New Skill Rust Setting

Sir_Scarfalot · 2014-02-08T04:59:59.000Z

Currently, the whole skill rust mechanic is deeply broken, either you can almost immediately lose skills, or you can’t lose skills, just progress to the next level. Personally, I think that both options aren’t what I would like to see, so here’s my suggestion:

IntLevelCap: Skills function as the current “IntCapped” setting, but once your skill level exceeds your intelligence score you start losing levels as well, down to a minimum of level=intelligence, as with the “Int” setting. That way, you can, with effort, become good enough to survive and thrive at a decent level without needing that Enhanced Memory Banks bionic, and you can become superhuman at things if you apply yourself, but you won’t STAY at that ultra-high level for long. The game is obviously balanced around skills hovering at about 8 or 10, so 12 or 14 intelligence will make you nicely skilled, but not able to invariably hack consoles and swat dozens of Hulks with headshots all at once. But, the Enhanced Memory Banks would allow you to progress to superlative heights, which considering its a BIONIC is what it’s SUPPOSED to be!

Rivet · 2014-02-08T05:10:04.000Z

I rather like the sound of this proposal.

Inquisitor_Dust · 2014-02-08T05:18:32.000Z

Oooh, I really like the sound of this. In the wise words of FunsizeNinja, “+1”.

Sir_Scarfalot · 2014-02-08T06:38:32.000Z

I’m glad to hear such positive responses! I had worried that I’d screwed up describing it :3

I love this game… ever since I found it off of a bay12 forums thread I’ve had a new sleep disorder. Its called Cataclysm: DDA.

KA101 · 2014-02-08T06:58:34.000Z

I support the concept. It’ll need a skill-rework as all the skills are either balanced around 20 or 10 as the max, depending on when the work happened. (10’s the target now; 20’s the previous max. No hard cap, IIRC.) So either you’d need the aug (or quite a lot of favorable IN work) to hit the cap, or you’d be safe with IN it’s quite feasible to have direct from chargen.

But yeah, this’d give a solid reason for high or at least not-low IN. Whether it’d be a total gamebreaker for low-IN is another question, but that’s why the skill-adjustment is important.

Sir_Scarfalot · 2014-02-08T07:18:05.000Z

[quote=“KA101, post:5, topic:5005”]I support the concept. It’ll need a skill-rework as all the skills are either balanced around 20 or 10 as the max, depending on when the work happened. (10’s the target now; 20’s the previous max. No hard cap, IIRC.) So either you’d need the aug (or quite a lot of favorable IN work) to hit the cap, or you’d be safe with IN it’s quite feasible to have direct from chargen.

But yeah, this’d give a solid reason for high or at least not-low IN. Whether it’d be a total gamebreaker for low-IN is another question, but that’s why the skill-adjustment is important.[/quote]

:3

Didn’t know that about the skill numbers; I only just picked the game up myself so I haven’t really learned much from experience what numbers are reasonable or not.

As for low-IN characters, well, there’s gotta be a price for low-balling STATS, amirite?

Zireael · 2014-02-08T08:28:02.000Z

I like the idea, too.

Provided skill rust stops kicking in when reading, it killed the game for me.

juliawang87 · 2014-02-08T09:06:17.000Z

I have always played with skill rust without losing levels. Is that still considered way too overpowered? A baseline determined by intelligence does sound like a good idea. I just always thought, as silly as it is to learn how to craft mini-nukes by assembling and disassembling a hundred flashlights, it’s equally silly to have the competence to cook a perfect spaghetti bolognese, only to go to bed, wake the next morning, and be incapable of making it cos your skill level degraded over night.

Iosyn · 2014-02-08T14:03:45.000Z

Great idea, scarf.
I think this would lend itself to longer games, instead of just reaching godhood in the first summer.
Certainly I think it makes more sense than some of the other skill rust options.
FYI at the moment, skills above 10~ or so is considered practically PhD level if I’m not mistaken.

Binky · 2014-02-08T14:24:12.000Z

Great idea Scarf. However, if it’s too closely related to Intelligence I imagine many people would just pump loads of points into intelligence to make sure they can get to those higher levels/it’d become the most meaningful statistic and limit char. creation.

One idea would be to have it as you described, but with one or two skills which you could ‘master’ which would make you have +20 intelligence on in terms of capping. This wouldn’t be available at the start, but would be once you got to a certain point (say a collective of 15 skill levels on various things overall). This would have the effect of allowing you to not have to worry about your favourite skills, but wouldn’t artificially boost them or anything.

i2amroy · 2014-02-09T02:26:38.000Z

Really the system needs a total rework (one that’s already been pretty much planned out on github already), but this would function as a stopgap until that happens.

system · 2014-02-09T02:39:15.000Z

How about like 2/3 of int is the max level cap, so at base stats your skills will be at 6 and won’t deteriorate. 6 is about above average.

Sir_Scarfalot · 2014-02-09T07:36:08.000Z

gtaguy:

How about like 2/3 of int is the max level cap, so at base stats your skills will be at 6 and won’t deteriorate. 6 is about above average.

What about when you have 11 int? Would that round up to 6 or down to 5? IMO, fractions would put in too much complexity for this system; higher intelligence=more skills, no particular reason to overthink the balance on this.

Sirbab · 2014-02-09T22:49:46.000Z

I rather like this idea, mainly because i play as an insanely smart character often, who, for whatever reason seems to forget simple skills, so i happen to just turn it off completely.

Zireael · 2014-02-10T09:47:18.000Z

Sirbab:

I rather like this idea, mainly because i play as an insanely smart character often, who, for whatever reason seems to forget simple skills, so i happen to just turn it off completely.

That’s the problem I have, too.

Williham · 2014-02-19T11:58:20.000Z

The argument could also be made that skill rust as a whole is archaic and gamey, and should be taken out all together.

Sanarr · 2014-02-19T14:08:36.000Z

Archaic might be true, but overall concept is right, I think. To my mind - if you are beginner coder, and you havent done any C++ coding for a year you might forget something. Skill capped (with maximum skill cap binded to Int ) would be nice. There might be correlations between skill level and speed of their rust. If you are newb in something you are more likely to forget some valuable pieces. But if you are professional you might forged some tiny bits, not the whole.

I also think that skills have to be divided into subcategories like mental and phisycal, with different rust settings. Motoric memory is more persistant, I think (bicycle riding fo example).

i2amroy · 2014-02-19T17:28:07.000Z

Williham:

The argument could also be made that skill rust as a whole is archaic and gamey, and should be taken out all together.

As I mentioned earlier we’ve got the outline of a system on github already (here) that shows how we would change skill rust (what it doesn’t really touch on is numbers, but let me assure you that they will be much better balanced).