From now on I will be posting some of my idea and concepts on game design.
Since I do not know if these design would work or not (due to that I am but a student working on a game design major), so any comments are welcome.
So the topic for today is ... Detail view of skill-based system in my head.
Details on skill system:
Level/Rank:
This is similar, but not that much, in compare to the old level system (level 1 – XX). This system is only for those who like to know how far they are in their progression of skills and jobs, not an actual indicator for your combat level and whatnot. I would rather call it a ranking system. It shows you where you are ranked by the standard of the game world. (i.e. a Amateur Swordsman is the lowest rank of a swordsman, thus is excluded from certain quest and jobs from the in-game guilds. And beyond Expert Swordsman is the ranking for Master Skill Ranks. These will indicate what kind of quests/jobs they can or cannot take.) This is by no mean that if you are a Bronze Swordsman that you’ll never be able to beat a Golden Swordsman, for player skill is equally important when it comes to PvP. But it does mean that you need to be prepared before enter into combat.
Here’s the broken down list of each level/rank.
Amateur
Novice
Apprentice
Advance
Expert
**** (From this point forwards are the melee “MASTER” skill level title ranks)
Bronze
Silver
Golden
Diamond
Platinum
Within each level/rank, there are 10 minor levels with 3 ranks (Low, Mid, High). This will work into PvP and PvE (quest/mission/job) system.
Weapon Specialization
This is an important idea in this game. In order to show in detail for players to know how to play their character, we’ll focus on weapon specializations.
Bare-hand: fist/palm/finger, (claw)blade-claw/tri-claw/dual-claw
Swords/Blade/Axe/Dagger: Strength(heavy 2h, heavy 1h)/Normal(2h, 1h)/Speed(lite 2h, lite 1h)
Pike/Stave/Blade/Hammer/Axe: Strength(heavy)/
Bow/Arrow: Strength(heavy)/
These are to give melee some more customization and ways to specialize and choose the way their character plays. This will help in balance and have less complains who is the FOTM, since each has their function.
Magic Specialization
Same as Weapon, the Magic users will have to given some specializations.
Energy/Chi
Who says that melee can’t have range attack? (not just throw weapon or such). If you have read any Eastern-influenced online novels (of course it’s in Chinese), or even watch some anime such as Dragonball and Saint Seiya, you’ll see that even the fighters/warriors have some sort of energy and use it to do long range attack. I think it will bring some interesting idea into MMO if we can define such energy.
In Chinese the general term is Chi (?, ??/??). These are the inner energy of which everyone has, and they can use it to support them in combat. What if this energy/chi can be one of the skills?
So if we use the upper chart, then for each chart, we get 100 point per chart, and I’m thinking of adding 5 pts cost to push through to next level/rank, so that’s 150 per chart. And melee, magic, and non-combat are all the same. Chi/Energy would fall under melee for chart, but it is in its separate system in skill points. By this standard, we can make it so that it’s not until Expert that you can have a long range chi/energy attack.
The preset skill points are 450, which means you can maximum have 3 masters, depends how you use it.
You know this "idea" has being done in a game before, however it never really caught on as far as I am concerned. The first game that I know of that does something like you say here is Asheron's Call. With the Tech at the time you didn't get better attacks you just had a better chance of hitting or overcomming your enemies skills and armor.
A quick run down of skills in AC and how they are raised. First you have your attributes like Strength, Coordination, Focus...etc. Each of these attributes are set at a base on character creation, and each one has a direct bearing on you base skill, an example, the "Sword" skill is based of Strength and Coordination, and the formula is "(str+Cor)/4" so if your strength was set to 100 and coord to 100 your base skill for Sword would be 50. Now each attribute can be raised useing the xp you gain during battle or quests, and the cost of raising each point goes up exponentially based on a formula that I can't remember. This is the same for the actual skill, you can take your xp and put it into the skills of your choices to raise them, and this went up at an exponential rate depending on your level of training.
I will use the "sword" skill for example, in AC you had the oppertunity at character creation to spend your skill points on skills. Each skill had a point cost that made this choice vital. Sword I believe was 8 points to Train it, what this ment is that you were familiar with a sword, you could attack and block with it but you would never be able to master the weapon. Your eventual skill would cost so much that it was crazy to sink that much xp into that skill to raise it a point. However if at character creation you wanted you could spend 8 points to Train the skill, but then an additional 8 points to specialize that skill, this also ment an initial boost in your base skill by I believe 15 points. What this ment is raising this skill didn't cost as much xp, and you could in turn get this skill alot higher with alot less xp, hence mastering the weapon. So what was the limit to your skill in a weapon??? Not sure I know I never hit it, maybe someone else did.
Basicly your taking the idea from AC and refining it a bit more, and I believe this is what games need now. Games like "The Chronicles of Spellborn" are trying to do this, I only hope they succeed.
Fri Jan 25 2008 11:14AM ReportAs far as I can see it looks a bit like the skill system is Wish, which sadly had their open beta at the worst of times, between the release of WoW and Lineage 2, and therefore didn't catch on. But they had a skillbased system where you started as novice and ended with grandmaster. There were no classes, but there was a limit to the amount of simultaneous novice skills. Also, learning a skill was related to how often it was used. Skills and stats were also interdependent, where training a dexterity based skill not only raised the skill, but also raised dexterity. Since they decided to stop further development I was only in for 2 or 3 days, but I loved that system, and any game which uses a similar system (and had a decently worked out lore and world) I'd subscribe to, even if it was $19.99 a month.
What I really do not want is a class-based system, in which skills are excluded from certain races and/or classes. It's not realistic that for example a warrior cannot learn to pick locks or cast a spell. But there need to be some limits on the system, such as a master swordsman suddenly learning magic would see a slow decline in swordsmanship related skills and stats (sitting the whole day reading books tends to not be beneficial to either strength or constitution).
Fri Jan 25 2008 1:10PM ReportThought far from perfect and it needed some tweaking AC still has had the best skill system yet in a major MMORPG.
Fri Jan 25 2008 3:59PM ReportSweet hope to read a lot of great blogs from you Forcan.
only comment this reminds just a tiny bit of elder scrolls whereas skill ranks are pretty much indentical to this (the skill ranks only). Then again I think they covered all those weapon types too I wonder if you've looked at it (for study)
Fri Jan 25 2008 11:52PM ReportMMORPG.com writes:
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