Skills?

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MathGeek
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Skills?

Post by MathGeek »

So I'm looking around the webpage and the CVS docs, and I can't find anything on skills or how they will be used in the game. So I figure why not start a thread to brain storm for ideas.

I love seeing games with Non-Combat skills like:

- Item creation ( eg, Black smithing )
- Item identification
- item enhancement / refinement
- Item gathering (eg, mining, fishing )

Beyond this I'd like to see skills grow by using the skills, not by skill points.

Anyone else have ideas?
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krismichael
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Post by krismichael »

I'm glad you started this post because skills is something that hasn't really been talked about yet.

In this game since it's all about MANA. I would suggest that skills drain MANA when used. Skills can be anything from Magic spells to non-combat skills like Item Identification. Item Identification for example would use up less MANA points then something like Cast Fire Bolt for example.

I agree with MathGeek that skills shouldn't be aquired by "Skill Points". Instead if you want to learn a magic spell/skill then you go to a magic shop in town and read a magic book to learn a new spell/skill. If you want to learn how to fish you walk up to one of the NPC fishermen and ask them to teach you, etc.

This way players have to explore the world to find new and unique skills to learn that they can only learn from talking with specific NPCs and finding special items like Magic Books, Scrolls, etc.

Maybe you gain some skills for free just by advancing in levels. If you fight alot then you learn how to be a better fighter? So as you advance you gain Fighting skills. If you use an Axe you get better at the Axe. If you use a Sword you get better at a Sword. Kind of like Deux Ex (if I remember correctly). The more you use a specific weapon or skill the better you get at it and the more related skills you can learn.

Any other thoughts on this?
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Rotonen
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Post by Rotonen »

I like the idea of skills getting better when you use them.. But should they also get weaker if you don't use them..?

That aside normal skills (blacksmithing, etc..) should not use mana, but if you want to create anything above the basic items, it consumes mana and can hurt you if you don't have a high enough skill level (higher level, lower possibility of getting hurt), because you cannot properly control the amount of mana flowing through your body. This could be called something like mana fatigue... Just an idea though :)
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Post by bay »

Rotonen wrote:I like the idea of skills getting better when you use them.. But should they also get weaker if you don't use them..?
perhaps this is a wise idea, however do you forget to ride a bike if you don't ride for a year?.. no. you seem to remember and maybe it's just me, but i doesn't seem i degraded my skill at riding.

however, things like attributes may prove to be degradable.. like strength. we all know that if you dont use your muscles regularly that you get weaker. so if some guy is a beefy strength barbarian and he goes and becomes a cleric he would still be physically strong but as time goes on he'll start to get weaker till he reaches a level suitable for his class.

this is different than when you switch classes and just loose or gain strength. one thing those older games never really had.. i can switch a class but i loose my physical attributes?.. gimme a break.
Rotonen wrote: That aside normal skills (blacksmithing, etc..) should not use mana, but if you want to create anything above the basic items, it consumes mana and can hurt you if you don't have a high enough skill level (higher level, lower possibility of getting hurt), because you cannot properly control the amount of mana flowing through your body. This could be called something like mana fatigue... Just an idea though :)
thats an interesting idea, a resistance or ability to control forces through your person. if you dont use it then you get a use tax (perhaps on efficiency or level of direction (power)) until you reach your comfortable quota for the mana skill.

intriquing.

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Post by G_Pinkie »

So basically we are talking about four things here

Class System
Job System
Skill System
Attribute System

These ideas are somewhat related to the mmorpg World of Warcraft

It seems to me so far that these thirng things are intertwined together. Depending on what class you are you could specialise in certain area of jobs which no other class could have, otherwise u could also have jobs which any class could have, Depending on your Job ie herbalist, or miner, fisherman etc you can only get certain unique skills, and these skills can enhance certain attributes ie a miner would be able to increase his strength above lets say ah fisherman who might have more agility.

But i have an idea whereby you could use both a leveling up system and the idea of getting better by training, for example, as you get experience and lvl up your maximum attribute you can get could increase, say u have a maximum of 20 strength at lvl 5, you cannot get more than 20 in strength untill you gain a next lvl which might increase your maximum strength to 25 so then you would have to train to improve your strength from 20 to 25 and so on.
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Skills_

Post by Guest »

Iv been following up on this project for some time now and hope it the best.

as for the skills, i wanna see skills & items that can target other players. like using a potion on a friend or something.
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Post by MathGeek »

Don't really see the point in a job system. If you do a job you get the rewards.

If using a skill needed to do a job improves your stats, then your stats get better.

I think it's better to make things less complicated, and simplify it for everyone.

Any thoughts?
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Post by Impetus »

I think skills should be gained by use, and degrade by underuse. However, skill degradation should have a limit.

For example, you ride a bike when you are 7 years old. By 9 years of age, you can go super fast and still maintain total control over the bicycle. Now, stop riding your bike for 5 years. If you try to ride super fast after 5 years of not riding a bicycle, you will destroy yourself. Trust me; I've done it. Lol.

Here's what I'm proposing. Skills go up through use; using swords will raise Sword; using fire magic will raise Fire Magic; swimming a lot will raise Swimming. However! There should be milestones along the way, where you can't degrade past that point.

For example, I use my sword and raise it to skill level 45. Over time, it will degrade, but it won't go under 15. Later on, I raise my skill to 95, and stop using it. It won't degrade past 50.

Maybe this system needs a little tweaking, but I think it's unique.
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Post by Kyokai »

Skill degredation with milestones seems fair enough, though I don't like the idea of my character degrading if I can't play for a few weeks.

Let's assume that, as in real life, a character would constantly be training each day at his job or skills. My character would get better at things while I'm away, maybe 5% of level exp every day, up to 3 idle days. This is a tiny bit, a maximum of 15% of your level's exp, but it allows a player to get better eventually, even if he has a real life too ( :roll: ).

with that in mind, perhaps you could specify a skill you wanted your character to work on while you were away. That would be nice, with a few limits.
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Post by MathGeek »

The only way a character should advance while you are not playing is if you provide them with access to the needed resources.

for example, if a character has a weight lifting set they could advance their strength if you tell them to concentrate on that. There has to be a limit on how many skills can be trained while you aren't playing.

This also brings up the issue of where a character is when you aren't playing. If they are still around then they may get hungry, need sleep, or interact with other players.

In my opinion this complicates things too much.
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Post by Kyokai »

MathGeek wrote:The only way a character should advance while you are not playing is if you provide them with access to the needed resources.

for example, if a character has a weight lifting set they could advance their strength if you tell them to concentrate on that. There has to be a limit on how many skills can be trained while you aren't playing.
Good idea. I like it. (I agree, the feeding and sleeping thing is getting out of hand though, this isn't tomogachi.) Training skills would definitely be a one-at-a-time thing if we implement it at all.


By the way, the preliminary master skill list is up now. You can check it out at the Wiki board and give some input.
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Post by Bjørn »

I think a player should log off and on together with his pets, and their stats should not change while offline. Unless of course you log off in the middle of a fight in an attempt to flee death, the server should probably still finish the fight for you, but that's something completely different.
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Post by Kyokai »

The main problem with DCs is that it's impossible to tell if a player wanted to disconnect, or if he just has a lousy internet service.

As for training while offline, if the system is implemented, it would be most likely done in conjuntion with a player estate (home) as follows:

If the player logs off in his house, and has necessary training gear, he will be prompted if he wants to train offline. If he replies yes, he will select a skill. For each 8 hours that he is away, he will gain 2% of his skill level's experience, up to 3 cycles (i.e: no more than 6% exp can be gained this way in a stretch). Also, training gear would have a level limit to prevent abuse.
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Post by Bjørn »

Well I still don't agree with training offline, though having to purchase appropriate training gear, having to be in your house with the gear, and limitting the level up to which you can train, does make it a bit easier for me to maybe accept such a feature.

The server doesn't need to tell the difference between a lousy internet connection or a premature on-purpose disconnect, it can handle both cases with the same timeout penalty. In the rare case that somebody could have saved himself out of a fight by using a potion, but was disconnected by his lousy connection preventing him in doing this, the person in question just has bad luck. The same happens if a family member fires up a P2P filesharing application and your input starts lagging severely. Nothing we can do about such cases, we can't start holding hands.

Keep in mind that during the timeout time the player is not going to stand still, just being attacked. I mean to move the system to something similar to RO in that you instruct the server you mean to attack a certain monster. During the timeout the player would fight back as normal, so could still win while the timeout counts down.
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Post by Talaroc »

This is off the topic of conversation, but I just want to comment on the skillsystem page in the wiki.

Categories: I like it, nicely varied.

Weapon skills: As I posted in my first thread here (http://themanaworld.sourceforge.net/php ... .php?t=313), I really don't like to see restricted weapon sets, and I think nonstandard weaponry (eg, stuff you don't see in every RPG; or indeed, some that might not really exist) would be a huge gain. As such, I would encourage a pretty substantial increase here. Even among standard weaponry, you've only included SoM weapons, which leaves out hammers, maces, flails, daggers, staves, various polearms (a spear is not the same as a polearm), thrown knives, nunchuku/sectioned staves, battle fans, and probably more that I haven't thought of. Putting nonstandard weaponry in the same categories as standard is fine, as long as you've got enough categories to not oversimplify things (ex, a person good with an axe isn't necessarily good with a warhammer, and proficiency with a spear doesn't imply equal proficiency with a scythe).

Craft skills: what you've got there is good, for the most part. I would like to see a few others, though; differentiating between shield/armor smithing and weaponsmithing would be a good thing, as would the addition of leatherworking, and perhaps potionmaking. One last one I'd really like to see is deconstruct; breaks down crafted items back into their component parts (see http://themanaworld.sourceforge.net/php ... .php?t=327 for more info on that).

All the rest looks cool to me, except that I think skill leveling should be on a 0-100 scale, not 0-10 (more rewarding for the players because you get new levels faster, more realistic, takes longer to reach top level, each character would be more differentiated).
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