Skills Bars

[wichita]

So it has become widely acknowledged that skills are now in place. When will we be getting some sort of indicator bars to let us know what type of characters we have to deal with. Much like tiredness was, the mystery skill debate appears to be the understandable bitch d' jour.

In order to give us some sort of indication without making the game seem more technical, could rankings in broad ability categories be displayed on the character page below the bars we have now? What I am imagining would look like:

Farming / Gathering
Manufacturing / Construction
Attack / Defense

I think that should cover the main areas we would care most about. If the skills are subdivided but incorporated into these classes graphically, that would still give us an unknown to experiment with.

One thing I would hate to see happen is percentage report increases to the bars, like "you kill a buffalo and improve your attack skill by 1%". Keeping the math in the background would still help to preserve the realism.


Did that make sense?


Please tell me why this is the worst idea ever proposed.

[The Sociologist]

So it has become widely acknowledged that skills are now in place. When will we be getting some sort of indicator bars to let us know what type of characters we have to deal with. Much like tiredness was, the mystery skill debate appears to be the understandable bitch d' jour.

Well, I'm not a fan of the indicator bars in the first place. They are horribly "tech" and remind me of the average action shmup. But how about something like:

"with superlative skill, you hurt a lion using an xyz, which loses 30 strength."

And a similar kind of message could be incorporated in the messages which follow upon conclusion of harvesting or factory projects, assuming that skills even exist in such cases.

Of course, the interesting issue is whether others should see these messages in the case of hunting and combat also. I would say that they should.

But all this is assuming there should be a skills system in the first place.

[Solfius]

Skills maybe in, but I have yet to notice any effect whatsoever on any of my chars, and frankly I don't care if I do. It' makes no difference to me whether they are good or bad or by how much they improve.

I think that bars would be a bad idea, as would figures in reports.

As an alternative I suggest some sort of descriptor in the person page like the old strong/weak descriptor and the person in their twenties/thirties/forties.

That way you are still able to gauge your abilities, but without the need for numerical stats and even more bars (which remind me of games like Baulder's Gate/Final Fantasy which neglect RP for stats, and the Sims which is all about getting the bars right)

[Solfius]

"with superlative skill, you hurt a lion using an xyz, which loses 30 strength."

my personal preference would be to not name the skills, but include something about how good you are at what you just did.
Perhaps:
you skillfully attack and hurt a lion using an xyz, which loses 30 strength.

or

you clumsily attack and hurt a lion using an xyz, which loses 3 strength.

[wichita]

Well, I'm not a fan of the indicator bars in the first place. They are horribly "tech" and remind me of the average action shmup. But how about something like:

"with superlative skill, you hurt a lion using an xyz, which loses 30 strength."

And a similar kind of message could be incorporated in the messages which follow upon conclusion of harvesting or factory projects, assuming that skills even exist in such cases.

Dude, the 30 strength statement is more tech than a bar in my opinion. That is why I specifically said that I would not like to see that - to help maintain realism.

As an alternative I suggest some sort of descriptor in the person page like the old strong/weak descriptor and the person in their twenties/thirties/forties.

This would be a better alternative to the bars. In real life, it's fairly straightforward to say someone is excellent, fairly good, or "Dude why even bother" at performing certain tasks.


I finally have noticed skills kicking in with one of my characters, so I'm a believer now. He's good at digging apparently. I can routinely get potatoes on the upper end of the yield range (just eyeballing it). However, he has been able to do at max 10 damage with a sabre. I'm pretty sure this is low, if I'm wrong, I apologize.

[AngelSpice]

I have one character that seems pretty good at masonry. I was surprised at how slow the project went with my second and third characters that did masonry work. That seems like a pretty useless skill to me, after all, how many buildings does one character usually build?

[Solfius]

I would like to see increasing use of descriptors, and decreasing use of actual figures/bars.

I think the way deteroration is expressed is a step in the right direction

[The Sociologist]

"with superlative skill, you hurt a lion using an xyz, which loses 30 strength."

my personal preference would be to not name the skills, but include something about how good you are at what you just did.
Perhaps:
you skillfully attack and hurt a lion using an xyz, which loses 30 strength.

or

you clumsily attack and hurt a lion using an xyz, which loses 3 strength.

Yes, that's more or less what I was trying to say. The question is how many adjectives or adverbs (in your case) one could fit in to describe the range needed.

I would like to see increasing use of descriptors, and decreasing use of actual figures/bars.

I agree, except that at the moment it might be nice to see figures tucked away somewhere so as to help Programming alpha-test their stuff. The recent business with tiredness from tools was more like alpha-testing than beta-testing!

[west]

I think it'd be great if we had some idea what our characters' skill sets were without spending years IC figuring them out.

Why? Simple: We have (max) fifteen characters, and it's already been note that there's an awful lot more people whose life goal it is to be a warrior or powerful politician or (other things) with many of their characters, with notoriety as their end-goal as a player, not necessarily from a char perspective.

If we know beforehand that a char is likely to be good at digging, is it not possible for society to take that into account? I'd like to see more players taking their character's skill sets into account when giving their characters personalities/goals/etc.

You'd see societies possibly get more efficient, if the character's personality was such that they accepted that they were good at something and stuck to things like that, instead of Johnny Warlike insisting on being a town guard when he only hits for 7 with a sabre.

It'd even be interesting, from a game perspective, to see characters that purposefully ignored/tried to overcome their natural strengths and weaknesses.

As I play for longer, and as more reams of complexity are introduced, I keep leaning towards more disclosure.

Sure, we don't want this to be like other RPG games with 'techy' skills and leveling, but knowing your skills (especially if there's no substantial way to alter them) beforehand would, I think, be a pretty good thing.

Barring that, we should at least go with the suggestion of Solfius and others: some sort of descriptor when one ends a project /hunts/attacks or whatever is affected by skills.

Even something like "Due to your skill with a dungfork, you collected 480 carrots in this project"

[formerly known as hf]

I always thought the plan was to keep stats hidden - so that you had to work out what inate talents your character had IC (much likie you do in real life - if you want to be good at something, and have the knack for it - great. If not, you have to practice hard - fair enough...)

But, I do think, there should be some indicatioon of what skills exist...

[Birdsall007]

I desagree completely with you West. In RL, people do what they can with the skills that they have, but it takes time to discover their skills. There are even people who work at a job that they don't really have to skills to do.

I think if we did have the skills disclosed, people who wanted to create a specific role, would be creating characters only to either let them die, or try to get them killed, simply so that they could have someone with the desired skill set.

[Schme]

There are no skill bars in real life. I don't think we should have them in Cantr.

[Nixit]

In real life, we are not on a computer.

[formerly known as hf]

yeah, but Cantr tries to mirror reality where possible...

If you want stats and skill bars and whatnot - go play final fantasy (which are brilliant games by the way)

But stats and skills systems with bars or values would be out of place in cantr

[Surly]

yeah, but Cantr tries to mirror reality where possible...

If you want Cantr to be so realistic, take out the fact you can only hit once per day. And take out the tiredness bar. And make so you can't carry 15000g of sand without a bag. And make it so you can settle and gather resources anyway instead of just set locations... no more travelling per se. And make it so you can't eat raw potatoes. And take away a damage bar. And make sure everybody is online at least 16 hours per day.

And see how many players you have left. Oh, it appears that if people want real life they actually have one of there own. People don't want to play a game like that.

But stats and skills systems with bars or values would be out of place in cantr

I disagree. It is text based, so they have more place in Cantr than vague descriptions alluding to a physical desrciption that doesn't exist (such as clothes)

I think if we did have the skills disclosed, people who wanted to create a specific role, would be creating characters only to either let them die, or try to get them killed, simply so that they could have someone with the desired skill set.

Doesn't that happen at the monet anyway? WIth not thieves and such? Maybe if Cantr worked on making it more enjoyable and easier to play, instances would lessen. But whatever, it will continue to happen whatever you do, but the better RPers will have a better time, and the game should become more interesting for everyone.

I desagree completely with you West. In RL, people do what they can with the skills that they have, but it takes time to discover their skills. There are even people who work at a job that they don't really have to skills to do.

Remember that most of us don't want to spend 21 years finding out what our characters are good at. That is part of what the previous 20 years of a Cantrian's life encompasses.

Don't confuse Cantr with real life. I already have a life of my own, and I don't have the time to live 15 other ones.

Rant over for now.