From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-13 22:19:27
There has been discussion around skills.
What we need in the beginning? What will be the starting skills?
And maybe we should start listing all the skills in game here.
Check also the skill question thread for ancient discussion around this thread.
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-14 01:39:38
In-Reply-To: 1091
Cooking skill
How much energy you get from the food you cook and what you can cook properly. Maybe also how fast you can cook.
Lumberjacking skill, how fast you can cut a tree? How much wood you get from each tree?
Survival skill, This skill could have a bunch of other skills compressed into it. It could have fire starting skill, such as how fast it takes you to build a fire and if we like how much heat it gives off. Also since rain and snow will affect you in the game, we should have the survival skill lower the damage we recieve from the natural elements, until we can get to shelter or buy better clothes.
Taming skill, this skill is not crucial at all but it also would be a slight pain to code. It basicly means that you can tame an animal and control him.
Another thing we have to ask, How will buildings be placed? will we have deeds like other games which you buy and then you can place anywhere like most games. Or will we have builders that can build houses. This would add a better element to the game, because in other games deeds can be stolen. Who can steal a house?
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-14 08:28:20
In-Reply-To: 1096
Cooking skill
I'm not sure of that anymore.. ;)
How will buildings be placed?
You build them as other items, that is the current suggestion. You carry supplies to construction site and you need to know how to build a house. Then you complete it, by your carpenting, stonecutting, etc. skills.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-14 08:48:28
In-Reply-To: 1097
No cooking skill.
Taiming? I dont know about that.. As in the wild if you take a baby animal and raise it it will "imprint" you as its parent so long as you provide a prental roll (protection, food, shelter) they will treat you as a parent. Pack animals are different they as a young age will imprint as parents then later will include you in there "pack" as some roll, you want to be the "alpa" male role. And they will submit to you, dogs are like this.
A skill to Taime an animal isn't nessessary imo.
Lumberjacking, can be a valid skill, but I'm not sure it should dictate the quanity of lumber, but the quality. And you can't cut down and saw a tree into lumber without the proper tools.
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-15 15:46:26
In-Reply-To: 1100
Of course we need taming. Raeky, adult horses can be tamed? why not other animals. You don't have to find a young animal to tame it, but it would be nice if it was easier to tame young animals
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-14 09:12:11
In-Reply-To: 1100
I would defend cooking skill, but from bit different point of view.
We seem to have two important variables that we use to measure the vitality of the character.
Physical Strength Physical Stress
Mental Strength Mental Stress
Resting will improve both
Medical treatment should improve Physical condition, but also give some relief to Mental Stress, since the death does not seem so imminent.
Food should give energy for body but also for soul. We should have more complex rejuvenation system than eating and resting. We need to take into consideration the quality of the resting and relaxing.
So, in order to encourage players to stay in towns, trade, talk, plot, work etc. We should make - nice food, music, conversation, drinks, warmth, friends - more appealing. Now we can command our character according our whim, we can make this tool walk until he needs to sleep and eat, after resting we can keep on doing this.
Let's make cities tempting places to stay and interact as on their own, instead of having just very violent nature that forces us to stay together.
Hmm, so thoughts like this I would add to support the cooking as a skill. Making good food makes you feel good. this would increase the multitude of sensible professions. Tavern might have a musician, to create the atmosphere and Cook to make some soul food. customers would naturally flock to a place with best price/quality ratio.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-14 09:25:06
In-Reply-To: 1104
Hmm, so thoughts like this I would add to support the cooking as a skill. Making good food makes you feel good. this would increase the multitude of sensible professions. Tavern might have a musician, to create the atmosphere and Cook to make some soul food. customers would naturally flock to a place with best price/quality ratio.
I'm still not sure about the cooking, but one thing is sure: It matters where you sleep or rest (and is threre music or not) - the refreshment. You sleep better in warm bed than under the cold sky.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-14 10:11:40
In-Reply-To: 1104
My thoughts on a cooking skill.
Its not really needed, everyone in that time period could cook to a degree that they can get the benifit of cooked food. Not all foods need to be cooked to gain nursihment, you can even eat meat raw and get the same nutrients one would get from it if it was cookied. (might have higher chance of disease, but fresh meat from the animal you just killed isn't highly likely to be rancid).
We want as few skills as possible, and cooking can be satisifed by learning proper identification of plants and there uses (includeing food, and how to prepare them to eat) you need to know how to cook it, not how to cook.
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-14 09:39:53
In-Reply-To: 1107
Sleeping is difficult in bad conditions, but it is equally difficult to eat bad food. Both are possible if hungry or sleepy enough.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-14 10:15:21
In-Reply-To: 1110
I think sleeping should be address more on the standpoint of safty then on comfort. Its online afterall and confort is hard to judge. But safty is not hard to judge. If you decides to sleep in the middle of some dark cave you might not awake. :P but sleeping inside a inn in a well protected city, would be far far more safe.
Although you could hire a bunch of npcs to protect your body while you sleep in the wilds (highly advised for people traviling alone.) But the safest way to sleep is in a city, or area with other players/npcs arround to watch over you.
From: Rakel
Date: 2002-03-14 13:45:32
In-Reply-To: 1111
...you can even eat meat raw and get the same nutrients one would get from it if it was cookied. (might have higher chance of disease, but fresh meat from the animal you just killed isn't highly likely to be rancid)...
But fresh meat can contain some parasites that can make you sick, and quite often in nature it does (for example trichina worm).
IMO, if players eat raw meat thay should have a pretty high risk of catching some disease.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-14 10:22:48
In-Reply-To: 1111
Are you suggestin cooking to be as in the new Creating items system? It sounds similar, and might actually work that way. The BPs to be receipts..
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-14 10:21:05
In-Reply-To: 1112
Comfort, it is not so hard to determine. In bed, in building, beside a campfire.. Weather, is it cold or not.. Other equipment used to sleeping.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-14 12:45:02
In-Reply-To: 1114
but comfort is hard to grasp in a rpg game. remember its not a real life simulator. :P
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-14 12:47:39
In-Reply-To: 1117
Hmm.. is there some point to light a campfire then? You do not need to cook, you need no light or warmth. I say we need a way to determine comfort or 'relaxiness' of some kind.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-14 12:48:48
In-Reply-To: 1118
Well that's good. Then we do not need to have different system for creating/preparing food.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-14 20:38:11
In-Reply-To: 1119
well yes a campfire does have a point. If your in the northern part of majik and sleeping in the snow, without proper protection and/or a fire you will die from exposure. Same is true in the very hot desert areas, (deserts get very cold at night). We should have some sort of sysetem for checking to see if a player is properly outfitted for the tempature hes in. If hes not then his health should slowly tick away.
From: darshan
Date: 2002-03-14 13:09:56
In-Reply-To: 1119
We already have done that. Ages ago I suggested a mental energy variable which is analogous to endurance. It determines how well you can pull off things, how well you are able to concentrate in what you're doing right now etc. Things like bad weather, failing etc. make this variable drop (you get nervous, edgy, unfocused, mentally exhausted...) and resting makes it go up.
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-14 14:09:35
In-Reply-To: 1120
Probably all of the actions we take (to be more specific - create) could be represented as BluePrints. Making a spell of fireball, make a dish, make a sword. The specific action of finished product should variate. This would enable us to feed massive amount of skills into simple system of item creation.
Ok, so the idea is not to have lot of skills, we could make it so that players don't really see all the skills, just the Blue Prints. this would result into a situation, where players cannot express their greatness in numbers. They could only describe their character to be good or bad in some specific things/actions. They could also say that they seem to have improved in some things like (here the cooking comes again) the food that they make, seems to give them more mental energy than in the beginning of the game, even they have not gotten much better Blue Prints.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-14 20:48:05
In-Reply-To: 1122
I agree, but it is possible. Fresh raw fish has the least chance (presumeing you caught it out of clean water) of haveing a disease.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-14 14:20:39
In-Reply-To: 1123
Then we have few skills, like smithing, casting magic, sewing.. And a lot of BPs to determine how good players are in knowledge of making a specific item.
So, this it would be like: A player has carpentry of 64(/100) and he knows how to make a poor chair (BP value about 350/1000). So he can make only a poor chair.
If he has carpentry of 23 and he knows how to make an excellent(800/1000) chair, he can only make poor or medicore chair because his lack of carpentry.
But then, this means that we need a cooking skill of some kind. One solution is, that when determining how good cake you are able to make, it depends only of your knowledge of the cake (BP value). So, this means that there will be no process operations while cooking, only attach supplies. (Read my text if you did not get that:)
This means: You need no skill for making food, only good instructions.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-14 20:45:02
In-Reply-To: 1123
There has to be skills for different things. Like blacksmithing would have a couple skills under it that one needs to master to be good at blacksmithing. (broad topics like alchmey, witchcraft, blacksmithing, etc.. shouldn't be represented as one skill, since the "blacksmith" can create many things, armor is totaly differnt then makeing a fork or a sword, thus kinda we get into the skill tree thing.)
Blueprints include in there "list" of things needed what skills one has to know in order to do it. You can't perform it untill you at least know the basics of the skill it requires. Someone needs to write (*cough* Archantes *cough*) a formula that will dictate how sucssessful you are at creating the item and what its quality will be. Maybe two forumlas one that will use your skill level and output a 1 or 0, the 1 becomming more and more frequent the more skillfull you are. there should also be a variable that we can put for difficulty of the item your creating. And the second formula for what the quality of the item is, takeing into account the skill and difficulty of the item. Possibly another vairaible or second set of forumlas if you have two or more people helping/supervising the creation of the object.
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-15 08:49:47
In-Reply-To: 1129
Obvious points, can't but agree with those. If something needs to be dropped, it would be the difficulty of item creation, this can be circumvented by providing bad BPs for difficult to make objects. However, I would also like to see difficulty as one of the variables in item creation.
About those skills: Blacksmithing could be a main paragraph, which would include a large variety of different skills, all arranged into a skilltree. I slightly disagree with the statement that action is not possible without basic knowledge of a certain skill. Action could be taken by using skill that is very close to the original in the tree. This should then have a appropriate negative effect. If one should use skill that is very far away from the needed (computer of course would choose the closest possible choice) then this would actually result into a damage for the project... however the whole project might still be successful (but ultimately ship is only as good as its loosest board... yeah, I know there is not such a metaphora).
Person should know by oneself, where he is good at. They should be able to try out and get the possibly failed results.
I suppose the formulation of an equation that will do all of this and more will be a daunting task. Good luck (*cough* Archantes *cough*) :)
From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-03-20 03:53:42
In-Reply-To: 1129
Sorry, Archantes, if you were intending to make one, or if you already have one (in which case this post should probably be disregarded), but I gave some to the problem, and came up with the idea that, since if every variable is the same in a formula, the results cannot be different, so the formula would need to be based on a percentage. A formula like:
s = skill level
p = success percentage
p = s / 1.05
of course, the failure percentage could be derived from this by simply subtracting p from 100.
This formula doesn't really factor in the difficulty of the item to be made, so perhaps a formula like this one would work better:
d = difficulty (integer from 1 to 5)
s = skill level
p = success percentage
p = (1/d) * (s / 1.05)
This would make most items around difficulty 1 or 2, or maybe 3. A 5 would make item creation very difficult, since, at, for example, a skill level of 10, a difficulty 5 item would have a success rate of about 1.9%, but with a difficulty 1 item, success would be about 9.52% of the time, or close to 1 in 10.
Thoughts? Comments? Verbal abuse?
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-15 12:11:17
In-Reply-To: 1131
In reply to those, both. Did you read the create.txt? I think all (most of) those question have answers there.
(*cough*Thanksforsupport*cough*;)
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-16 04:34:22
In-Reply-To: 1133
I read it, Im writing some sort of a commentary, but it is slow... it wasn't actually very intuitive :) Ideas were good, but somehow the formulas were not that fluent (or what ever the formulas are then) But, yes, I know you put out an effort to answer most of these comments here. Thanks
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-15 23:40:04
In-Reply-To: 1134
Taming could be nice to have.. Tame a bear if you can.. ;)
Hmm.. here's some others too (What should be/not to be there?):
* The martial skills (all of 'em)
* Speak Languge
* Write/Read Language
* Teaching
* Barter
* Painting
* Surviving
* Fishing
* Climbing
* Swimming
* Running
* Riding
* Jumping
* Sailing
* Alchemy
* Magic (and all it's subskills)
* Astronomy
* Smithing (Making blades and other with hammer&anvil)
* Sewing
* Timberwork (Carpenting)
* Masonry
* Metal work (Other than blades, rings, helmets, wire..)
* Leatherwork
* Spinning
* Snaring (making traps)
* Sowing
* Fleecing
* Mining (and Stonecutting)
* Woodcutting
* Mowing
* Shearing
* Butchery
* Singing
* Playing (an instrument, should we make an (abridged) instrument tree?;)
And what should we do with identifying items? Should we make some skills like knowledge of minerals or knowledge of herbs/plants? Or should it be just that you can identify the item X and Y only if you have learned their features and looks from some book etc, like 'Common minerals' containing information about X, and learned information about mineral Y from someone.
The painting.. heh, just had I wild thought.. How about something like this: If you know how to paint and you have equipment for it, you can 'take screeshots' to paintings, and we could have painting competitions and art would be expensive and sought-after.. I'd like to hang a beatiful scenery painting to my house's wall ;) There is certain problems in this system, so I think it's quite iffy to get it work.
This is quite long list? Yeah, I think that too.. The question is, will we need these all, and what should we remove(/add/combine).
I want to remind you all, that more skills we have, more complicated and difficult it will be to make, but also more interesting, diversified, functional and realistic it will be.
Once again, what we want? (You can't repeat that too often, the game is based on that question - and you can't answer that very easily)
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-16 14:54:58
In-Reply-To: 1134
I don't see the need for taming. Horses are broken, not taimed. And all horses need broken. The older they are the harder it is. The breaking of a horse is when it learns that the person on its back is not trying to hurt it, and it stops trying to throw them off.
We currently have no plan to have horses? and a specific "taming" skill isn't needed.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-16 14:39:47
In-Reply-To: 1139
alchemy has several sub skills
Bartering? that shouldn't be a in game skill, but a skill the player would have to learn him self. lol
Mowing? people in medieval times didn't mow grass.
Mundane tasks and jobs prolly shouldn't be player things but npc skills, mining for example. If a player wants to mine for gold he should hire some npc workers who know how to do that, and send them off to do the task.
npc hirelings should be able to be taught a skill just like you'd teach a player.
Singing? common are you serious?
* Climbing
* Swimming
* Running
* Riding
* Jumping
* Sailing
I assume an average adult in medieval time would know how to run and jump. climbing if its like a tree yes, a mountain no. Swimming, prolly not, but they can learn.
Be practical here, if its a task that one would assume an adverage adult in medieval time period would know, we don't need a specfic skill for it.
And boreing tasks need to be given to npcs and not force playrs to do them.
There has to be skills for knowledge of minerals/plants. I think if you mouse over something you can collect it will identify it to your knowledge, if you have no clue what it is it would say, Tree, flower, plant, rock, crystal. but if you know what it is it will give the specific use for it. And if you know that its edible it will even give you the option to eat it. (berries, fruit, etc..). Mouse over it for like 2 seconds and it pops up a little menu (presumeing your close enough to pick it up) with options like, Examine, Take, etc...
Painting, i donno... to complex for now to code.. we don't really want to program a paint program inside the game. :P
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-16 04:44:31
In-Reply-To: 1139
Identifying items should have direct connection to Blue Prints. Blue Print of a Ship (as in archantes create.txt) would enable player to identify those parts/objects that belong into that Blue Print.
Identifying as itself could be more of a skill that determines the quality of an item, hence:
Identification comes from Blue Prints, but determining the quality is done with the skill of (lets say) evaluation.
One more thing (as I already said in somewhere else in the posts) is that character should not be able to see his skills, so that he would not be able to brag having this and this skill so and so high.
Bye
From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-03-16 05:27:28
In-Reply-To: 1139
Hmm... I don't think a language reading/writing and speaking skill needs to be separate. And I think teaching should be based off the skill in the subject you are teaching, not some separate skill.
Do you think it would be possible to combine some of the 'working' skills (woodworking, leatherworking, metalworking, etc.), which would then have a large skill tree.
Also, I think blueprints should be both physical drawings on paper or some recipe for a cake, but blueprints should also be learnable by watching (repeatedly) another person creating the specific item, or being actively taught how to make it.
I think that unlearned skills should definitely not be shown to the player, learned skills should, so the player knows what they can do.
I'm probably combining too many thoughts in one post, but has anyone said anything about skill decreasing if it isn't used often? (of course, it would never go to absolute 0). While the 'forgetting' rate should be very slow, it would make practicing and maintaining your skill even more important, and would IMHO make the game more intersting.
--sweatshop
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-16 08:54:55
In-Reply-To: 1141
Give me all you can get and I'll answer and fix everything I can, and we have the best result.
The formulas vere quite precipitate, yes, in the beginning I wasn't even sure if enyone would listen my suggestion, so I did not try to make them to be ready ones. Demonstrating the whole idea in general was my point here.
Because of this support I'll start specifying the system block by block. And the item tree needs a new basis - and translation.
And this brings me to one question: We need a list of all items imaginable in game, so should we start to gather them, or just should we have 'a limited' one first for nemen? Of cource we can add them later too. Oh, and the raw materials need to defined too, and the tools.. There is much to do.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-16 18:46:58
In-Reply-To: 1141
And by the way, please put replies to this discussion to thread 'Creating items'
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-16 09:12:38
In-Reply-To: 1142
That identification part sounds good to me.
One more thing (as I already said in somewhere else in the posts) is that character should not be able to see his skills, so that he would not be able to brag having this and this skill so and so high.
I say we should bring the nubmers of the skills out to be in a verbal scale like: Poor, medicore, excellent.. if we have, say, 20 different adjectives for skill levels it means one for every 5 in a scale 0-100. IRL people can boast with their skills, so they should have that option in game too, but without numeric stats.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-16 18:41:33
In-Reply-To: 1143
has anyone said anything about skill decreasing if it isn't used often? (of course, it would never go to absolute 0). While the 'forgetting' rate should be very slow, it would make practicing and maintaining your skill even more important, and would IMHO make the game more intersting.
This is a definitely thing I want. If you master something you have to keep it up so your skill does not vanish.
A formula like this: The higer the skill is, the faster the forgetting will be, so if you have skill of 85 you'll propably forget some things when idle (in that skill) for, say, two weeks. (in game time) OTOH if you know only the basics, say skill 25, the skill would decrease when idle eg. for 3 months.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-16 14:52:25
In-Reply-To: 1143
for teaching, refer to my topic about skill learning from teaching. The forumla takes into account the skill level of the player and teacher and the difficulty of the skill being learned. Also it presents a good way for teaching to take place.
I like the idea of a skill tree, it lets us logical group skills together so that they are easier to understand from our point of view. Players will never see this "tree" or there grouping. The worldbook page for skills is sorta already grouped into a tree. More grouping should be done, and then a tree drawn.
Blueprints should be able to be written down on paper, and a player can read the paper and "learn" the blueprint, and a blueprint should also be able to be learned from a teacher. If you are in the presense of another person, and they agree to teach you, you have the ability to create any blueprint they know, you select from the list what you want to learn, and presumeing you have the materials and equipment you create the item, learning both the blueprint and skills associated with. You can't just automaticly batch select all the blueprints the "teacher" knows and copy them so you can use. you have to create the item in there presence. This will greatly slow down blueprint learning because one has to consume raw materials to learn the blue print in this way. Also writing a blueprint down on paper shouldn't be cheap, blue prints should be rated on there difficulty, and a blue print will require so many blank pages depending on its difficulty. A very complex blueprint, say for a castle would take a huge book to write down on paper, and would be very very expensive, (blank paper and books likely will be very expensive in the game).
A simple blueprint might just take one page to write down, and a book could be filled with alot of simple blueprints and sold. Players that have spent the effort to learn tons of blueprints can make some extra money buy writing books of blueprints and selling them. (any thoughts on that?)
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-16 14:43:39
In-Reply-To: 1147
skills should be invisiable to the player, they should just be able to see there blueprints they know and look at them, If they don't know a skill needed it says what skill they need to learn. They learn some of it they can start trying ot create the object. The more they practice the skill (either by directly practiceing the skill or trying to create things that use it, refer to my topic about skill learning formula) more successful they become at creating the objects.
I assume a list of known skills can be presented to them, but keep secret all the unknown skills.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-16 17:11:52
In-Reply-To: 1152
And boreing tasks need to be given to npcs and not force playrs to do them.
What is boring? And have you ever played UO for example? People there make money by actually doing something by themselves. The most interesting part is to hire some PCs to work to you.
And force? What if players want to dig a mine by themselves? No option for that, because you just can't. Put NPCs to work. I think PC and NPC should not differ much from each other.
Bartering. Skill to barter with NPC, if we have them..
Mowing? I'm not sure if this is correct term, but I ment gathering grain from fields.
And in general, the skills for gathering raw materials.. why not? Of cource we can make it be that every PC mines or cuts wood as fast, and that's it, but still..
Same to running and so on.. we can't never arrange running competitions if all players run as fast. Seriously: If you are a loysy fighter you can always run. If every PC runs as fast none can ever catch anyone.. without a horse etc.. Of cource if there is some other method for determining the speed of char, I just shut up in this case. ;)
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-16 16:26:12
In-Reply-To: 1153
I assume a list of known skills can be presented to them, but keep secret all the unknown skills.
Agree to that.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-16 17:22:01
In-Reply-To: 1154
First: BPs difficulty, as you say, is how large the instructions are. In my system BPs contain every single step of making an item, so if you are building a castle, it obviously takes huge amount of paper. We need no separate diffuculty. (If you ment that)
And I like the idea of actually making an item while learning the BP. The thing is, we have a BP for a chair. Well, there is person A who knows the BP for chair, quality 450, and a person B who knows nothing about making a chair.
The A agrees to teach B and so they make a chair. The B learns how to make a chair, quality 50. Now the person B is able to start learning by himself. He can make a chair of 20. Now he starts to learn from a teacher to gather enough information to quality 99 - before that he does not have to actually build the chair. But when willing to learn the quality 100 he has to build another chair again. Like this the B has to build some items to learn something. And again, when reaching the 200 another chair.. etc.
I think that makes it work..
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-16 17:16:51
In-Reply-To: 1155
How about dogs? Hawks? Parrots? I know that my char will have a hawk.. ;)
I think we need taming if we have animals. And horses we will have at least.
From: Rakel
Date: 2002-03-17 12:25:58
In-Reply-To: 1155
I'm for taming, players should be able to get meat from their herds if they do not want to hunt.
And this reminds me, if players are able to tame animals, we must figure out how they can feed them. How much hay does a cow eat in a day. What if the player isn't online to feed them? (S)He should be able to set his/hers character to do all the menial tasks needed in animal care...
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-17 09:58:13
In-Reply-To: 1155
Raeky, don't need taming my foot. Dogs? what about dogs tp protect your house. Or better yet have a monster. If you ever looked at Ultima Online, which I doubt because u keep calling it a MUD, thousands of people enjoy being animal tamers.
The breaking of a horse is when it learns that the person on its back is not trying to hurt it, and it stops trying to throw them off.
That is called taming. Deffinention of Taming:
1. Causing an animal not to be wild.
A horse that throws people off all the time is WILD, after you break it, it is tame.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-16 21:29:41
In-Reply-To: 1163
first, what is UO, and likely i haven't played it. MUDs *SUCK* IMO. So my mind isn't poisoned by them.
Boreing tasks are ones that no saine player would spend weeks doing. It *IS* possible that a player can learn to mine him self, but *MOST* players prolly would rather hire some npcs to do the boreing stuff, while there off learning skills or practiceing magic or exploreing.
NPCs should be already hireable from the start knowing how to do some of the more boreing tasks. The more skills they know the more expensive there "wage" is.
Bardering. Just how do you propose we make that a skill? Its just silly, if you want to bater with a NPC we just make the interface possible to bater. The NPC that is selling has a set MIN price it will sell an item for. And you can talk down his asking price. I don't nessessarly see a need for the bartering skill. bartering is something a player just has to learn, and if we make npcs possible to bater with then we should do it so the player can learn how to bater with them, no in game skill. Hell if i was a store owner and some player had his bater skill maxed i would instruct my npc to NOT sell to him. NPCs should be able to accept/reject barter offers from anyone regardless of some skill. It should be more random. say the asking price is 100 gold and the MIN price is 50 gold. If you offer 75 gold you have a 50/50 chance of the NPC accepting. if you offer 50 gold you got a 1/100 chance. if you offer 99 gold you got a 100/1 chance, etc... IT should be random based on how far down you want to try to bater him. if you keep badgering him he will get pissed off and only accept the asking price of 100 gold.
mowing would be the term of cutting ones lawn grass. Harvesting would be what you call collecting grain.
And personaly if we have a "harvesting" skill it should apply to havesting ANY crop. And it would be a skill you can right off the bat hire a npc to do.
There should be areas in the starting towns where npcs can be "bought." and these starting npcs that you buy will know the boreing stuff. like you choose i want a npc who knows how to mine or a npc that knows how to cut wood and make lumber, or a npc that knows how to do basic blacksmithing, etc... Then you train your npc and as you train him is "wage" increeses. If you can't pay him no more or if you decide to "fire" him he will make his way back to the nearest town depot for buying npcs, from there another player can decide to buy him, and he will still know everything hes been taught and his "wage" will reflect that.
I feel this is the best way to solve the problem of doing boreing or time cosumeing tasks, also the best way for a player to learn alot of skills to be used. If you want to take up blacksmithing just go search arround and see if you can hire an experienced blacksmith npc, then you can learn from it, or teach it new things. And while your off adventureing he can be back home makeing weapons and takeing them to your store for sale, and other npcs out collecting raw materials takeing them to your blacksmith, etc... Have a whole industry that you fund. Of course this would be rather expensive, and consume alot of the players time keeping it running correctly. lol, but it is possible for the player to make large amounts of money so he can build his castles.
Running would be based on endurance, how long you can run before you tire out. If we have an endurance variable for players, no discussion has said we did, then players can improve it so they can run longer. But a human is still human, and even the best runners won't go really that far, maybe a couple km before they tire out. And a flat out sprint one wouldn't make it a few hundred m before they fall over dead. so.... I think it would be best to just give everyone some sorta base running ability, randomize it a little so everyone dosn't run the same speed, and base it on race. Some races can run alot longer and faster then others.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-16 21:30:34
In-Reply-To: 1165
keep in mind we don't want 50000 skills. FEW as possible.
From: Rakel
Date: 2002-03-17 00:03:34
In-Reply-To: 1171
"Forgotten" skills should be re-learned faster. If you have already learned something it's quite easy to refresh your memory...
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-16 21:11:55
In-Reply-To: 1171
if it does decrease it should be very very slowly. And I don't really like the idea of it decreeseing. Its supost to be possible for a player to learn EVERYTHING.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-17 02:35:21
In-Reply-To: 1174
Yes, players should be able to learn everything they want, but NOT ALL IN SAME TIME, that's just.. unrealistic. Of cource you can be a master thief and master fighter mage in same time, but you can't just be master smith, master fisher, master sailor, master this, master that... in same time. You forget things, and you have to keep them up.
Of cource it's slow, and you'll can keep all skills > 50 if you practice enough, or just do normal things. But mastering (skill > 90) more than three skills is just too hard for human (or troll) brains. Without a spell or magic of some kind, that's just impossible. (I'm not quite sure with the elves - maybe their forgetting rate is slightly slower)
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-17 03:19:50
In-Reply-To: 1175
UO is Ultima Online. Not a MUD. And I do not take into consideration what you think of MUDs, that is irrelevant.
People in UO love to make their own items, their own indrusties, collect raw materials, make things, learn how to make their bread. Store their self made food. Wear their hand made armours. There is no need for boring task to be done only by NPCs, simply because there is always someone making that - with pleasure. If there is need for something, people pay good money for someone to make it. And people communities want to be independent, no need for ONLY lean on NPCs that make the producing items more boring. Of cource you can hire them to help you, but is there still need to limit the playing with PCs? If the players can do more than run and beat, hack and slash, they will do it. And this all makes ROLEPLAYING more important. There is no free NPC master smith in every town, you need to bargain with other player groops. Some produce iron (because there is some very good miners in their group), some make weapons etc.
Believe me, there will be players who love to sell their products to other players, and people that wants to make their own food and equipment. People who wants to make a shop for his items - furniture that he makes.
If this whole economy system is based on NPCs, for the players the playing will be only doing something exceptional and adventurous. There is no possibilities for normal, AVERAGE MEDIEVAL life, that is important part of a game. (Of cource we ask again, what we really want from this game..)
And you can make adventures while making items or make items while adventuring: You run out of money and food, just gather some grain and take them to mill, and then to bakery.. Or you have been robbed and have no bow or arrows anymore. And nearest town is 20 miles far. Just make a bow and few arrows and you can survive back to that safe shop. Or your chainmail is nearly broken and you have no money left. Well, repair it by yourself.
This is ALL about roleplaying. What fun there is, when you can't start digging a gold mine with some of your friends and chat at the same time and after founding a gold vein go to nearest inn (with nice PC owner) to drink for it? Drink beer that has been made by those very own hands. (Hmm, I should add the brewing skill to list ;D)
ONCE MORE: We do not have ONLY average medieval adults in THIS GAME.
We have different races, cultures, some of them use hunting as main livelihood. And some people, noble families eg. have not ever seen a scythe before. How do you think they can use it? Or how fast they can harvest.
The question is, do we want people to have different rates of woodcutting, smithing etc. I say it will be boring if people just makes as fast some metalwork as woodcutting, simply beacause there is only one skill/value to determine that: your char's deftness or similar.
It's not only the brutal force that makes you good gold digger. It's the skill..
We should have NPCs, that I say, BUT I say also that the PCs should have the possibility for "boring tasks".
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-17 03:20:43
In-Reply-To: 1175
To me UO brings in mind Ultima Online, not that I have played it.
It is so much fun to see how the basic stances of people do not change. You think that boring tasks are still boring tasks and nobody wants to do them.
I think that as in life, we have boring tasks that we need to do everyday. My biggest motivation to step up in corporate race is to avoid those dull tasks... why game player wouldn't feel the same?
I don't see wast NPC use as a solution to make the world running. There is atleast one serious trouble with them, where and how do they use their salaries? This is not a problem with players, since everything they do will help the game world circulating.
That example of mining would go so that while you do your mining, you also improve your mining skill and similar skills like the use of ax. So, even the boring tasks would develop the character and prepare it for the future. Selling the ore or delivering it to ones contractor would put some money to the pocket and all this would fire up an anxiety to better oneself, in order to be able to do something else.
Some other thoughts of NPCs if there is lot of them in the game already, there is no marginal cost to acquire them. The process cannot be so simple that we just employ NPC and turn this (NPC) unit into a non-complaining, non-raise demanding producer of profit.
Instead of NPCs I still would like to see PC offline guidance so good that we can leave the characters to do their things without much worrying.
OK, then I try to give some answers to those people who now would like to start saying how easy it is to put up lots of accounts and reap the benefits etc.
----Some of these examples do not follow my basic mentality towards the game system, which is that nothing exist if it is not specially made. We should not have ingame external value producing arbitrates like NPC, money/items from thin air.
1. offline AI should be for monotonic tasks. One should not be able to program character to do macro operations, so mining-transportation-selling, wouldn't be an option. If we want the character to bake breads and sell them, we could only choose one of the functions.
2. offline AI cruise mode would not increase the skills or BPs of a character, so early on newbies really couldn't be used to do anything refined, making them therefore not worth the trouble of creating lots of accounts and putting zombies into work. Player would need to train his character hard to make it useful.
3. Character should start without any equipment and inside in the game there would be some sort of a salvation army like feeding line... player would need to go there reqularly to get his stomach full.
(this is rather strange example, but I don't want to see characters that have lots of items with them... Lots of items or starting money will accumulate and skew the economy)
4. No NPCs in the beginning of the game. NPCs would form from people who have left the game and given up their characters without meeting death. The idea of NPC could also be more of a slave than NPC. To get slaves, one would first have to turn player character into a slave. That would create a strong marginal cost for having slaves.
5. There is no boring tasks, because the need to do something creates a value for the work. There will be someone willing to do the work, especially if no NPCs are available and starting conditions are dire.
(we could have a situation, where all characters are created from clay, God makes this clay living and then the player goes to the world naked, trying to find something to get by with) rather extreme measure, right.
6. game could have eg. 10 Euro fee for a single character account (or a yearly fee), that would put off the adventurous spirit of newbie and to make newbit treat the precious character well on its early path.
(proceeding would be used to cover the costs of the gameplay and technology. no salaries would be paid for developers so it would still be sort of free for players. Limited company structure could be formed for the game and all the players would become owners of one share with the fee they pay for playing the game. Possible revenue could be used to buy stocks of other game companies.)
---------End of examples---------
So, I just don't see, why it wouldn't work with just the players. One shop could be run by 3-5 players doing team work... somebody working in shop online, someone's character would do some simple work, some of them would take a day off and roam the countryside, killing deers and frogs.
Ok, this is it for now
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-16 21:33:09
In-Reply-To: 1175
a little bit more, an adverage adult in medieval time period would know how to harvest crops. because they solely depended on there farm and there own crops for there life, they all learn how to farm and harvest. So it dosn't need to be a skill, players already know how to do it when they start the game.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-17 03:24:09
In-Reply-To: 1176
This far we have 32 or something, about 49968 to go..
This argumentation is useless, we both know it ;) You have your point of view and I have my own. We should really ask Namhas or Yorka or some others..
This is versatility and roleplayability against the time we want to use making the game system, am I correct?
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-17 02:37:38
In-Reply-To: 1181
Ah, that's a good point indeed. That will make it easier, and we do not have to worry so much about the decreasing skills - you can always rehearse.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-17 03:36:27
In-Reply-To: 1187
Yes, that's what I'm saying. The world economy does not have to be running with NPCs only, and if it will, there will be serious problems.
We can have NPCs but I want people to be able to do things the NPCs do as well.
-----
And that game fee, I think that is not going to work, it's far too complicated and hard to arrange.
From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-03-21 01:00:32
In-Reply-To: 1187
Some good points there, but I just want to make sure that everyone understands that Majik will be completely free to use for anyone.
I think that NPCs are only useful as shopkeepers or similar tasks, because, as you mentioned, there is always someone willing to take on the most monotonous task if it earns the person money, and through money food, and through food survival.
I'm not sure about abandoned PCs being the NPCs... it seems like it would cause some problems, like, what signifies that a PC is abandoned? What if someone signed off because they went on vacation for a month, and come back to find out they're someone's slave?
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-17 10:42:58
In-Reply-To: 1189
like i said, a npc can learn anything a player can learn and vice versa.
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-17 10:00:12
In-Reply-To: 1192
Raeky, I read my thing over and it seems very rude, so I apologize because I didn't mean for it to be that rude sounding.
Another thing is, because we have a limit to what we can carry we need pack animals, correct?
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-17 16:38:14
In-Reply-To: 1197
The point here however was what we are going allow PC and NPC characters to do. If we give PC no chance to do anything "boring" he is forced to give the job to NPC, which is able to mine, smith etc. And with this
a npc can learn anything a player can learn and vice versa
the PC should be able to mine and smith then. And when players are able to do so, we need skills for them. That's because that IF there is NO skill there is no point of learning to be a smith or a miner. The whole game goes to chat, hack and slash. No one cares learning to make a ship, because every NPC you can hire can make as good ship as anyone else, if you pay well. And the most stupid and clumsy NPC smith can make you the most finest sword if you give him precise instructions. Simply, there will be no unskilled smiths, because threre is no SKILL.
That's something I do not want to see.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-17 12:45:34
In-Reply-To: 1198
No, we are not. We are making something better. (That sounds a bit... well it's an opinion after all..;)
But if UO includes some good things, why not to make some to be here as well? Why we want to ignore things just because they are part of some other game?
From: origon
Date: 2002-03-17 15:05:35
In-Reply-To: 1199
Why not istead of a 'taming' skill make it a bit more interesting. You could 'kidnap' a foal and treat it well, and it will see you as its parent.
Adult creatures are not likely to be tamed.
Feeding a creature: drop food on ground, walk away, it will come sniff on it and possibly eat.
If you already are decent friends: hold your hand with the apple by its mouth, or leave food in some bowl if you only seek to feed them and not seek to strengthen the relationship.
If an elf has tamed a horse, how will the horse then react to the first sight of an orc?
From: Rakel
Date: 2002-03-21 09:00:29
In-Reply-To: 1199
What about combining taming and taking care of the animals?
After all, you can't tame an animal if you don't know what it needs to eat etc. One could capture an animal and click the "take care of the animal". After a while the animal might be tamed, if one knows enough of its feeding- and other habits.
We could use blueprints for species here... This combined skill would also provide players a way to manage their animals after they have tamed them. By clicking beforementioned button, they would get a message stating the needs of the animal (get that 30 kgs of hay/day).
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 00:36:08
In-Reply-To: 1201
we don't want obvious similiarites with UO, and likely your concepts are quite different then UO. I don't see any reason to borrow much if anything from an existing game. a player who has played UO will be like "wow, they coppied that." and we DO NOT want that.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-17 16:57:07
In-Reply-To: 1204
Should we have an animal training skill instead of taming then?
So this it would be like:
- You simply can't tame an adult creature
- Only way to get a tame creature is to raise a foal or a cub by feeding it.
- You could teach simple commands to it and the succession in this would depend on your animal training skill
- There could also be an option to give the tamed creature to someone, so there one is able to ride somone else's horse at least.
- Tamed animal would be devoted to the char that feeds it regulary, and it could be used by some other char too, if the owner commands it to follow him.
Could this actually work?
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-18 09:03:03
In-Reply-To: 1204
Well that's what basicly taming is, making friends with an animal and making not be afraid of other creatures.
I like the idea, how about, for example you need items to tame animals, like all animals need food to be tamed, and then you need special equipment for dangerous animals. Another thing is, the more food or better food you use, the more succesfull you will be.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 00:34:10
In-Reply-To: 1205
we've all agreed on skills haveing levels or whatever you want to call them. There are formulas written for how you learn from teachers, and how you learn single handed. Say you want a NPC for blacksmithing if you hire a fresh new npc that no one else has hired before and he knows blacksmithing, he will be quite low level skill in it. He will have to be taught by an exerienced blacksmith to learn faster or just brute force is way through it and learn on his own, much slower.
A player can know blacksmithing, and hire a npc that has no knowledge of it, or have another npc that has knowledge of it. He can then teach the new npc or instruct his other npc to teach the new npc blacksmithing, or some aspect of it, like smelting and ore proccessing.
A PC can also learn from a NPC that they have hired, in the same mannor one learns from a PC teacher.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 00:29:44
In-Reply-To: 1205
PLAYERS CAN DO ANYTHING A NPC CAN, AND A NPC CAN DO ANYTHING A PLAYER CAN.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 00:41:49
In-Reply-To: 1206
this works for non-domestic creatures.
Domestic = farm animals, dogs.
If its an animal that has been bread on farms for 100000000 years, its lost all its wild instincts and will have no fear of humans. Thus its not to much trouble to tame it. A horse is kind of different, a wild horse will stay far away from humans, its very unlikely a person in medieval time period would have captured a wild horse and broken it. My best guess is they took a few of the foal's and such as very young and raised them, and thats how the first domestic horses arrived, not some brave "cowboy" out there hopping on the back of the first horse to be taimed. lol
I like the animal traning/handeling skill kinda then TAIMING you won't see our medieval characters out there taiming lions and such. You may find them out sneaking arround and stealing a baby lion cub and raiseing it. Haveing a few animals like lions thinking your there pack leader/parent protecting your house or person would be very good security. :P
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 00:43:24
In-Reply-To: 1206
farm animals should be able to be bought from npcs in starting towns. If you want a chicken, you will have to get it from someone else who has chickens. and you'll need femals and one male, to keep getting more of your own chikens. hehe
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 00:54:05
In-Reply-To: 1206
specificly talking about your post. :)
You can capture in the wild most creatures as young, and raise them. This will give you a psudo-domestic version of the creature. Following generations of this animal that has been raised in captivity makes them more domestic. There should be a way for players to judge (maybe pedegrees?) the domestic level of a wild captured animal.
Farm animals and such, have been already fully domesticated, and thus are very easy to capture, even the adults will have no fear of PC's or NPC's for that matter. You can walk up to an adult cow (or whatever version of a cow we have) and capture it and lead it away to your field.
You can buy domesticated animals from people, and i supose give them away. Chickens for example multiply like rabits, or rabits even, you might have so many you can just start giveing them away or releaseing them back in the wild. That brings up
A domestic animal that isn't FULLY domestic (farm animals) if in the wild will slowly revert back into there wild self. At a faster rate then they revert into domestic. A domestic animal will remain domestic in the wild, but his offspring will be less domestic since they haven't been arround humans/elf/orc/etc...
An animal that has been domesticated by a orc will naturally fear a human but if the owner (the orc) is present when the human and animal contact and the orc and human are friendly then the animal will accept this human as friend. Most wild animals that you domesticate will only tolerate the pcs/npcs arround them, and will fear/attack newcommers unless there owners are present and reconize them as friend, then the animal will accept the newcommer as a non threat and treat them friendly, maybe not as friendly as there owner. but the more the newcommer is arorund the animal the more like its owner it will treat him.
domesticating wild animals is all about trust in the animal, wild animals by instinct have no trust of a new large animal they since its a threat and will protect there domain/friends. Only if there owners express friendleness to the new person will be animal accept him. Animals that have been domesticated for a long time, (farm animals) really have no innate fear of npcs/pcs and if in the wild you could walk directly up to them.
After the caticlism the farm animals that where on farms where left ownerless (the ones whos owners where destroyed.) and roam the wilds, they will have to be captured and brought back to captivity. Some species might not be 100% domesticated and thus slightly reverted back. But still possible to capture an adult without much worry, They at most will try to run away.
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-18 07:17:16
In-Reply-To: 1208
I fear that NPCs will be treated just like books etc. Buy it check if it knows anything... make it teach you and dump it. When person can finally be good by himself (learned a lot from those dummies), he will just hire some lousy NPC (since they don't demand money), teach a specific skill to it and thats it... low cost zombie energy.
Much nicer, if player has to find such an apprentice agreement, get some, give some and dynamics of a relationship will evolve. Employer has to be nice to make employee stay and then again worker has to be industrious to earn the salary. Just think of those delicate salary negotiations.
As I earlier mentioned, slaves could be nice solution. What about having to hunt down goblins to force them do some boring manual work? They need to be guarded, feeded, accomodated... this would already create a whole industry around them.
Slaves wouldn't have the problem of an NPC, where does NPC use it's money? I fear the cycle of money would be too predictable.
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-18 08:59:12
In-Reply-To: 1209
raeky, UO is an online Role-playing game, WE ARE NOT COPYING it. Almost all roleplaying games have similar elements. Our world is entirely diffrent, our combat system is diffrent, our races are diffrent. Someone who sees taming, will not say, hey they're copying UO, they'll say, hey cool they have animal taming. Lots of RPGs have taming.
UO has cooking, so we shouldn't use cooking skill right? : )
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-18 09:09:11
In-Reply-To: 1212
I like the idea of domestic animals being easier to tame and such, but I still think you should be able to tame adults. But like I said before it should be easier to tame a younger one, but still possible to tame adults.
Another thing I like is the wild captured animals, will react with fear against none friends, and like an animal tamed by an elf will dislike an orc.
But there should be a way to train your animal not to attack anyone also
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 09:46:48
In-Reply-To: 1215
npcs use there money to do whatever they want, npc humans for example will have a decent amount of ai, enough to build there own house if they had enough money and learned the skill, or even a npc could hire other npcs to help it build a house. :P Or the wages given to npcs just vanish, or go into the collective pot for the city wealth, or something. who knows. they can buy them selves armor and stuff from shops, and buy them selves weapons. Hire a merc npc and you can provide them weapons and they save there wages and buy them selves wares as well when you go into a town.
Slaves are a cool idea, I think any race could be enslaved. you can have human slave npcs, these would be weak humans not strong enough to fight or escape from your guards, then they would be forced to work for you, but the quality of slaves products likely would be less then that of a hired worker.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 09:49:29
In-Reply-To: 1216
lol... i didn't SAY WE WHERE COPYING. I said WE SHOULD BE CAREFUL NOT TO COPY.
And I still don't like Taming.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 09:56:31
In-Reply-To: 1217
umm... i beg to differ. Present food to a wild bear, sure it may come and eat it, maybe even out of your hand. (if it dosn't decide to eat your hand too.) stop giveing it food or run out and the thing will think you are hideing it from it and attack you looking for more, or just decide to eat you as desert.
Not all animals can be tamed, and any dangerous animal more then likely CAN NOT be tamed as an adult.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-18 09:54:11
In-Reply-To: 1218
you can't taim a wild adult animal.
its domesticating not tameing, if we have a skill it will be called "domesticating" (spelled right of course.) and it will involve captureing wild baby animals or maybe some adult animals (dosile ones, vicious ones not good idea to tango with. can't tame an adult bear. lol)
And farm animals really don't need much, except herding them into your fence, or sicking your herding dog to keep them wherever you want them.
Some animals can't be trained to like everyone. It depends on the animal and bread.
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-18 11:45:37
In-Reply-To: 1223
Well, the money cannot vanish. All the work people do in this world should carry on existing. Creating something would have the advantage of continuity, until destroyed on purpose.
I just don't believe that NPC AI can be so good that it will form logical invisible hand of market power. Can't we just start without them? Hmmm, well, I guess in the beginning we actually need them most, since we will not get flooded by players.
I would personally start even with a character who does not need food etc. This would remove the need of having NPCs producing food. Well, we could start with just a 3dUI in place and let players discuss what they want. Most wanted wish would be realized once a week (Ok, we want better graphics :)
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-18 14:15:59
In-Reply-To: 1224
Hehe, I guess we can't stand each others guts, :-D
Well . .. I LIKE TAMING, althoug you are my superiour, you were hired before me
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-18 19:14:10
In-Reply-To: 1224
My point here was to point out that it is fully working system, and tested and people like doing it, the taming.
And we should be careful not to copy.. yes, but we can't avoid all things - simply because this is not the first online fantasy RPG in the world.
I thought we are making a (in some limits) realistic, fun to play, flexible and diversified game.. And if people like taming and it makes game more interesting and it is a sytem that works in other games too, I see no point not to take it.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-18 16:40:45
In-Reply-To: 1225
As I said, no cooking skill is necessary, because we can use receips alone..
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-18 14:20:29
In-Reply-To: 1226
Any animal with the inteligence of a dog can be trained to do anything. BIRDS can be trained, training basicly means punishing your pet when it doesn't do what you want and rewarding it when it does.
ARRRGRGRGR Domesticating, taming, YES YOU CAN TAME AN ADULT ANIMAL
We want to have the ability to tame any animal, any age, but make it so it is more difficult to tame older ones
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-18 14:24:58
In-Reply-To: 1227
Any animal will attack you or run away if you stop feeding it.
Also as you keep trying to POINT OUT,
We are not making a real life simulation
this is a fantasy game, WE WIL BE ABLE TO TAME ALL ANIMALS
:-[ *Readies his ax, for the intense battle of words with raeky, sure to come*
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-18 19:05:43
In-Reply-To: 1229
Conclusion: Since players are able to do whatever the NPCs do, and we want people to do different things with different qualities (and this thread was for skills after all) I think we should have smithing, carpenting, sewing etc. skills included. That's what I am trying to say..
This discussion about if we should have AI smiths or not belongs to NPC AI thread. This whole thing is getting out of hands because people keep posting OT all the time, and messages that have only one sentence.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-18 16:39:27
In-Reply-To: 1230
I like taming. It makes the world better.
From: origon
Date: 2002-03-18 16:23:45
In-Reply-To: 1231
'A dog' is a wolf that has been bred for hundreds of years to become easy to domesticate.
Animals survive from running, i would like to see you run out in nature and convince a wolf that you are its master.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-19 05:29:56
In-Reply-To: 1232
the only way i can conceive the ability to tame all animals reguarless of age would be to have the magic of a Druid. And use magic to control the animal. NOT ALL PLAYERS CAN CONTROL ALL ANIMALS. we don't want some newbie player going out in the wild and mastering tameing then tame every dragon/bear/beast in the land to be his personal army.
I venture that only a few animals can be tamed, even if you had them as babys. A dragon should never be tamed, and if only controled by the most powerful magic, once the magic ends it will try to kill anything nearby it.
Domestic animals, dogs, cats, cows, chikens, small animals, etc... can easly be tamed.
Big animals and dangerous ones or ones with a fair amount of ingelegence (simple npc races) likely can't be tamed, even if you had them as young.
Some people may, but I think anything thats not domestic has a HIGH chance on turning on its owner, reguarless of the skill the owner possess. The more wild/big/dangerous the creater the GREATER the chance it will decide to eat its master.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-19 05:24:29
In-Reply-To: 1234
exactly. or even better a 1000lb grizzly bear.
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-19 09:13:40
In-Reply-To: 1234
if you capture it and keep it from running you can convince it,
And I never said I could, but it is possible
From: origon
Date: 2002-03-18 22:38:56
In-Reply-To: 1241
Why not have cooking skill and Blueprints for recepies?
Different recepies would have different affect on you.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-18 23:42:10
In-Reply-To: 1244
We can have cooking skill IMO, but it seems some do not like it..
If we say that we need no actual skill to make food, only the recipe, in the current create items system that means you do not have to make anything, just put the ingredients into pot, in order said in the BP, and that's it.
OTOH if we decide to take cooking skill, then the BPs would contain processes that need to be run through before the food can be made, eg pulverize this and knead that and the succeeding in these processes would depend on the skill.
I say latter would be better.
From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-03-21 01:33:09
In-Reply-To: 1245
Hell, why not include taming, or even cooking. While I understand too many skills can be awkward and unrealistic, if there are 32, or even more, if players slowly forget some of their skills if they aren't practiced, this would effectively cause everyone to have, perhaps, only 10 skills that they know moderately well.
Anyway, if programmed better than "right click on animal - click the tame button - percentage of successful taming based off skill level", it can make the game a lot more interesting, especially for those who aren't really interested in just killing.
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-19 09:14:32
In-Reply-To: 1246
This is a consipracy to get me, isn't it?
:)
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-19 09:17:04
In-Reply-To: 1247
You forget, if you don't care for your animals they run away. We could also have NPC stables where you can keep maybe four animals, or we can limit it by size.
And a newbie that masters taming to the ability of taming dragons is no longer a newbie.
Raeky I have this bad habit of making people hate me :}
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-20 00:51:01
In-Reply-To: 1250
convince? convinceing only works with a creature that has enough intelegence to reason. A bear or wolf does not, it can't be convinced of anything.
From: origon
Date: 2002-03-19 15:16:32
In-Reply-To: 1252
no illogical limits.
You will have to pay for NPC/PC's to take care of your creature. Your pile of gold is the limit
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-20 00:56:38
In-Reply-To: 1252
its not a matter of food, these animals are wild, and most likely some of them will never associate you with food, they more then likely will always see you as a sorce of food, either you give it to them or you become food.
He is still a newbie in the eyes of the game, only mastering one skill, but becomeing powerful enough to takeover whole citys by commanding all of nature to attack? thats silly, it can only be done by great magic and likely most nodes cannot provide the amount of magical energy needed to command a whole regions worth of animals.
And I donno if we want to see a player with a bear or some huge monster as its "pet". Monsters are in the game to attack players to make it difficult to travel in areas the monsters live. We don't want the monsters to become simple play pets. They can not.
If we decide to have "druids" then we will have magic that can "summon" or "control" a creature to do his bidding. But again to command a whole army of monsters would require MUCH magical energy, far more then is in the player him self.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-19 15:32:37
In-Reply-To: 1257
Well IMHO the space available for animals is not an illogical limit.. ;)
But yes, the money is one.
And btw. I think dragons are that smart you can't just tame one. You'll have to become friends with it.. if it's even possible by normal means.
It is true what is said about taming a some huge monster, you are not a newbie anymore - or you get killed if you are an unskilled fool trying to make game easier..
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-20 12:17:10
In-Reply-To: 1267
How do you ttrain a dog? you convince it to do good things by training it, how do you train? you reward it when it is good, and punish it when it is bad.
Soon it makes an imprint in the dogs mind that it will be rewarded when it does something good
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-20 16:57:25
In-Reply-To: 1268
He is still a newbie in the eyes of the game, only mastering one skill, but becomeing powerful enough to takeover whole citys by commanding all of nature to attack? thats silly, it can only be done by great magic and likely most nodes cannot provide the amount of magical energy needed to command a whole regions worth of animals.
You just can't learn to be master tamer if you are a newbie. You just can't survive that long without not being a newbie anymore. It takes, say 2 years in game (couple of months IRL?) and you have played that long.. well he's not a newbie to me anymore - and after all, when playing so long and hard he have to master some other skills too, not only one.
So I don't think this is a real problem here. I really don't.
Pet, that is something you take for fun or friend, monster and others, like horses, are more like slaves. So when saying 'to tame a bear' I see it as echaining and commanding an animal, not being your friend.
So I say that taming a bear means enchaining it and commanding it with a whip - not just feeding and then saying fairly: 'be nice and hit the bad man'.
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-20 12:25:08
In-Reply-To: 1268
Raeky, you forget that most animals do not eat humans as food, if an animal finds it can have continued amounts of food from a human, it will follow the human around.
And what is the matter with having a huge bear as a pet? you will have to be very powerful to control it, and if you are not powerful enough to control it you should be able to buy items to help you control them, collar and chain, cage, whip.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-20 12:51:05
In-Reply-To: 1269
Actually I did not have any good plans for formulas yet, so this is a welcomed idea.
This need development, but I just have no time for this now, so I'll check this later.. We have to adjust this formula and..
Ah, later.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-20 21:32:50
In-Reply-To: 1269
Allright.. hmm. Maybe this is too diffuclt. It should be more like:
p = 5/(d+2) * (s / 1.05)
That's because there is sevaral operations in one item creation. And simply because you have to succeed in every of them it should not be so hard. And yes, it seems that skill more than 63 in this formula means that you just can't fail if d = 1, but that's OK IMO. At least if we agree to have failure regardless of the skill with a 'roll' of 100 or something. (Criticals?)
In my version the diffuculty does not play so big role, as you can see, but of course it means something.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-22 04:02:41
In-Reply-To: 1269
the problem is, they should have a very high success rate if you are skillful in it. and my thinking of it outputting a 1 or 0 would be for programming, if a 1 comes out the item is made a 0 the item fails.
Say for example skill levels are 0-100 and 100 being complete total knowledge of the skill. Each skill will get a "difficulty" setting.
x = skill level of player
y = skill level of teacher (is set to 1 if no teacher is present)
z = skill difficulty (a fractional value, smaller the fraction harder the skill is to learn.)
f(x) = x + y(z+(x*z))
Is a formula for learning a skill. I have some stats for it in the article #963.
Now an item would have its own difficulty to make and be based on the of the player.
x = skill of player
y = difficulty of item to make (percentage, smaller the percent, the harder the item is to make)
z = Boolean value for success of item creation.
R = random integer number from 1-10
z = { x^2*(y*R)/200 > 1, z = 1
x^2*(y*R)/200
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-22 03:35:11
In-Reply-To: 1273
Possibly you don't understand the English meaning of Convince. To convince something it needs to have the power to reason, or decide what’s in its best interest. A lower intelligence animal doesn’t have such intelligence and thus learns by association. It associates you with food and pleasure (petting) and thus it accepts you into its "pack" (for a dog) and depending on your authority role in the pack it assigns you a "class" being Alpha male or even lower. If you don't assert authority to the animal it will assign its self or someone else as the Alpha male, and you can be lower in the "pack" then the dog its self, which causes all kinds of problems.
con•vince: To bring by the use of argument or evidence to firm belief or a course of action.
This isn’t what you associate animals with. Animals have simplistic brains and associate you as one of them. They don’t associate you as a human or anything else, they begin to think of you as one of there own species, and thus treat you as such.
If an animal is very intolerant to anything including its own species, they are very unlikely to be “Tamed.” You can only really tame an animal that are pack or herd animals. Solitary animals can be kept in captivity, but they really won’t be tame. Very large and dangerous solitary animals, is a bad idea to try to tame one of them.
Animals should have the variable “tamable” it should be a numeric value if set to zero the animal cannot be tamed. And as the number increases it becomes easier and easier to tame, 100 being domestic. So a wolf at 25 would be fairly difficult to tame compared to a cow at 100. And a dragon at 0 would be impossible to tame.
We need to decide if we will have a branch of magic for Druidic magic, where animals can be “controlled” and spirits of animals summoned.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-22 03:37:57
In-Reply-To: 1274
cage and wip? lol
do you have in mind a circus lion tamer?
Aniamls may be brought into captivity, but NOT all animals can be tamed. Rememer we don't have normal animals like you find on earth today. Some of our creatures are nasty simplistic beasts, and thus wouldn't be tameable without strong magic (druidic?) and thus it would be suicide to even raise a young of one, because it will kill you one day.
From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-03-21 01:52:19
In-Reply-To: 1279
What if creatures can sense your physical power (or magical, ?) and then, combined with a high taming skill, you are able to tame a bear, and a person who is all three: a physically powerful person, a powerful magician, and a master trainer (and thus has played for a long time, could, with much patience and risk of his own life and limbs, possibly even tame a dragon?
From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-03-22 01:59:21
In-Reply-To: 1280
That would work, but, if there is another alternative, I think it would be better if there is not level where the failure percent is 0. that's why i added the /1.05 part. Perhaps this one would solve that problem:
Instead of using difficulty levels of 1,2,3,4, and 5, why not 1.0, 1.4, 1.8, 2.2, 2.6 ?
With my formula [p = (1/d) * (s / 1.05)], this would give you the following success percentages with skill level 10:
Skill level:
1 (1.0): ~9.52%
2 (1.4): ~6.80%
3 (1.8): ~5.29%
4 (2.2): ~4.33%
5 (2.6): ~3.66%
And I graphed the curve from skill level 0-100 at each difficulty below:
Tell me what you think of that.
--sweatshop
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-21 15:36:43
In-Reply-To: 1283
This is a good point..
I'm not sure about abandoned PCs being the NPCs
So should there be possibility to 'turn you character off' for some time? This could mean that player is able to set a time for character to be away from majik world.
In practice there has to be some kind of a limit for it.. So what would you say about a system that turns the char off for 5 or more (real life) days. When you select to turn your char off you can't join in the game for five days, but the char will be safe. And when the 5 days have passed the player could join the game normally again and the char would appear there again.
This 5 days (or seven?) prevents player from putting their char offline (and safe) every time they do not play.
Of cource there is still the normal PNPC system with this offline possibility.
So if you know you'll have to be away from world for a longer time eg holiday, it may be wise to turn the char off and then return to world when able to play again.
From: origon
Date: 2002-03-23 12:43:05
In-Reply-To: 1284
Why always use a button to activate a skill? , etc.
Why not instead make the animal have a variable for each player that has interacted with it. Ff one player has patted it much at given it food, this 'friendship with player1231' variable would increase. You could then steal animals from being nice to them.
And for mining and such, you could as well have the interface as follows: Use the right tool at the right place and a certain skill would activate, all to avoid 'skill buttons'. Wield miners pick, use on rock -> mining. Wield smiths hammer, use on anvil -> smithing. etc etc..
From: Takomtor
Date: 2002-03-21 07:06:56
In-Reply-To: 1284
To my opinion, our coming item creation system can include any number of skills.
My image of this ICsystem is as follows:
person comes to the game knowing very little (has some BPs). Interaction with other characters and other player activities start to increase player's BP-list. When a new BP with previously unknown skill is added into the BP-list. Player also acquires the basic knowledge of those previously unknown skills.
Now, one skill can be used to do number of things, but person can actually use his skill to do those within his BP-list.
Let's say one has BP for making timber from trees this requires woodcutting (or a like) skill. So as a person finds a tree, he could for example click the tree and he then would have the choices he could make from it. In this case there would be only timber.
Lets say that he also knows how to set traps for small animals, by setting up a clever string trap. So clicking the tree would now give him the choises of timber and trap setting.
We could use somekind of colouring to determine, if there is all needed materials for actions, but the fundamental interface would be to turn A into B or C or D or do any number of actions. But it would not be so that we decide to use a skill into something. "I think I am going to use my singing skill to sing this song" OR "I am going to sing this song"
So, lots of BPs and lots of skills, but the interface would still stay simple.
Granted, there might be hundreds of possibilities, but we can make divisions to skill and BP trees by showing first actions BPs that are sudden/quick/immediate in effect. We could also let players decide what is the first options for BPs appearing, arranging BPs automatically so that those that have been used frequently appear first etc.
Rest of the BPs would be in some hierarchic system that is easy to locate.
Cooking would work so that player chooses dishes from the BPlist and - voila - if needed ingredients were at hand, dish is soon ready. I think that in the beginning there is no need to take into consideration a thing like "continuous care" where chef (apply to other skills too) needs to be present constantly othervise product is damaged. Item could be constructed in short separate sessions or so.
Ok and taming a horse would need BP of tamehorse. Just go to a wild horse and click it, choose one of the options and there... character tries to tame it.
Purpose is not to defend these skills actually, I think that we could start with only the BP system and some basic skills that are needed to keep the character alive. New skills could be added as players demand.
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-21 18:14:35
In-Reply-To: 1285
Dragons cannot be tamed. I agree with that. Dragons are a lot higher inteligence than peple. But according to namhas and yorka, I am allowed to make a animals similar to a dragon, such as a dragon as small as a horse and cannot fly.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-21 15:42:28
In-Reply-To: 1286
This is correct. Agreed.
And it is true what is said about number of skills and interface, yes, we should have many skills but the interface can still be simple.
And it makes the game more interesting when we actually have to practice mining instead of just.. 'mining'.
From: Archantes
Date: 2002-03-21 22:29:26
In-Reply-To: 1287
Yes, sounds reasonable. And we may still add there the difficulty of taming older animals. (After all a cub may think that you are its mother;)
And in general, it seems that we are going to have a great number of skills and, above all, blueprints, so I think there will be lots of oppoturnies to specialize in something - and that is the thing making the game interesting.
From: Zaxim
Date: 2002-03-21 18:16:14
In-Reply-To: 1287
Amazing, I agree with you. Yes that would be a good idea
From: origon
Date: 2002-03-23 12:36:25
In-Reply-To: 1288
You should be able to freeze the char for a longer time than a week.. how about a month? And when freezing your char you would still be an NPC for some half an hour after activating freeze, to prevent usage of freeze for surviving in fights.
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-22 03:40:43
In-Reply-To: 1290
sure, make animals, and apply the variable i mentioned earlier, to if they can be tamed.
0 being impossible
100 being domestic
for difficulty.
I just don't want to see every animal being able to be tamed.
Also an animals difficulty and your skill level will determine if the animal will turn on you and eat you one day or just kill you.
From: sweatshop
Date: 2002-03-22 02:13:23
In-Reply-To: 1297
That didn't seem to work; try this:
Success Rate Graph
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-22 03:21:35
In-Reply-To: 1298
skill level of 100 (highest possible) should yield almost 100% success rate, for any item being made.
The skill level is what should be difficult to increase.
A formula for item creation should yield a 1 or 0 for success or failure. It likely should be a exponential formula that yields a curve instead of a straight line.
I am working on a formula for this… unless you care to produce one. :P
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-22 04:04:30
In-Reply-To: 1304
umm... ok.. it cut my post in half?
the formula is
z = { x^2*(y*R)/200 > 1, z = 1
x^2*(y*R)/200
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-22 04:07:03
In-Reply-To: 1305
AHH, there must be a bug? it cuts the post at that part of the fomrula?! > <
From: raeky
Date: 2002-03-22 04:08:07
In-Reply-To: 1305
ok now i figured it out.. darn greater than/less thans. :)
the problem is, they should have a very high success rate if you are skillful in it. and my thinking of it outputting a 1 or 0 would be for programming, if a 1 comes out the item is made a 0 the item fails.
Say for example skill levels are 0-100 and 100 being complete total knowledge of the skill. Each skill will get a "difficulty" setting.
x = skill level of player
y = skill level of teacher (is set to 1 if no teacher is present)
z = skill difficulty (a fractional value, smaller the fraction harder the skill is to learn.)
f(x) = x + y(z+(x*z))
Is a formula for learning a skill. I have some stats for it in the article #963.
Now an item would have its own difficulty to make and be based on the of the player.
x = skill of player
y = difficulty of item to make (percentage, smaller the percent, the harder the item is to make)
z = Boolean value for success of item creation.
R = random integer number from 1-10
z = { x^2*(y*R)/200 > 1, z = 1
x^2*(y*R)/200 < 1, z = 0}
Test this formula, I got to go write a 10 page term paper by tomorrow.. lol
I was using 0.01 for the y value while testing on my TI-83, the formula looks like on it
Z^2*(y*(rand*100))/200
At 100 skill level and 0.01 (maybe the hardest to create item?) there is still a fair amount of failures for the creation of the item.
Out of 34 attempts 22 successful 7 failures. That’s 20.6% failure rate for perfect knowledge.
Test the formula out. For lower skill and easier items (higher y value).
