Skill system rewrite - Seko/Doug ideas

[sanchez]

I don't buy that keeping the player population diluted is a good thing. If you have 10 locations with an average of 4 characters per location, in my opinion having 30 characters in one location and the rest dispersed doing "whatever" is much better for the game than having 10 "micro locations" where nothing gets accomplished anyway due to lack of characters.

From the PD perspective, having players in small language zones all spawn 15 chars migrating to the same cities is a nightmare. The choice isn't really there.

[cantrlady]

I can see your point from the PD perspective but it is so damn depressing to come into a town that has 40 buildings and 3 people. We need to merge together for this to survive.

[cantrlady]

I can see your point from the PD perspective but it is so damn depressing to come into a town that has 40 buildings and 3 people. We need to merge together for this to survive.

[sanchez]

I'm not disputing it would help English players on islands where the populations are declining, but that isn't the situation in all regions. Some zones are growing, and chars spreading out from the original spawnpoints to develop other towns can be a necessity, either for control and cultivation of resources needed for development, for players to avoid clustering their own chars, or in some cases, because of regional wars in mixed language groups.

Skewing the system to benefit only those chars in dying cities and declining languages doesn't make much sense overall. Who do we need to encourage, and for what?

[Rossato]

I think it goes to the eternal question: to retain new players. Yes, we can RP learning, but if a mechanic in the game affects it in a way you really see improvements in things you do, it'll be more motivating.

Although, small language groups can suffer a lot.

[Doug R.]

I don't buy that keeping the player population diluted is a good thing. If you have 10 locations with an average of 4 characters per location, in my opinion having 30 characters in one location and the rest dispersed doing "whatever" is much better for the game than having 10 "micro locations" where nothing gets accomplished anyway due to lack of characters.

From the PD perspective, having players in small language zones all spawn 15 chars migrating to the same cities is a nightmare. The choice isn't really there.

Can't really argue with that, except to say that if the language zone is so small, then their characters are bound to interact anyway. For example, there are 4 french players and 23 characters. Now, probably not all 23 are played by those 4 players, but I bet the vast majority of them are. Yes, having the characters spaced apart reduces interactions, but it doesn't eliminate them. Perhaps the CR rules should be more relaxed for these regions in order to promote growth? Maybe the CR itself is stunting growth in these regions?

[sanchez]

Why do you assume growth is stunted? Marketing may be the biggest thing holding back some langauges. And PD does take into consideration the regions people play in.

On another note, even for the English Zone, do you or don't you want to encourage development of new regions, colonial expansion, etc? I agree some of the old cities are stagnating or worse, but I see some previously uninhabited areas growing nicely. I don't think skills tweaking to force dependence on others who may or may not be around is an improvement.

[Doug R.]

I don't think skills tweaking to force dependence on others who may or may not be around is an improvement.

So, do you then think that any efforts to encourage inter-character cooperation are ultimately doomed to failure because other people's characters are intrinsically unreliable?

[sanchez]

I think the only truly reliable method of fostering cooperation is RP.

[Doug R.]

That would really end Cantr as a "society simulator" then, if this were true, and throw it squarely into the RPG category.

Or would it?

Are societies primarily based on the need for cooperation, or the desire for cooperation? Do we live together because we need to, or because that's humankind's most desirable state? That's the fundamental question.

[Rossato]

Ultimately, we cooperate because we desire more comfort. We as humans have the power to live all alone in the jungle, like Robinson Crusoe. But life is a lot easier when we join forces and divide tasks.

Today in Cantr, you can live with almost the same comfort in a very small group (let's say, a couple) or in a big city. And this because dividing tasks doesn't increase productivity very much. I can make my clothes with the same quality, material usage, and even more efficiently than a tailor. Or I can make my tools as well as a blacksmith with decades of work.

So, cantrians should have the ability to live all alone, or using a better word, to SURVIVE all alone. But if one wish comfort, like good weapons, tools, a big house, nice clothes, he must cooperate with others to divide and master tasks.

[Gran]

Well, technically we humans can survive alone, but cooperating is such a huge boost that we can't afford to be loners all time.

[formerly known as hf]

I made an argument some time ago that there should be a form of tutorship for skills.

Someone with a high level of aptitude for a skill should be able to increase the rate at which another character improves that skill by working on the same project with them.

Such a system would encourage apprenticeships on the small scale, and vocational training establishments (schools?) on a larger scale.

[Doug R.]

Merged and bumped. The following summary is not an excuse not to read the whole thread:

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

The ideal system, I believe, would look something like this:

1) Take the existing skill system, fix the logical inconsistencies, and reclassify it as "aptitudes." Aptitudes are your character's genetic potentials. For example, some people are born athletic, and some are born clumsy. Aptitudes are fixed values.

2) Create a new skill system, where everyone starts out at awkward for every skill. Aptitude would influence how quickly skills can increase.

3) Make gaining skill much faster for high aptitude characters. For example, a character with high aptitude in mining should be able to go from awkward to expert in 5 game years (of constant mining). Characters with poor aptitude should acquire skill at perhaps 1/10th the high aptitude rate.

4) Make gaining all skills equal. Right now, strength, hunting and fighting don't seem to increase the same as project-based skills. It should be changed so that everything is on a level playing field.

5) Add another dimension to the tech tree by requiring a certain level of proficiency in a skill to do complex projects. Right now, proficiency only affects time (mostly inconsequently). Ideally, proficiency would affect time, quality, and ability. A character with average skill could produce an average item in X time. They could produce a poor quality item in 1/2X time, or a higher quality item in 2X time (an example scale only). Items of a quality higher than 1 over their current proficiency wouldn't be able to be created at all, and some items would require a minimum skill to make at any quality.

6) Have quality affect items. Quality would be visible, and low quality would increase decay.

7) Allow participation in projects that normally wouldn't be able to be performed due to low skill. This would be called apprenticing. It would slow a project down considerably (based on difference in present skill vs. needed skill), but the apprentice would gain skill much more quickly.

8) Skills should decay without use (although slowly). A skill would never decrease to more than 1/2 its highest level, however.

9) Clothing would have visible quality, and it would have to mean something (i.e. wear would have to be applied to clothes and could be travel/work based), meaning that wearing that silk gown while refining iron ore would suddenly be a bad idea, while wearing sturdy (and cheap) hemp clothes with an apron would be a much better idea).

[Dudel]

I agree with the ideal system with the exclusion of Aptitudes as this would not remove, maybe decrease, the "Oh that sucks, let me make this character sleep to death now" mentality.

However the current state of Cantr means that most items have no point to being made. The only 5 skills in Cantr that currently have a value are strength, combat, hunting and farming/gathering.

If the world was more naked and/or new than your skill system would be 100% ideal.


I've also got this problem that people might simply do nothing but train combat for all 15 character slots (Rigil, yugo, ShadowWolf, and a few others come to mind). That creates a REAL problem REALLY FREAKING FAST within the Cantr world. There needs to be a way to balance these out as "aptitudes" wont do it without being a little more drastic than they are now... and you still get people leaving characters for dead if they don't "level fast enough".... and with drastic aptitudes its down to that same breed of luck, once again.


I think there should be harsher punishments to players for getting characters killed (especially in the above manner), sometimes, but that is another topic for another day.