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ADVANCEMENT / TRAINING CHANGE PROPOSAL.
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The Official Haelrahv Message Forum Forum Index » Announcements From The Staff » ADVANCEMENT / TRAINING CHANGE PROPOSAL.
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HR-Trevor
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Joined: 04 Oct 2002
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Location: Louisville, KY

 Post Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2003 7:22 am    Post subject: ADVANCEMENT / TRAINING CHANGE PROPOSAL.
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After pondering over recent posts and talking about it amongst ourselves, we have decided to offer up a proposal for an entirely different skill/stat system to be used in the "live" game. This system, if implemented, would not be put into play in the existing test game, due to the number of system changes involved.

I say we are offering this as a proposal, because really Haelrahv is a game built for you, the players. With that in mind, while we don't always go with the majority, we do so as much as possible. After all, regardless of what we as staff members might find superior, it is generally you, the player base, whose opinion matters most. If this concept is well received, we will implement it. If not, we'll stick with the existing system or modify our ideas for a new proposal.

Essentially, this is a concept that draws from many sources. It will in reality seem very familiar to DragonRealms players. It will also seem very familiar to Asheron's Call players (AC1, I personally know virtually nothing about AC2 to compare). And, if you read the boards avidly, you will even notice similarities to a proposal put forth by poster "Downtweak". We as staff hashed out and revised this idea until we unanimously had support for it at our last staff meeting.

And so, with no further delay, I give you said proposal.

The system revolves around the concept of "buying" skills and stats with experience points. Not training points, but actual experience points. The cost of a skill or stat would start at some number likely in the triple digits or so, and this cost would increase each time the skill or stat is improved. Your race would definitely affect stats (and perhaps some skills to a small degree). Your profession would affect skill costs.

As one gains experience by doing virtually anything, this experience is put into a general pool that counts toward your level. A copy of this experience is put into what I'm terming a "spendable pool" as well. So let's say you have earned 1000 experience. This experience is put into your general pool toward your next level. Another 1000 experience is put into the "spendable pool".

You may then use this spendable pool to train a stat or skill. Let's just pretend that you want to raise Climbing. This may start at, oh, say 400 points to raise one rank. You burn 400 points from your spendable pool to raise Climbing and now you have 600 remaining in that pool. The cost to raise Climbing again will be higher next time, so you'll have to spend more than 400 points.

Now, in addition to this spendable pool, you have a pool for each skill "category". This will be familiar to DR players to a point. For instance, let's say there is a Combat Pool, a Survival Pool, and so on (official names have not been drawn up yet). The Combat Category contains skills like Evasion, Pulse Weapons, etc. The Survival Category contains skills like Ecology, Handle Animal, etc.

As you use a skill, experience points go into the pool for that category. Let's say you are foraging. This would put points in the Survival Pool. Not in the Ecology skill itself, but in the Survival Pool. You can then spend points from the Survival Pool on any skill in that Category. So you can spend points you earned from foraging on Ecology, Handle Animal, Swimming, etc. but not on say, a combat skill, since that is a separate category.

So, to recap with an example. Let's say I go out and swim for a while and I earn 1000 experience, all from swimming and nothing else. 1000 experience would go toward my next level. 1000 experience would be placed in the spendable pool and I could use that to train ANY skill or stat. And, some experience (less than 1000 probably) would go into my Survival Pool, to be spent on any survival skill I wished to train.

So, the final part of this proposal I'll do as a Q & A.

Q: What happens to core skills?
A: Instead of receiving a skill point in specific skills when you level up, points would be put in skill category pools that are fitting for your profession. The amount of experience would depend on the level you are reaching, since skill and stat costs increase as they are trained. Just as a basic example (not real numbers), an Agent making level 10 may receive 3000 points in his Survival Pool and 1000 points in his Combat Pool, to spend on applicable kills of his choice.

Q: What about double/triple trainable skills?
A: Skill caps would be removed entirely. How high you train a skill per level is up to you. Just remember, skill costs increase, so you may have to severely deprive your other skills if you focus to much on certain things.

Q: What about stat caps?
A: No caps of any kind on stat training. Again, dumping a lot of points into a specific stat will make it harder to train other things.

Q: Do skills and stats have separate pools I train from?
A: No, they share experience, and you'll need to consider this when planning how you wish to train.

Q: Are the "lifetime" caps still in effect? (i.e. max of 200 skill, 100-ish stats)
A: No, these caps are removed entirely. The increasing costs of skills and stats as they are trained is sufficient control.

Q: Is the level of cap of 100 still in effect?
A: No, there would be no level cap at all.

Q: Would levels/skills/stats start out relatively cheap/quick and progressively become more costly?
A: Skills and stats, yes. Levels, probably as well.

Q: How are you handling the fact some players may have unbelievably high skills? If I train my Singing skill up to 400, can I expect to still be seeing new levels of proficiency (i.e. a better sounding voice) when I sing?
A: No, we will design each system for a skill range when necessary and singing ability would be one. This is not to say 400 singing is not better than 200. For use of spellsongs for example, it would help you entirely to have so much skill. However, the SING verb will not have tons and tons of levels of singing proficiency to cover hundreds of skill ranks.

Q: Are there other ideas you are considering that you didn't mention?
A: Things may come up for consideration if the proposal itself is accepted. One idea is allowing you to choose a few skills you'd like to be extra-proficient in, and reduce the training costs for these skills.

Q: What about a skill such a say, Spell Research. Will it eventually be useless to keep training it, since there are only so many spells we can learn?
A: It is possible this may happen with skills in rare cases, but we will endeavor to implement benefits for continued training to all levels of proficiency. Purely as an example, Spell Research may improve the power of magical artifacts on can use / invoke or be tied to the creation of magical items.

Q: The issue of racial stats has come up recently, and the disparity in their costs. Since stat costs would rise as you train and each race would have stat cost modifiers, how will this problem be resolved?
A: By adhering to a simple rule when calculations are done for stat costs, we can eliminate the gap between races so that each race needs exactly the same amount of experience points -overall- to raise their stats.

Q: Would there be a delay between the time I perform an action and when experience goes into the spendable pool and/or skill group pools? Do I need to "drain" experience into these pools?
A: Likely, yes. There's too much of a chance that a buggy system would award too much experience too quickly without a pool/draining mechanism.

Q: Would I have a mindstate or have to worry about having my draining pools too full?
A: Probably not. We have resisted implementing these types of mechanics to date and would like to continue doing so.

Q: How would character conversion from the test to live game work with such a drastic change?
A: The most likely solution here would be to give all characters something akin to a super role-playing award. That is, a super fast drain rate for a period of time based on how much experience you had in the test game. This would allow you to gain and spend experience almost instantly in a manner you choose.

Q: I'm worried I'll mess my skills or stats up with this system since it's so different than what we use now.
A: We will attempt to provide a mechanism by which you can "reset" your character to how they were when you first moved from the test to live game, so that you can redo your training. This mechanism would only be available for a limited time, but should allow you to fix any bad mistakes you may make as you experiment with the new system.

Q: Are you definitely going to go with a majority vote as to whether to implement this?
A: Not definitely. It will depend on how close the vote is, for one.

Q: How, when, where do I cast my vote?
A: A poll will be placed soon, but not yet. We'd like to give you time to absorb this information and think on it.

Q: I'm confused and don't understand how something (or everything) you mentioned here works.
A: Just post a note in the Replies to Announcements folder. Please be as descriptive as possible about the section(s) you don't understand and we will attempt to clarify them for you as much as possible.
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