So, Ive been playing World of Warcraft lately, and theres alot of Ganking on PVP servers. Ganking, for those that dont know, is when a high level character kills a low level one. Usually, the low level character can not do anythignother than die. Its fairly frustrating and feels unfair alot of the time. But thats a big problem in a vast majority of PVP MMORPGs. Also, Ive always found it unrealistic that level 60 would kll level 20 in one hit. I mean, it woudlnt work in the real world that way. The way monsters are scattered around at your level.. I dont know. theres something aobut the number based leveling up system that just doesnt make sense. I cant quite explain it. So Ive been thinking about a way to go around that, and came up with an interesting way for your character to levelup realistically. First, you'd have a number of stats. Main, Submain, Resistant, SubResistant Main - Your main action. Fighters would have fight. Mages would have Magic. Submain - What type of main action. Fighters could have Blades, Martial arts, Blunts. Mages could have Fire magic, Ice Magic, Lightning Magic, Healing Magic.. Resistant - This would be broken down into Magic Resistance, Physical Attack Resistance, Status Resistance. SubResistant - What type of Magic you're resistant to (Fire, Ice, Holy?). what type of pysical attacks (Martial Arts, Blades, Blunts). What kind of Status (Poison, Silence) Thats the basic set up. Now, as you start fighting monsters or other players, you start to build up your stats. If you use swords alot, your Blades skill goes up. If you're constantly being attacked by Fire Magic, your Fire Magic Resistance goes up. If you keep being poisoned, your poison resistance goes up. Like that. Now, as you play and time goes on, all your stats diminish slowly. If you build up a strong tolerance to poison, and you stop being attacked with poison, your resistance to it goes down gradually untill you no longer resist it at all. Also, as you start building up your stats in one thing, the stats of other things decrease faster based on how long its been since you've used those other stats. For example, if you start working on your resistance to poison right after you spent time working on your resistance to silence but havent worked on your resistance to slow in a while, then your stats in slow would diminish faster than those in silence. There could also be special armors and weapons that define the minimum and maximum your stats can be. The Holy Robe of the Magi could set your Silence resistance min to X and the max to Base_max + Y and do the same for your Healing/Holy Magics. Since as you build up stats, the stats you dont use decrease, you'll never have a character thats a badass at everything. Pretty much, this is forcing the player to decide what sorts of things they're strong at and what they're weak against. In PVP, this creates an almost Rock-Paper-Scissors style. A Fire Mage fighting a swordfighter would be pretty even matched because they're weak against each others attacks. Also, for the most part, it means that a player whos been playing for a few hours now and then could take on a player whos been playing 12 hours a day for the last week. The monsters would also have these strengths and weaknesses. By the Way, in order to get the options to do higher quests, the player earns fame as they do quests and word of mouth gets out. As they get more famous, they're allowed acceess to new zones and quests.

Somebody on these boards eloquently described the grinding level system as being analogous to a slot machine. You work and work and work at it, and then there's this little tiny payoff, and that's enough to flog you into grinding up another level. It's that tiny psychological reinforcement that keeps people playing boring, ridiculous games for weeks on end.

Your system doesn't have that. In fact, it almost punishes you for playing, by penalizing your stats over time. Have you ever Played Final Fantasy II? Not the American one, which was the Japanese FF4, but the old one that looks just like the first one. It has a skill atrophy system almost identical to what you describe. Taking damage and surviving causes your HP to increase, you gain weapon-specific combat skills, and your various magical powers increase with practice. But if neglected skills decrease.

There's nothing so discouraging as swinging an axe into an enemy's face and winning a battle, and then seeing "Sword skill -1" appear at the bottom of the screen. I know how that would make me feel, and it wouldn't be "moralized".

Maybe it's possible to balance such a system, but even if you get it just right, players who work at your game for months EXPECT to be way tougher than the n00bz who just logged in.

And to be fair, it is in fact possible to be absolutely unbeatable at high skill levels. Fencing is a good example. I used to compete in college, and there were some guys (St. Johns, for instance) who were untouchable. They spent so much time training, and had such terrific coaches, and steped onto the strip knowing my style better than I myself did, it seemed, that it was all I could do to keep distance and try to get some double-touches (saber). 0-5 was the norm for those bouts, and if you're dealing with melee skills in your game, it can be expected that Miyamoto Musashi would in fact be able to take on a half-dozen thugs without a scratch.

Why those guys can take an arrow through the eye and shrug it off is beyond me, but that's a huge issue that we've addressed here time and again.

If you're going forward with this idea, don't forget to take the gameplay experience of the more dedicated players into account. If you make a mewbie-friendly game, then "hardcore" players will scoff.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage Somebody on these boards eloquently described the grinding level system as being analogous to a slot machine. You work and work and work at it, and then there's this little tiny payoff, and that's enough to flog you into grinding up another level. It's that tiny psychological reinforcement that keeps people playing boring, ridiculous games for weeks on end.

Its not the bonus in stats that the player cares about really. As you level up, the enemies in zones level up. The challenge is consistant.
What gives the players that psychological reinforcement is the new abilities they get and the new weapons/armor they can equip. Its the noticable change that player want.

So you've given me an idea I hadnt thought of. as your skill in certain areas, you get new abilities. Once you get X points in heal magic, you learn Ressurect. If you stop using heal magic and your stats ebb away, you dont lose the ability, but instead it's success rate drops. Also, Itd be neat to combine skills to make abilities. for example, If you have X points in Blades and Y points in Fire magic, then you can learn an ability to enchant your weapon with Fire to deal Fire damage on top of the Physical damage.

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Your system doesn't have that. In fact, it almost punishes you for playing, by penalizing your stats over time. Have you ever Played Final Fantasy II? Not the American one, which was the Japanese FF4, but the old one that looks just like the first one. It has a skill atrophy system almost identical to what you describe. Taking damage and surviving causes your HP to increase, you gain weapon-specific combat skills, and your various magical powers increase with practice. But if neglected skills decrease.

FF2j's system was interesting, and i liked the concept. Its obviously the underlying concept of this game im conceptualizing. However, FF2j's system was flawed. Im looking to create a workable version of it in the scheme of an MMORPG where players can end up being unique.

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There's nothing so discouraging as swinging an axe into an enemy's face and winning a battle, and then seeing "Sword skill -1" appear at the bottom of the screen. I know how that would make me feel, and it wouldn't be "moralized".

If you never use Sword skills, then what does it matter? If you dont use your sword, your ability to use it obviously diminishes. On a quick side note, I think its a bad idea to show the player is losing skills. That is demoralizing. Its got to be something that the player only notices over time. After playing for a week as a Fire mage, they shouldnt expect to be as good with Ice magic.

Another idea i just had is this: Suppose you built up your ice magic ability really high and stopped using it. I already mentioned that it's stats would diminish slower that other skills you rarely use, but it would also be nice that if you were once great at it, if you pick it up again, you learn it a little faster up untill the point you once knew it at, and then it begins to rise at a normal pace.

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Maybe it's possible to balance such a system, but even if you get it just right, players who work at your game for months EXPECT to be way tougher than the n00bz who just logged in.

After thinking about it, I think that long time players will be more powerfull, however, since those long time players still have weaknesses, they're still vulnerable against certain attacks. also, since there woudlnt be a feasable way of showing every stat the other players have, some players might be a little wary of fighting random people and hoping their noobs. I guess i mostly want the casual player to be able to fight against a hardcore player and still have a fighting chance. Even if they lose, the other player shoudlnt have full health. In WoW, if someone is 5 levels higher than you, its damn near impossible to inflict even 100 HP of damage. I want it so that if a hardcore player enters a zone with other weak players, they shoudlnt be able to go through any more than 4 or 5 noobs before having to run away.

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And to be fair, it is in fact possible to be absolutely unbeatable at high skill levels. Fencing is a good example. I used to compete in college, and there were some guys (St. Johns, for instance) who were untouchable. They spent so much time training, and had such terrific coaches, and steped onto the strip knowing my style better than I myself did, it seemed, that it was all I could do to keep distance and try to get some double-touches (saber). 0-5 was the norm for those bouts, and if you're dealing with melee skills in your game, it can be expected that Miyamoto Musashi would in fact be able to take on a half-dozen thugs without a scratch.

I see your point. But in real life, Miyamoto Musashi would probably never find a guy who's just learning how to shoot fireballs from his hand. That would be his weakness. While he would still probably win, he's going to be in at least a little pain from being bombarded by fire.

I think same classes (Fighter vs Fighter) would be interesting if they fought against eachother since one fighter has more abilities and better armor and weapons. Obviously the weaker one will lose. But should he fight a mage, he wont walk away unscathed. Not everyone will be fighters. Not everyone will be mages.
So I suppose that in a way, you level up as the style of combat you're working towards. A hardcore fighter will kill a casual fighter. But since not everynoe will be fighters, a hardcore fighter can not simply go around murdering low level players. But still, PVP could be fun since most people woudlnt feel hopeless when someone comes in Ganking. Everyone would ahve the chance to make a unique character with their own strengths and weaknesses and abilities, and they would want to show off how their unique character could do in combat against other unique players. Think sort of like Final Fantasy Tactics. It was fun to make combination unts like Archer/Knight or Summoner/White Mage and see how well they do in battle.

Ultima Online (UO) used a skill system similar to what you're proposing. There were X skills and you had 700 skill points to use. That gave you enough to raise 7 skills to 100%, or 14 to 50%, or 28 to 25%. Your skills also atrophied, but at a fairly slow pace. In my 4 years of playing UO, I only ever got 3 skills to Grand Master (100%), so despite what Iron Chef Carnage is saying, you can have respect and love for your powerful character you've spent time building. The rate at which you gain / lose skills will define how accepted your game is by powergamers.

Personally, I love the skill based system. I played Shadowbane for 3 months, built my character to level 65 only to realize that the supposed "end game" everyone preaches about in level based MMOs was crap. So I quit. Killing 800 MonsterRank2 in Boring Zone 2 was no more exciting than killing 400 MonsterRank1 in Boring Zone 1. By the final levels, you've hunted all of the big-game creatures and there is zero reason to continue to play.

I want to explore, have fun and dick around. If I want to hunt dragons with 60% magery, I should be allowed to. Throwing a few spells and than running for my life still increases my magery skill, and I have fun. I can try to do these things, because no matter what, my skill increases.

You will never see "where should I go at 60% magery?" in a skill based MMO, but you'll see 100s of "what zone do I hunt in at level 4?" in a level based one. What's the point of playing an "open ended" game like an MMO if it inheritantly dictates where you have to go and what you have to do?

Always remember - there is no such thing as a "skill grind".

how do you define use?
for example, I cast ice spell 7x and attack 10x using my axe. will my ice and axe skill increase? what if I lost, ran away or somebody put in the killing blow?

if skills increase per use, players could hit each other (or make scripts) to increase stats. then they would have high resistance to everything.

or I cast fireball on me to increase fireball skill and fire resistance.

I thought about that a little bit earlier. Im thinking that against NPCs, your skills go up as you use them (that is, per strike). Based on your current skill and the skill of the NPC (or monster), you have a certain succession rate at raising your skill. So in the beggining, you could fight practice dummies for a while and raise it to, say, 10 points. you get one point for every 1 or 2 hits. If you continnue fighting the practice dummy, you might get one point for every 3 or 4 hits. Or if you're a master swordsman, fighting the dummy would increase your skill every 100-200 hits. you'd be forced to move on to things with higher skills in defense against your weapons. Alternatively, if you're a Fire mage, and you continue attacking things weak against fire magic, your skills wouldnt increase that quickly.
Also, as you use your skills, they dont ever go down. So your stat wont decrease just because its not increasing.

Against players.. i think the same thing could be in effect. Now this is where Im tossed. i like the idea of players being able to train other players. Like a master swordsman spending hours to get a newbie better at his weapon. I like that idea alot, but theres alot of room for exploit. So maybe it could be that you could only increase your skill up to half of what the other player's skill is. If player Y is training with player X and player X has 100 points in swordsman ship, then player Y could only train up to 50 points. That would prevent players from power leveling too fast, but also provides a way for friends to help friends build up their skill to go questing with them, and maybe a way for stronger players to earn some extra money.

Thats if you train with another player. That means, no one dies. Also, the closer the weaker player gets to half the stronger player's skills the slower the stats build up. The stronger player shoudlnt gain any skills.

If you're attacking another player, then someone could die. The skill points are only added when the other player dies and can only increase by a maximum of, say, 10 points. not a whole lot. Also, you can only gain points if you're the weaker than the other player. If player Y has 100 points in Poison Magic, the player X woudlnt gain any poison defence if he has more than 100 points in the resistance. something like that.

i like the training idea alot. but even so, theres a potential for exploit. a potential for the player to just turn on a macro and go to work or sleep while the other player does the same thing. So any ideas on how to avoid that? maybe have the training player do mini games of some sort? sort of like in the Karate Kid where the kid had to do the wax on/wax off thing.. something so the players cant just leave.

I think this idea has merit, i dispise the level grinding of MMORPG's like Everquest, i waste all my time leveling a character that doesn't require much skill on my part for a few month's only to be rewarded with a "Your to uber to do anything interesting anymore, thanks for paying us while you grind and waste your time!"

With your system, the players never stop evolving, you don't need to be uber elite to have a good time, and even if your skills degrade (and they will anyway) the player would at least have the same number of skills and the equipment and style he's worked to get. It somewhat pleases me that i can come back with rusty skills and have something to work on while going out with my buddies in my shiny armor to get back into the 'groove'. I do agree also that the rate at which you gain/lose skills will be a big factor in how well the game may be accepted.

As a personal preference though, i'm far more in favor of FPS hybrids that rely more on the players individual skill rather than statistics that represent skill.

One, I fail to see how this will affect ganking. I mean, UO definitely had ganking problems in it's heyday as well. There are going to be less skilled players that get picked on and ganked by more skilled players. Skill atrophy systems aren't going to change that.

And the problem with skill atrophy systems, they require constant maintenance to keep your skills the way you want them.

If I want to maintain a decent resistance to fire, poison, and ice, I have to constantly monitor my resists and shift the focus on my target playing areas to maintain such a balance. I'm not the kind of person that will want to do that. I'd rathe focus on playing where I'm playing, doing what I want to do, working on what I need to work on, as opposed to maintaining my desired skill set.

And WoW has rock/paper/scissors already built into the class structure as well. Warriors are weak vs mages, who are weak vs rogues, who are weak vs warriors. The thing is, the strengths and weaknesses are not so significant as to be insurmountable in any given situation, simply an advantage that SHOULD tip the scales in the favor of one side or the other. You don't want any guaranteed outcomes in these games. Any given player is going to cry foul if he stands zero or little chance of winning against any other given player.

I thought about this idea for a while and decided that I don't like the whole idea of levels. In a MMO setting I agree with what The Iron Chef and others have said before and thats reputation system would work far better and be a better way to judge the superiority of other players. If you combine it with various titles and awards it works very well. It also serves as great way create a sense of rivialry, comrodery and Hero worship. After all if you are off in the wilds and encouter Miyamoto Musashi the Sword master a title representing he is the greatest swordsmen in the land you are either going to want to take a shot at him and see how you really compare to the master or ask for his autograph.


But as to skills what if instead of using levels, there was a rating system that went from pathetic to godlike. Skill ratings would represent a comparision between the character and the other character in the game and not acutal values. So a charcter with average sword skill would loose badly in fight to someone with godlike sword skill. But since they are comparisons it means that if the godlike swords men decided to spend their time developing their poetry skills and ignoring their sword training then the next time they are involved in a fight they could discover there former godlike sword skill is now consider pathetic in comparison to everyone else. They haven't got any worse it just that everyone is now far better.

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Original post by jRaskell One, I fail to see how this will affect ganking. I mean, UO definitely had ganking problems in it's heyday as well. There are going to be less skilled players that get picked on and ganked by more skilled players. Skill atrophy systems aren't going to change that.

I agree. This will not prevent ganking, but good idea nonetheless. I don't know how a battle is implemented in WoW, I played AC2 and ganking is what made me stop playing that game. You were walking happily to a dungeon to finish your quest when all of a sudden a high-level player jumped on top of you and killed you in one hit.

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And the problem with skill atrophy systems, they require constant maintenance to keep your skills the way you want them. If I want to maintain a decent resistance to fire, poison, and ice, I have to constantly monitor my resists and shift the focus on my target playing areas to maintain such a balance. I'm not the kind of person that will want to do that. I'd rathe focus on playing where I'm playing, doing what I want to do, working on what I need to work on, as opposed to maintaining my desired skill set.

I have had this idea for quite a while too, and one way to improve it is to apply it to a set of skills only. For example, your primary stats (strength, intelligence, etc) won't suffer if you do not use it. They gain permanently. Other skills, such as resistance skills, may lose points if not used. These stats, however, are not that important to care about. Even if you have 0 points on all of them, you can still survive fighting a multi-element creature.

Second, the area you are no longer working on will not diminish completely to 0. There will be a minimum threshold. You do not lose entirely. For example (in a 0-100 scale), you start at 0. You work at it and it reaches 30. Then you shift your focus to other areas. It will not reduce to 0, but only to 15. Then when you come back to it, you can still gain more. Let's say this time you reach 50 and you stop and move on to others. The minimum threshold would be 30. You could then design it that the maximum minimum threshold is 75 (if you manage to max it to 100, the minimum threshold will be 75). Even if you never work at it anymore, you still have 75 points in that area, and you won't lose these 75 points. If you decide to get back at it, it can go back up to 100, but not permanently.

These stats are not that important. They help you in battles somehow, you don't normally want to max these out, because they are not permanent.