One possible design is to have the skills directly attached to types of things. You don't just have a general 'weapon' skill, but for each kind of weapon and the way you use it (ie- there are many kinds of swords and styles of using each one)

Next is where use of particular items used as tools are gateways to doing different activities/environments in your game world .

An example would be learning how to make an effective torch (as well as how to light and hold it). Try going into a cave carrying a glowing hunk of wood or a handful of burning brush and see how far you get. So exploring caves (or running through rough terrain on a moonless night) is made possible (as is setting a grass fire to drive an animal/ herd over a cliff).

Ropes to assist with climbing (or making snares or a 'tripwire' trap)

Making a shaft straightener tool for better arrows (and using it)

Preserving food for a journey and effective water containers for unfriendly terrain that needs traversing

Shoes/foot protection

Clothing

Boat...

Riding...

So the majority of skills (to be acquired/increased) would be for specific uses of specific tools, while some general overall skills are modifiers for that.

Such a system DOES take alot of programming logic (particularly when multiple overlapping skills are involved) for a wide range of actions (and their interaction with the terrain/prop objects). Obvious patterns of specialization for higher skill levels (which since you shouldnt have them all then requires interactions with NPCs or other players to have access to the results of higher skills).

A templated approach to the logic might alleviate alot of work (and leave more effort for handling all the complex end-cased)

I think it could work.

Basically, what you've got is a sort of usage-based improvement system, without some of the drawbacks. Like, the downside of usage-based systems is that it incentivizes repetitive behavior -- you do repetitive behavior to level up that behavior, and then once that behavior is leveled up there's an opportunity cost to doing anything else, so it keeps you further in repetitive behavior. This isn't in the player's interest or yours (you both want the player to experience a wide variety of fun things rather than experience a tiny repetitive sliver of the game).

By tying the upgrades to specific, named actions (of which there is a limited pool), you avoid the problem of someone swinging a sword at a friend 1000 times and then the friend healing themselves 1000 times, in order to level up in swords and healing. If there are only 3 opportunities to level up in healing magic per chapter, you just can't do that.

The downside of your "usage-quest system" is that it becomes a lot of work for your creative team. Can you push that much content in the amount of development time you have? Can you think up a different mini-quest for each possible level of healing? Are the agility quests more difficult or long or tiresome than strength quests in a way that it incentivizes strength builds in an unintended way?

I think it could work.

:cry: Thanks. At least someone does :lol:

The downside of your "usage-quest system" is that it becomes a lot of work for your creative team. Can you push that much content in the amount of development time you have? Can you think up a different mini-quest for each possible level of healing? Are the agility quests more difficult or long or tiresome than strength quests in a way that it incentivizes strength builds in an unintended way?

That's a good question and one that I've been pondering as well.

i'll second that.

"i think it could work".

just have to keep it reasonable and believable, not contrived.

of course that may be easier said than done....

Take a look at crackdown. It had several points values, e.g. hand to hand, guns, explosives, athletics etc.

Actively using a gun raised gun score and made guns better, unless of course you shot civilians and then it might decrease.

Throwing grenades at enemies raised explosives and running and jumping raised the athletics score.

Dotted around the map were orbs which gave instant boosts to scores.

The athletics orbs were higher up the map the more effective they were so you were locked out of levelling up ridiculously quickly.

I loved that game...

The problem that I have with these mini-quests is that someone has to generate them, and they will inevitably get boring (there's only so and so many things you can give as quest).

I somewhat like the way stats work in NetHack. Every XYZ you do will "exercise" a stat, and every so-and-so-many turns a check is made whether you have exercised, and there is a small (and diminiushing) chance that the exercised stat will go up.

Now, of course, NetHack wouldn't be NetHack if there wasn't "abusing" a skill, too. Which you can easily do, and there's like 10,000 things you need to keep in mind, or you'll regret.

Basically, remember to carry around enough weight to get stressed (exercises strength) but avoid getting hungry (abuses constitution), and do not carry enough weight to get strained, or even overloaded, since dexterity (and eventually constitution) will be abused.

But yeah, in general, that's a cool concept. Only a tidbit too complex for me, with a little too many pitfalls (I guess that's just the challenge to a hardcore NetHack player, though).

The problem that I have with these mini-quests is that someone has to generate them

that problem is endemic to all hand generated content. procedurally generated content and user created content seem to be the only answers.

and they will inevitably get boring (there's only so and so many things you can give as quest).

that problem is endemic to all hard coded content, and even procedurally generated content which lacks sufficient variety. procedurally generated content with sufficient variety is one possible solution. another is to design the game so tasks/quests are not repeated often enough to get old. make them one time only, or a limited number of times, or design them so they won't get used too often (IE they are of limited benefit), something like that. or just throw up a message and say "if you want more - buy the DLC or next version!". and then make a bunch of DLC, and a new version. <g>.

at the end of the day, any offline game can only have a fixed amount of content. once its used up, its used up. time for a new game.

unless you can come up with a good script formula for writing quests, it may be too much work to use quests as the primary means of leveling up. they may have to be relegated to a bonus way to level up, with some more traditional / automatic / less developer labor intensive means of leveling as the basis for the game.

right now i've finished 26 quest gens for caveman, and still have another 29 on the todo list. each requires about a screen worth of init_quest code, and 2-5 screens of run_quest code (depending on the number of stages in that quest type). almost every new quest requires me to write some function to check for some new condition never checked for before in the game. that's typically another screen or two of code. code is also required to display map markers and journal entries based on quest stage. although this could be handles with generic routines and a database. but its just about as fast (maybe faster?) to add the code as it is to add the data as to where to draw markers and what text to display at each stage of the quest. by now i've got it down to about 3 hours to write, test, debug, and finish one quest gen. and it doesn't look like i can do it any faster.

Rather than hard-coding (or generating) specific quests, you could:

1. Identify places/times in the game you can only access by exercising specific skills (like a spot you can only get to by exercising agility, or by talking your way past someone in a clever way, or by winning a jousting tournament, etc.)
2. Put one-time skill-specific upgrade collectables in that spot (like Chrono Trigger's "tabs"). (After all, which felt better in Chrono Trigger, leveling up or finding a tab? Probably finding a tab. I still remember where some of them are.)

Then again, this almost entirely removes one of the perennial benefits of levels. Provided gaining a level is a real reward (e.g., that you get skills that expand your gameplay possibilities), there's an "anticipation" period before you level up where you keep playing in anticipation of leveling up. ("Can't abandon the game now, I'm more than halfway to the next level"), and then a "honeymoon" period after you level up where you keep playing because you have new stuff to play with and maybe there's a period where once-harder-things are now easy and you feel badass. That's a really effective cycle, and part of why RPG levels are now part of so many other genres.

(And why you have multiple systems that are "filling up bars", so that you spend more time in anticipation and honeymoon modes and less time in "neutral".)

That particular cycle is harder to maintain with a "collectathon" structure -- it's easy to be in the anticipation mode if you've spotted a "tab" and are figuring out how to get it, but when you don't know where any "tabs" are you're in neutral mode. Same thing with "usage quests". If you don't know you're on such a quest, or aren't on one and don't know where to find more, then you're in neutral.

Anyway, it's not a fatal problem. This is just to get you thinking about ways to keep people in anticipation mode without levels.

Because you're building your stats because on the quests you do. Rather than the number of enemies you've killed or number of times you've used a weapon, skill, or magic.

If you want to be a warrior, you'll do quests that will strengthen strength, attack, physical defense. If you want to be a thief, you'll do quests that will strengthen intelligence, agility, stealth.

In 'Fable' (one of the first two - I haven't played the others), you have four different experiences that act as currency:

- General experience can be spent on anything

- Three different attribute-specific experiences (I think they were Strength-based skills, Dexterity-based skills, and Magic-based skills).

When defeating an enemy, depending on what abilities you used to defeat it, you'd get that same kind of attribute-specific experience as well some general experience, providing a mix of freedom to develop your character how you want (using general experience), and also growth in the same area you are actively using (the other experience types).

Kill 10 slimes in a normal RPG would add EXP points and going to the next level will up all your stats. Move 10 rocks will increase your strength only. Kill 10 bears will increase only your strength and your stamina.

So to try to put it another way, the events (as I call them) only increase a particular stat (or two depending on the quest).

What if I take the "Kill a bear" quest, and I kill him by pushing rocks over a cliff edge onto his head? Your quest wouldn't recognize it, because it sounds like you are designing your quests to force the player to approach them a specific way.

Suppose I kill the bear via dousing it in gasoline and lighting it on fire? Or kill it with arrows from 100ft away? How is strength involved?

Suppose I kill the bear by running away from it, and luring it to try to cross a rope bridge, and then it falls to its death when I cut the rope?

Obviously not all these mechanics will be implemented in your game - my only point is underlining that your are forcing players into "one true way" of solving the quest, or at least rewarding them as if there is only one true way. i.e. your quests aren't a challenge of choices and thought, but a challenge purely of action, with the solution pre-prescribed.

When I "Kill a bear", regardless of how I accomplish it, the game pretends I really did "Kill a bear with a sword in close-combat while within 20 ft of its starting location."

Your design could certainly be made to work for a game or two, but as a general improvement over existing experience systems, I feel like there are too many cons and not enough pros.

Then again, this almost entirely removes one of the perennial benefits of levels. [snip]

excellent insights there.

when addressing the question "what to do when you're high level", i came to the conclusion that the player needs a goal at all times, either supplied by the game, or one the player has set for themselves. it can be as simple as "lets see whats over the next hill... hmm... yet another hill." or as complex as "slay the dark lord while simultaneously balancing the national budget". traditional ways of gaining experience provide this constant goal (i have a progress bar to fill !). quests would not do this unless they were one long quest line, with each quest automatically assigned upon completion of the previous. similar to the main and faction quest lines in skyrim.