Skill Development Overview part1

As I have already stated, I really don't like a level system in rpgs, I much prefer a skill based system. Many games have combined the two somewhat such as World of Warcraft having a level system for your characters, while crafting is a skill based grind. I have not completely worked out how Wogralds skill and system is going to work out yet, all I know is that I don't want what is currently in crossfire, or another generic level up sort of game.

In Ultima Online, every skill you could use in game from tailoring, to cooking to magic was skill based. But there were also "default" skills, things any character could do as soon as they were made, things that may have actually taken skill points in other games to complete. A good example in Ultima Online is carving the hides off of corpses. This was an easy resource to harvest in that game, while in other games it takes a speacial skinning skill. I often wonder if certain skills should be default, and/or certain skills everyone should be able to learn up to a certain level, such as cooking.

Many games end up tweaking the skill system and the way it works after the game comes out and is play tested. Too many things that seem like a good idea on paper, end up being problematic when there are real people involved playing the game. For instance. Some games have you make thousands of items over and over again to gain a small amount of skill. People find this repetative, and then end up getting macro bots to do the tedious skill grind for them. You can put the macroing into the game, such as in phantasyrpg, where you can simpely tell it how many times you want to mine, typing in a number up to a certain amount of digits.

I like the gain on use idea for skills. I believe this is already in crossfire, with weapons levels going up with usage. There are a couple annoying things with this though. First of all, if you allow skill gaining in pvp, a person could get a sparing partner, train with the same person all day and night, and eventually both people would end up with high skills. The other thing is where newbies fight low level monsters to gain skill up to the maximum amount. We should limit how much you can gain from easier stuff.