Curse

Sleeper Service · Oct 18, 2007, 11:11 AM // 11:11

I was just going to make a quick response to a post and I ended up with this.

If you can imagine a 3-D cube with X;Y;Z axes.

X: Melee
Y: Ranged
Z: Mage

I would place humans pretty much slap bang in the middle of it represented by a ellipsoid ball tending towards ranged.

This zone would show where human players start at but in no way force them to remain within those limits.

The same would go for all races, each starting within a different zone, determined by their racial tendency.

This means that players wanting to be mage NOW could therefore take Assuran and be guaranteed a better mage skillset than say; a Human. With time however there would be nothing stopping a Human from becoming a mage just as skilled as an Assuran.

No levels or the opposite infinite levels (paradoxal but they result in the same IF you use the method which I will explain) would be the way forward.

A Human starts off in the centerish of this cube, (s)he can go any which way and be relatively proficient in it.

- How do we determine proficiency?

Proficiency in for example: melee, is determined by the amount of skills that that character has attributed to MELEE.
These skills can be broken down into several TYPES (generally 3 or 4):

1. Offensive
2. Defensive
3. Support
4. Stealth

For each Type you would further break it down into sub classes:

Swordsmanship, Shields, Tactics. etc.

The more proficient the character would be in a certain area the more SKILLS they would have (able to use equipment, be more effective in that general class) there would be no levels within Skills or Types, you train a skill; learn it and once you have it that’s IT. However if you want to make a full blooded warrior you could train all the Melee TYPES and in doing so due to the synergistic nature of the skills within that type would gain a considerable buff.

Result: player levels are not determined by XP but by the skills you have acquired.

Racial perks (+ energy, Elf night vision whatever) would be replaced by the skill system and so any race would be able to acquire whatever skill they wanted if they focused on it.

Learning more Skills/Types in a particular X;Y;Z direction would open up new professions for the player and do so seamlessly, in fact you could drop the whole stereotypical class naming with this system. Yes eventually a dedicated player could in theory learn all the skills and types, but that would not make them more powerful than other players only more skilled (by limiting the amount of spells or whatever they can carry on a skillbar is one way)

- Levels, HP and Mana ?

You see if one uses the skill approach then we can directly link things like +HP or +Mana to them. None of this "gain a lvl, gain+50hp" but rather "equip 3 defensive skills gain 50HP"

Anyways. I just thought I would present this, personally I think it’s the way modern RPGS should be constructed and I find it’s a much more natural way of looking at character evolution than “LULULULUDRICOUS KILL! YOU HAVE GAINED A LEVEL”

Sleeper.

Antheus · Oct 18, 2007, 12:29 PM // 12:29

So, the way GW used to be, and the direction it moved away from for WoW's approach?