Upcoming: Ability Trees, Skill (un)Caps, and Challenge-Based Skill Practice

[Rias]

Ability Trees, Skill Caps, and Challenge-Based Skill Practice - Oh my!

All three of these have been brought up at various points in the past, some more than others. I wanted to make a post just to keep them in public awareness to avoid any big surprises since these are big changes and talking about them now won't spoil any story arc/plot reveals; this is all about mechanics. We've been doing testing on our test server of the latter two. I'll try to give an explanation of how we're leaning with each.

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Challenge-Based Skill Practice

This one is the easiest to explain as it's already in place for a good number of things. To increase your Melee, you fight things that are at least somewhat of a challenge for you, or you don't get gains. To increase your climbing, you climb things that are somewhat of a challenge. And so on. We're applying this to a wider degree, wanting virtually everything to use this system. (There may be some wonky outliers if we can't come up with good ways to practice them, but we want to avoid that as much as we can.)

We are also testing the complete removal of level-based skilling up and just having skill go up with practice based on challenge. No requirement to go to a trainer in order to raise a skill before practicing it, or waiting for the next level-up to increase a skill. The practice system itself acts as the time-gate. Paid training will be used to increase the rate of skillgain for a period rather than an instant increase of practice range. To those familiar with CLOK: Yes, pretty much like it was in CLOK. Levels will remain relevant for granting ability points and some other stuff we're considering, but without getting off track let me now segue into ...

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Skill Caps

This one has been talked about less, but I feel no less strongly about it. It's also a multi-faceted issue. One facet is that the skill caps are a huge pain when it comes to game design and the desire to add new content. There haven't been any new skills added in ages because any new skill is A) going to have everyone scrambling to re-assess how they spend their limited skill points, and B) it can be really difficult to justify adding an entire new skill and the investment of limited points into it unless it feels nice and meaty all the way from 100 to 700, which can be both difficult and discouraging. It also means that the more skills we add, the more we have to worry about whether to increase the overall total skill cap, and my time spent trying to fit the square peg of new skills/mechanics into the round hole of the current game design feels frustratingly unproductive. It is very much Not Fun(tm). There's so much to worry and stress over that it's pretty much stagnant. I want to add the Psychology and Alchemy skills!

Another facet of the current system that I have constantly been frustrated by is that there is an unbreakable ceiling. There's a definitive and unbreakable "end" to the content scale of mobs and combat zones, for instance. And lock picking challenges. And climb challenges. And any other challenge. I Really Do Not Like This. I don't like the idea that there can never be an idea to add something new and even more challenging if it strikes us. Sure, for combat we could try to come up with more group content or something (and we won't -not- do that), but that ceiling is still there. And those walls, and that floor. Development-wise, I'm stuck in a box. The boundaries are there and unbreakable, and it can be very discouraging and demotivating development-wise to know there will never be anything beyond those boundaries.

What we're playing with is removing the idea of hard-coded skill caps per skill, as well as the overall character skill point total.

One huge benefit to this is that new skills can be added without worry, and not every skill needs to feel like it needs to feel worth investing limited points into. We can have that Glassblowing skill, or Firekindling, or Soapmaking. We can split Masonry and Mining back out from Stoneworking, because that bothers me every time I think about it. We can not need to have things like Bushcraft cover a zillion different use cases - if you want to do some survivalist knapping, go knap. Survivalist woodworking, go woodwork. Survivalist skinning, go skin things.

We can add in individual weapon skills, and let people feel special because "I'm a Swords guy" versus "I'm a Hafted Weapons guy". Or "I went through the trials and tribulations of skilling up Slings or Whips, and yes it is a personal point of pride, thank you for noting." It also potentially extends the game's content, because if you sword your way up to the content cap and there isn't any new content on the horizon - grab a spear and start working on your Polearms skill, revisiting a bunch of those old combat zones you had left behind with your high Swords skill.

We can have individual occult skills, like Fortourgy, Aeromancy, Hydromancy, Pyromancy, Geomancy. I've even got ideas for branches of Sorcery and Druidry that are currently just neglected aspects of the neglected affinities system which just hasn't been able to be satisfyingly implemented.

The highest one could get in a skill would instead be based on the content available to practice against. So if there are combat mob challenges in the game up to 1200, people can get their combat skills up to 1200. Berserker Ben and Warlock Wilma might both have gotten to 1200 Melee skill, but Berserker Ben is going to have a heaping helping of rerolls and a bunch of handy combat moves to make them be the clear superior in matters of melee combat, thanks to all the melee-focused abilities available to the Berserker class. Warlock Wilma will certainly feel less capable of keeping up in melee combat because Warlocks don't have access to nearly as much in the way of Melee-centric abilities, but on the other hand, Wilma will no longer feel completely left in the dust due to her skill numbers being capped lower. She can still skill up and get involved in those higher-skill melee encounters if she wants to. No more, "You can't be any good at Melee, because you're a Warlock." Warlocks won't be the best at Melee compared to classes that focus on it, but they won't be non-viable either.

There will still be some specialist skills that are only available to certain guilds/classes. The occult skills and locksmithing come to mind. There also may be some skills that have intermediate caps requiring an ability to unlock the full extent of. Rogues & Treasure Hunters with an ability to uncap locksmithing, for instance, so Nightblades, Bards, and Rangers aren't just as good at a core aspect of the Rogue/Treasure Hunter while also being better at their own specializations. Another likely such cap would be Climbing, fully unlocked for Rangers.

So! Instead of skill caps being the great differentiators, we have Abilities serving that purpose. Which brings us to ...

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Ability Trees

They're called trees because the idea is that there are a lot of branching paths that require investment, rather than allowing people to just cherry-pick the "best" abilities. You can't just go straight to Super Hasted Berserk Rage Attack - you have to go through the prerequisite abilities and make your way to it, and you have to decide whether the prerequisites feel worth your investment. We're shifting the investment from Skill Point Caps to Ability Point Caps.

Guardian Greta might decide she wants to get into blacksmithing, and she gets up to the content cap of Blacksmithing just like Physicker Phil. But Guardian Greta has spent the lion's share of her points on combat stuff (as Guardians should, being a Warrior class) and so they haven't unlocked all the fancy crafting categories and upgrade abilities that Physicker Phil has been able to with his abundance of leftover ability points. (Wipe that smug grin off your face, Physicker Phil. There's more coming for Physickers once I can add Psychology and Alchemy and you're going to want to think about reclaiming some of those spent ability points.)

There will still be plenty of abilities that are restricted to specific Guilds and Classes to keep them unique and feeling like experts in their respective fields. Primalist Paul might have high Climbing just like Ranger Rita, but Ranger Rita has access to some exclusive climbing-centric abilities that allow her to make some climbs that Paul cannot, even with his comparable skill numbers. Sorry, Paul! On the flip side, Rita doesn't have access to some of the unique Primalist druidic abilities.

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So, those are some big things that are in the pipe at the moment, being tested on our test server. They're not priority one but are going on in the background, and I'm getting more excited for them every day!

[Gorth]

This is a pretty big shift in intention from what we were originally told about. I'm not necessarily against it, and truth be told it doesn't matter if I am. Can we expect any sort of timeline on this? Does long term goal mean a few months or two years?

[Serity]

Those are some pretty huge shake-ups. No real feedback here, aside from that the changes sound very exciting (withholding judgement on 'better' until release, though I'm optimistic) and to say thank you for continuing to update us on The Future.

[Lexx416]

I'm a fan of challenge based skill gain (even if I truly despise the change that was made so that practice = rolling, instead of training), and I've already shared my thoughts on the ability tree elsewhere (I don't like it).

What we're playing with is removing the idea of hard-coded skill caps per skill, as well as the overall character skill point total.

But I actually really dislike this. As with all things, if it makes the game better for the Staff to develop, that's great, and I think you should proceed with it. But I didn't start playing this game because I wanted to play CLOK again. If I wanted to play CLOK, I had years of opportunities to do so. I chose to stop playing clok years before it ever closed down, however. And I don't see myself having any sort of longevity in COGG if it's just going to shift truly towards CLOK 2.0, instead of being it's own separate, cool, unique thing.

[artus]

I adore this idea. It feels like revisiting old Clok again with more things to do that makes lost lands experience feel more wholesome than before. I'm a fan of skill gaining through use anyway.
One thing I'm concerned about though is new player vs old player gap if there's a skill that can scale up endlessly with anything. It feels like everything needs to be put in place just right before it rolls in or else people will be at a lost what to do. Am I back at square 1? What am I gonna grind now? Am I going to have to grind what I already could do well up all the way again? Will I start with horribly malformed stuff when I craft again? Blah blah blah. Will there be a skill that scales endlessly that I can't scale after people a year before me? Is it going to be a series of grindfest to get there?
People sometimes have a tendency to want to come out on top regardless of how much or how little others enjoy doing so. I hope it's not a problem again now that we can do more than we could way back there.

So far I love the change, not like, love. I'm just a bit worried about how well executed it will end up being because one wrong execution move = loophole.

[Frisbee]

For the small amount of time I played CLOK, I liked the lack of a leveling system there, but it also felt a bit odd that I could pick up most every trade and level it to cap. I hope the ability tree system will work to counter do-everything builds. Other than that, I'm not a huge mechanics/numbers person, and therefore don't know what will work better for this game and what won't, but I'm excited to try out the changes nevertheless!

Thanks for these progress updates!

[Maina]

I'm willing to see how this goes.

I was on CLOK, however, and the change from this system to COGG's was a relief to me for several ways, and I would like to ask what considerations, if any, have been considered to address some things I perceive as issues with the way CLOK did it:

On CLOK, it often felt like the people who knew all the exploits and had time to grind constantly were simply untouchable due to the sheer gap between low-skill and high-skill characters.

There's a few aspects to this:
1. That it encouraged exploit abuse to (a) increase skills faster so as to be competitive ASAP (b) increase skills at all in some cases, as some skills had such niche ways to increase them that you basically had no other option.
2. These exploits made skill grinding feel like it absolutely required absolutely silly things of you - if you didn't have a friend to practice Aeromancy on, for example, you had to hide and blow wind at birds for days at a time. Doing it the "proper" way would involve animals fleeing every cast or getting yourself murdered against lethal mobs because Aeromancy on its own had no ability to kill things.
3. People are encouraged to not share these exploits, either because of competitive edge (always an issue but less of one on COGG than CLOK with the lack of CvC) or out of fear of them being reported and fixed (more of an issue on COGG than CLOK). This leads to a massive difference between new players and experienced ones, as new players might take six months to a year to cap a skill while old ones can reach end-game content in weeks to months.
4. The bigger the effective cap on skills, the bigger the gap between new players and old ones. It will be nice to increase my character's skills to a level where she can participate in high-end content, but when high-end content is 1200 or 2500, it's going to be a long time before newbies can participate, and it is currently not very rewarding for higher-skilled characters to go to lower level zones to help new players. And with a higher skill cap, it becomes more dangerous to bring new characters to higher level zones. I think a return of the mentor system could help with this, where higher level characters can drop their skill to match a lower level one (and preferably count as lower level for loot calculations).
5. This one is more personal, but: it just made the game less fun when you felt you had to put your nose to the grindstone to cap out a skill ASAP in order to participate in group content with other players. And 'ASAP' - if you didn't have the game sense or knowledge others had or the desire to do silly things like blow wind at turkeys for days - meant months of work. It made the game a race to the end instead of a walk.

On a more positive note: Despite these concerns, I have never been fond of level-based systems and the lack of that was something I, over-all, did prefer on CLOK. I'm glad to be moving away from that, even considering the concerns above.

I am also still very excited for ability trees and - what I perceive to be - an increased ability to customize one's character and be less locked in to a specific guild template.

[Dennis]

I'd love to join the test server and try some of these out!

My thoughts below. I'm generally positive. I trust the process.

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Challenge-Based Skill Practice

We are also testing the complete removal of level-based skilling up and just having skill go up with practice based on challenge. No requirement to go to a trainer in order to raise a skill before practicing it, or waiting for the next level-up to increase a skill. The practice system itself acts as the time-gate. Paid training will be used to increase the rate of skillgain for a period rather than an instant increase of practice range.

I often feel stifled by the level-cap system as the time it takes for me to improve is capped off by a hard "time spent in game in order to progress". I really like this idea. I think shifting to progression-by-challenge makes a lot of sense. I hope that there will be flexibility between the loot system and skill progression system such that someone who isn't gaining skill in an area can still hunt there for economy progression, let's say if they chose to forgo increasing their melee in order to hunt in an area for a while.

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Skill Caps

There's a definitive and unbreakable "end" to the content scale of mobs and combat zones, for instance. And lock picking challenges. And climb challenges. And any other challenge. I Really Do Not Like This. I don't like the idea that there can never be an idea to add something new and even more challenging if it strikes us. Sure, for combat we could try to come up with more group content or something (and we won't -not- do that), but that ceiling is still there. And those walls, and that floor.

I think it's fair that there's an end goal, but that can come when you're satisfied with the limitless possibilities.

What we're playing with is removing the idea of hard-coded skill caps per skill, as well as the overall character skill point total.

I like this, with the above mentions that other players have made in that they're concerned that their potential unique identity may be lost, and that the community may suffer from a lack of co-working since everyone will endeavor to be self-sufficient.

We can add in individual weapon skills, and let people feel special because "I'm a Swords guy" versus "I'm a Hafted Weapons guy".

I do personally like the existing generalized ranged and melee skill over having a skill to raise for every type of weapon. I never quite enjoyed the 'melee and a weapon' system of CLOK. I've seen far too many people abuse the melee skill to add to general rounding in order to make raising the associated weapon skill a reasonable endeavor. I do like the idea that there's room to extends the game's content by revisiting old zones though.

We can have individual occult skills, like Fortourgy, Aeromancy, Hydromancy, Pyromancy, Geomancy. I've even got ideas for branches of Sorcery and Druidry that are currently just neglected aspects of the neglected affinities system which just hasn't been able to be satisfyingly implemented.

I'll just be sad that I can't call myself master of all arcana anymore. I hope that the apprentice/journeyman/mastery tiers of attainment with their party tricks is brought back in some shape or form!

Berserker Ben and Warlock Wilma might both have gotten to 1200 Melee skill, but Berserker Ben is going to have a heaping helping of rerolls and a bunch of handy combat moves to make them be the clear superior in matters of melee combat, thanks to all the melee-focused abilities available to the Berserker class. Warlock Wilma will certainly feel less capable of keeping up in melee combat because Warlocks don't have access to nearly as much in the way of Melee-centric abilities, but on the other hand, Wilma will no longer feel completely left in the dust due to her skill numbers being capped lower. She can still skill up and get involved in those higher-skill melee encounters if she wants to. No more, "You can't be any good at Melee, because you're a Warlock." Warlocks won't be the best at Melee compared to classes that focus on it, but they won't be non-viable either.

I like this. I feel there are unique benefits that adventurers or scholars bring that aren't outright warrior abilities. Giving them a way to feel like they aren't numerically overwhelmed by the odds by giving them access to the same caps will help a lot.

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Ability Trees

I think ability trees have been talked about on a conceptual level before. It's a bit vague still, and I'd love to see a sample or roadmap of one of the trees so people get an idea of what to expect.

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[adresin]

Oh my goodness, so exciting! Like most, I have some concerns, but I also trust Rias and the rest of staff to do their best. Nothing will be perfect or satisfy everyone, but I really really do like this overall. So, some more detailed thoughts as I've been reading.

I love the idea of getting rid of the level limits to skills. With both of my characters, it's super frustrating to have to choose between working on skill A or skill B not because of time or whatever, but purely because I have to get another level first. To use Alia as an example, she's a combat medic of sorts. Well, if I spend 100 skill points from a level to train medical by 20 points but then she gets invited to go into a hunt in the bog, that hunt might help with experience but do nothing for her combat practice. Not to mention constantly trying to do the math to set character skill goals just right and it can be so annoying to realize I'm 100 points short of getting a certain skill goaled to what I want. It seems to make a lot more sense that characters will get better at what they're actually doing.

On the other hand, this does mean that I won't be able to just keep Adresin's melee at the same level and have the bog be a viable combat training place for months and months to get the experience and lockboxes. While unfortunate from a personal perspective, that's probably better overall anyway.

I am a bit concerned about the potential power gap this could open up, especially if things like higher crafting skill leaves newer crafters who can't play all the time in the dust and no one wants to ever go to them because this other character has 1000 leatherworking. This coming from someone who plays one character whose main focus is crafting. It's a careful balance to keep new or less active characters viable while still rewarding the work of more long time characters. I also really like the idea of being able to introduce more skills and have more granular focus, such as separating mining from masonry or as mentioned, specializing in specific weapon types. Maybe Alia wants to join a newer character in the graveyard, but she's so good with her warhammer she'd get little out of it. Well, on one hand there's the roleplay aspect and not *every* action needs to have gains, but maybe she might want to take advantage of the trip out there to practice a bit with a sword.

I'm excited about the potential of the ability tree. Maybe, even if Alia doesn't manage to get into what she/I am hoping she will, this will open up a bit more opportunity for her to be that protective combat medic I'm aiming for? Sure, she'll never be as good as a warrior, but I feel like her potential is so limited right now due to skill caps and physickers having access to almost no combat abilities at all. Right now she's sitting on 8 ability points I have no dang clue what to do with because I've intentionally kept her crafting limited to very specific things. Yes, Adresin is a sort of do everything type, but Alia really isn't.

So yes, overall I think this is fantastic and look forward to seeing when this comes about. I'm sure there will be aspects I don't like but that's true no matter the game. Honestly, I'm just grateful to have found a place that satisfies both my desire for real roleplay, and the logical part of my brain that wants to understand and yes, take advantage of in a nonexploitive fashion, how game mechanics work. Also, a psychology skill? Yes please!

[Volinn]

I am overall positive and interested in these changes, but I admit a great deal of concern with it comes to the prospect of an increasing number of jacks-of-all-trades. I don't think I have much more to say, besides I hope there will be some counter-measures in place to prevent that.