Oh how I do love the sound of a good rant in the morning. I figure a flow chart that connects all skills in certain way such as, opposites (like melee and magic) similars and neutrals (such as magic and alchemy) would take care of advancement quite well. When you work to much on an opposite of a skill you already have, it begins to suffer for it. Whereas similar skills will agument each other. Neutrals will have no effect either way, or minute ones. Each skill goes up with practice, and they gain faster when its praciced against an opposing force.. such as your atack against someones defense instead of you just swinging a sword around. The only part about this I do not like is the loss of a skill you already knew, but I have an Idea there. If you lose skill because you start to train in the opposite skill, when/if you go back to it it will gain at say 5X the origional speed until you hit the skill you were at before you switched. Kind of like riding a bike after ten years. Takes a second to become fimilar with it again but the skill is still there. Mind you once again this will require balancing up the wazoo.

P.S. where on earth are you negative ranters getting the idea that because I say something sucks, or doesn't meet the standard of fun, that I think I can do better? That was never said in any post, but kudos to you for having such a good imagination.

(although I am most certain that I can, have, and will again make better)

P.P.S. I sent you an e-mail Dr. did you get it? Service providers have been toying with the servers again so I wouldn't be surprised if it got lost.

Edited by - astrum on March 2, 2002 11:45:42 AM

quote: astrum, glad to help you. most of my days were spent playing RPGs and thining about how they s**k. As they pop up in my head, i post em here, so keep reading.

email if you want. joltman@prodigy.net and well do some more talkin bout game concepts and how todays games s**k

I suggest DrMol follows his own advice and take his daily tirades of how games suck (I guess he enjoys tormenting himself by spending his days playing RPGs and whining about how they suck) to a private discussion with astrum.

quote: I am talking to astrum, now please go away little man. I am busy.

Hm, do you even understand the concept of a forum like this? It''s not really the place for private discussions. You''ve got his email!

quote: dwarfsoft I am going to ignore you as well.

Okay, we get it. You don''t want to talk to anyone else but astrum and perhaps a few people who will not annoy you by questioning the greatness of your revolutionary ideas.

Thanks Silver...

The funny thing is, I had this very same discussion with my brother over 4 years ago when UO first came out.

We were disecting their multiple channel skill system and retooling the advancement and atrophy rates so as to avoid the Grandmasterx4 players that comprised 50% of the population on the servers.

We talked about how skill increases could be done in tangental ways through things such as research in order to slow down the killer spellcaster phenomenon that was running rampant.

We analyzed ways of combining the skills in different ways to make paralell advancement of skill more beneficial.

In fact... it was after these discussions that my brother went on to be on an informal advisory board for UO and was the player that had the MOST suggestions implemented in the game - by a factor of 5 to 1 over the next contributing players.

Sure, UO still had problems but it was something that was being continually adressed. DrMol really seems to think he has a corner on the creativity market and the rest of us who''ve been there don''t know squat.

Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

quote: Original post by astrum
P.S. where on earth are you negative ranters getting the idea that because I say something sucks, or doesn''t meet the standard of fun, that I think I can do better? That was never said in any post, but kudos to you for having such a good imagination.

Uh... you are suffering from a severe identity crisis. My rants were ALWAYS at DrMol... not you. If you continue to think that people''s comments to others are at you, then you must be having some fantastic feelings of paranoia.



Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

quote: Original post by DrMol
I GET IT! I GET IT!! HORRAY!!
I get that you annoy me. Go away.

Do you not get that the very existance comments like yours here has annoyed people here since before you were a member?

Here''s a thought. Who do you think you are speaking to when you post here? Has it ever occured to you that the simple lines:

quote: astrum, glad to help you. most of my days were spent playing RPGs and thining about how they s**k... and well do some more talkin bout game concepts and how todays games s**k.

... may very well be insulting the very people who you are in the forum with? How the fvck was that supposed to be taken? God... for someone who thinks so highly of himself, you don''t listen to what you say very well.


Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

Bravo, people. There were about 8 entire posts before this thread erupted into a flame war. That has to be a record or something.

Edited by - DaWanderer on March 2, 2002 1:59:53 PM

quote: Original post by DrMol
Hello. Im Mr. Buff. I walk around all day a nd kill stuff, and then I level up and my lockpicking inceases even though I was out in the woods all day.
......
What do ya think?

Ya know, I''m on the fence about that one. Sometimes I am out
all day, doing other stuff than trying to learn programming,
and I''m thinking about programming in the meantime, and suddenly,
I kinda go ''Hmm wait I know how to do that!''
Of course if I''d been programming all day it might or might not
have been quicker for me to say that. I don''t know, if you are
killind rats all day, and then your lockpicking goes up, maybe
you were thinking about lockpicking while you were killing rats.

There are several ways that work, and although you have a point,
if the only way to increase your lockpicking is killing rats,
maybe there are some other alternatives, like not increasing
lockpicking a lot when levelling, and increasing it a lot when
lockpicking. Or you could take the approach that our hero has
a one track mind all the time, and only thinks about what he is
doing (the modern skill systems now).

-=Lohrno

quote: Original post by Lohrno
I don''t know, if you are killind rats all day, and then your lockpicking goes up, maybe you were thinking about lockpicking while you were killing rats.

In UO, there were mutliple factors that contributed to the overall level of a skill. There was the raw factor and then an effective level based on other abilities. With lockpicking, for example, let''s say you have a base rating of 40%. However, because your dexterity is relatively high, your effective lockpicking skill is 43%. Therefore, if you were off doing something that tended to increase your dexterity (such as fencing or various crafty things), your lockpicking would SEEM to go up - even though it was just the combined effective rating. This, of course, confused many people who didn''t take the time to understand what went into their rather complex skill system.



Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm Development
"Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

Take it however you want. if something annoys you, then dont read the post, or respond in a calm, ration contructive manor.

Not to call me DrPhallus, DrThis DrThat
Look I can do the same thing:
Incestuous Fox, Idiotic Fox, Imbicilic Fox, or repalce all the Fox with F**k. How do you like that? Is it as witty as when you did it? I bet you get pissed and rant back.
Or in response to pastey white programmer and DrPhallus
how bout I call you the Greasy little rat and Mr. Dick?

I have an idea, let''s copy my original post, the post that seems to have offended you, and your reponse to it, and send them all to the admin and see if your response was on par.

Since I came on this board I have posted a few things, and none seemed to have any annyoing effect on people. But hey, thats just how I see it. Perhaps this board is not for me, but I am hoping that just because I annoy one person, doesnt mean I annoy the rest.

Now I hope to end this little flame war and get back to what others are thinking. So I will let you get the last word because otherwise this will never and and blah blah blah back and forth and you it will keep people with legitimate responds or constructive critisism away.
SO fire away and watch me ignore you.

I''m just taking a rest but boy you all sure are devoting a lot
of time from your respective dreams...really...lets stick to the
topic you all had some nice points aside from the flaming...

Innocuous -- I didn''t realize that either, but I don''t know,
IMHO I wouldnt take anything from UO as almost anything they do
is kinda a hack job. In my exteremely limited expereince at the
beginning of UO (Yes I''ll admit a bit of newbieism, but from what
I saw I was able to make the conclusions I am making, I played
for 1 month) They would remove 1 bug, and add 2 more.
Yeah, thats not design, but anyway, they werent thinking right
when they let everyone have a house in such a small world.

But anyway not that ALL UO ideas were bad, just most of em. I
liked the idea about ''Massively Multiplayer Online RPG''
This system you describe of theirs though is kinda neat. But I dont know if it actually worked that way. And I''d like to see
maybe an upgraded system of that. I mean I''d like to see you just kinda do something else, or are walking around in the
forest, and you kinda go ''AH-HA! (very rarely of course) And
your skill increases a little bit, or even a significant amount
in one of your main skills.

Like maybe a mage in battle (who is pelting rats with fireballs
according to true computer mage standards(see Thread about mages
here) suddenly goes ''Wait! I know how I can do this a little
better next time!''

-=Lohrno