Practice makes perfect

[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.