New Feature: Skills

[Ariadne]

Some of you may have noticed that nice new button on your menu that says [shop]. You might be thinking "Oh man, that cheesy shop again?" but please read on...because this new "shop" is nothing like what you experienced in PoS.

Skills allow your character to grow and develop as you role play them. It also gives moderators a fair scale against which to judge your actions. For each skill, there are 4 levels.

Level 1: Your character is starting to learn this skill. They are better than characters who have no experience with this skill. This may mean that they have a combat or social advantage or it may mean that their life is slightly more convenient.

Level 2: Your character has been practicing this skill and is getting better. They are starting to uncover new uses for this skill and will have a greater advantage/convenience.

Level 3: Your character is very good with this skill. At this level they often don't even have to be concentrating on using this skill and it's bonuses will be applied to them. (i.e. It is second nature to dodge an attack, so your character doesn't even have to say dodge in order for the moderators to consider that an attack doesn't connect.)

Level 4: Your character has mastered this skill. There are few who are as adept as they are in this regard. They rarely have to concentrate to use this skill and the advantages and conveniences awarded are substantial.

But how do you get these skills? Well, there are 4 ways:

1) Skill Points
Every time you post you will gain a skill point which you can use to purchase skills in the shop for your character. While there are some restrictions (See below) you can pretty well develop your characters however you would like, choosing which skills you would like to hone and use.
note: We are currently experiencing some bugs with this. It seems to be related to "quick posting". If you do not use quick post, you shouldn't have any glitches. The staff will award skill points at the conclusion of threads until this is resolved.
note 2: This rule is currently under examination for many reasons, the most pertinant being hyper posting and ooc posting. For now, there are no skill points being awarded for posts. Only staff will be granting Skill Points.

2) Character Award
When you create a character, your character will have a certain skill set, and they will be granted the appropriate skills. Take Vengeance, for example. Her character is a water character who enjoys swimming. She might be granted a character Award of Swimming Level 2 because her character has a background of swimming. Similarly you will receive a character award for your weapon of choice.

3) Experience and Growth
When a thread is over (locked), a staff member will review the thread and determine if any characters used skills they already possess enough to level them up. In this case, your character will be rewarded experience and growth skills to reflect their proficiency with a skill.

4) Training Award
Sometimes your character cannot just pick up a skill, or can't progress for one reason or another. You can advance your skill by training with another character of a higher skill level than you currently have. If the training is well played, your character will be awarded a training skill for the thread. (Note: Trainers cannot progress in the skill they are training in, but they can progress in the "teaching and training" skill which will impact how quickly their pupils receive training awards for the work they do with you)

Restrictions and Rules!!!

So, with anything we need some guidelines, restrictions and rules so that the system works. Please read these carefully so you understand how to use your skills.

Playing With Your Skills
If your character has a skill, they may use that skill. If they don't have that skill, they cannot use it. If your character is not at least a level 1 swimmer, they had better not be in the water, because they cannot swim.

Levelling up Your Skills in the Store
When you go to the store you'll notice that you are able to use your skill points to level your skills up. But wait! If you buy a level 2 skill without first having a level 1 skill, it will be treated like a level 1, not a level 2. Be certain to double check that you are purchasing the correct skill level when you use your Skill Points!

Skill Restrictions
Not every character can use every skill. If you are not a morpher, for example, you cannot just pick up a morph skill and change form. Some skills can be practiced by anyone, like dodge, but not all of them can be. If you are unsure if your character can learn a skill, pm one of the staff to find out. Skills that cannot be used by your character will be removed.

Differentiating Between Characters
If you have more than one character, you need to distinguish which characters have which skills. To do this, list in your signature your character name and the skills they have. An icon for each listed skill will appear in your side profile, so don't add skills to your list that you don't have, but be certain to sort all of the skills you do. If a skill appears in your profile but isn't sorted in your signature, it will not be counted for any of your characters. For players with only one character, you do not need to list your skills in your signature, though it is recommended for those members who do not know the skill symbols.

Explore and enjoy this new system. Happy skill building!

[~Pain And Panic~]

If quick reply is being a problem, why not just get rid of it?

[Zee ♥]

Hey, I LIKE Quick Reply. It helps annihilate the need to wait a few seconds (MINUTES, even) wait for the page to load so I can reply.

Hmm. This will be a little complicated, it seems.

[HARDLYhuman]

Do we get points for the posts we have already made?

[Shaeandra]

I'm not sure what the successes on this are going to be.

With Tazlure, it was an established system and able to work because of it. With this, people have been roleplaying without it for quite some time, to the point where this may feel like a restriction on their imagination.

If it still goes through, I suggest perhaps splitting up some of the skills into more defined categories, or in fact, the removal of some skills altogether. It doesn't seem to make sense that there's a "Seduction" for example, that Lust has chosen--isn't Lust already proficient with it (you would think)? And further, if there's a Seduction that some other Sin/Virtue can train to Level 4, but no, say.... Thunder/Lightning skill they can train to 4, it means that some characters are able to eclipse other characters.

One more thing, which is post count. I don't think ANY posts should count towards skill point increases. The rest of the criteria is fine, but with the post count, we're awarding people based on their ability to hop into a ton of RP threads and go at it. This naturally unbalances in the end because, some threads might move quicker than others. In one thread, you could have a Sin and a Virtue RP'ing back and forth so it moves fairly quickly, while in another, you have 4 Sins, 2 Virtues, moving slower. Should the former group have better characters because of this?

Those are the necessary changes I think should be made to ensure this system has a chance.

[HARDLYhuman]

I strongly agree with Shaeandra about saying that it might be a restriction to our imagination and everything else.

One of my characters is Skill and all of the sudden he isn't skilled at anything because he still needs to level up?...
Sounds a little sketchy

You maybe should have asked the opinion of the members before simply incorporating it in.

[tyr]

Well, this sounds like it could go either way.

I think that some sort of system does make sense. It can't be that absolutely everyone is the best at everything they do.

On the other hand, Shaeandra makes a very good point. I know a few people who can't get their threads moving very fast, so they won't be able to have very good characters.

Just a thought, (because I realize that I myself have very few skill points, and no skills) what if starting members were given a set amount of points just on joining, to make their character as they will? They only get so many points, and how they spend them could define how they begin their character. I think that this is what you were getting at with the Character Award section.

Take my own character for example. Altruism is supposed to have been trained in moving silently and being unnoticed while he was alive. Now, with no skills, he would appear to be a fumble-footed idiot who couldn't stand out more if he were wearing an orange safety vest and reflector tape. I don't mean to complain, but that kind of messes me up, doesn't it?

I don't see a way that skills could be awarded other than by staff, and I think that sounds like a gigantic pain. I wouldn't want to be staff, and have to go through every character in existence awarding skills. There are tons of characters, and it wouldn't end, because people make new characters all the time. If new characters were given a set amount of points, they could do it themselves. You could maybe award points to users when a character gets accepted, so that players with more than one character don't have to make do trying to share the beginner points among several characters.

Also, important people could have more points than others. For example, this way, Vengeance or Deception couldn't end up being upstaged by some random new person. I would suggest this for many of the old carry overs from PoS (a number that I realize I am not among, so don't take this as a bid for personal gain.)

Please, don't take this the wrong way. It was just an idea that I had. If it doesn't work, or you don't like it, disregard it. I don't mind at all. I'm not trying to be preachy or anything, and I sincerely hope that nobody takes it that way.

Now, I have a question. What happens to posts that we made before the skills came into play, in which we would now be using a skill that we don't have? Will we have to change it? I know that in my last post as Altruism, I got up silently and walked away to do a few things unnoticed. If I can't do that anymore, what happens?

[hApPi]

I have to agree with Hh, ( i mean it sounds like it could be interesting), but a little sketchy, and most definitely a restriction. Sure there are some things that certain characters shouldn't be able to do, but doesn't this start restricting almost all characters?

. . . I wish we had heard about this ahead of time, this is a pretty big change, and I think it's a bit flawed.

[Ariadne]

It's not perfect yet, and yes we are missing a bunch of skills. We will need people to suggest which skills are missing so we can add them in. Because, like Shaeandra said, not everyone's skills are covered, and some are so broad that how 2 people would have leveled up in that skill would be entirely different.

Most of the other concerns that were brought up in this section are currently being discussed here: skiesdivided.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=rant&action=display&thread=319&page=1 Feel free to jump into this conversation. Just so that we don't have 2 conversations of the same subject going on at the same time. We'd end up repeating everything in 2 places.