How to make initial skills more desirable

[BeerBeer]

[quote=“StopSignal, post:15, topic:10115”]I know, hahahaha, but I guessed it could be for main game.

I got an idea. What if, instead of skill points, we get skill multipliers, where we can make the skills be gained faster? Like

Skill Points = Skill Gain
0= 100% gain
1= 150% gain
3= 200% gain

Etc.
I think that is actually good.[/quote]
That would be bit like the tag skills from ancient Fallout games of the long distant past. Might I suggest the following: Get first tag skill for 1 point. Get a second tag skill for 2 points. And so on.

Back to reading.

What if we think the problem with reading is the manual tedium associated with it? I mean, in order to read, you have to be at a safe location and you need food, water and lighting. What if reading was much slower but automated, and part of the sleeping process. Let’s say 1/8 of the time spent sleeping would count towards reading books that the character happens to carry. On the other hand then you’d have to think about the characters who need very little sleep. Or perhaps a character could automatically read whatever happens to be nearby, with a preference for carried books. Or what if reading would happen passively whenever a character waits, cooks or crafts anything for longer than 20 minutes.

I mean, I’m all for books but the learning speed is… kind of overpowered.
And then again, if it’s slowed down, reading becomes tedium.
Have we been spoiled with overpowered reading, and now it’s impossible to think it could be nerfed to sane levels without losing enjoyment?

[someguy]

We haven’t been spoiled with overpowered reading, more we’ve been spoiled with an incredibly safe environment where upping your skills by doing nothing but read for weeks on end is possible at all. Similarly, “grinding” your crafting skills is currently the optimum way to play for a similar reason.

You never know, a (better) working wander spawn/horde system (in the works AFAIK) might render that kind of gameplay moot. Spending an entire day sat on your ass in one place might be a lot harder without first fortifying the hell out of it.

It’s not a problem that should be looked at in isolation IMO.

Personally I’d prefer to see a more natural progression in crafting skills, where using them during normal play is actually desirable, so they’ll go up without needing to be “grinded” at all. Right now, that doesn’t really happen. You have a few threshold recipes that you grind pointless things to get to, then never use the skill again.

[StopSignal]

I think we should not nerf reading with hordes. You would basically make establishing a base impossible, because it’d basically would make impossible to have safe places.

I have two ideas.

First one:
Concentration system.
In this system, any status effect (tired, hungry, thirsty) or wound would severely hamper the reading pace, this way making way slower. All this things would hamper the reading speed by %30, %40, and they would stack. Having a lot of them or being too wounded would display the message to recover or eat/drink first.

This system would make it still able to just turtle up inside a house and read everything but it’d be harder, especially after a book raid.

Second one:
Theory /Practice.
Simply making it impossible to power up skills just by reading. Reading would only let you get %80 of the skill, the rest would be needed to gain by practice yes or yes to skill up.
Like real life?

What do you think?
Maybe a combination of both?

[Random_dragon]

[quote=“StopSignal, post:23, topic:10115”]Concentration system.
In this system, any status effect (tired, hungry, thirsty) or wound would severely hamper the reading pace, this way making way slower. All this things would hamper the reading speed by %30, %40, and they would stack. Having a lot of them or being too wounded would display the message to recover or eat/drink first.[/quote]

The focus mechanic technically already accomplishes this via other means, to some extent reducing how effective skill gain is.

[StopSignal]

Totally forgot about focus. Focus is a buff more than a Nerf though?

Anyways what about the other one?

[Random_dragon]

My focus always seems to be under 100 when reading, so it seems to nerf more than buff. Especially since, aside from morale, repetition from reading is the biggest drain on focus.

As for the other idea? Not really sure. Some skills (mechanics comes to mind) are unfeasible to train from 0. Doable, but annoying and tedious as all hell.

Also, that’s make it so that the only good way to get level 1 tailoring is to repeatedly wrap cloth around your assorted body parts, then dismantling the wraps. Why yes, I’ll learn to make some decent gloves by repeatedly pretending I’m a mummy!

[i2amroy]

I actually really like the idea of initial skills coming with more aptitude, though I think we might need some more basic work on the overall skill system a bit before it happens.

As for a cap; the eventual goal is to have an effective cap at level 10 in a skill. The fact that the current system isn’t set to be that way is one of the current problems with it.

[Random_dragon]

Hmm. I really see how the “Stats Through Skills” mod affects balance versus the defaults, versus playing normally with more points, and versus how those proposed changes might play out.