "Fired", "Stabbing", "Slashing" etc, but I think thats a bit much for our little old cantr!). And they would be bettered by Accuracy (Better named dexterity, because then it can apply to making electronics, or crafting jewelry) and power (IE strength - which should also boost things like digging, or building) - (the mix of those traits would be per weapon ideally, as per currently but with the new trait "aim/dexterity/whatever")

Yeah, onto it. And also agree that characters should be balanced, rather than random. A points system where you can put in Dexterity, Strength, starting skill aptitudes - if these still exist... (perhaps you could even spend points on some starting equipment! But then why is everyone naked at twenty anyway?....lol). Anyway, something where you can choose to be good at this, or that, rather than sometimes end up being crap at everything.

Personally I think randomness of skills is dumb. Realistic but silly for a game. Why not have everything game power balanced and easier for RP purposes?

And yeah, I agree generally that rather than start out with perfect skills, you should start out with maybe a basic aptitude (Like dex or str giving the skill a small boost), and then learn quicker than currently. As for the older folks problem, why not set the learning rate as limited once a certain total skill level is gained (Say your expert in three things or whatever, then your learning slows down a fair bit)...?? - This way it wouldnt penalise old people who arent very skilled...

And of course, I quite like the notion of other traits too. Endurance would be a good one, for effecting tiredness levels, how much hunger you can take, perhaps even damage levels. A combination of endurance/strength could effect how much you can carry. Speed/Agility for travelling, and to be mixed with dexterity for blocking (and dodging, which really needs to be added too) - could also make you able to attack a person earlier the next day.

If there was a points system in place, one could even include intelligence level, which would prevent mental retards from being able to easily build a radio or engine, and perhaps put the the more technical items into more specialised hands. But much less call for this than physical ones..

[Polt86]

A system where the player could use points to choose there skills/attributes or whatever you call them would simply lead to all characters being expert fighters who are very strong, plus some less developped skills. Who besides the very hardcore RPers would even consider putting all their points into anything else? Especially if the rest of the system remains the way it currently is.

Besides, it goes against the entire idea of RPing each character based on their environment because they would most likely have to use their points before they spawn, meaning the player would already have an image of the character before the character even exists.

I do however like the idea of having the genes control how good he character is at learning a specific skill, but leave it random/genetic as it currently is.

[Snake_byte]

The key thing is, we need to prevent those idiots newspawns from killing off their characters just cuz they are weak and suck at fighting and instead make every character have its own advantages and disadvantages.

I agree with Yugo.

What needs to be done is we need to have different skills as far as fighting and the attributes of players are concerned. For example, Archery, Swordfighting, Accuracy, and Power could be considered.

I'd have to agree as well. Throw fistsicuffs in there too with the new fighting skills.

With the over 15 skills involved, if everyone chose to be a fighter and no one wanted to work as a miner, hunter, or even a gatherer, there wouldn't be any truly successful towns.

Arrange them into two categories of skills.

One- for Physicallities such as:
-Strength (overall strength and size),
-Dexterity (uses with machinery, complicated weapons, as well as blocking and dodging),
-Endurance (affects tiredness, disease resistance, and defense),
And Possibly
-Agility (for travelling, and aid in blocking and dodging as Drael pointed out)

Two- for Skills.
(Add Long List of Skills Here)

Put a max of say 10 points to go from Much Less to Much More than Average. Making 200 point possible for the top for all to be max as:

10 X Five Skill Lvls = 50points X 4 Skills = 200 points.

To be 'average' for this skill set, one would need 100 points. But being able to set them yourself you can set two at 'much above average'.

The same concept can work for the other skills.
10 X Five Skill Lvls = 50points X (N) Skills = (P) points.
Where (N) is number of skills and (P) is the number of points.
One again giving them half or even 3/4 of the overall points to play with.

OR

The random gene idea can play in even included before all of this by taking point allotted, dividing them by half, and putting the other half into a random skill generator, like a dice roll.

To get one started:
=================

-I choose a language group.

-In the new window I click the "random gene" or "roll" Button and get a max of 50 points randomly added to Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, and Agility.
--I get 10 to Str, 5 to Dex, 20 to Endur, 15 to Agil. I don't like it, I can "roll" again.

-Once I'm done here, another window opens - Same for skills.

-Then Skill placement window appears. These can be done in the same window together as well as with the name and gender.

=================

All of this while removing the 'fighting' category as a clump like Yugo suggested.

[EchoMan]

I feel strongly against D&D-type skill point plotting. It would only create stereotype characters. Leave as is imho.

[returner]

Rewriting the skills is a big job and begs a very important question - is Cantr II worth it?

Perhaps it's time we evaluated the pros and cons of a massive, massive change to the dynamic of Cantr such as this. No doubt, a massive 'fair' change will create an entirely new way of playing Cantr. In the future, the history of Cantr will not be the same. I'm not saying this IS a bad thing, but it might be.

So what I'm suggesting is, perhaps the need for a skills system rewrite (hell, a whole fricken game rewrite! [no offense to those who have made it what it is.. it is great for what it is, but can be better]) indicates or implies a need for a new game entirely.

Perhaps we could take the myriad of suggestions for massive implementations/solutions to huge problems, and put them into one basket for Cantr III (Cantr 3).

Personally, I think the Cantr community will go one of two ways:

1) Continually 'tac' on quick-fixes, as the game slowly goes downhill until the player level is so low and the staff level is so low that the game shuts down (2 or 5 years until this happens)

2) Begin work on a conceptual Cantr 3 (could be text-based, could be graphical, could be 3D... all discussion), bring together the BEST elements of Cantr 2 (the majority of it!) and revisit the ideas of combat system, skills rewrite, etc etc.



IT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT SKILLS HAVE BEEN REWRITTEN BEFORE. IT FAILED BEFORE THAT, IT FAILS NOW. WHAT WILL STOP IT FROM FAILING AGAIN?

[Piscator]

DEFINITELY NOT WRITING LIKE THIS!!!!

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. The core of the suggestion (not the last bit about spending points etc., which I strongly disagree with btw) is just a new way of assigning skills to newspawns, which is far from a major rewrite. It would have global consequences, yes, but other changes had that before. It's in any case nothing worth shutting this game down and spending the next two years on writing Cantr III.

Neither is option 1 an option, as the premise is fundamentally wrong. Predicting the death of Cantr to be 2-5 years from now is pure speculation (the world didn't end on day 2310 either) and patching the game to death is also no neccessity. I'd much rather see sensible structural improvement of the game mechanics, like this suggeston.

Having said this, back on topic!

To elaborate on what I threw in before, I neither like picking your skills on spawning, nor do I think it's necessary. Cantr has always (or at least since skills were implemented) had a learning-by-doing system, so if you want to have a certain skill, practise it for some years. With learning aids like apprenticing, getting your favourite skills won't take longer than getting your favourite equipment.

Btw. if it was possible to pass on skills directly from char to char by some form of teaching, we could get rid of the gene system entirely and replace it with something more direct. Instead of a genetic evolution, we could have a cultural one, allowing newspawns to start truly equal (without even genetic aptitudes).

[Snake_byte]

Cantr has always (or at least since skills were implemented) had a learning-by-doing system, so if you want to have a certain skill, practice it for some years. With learning aids like apprenticing, getting your favorite skills won't take longer than getting your favorite equipment.

As it is, it takes RL Years to get anywhere with anything if you suck at it, and you won't improve past one, possibly two, skill sets in a realistic amount of time someone might play this game (we'll say one year).
Most people who play, don't play for that long at one time to begin with, so they'll never really see any changes. There are only a handful that don't quit for a time...

If it was possible to pass on skills directly from char to char by some form of teaching, we could get rid of the gene system entirely and replace it with something more direct. Instead of a genetic evolution, we could have a cultural one, allowing newspawns to start truly equal (without even genetic aptitudes).

What if to people were involved in a project to increase a certain skill but only the one with the lower skill would improve. It's a project that would have to be repeated three to four times before going up one skill point.
A 'teaching skill' project.
Basically you begin a project for a skill to teach, only the one teaching may begin the project.
Then the student(s) join, and they begin to increase in skill. Max being whatever the teachers max is.
The projects themselves last for one to two days... if it's two day for four projects, that's eight days of solid work and study to increase one point.

[Piscator]

As it is, it takes RL Years to get anywhere with anything if you suck at it, and you won't improve past one, possibly two, skill sets in a realistic amount of time someone might play this game (we'll say one year).
Most people who play, don't play for that long at one time to begin with, so they'll never really see any changes. There are only a handful that don't quit for a time...

Why do you assume that the learning rates will stay the same while everything else is going to be changed? The years I mentioned were meant as ingame years.

A teaching project sounds incredibly dull and I don't know if we want people just standing around, learning from each other. Having your skills increase faster while working with a master sounds like a much more interesting and natural way.

[Snake_byte]

Having your skills increase faster while working with a master sounds like a much more interesting and natural way.

So someone with a higher skill than me, in the work we are doing, joining any one of my projects will make me increase my skill faster - including anyone else's under them?

What if A had expert in our work, I had average, and B had awkward:
Would B benefit from both of us or just A?