My subjects never make much sense. Anyway, I was wondering which form of skill increase people would prefer.
On one hand, skills can go from 0 to 100 or so, where with a succeesful use of the skill, there is a chance (which gets lower, the higher the skill level gets) of increasing that skill. That's the random version.
The alternative would be to have skills increase, say, from 0 to 1000, but they ALWAYS increase on a successful use of that skill.
Either way, players never actually see those numbers, because they're masked by words describing how experienced they are in a skill.
Which do you prefer?
ID:153929
 Oct 22 2002, 9:02 pm
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Oct 22 2002, 9:03 pm
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Polatrite
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After careful thought and reflection, I think type B would be good. (Don't listen to my pager messages! ;)
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I think the skill range should be fairly large like 0 to 1000 but the amount of skill you gain should be based on how challanging it was to successfully preform the skill.
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I prefer the random version, because I've found that in games where your skill goes up according to how much you practice the skill, it encourages players to just keep practicing the skill and not take time out to socialize. In a system where you have less and less of a chance to advance when using a skill, many players will feel more like taking breaks.
Though if there are so many skills to work on that a player will always have one that's still on the low end of the 1-100 scale, it may be moot. Z | |
Maybe you could have a level system where you can choose a skill to advance when you go up a level, and have a small range (1-10?) Either that or option A
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How about a combination, where your skill goes up a random amount for each success. I'm not sure how you decide whether or not you succeed, but the way I do that is pick a random number, and the number has to be above a certain value to be a success. If that's they way you do it, or a similiar way, maybe you could add to the skill points the amount that you exceed the requirement to succeed.
Either way I think you should always improve your skill when you succeed at it. | |
Option A. It makes mastering a skill difficult but allows a general familiarity with the skill to be gained more easily. Random is also a nice factor because it prevents it from being completely predictable and creates a little more variation in characters.
Option B makes progression equal at all points. Well, that is unless you make the automatic increases less and less as they progress. | |
Im not sure why, but I prefere random. I think I just prefere choas in games rather then the more mechanical systems.
Also, it means that there is less chance of the words becoming like numbers. You wont be able to say "Chop down a hundred trees and you'll be 'very skilled' in woodchopping.", which I really find to be a turn off in games. -DogMan | |
Option C:
You use the random one, but have the constant one running in the backround. This time though, your chances of increasing that skill raise either higher or lower based on the difference between the random and constant ones, and how high the skill is. -DogMan | |
A
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Yep, that's my method. Any use of a skill (successful or insuccessful) will net you:
var/gain = ((learn/50)*(rand(1,100)/1000)/(level/10)) * (max(abs(margin)/20,1)) / 10 gain = min(max(gain, 0.001),0.1) ...points in the skill (this formula typically means that most gains will be in the hundredths range). Learn is your character's Learn attribute (which is a number from 35-85 for most people, and is 55 on the average), level is your current level in that skill (skills have no upper cap, but 100 is considered expert), and margin is the margin of success/failure by the internal rolls (so if you needed a 50, if you rolled a 75 (a failure) you'd have a margin of 25 -- ditto if you rolled a 25 (a success)). That basically means that as you get higher along, you're going to get more and more into trivial gains. But regardless of circumstance, you'll be utterly guaranteed of gaining at least 0.001 points (1000 attempts to rise in ability), and will never gain more than 0.1 points (10 attempts to rise in ability). It also takes into account that people learn from their mistakes as well as learn from their successes -- the greater the margin of success/error in your skill roll, the greater amount you learn (a margin of success of 50 will net you a bonus of 2.5x!). | |