Characters - Skill Trees

[Section8]

So having talked about skills in general, it's time I elaborated a bit.

Basically, each of the skills described in the previous post denotes the root of a skill tree, and give a general description of how Primary Stats interact will the skill tree in general. For example, there is no Brawling skill as such that the player invests points into for scalar increases in efficiency, there are instead a variety of defining facets, such as a skill that lets you throw an uppercut, or a one-two punch.

Why? Because I just don't think scalar skill increases are particular interesting for the player. All they do is reduce the difficulty of encounters, so the gameworld must respond accordingly. It's not all bad though, the mechanic of barring certain areas/locations by putting difficult combat encounters between the player is pretty natural and makes the player feel they've achieved and grown. So we're not completely discarding scalar increases, though they're part of the skill tree and now must be weighed against extended actions.

So the intention here is pretty straightforward. Skills clearly delineate characters. Consider Dave, a skillful brawler in contrast to Andy, a brainiac who has never thrown a punch in his life. Rather than both characters acting the same way in a fist fight, with Andy landing less punches and doing less damage, Dave acts more like you'd expect a boxer too. He has an arsenal of punches - jabs, hooks, uppercuts, haymakers, etc. - he knows how to block incoming punches, how to counter punch, how to breathe effectively.

There is a framework of many abilities within a skill tree that differentiate is obvious ways. There is also a layer of scalar improvement attached to skills. Bob may also develop these various facets further. Being able to throw an uppercut is one thing, being able to throw a devastating uppercut is something else. By tying these linear improvements into individual abilities, it's possible to improve vastly different facets. A character who invests in Accuracy will land more punches though perhaps at the cost of a broader repertoire. A character who invests in Breathing will be more enduring in a fight. Dodging will keep a character out of harm's way, and so forth.

This is were the system deviates into a more chaotic sprawl than the very neatly ordered pairs in previous Character threads. It takes that fairly rational and hopefully intuitive basis and then lets the player go wild. It's fairly simple to classify physically superior characters as combatants, but the actual breakdown of how they approach combat and what aspects they excel in will hopefully make even two pugilists different, let alone someone who fights by grappling, with melee weapons or with the entirely different Firearms skill tree.

There are also Traits to be discussed at some point which are functionally similar to Skills, but conditional. For instance - Wife Beater: Improved accuracy vs female opponents, higher fear incurred vs male opponents - as a purely hypothetical example. But Traits will be done in depth at a later date. For now, do Skill Trees make sense?

 

[Sovy Kurosei]

For now, do Skill Trees make sense?

So is this going similiar to Hammer & Sickle or were you considering doing something more breadth (fewer/no skill requirements for skills) based?

At least I like where you are taking skills. Instead of simply incrementing damage and accuracy you are giving special abilities (perks like in, dare I say, Oblivion? ) that expands on your niche in martial or hand-to-hand or gun fighting.

 

[cardtrick]

So the intention here is pretty straightforward. Skills clearly delineate characters. Consider Dave, a skillful brawler in contrast to Andy, a brainiac who has never thrown a punch in his life. Rather than both characters acting the same way in a fist fight, with Andy landing less punches and doing less damage, Dave acts more like you'd expect a boxer too. He has an arsenal of punches - jabs, hooks, uppercuts, haymakers, etc. - he knows how to block incoming punches, how to counter punch, how to breathe effectively.

What mechanic prevents a player from investing all points in, say, uppercut at the expense of jab, hook, and haymaker? Are the various punches (or, more generally, the various subskills in all the trees) more or less useful in certain situations?

I encourage you to check out the MUD The Eternal City, which has a somewhat similar system with some additional complexities. It's essentially like what you've described, but skill trees are called "skillsets" and skills are called "subskills," if I remember correctly. Each skillset had ten or fifteen subskills. Unlike your system (I think) the player could invest points in either the general skillset or the specific subskills, but no subskill could be raised higher than the level of the skillset. Again, unlike yours (I think) each subskill had a difficulty level (easy, intermdiate, difficult, expert, or something like that) that influenced both the chance of success with that subskill and the cost of training it.

The Eternal City had two mechanics that dealt with the issue I asked about above -- ways of preventing the player from min-maxing by putting all his points into a single attack. First, the various subskills had markedly different effects that were useful at different times (for example, in the sword skillset: lunge would close to range and attack simultaneously, jab was an easy attack that tended toward the midsection if you didn't aim and was useful against lightly armored but very nimble opponents, chop was a powerful overhand strike that left holes in your defense but tended to hit the vulnerable head or neck, feint did no damage but lowered opponent's defenses for the next attack if successful, sap was a hit with the hilt of the sword with a chance to stun that was especially useful if you were trying to avoid killing someone, and so on and so forth). Second, the game encouraged attacking in a cycle of different attacks to "keep your opponent on his toes," by simulating the opponent anticipating your moves; this was done very simply. Immediately after a stab, the opponent is ready and expecting another stab, so his defenses are increased by, say, 50%. If you stab a third time, his defenses against that stab will be increased by, say, 75%. This eventually reaches a maximum level of increase (anticipation only helps so much if you are unskilled in dodging). Now, if you stabbed, then chopped, there would be no increase in defense aganst the chop. But if you then stabbed again, there would still be some increase in defense (he was still somewhat expecting it), but it would be a smaller effect -- say, an increase in defenses versus stab of 35%. If you stabbed, then chopped, then sapped, then stabbed, the defenses versus the last stab might only be increased by 15% or so. The point of this was that if the player didn't want his opponents' defenses to continually increase over the course of a fight, he needed to learn at least five or six attacks that he could alternate through. (All of this only worked against other players or humanoid/intelligent enemies . . . it wouldn't have made sense for a badger to learn to recognize your attacks and react appropriately.)

Anyway, I didn't really mean to turn this into a monologue on The Eternal City, but I do think it's worth considering methods to prevent the player from gaining too much benefit from min-maxing.

 

[galsiah]

As I understand it, for the majority of subskills there aren't different levels of expertise - so Uppercut/Jab/Hook/Haymaker would be binary abilities. I still think it's important that each skill be significantly differentiated from others though. It'd be unfortunate if a haymaker is just a reskinned uppercut. Presumably this is already the intention.

One of the main ways to get meaningful variety in e.g. combat skill implications would be through having a wide range of potential combat outcomes, Xcom-style (and more), rather than the too-frequent: lose+die+reload, win+heal+forget. So long as combat (and other gameplay systems) have a wide range of nuanced outcomes, there should be ways for relatively small skill differences to produce significantly different results.

 

[Section8]

So is this going similiar to Hammer & Sickle or were you considering doing something more breadth (fewer/no skill requirements for skills) based?

For the most part, the trees will be broad, with the basic elements stemming mainly from the root (no prerequisites) but each depth increment narrows.

Instead of simply incrementing damage and accuracy you are giving special abilities (perks like in, dare I say, Oblivion? ) that expands on your niche in martial or hand-to-hand or gun fighting.

The biggest problem I saw with the Oblivion perks was that they made the single increments feel pretty pointless. Watching your skills go from 26-49 (and so forth) was just like watching an experience bar fill up. There was no natural progression curve, just a series of dramatic steps. Same goes for the scaling of encounters, but worst of all - these two graphs of progression weren't one and the same.

What mechanic prevents a player from investing all points in, say, uppercut at the expense of jab, hook, and haymaker? Are the various punches (or, more generally, the various subskills in all the trees) more or less useful in certain situations?

Nothing will be set in stone until we have some of these systems up and running to playtest but that's the idea. Jabs are quick, hooks and uppercuts are more damaging and attack from different vectors, haymakers are inaccurate and leave you vulnerable, elbows and headbutts are quick and deadly but easier to dodge, and so forth. Fairly predictable dynamics, but (hopefully) in line with player expectations.

That Eternal City system sounds interesting, slightly more elaborate than my own vision. The way I see it, a sentient being that wants to block an attack basically perceives it and then reacts. Even if they're not quick enough to block the initial attack, they're now that much closer to blocking position against another attack of the same type, but a bit further away from an effective blocking position against a different type of attack. Also, there's potential to Feint, so your opponent blocks one type while you follow up quickly with another.

But I'm not trying to discourage one way or another with regard to min-maxing. Versatility is its own reward, as is specialisation. Besides, I don't necessarily want all characters to be jack-of-all-trades, because that's not very defining. I'll do my level best to try and have either extreme advantageous only some of the time though.

As I understand it, for the majority of subskills there aren't different levels of expertise - so Uppercut/Jab/Hook/Haymaker would be binary abilities. I still think it's important that each skill be significantly differentiated from others though. It'd be unfortunate if a haymaker is just a reskinned uppercut. Presumably this is already the intention.

That's definitely the intention. Boxing is a slightly awkward example because the differences are fairly subtle.

One of the main ways to get meaningful variety in e.g. combat skill implications would be through having a wide range of potential combat outcomes, Xcom-style (and more), rather than the too-frequent: lose+die+reload, win+heal+forget. So long as combat (and other gameplay systems) have a wide range of nuanced outcomes, there should be ways for relatively small skill differences to produce significantly different results.

That's very much an intention too. My biggest concern in this regard would be stopping it from becoming a slippery slope too soon.

 

[Pussycat669]

Quick questions: how exactly are those perks acquired? Will there be level ups that distribute a certain amount of skill points to the player so that he can use them to purchase said perks or would character development be handled by quests? Do you weight the traits differently in prices? That is if there is an advanced perk after another, will the player have to spent more points to buy them?

 

[Section8]

Quick questions: how exactly are those perks acquired? Will there be level ups that distribute a certain amount of skill points to the player so that he can use them to purchase said perks or would character development be handled by quests?

It's slightly contrived, but basically at the end of each day you have a period of introspection before you go to bed. So while lie in bed dozing off you have a conversation with yourself, for a couple of reasons:

First of all, it lets the player reflect upon significant events of the day, so the game has some inkling of what the player is thinking, or how they feel about certain subjects and can track their personality accordingly.

But more importantly, you're recovering a memory every day, and skills are tied into this. You essentially have a flashback to your Erstwhile Self doing something fairly dramatic/significant and it all comes flooding back to you. So for instance, if you think back to a time where you shot somebody in the head, then you gain the "Called Shot: Head" skill, along with some excess baggage.

It's another one of those concepts I'll make a lengthy post on, though you can see fragments of the idea in this thread. Bear in mind it's many months old and some of the ideas have changed slightly.

There will also be skill training, where with the right equipment, right teacher and enough time, an NPC can pass on their knowledge to you and vice versa. But as always, taking time to do that gives you less time to spend on other activities.

Do you weight the traits differently in prices? That is if there is an advanced perk after another, will the player have to spent more points to buy them?

Yep, and there are essentially two costs involved. First of all, memories with a more significant effect are buried deeper into the dialogue trees and you'd have to recover memories from various steps along the chain before you get to them. Second is the concept of Erstwhile Nature, which won't make a whole lot of sense until I talk about Needs and Desires, but in a nutshell the memories with a more pronounced functional effect are tied in with some pretty dire consequences.

For instance, if you flashback to shooting an unarmed kid in the head, you might earn the "Called Shot: Head" skill, a bonus to hit smaller targets, the "Unfaltering Aim" skill where nothing fazes you when taking a shot - but in return, the need to behave like your Erstwhile Self incorporates a need to engage in sociopathic homocidal acts.

And not only that, all of your peers are also recovering amnesiacs, so what you each remembered the night before is a hot topic of conversation and admitting to or hiding that fact that you're a former child killer is likely to make your life difficult.

It's an unusual concept, but I think it ought to work. More on it later though.