Skill-raising: how to fix it without killing realism and without breaking the game

[SilearFlare]

Let's face it, Cata's skill system is broken and we've lived with it for too long to ignore it. Everyone knows how it works: Get to 1 electronics(before you could just get a flashlight and disassemble/assemble it until you got 1, but luckily, everything in the electronics book has been booked, more or less) by reading a magazine or what's a transistor, both easily found in any gorcery shop/electronics store. Then, start disassembling flashlights until you understand how they work and can reassemble them, which doesn't take much. Repeat ad nauseam to get to 10+ electronics. By disassembling and reassembling a goddamn flashlight. Realistic, right?

here's an hypotetical solution.

"The booking is great, but learning is still pretty fucked up when you can just disassemble flashlights or directional antennas and remake them again until you're a genius of electroics. Same goes with cooking meat. You can still cook hundreds of steaks and somehow learn how to make a long island tea and, god forbid, a batch of mutagen. By those standards, every chef should be a A+ level scientist with 50 cooking skiill.

My Idea was to make it so that if you boil water(which has difficulty 0 and prerequisites 0) you only get up to 1 skill point in cooking. 1 recipes(like flashlights) should give you training only until 2. Basically "level of the recipe+1", since leaving it to "level of the recipe up to 99% of the same recipe" wouldmake it impossible to learn new recipes to get to level 3 and so forth. So it would go like this Boil water until level 1 Skill doesn't increase anymore, but hey, look! You can start making some things, like lemonade, or Irish coffee if you feel more like it. Then you get to two and so forth so forth.

It works with all skills. It wouldn't be a permanent soultion, but it would be a good placeholder until we get our shit together on the skill system and it's not underpowered. It's more realistic, but not crippling at the same time."

That's one suggestion.

next, we have "Why not just make exponential curve with rounddown for crafting? So that item requiring current level gives 8%, level-1 4%, 2%, 1%, and finally, most importantly, 0%. Like in some RPGs you completely stop getting exp from weak enemies.

The problem is in current exp implementation, crafting gives static number of exp points with every level requiring more points collected, so I think it would require extensive rework of exp system."

Then: "You could just have skill ceilings for practice that require reading certain books to move past, and only a few basic recipes that can be learned without reading. You're less likely to come up with how to make all but the most basic recipes on your own.

That way books aren't just an alternative to manual leveling and libraries are more valuable locations."

And "> reading be required to graduate you past a certain point of practice What about the opposite too? Practice fills exp pools, separate for each skill; reading (or studying with NPC) converts exp into levels. Higher levels require both new books and more exp. That would make both theory and practice important, and offset illiterate crippling (when NPCs are finally done)

And on a somewhat related topic, I find weapon types distinctions weird. What's the difference between shooting SMG in single mode and shotgun with slugs at the same distance? Here is how I would implement it: Weapon types:

Handguns (includes one-handed shotguns) Rifle-like (includes crossbows, SMGs etc) Shoulder launchers (and add some shoulder-mounted machineguns, railguns etc to fill the niche) Bows Shoot types: Gunslingery Marksmanship Burst Archery Where first two are selected by range, last one applies to 40mm grenades and similar. So every time you shoot you train two skills"

And finally "I'm mostly suggesting that reading be required to graduate you past a certain point of practice, so that scavving the right book is as valuable as scavving the right part or medicine. Also makes illiterate a "jack of all, master of none" disadvantage and quite crippling.

Another idea is that only certain crafting recipes or types of attack level certain skills after you gain a certain level of skill. Like swinging a branch will get you to Melee 3 but you'll need to practice with a sword of some sort to get you to level 5, or something similar. Easy to mark on the item and it doesn't bar you from using preferred weapons, just forces you to branch out a bit if you want to become Musashi with a hockey stick.

Neither are a real fix if you guys aren't happy with how leveling works overall but it would keep players from skyrocketing to mastery doing basic recipes without a little footwork. IMO the skill system needs an organic sense of limitations to match its organic sense of growth."

Keep in mind that these are just some examples took from a brainstorming session: we need Your help to fix Cataclysm's skill system. Point out the flaws, point out the strong points, explain some new methods You think are right.

[VampyreLord]

The skill system is really horrid right now. Reading is really not needed; why do you need books to get melee to 3 or fabrication to 5 when you can just do basic stuff to get there without even getting outside your house. Not to mention the overpowered throwing skill, you only need a handful of rocks to kill basically anything.

[kevingranade]

For throwing and ranged skills I have an idea similar to the concept of limiting skill level by the level of the task. My idea is to limit skill gain based on the accuracy of the weapon used, on the basis that if your weapon is less accurate than you are, you can't get feedback on how well you're shooting.

[KA101]

Hey, I just booked up all the chems, mutagen, and drugs. (Because good luck knowing how to make meth by roasting meat.)

FWIW.

As for the general idea, I thought we kinda had that decaying system in place already, but it might stand to have a recheck. Making reading any more mandatory than booking makes it, IMO, makes Illiterate a 10-point trait, if not outright unplayable.

As for melee weapons, well, I'd suggest that lousy weapons might well be better for skill development than good ones: you get used to having the weight, etc so when it's removed you're that much better.

[VampyreLord]

@KA101: We need to book more stuff. Mainly electronics.

[Zireael07]

Booking is a good idea provided you can find said books.

[VampyreLord]

@Zireael07: That's obviously the point.

[SilearFlare]

@KA101 And as I said, I really like the booking, but if, for example, you sit by a river/pool and you have a fire burning/hotplate and a pot, you can increase your cooking skill from 0 to 10 just by boiling water. That said, with that last one booking you won't be able to do much about it, but you're still giving the player, who now has 10 in his cooking skill, which puts him on par to several mad scientists rolled together, to learn how to make meth and mutagens easily if he ever comes by the books. Poor sod's been boiling water for days, how come he knows how to tamper with DNA samples? The same thing applies for the rest. As I said, booking is great, but it's not the final solution.

[VampyreLord]

Of course booking are not the solution. Skills are overall ridiculous, like the example you gave above.

[KA101]

@VampyreLord I think I've hit most all the Electronics already. Dunno if you're playing the latest.

@tyrael93 I'm not unsympathetic to that issue. I think it's overstated a bit--that's a lot of days spent boiling water and if people are doing that then we have other ways to discourage that activity (spawn critters, fatigue/focus penalties, etc) than simply requiring that they find a book.

The decreasing-efficacy would work, IMO, and as I said I think we've got that around already. Maybe it needs tweaked; I haven't specifically looked at it. I can't justify imposing an actual hard skill-cap because someone only has practical experience, though.

[VampyreLord]

@KA101: I think stuff like batteries and flashlights shouldn't be auto-learned.

[KA101]

Why should batteries and flashlights not be auto-learned? Auto-learn is for things that someone with that skill level could reasonably be expected to either know as part of that knowledge, or work out from that knowledge.

Hooking a power supply to a filament seems utterly straightforward. Even if I booked it (and I can't justify that), I couldn't justify taking off its decomp_learn. So "flashlight meditators" would maybe need two or three flashlights to start going Ommm.

(Or, they could just play the bloody game and accept that perhaps they won't have top-flight skills from the off? That's what I did when I had the time to play!)

Batteries can be argued; however, I'm generally inclined to let people have some wriggle room. Some folks play Illiterate and though I certainly don't cater to them, I'd as soon not make their game unplayable.

In general, if it's 0 or 1 skill, my question is "why shouldn't this be auto-learned?" and at 3 or more, it's "why should this be auto-learned?" 2 is the tipping point. I do take playability into consideration--Archery benefited from that because people playing no-city really need something better than a self bow and field-points.

So. Why shouldn't flashlights, batteries, etc be auto-learned?

[VampyreLord]

@KA101: Me saying "auto-learned" is a way of saying "they should be booked" if you haven't notice.

As for the matter why shouldn't they be auto-learned; well, an ordinary person cannot craft them easily, can he? even with enough electronics skill and if you are feeling sympathy for "illiterate" players don't they chose to play as illiterate and they knew the consequences? how the hell would an illiterate person know how to create a battery in the first place? I'm sure I can't.

Also crafting batteries and flashlights isn't a mandatory in game as to make it "unplayable", you can found those easily everywhere.

[CIB]

... I don't see you mentioning the simple solution of keeping track of what kinds of items someone already has assembled/disassembled and then simply giving lower and lower skill bonuses for that particular item. Because that'd be really simple, and also what you'd expect. If I take apart and re-assemble a flashlight a million times, I'm not going to get much better at electronics than if I did it 100 times. But if I haul a whole electronics store to my base, and take each item apart to see how it works, that indeed SHOULD give quite a significant skill raise.

[Headjack]

I feel like certain recipies should be free with certain professions, like tweaker starting with methamphetamine, or traits like cannibal starting with the roast human one.

[kevingranade]

Cannibals starting with a few recipes is reasonable, but does your average tweaker know how to make meth? I'm pretty sure they don't.

[Zireael07]

Booking most high-end recipes solved most of the problems. I agree some professions should get certain recipes as a bonus. However, there is one problem remaining: I thought we agreed lvl 10 is the max? We can still raise skill way past it, with no real reason or bonuses for doing so.

[KA101]

"Better reliability when making high-end crafts" (alpha serum, anyone?) and "installing more than one engine" seems like reason/bonus for max-breaking skills. YMMV.

[Zireael07]

Alpha serum and installing more than one engine are good explanations, but these hold only for cooking and mechanics. What about other skills?

[KA101]

Unarmed: mutant attacks come out much more often with good DX and good skill. 10+ and you're looking at a one in 2 (or one in 1 :D ) chance.

[Sheco]

I support capping the experience you get for low level recipes, that would stop the mindless grinding.

Moving most recipes to books would effectively make illiterate a dead end trait.

I propose recipe dependencies, you can autolearn how to make higher end recipes once you understand enough about certain lower end recipes, you will then have a ladder to climb learning easy stuff, once you understand the basics your character will have access to more complex recipes.

If you want to improve certain skill you really need to understand it.

A rough example:

• You learn how to make an amplifier circuit after you make 10 antennas.
• You learn how to make a transponder circuit after you make 30 antennas and 10 amplifier circuits.
• You learn how to make a flashlight after you make 50 antennas, 20 amplifier circuits and 10 transponder circuits.

On the other side, to reduce grinding boredom, it would be helpful to be able to make recipes in batches, instead of one by one, you choose to make 5 antennas.

[dwarfkoala]

I feel like that would be excessively tedious. I think that perhaps a chance of learning recipes after crafting items which require at least as much skill as the unlearned recipe would be more appealing. I do not want to grind antennas in order to learn how to make a flashlight, especially if it's going to take 50 antennas to do so.

Of course, some recipes would be non-learnable except by books, as those recipes require such in depth knowledge of the mechanics of the skill that it'd be impossible to learn them by mere experimentation. Cases in point: advanced laboratory serums, CBMs, charge rifles.

[KA101]

Dwarfkoala's right: the whole point of booking things up was to reduce the incentive to grnd grnd grnd. Sorry, sduran.

[Sheco]

No, you guys are right.

One of my priorities is avoiding grinding, but I would also like it if there was some incentive to use different recipes instead of the same ones over and over.

[dwarfkoala]

In my hypothetical situation i've outlined above, the incentive to use different recipes would be that you have to be doing a recipe higher than or equal in skill difficulty to that unlearned recipe (assuming it's learnable with just experience) in order to learn it. You can't just flashlight meditate and learn how to make every item.

In addition, we should really consider getting a system in place where you cannot gain skills when doing very easy recipes, like getting to level 10 electronics via flashlight meditation.

[Sheco]

@dwarfkoala I agree with reducing the experience for crafting recipes lower than the skill level.

But still, there will only be 1 favorite recipe per level. You will still be grinding a craft per level.

Another idea would be to have a system similar to reading books, but it would be called "practice". You need certain amount of components and will keep crafting/disassembling some hypotetical recipe until you level up. Each practice run there's a chance of destroying some components.

This way there's no "recipe" to grind, no grinding at all. Just like reading a book, but without books. It might take hours (in-game time) to level up a skill practicing it.

It is harder to implement, of course, so I can see falling back to grinding a recipe per level.

[Zireael07]

The practice idea was already being discussed on the forums: http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=3728.0

[Sheco]

I really like the ideas in that forum post, I think it makes a lot of sense.

[kevingranade]

One of the suggested changes has been adopted, namely capping skill gain from activities based on the difficulty of the activity.