[pythian] Re: DESIGN - Experience
- From: Darryl Long <dlong@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pythian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 08:13:23 -0400
> In the system Darryl proposed we can hide most information
> from the player,
> "forced" him to concentrate on gaining new skills while
> playing instead of playing to just gain new skills.
I agree. I would like to hide many things from the player, but it is
difficult to say what players will accept as hidden or not. Some players
prefer to micro-manage their characters. I don't propose any solutions for
this, at least, not yet.
> I remember myself become greedy for magic power and rising my
> "destruction
> magic" skill by casting fireballs on the inoncent wall in tavern
> of Daggerfall. ;-)
I see this also as a problem. I was considering a limitation where you only
gain an advantage to your skill when you use the skill "successfully".
Thus, when you are using the Sword skill, you only increase the skill when
you succeed with the hit. With the Fireball example, you would only
increase when you actually hit an enemy.
But this would still not prevent players from killing cats and dogs just to
gain skills. I think the only way to prevent "greedy" playing is to hide
skill information from players. As Mike and n30n have suggested, instead of
showing the player his specific values (e.g. 81.43534534%) we could show him
something like: POOR, AVERAGE, GOOD, VERY GOOD, EXCELLENT, L337
> Reading books is a good thing too (as we all know, I hope
> :)). But from my
> point of view me reading books can give a good start but if
> you have learned
> a lot you are harder to get something new from the book. Here we have
> dependancy quite similar to finding good trainer (the book's
> author in our
> case).
Similar to your suggestion, I propose we have a "skill percentage" in every
book. This would be the "skill percentage" of the author when he writes the
book. For you to learn from the book, the book's skill must be a certain
amount higher than your own, the very same criteria as with training
directly from a person. This will solve the problem of learning too much
from books.
I also agree with limiting the player to learning only once from a book.
His skill will not increase further if he reads it again.
> And the last point on books and reading. Some skills
> definitely depends on
> practice and training much more then on reading books.
I agree. When you read a book about combat, you do not actually increase
your combat skill. Instead, you increase your "skill potential", but you
still must "use" the skill to increase your skill.
To use my earlier email's Sword skill example, you finish your training at
40% Sword skill. You can increase your skill to 48% with "use" until you
must train again, and this we will call your "skill potential". Perhaps
reading a book would increase your skill potential to 52%, so that you may
get to 52% skill via "use".
This means for each skill we have (at least) two values: one for your
"actual skill", and one for your "skill potential". When you "use" your
skill, your actual skill increases. When you train, both your actual skill
and your skill potential increase. When you read a book, either both will
increase, or only one will increase, depending on the skill.
So for the Sword skill, reading a Sword book only increases your skill
potential. By reading a Necromancy book, both your actual skill and your
skill potential increase (not necessarily by the same amount). These values
can vary based on the book, and skill of the books author, the skill
described, or anything we want.
You'll remember that the higher your skill potential from your actual skill,
the easier it is for use to increase your skill through use. That is, if
your skill is 40% and your potential is 48%, it is easy to increase your
skill, but the closer you get to 48%, the slower your skill increases
through use. By reading a book and increasing your skill potential, the
system easily and naturally makes it easier for use to gain more of your
skill through use.
This book system allows us to control the players ability to learn from a
book, while modelling some element of reality. You can not read enough to
defeat an army, but you may learn the tools to do so, and make it easier for
yourself to become more skilled.
The only thing I can think of to resolve is what to do if a 20% skill player
finds a 80% skill book and reads it. What should happen? I don't have any
ideas right now, and I must stop writing this email now!
> But I think if we desinged such rules and describe major
> essential of them
> to player it should be very cool.
I agree, and it is unique to our game!
Darryl
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