On the Design of Skills, Read me First! Options

[Gaetele]

Whoa, whoa, skillsets already when we don't even know how the skills work!?

You're moving too fast, you're moving too fast!

We don't know exactly what holes we will need to fill that the general skillsets won't fill already. The Administration already has many great ideas for skillsets and I'm pretty sure that any basics that we can come up with are filled in some form or another. At this stage, when we don't know everything, any ideas we can come up with are just common sense. When things become more specialized, I would expect that our input becomes more relevant.

[helvet]

its called initiative .. hehe ... and besides .. something said early has more chances of being incorporated ... if its worth that is ... hehe ... just some novice enthusiasm .. though this opens up so many possibilities !!!

[Anansi]

This thread is derailing- nay, flying out of its tracks like the little engine that could bloody fly. If you want to post your own skills, there is a whole forum for doing so! This thread is for informational purposes only and for commenting on the original post.

[Ronsar]

Ooh another thought, all of the IRE games so far have had some form of magical power. However most games involving space eskew magic in favor of psionics. Do you think they would go in that direction?

I hope if they do its not just the same thing as magic, just relabeled. Like taking necromancy and naming it necropsi.

Actually I love that name.

DESIGNERS! Make a necropsionic ability. Maybe something involving spirit communication (psychic mediumship), as I dont see a huge number of corpses in space.

As cool as necropsionics sounds, I'm not quite sure that I am fond of psionics in sci-fi based games or tv shows or anything for that matter.

I think we should, instead of 'magic' or some sort, rely on hard science. Throw some quantum theory in there and you could theoretically do anything that magic could most likely. For instance, let's say someone wanted to be an aquamagelike character... couldn't there just be a sort of water/ice gun that teleports water from some lake where a 'base' teleporter is contained...

I'd be a big fan of something more along these lines than magic or psionics seeing as how it is called "science fiction" and not "psience fiction"

With the science fiction element. I am really hoping to see guns, etc to shoot people with. Loading different affliction ammo (like envenom sword with "poison, but load pistol with "affliction" bullet)

I really like this idea. I'd also add the idea that maybe you could pour different types of bullets like how there are a wide variety of arrows in Imperian. I also think there should be a big difference between say a pistol and a rifle. I think a pistol would be something that would be treated as an IRE game treats a melee weapon... you have to be in the same room, or maybe one away. The rifle however would be like a bow in any IRE game, long ranged and masked from view of who is attacking.

This would allow for a separate sniper type character for those that like to stay away from harm while still causing it.

That would be pretty interesting. Also making certain types of weapons for ranged, while making close combat fighting as well.

Say I ran out of ammo, and I had to actually fight hand to hand. If I had a skill like knifeplay for close quarter combat, I could get in and accomplish my mission (so to speak)

I think this is a good idea too, but I'm sure that people will either stock up on ammo or the weapons will be ammoless. But what would work is maybe it takes a decent amount of time to reload your weapon and you know someone is almost done, so you just whip out your knife and go for the kill.

In addition, with guns and such, there should definitely be some abilities to 'deflect' attacks. For instance, running up to someone and grabbing their arm and pushing it would prevent them from shooting you... or maybe you could make them shoot someone else. This would be like grappling for monks in Lusternia, except you could then AIM the arm at something else so when they tried to fire it would hit that. Just my two cents for now, I'll have plenty to add later when I find out what's all actually planned already.

[Saran]

Hacking/Electronics skillset?

Allows you to bypass security systems, access information on organisations and individuals (would be nice if honours/orghelps were restricted to computer terminals). I once played a mud where every ship had it's own mainframe that you could hack into, once inside you were able to fiddle with the ships control systems (venting all the oxygen just for the fun of it or bringing back a drifting spaceship)
If we had an online subworld within the game then it could be the play ground of the hackers. Especially if players could expand on it. Could also provide a way for meetings to be held discreetly?

Skills:
Deck Creation: Create a basic set of equipment to allow yourself to get online.
Module Creation: Write a module for your deck that allows you offense and defense within the online world.
Trace Routine: Locate an online presence.
Crack: Break a virtual lock, offline you can attempt to hack in to a protected terminal, online you can attempt to hack in to a protected server.

Loosing steam...

Software Creation: Write software to defend your servers from intrusion, or help you intrude others (entourage creation).
Viral Programming: Create viruses to infect online presenses and servers.

And lost it.

Either way it's a skillset that has limited us in the offline world of the game. Probably requiring some restrictions to prevent them from getting too annoying.

[Shiri]

Regarding your use of terminology in the OP: you're going to be fighting an uphill battle calling skillsets skills and skills abilities. Player usage seems to lean strongly towards the former in each case, and it's not worth it to make ambiguous terms that people still get confused with due to the previous ways they've been using them.

Try "skillsets" and "abilities." I don't think anyone uses either of those two terms in a way that would contradict the new meanings.

P.S Fairly cogent post. Recommend you also describe what you want balance to be sooner rather than later so you don't fall into pittraps in post-release devel.

This post has been edited by Shiri: Feb 6 2008, 01:42 PM

[Kunin]

Regarding your use of terminology in the OP: you're going to be fighting an uphill battle calling skillsets skills and skills abilities. Player usage seems to lean strongly towards the former in each case, and it's not worth it to make ambiguous terms that people still get confused with due to the previous ways they've been using them.

Try "skillsets" and "abilities." I don't think anyone uses either of those two terms in a way that would contradict the new meanings.

P.S Fairly cogent post. Recommend you also describe what you want balance to be sooner rather than later so you don't fall into pittraps in post-release devel.

"Skillset" does not exist! There is only Skills and Abilities...

[Shiri]

"Skillset" does not exist! There is only Skills and Abilities...

Yeah, but that's not what the players from everywhere else think! Heh.

[Shadow]

I wouldn't mind seeing a Hospice skill. i.e. you screw your ship to bad you have to put in to someone who owns a hospice building to repair your crew especially if your own medsect on your ship (IF you have one) couldn't fix them well enough. The better the med is in hospice the faster the repair type thing I just think it sounds like a nifty idea

[Silferras]

I think the Psychology skill mentioned in the Lusternia forums by Myrkr (I think?) would be an interesting sub-skill of Psionics, or something along the lines of Empathy.. Learning how to read someone's mind and extrapolate their actions to use it to your advantage in combat and suchlike would be interesting. Was so thinking of Deanna Troi on this, heh.

Could also be a spin on Influence, in that you can convert small NPC ships/planets to your cause depending on their natural inclinations or loyalties. Not sure how this melds with how the org system actually works, though, so I'll wait and see!

This post has been edited by Silferras: Feb 6 2008, 05:02 PM

[Anansi]

P.S Fairly cogent post. Recommend you also describe what you want balance to be sooner rather than later so you don't fall into pittraps in post-release devel.

This is going to sound lazy and/or stupid, but balancing is really not the job of design. We're not clairvoyant, so the actual job of balancing things falls into the hands of the playtesters and developers.

However, the overall power level I shoot for is that a skill should always eventually kill someone who is doing nothing but curing perfectly. How long that takes depends on the individual skill, but generally speaking, a more aggressive skill should be one that is easier to shut down, and a skill that works more slowly is one that is harder to shutdown. There are three broad categories of winning strategies:

1. "Aggressive" tactics, which almost always means stacking damage through damage-enhancing effects and afflictions to kill someone very fast, or rapidly reaching the conditions for an insta-kill that relies on health, wounding, mana, afflictions or something like that.
2. "Control" tactics, which mean affliction locks and shutting down someone's curing so that you can stack bleeding until they drop dead, or so that you can keep them still for a timed insta-kill.
3. "Buildup" tactics, in which you are hardly ever hindering your enemy, but instead you are "doing your own thing" and building up to use an ability that turns things around, most often an insta-kill of some sort. This is quite rare, so much so that I can't think of an example, but I'm citing it for completeness.

Generally speaking, players should have an incentive to try and control aggressive tactics (Hinder an opponent's offence), and to race against control tactics (Kill him before he gets his affliction lock going). Thus, the more aggressive win conditions on a skill should be fast, but easier to shut down. On the other hand, the win conditions that rely on things like afflictions locks should be slower, but harder to stop. Skills that "build up" to a big effect should be coupled with a defensive skill, or should have some defensive abilities themselves.

The overall balance is that skills should be able to kill, but the faster it kills, the easier it is to keep it from killing. Consider how fast the skill can kill a "dummy" opponent that does nothing but cure. If it can do that really fast, and it relies on passive effects to do so, something is wrong. Things that are easy to stop, such as "chained" abilities (Players of Lusternia will recognise those as the kata forms) should go into really aggressive skills, and things that are hell to stop such as passive abilities should go into slower skills. When coupled with offense, things that make someone very hard to stop, like passive healing effects, should go only into the slowest of skills.

[Shadow]

This is going to sound lazy and/or stupid, but balancing is really not the job of design. We're not clairvoyant, so the actual job of balancing things falls into the hands of the playtesters and developers.

Ain't that the truth.

[Gaetele]

This is going to sound lazy and/or stupid, but balancing is really not the job of design. We're not clairvoyant, so the actual job of balancing things falls into the hands of the playtesters and developers.

However, the overall power level I shoot for is that a skill should always eventually kill someone who is doing nothing but curing perfectly. How long that takes depends on the individual skill, but generally speaking, a more aggressive skill should be one that is easier to shut down, and a skill that works more slowly is one that is harder to shutdown. There are three broad categories of winning strategies:

1. "Aggressive" tactics, which almost always means stacking damage through damage-enhancing effects and afflictions to kill someone very fast, or rapidly reaching the conditions for an insta-kill that relies on health, wounding, mana, afflictions or something like that.
2. "Control" tactics, which mean affliction locks and shutting down someone's curing so that you can stack bleeding until they drop dead, or so that you can keep them still for a timed insta-kill.
3. "Buildup" tactics, in which you are hardly ever hindering your enemy, but instead you are "doing your own thing" and building up to use an ability that turns things around, most often an insta-kill of some sort. This is quite rare, so much so that I can't think of an example, but I'm citing it for completeness.

Generally speaking, players should have an incentive to try and control aggressive tactics (Hinder an opponent's offence), and to race against control tactics (Kill him before he gets his affliction lock going). Thus, the more aggressive win conditions on a skill should be fast, but easier to shut down. On the other hand, the win conditions that rely on things like afflictions locks should be slower, but harder to stop. Skills that "build up" to a big effect should be coupled with a defensive skill, or should have some defensive abilities themselves.

Aggressive being something like large amounts of wounding ie: Monks, Warriors or mana/ego based instakills ie: Toadcurse
Control being something like time-based instakill ie: Judgment, Chasm or forced instakills ie: Deliverance
Buildup tactics being a rupture-based instakill (I dunno if Ninjakari has that) or something like the Soulless tarot.

[Anansi]

Aggressive being something like large amounts of wounding ie: Monks, Warriors or mana/ego based instakills ie: Toadcurse
Control being something like time-based instakill ie: Judgment, Chasm or forced instakills ie: Deliverance
Buildup tactics being a rupture-based instakill (I dunno if Ninjakari has that) or something like the Soulless tarot.

To your "control" list I would add the classic Lusternia control skill, Druidry. At least in the times of sapping people to bleed them dry.

To your "buildup" list I would add the caveat that, while the Ninjakari have a rupture-based instakill, they don't usually use that, and when they do, it's usually along with abilities that afflict heavily in the process, making it more of a case of aggressive-buildup or control-buildup. Very hard to find a skill that is "pure" buildup, the main distinction being that the player of said skill should be able to fight without reacting much to what his opponent is doing.

[Gaetele]

Druids don't use cudgel to kill!

... wait, Druids kill at all? Last time I saw a druid kill was... a long time ago. They just sit there and be annoying and groundsap while calling for a Wiccan or a Warrior to come kill this thing for them.

[Distillation]

I was just wondering something relating to your offensive design that you were talking about here...

Afflictions and effects that let the skill user build up damage over time until they can overwhelm someone's curing are viable ways of killing.

From what you're saying it sounds like some of the classes are going to be based around attrition. Is this right? Attrition classes are hideously boring to fight against and almost impossible to balance. Generally either the attrition effect is weak enough to be mostly negligible (spiritsinger sleep on Lusternia), very expensive to recover from (hunger), absurdly incapacitating (willpower draining), or essentially a time-bomb (dolls/puppets in all incarnations). Furthermore, it's really boring to fight against a class where you know that if you don't kill them in a certain amount of time, they win, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Of course, if I've interpreted this wrong and you aren't using attrition classes, ignore me...

[Gaetele]

A prime focus of combat is that there should always be input from the player. An aggressor should always be able to kill a player that does nothing but attempt to cure the afflictions and damage being directed to it. This is hardcoded in by things like elixir/salve/herb balance in the games, but a player should not be able to just turtle in a stalemate until the battle ends as some of the other games have shown (Priests/Clerics in Achaea/Aetolia/Imperian are a good example of this). How fast the aggressor wins should be dependent on the skillset and the method of killing the curer. Offense should always trump defense by some margin.

[Anansi]

I was just wondering something relating to your offensive design that you were talking about here...



From what you're saying it sounds like some of the classes are going to be based around attrition. Is this right? Attrition classes are hideously boring to fight against and almost impossible to balance. Generally either the attrition effect is weak enough to be mostly negligible (spiritsinger sleep on Lusternia), very expensive to recover from (hunger), absurdly incapacitating (willpower draining), or essentially a time-bomb (dolls/puppets in all incarnations). Furthermore, it's really boring to fight against a class where you know that if you don't kill them in a certain amount of time, they win, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Of course, if I've interpreted this wrong and you aren't using attrition classes, ignore me...

Sleep, hunger and willpower drain effects (Which I agree are either useless or frustrating) are not what I had in mind. Rather, I was thinking of timed insta-kills, passive effects and stacking bleeding. Those skills that take a "slow and steady" approach to offense and are harder to shut down, but take longer to do their thing.

[Anansi]

I know you mentioned randomness and how its bad but, and perhaps its just me I'd like it. One downfall with combat to me is its too regimented. I always use effect X and you counter with Y and we always get this result. Now IRE certainly is way ahead of a lot of places in this regard, but perhaps there can be more done here.

Polaris has more random elements in its combat than other IRE games. What I'm talking about isn't so much skills with random effects, but rather an issue of predictability and expectations. The skill's user should have a reasonable expectation of what he can accomplish with an ability; he should be able to predict what will happen if he uses it so he can think ahead. A skill that is utterly unpredictable is bad even if it's not random. Think of an ability that has effects keyed to the current time and to the date of birth of the victim. If you have no way of seeing the effect in advance, and if there are enough possible different effects, the skill is useless even though it isn't random. A skill that does a random affliction out of a list of three to five possibilities is usable, especially if the afflictions have similar functions but different effects.

All very good points! In the end, obviously, I have final say in the design of skills. While I will do my best to read every post and comment if I can, don't be put down if I don't. Anansi will be my main filter and make sure I see things that would fit in well or that could be adapted to meet one of our planned skills.

One hint: If you like an idea, post in its thread and show interest. That will help keep it floating at the top, cluing me in that it's an interesting idea.

[Arizte]

I think we should, instead of 'magic' or some sort, rely on hard science. Throw some quantum theory in there and you could theoretically do anything that magic could most likely.

Quantum entanglement!