Has anyone considered implementing a situational or short-term character skill boost system? Basically, characters would gain significant improvement with some specifically defined skills as the character performs them. Probably about 25% increase over the permanent numbers. But then that improvement will gradually fade out over the course of a few game days. Characters could actually boost their permanent skills (or earn experience in that area) by employing and maintaining the temporary effect. For an example, lets say the game has a basketball mini-game. The player may have pretty bad skills - 8 out of 100 - at playing the game. But after a few shots during a game, he will earn a temporary skill boost of about +2%, bringing his total skill to 10. By half time, he could earn up to +25%, making his skill 33 out of 100. But that would be as high as it could go, temporarily. That number being so high for such a long period of time would feed the learning of the permanent skill or experience. So if he keeps playing, he could bring the permanent number up to 9 or 10. But the 33 would gradually fade back out once he stops playing. Any opinions? I just woke up (I must have been dreaming about this crap), and I haven't given it much thought yet. I would appreciate help finding holes or negative aspects that this would have on the gameplay.

Quite a few games allow temporary boosts to stats/abilities. One thing you need to consider is whether you can stack temporary boosts. 3 or 4 of those +25% would add up real quick.

Try playing the Sims Hot Date (or later) or Sims 2 and watch the relationship bars. You can get an insanely high daily score quite quick but the overall score eventually builds up to the daily score. The daily goes down each day unless you interact with the other person. The opposite can be true as well the the bars can go down if the daily drops.

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Original post by tstrimp Quite a few games allow temporary boosts to stats/abilities. One thing you need to consider is whether you can stack temporary boosts. 3 or 4 of those +25% would add up real quick.

I'd be interested to know which games, to see how they implement it. I was picturing it working the same way that gaining normal experience works. Wherever you would gain normal experience, that's where the temporary boost would be added. It wouldn't be stackable on a single skill.

If you're talking about bonuses to skill success, then just grab any RPG, MMO or not, video game or not, with a magic system that's been produced in the last twenty years. Pretty much any of them has some concept of temporarily boosting abilities in one way or another, and take different approaches to stacking bonuses. Ex: D&D 3.0 and 3.5 use named bonuses to determine which effects stack. Whereas Everquest developers sat down and named which spells would stack with which others and which wouldn't.

However, that concept is largely unrelated to the concept of improving skill gain. That depends on the underlying experience system.

I'm referring specifically to temporarily boosting skills by performing the actions that relate to them, the same way characters would increase permanent skills. Holding the temporary boost up high would increase the speed at which the character permanently learns the skill.

I think that's quite different than gaining temporary boosts from a friendly magic spell or taking a drug. The temporary boosts I'm talking about would always be happening. Any time the player performs any type of action, the boosts for that action would be climbing.

That system could work very well if the lowest value keep increasing as well.

Let me use your basketball example. The character has a skill of 8/100 points. Let's consider the minimum value to be 5 (no one is THAT bad, right?). After he/she got up to 11, the minimum would be raised to 10. After 21, the minimum would be 20, and so on, so forth. That way there would be a temporary boost that would slowly accumulate over the course of the game.

I don't know if 100/100 = learning permanent skill, but if it doesn't, in order to prevent the characters from having 100/100 all the time, you could have the highest minimum value to be 90/100. It's a high enough value to be considered excellent, and it will still motivate people to try those mini-games every once a while.

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Original post by Eduardo Friedman That system could work very well if the lowest value keep increasing as well.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. What is the lowest value? The 8? The 8 represents the character's permanently learned skill. As they continue to perform the action, they will gain in their temporary ability. Keeping the temporary ability higher will increase the speed of progress toward their permanent ability.

It may start as 8+2, but will climb to 8+10, then 8+25, then 9+25, then 10+25, etc. Later on in the game, their skill would eventually climb to 60+25, then 80+20 (capped off), then 90+10 (capped off), then 100. Once mastered, there would be no more temporary boost. If they have something like 50+25 going, and take a long break from the activity while doing something else, it would gradually drop to 50+20, then 50+10, then just 50. Going back to play more later would change it to 50+10, 50+15, 50+25, then eventually 51+25. They don't need to keep the temporary boost at 25 to gain permanent progress. They could "level up" while it's at 1 or 10. But 25 will make it happen faster.

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Original post by Kest I'm not sure I understand what you mean. What is the lowest value? The 8? The 8 represents the character's permanently learned skill. As they continue to perform the action, they will gain in their temporary ability. Keeping the temporary ability higher will increase the speed of progress toward their permanent ability. It may start as 8+2, but will climb to 8+10, then 8+25, then 9+25, then 10+25, etc. Later on in the game, their skill would eventually climb to 60+25, then 80+20 (capped off), then 90+10 (capped off), then 100. Once mastered, there would be no more temporary boost. If they have something like 50+25 going, and take a long break from the activity while doing something else, it would gradually drop to 50+20, then 50+10, then just 50. Going back to play more later would change it to 50+10, 50+15, 50+25, then eventually 51+25. They don't need to keep the temporary boost at 25 to gain permanent progress. They could "level up" while it's at 1 or 10. But 25 will make it happen faster.

I was thinking of a system that combined both the permanent and temporary growths.

It was pretty much what you just posted, but, um, worded a lot worse. My bad there.

It's like this:
My idea was to make the skill permanently learned at a certain number of points. Anything above that, if possible, would grant the character bonus when using that particular skill. For this example, let's say it's 90/100 points.

Also, the number of points in that skill would be dropping whenever that skill wasn't in use, like you said. But instead of gaining +25 bonus, I thought about breaking the 100 points into levels. (5-10, 11-20, 21-30, etc.) The absolute minimum is 5 because I think it's impossible for a person no to be able to do something.

A character has 8/100 in basketball, so he's in the first level of learning that skill. If he doesn't make use of that skill, the 8 will go down to 5, and stop there. If he makes an effort, takes part in mini-games, etc., the number of points will increase, and, when it reaches 11, the learning levels up, and the minimum is now 10 instead of 5.

OK, now he's got 90/100 points, and subsequently learned the skill permanently. If he keeps getting points, shots will be easier to make, he'll be able to move around faster, and so on.

I hope that's easier to understand.

You're saying the skill is sliced up into several levels so a character can drop no lower than their current level's minimum range while inactive, and can advance to the next level by increasing the skill beyound their current level's maximum range. Like a ratchet wrench.

Underneath the skin, what I posted is also counting small steps toward the next level, but the permanent progress wouldn't regress when the temporary effect does.