Hey everybody, this is kind of a spin off of the other MMOFPS related thread, but a little more specific. One of the things that I found on that thread is that people have very different ideas about how progression should work, and as an avid Halo 3 and CoD4 player, I'm in favor of it being more skill based in combat, and I don't mean the kind of skills from D&D, though those have their place too. I want skills that work similar to Oblivion for outside of combat, weapons skills that are part of that, then micromanagement of your gun. Then abilties that work like spells or, well, abilities for combat to spice things up. The abilities are chosen when the character is made and stay that way, so you would make your character with a specific position within a squad in mind. Just some food for thought, what if you had a squad of 4, and that squad is what leveled up, I just thought of that, so I don't know how it'd work, but I'm curious as to what people think about this.

I've thought about this for long time, and I'm still not satisfied with my ideas. Actually, I don't think a game designer ever should be satisfied but that's another topic.

If player skill determines if an attack hits or misses then how can character skill affect damage? One idea is that character skill determines the chance of doing critical damage. This would be rationalized as an accurate character being able to hit more vital areas. There could be a dodge skill that negates critical attacks, which would be rationalized that the character knows how to expose itself less.

Not that kind of exposure. You and your dirty mind. Sheesh. :-D

As for non-combat...

I have no idea. I'll keep thinking about it.

Is that the kind of idea you hope to have in this discussion? If not then my apologies. I just woke up.

Yes, I'm that obsessed with game design. Check GameDev or brush my teeth... Duh! GameDev!

haha, I just got up to and I brushed my teeth and then checked.

I think that I should have clarified what I meant by weapon skill because it didn't come through very clear. The weapons skill in this one would, at higher ranks, allow more modifications to your gun along with different kinds of rounds, stuff like that. It would be up to the player whether or not they hit.

In the current setup of my design, there are abilities that make your more accurate for a time though.

And this thread is just supposed to be a discussion about different aspects of progression in MMOFPSs. I'm hoping people will just throw out ideas that are interesting.

Now I'm thinking a lot about having set abilities for characters that were picked by the player at creation. They progress by building up skills, upgrading their weapons, and joining a Squad, which is where the second part of progression happens. The Squad gains Prestige (tentative name, what do you think?) which unlocks harder content and more stuff for them. Higher levels would also unlock Squad Abilities, but I still don't know what those would be.