Re: Skills!

[Peter Mardahl <peterm@soda.berkeley.edu>]

In message <MM.770220672.25080.yrsa@ifi.uio.no>, =?iso-8859-1?Q?Bj=F8rn_Georg_L
udvigsen?= writes:

>My idea goes something like this: hp and sp would improve
>automatically when you increase in level, everything else wouldn't.
>Not even saving throws.  You would get a certain amount of skill
>points, which you then could 'spend' in the guild. If you want to
  Several things:
  1)  You get your 'points' by killing monsters, presumably, this
is how you advance in levels.  I disagree that killing monsters
should enable you to become a better lock-picker.  
  2)  I do not like the idea of 'guilds' to which you must go
for advancement.  This REQUIRES a certain map set, and removes
much discretion of the server maintainers.  I dislike the idea
of enforcing any required objects in the maps for playing the game,
because if someone wants to chuck all existing maps and start over,
he MUST put in guilds.  All of them.

>Here, you can learn skills like "General Weapon use", "Broadsword" and
>"Small Shield".  If your "Broadsword" skill is 3, and you'd like to
>improve it, you pay a certain amount of skill points. It's easier to
>learn skills at low levels than at high.

  Why would anyone want to specialize in Broadsword instead of 
General?  Then he'll be handicapped when he finds the Long Sword of
Holy Avenging, which he would DEFINITELY want to use, or some weapon
like the Axe of Biff, or the CSUA Bat.

>at a high skill level (10-20) reduced sp cost (all the way down to
>none) and increased efficiency.

  This is an extremely bad idea.  Omega had a system in which:
players gained mana each level, relearning spells reduced their expense.
Powerful spells quickly become costless, and soon i had a character
capable of killing ANYTHING by frowning at it.  Playing crossfire
would reduce to learning a broadly-applicable spell, and getting
so good at it (zero cost, high effectiveness) that you could kill
anything.

>want to, you can be a Jack-of-all-Trades, but those who devote their
>life and time to Karate will definetly whack your butt. (KAI! *whap*)

  Do I scent an installation of a system which would make it impossible
for characters to succeed alone?  

>The races make Dwarves tough "warriors", and elves not that tough
>"warriors". This is because elves are more slender, and dwarves are
>tough by nature. But try jamming even one of those wiener fingers of a
>dwarf into a lock.

  The race idea is a good one, readily implementable with stat bonuses.

>skills. The race has nothing to do with it, their stats have.

  I agree that stats should behave the same way for different races.

>I have given this much thought, and probably have missed lots of vital
>things (I'm overly exited now), but I would *VERY MUCH* like to see/do
>this if you think it's a good idea. I think it gives Crossfire the
>roleplaying-look it needs. 

>- Bjorn (Sheesh. This was an answer to a "BTW".)

  Bjorn, you and I are aiming in sort of the same direction, but
we have these fundamental disagreements:

  1)  I think that advancement in a skill area should come from
 in-the-field practice of that skill.  You think that it should come
 from in-the-field gain of any type of experience, then paying for
 training.  I happen to think it'll be more fun to be rewarded
 directly for practicing skills than to acquire experience-currency
 in whatever manner, and then spending it on skills.

 2)  You would like to hard-wire guilds into the game.  I think that
 maps should be extremeley flexible, and that there should be very
 few things required in the maps for the server to work properly.

 3)  Your proposal is a lot more complicated than my 4-skill proposal.
 A multitude of new skills would have to be added.  My proposal is
 a good deal of work, but clerics are in the game, mages are in the
 game, and fighting is in the game.  Thieves are NOT in the game.


I suggest that you and I are going in the same direction, however.
My 4-skill proposal is sort of a stripped-down version of your proposal.
mage-cleric-fighting-thief are like general skills in  your description.
Perhaps it might be easier to go to your system FROM mine, rather than
trying to put yours in to start.

I also would like to note that it would be bad if you installed your
system, and made a bunch of skills such as lock-picking, only to
find that there are NO LOCKS in the game to pick!

I think that in the immediate future, our paths are together:
before making radical changes to the basic philosophy of the game,
we should build the prerequisites.  Let's put in the locks to pick
the traps to disarm, the chests to loot, before we install any
system of skills.  Let us first put the things in the game to
which the skills shall be applied, because:

  1)  it won't leave crossfire broken if
we proceed in small steps to our goal but one of us finds our
will to continue the project gone  2)  everyone seems to agree
that adding Thiefly Things is Good,  3)  it serves your skill 
proposal, my skill proposal, AND those who think the current
system is just fine.

Regards,

PeterM