Some ideas and thoughts on leveling

[Windexglow]

Something that should be brought up, but hasn’t so much before is how should players “level” up. There are many ways to level up - standard leveling, proficiency leveling, badges/traits, and so on. Feel free to add yours, the more voices the better things can be.

Standard Leveling
“Only 50 more xp till I get that level!”
the most uninspired yet simplest method of leveling is this one. You gain xp from killing things or finishing quests. When you gain a level, often times you get to choose new skill or allocate skill points. This means you can make a magic caster without ever using magic!
On the plus side, this is something you can expect.

Proficiency Leveling
“Running around in circles with the arms out”
This one isn’t seen in too many games, however it’s one of features I enjoyed having in Warcraft3 games I made.
The basic idea behind it is the more you do something, the faster it levels. Using your sword - You get better at it. Use some magic - you get better at it.
At the same time, skills could become worse over time. Not practicing your sword skills would mean (over time) your sword skills deplete.
This one is very ideal towards a game like this - it’s automatic yet controllable, it allows players to shape their squads without microing, AI controlled groups naturally grow their skills based on their weapons.

Badges/Traits
“Look mah, I got my firestarter badge!”
I can’t think of many rpgs which do this one. These are rewards given to the player for doing something - split between if they’re permanent or not.
Not - These would be traits which you can lose. If you have a 4 to 1 kill rate in battle for X battles, you would be given this award. However if your kill rate lowers to below that for X battles, you lose (or get it reduced) this award.

Permanent - These are hard lessons you’ve learned, or things you were born with. Good looks, high iq, sense of danger, and so on. These give off subtle effects which can shape a player without realizing it.



Because AI controlled people will play a big part in this game (players are likely to send most of their squad off on their on in combat, and micro a few select units) let’s also talk about some ways how to make this better.
Mount and Blade did this very nicely, but I didn’t like how things were upgraded. In the game, you’d buy warriors for your army. Each unit could be upgraded in a certain upgrade tree, with each upgrade making it better than the last.

However, excluding upgrades your army would always stay the same. Your men would come into battle with the exact same equipment as they did 50 battles ago (once again, baring upgrades). Units would look exactly the same if they were the same unit type. You could buy some peasants from a farm, bring them though a few battles, and end up with enough experience to upgrade them into killing machines (knights). Within a game week I could have a 100 knight army, which originated from a bunch of peasants.


Kenshi however could push past that - at the moment, characters in the game have their own list of traits, and their own inventory. That means over time, your characters (especially if proficiency leveling is used) can become very unique and different.


So go ahead, add your ideas and suggestions. It can't hurt

[Hector]

My favourite of those three would probably be a mix of proficiency leveling and permanent traits that are granted when they make sense in the storyline. After all, if you fight a lot, you get better at fighting. You don't get much better at weaponsmithing, healing people's wounds, sneaking around, sweet talking people or anything else but fighting. It also solves the main problem of handing out XP for combat - that it penalises those who try to take the non-violent option - without making loot the only reward for combat. Sneak-thieves shouldn't be going out of their way to kill people, but if that's the main way to improve your stealth skills, that's what people are going to do.

[dingbat91]

I personally like the idea of permanent+Progessive leveling as well.

It would be nice at chargen to pick skills your character has a "Natural affinity" for, possibly allowing him to reach a higher tier. For example take this skill tree

Unskill - Basic - Adept - Trained - Expert - Master - GrandMaster

now any player who trains can reach master on this tree, while somebody who has a natural affinity for the thing he is training for can reach grandmaster with more time. this allows people who have a certain "special something" to reach this level, possibly giving some rare skills or statistical bonuses.

This could be done in other ways depending on the type of skills: for example you can reach expert swordsmanship by training/practicing but to reacher master/Grandmaster you would need to send the character off for a period of time to be taught under another grandmaster (possibly a quest to find said grandmaster might be needed)

another Idea is that any player can reach "Master" on this list, and only one character at any given point can be the grandmaster, and you would have to challenge the grandmaster to a duel on his relative mastery, giving a relative achievement to the higher roles...
-

Never been a great fan of Experience points, the ideal that someone instantly gains certain skills across the board due to a numerical value destroys a lot of the immersion... however if your going that route you could take the approach of Lionhead Studios "Fable" -

In this route any kill, ability ect ect amounts two different types of exp which are:

General EXP - Points to spend on anything
Skill EXP - spent to each specific skill type

so killing someone with a sword might issue 100 General exp and 200 Swordsmanship exp

This means that people who focus on a certain route learn quicker while allowing them to progress through other trees albeit slower...

Hope this gives some food for thought!
-
Dingbat91

[Captain Deathbeard]

The advantage of the level-up style to me is that it is fun deciding where to allocate your skill points. It also avoids the disadvantage of the progressive style, which is repetition. Progressive levelling forces the player to repeat the same thing over and over to level the right skill, its a grind. Level-up style means you can do whatever you want, try all different activities, and still level in the field you want.


Here's what I'm thinking then. You have physical attributes (strength, agility etc) that affect the skills (sword, sneak etc). Physical attributes increase progressively when you do an activity. Skills are a mix, they slowly level progressively, and you also get free skill points to assign manually.

All activities earn skill points, not just combat. A trader will raise his strength and fitness by carrying heavy goods from town to town. A thief will still get XP from sneaking and stealing, and if he spends all his time thinking about swords, you can slowly level his combat skills in the background.

Also I will later start adding fallout-style perks and traits, to give unique skills and advantages.

I don't like the idea of deciding specialties at character creation, because you are actually creating a restriction on yourself and players always change their minds later on. Plus when I get new characters join I like to have full control of what they become, and not be told "this is a thief character, and they will always be weak".

[Hector]

This I like the sound of.

[Windexglow]

The reason why I added progressive and traits, were that it's much more automated than leveling. Controlling 40 people would make choosing their attributes every level incredibly difficult.

[dingbat91]

I also came up with another idea, taking ideals from D&D "Feats" your statistic/skill leveling and Fallout "perks" (came from your mentioning of them actually)

so we stick with the point system (gaining points for doing certain activities) which you can spend into stats/skills

however I also had the idea of every so many points or so they can pick a "Perk" for example Dex may have a perk called "Runner" allowing the character to run slightly faster than other, this by itself is a small addition but you could make bigger ones that require a certain level in a particular statistic

Perks could also cross-class and multi-level, for example "improved Swordsmanship" perk may be available across the Dexterity stat and swordsmanship skill which allows the opponent to pull off more difficult manuvers with a sword, this could be taken more than once increasing the effect.

From that addition you could also make "Feats" which become available (for purchase or to that character) when certain perks are mixed

For example Bob levels up Dexterity and Strength, taking the "Runner" (faster running) and "Big built" (Minor Increase to attack/Strength when unarmed) which could unlock the "Feat skill" "Charge" (running into them with a chance to knock them over as well as do damage...

If balanced correctly you could have a persons focused in one role (and be exceptionally good with it) but also people can make a not so focused individual that still had individual upgrades and skills based on the mixture of two styles and strengths.

This could also expand each indidual de-facto "Class" so to speak as certains ways of playing will require different "Perks" and "Feats" compared to others (for example a smooth talking con-man is going to want more "Diplomatic" skills than a robber whos main focus is to get in and rob, no questions asked)

Just an idea to throw in
-
Dingbat

[wazupwolf]

do the pregressive thing like oblivion and fallout that system rules look how popular those games are and the exp lvling sucks i hate playing games like that except for fallout

[Hector]

Hopefully there would be a little more thought put into it than the system used in oblivion...

[Windexglow]

That's one reason why I made this topic - I really don't want kenshi stuck with subpar features :p

Which is why I've spent 3 hours re-texturing the same set of pipes in photoshop = )
Apparently no one on this team is good at texturing (cough windexglow cough), and I don't want the models I make to drown this game. Hence why I'm spending so much time retexturing the same thing.

[Captain Deathbeard]

The reason why I added progressive and traits, were that it's much more automated than leveling. Controlling 40 people would make choosing their attributes every level incredibly difficult.

Exactly, I have to find the balance between micromanaging 40 characters, and simplifying it too much.

How about this modification then. You can choose. So at game start when you only have a couple you can micromanage and assign their spare skillpoints manually as i said above. Then when you are fed up you can tag one or more of that characters skills as auto-level, so all your spare skillpoints will automatically get pumped into those chosen skills until you change it. You can also set the character to "full-auto" mode, so he will get no free skill points, they will go into his progressively levelling skills and make them level faster.

Best of all worlds, no?

Which is why I've spent 3 hours re-texturing the same set of pipes in photoshop

Good training though, you're gonna get good.

[Windexglow]

Good training though, you're gonna get good rocky.

Also I will later start adding fallout-style perks and traits, to give unique skills and advantages.

I've always felt those were more like cheats - especially in Fallout3. The badge idea I had was pretty well inspired by these, but with the badges players could strive towards them, yet not treated as collectibles due to their difficulty.

You can choose. So at game start when you only have a couple you can micromanage and assign their spare skillpoints manually as i said above. Then when you are fed up you can tag one or more of that characters skills as auto-level, so all your spare skillpoints will automatically get pumped into those chosen skills until you change it. You can also set the character to "full-auto" mode, so he will get no free skill points, they will go into his progressively levelling skills and make them level faster.

Sounds good, just don't want it to suffer because of simplicity Of course, the details of leveling will probably be in much later versions.

[RustKnight]

I kind of fear that of what Chris said upper:

Micromanage the first few ones, and then make them all follow the same pattern
Call me paranoid but isn't that gonna pull the game to the side where npc lose a touch of their individuality? copying themselfs with the same abilities and so on ?

[Captain Deathbeard]

No, it just means that you can setup each character to auto-level the way you want, without having to keep going back to do it manually. It will not affect the individuality of a character. And its only an option, you can still micromanage all you want.

[nissekurt]

I like the badge idea with perks that are earned and can be lost. This would make you more interested and focused on whatever you are doing since doing it poorly might loose you one of your perks.

But i think it would be cool with perks on different levels, permanent character perks (or chosen perks as proposed by Chris_The_Great), earned perks(badges by Windexglow) and faction traits

Where faction traits would be associated with your playingstyle
For example it has been mentioned that later in the game bandits will take your knocked out characters and hold them for ransom and you can get them back by either bribing, attacking or trying to escape.

If you for example consistently attack the bandit camp your faction gets the perk ruthless: other factions fear you, making negotiations a bit harder but bandits attack you less often or even avoid your caravans

If you bribe the bandits you get a perk named someting like "easy money": bandits will attack you more often because it is known you always pay.

Lastly if you never do any of the above your faction gets the perk "on your own": which would help characters level fighting skills or make them able to push themselves more in combat like fight 2 handed until one arm falls below -20 or run better with wounded legs. because they know that no help is coming.

[Bancheis]

I kind of fear that of what Chris said upper:

Micromanage the first few ones, and then make them all follow the same pattern
Call me paranoid but isn't that gonna pull the game to the side where npc lose a touch of their individuality? copying themselfs with the same abilities and so on ?

What Chris is proposing is giving you an option to automate some leveling. Sounds to me like you still have the choice to do it manually if you are diligent. I probably would, I enjoy the number crunching and skill leveling. Even so, with his idea, you still dictate which skills would be levelled. No need to worry

[Duck]

This is some serious thread necromancy here though, it's from 2009, so take what you read with a grain of salt.

[Bancheis]

This is some serious thread necromancy here though, it's from 2009, so take what you read with a grain of salt.

Honestly, since the stuff mentioned in here is not implemented yet anyway and the stats are still in development, I would say there is still more to discuss here. Not many opinions were given back in 2009 as requested, so how about we give some now? I am sure the staff would appreciate the feedback of today.

[Blxz]

This thread seems very irrelevant to the current state of the game. It seems chris has decided on a 'progressive' levelup style as covered in the first post. Perhaps one of our mods would like to lock this thread as the relevance is basically zero other than as an interesting history view on early kenshi ideas.

[toaster Assassin]

Necromancing is fine (because it prevents clutter if topic is relevant), but if the message is irrelevant then it will cause a topic clutter. -Topic locked.