Postby Junesun » Mon May 02, 2005 9:24 am
I don't think skills numbers should be visible, especially not for a short time because that would give a disadvantage to players joining afterwards or players not logging in during that time.
Also, there's the problem that numbers don't say much without context, i. e. you may find for example that your character in Karnon area has very low potato-harvesting skills compared to your other characters, but that he is nevertheless the best on that whole island. I believe the development of regional specialties that might even develop into in-game clichés like "The best miners are from Reniov region", "The best hunters are from Aki island" (just examples) is the natural outcome of the current skill system.
I do find it problematic that there is currently no easy way to get even a slight idea about what your character is good at / not so good at, apart from hunting. Of course he can always just continue life as before and hone whatever skills he needs that way, but for game purposes it would be nice to be able to say "Employ me, I'm a much better smith than he!" - without turning this into a stats-driven game like thousands of other RPGs.
I have an idea...
How can you tell in real life that you are good at harvesting something / making clothes / working with wood or the like? There are no numbers to tell you, but if you work with others, you can just compare your working to theirs. E. g. do I make more mistakes? Are my movements more clumsy / less practised? And it all boils down to: am I progressing faster than they or not?
That information could be programmed into the character descriptions just like it is already programmed for people on the road: he is walking faster / slower / at your pace would become he is working / faster / slower / at your pace. Perhaps even much faster / much slower. For when you both do the same kind of project, of course, otherwise it wouldn't make sense. When tools are used to do things more quickly, that should either be left out of consideration for that description, or, preferably, mentioned in the description ("He is harvesting asparagus with an asparagus harvest knife"), so that people don't need to wonder why others work much faster while having the same damage / tiredness rates.
The result would be that your character could compare his skills to those of the people around him, without using OOC information and without using concrete numbers. It would also mean that if he's above average for his region and below average in a different region, he won't know and it won't matter because it's no use to know that e. g. hunters are much better on one of far islands if you can't bring them to your town to deal with the wild animals. The region has to make do with what it has been given and if a skill is particularly important in that region, it will eventually be native to all people spawning there.
Finally, may I remind people that killing off characters for OOC reasons such as undesired spawning point or undesired skills configuration is a clear breach of the Capital Rule.
I gave up trying (to improve my skills).
