It's a double post, I know, but I figure, what the hell? I'm entitled. Ok, here's the generic overview of how I'm thinking this will work. Warning: I'm not up to par on the math yet, so I'm not going to include equations, just the general principals.
Character Creation
Point ValuesMost MMORPG's use 'levels' to rate a character's progress in a game. In Precursors, we'll be using a point system. The Character Point Value (CPV) will basically serve two roles. First, it gives you a limit on how many skills, and such you can give your character at creation. afterwards, it gives you a sense of acomplishment, and also lets you rate characters. Sure, there's a part of me that says that this 'breaks realism' but you don't HAVE to look at this. It just gives us something concrete to talk about, which I think is good.
So, basically, you will start out able to make a 200 point character. This limits you to Lyndri, Half Lyndri, Human, and NorAellian (although I'm not sure if the Drag's will be more like 250 point characters.) It's a decent list to choose from, and doesn't lock you into one race, but also gives you hope of more to come.
The points, as I mentioned, will be used at creation time to improve your skills. There won't be the option to change the initial settings you make once you've made them, so you also will have to use all the skill points, or lose them.
SkillsEverything in the game will be based on skills. Hacking a computer takes skills, and flying a ship takes skills.
Everything is based on skills (Yes, I'm being repetitive, but I'm beating it into your skull.) Skills have two components: Intuition, and Knowledge. Both are increased by training, or using a skill.
Over all, skills will grow over time (with use), but as they increase, their growth will decrease. For example, if it takes two days of training to get from 40 to 50 in a skill, it will take four days to get from 50 to 60. Eventually, it will naturally platue at a 'max value'. this max is based on each race. Let's say a human's 'break shit' skill is at 95 (max 100), and a Sooni's 'break shit' skill is at 95 (max 200). It will take much more training for the human to get from 95 to 98 then it will for the Sooni. This is because the Human's near his limit, while the Sooni's got quite a ways to go before she's close to the 'knife edge'.
Now, something that people should take note of is this: Skills have a 'halflife'. No, it's not based on a halflife style degredation formula (Caenus: would this make any sense here? We might want to make it a true half life.), nor does it have anything to do with Headcrabs.Instead, I simply mean it decays. (Kinda like headcrab zombies. Oh, and did you ever wonder where those things come from? Flip one over, and you'll see a 'Made in Tiawan' sticker! I swear to you! All zombies are made in Tiawan!) So, if you don't use skills, your skill level will drop.
Now, this means that you can't just get a million points in one skill, then never use it. Should you not use it for a while, you will start to loose point in it, but you can gain those back much quicker, should you start using it again then when you first gained those points. Still, you need to actually
use you skills. If you think about this, it also means that a 260 point character can become a 220 point character if you don't bother using any of his skills.
This is basically the point we've gotten to. I've got to turn my attention to health/endurance, combat, and a few other areas... which will happen once Dave gets back. I want to be able to talk them out with someone in person before I commit stuff to paper.
--Chris
