Slowing the rate of skill gain

[I-am-Erk]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Skill gain in this game is presently broken. This is likely to be controversial in some circles, but we know it's true. For example, it takes 3 minutes in game to advance to skill level 1 from untrained, and in general early skill levels are gated somewhat by the time it takes to obtain practice recipes and crafting books and things, but the experience gain itself is trivially quick. This causes a large number of knock-on effects:

• Rapid level-ups mean that it is hard to reward players for missions. Any reasonable physical reward is something they can probably obtain and craft themselves. If it is hard to reach high levels of tailoring, for example, then an NPC who can repair your gear becomes valuable and can be used as a mission target.
• Rapid level-ups mean that NPC followers are superfluous. However, if it takes a long time to learn a major skill, then NPC followers can fill in your skill gaps and form the backbone of a good team.
• Combat skill rising to exponential heights contributes heavily to stagnation of the mid-late game as there's little left to do to get better. In turn this leads to monster evolutions getting kind of ridiculous, quite fast, and soon in order to challenge players, we're making 30-meter tall metal zombies wielding skyscrapers.
• Players continue to operate under the not-intended attitude that their starting avatar is supposed to be able to learn to master everything in the cataclysm. Really, we want a game where your starting avatar feels like a normal, limited person who has to rely on allies to be able to do everything they want to do. We still want it to be possible to do that stuff... but no one person should be a master tailor, master blacksmith, master mechanic, master builder, and phd level organic chemist. Especially not in two weeks.
• The meta actively rewards players who start as strange weirdos who have virtually no starting knowledge except in specific rare, weird areas that are helpful in-game but don't represent what most people would know. It's easy to get skill, so why put points into anything besides what's hard to find books for?

Solution you would like.

Skill gain needs to be slowed down enormously. The correct set point is up for debate but in my opinion:

• level 1 skill from 0 should take a day of dedicated work, or a few days of scattered reading and practice. Note that yes, this means if you start as someone who is unable to boil an egg, it will take you a long time to figure out those basics. That's because starting with 0 skill in something as fundamental as cooking is similar to starting the game with the Illiterate flaw. If you don't want this flaw, the solution is to not start out with a serious handicap. This should be relayed to the player during character creation. (note: the time here would vary depending on stuff like focus. However I'm picturing about 8-12 hours if you grind. If you spread it over a few days the actual time invested should be less due to changes recommended below)
• level 2 and 3 should take similar to, or a little less than getting level 1 in the first place. Once you hit the fundamentals, getting started is a bit easier. An average player who doesn't grind it out should reach level 3 after 2-3 weeks of gameplay. Someone who decides it's absolutely necessary to get there should hit level 3 after a few days. Note though that at this point, changes described below should I hope be making it abundantly clear that grinding is inefficient and you should be getting up and doing other things.
• level 4, 5, and 6 should become much harder, long enough that grinding becomes a wildly suboptimal strategy. How long this is is up for debate. I think it should be a few in-game weeks between level up, but that should be weeks where you're using the skill regularly and not grinding.
• Beyond level 6 should be ranks you don't really expect to reach in the average playthrough unless you started higher. It should still be possible, but getting from level 0 to level 8 should be something reserved for very long term games. (Note that by this I mean if you start at a decent level, which should be more common, it's still very attainable to get to higher heights. Note that this does not mean 6 is a hard cap, just that if you start at 0, you're probably not planning to go up past that.)

As best I can tell, proficiencies seem to be OK for the moment. These should represent a way to get lateral advancement so that there are still ways to 'level up' when your high level skill won't improve.

Recommended steps to reach this point

1. Adjust starting professions to encourage players to begin at higher levels. This should be an entire issue of its own, and some PRs have already moved us this way, but in general it should be fine for a normal-to-weak starting build to have a couple fairly high skills in the 4-6 range and a wide range of skills at lower levels. What I'd like to see ideally is the use of avatar age as a 'currency' for this, so the higher skills you choose at start, the older your starting character must be. I'd also like to see some of the higher level or more rare professions gated behind interesting or fun meta advancement, so if you want to be a master tailor you need to have done something in game before it unlocks as a starting option (note: the achievement in question should absolutely not be "reach level x in skill". that's boring and grindy).
2. Sanity check that there are some (perhaps default-on) backgrounds for basic adult skills everyone should have, such as "driver's license" giving 1 level of driving, and "simple home cooking" giving one level of cooking. this is, amazingly, already done. Thanks, fris0uman!
3. Adjust recruitable NPC skills. Diversify our starting dynamic NPC stat blocks so that there are many more of them and they have more specific skills. Rather than meeting a "cowboy" you'd meet a "plumber" with appropriate skills and proficiencies. This is a big one and also should be a pretty fun one. it could go along with giving NPCs some unique character and dialogue.
4. along with the above, we need to ensure NPC's in party are actually assisting with tasks they should help with. This could probably be done via a dialogue option, "help me out with tasks" that would have them take over if their skill is higher, but could be turned off if you're trying to learn yourself.
5. Ensure that skill descriptions make it clear that level 0 is very low, eg in character creation, as these are currently framed as "average". Really 1-3 is an average/beginner knowledge, 4-6 is a skilled level, and 7-10 are experts approaching mastery. The design doc has more information breaking this down more precisely.
6. Take a look at existing recipes that are hard-gated to skill and consider some ways to make them accessible at lower skill levels, ideally without clogging the crafting menu more than it already is. (see conversation in this thread starting about here)
7. Fix focus. #53372 is still in my opinion a relevant and not that hard to implement solution that changes focus to reward smaller bursts of learning followed by doing other things. This should help a bit to reduce the desire to grind. In this model, whenever you practice something you get "pooled" xp that is distributed over the course of the next few hours, encouraging you to do some practicing and then go out and do something else.
8. Add more static NPCs with useful skills and associated quests, eg. helping you craft advanced gear so that you don't feel like you need those skills on one character every game. We should guarantee that certain fundamentals in game can be found, such as a tailor who can help repair your gear, and we should tie these to both trade and story arcs. This will make it so that grinding to tailor 10 is less of a necessity and more of a playstyle choice, one that can be balanced against the desire to have other high level skills.
9. Break out the old nerf bat and earn your keep in the salt mines. In other words at this stage, with the above steps done, we can examine where skill rates are at and see about nerfing them. Changing focus may have already substantially adjusted them (I have a suspicion focus buffs are actually bugged currently and are causing the current out of control gains), so it remains to be seen how drastic a change will actually be needed.

Dealing with salt

Carried to its conclusion, this will cause a lot of frustration. Any big change to the meta does; I hope we can minimize that frustration with careful development. That, plus goal planning, is part of why I am putting it up here. There is no way to eliminate this; for some people, levelling up fast is what the game is about. Unfortunately it was never supposed to take a couple minutes to gain a bunch of levels, this is bugged behaviour and it does have to be fixed. However, I'm hoping that by flagging it early and addressing the things that should be put in place while we change this, it will help people adjust in advance of upcoming huge shifts.

If this change is concerning to you, consider looking in to ways to contribute some of the things that will mitigate it. For example, help to audit important tasks that are locked behind too high of a skill barrier. Adding recruitable or quest-giving NPCs that can fix gaps in your avatar's skill base is another great way to help. Ultimately (that is to say, possibly years down the road) I hope that we can replace the skill-gain-grind with instead a game where the early play portion is a matter of tracking down and finding allies who can fill the gaps your avatar has in their knowledge base, which started at a nice high level.

Describe alternatives you have considered.

The exact set point of skill gains is very fluid and debatable at this point, which is why I've left it vague.

It may be a good idea to have NPC trainers able to specifically accelerate the 0-1 training speed, but I'm not certain about that.

My own thoughts on how to change focus aren't the only way, there are other options out there and some are simpler.

Ultimately though, there's no alternative to the basic fact that skill gain needs to be a lot slower.

Additional context

All this has been a very long winded way to say "I hate fun and I hate the players". (If you took this last joke seriously, as I see many people have, please don't bother to comment)

[Alm999]

-- It would be great if NPCs were any good. I personally do not know a single RPG where NPC can do the talking in place of PC, say if your character has only 6 in "social" while your follower has 9. Moreover, as great as NPC may be, his/her "swimming" (AKA "athletics") is still his/hers, not your character's and NPCs do not need said skill (they don't use stamina), while PC does.

-- Also, unless I'm wrong, only PCs skill determine whether you can hotwire a car, remove/install equipment and so on.

-- As far as I know, there is no way to tell your NPC follower to pick a lock or disarm a bear trap.

Long story short: current NPC implementation is quite rudimentary and effectively stripping PC away from the ability to attain high level of skill (and setting outright prohibitive time requirements is denial in all but name) will render the game quite unplayable (unless people just debug in all the needed skills).

I must confess, I don't get the idea of enforcing even more grind as a means to "prolong game's fun". Other end-game activities can be introduced to set end-game goals, like the ability to construct "environmental purifiers" (structures that purge ecosystem from extra-dimensional invaders), organizing your own society (that would require seeking NPCs with certain backstories/proficiencies, like "Teacher", "Engineer", "Medical Doctor", "Economist" and so on): a PC can know a lot of things, but (s)he can't be everyone and everywhere at the same time… I think that would be more immersive incentive to rely on other NPCs than artificial numbers in character sheet.

[I-am-Erk]

Even in the absence of the ability to ask a more experienced NPC to do a task for you - which is quite easy to add - we have the ability in game already to swap between characters in the right circumstances, and more of it would be welcome. Anywhere where it becomes clear your followers aren't correctly helping you out with the skills they have is a bug, and should be fixed.

However, you're simply not supposed to have a single character on a given playthrough who is a smooth-talker, and a lockpicker, and a skilled mechanic, and knows how to handle bear traps, and is a good butcher, and can read advanced science notes. Maybe you've got a host of NPCs and support people to do that, or maybe you are forced to solve your problems another way. This game already has numerous solutions to any given problem, but often it doesn't come up because it's trivially easy to pick the optimal one and grind up the skill to do it.

The mindset of this "enforcing even more grind" is precisely the problem. It should be possible to gain skills, of course, but when the first solution to a given problem is seen as "I now need to become an expert locksmith" then we've failed. If you're not a locksmith and you encounter a locked door, you should start looking for some other way through it, not start studying lockpicking for ten minutes.

[Alm999]

What you described is basically a "party-based RPG" with different characters covering each other's needs. I'm fine with that personally, but… C:DDA has started out as a single PC "roguelike" experience. Party management, NPC AI routines even NPC controlling… Lots of things need to be changed. It looks like an attempt to re-forge the game into entirely different beast.

To put things into perspective: currently even bringing NPCs into vaguely dangerous location is most certainly a death sentence. NPCs constantly charge into attack against superior force or flee for whatever reason, yell and complain in situations where sound is deadly (slime pits), and generally lack judgement. Ability to bring "nerdy hacker" with you into a lab or a squad of ninjas to stealth-loot a military base would require precise direct control of each and every action of NPC followers.

Ooh… making "Wasteland" out of "C:DDA" is not an easy task…

[anoobindisguise]

Should certain skills "cross train"? Like if you're a talented rifleman but never picked up a handgun or shotgun, it's easier than usual to learn those skills. Or melee making it easier to pick up bashing, stabbing, cutting and vice versa.

[ghost]

What you described is basically a "party-based RPG" with different characters covering each other's needs. I'm fine with that personally, but… C:DDA has started out as a single PC "roguelike" experience. Party management, NPC AI routines even NPC controlling… Lots of things need to be changed. It looks like an attempt to re-forge the game into entirely different beast.

To put things into perspective: currently even bringing NPCs into vaguely dangerous location is most certainly a death sentence. NPCs constantly charge into attack against superior force or flee for whatever reason, yell and complain in situations where sound is deadly (slime pits), and generally lack judgement. Ability to bring "nerdy hacker" with you into a lab or a squad of ninjas to stealth-loot a military base would require precise direct control of each and every action of NPC followers.

Ooh… making "Wasteland" out of "C:DDA" is not an easy task…

a little bit off topic but CDDA having the option to go into bird-eye view and control multiple people at once would genuinely be so cool and fun.

[I-am-Erk]

Should certain skills "cross train"? Like if you're a talented rifleman but never picked up a handgun or shotgun, it's easier than usual to learn those skills. Or melee making it easier to pick up bashing, stabbing, cutting and vice versa.

We already have Marksmanship to represent that, and also the proficiency system for non-combat skills. I'll leave the fine tuning part to people who know more about marksmanship though.

[I-am-Erk]

To put things into perspective: currently even bringing NPCs into vaguely dangerous location is most certainly a death sentence.

While our NPCs are definitely dumb as bricks, I've never really found this myself. However, as always, this isn't a reason to not use NPCs more, it's a reason to identify what's killing them and get them to stop doing it. Individual NPC behaviour fixes aren't beginner level code, but they're not impossibly difficult either.

[Skerald]

I see you covered your bases with the salt comment, but unless a lot changes this would significantly reduce the fun for me.

The fantasy of a slightly unhinged, unfettered, inhumanly motivated and fearless survivor reaching heights not possible in the current world and surpassing similarly big challenges is a big part of the appeal of cdda for me. Transhumanism like with all the mutagens.

Combat skill levels also are not very impactful at the moment, since the most common enemies do not dodge and later damage increases rarely reduce the hits required to kill an opponent. Everything truly dangerous gets shot anyway and most dangerous things are huge and easy to shoot. Dodge skill could be considered detrimental currently.

Also with the speed of grinding skills substantially reduced, it might reach a point where doing it is simply not worth it. What would a player do then? Scour the map for npcs meanwhile accumulating an ever increasing pile of unusable garbage or since you can not modify or repair a vehicle, leave all that loot where you found it, keeping a mental map of the places you will have to backtrack to?

Finding a good npc with the skills you need, would probably just elicit a feeling of "I can finally play the game!", instead of genuine joy. This would not increase the difficulty of the late game, but only heighten the tedium of getting there.

I suggest implementing this as a value you can change during world creation, so fun fiends like me can change it to something fantastic and people desiring a slower, perhaps more realistic experience can enjoy it as well.

[TheShadowFerret]

The meta actively rewards players who start as strange weirdos who have virtually no starting knowledge except in specific rare, weird areas that are helpful in-game but don't represent what most people would know. It's easy to get skill, so why put points into anything besides what's hard to find books for?

I thought the plan for this was "yeet the points some time after #64697 was merged for being arbitrary"

[I-am-Erk]

The fantasy of a slightly unhinged, unfettered, inhumanly motivated and fearless survivor reaching heights not possible in the current world and surpassing similarly big challenges is a big part of the appeal of cdda for me

I feel for you, but that's always been incompatible with the design goal. We're not building a post apocalyptic power fantasy. The goal is to make it feel like you're a person actually surviving in an unbelievably weird apocalypse.

[Fris0uman]

The fantasy of a slightly unhinged, unfettered, inhumanly motivated and fearless survivor reaching heights not possible in the current world and surpassing similarly big challenges is a big part of the appeal of cdda for me

I feel for you, but that's always been incompatible with the design goal. We're not building a post apocalyptic power fantasy. The goal is to make it feel like you're a person actually surviving in an unbelievably weird apocalypse.

There will probably still be room to add trait/artefact/bionics to be an unnaturally good learner I guess, and if not in vanilla maybe in a mod. This looks like a good ground for a perk for exemple. Making learning fast a special reward instead of the norm seems extra interesting to me.

[PatrikLundell]

I'm not opposed to most of the suggestion as such, but things have to be done in a reasonable order, i.e. make sure replacement strategies are available at the time skill progression is nerfed, rather than leading with nerfing skill progression and then slowly and gradually add the means to deal with it later.

Thus:

• Lead with the introduction of useful recruitable/employable NPCs. They cause no harm in the current game, even though many may find them to be of little value when they still can do everything themselves.
• Follow up by making NPCs useful in dangerous situations. If you strip away the ability of the PC to deal with danger by nerfing their ability to become skilled and get good equipment, compensate by making it possible for the group to deal with enemies. This is difficult, so it might be reasonable to nerf crafting at a different (earlier) time than activity oriented skills, which may lead to two parallel progression systems for a significant amount of time until unification may be reasonable.
• As far as I understand PC character swapping is currently not a main game option. It probably will need to be made a normal main game functionality, especially during the (probably rather lengthy) period during which the ability to order companions to do tasks for you remains absent or only partially implemented (picking locks, hacking terminals, specific vehicle repair to make them usable rather than repair everything which you don't have resources for, etc.). It can also be noted that character swapping will be a major game play focus change some people are likely to be rather unhappy with (I prefer party based games, so it would be a benefit for me).
• Nerfing grinding has to be done with care: You can't really be expected to enter a lab and do a little bit before deciding that this is enough training, and in order to get anywhere skill wise, the grinding has to be done by snipping action activities into little parts and grind those by doing a little bit, leave, and then come back a week later to grind the next snipped. In general, when you expend the effort to travel to a place, you should not be penalized for dealing with a location in one session (not saying that you should never have to retreat due to injury, lack of ammo, damaged equipment, etc., only that you shouldn't be penalized for not cutting it up).
• I remain adamantly opposed to locking things up behind grinding solely to allow you to start from where you want to start the actual game play and its grinding. That goes for starting scenarios as well as for starting skills or professions.
• If player combat capabilities are nerfed monsters should be nerfed at the same time, not as something to be corrected later by somebody else.
• Also note that nerfing has to be compensated for with simultaneous reduction in the base monster evolution rate. If the progression rate of the player is reduced, so should the progression rate of the enemies be reduced. As long as this rate is a parameter, experienced players may adjust it (but only after wasting time and effort on trial and error to determine what a reasonable rate is), but inexperienced players may be screwed over when their gear and skills barely have changed when the hulks appear in numbers.
• I would suggest some skills should be considered standard, so characters would default with a level of 1 in them. I would expect almost everyone to have a basic understanding of cooking, sewing, mechanics, and athletics, for instance, unless they somehow are males from a "traditional" gender separated society for the first two, and females for the last one, and such people ought to be rather rare in New England. A level of 0 in those skills ought to be challenge modifiers.

@Alm999: Mask of the Betrayer had a system where companions could interject in dialog when their skills were superior to that of the PC, and some other games have had companions take over the talking (the demo of Broken Roads allowed you to hand the talking part over to the negotiator companions, for instance). So there are examples, but in this game I would suggest character swapping would be the way to handle that, although you probably wouldn't be able to swap in the middle of a conversation (which affects how skill checks could be used in dialog, at least until the skill check logic is expanded to allow it to check for skill levels of available companions).

[estebandellasilva]

Point 1 : Then skill decay should also be slowed down massivly Point 2 : maybe its possible to assign certain proficencies to a skill ... at lvl 3 you should have 3 base proficencies related to that skill at lvl 5 you should have 3 advanced and 6 base at lvl 7 you should have 3 mastered and 6 advanced and 9 base. for lvl 10 you should have mastered at least 6 proficencies related to that skill

another way it could be handled iss like without proficencies you can reach lvl 5 as a hardcap - certain proficencies which are ... related to that skill could increase the hardcap -> until you can reach the maximum

[Alm999]

@estebandellasilva I believe the idea is to make Lv.10 virtually unobtainable so if you really need a high level of certain skill (and haven't chosen that skill as your starting profession) then you shall seek a skilled NPC.

Take a "computers" for example. For that you must rescue a dedicated hacker who was meddling with computers since age 8. At 16 she tried to hack the Pentagon, got arrested and sent to prison, where she managed to hack local security system and organized a breakout. Later she worked for crime bosses stealing money from stock exchanges and in the process robbed all 6 of her "employers" but was discovered and had to run, forging her new fake identity, was finally caught by FBI and escorted to prison (again) but managed to escape by utilizing a backdoor in police bot OS placed by her back when she still was trying to hack Pentagon but managed to get into Uncanny's R&D department's server. Oh, she is at age 37 and rated at "computers 7", BTW. :)

[PatrikLundell]

It can be noted that you tend to need to gain quite a few proficiencies to gain levels in the current system, as the recipes available to train tend to require proficiencies, so you have to grind their prerequisite proficiencies to get a reasonable chance of producing the items (which you may or may not have use for). I think this kind of natural dependency gating is better than an artificial one based on number of acquired proficiencies (and it may be difficult to invent enough proficiencies for some skills, such as athletics. Top performing athletes tend to be very narrow in what they're experts at).

I do agree skill decay has to be eliminated or decreased vastly if the system itself makes it inefficient to gain skills by training them daily, or you'd spend most of your skill using time regaining lost ground.

A problem with a small pool of dedicated recruitable skill providing NPCs is that the game currently is very weak when it comes to protecting them from getting killed or end up in inaccessible locations (because there are no routes to their locations, or the routes are blocked). Basically the same issues that plague unique locations, but with even less protection.

[estebandellasilva]

@estebandellasilva I believe the idea is to make Lv.10 virtually unobtainable so if you really need a high level of certain skill (and haven't chosen that skill as your starting profession) then you shall seek a skilled NPC.

Take a "computers" for example. For that you must rescue a dedicated hacker who was meddling with computers since age 8. At 16 she tried to hack the Pentagon, got arrested and sent to prison, where she managed to hack local security system and organized a breakout. Later she worked for crime bosses stealing money from stock exchanges and in the process robbed all 6 of her "employers" but was discovered and had to run, forging her new fake identity, was finally caught by FBI and escorted to prison (again) but managed to escape by utilizing a backdoor in police bot OS placed by her back when she still was trying to hack Pentagon but managed to get into Uncanny's R&D department's server. Oh, she is at age 37 and rated at "computers 7", BTW. :)

The Problem iss people dont like skill decay ... and reaching lvl 10 iss the only way to stop skill decay ... Thats the main reason people look for ways to optimize the way they gain skills because it gets annoying over time Another thing is what many people pointed out ... you cant rely on npcs because they arent that good -> until you make NPCs not a liability but forcing the other change you would do basically what was done with portal storm again

[esotericist]

skill rust is only the rate it is because skill gain is at the rate it is. it seems fairly obvious that both would need to change. rust is almost certainly not going away, though, not unless some other mechanic that fills similar purposes gets implemented. (which seems pretty unlikely)

edit: for clarity, i posted this to make it clear that it's a side topic; this issue is meant for planning the actual required tasks necessary for getting the objective done of making skill gain happen at a sane rate. rust, while pertinent, is not one of the blockers, just a thing that also will need to happen (possibly as a followup). so don't get mired on that.

[Alm999]

Skill rust is completely tangential to this. As I understand, the idea is to make PC unable to be master at everything. Player shall choose starting skills/proficiencies (and they shall be adequately developed: no police officers with only 2 in "handguns") and all other (not pre-selected) skills shall be immensely hard to grind. Like, if your PC is not a career athlete, it shall take several (probably, in-game) years to train "athletics" to 5; your character needs to dedicate whole life to a field of expertise to gain significant progress.

So, if a need for a skill arises, player shall seek a competent NPC that would cover PC's needs in the required field (medic, hacker, burglar, sapper, mechanic and so on).

[I-am-Erk]

We aren't really looking at years to train up a skill. A person can become pretty competent (level 4-5) in most things after a few weeks to months.

[Alm999]

The exact time frame for learning a skill up to a mediocre level (and lv.5 is mediocre in the most literal way possible -- it is in the middle between the worst and the best) is not that important. Required time can be adjusted.

What I described is the idea as I got it: high levels of skills that do not stem from the pre-selected PC's hobbies/occupation shall be nearly unobtainable (or at least made hard and tedious to train) to incentivize players to seek NPCs' help. And to that end NPCs are planned for a general rework to make them actually useful and reliable in all situations. Well, as reliable as reasonable, of course. They shouldn't be un-killable and unstoppable, but all their deaths shall be the results of player's wrong decisions or actions, not AI stupidity.

[keampe]

I absolutely agree with greatly slowing down the skill progression as right now it's ludicrously fast.

One thing to consider, though, is character creation and what is considered average. If you open up the game and create a new custom character you will see that Offense, Defense and Social are all average. You haven't even selected attributes, traits or skills. So, 0 skill is currently considered average. for these. For Knowledge 4-5 total skill levels amongst all crafting and interaction skills is considered average. This is before attributes and traits are added in. This is in no way representative of average people.

So, a new player is going to look at this and think that you are supposed to start the game with a handful of very low skills, which actually represents anything but an average person.

Average people should really have 2-3 points in every skill that they use occasionally (or all the time but not for particularly hard tasks like driving to work) and at least 4-5 in skills they use to make a living, probably higher. Take Police, for example - the Police interceptor has a Vehicles of 3 - same as the bus driver - and none of the others has any better than that, with most police having none. All that despite police being trained in pursuit and advanced driving as a matter of course.

tldr - I think a revamp of the way skills are perceived would help players get used to starting with higher, more realistic, levels of skill. This would in turn lessen the hit of slower skill gain and would reduce grind in general, especially among new players.

Just some thoughts.

• Shane

[Skerald]

Just had a thought on melee combat skills:

You should not be able to get high melee skills from character creation, but improvement should be somewhat faster. Why?

Post cataclysm melee skill ≠ today's melee skill.

If you train in some martial art today, you are quite limited in your realistic training opportunities and rarely practice one, that is intended to kill. Even more informal combat is usually not meant to kill someone and even if your character made a living of killing people with his bare hands or a melee weapon, their opponents were likely lacking and fights ended quickly.

Also martial arts are designed to fight humans, not wasps or zombies. Self defense tactics will most likely fail against zombies, who feel no pain and are immune to exhaustion. You may be proficient in subduing an unarmed survivor, but how often does that happen?

As for weapon skills: Let us say you did train HEMA and know how to use a sword. Would you know how to extract your weapon quickly, once it got stuck in a ribcage or how to prevent that? How much force is enough to kill and what would just tire you out? Perhaps fully impaling a zombie through the chest just gives it the opportunity to chew your face off? You might know how to defend against swords and spears, but unless you start in a mansion, that knowledge is going to be mostly useless.

The very basics like distance management would of course still be valuable, but the things that would make up a high melee level for a character just can not be learned today.

Surviving a week and killing dozens of zombies will likely trump any experience or training a character has received previously.

[Dhanvanthri]

I think sleep/rest/downtime should play a bigger part in the remade system as well. I'm sure I'm not alone in the feeling that studies, and practice in general only solidifies over time and with good rest. I think this is true basically across the range of things I've done, from comp sci, mathematics and philosophy to guitar, skateboarding and shooting.

In addition to the thoretical and practical difference, you should gain a portion of the experience frontloaded and some of it over the course of time that you sleep, and generally not focused on a task. This passive over time component could be more random/jumpy.

In certain activities, like fighting games, I come back after many weeks much better than I was before just from the break in my entrenched patterns coupled with a fresh perspective.

[I-am-Erk]

I think sleep/rest/downtime should play a bigger part in the remade system as well. I'm sure I'm not alone in the feeling that studies, and practice in general only solidifies over time and with good rest. I think this is true basically across the range of things I've done, from comp sci, mathematics and philosophy to guitar, skateboarding and shooting.

In addition to the thoretical and practical difference, you should gain a portion of the experience frontloaded and some of it over the course of time that you sleep, and generally not focused on a task. This passive over time component could be more random/jumpy.

In certain activities, like fighting games, I come back after many weeks much better than I was before just from the break in my entrenched patterns coupled with a fresh perspective.

That is basically the goal of the focus rework I described, for the short term part, and the reason for the xp boost given by recovering from skill rust.

[Quacknis]

Quoting someone i saw

If you give the average person the recipe for a cake, and the tools and ingredients required to complete it, they shouldn’t have to attend culinary school or read 8 cookbooks just to give it a try. In regards to crafting / construction / mechanics, you should be able to try crafting anything regardless of skill level, so long as the recipe, tools, and ingredients are available. Skill levels should decide the success rate, completion time, the effects of crafting failure (minor / major mistakes), and whether or not you actually need a recipe.

I completely agree with this take, capping skills to try things doesn't make any sense. The skills should only dictate failure and time needed. Though i guess this is overlapping with profficiencies. Still why would i need to boil 20 eggs to try fried liver? The whole recipe system and the needed experience for reach recipe would have to get a huge look over as well.

[Dhanvanthri]

I think sleep/rest/downtime should play a bigger part in the remade system as well. I'm sure I'm not alone in the feeling that studies, and practice in general only solidifies over time and with good rest. I think this is true basically across the range of things I've done, from comp sci, mathematics and philosophy to guitar, skateboarding and shooting. In addition to the thoretical and practical difference, you should gain a portion of the experience frontloaded and some of it over the course of time that you sleep, and generally not focused on a task. This passive over time component could be more random/jumpy. In certain activities, like fighting games, I come back after many weeks much better than I was before just from the break in my entrenched patterns coupled with a fresh perspective.

That is basically the goal of the focus rework I described, for the short term part, and the reason for the xp boost given by recovering from skill rust.

From reading that issue, you're clearly some parallel universes ahead of me XD. I neglected to read that link in the OP Cheers m8

[DeciusBrutus]

If making a packet of instant Ramen using an electric kettle and water is a task for Cooking level 1, then level 1 isn’t the baseline level that fully functional adults have, it’s a disadvantage that some people who have limited life skills have.

I think a good metric for the baseline would be to look at the things that someone does regularly and make sure that their skill is high enough that they no longer gain skill from their regular tasks. That means that a plumber would inherently have more than vehicles 1, since they drive every week.

A starting value of 8+ in one or 7+ in two skills should be pretty common for professions that are literally professionals, and if it’s odd that a plumber gains welding and electrical knowledge above their level that’s a reason to break “fabrication” into multiple skills, not a reason to require that a professional have several trades before being skilled at their primary one.

I would like to see skill books that allowed or helped in specific tasks above the general skill level; a book that provides specific instructions on how to make explosives wouldn’t need to train applied science generally, just allow the use of specific recipes better than reading college chemistry textbooks and doing the lab work until you understand from first principles how to make explosives. However, just following written directions doesn’t provide the same learning experience.

Having crafting, construction , and vehicle modifications use the best of all skills and all known recipes among nearby allied characters would mitigate a lot of the crafting-related issues, at a programming cost that is most of the complete overhaul those systems need. It might be worthwhile to design how those systems need to end up and make a skill system design that works with them first.

[Zireael07]

@Alm999 I think you and @I-am-Erk had a misunderstanding, because "mediocre" doesn't mean "average" or "middle of the way" as you intended, it means https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/mediocre

[Elshad19]

Please, check this post on reddit before you start working on this issue.

[I-am-Erk]

If we're at the point of this being a Reddit salt thread, I'll close it for a bit. It's produced plenty of useful feedback that had altered the initial post, but that's pretty much the opposite of what a Reddit salt thread about how mean the contributors are is going to do. There's a very good reason all the Devs left Reddit and you can see it right in the third post of that junk (or, I see, your own ridiculous arguments wherein I am apparently not a member of the community)

If you have important observations in the vein of the one about character generation feedback, please let me know on discord or similar

Edit since it's been called to my attention that temporarily closing this has spawned an enormous amount of drama: look no further than the type of drama it has spawned, like the number of people dming me who can't understand that this is a "list the things we'd need to fix" type of thread and therefore fill it with spam and noise because they don't understand the dev process. I've been accused of all manner of ill will for daring to make a suggestion thread. I don't need to moderate dozens of posts where each time I have to explain everything again to someone who just read a completely inaccurate Reddit summary. Once the hive mind backs down I'll likely reopen this for further discussion... Unless it again gets flooded.

[I-am-Erk]

To comments. Close to comments, sleepy brain

[I-am-Erk]

If making a packet of instant Ramen using an electric kettle and water is a task for Cooking level 1, then level 1 isn’t the baseline level that fully functional adults have, it’s a disadvantage that some people who have limited life skills have.

I think there's room to review what's a level 1 requirement that should be level 0, but you'll note in the OP I already commented that players should start with higher skills and a wider variety of skills

Generally a character should be starting much closer to the desired set point, not starting with almost no skill and learning everything after the apocalypse.

[ZhilkinSerg]

Please, check this post on reddit before you start working on this issue.

No

[I-am-Erk]

I'll probably reopen this tomorrow as the worst of the salt has died off in other communities. However, be aware that if your comment is just a complaint about realism or how I must hate fun to demand a change like this, I'll know you haven't read the issue and instead are just coming over here from one of the dozen-ish Reddit threads. If you have arguments against the suggestion outlined, address the suggestion outlined, not whatever memish ideas you've gotten from an online troll post. If your comment gets deleted, that's almost certainly why, and if I have to delete more than one or two comments, I'll close it again for a while.

If you've got actual feedback about what other areas I've missed that should be prioritized, I look forward to hearing from you.

[Qrox]

Before I lay out my suggestions about your proposed changes, I suggest you move your "dealing with salt" section to the start (and give it a less inflammatory title) so that people understand what you truly intend to do without having to parse through a huge wall of text. Not everyone is a developer interested in and understands game development and this is a public forum for everyone to see after all.

And before I start my own wall of text, here's a brief summary of it: While the proposed changes are very ambitious and promising in theory, the game still requires multiple huge overhauls before it can actually make the game more fun and believable instead of less (as you've admitted to in the later sections of your issue), and some of the proposed changes might actually make people grind more instead of less without careful balancing. Given the community nature of the game development, I'm not holding my breath before the game is in a state that the proposed changes make sense, and I hope we do not rush any of the proposed changes only to make the game more broken (which I see you're planning to avoid, and I appreciate it).

And here's a point-to-point review of your proposed changes:

For example, it takes 3 minutes in game to advance to skill level 1 from untrained ...

The skill gain speed at low levels is definitely too high and needs adjusting. (I was able to level shotgun from 0 to 2 in one practice session so that might be a good start for a fix).

Rapid level-ups mean that it is hard to reward players for missions ...

That sounds like a fun system, but it would require first making NPCs to be able to craft/repair/do whatever things for you (as you've proposed in your recommendations), and I'm not sure that will be any time soon given that these existing systems are all implemented as mostly independent systems. Before that happens, restricting the player's own ability to do things will only make certain things purely impossible or slow them to a grind if they do not choose a high enough starting skill.

Speaking about awarding players for missions, currently NPC skill training seems to be taking a ludicrously long time and there's no indication of the training progress nor a way to interrupt the training and be able to resume later.

Rapid level-ups mean that NPC followers are superfluous ...

Agreed.

Combat skill rising to exponential heights contributes heavily to stagnation of the mid-late game as there's little left to do to get better ...

While I do agree, I don't think that's the main issue of the current state of the game. The thing is that the games systems are so unbalanced that you can basically ram hulks and grind them into a fine paste with your death mobile while diving into a lab makes you get beaten to death by one zombie predator. Fixing the combat skill learning rate won't help fix the first issue and will only exacerbate the second one.

Players continue to operate under the not-intended attitude that their starting avatar is supposed to be able to learn to master everything in the cataclysm ...

Well, the old system could be hand-waved as everyone's intelligence being enhanced by the blob just like how the healing system makes you heal battered arms overnight, so I won't blame the players for not liking the system change.

And my argument is that people play a game to experience what the game has to offer, not to relive their years persuing a degree, so a game should allow people to master everything possible in game in a reasonable amount of time before it becomes a grind, especially considering there isn't actually that much real playable content behind some of the game's skills.

The meta actively rewards players who start as strange weirdos who have virtually no starting knowledge except in specific rare, weird areas that are helpful in-game but don't represent what most people would know ...

While that's true, I'm not sure if the currently proposed changes are going to change that. People who were trying to start with the most useful and hard-to-obtain skills will continue to do so, and I doubt anyone has the feat to balance the game to the point that every skill has the exact same utility-to-price ratio.

Skill gain needs to be slowed down enormously. The correct set point is up for debate but in my opinion ...

One problem is that currently one level represents different amount of knowledge in different skills, so either someone rebalances every skill to a strictly defined level scale (which will take a huge amount of effort and won't be done any time soon), or they calculate how much utility a given skill level has for every skill and adjust the learning time accordingly for that level (which should be less difficult but still requires considerable efforts). Before that any attempt at changing the learning time between levels is only likely going to fix one skill and break every other.

Also, while this might encourage some people who grind to give up on grinding, this will also make people who do not grind unable to level up their skills simply by doing what they have to do, which I'm afraid might actually make people grind more instead of less, unless someone devises a perfect system where people actually have better things to do before leveling their skills up by grinding.

Adjust starting professions to encourage players to begin at higher levels ...

It's unclear to me how this differs from the current system. First, I think people can already begin at higher levels. Second, it does not solve the problem you mentioned about people choosing weird starting skills if we allow player to choose their profession freely.

Adjust recruitable NPC skills ...

along with the above, we need to ensure NPC's in party are actually assisting with tasks they should help with ...

Ensure that skill descriptions make it clear that level 0 is very low ...

Agreed.

Fix focus.

I haven't read that issue so I don't have any comments for now.

Add more static NPCs with useful skills and associated quests ...

Agreed. These will require huge overhauls of the NPC system though, as I've said earlier in this comment.

Break out the old nerf bat and earn your keep in the salt mines.

I hope this will truly be the last step as advertised because based on previous development history I'm not totaly convinced this will be the case.

[I-am-Erk]

Qrox: note that each individual step, including busting out the ol' nerf bat if necessary, may take a while and go through many steps. This is an approximate outline.

I disagree that static NPC crafting additions need all that much special work though. We already have everything necessary to meet a new NPC, earn their trust through missions or dialogue, help them obtain materials for crafting special equipment, pay them for the equipment, and return when it's done. It's a bit tougher with something like mechanics or gear repair I suppose. The ability to get an NPC to repair your car or fix your broken gear would be so fundamentally beneficial to the game that I can't bring myself to be concerned over possible time to implement.

I'd highly recommend checking out the focus issue, as it's pretty crux to the whole thing and I'd really like some more eyes on it. For example it addresses, or intends to address, a fair bit of what you're concerned about with people who don't grind potentially being unable to gain skills, in that they'll gain a fair chunk more XP overall for their actions spread over a longer time.

[estebandellasilva]

2 Things that maybe should be taken into consideration

1: For Crafting when proficencies are available ... if you reach certain proficencies they should help with skill gain, if you gained for example 6 out 10 available proficencies for Farbrication you cannot say that the person iss not somewhat knowledgeable about fabrication - so skill level 6 should not be the the "softcap" he can reach (if he started with zero skill) (getting those proficencies requires a certain understanding of the tasks you do which should ... compensate somewhat for a lower start) 2: To be able to reach level 10 in any combat skill currently requires you to specifically grind certain enemies, as weaker enemies do not give you any experience -> if you just increase the time it takes without taking into account with which monsters can be used to train, level 10 will be absolutely unachiveable (even for guys who start with higher skills)

[cm97878]

When I read some of the various threads on the drama of the week I got an inkling that there was some catastrophising going on, and having read through this all here I'm glad to see I was right. Not to say I personally agree with all the changes, I'm definitely firmly in camp "likes to be good at everything" - but, on one hand with how this was described it sounds like (with the proper NPC changes and infrastructure updates) I can definitely see myself loving it, and on the other hand if it doesn't vibe with me it definitely wouldn't be too hard to mod skill gain up and pretty much fix the issue I'd have.

I am curious though, what does the dev team see as being the general progression with this, from a purely early-planning-stages theoretical point? Specifically in terms of crafting skills, as practical skills like lockpicking or trap-disarming or what have you seems pretty cut and dry - bring em with you and either order them to do X or swap control and do X.

But as for crafting, I can't imagine the goal is to just swap to an npc to craft for 8 hours as your PC sits there with a gormless stare. First answer that came to mind (for someone basically entirely unfamiliar with the code) would be something like the bill system in DF/Rimworld - workstation/designated crafting area, context menu to queue up crafts to be done. But, I'm not sure if this is remotely possible with the current way things are structured. Are there any tentative plans for how to handle longer-length tasks like this w/ npcs?

[I-am-Erk]

The first and easiest crafting change I'd think of would be to hire a static NPC to do it. So like, we make a "Zug the tailored" you can meet and pay to do commission work. However there's also already a mechanic in to get your followers to craft for you that can be developed further.

Esteban: good point about making sure combat isn't a vile mess with this. Better tools for sparring and weapons training probably would fit there

[PatrikLundell]

To expand on I-am-Erk's answer for those who aren't up to date: There was a recent addition that made it possible to directly order a companion to craft items they have the skills to craft, while your character does something else. It has worked very well for me so far, although I haven't tried to see what happens when you move so they end up outside of the reality bubble, nor have I given crafting tasks that take a very long time (that should result in a loss of visibility during the night and need to sleep). Note that this is distinct from the base camp companion crafting system which remains in place (but certainly could use a total rework).

[I-am-Erk]

Thanks for that, I'm on trains and things today and didn't have time for a longer reply.

[Termfin]

Hey Erk, I understand that this change is very much still in the drawing board phase, but I was wondering if you had a general idea of how NPC spawns would work with the rebalanced skill system?

Currently, by default, NPCs spawn fairly rarely; save for overmap specials like the refugee center. Depending on world generation, this makes the game's atmosphere rather lonely. What is the vision for how often a player should encounter someone else? And how often should a player expect to meet an extremely skilled NPC?

Thanks.

[PatrikLundell]

Note that the NPC spawn rate is a parameter the player can set (I generally reduce the spawn rate significantly because I find there are too many of the currently usually rather useless NPCs to deal with). At something like 12 days into my current game, with a reduced NPC spawn rate. I've already encountered (seen on the map, not necessarily approached) about half a dozen without even bothering to visit the refugee center yet. I suspect some NPC spawns don't respect the spawn rate parameter, but rather have a hard coded rate (I've got two or 3 survivors in evacuation shelters, for instance). Note that there are bandits on top of that.

My understanding is that the random NPCs encountered should be adjusted to have rather normal sets of skills with a modest bump in the skills related to their professions. Extremely good NPCs should probably be very rare among randomly generated ones, and instead you'd find out about them from other NPCs or stumble upon their custom generation locations. Some of them probably wouldn't be recruitable, but rather be available for performing tasks (akin to the the two artisans). Obviously my take on it, so it's not in any way any official stance (I have no official capacity).

I wouldn't be opposed to a way to select the profession of the starting location NPC (for scenarios that start with an NPC, obviously), especially initially, since I'd expect most players to want to have a fighting oriented PC, which means companions (if you manage to recruit them) would be most useful if they brought other skills to the table. Once companions become more useful and reliable (as in being reasonably sure they behave as instructed or in a reasonable and somewhat predictable way) the PC may change to having some other priority, but that's probably a fairly long way off.

[DeciusBrutus]

I think that NPCs should have a starting profession taken from the starting professions available to the player, possibly excluding some of the more fanciful ones or possibly restricted based on location, and then have equipment, skill, and possibly mutations and such altered by time since the cataclysm.

If a plumber PC starts with 7 fabrication, a plumber NPC shouldn’t start with less.

I also think that NPCs that the player finds after a long time should have done some things to their surrounding area, like pulp zombies and fortify, but that feels like it involves dealing with mapgen in a complex way.

[Fajdek]

How will this change affect books and theoretical xp gain? When I first started out and read fabrication 0-2 books, I found that it taking a few days makes sense, but then I found carving practice and it lets me hit fabrication 2 pretty much instantly, which is what this issue wants to solve. On that note, will book reading times be changed, either slightly or massively? The skill gain from crafting stuff, such as sundress really needed a nerf as I could obtain tailoring 3 in a matter of a few game hours from 0, whereas reading the same tailoring book 0-3 would take me atleast 5 days in game, so I don't think books really need a huge nerf. Keyword: Huge, this issue wants to make it apparent that everyone should have some basic level of understanding of everything, and level 0 is your character literally not knowing anything in the concept, so I would understand if books would receive a small nerf.

[I-am-Erk]

@termfin: it would be nice to improve how dynamic NPCs spawn and wander, but for the purposes of guaranteeing certain skills are available I'd also like to add more recruitable NPCs that spawn in specific maps and can be found through quests and dialogue. Eg. Learning about other survivors that the merchants trade with, and getting to meet them.

@PatrikLundell I also would really like to see the starting npc be more customizable, I'd also like it if they could have a defined relationship to your player.

@DeciusBrutus the player starting professions presume you're going to also take some backgrounds. Rather than recoding it, I'd prefer to design a broad set of general professions that cover a few bases, so that it's easier to give them each some more interesting details and dialogue as well. See the Motorhead template I'm working on now.

@Fajdek focus changes would apply to books as well. Whether or not they'd need more changing after that, it's much too early to say.

[I-am-Erk]

Ooh, just had a cool thought. The Teamster should have a dialogue option, basically "looking for group", where you can ask merchants to send out word you're looking to recruit someone, and they'll bring back either a prospective recruit with them, or a mission to get one. Possible option to specify you're looking for a particular skill set.

[esotericist]

@Termfin side note about npc spawns: in addition to the world setting slider mentioned above, it's important to note that npc spawn chance slows as the number of npcs in the world near you goes up. if you travel more and longer distances, more of them spawn.

they also gravitate to 'safe' locations. some of which admittedly aren't very safe. at this time, other than the player loading them into the reality bubble (where the zombies or mutants presumably eat them), they won't die off naturally, and continue to occupy 'population slots' for lack of a better word. (there isn't actually a hard cap, but probability approaches nil after a while)

[PatrikLundell]

I like the Teamster dialog suggestion, but would have that resulting in a "quest" of the prospect's location rather than having the NPC delivered (and potentially rejected, stranded with the Teamster).

Also realized there would need to be general "potentially recruitable NPC" dialog where you can ask them about their skills (currently you can look at them to assess stats, but there's no way to get at skills without recruiting them first). I would gate such dialog behind a trust and/or PC faction reputation and/or recruitment quest check (and provide means to gain sufficient trust).

[I-am-Erk]

Discussion of the teamster quest idea should be saved either for the pr where it gets added or an issue post suggesting it. It's mostly a digression here, though it helps this concept. I'm going to try to finish off the motorhead pr and then work on that teamster quest on my enormous drive today so maybe you will see it soon.