Illarion.org

I had an idea about skill gain that I think might work well for Illarion.

I would like to hear others opinions about this system, and also if anyone else has had similar ideas that I just did not see.

If the VBU already has a good solution for skilling, then I would still like to hear opinions about this in general.

The idea is that you would first take a skill and determine how many in-game hours it should take a dedicated player to max.
Then devide that number up in scaling increments so that higher skill levels take more time to learn.
Then, find out how long it takes to complete 1 action (ie each resource used in crafting, each blow hit/defended)
Then calculate how many actions could be performed in each time interval on a skill by skill basis. Then devide that number by 5.

I think it is best desribed with an example:
Lets say that we want it to take 2 hours of in game time to gain a level.
Lets also say that you could perform 720 actions in that time frame.
You would need 144 actions and 2 hours to gain a level. Time would need to start from the first action since the last level in the skill.

That would help level the playing field between powergames and RP players.

So if a blacksmith is busy making chain mail and his friend says "Could you help me hunt down this bandit?" the blacksmith would know that taking time away from "skilling" would not hurt their skill gain.

Mecanically this would be accomplished as follows. The first action you make since making a level would start a counter that would count the actions complete. At the same time it would also start an online clock that would increment as long as you are online.
When both the timer and the counter are equal or higher than the requirements for the next level, you would gain a level, the counter would reset to 0 and the timer would stop and reset.

I RP sometimes, I PG sometimes, sometimes I do both, and other times I sit around just smoking sibanac, so I don't like that idea...

reasons:
-some people don't have several hours to spend online each day

-newer players/characters would take days to be able to do anything

-new players would give up since they couldn't do anything

-it would drive more people to use multiple skills to avoid the cap

-it would ruin RP if noone could do anything only talk about doing things

The early levels would only take from 30 seconds to a few minutes time wise. The example I gave was for high level skill.

The time element should be close to the amount of time it should take someone to gain the same level currently, with some adjustment for balance.

Also, you would not need to spend the time online in one sitting, the server would remember the time when you log off.

The idea being that instead of grinding for 8 hours skilling so you can gain that last level in smithing, you could just spend 8 hours in game where you were smithing at least 20% of the time. There would be no penalty if it took you longer to reach the required number, you would just have to smith some more after the time was up.

So if you fell in combat and lost skill that took you three days to gain, you would still have to take three days to get it back, but you would not have to sacrifice everything else you wanted to do in game just to get that lost level back. Just 20% of that time.

As for having nothing to do, you would still be able to perform the tasks, just that past a certain point, it would not give you any faster skill gain.

You do make a good point though about multiple skills being raised at once. I am not sure if that would really be a problem, if you were never told in game when you hit the appropriate number, you would not know when to switch skills.

While your thoughts are appreciated, we're already due for our VBU which is likely going to include some changes to the way skills are gained and how they are represented. Until the full details on the new aspects f the game come to light there isn't much point in designing and theorizing a new skill system. If you do have a proposal though you can go to Mantis and place it there for the Dev's to consider. You can find a link on the homepage. its not likely that your ideas will be given anything more then a brief glance here in the general forum.

I fully understand. This idea came to me without planing, and I was only interested in feedback. I will of course wait for the VBU before even thinking of suggesting this as an actual proposal. I am hopeful that if they have already implemented a different skilling system, that it would be better thought out than this.

With the VBU, a (much more) sophisticated solution will be released. However, it will be a much more simple solution than even the current skill system. Sometimes, simplicity is more sophisticated than countless lines of code and database tables .

The spirit of this solution is somehow related to the original proposal, the key question was "How long should it take until you gain a level and how can we 'control' this time?". This yields that the number of clicks becomes less important compared to now while the time spent online becomes more important. And of course, we'll dump that retarded skill cap crap.

For those who ask for some more background: We'll use the residual control deviation of a seriously under-tuned proportional controller, the required movepoints per action and one lead attribute to scale the skillgain which follows a logarithmic learning curve. So if you want to discuss about skillgain seriously you'll have to know what that stuff means .

Estralis Seborian wrote: For those who ask for some more background: We'll use the residual control deviation of a seriously under-tuned proportional controller, the required movepoints per action and one lead attribute to scale the skillgain which follows a logarithmic learning curve. So if you want to discuss about skillgain seriously you'll have to know what that stuff means .

What Estralis is trying to say is, every time you do something IG, Nitram rolls a dice, and then tells the game how many points to give you.

Five million points buys you a pony.

OMG TURNY?!

Nitram does not play dice.

-Albert Einstein

Estralis Seborian wrote:Nitram does not play dice.

-Albert Einstein

Hes not playing, he's "editing"