[Rainer Deyke]

Here's an idea for a character advancement system that I am planning to use in a future game:

The basic unit of character advancement is the skill point. There is a predefined list of events through which you gain skill points, such as "defeat this boss", "complete that quest", or "kill 100 monsters". Each character can only gain from each event once, so there's generally no benefit to doing the same thing over and over again.

There are maybe a dozen or so skills that can be raised through skill points. Raising a skill from level (n - 1) to n costs n skill points. In other words, reaching skill level 1 only costs 1 point, but reaching skill level 5 costs 15 points total. Skill may have prerequisites for certain levels - for example, your character may need high dexterity to master the archery skill.

Skill level would be capped at a fairly low level, maybe as low as five, and each skill level would have a name.

Comments?

[PhyrFox]

This system is slow, and often gives perception that your character is hardly progressing at any real speed. Additionally, there's a possibility that if a given area becomes too difficult, and that's the only way they can continue to gain skill points, then they may have to restart the game in order to get back there with a different set of skills.

An experience-based or level-based system generally lends a better playing experience to the player; if an area is too hard, there's nothing that a few levels and some better armor won't fix.

Here would be a basic example. Conan the Barbarian (tm) (r) (and whatever else belongs to original makers) goes out to this cave. He's focused a lot of skills into fighting, and is probably the most dangerous thing this side of the jungle. He's already cleared all the quests he possibly can, and has allocated all of his points into fighting arts.

Now, the wizard on the other side of the jungle is highly resistant to physical attacks, and can only be really harmed by aiming his own magic back at him (requires, say, only 1 point in magic reflection to survive him). Conan strides in sword swinging wide and ends up a pile of dust just moments before rendering the wizard ineffective. The player realizes that he needs a point in magic resistance to survive the encounter, but he's already used all of his skill points! Additionally, the wizard's cave holds a warp behind the wizard that would take Conan "further" into the game; the only way to go on is through the magic mirror.

This is, of course, an "obvious" time that the player would need to reset. After all, he can't beat the wizard without gaining new skills, and he can't get new skills without beating the wizard. Now, depending on the level of "need" of a skill, it might not be so bad. If the wizard just had a powerful sword and some skill points to award Conan, he'd be okay with coming back later after getting more skill points. But if a primary objective requires a skill, and there's no way to increase that skill, then the player comes to a stalemate.

Alternately, if a player can beat any given scenario with little regard to the skill points he's already invested, then the game would be too easy...

Experience-based systems usually err on the side of the player. That is, the player can never be "stuck" (or, at least, not in 99% of all cases), since he can just whack a few extra enemies and gain enough power to muscle his way through. Extra care has to be given to quest-point systems, since there are only so many points to go around, each skill has to be fairly balanced, and, additionally, scenarios need to have multiple ways of completing it, based on the skill sets that the player chooses to use.

With all that being said... If you can pull it off, then go for it... I'd like to see such a system, if it would work well. The problem always comes down to balancing any "fixed XP" system. It's always either too hard, or too easy, or just plain too predictable. Or possibly even too linear, despite the illusion of being able to go anywhere you want in any appearant order (although, some places will be literally impossible without enough skills, thus imposing linearity at some point).

I've never seen one work well, the game always had several different flaws, either in forcing players to choose certain skills, or taking a certain order of all events, or just plain being too difficult or easy.

~= phyrfox =~

[Nephilim]

On first blush, it's not all that different from 'normal' experience-point based systems that let you select how you advance when you level up, or 'buy' upgrades to your character by expending those experience points.

After all, there's not much functional difference between '100 monsters = 1 skill point' and '1 monster = .01 skill point'. And many RPG's give experience awards for plot elements. Really, the only functional difference here is that you'd place a cap on how much XP you can get from a 'monster safari'.

But even if, functionally, the systems were identical, what I like about PRESENTING the advancement system this way is that it is goal-oriented. And it's a more eventful reward system. It's more rewarding to earm 1 skill point than 150 experience points, because they are explicitly and singularly tied to player achievement.

You could even take it a step further and have different types of skill points that advance different types of traits: physical / mental / combat skills / magical skills. Obviously, this would be tied to the type of accomplishment - physical feats would improve physical traits, and so on. You could still award 'general' skill points that could be used anywhere as a reward for particularly eventful plot elements. This would help avoid the 'Conan' example above where a player specializes himself in to a corner - you could ensure that the player rounds himself out at least a bit.
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