Practice makes perfect

[Tally]

I personally would like to see the new style system (independent of weapons) be expanded upon further. Any variety to melee combat, almost always a boring but staple option in a roguelike, is a good thing. When combat insights and fighting techniques (or even just practice techniques) were discussed, the idea did hook into my mind, but I didn’t catch this thread until just now.

This is probably a distant idea but shouldn’t it be possible for your character to assemble his own unique style? Over time, learning to fight something not entirely human, with little prior experience (for most people) in combat, wouldn’t most people develop their own method of combat? Unfortunately, the way for the game to develop a style based around your actions as a player would probably be difficult to code in, and involve a lot of analysis over time. Maybe, however, between melee (or weapon-specific skills) skill of 6 - 10, assuming the previously discussed exp curves and caps, your character should have breakthroughs on methods that work well.

The style, generated upon your character’s fighting style until then, might then be only applicable to either a favored weapon that you use almost exclusively, or a group of weapons within the skill that’s in those levels if you switch it up. It probably wouldn’t be as sophisticated or effective as martial arts styles, and I hope more are introduced that primarily affect weapons, but it would be, do a degree, tailored towards your own style as a player.

And of course, I think the practice thing is great. There are a few skills that are hell to train to any decent level without hiding in your cave for almost a month with books stacked to to the ceiling. Computers and Electronics I am looking at you. First Aid I wish had books that took it past level 3, but it’s not terribly important that it does. Mechanics I can train to 10 in a day with a hacksaw and a wrench and a few dead cars, and that’s kind of a problem. I can get it to 40 and well beyond just making my own vehicle.

[NamelessHero]

I think this is a pretty good idea; the grind involved in getting a new characters throwing skill up to a decent level is much more annoying and seems more mechanical than I would like. I also got a thought wherein certain nearby features could affect the speed at which the skill is increased, like those tackle dummies that they use in football could be used to train up the unarmed skill slightly faster, same would go for being near a punching bag. This could also add in a gym that would have a bunch of these features to be used and various broken down electronic exercise things. Also sets of dumbbells to be used as a weapon. Another idea I read from another such thread is the use of straw dummies to train up the melee skill, which could work for training with a weapon.
Also, I figure that there is a certain difference between air boxing to train up the unarmed skill, to punching an actual undead in the face. I figure that may either factor in as a skill cap at like 5 to be further improved by punching the undead in the face. This would also apply to stuff like archery or firearms, as aiming for a wall and slowly getting better at aiming would be much different from hitting an undead in the head.

[vultures]

I’m gonna take on this:

lvl 0: no practice time lvl 1: 12 minutes lvl 2: 1 hour lvl 3: 2 hours lvl 4: 10 hours lvl 5: 20 hours lvl 6: 100 hours lvl 7: 200 hours lvl 8: 1,000 hours lvl 9: 2,000 hours lvl 10: 10,000 hours ___

lvl 0: none
lvl 1: 2 hrs
lvl 2: 6 hrs
lvl 3: 15 hrs
lvl 4: 40 hrs
lvl 5: 100 hrs
lvl 6: 250 hrs
lvl 7: 600 hrs
lvl 8: 1500 hrs
lvl 9: 4000 hrs
lvl 10: 10000 hrs

In both increment systems there is a questionable article - your lvl 5 or 6 takes some 16 or 20 days (12-hour per day labor), but your highest skill level asks for a 3-year ingame experience. Sure, there’s a sense to it when you think of melee and dodge, for ex.
Now, let’s just look at Rifles and Firearms skills, which are not the same. The jewel in that crown could be hitting a bullseye through a low-end scope on an average sniping rifle at a 500 yards distance. Your respectable skill in both could be, for yet another example, lvl 6 in general and lvl 5 with that hunting rifle you’ve found. Your attempt at a master shot would yield a 2% or less probability, assuming you’ve got a single chance with the abovementioned set. This is highly discouraging, yet realistic. What’s even more probable is that you’ll never become anything but merely proficient with the weapon type if – a) you don’t obtain a far better tool of war, or b) you’re not some kind of a wunderkid with extremely high adaptability due to massive stat scores. We’re not even discussing ammo, which is hard to find, even through parts.
Note: Practice is the way to encourage more effort from players, but the theme here really should be that you should learn from mistakes, too. If the player willingly chooses to extend his base knowledge of firearms with more and more types of those, and goes great lengths only to claim a powerful weapon, he should get some sort of focus due to the nature of the item. The only real problem here, however, would be that of the type of skill - your attempt to hack a lvl 10 password with only some skill should deprave you of doing so in the near future, but should you accomplish a task that’s stuck with a notably less difficult notch on the same scale, and obtain a state-of-the-art hacking device in the way - you’d be rushing to try and claim the prize. I believe there’s a common understanding of this being a bonus to success.

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Now, I just don’t want to forget will power in the progress. It is said that anyone with enough love for the craft and sufficient ingredients base could become really, really good at cooking. That’s like, to my senses, lvl 8 in my book. Besides the hours that are needed for just perfecting the most complex and unusual of recipees out there, the better part of the mastery is well, plain luck.

[asdfzxc]

I don’t see how this “solution” is supposed to solve anything.

Problem: Certain simple tasks can be repeated ad infinitum until your skill level is maxed.

Solution: Nerf the old learning mechanics to the point that nothing short of constant grinding can actually increase your skill level. The only way to gain skill levels is to either find an NPC, read a book, or perform training (which, from what I understand, is functionally the same as reading a book).

Result: Grinding is now mandatory.

A better solution would be to just make doing the same action over and over again yield diminishing returns. The easiest way I can think of is to just make focus decrease a lot faster when doing repetitive tasks like crafting; craft/uncraft spam is, after all, just as boring for the character as it is for the player.

[Zireael]

Reading a book or practicing is not grinding IMHO.

[VomitingRobot]

I’ve always liked the idea of having players pick “core” skills at character creation, and having skill performance more closely tied to specific stats. You could play a brainy character by tagging science/computers/electronics, a brawler by choosing unarmed/bashing/survival, etc.

The problem is it’s too easy to make an omni-competent survivor, there’s no trade-off. Change that you remove a lot of the incentive for grinding.

To clarify, what you’re proposing is similar to the system used in Fallout? Tagged skills are higher at the start, and they develop more rapidly?

Roughly similar. Have X number of major tags, Y number of minor tags. Major tags are the easiest to raise and are the core of your character, minor tags are useful abilities that will be very difficult or impossible for you to master. Perhaps even have a hard cap for non-tagged skills, but have some difficult to acquire and rare item/location within the game let you switch tagged abilities. A brain surgeon autodoc that spawns in some science labs, or something.

This seems to me to be a better way to deal with the survivor with 10+ skill in everything than by requiring onerous grinding to raise skills, or tacking on complicated new practice system. There are a few tweaks I’d still like to see, like simple recipes capping out in terms of giving skill gain once you’re a certain number of skill levels above their difficulty, and decreased gain for crafting the same item over and over again. But the basic system is sound.

[Weyrling]

I don’t see how this “solution” is supposed to solve anything.

Problem: Certain simple tasks can be repeated ad infinitum until your skill level is maxed.

Solution: Nerf the old learning mechanics to the point that nothing short of constant grinding can actually increase your skill level. The only way to gain skill levels is to either find an NPC, read a book, or perform training (which, from what I understand, is functionally the same as reading a book).

Result: Grinding is now mandatory.

A better solution would be to just make doing the same action over and over again yield diminishing returns. The easiest way I can think of is to just make focus decrease a lot faster when doing repetitive tasks like crafting; craft/uncraft spam is, after all, just as boring for the character as it is for the player.

From what I can tell this is not what they’re talking about.
First, I inferred that this is an addition/modification to the current system, not a blatant replacement requiring you to ‘grind practice’ instead of perform ‘real world’ tasks.

Currently: Grinding action by action (turn by turn) is the only way you can ever gain skill in anything whatsoever (aside from reading books). This is practically the definition of grinding being mandatory.

Proposed: In addition to performing individual actions (which will increase skill/insight depending on what you’re doing)
You have skill, insight, and skill-rust, the longer you don’t do things relating to a given skill the more rust accumulates, this rust will quickly disperse once you start using your skill again.
If you have more insight than skill, you can practice until your skill increases, allowing you to skip the grinding of, for example, throwing 10,000 rocks at squirrels, or dis and re-assembling flashlights a hundred times.

I’m assuming you would gain skill and insight from actually utilizing said skill in a real world situation, such as killing zombies with a katana.
You would learn more about how sharp objects cut other things (and how the human body applies cutting force through sharp objects), in fact you’d probably learn more about cutting things than you are capable of utilizing, which is when your insight surpasses your skill, allowing you to train to a higher level of skill without needing to murder more zombies with said katana.

[Zireael]

Can we return to this topic?
Book-locking recipes solved some of the problems, but there are still several left:

1. skill can rust faster than you can read high-level books -> that’s why I play with skill rust off
2. many skills (apart from cooking, mechanics and unarmed) have no real use over 10

[i2amroy]

2) many skills (apart from cooking, mechanics and unarmed) have no real use over 10

This one is at least sort-of intended. The official “max” skill to be used for balancing is 10, which is considered to be the “professional” skill level that requires constant work to maintain.

[Zireael]

[quote=“Zireael, post:43, topic:3509”]2) many skills (apart from cooking, mechanics and unarmed) have no real use over 10

This one is at least sort-of intended. The official “max” skill to be used for balancing is 10, which is considered to be the “professional” skill level that requires constant work to maintain.[/quote]

If 10 is the official max skill, then why are we able to get to 15, or 20, or whatever?

[Sanarr]

That “practice/grinding/skills/rust” issue is complex, primary because in represents different aspects of gameplay (and players). Some want game to be realistic and hard (skill take big amount of time to learn (especially from the scratch); some want game to be fun (just give me level and ability to craft X or Y really quick); some rest in between, like I do (though I tend to like hardships).

Whole grinding issue is frustrating, and, to my mind, one just cannot craft some complex electric schemes via assembling/disassembling flashlight (especially if one doesn’t know theory well). I vote for some boundaries in crafting recipes, for example “from cooking roasted meat you can only advance in level 1-2-etc in cooking, no higher” or decrease amount of skill gain you get from it with each iteration. I like overall practice system suggested, especially knowledge/skill concept Deferos post.

Anyway - I agree that skill system needs to offer more challenges and be more reasonable, so any changes in that directions are welcome indeed.

[Logrin]

I really really like what you’re suggesting here Kevin. It could really help to extend the early/mid game ‘vibe.’

That said INT should probably factor into the time needed to master a skill/effectiveness of practice.

[Human_Shield]

Still see this listed as a project.

Two thoughts on approaches that don’t use new menus:

1. Training crafts for more skills. Melee training dummy made of wood trains melee as the crafting skill and produces splintered wood. Early game way to get melee to 1 or 2.

Ranged would be tougher as you would want to have a % of arrows recovered or recover 100% of casings. As well as generating gunfire noise levels.

2. Training furniture from construct menu. Practice desk, melee target dummy, ranged target dummy. Practice becomes option when examining the furniture and uses up items dropped on it. Bullets become casing, empty tin cans and glass bottles increase ranged practice speed. Drop computer items on practice desk and able to practice computer use. Maybe a swimming platform that requires massive water (build next to a mansion pool).

[kevin.granade]

Still see this listed as a project.

Yes I still plan on implementing this, though it isn’t the top priority.

Melee training dummy made of wood trains melee as the crafting skill and produces splintered wood. Early game way to get melee to 1 or 2.

Do you mean you have one recipe to create a practice dumy, and another recipe to “use” the prctice dummy? Yes that could work as an interim solution, though the practice actions really do deserve their own menu.

Ranged would be tougher as you would want to have a % of arrows recovered or recover 100% of casings. As well as generating gunfire noise levels.

That shouldn’t be too much trouble, unless you mean that it shouldn’t require any changes to game code at all, in which case, yes, it would be tricky or impossible.

With a proper target, arrow recovery is going to be nearly 100%, close enough that you could just treat the arrows as a non-expended tool.
Recovering 100% of casings would actually be pretty easy, you could make a recipe that consumes ammunition and creates casings… crap now that I think of it, a recipe as defined now is going to demand specific ammunition and produce specific casings. This is an example of something that the practice system would want to handle, but crafting probably wouldn’t.

IDK, we could hack a few things in with crafting, it’s a very interesting approach, but I think it has too many limitations to work well.

[Human_Shield]

Do you mean you have one recipe to create a practice dumy, and another recipe to “use” the prctice dummy? Yes that could work as an interim solution, though the practice actions really do deserve their own menu.

Could be two or could be one. Or key off of wooden frames + simple items. Melee uses up a frame, Bashing uses a few more 2x4’s, cutting uses leather, piercing uses sandbags, ranged could use tin cans or bottles, etc…

So “Practice Melee” becomes a crafting item with wooden frame as an ingredient that keys off Melee skill for crafting, takes ~4 hours, difficulty 0 or 1, and outputs splintered wood.

Could work for arrows and throwing items as well. But would have to list all arrow launching weapons as recoverable tools.

Recovering 100% of casings would actually be pretty easy, you could make a recipe that consumes ammunition and creates casings… crap now that I think of it, a recipe as defined now is going to demand specific ammunition and produce specific casings. This is an example of something that the practice system would want to handle, but crafting probably wouldn’t.

IDK, we could hack a few things in with crafting, it’s a very interesting approach, but I think it has too many limitations to work well.

Yeah the massive amount of different casings is what gave me trouble. Could throw in the most common .22, 9mm, .45, .223, shotgun shells but the game has lots and it would also have to check for a gun as well.

A third idea is an item that spawns a stationary ignoring creature called “target dummy”, maybe with some kind of skill bonus on hit. So at least with guns you have to setup a target and fire the rounds manually.

[tarburst98]

ah, that could work, it would be like a reverse pat-carrier. aka you use it and it releases a ‘creature’ rather then capturing one and then the item is deleted from your inventory. the ‘creature’ is immobile and has a CRAPLOAD of health and… how does attacking a thing decide how XP it gives? if attacking something difficult to hit gives more EXP then give it a lot of dodge, if hitting is all that matters then give it none.

[proxiehunter]

Random Kettlemods already includes targets to work on your shooting skills with. Haven’t gotten around to making one and trying it out but the intent seems to be to do what you’re talking about here.

[kevin.granade]

The key difference is the target just gives you something to shoot, but you still have to spam shooting commands to train. The practice action concept is that you just trigger something like:
’’‘pistol accuracy drills: duration 10 minutes, requires pistol and pistol targets, expends 100 rounds of ammunition, causes high volume noise, trains firearms and pistol skills’’’

[Medi_Ding]

I think it would be cool if using items that you crafted recently could help in learning that skill. It wouldn’t even need to be made by you specifically, just as long as you crafted one some time ago. Make a knife spear + shank some zombies = makes your mind think this knowledge is important since it kills dangerous things + better understanding about fabrication, since you watched the spear wear down and break, analyzing how it did. Make a smoke bomb + throw it = seeing that the chemicals react to make smoke, like a lab demonstration.

[Medi_Ding]

Well. I feel like an idiot now. I thought that this was a very recent post because it said October 13.