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Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 10 Oct 2009, 10:35
by Rotonen
I'm only seeing more trouble than benefit from having crafting affected by attributes. Any way I manage to think of it, it only feels like an annoyance and a hindrance to building a battle character.

I do not want these to become mutually exclusive.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 11 Oct 2009, 17:32
by Kage
as far as technically implementing it I found away, Since me and Jax made skills dynamic, they are no longer hardcoded. So what we can do is this:

0-99 skill id reserved (mainly because attributes are treated the same as skills to the server and client)
100-999 Combat skills (100-199 will be melee, 200-299 will be magic)
>1000 Crafting skills

This system will both allow for TONS of dynamic skills, also we can hard code skill 1000 or above not to influence player level.

I am willing to implement this, if every is in agreement to drop crafting skills from level calculation

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 11 Oct 2009, 17:41
by Crush
OK let's do it that way.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 11 Oct 2009, 18:32
by Kage

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 12 Oct 2009, 03:40
by Jaxad0127
More hard coding? :x

I'll live with that for now. In the future, a simple flag in the skill file would do nicely.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 12 Oct 2009, 06:55
by Bertram
Hi agree with Jaxad.

Why not type the skills instead?

Regards.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 12 Oct 2009, 09:13
by Rotonen
How you pull it off under the hood doesn't have too much to do with CR1 directly.

So, once you hit the level cap, you cannot gain any skill? Or you cannot gain any skill which would take you over the gap?

What do these two options actually mean with our fancy level calculation when it comes to optimizing your character's battle capability within the level gap?

Also, on a rather related note, it is still a mystery to me how skills (as in usable active battle skills/attacks/spells) tie into this scheme. You get them automatically from the combination of skills you have leveled up or do you just gain the potential to learn from a master?

IMO we should also design the primitive active skills for CR1 too.

This leads into a question: how do we want our characters to specialize? The usual split will be approximately something like tank/damagedealer/healer/buffer/debuffer. These roles could somehow be distributed over warrior/archer/mage and the combinations of these. To me it seems sensible you can be for example a damage dealer in a few different ways and choosing your warrior/archer/mage split wouldn't lock you into a certain role in a party, but rather how you built your character over time would be the deciding factor in which roles become sensible for you in a party.

A lot of open questions in the air still, for me at least.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 12 Oct 2009, 15:27
by Crush
Regarding cap: The current consensus is a cap on every skill separately. When one skill hits the cap you can still level others like before and thus also improve your level. But as you (should) know the highest skill has the most influence on the level. The secondary, tertiary etc. skills affect level much less.


What you call "active skills" is calles "specials" in TMWServ terminology and it is not implemented yet. Doing so will delay the development quite a bit because I will certainly not tolerate to rush the implementation of this essential part of gameplay. We should delay this to RC2.


Regarding character roles: The character system conceptualisation was built on the assumption that attributes and equipment define the character type, not skills.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 13 Oct 2009, 10:38
by Rotonen
I'm fine with leaving specials unimplemented until CR2 or even later.

But with our pace of doing things, we're going to have some people maxing out every skill they have between content releases.

This can be either meaningless or bad depending on how things work.

Since how specials work is not yet defined, AFAIK, we should define the system a bit further.

So, can someone explain to me in a way even I will understand how this character specialization and gaining specials should or will work?

I propose that specials come available based on the attributes you've gained. This is a rather good way to make people think about character specialization. Specials becoming available can also depend on each other in a hierarchical tree so you have to make further choices.

What battle related skills are there?

-Weapon skills? Which weapon/skill associations are we going to have?
-How do magic skills work? Direct vs. Indirect? (Although this'll only come into play with specials, but the general concept is nice to have laid out.)
-Defensive skills? Dodge? Does shield need one? What could there be? Resistances are skills or derived attributes?

For weapon skills, we need to have weapon classes which are significantly different of each other so the choice and playing style come with them naturally.

Are we going to go for cliches? Slow and more damage vs. faster and less damage, but higher critical chance? Staves and other otherwise useless items boost magical properties?

A lot of disoriented thought here from me, but IMO we need to clarify our system a bit further before making decisions such as how far to allow our players to go within a specific content release.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 13 Oct 2009, 11:07
by Bertram
Hi,

There is one first thing I don't get either:

Is the system working or willing to work like that?
Example:
[Skill] Magic
--> [Special] Fire Ball

Or:
[Skill] Swords
--> [Special] Dash

Thanks for that first answer.

Regards.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 13 Oct 2009, 11:21
by Rotonen
For weapon related specials, that sort of a scheme should work.

For magic, it could make more sense to have schools of magic. I cannot evaluate on my own whether it'd be good to have a generic magic skill as a basis for magic learning as well.

In any case I'd like there to be some joint specials available only to hybrid characters to make slight hybridization sensible and to also make heavy hybridization fun and different.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 13 Oct 2009, 12:04
by Bertram
Hi,

A more precise example for magic, maybe:
[Skill] Nature Magic
--> [Special] Fire Ball

What I don't get is:
- Is it wanted to make it work this way?
- If yes, how is it planned to set conditions to specials activation?
Should it be based on skill level, item possession, equipment, etc, or all sort of combination?
(I'm personally for the most flexible solution: all sort of combination.)

- If yes also, I'd prefer rename [Skills] to [Base Skills], and [Specials] to [Skills];
Special sounds too generic to me. What do you think?

Regards.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 13 Oct 2009, 16:20
by Crush
It really surprises me that you, Rotonen, seem to be oblivious to all the game design decisions we made after discussing all of this back and forward for hours in the past years. Especially because you took part in these discussions.

When your memory doesn't serve you well you could at least look it up on the wiki where most of these things are written down.

I will post more later when I am at home.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 13 Oct 2009, 18:07
by Crush
- If yes also, I'd prefer rename [Skills] to [Base Skills], and [Specials] to [Skills];
Special sounds too generic to me. What do you think?
That would be even more confusing, because "Skill" and "Base skill" would refer to fundamentally different things.

The term "Special" is an abbrevation of "special action" which was an umbrella term for every "special action" a character can perform besides walking around, using items, talking and normal attacks. This includes:
-magic
-physical special attacks
-using emoticons
-crafting
-anything else we can think about

But I agree that the term sounds a bit retarded. When you want we can use the term "abilities" or "actions" instead. I will use the term "abilities" for the rest of the post.
But with our pace of doing things, we're going to have some people maxing out every skill they have between content releases.
And? There is nothing we can do about it, even when we work faster. Commercial games have the same problem. There will always be the powerleveling nerds who archive in 2 nights what a normal player archives in 2 months. Our target group should be the less hardcore players, in my opinion.
I propose that specials come available based on the attributes you've gained. This is a rather good way to make people think about character specialization. Specials becoming available can also depend on each other in a hierarchical tree so you have to make further choices.
I would recommend to read the wiki articles about the magic system and especially the rune combination system where this aspect is already worked out pretty well. The physical attack abilities, on the other hand, are not conceptualized yet. But to make the balancing between warriors and magicans not a completely futile task the abilities of warrior characters should work at least similar.

Anyone who feels like having some thoughts about this topic is invited to start a wiki article about it, with or without some brainstorming on #tmw-dev.
-Defensive skills? Dodge? Does shield need one? What could there be? Resistances are skills or derived attributes?
Defensive skills in a learning-by-doing system mean that the players are rewarded when they let monsters hit their characters. I don't know how you want combats to be played but I believe that players should be motivated to avoid harm to their characters.

When you want defensive abilities (a shield-based defensive self-buff, for example) I would recommend to tie it into the ability trees/lists/systems/whatever-we-choose together with the offensive skills.
For magic, it could make more sense to have schools of magic. I cannot evaluate on my own whether it'd be good to have a generic magic skill as a basis for magic learning as well.
[...]
A more precise example for magic, maybe:
[Skill] Nature Magic
--> [Special] Fire Ball
We already agreed after long (and often annoying) debates to have one school of magic for every classic element (fire, water, earth, air), one for healing spells and hold the option open to add new element schools later. Later additions could be the "combined element" schools lightning, nature, ice and matal which are combinations of the basic elements or more obscure schools of magic (light? darkness? time? motion? pastamancery? all possible options) . We decided to delay the decision about further additions to the 5 basic schools until after we made some experience with the existing ones.

Re: [DIS] release1 level cap

Posted: 13 Oct 2009, 19:19
by Bertram
Hi Crush,

Thanks for the reply.
Don't get on nerves, after all, it's hard to get each and every point in there sometimes; And it's never dumb-like to ask.

I agree for the 'Abilities' term instead of specials, and you have my support for any development on this.
Tomorrow, I'll read carefully the runes article and then,we'll be able to set up together a good equivalent for physical abilities.
Then, let's go the [Skills] and dependent [Abilities]!

Regards.