Re: New Feature: Skills

[Kal Skirata]

Ok, I dont want to anger any one but I feel I must say my piece on the new skill system.

I joined tSD (it was PoS at the time) nearly a year ago. I'll admit that I joined at the time because Seya wanted me to. Then PoS ended before I could start, and when tSD came around I wasn't sure if I wanted to come back.

What changed my mind was the way it works. I already play DnD in a few different forms nearly every week and I love its gameplay, but what brought me back to tSD was that it wasn't DnD. I liked the free form role playing. I liked that my newbie character was on the same level (or at least close to) the characters that had been on the site for a long time. I liked that we could make who ever we wanted to without being restricted by dice rolls, abilities and skill checks.

What concerns me is that with the introduction of skills we are making tSD into something that is different from what a lot of us wanted to be apart of when we signed up.

Now on a different note, I would support skills if they were created in a more n00b friendly way. What I had thought of was perhaps running it like DnD in which the abilities are rolled for? Then the player could place the scores where they want them to go. Or it could be done with the point purchasing method. We give the player a certain amount of points to work with and they go from there. These actions could also be controlled by a dedicated staff member so as to make sure that nobody cheats.

I suggest this because I believe that the way they are set up to work now they will:
1. Unbalance the characters. I believe that this will affect more than just new players. For example; those of us that have our characters stuck in a thread and thus have a much smaller post count will be left in the dust by some one who jumps from thread to thread thus racking up a massive post count in a short time.
And
2. Give support for hyper posting and short posts (something that I know most of us want to get rid of) due to the skills partial basis on post count.

Now that I have said my piece ill go back to my corner and work on the story for my next DnD night.

[Winter]

I have to admit I find your concerns legitimate, my own first thought on another rewards system on basis of post count was that my characters would be eclipsed by, well, what you mentioned, hyper posting, and two-sentence posts. Both take far less time to write than the average posts of many of the more substantial RP-ers.

Ariadne mentioned that staff will be reviewing completed threads to award points for the time being, and personally, despite the work involved, I think that sounds like a better system to have it actually work. More skill points for a more fleshed-out post would, in that case be an option, and that allows differentiation between ooc posts as well.

I guess we have to wait and see how the system is devised a bit more (for my own part, I haven't had the capability to access it yet), but there are some valid points regarding it that should be looked at, before we go too far into this.

[Lt. hello II]

I agree full heartedly, after all I joined this site for the freedom, if my character wants to show of some cleavage, she shouldn't have to level up and learn "seduce". And if it's based on posts, then right now, are all my characters getting skill points? That makes no senses...
Also, expect a lot more centric threads, because let's face it, we all walked around the tall grass to level up our pokemon, and whats a centric thread if not just tSDs equivalence to the tall grass now that we have to earn our skills? A slow, boring time consuming process, but worth it when the Gym leader is facing down your level 70 Flareon with a level 30 bulbasaur.
Don't go into the tall grass!
Maybe I'm missing something, but the site seemed fine when we simply moderated what was "too strong" but now we need to check if every player has in fact learned surf before crossing the ocean.
Example of why I think this is a not good idea:
"Hey let's go swim in the lake." "Oh sorry, I learned Acting instead of swim, I'll go for a walk over in that field for a bit, so I can learn swim" "You're a couple hundred years old...how have you not learned how to swim?" "I WANTED TO BE AN ACTOR!"
My final thought: Again referring to pokemon, since I've wasted a good part of my life leveling my Eevee team <3. I'm not RPing while playing that, I'm not saying Team Galaxy must be stopped at all costs, I'm saying, I'll stop 'em once Vaporeon reaches level 60. Same for Modern Warfare 2, I'm focused on that next unlock, getting those head shots, kills, whatever it takes to get my M16, even if I die many more times then a Marine should. So what's next? respawning, waking up at the nearest pokecenter? Now I'm not complaining about those games, its still fun running and gunning, but it's not why I joined a text based game, I joined to be free to have a character who wasn't restricted by 4 moves, a character who could think on their feet, look at a rock when disarmed and say, "that could be a weapon!", not "I wish I had that rock throwing ability right now." Like Skirata said, free form role playing.
Anywho, that's just my opinion, love it or hate it. Look forward to hear how much the rest of you agree or disagree

[Zee ♥]

I have to agree on that. <3 to Eevee's! I did that too Spent my time cheating my emulator (and GBA) to bits.

Anywhooo, I'm not trying to discourage Ari's effort (because that's some mega awesome job whether we like the system or not), or put down anyone's opinion that this Skill thing might be great, but I think this system needs to be discussed and sorted out first (with the rest of the staff, preferably) before we dive into it.

While this system might be awesome fun to other games and sites who use it, to suddenly incorporate this system into a free-writing based roleplay site is a bit messy, and isn't without kinks. Hopefully we can all sort it out.. somehow. Without it sounding like yet another Pokemon (or whatever) game.

[Ariadne]

Lt. Hello, your post made my day. Your commentary on the rock was so great!

Couple things, I'd just like to mention.

1) The skills are super new. We don't have a perfect system worked out yet, so we do need lots of feedback on how we can make it better. There's no point in having something that just makes everyone miserable.

2) Hyperposting etc... this is a HUGE concern. Having staff determine how many skill points to award based on posting quality is, in my opinion, a good solution.

3) n00b friendly. When you make a character YOUR description will determine which skills you start with. So if you say "My char is a master archer" then you will probably start at bow level 3. The skills are to make the game fair, and penalizing new characters would not be fair. I do like the idea of having some skill points be allocated at the beginning so you can customize your character how you'd like beyond your profile. I think that would be awesome.

4) Swimming vs Acting. If everyone is like "Let's go swimming" and you don't have the swimming skill, it's always an option to say "I don't know how to swim, someone help me," and then when someone else helps you out, you would earn the swimming skill without having to purchase it. It's the same way in real life. If I can't play tennis and my friends are going to go play I try to learn. I probably suck, but hey, I just learned something new.

5) The rock...oh the rock. Same as above. If you see a rock and say "hey that could be a weapon" and you don't have a blunt weapon skill or whatever, you can still use that rock as a weapon, it just wouldn't be as effective. Again with above, if you just picked up a rock and threw it at someone and had never practiced your aim, there's no guarantee you'd hit everything your first time throwing a rock. But that doesn't mean you can't try, and it doesn't mean you won't hit anything.

6) This concern was not brought up as of yet, but I feel it should be. Because system is new, the staff will have to go through all the character bios again to assign everyone their char's skills. This may take some time to do, so they will most likely not be factoring in too much.

[tyr]

Hi, I don't mean to be annoying, or repost or something, but I made a post on the other topic, here, skiesdivided.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pcc&action=display&thread=317&page=1#1264359514.

I don't want to retype it, or take up a whole bunch of space here, so I won't post it again. I just want people to be aware of its existence. I had a few comments that I thought had some merit.

If you don't mind, please check it out, I had some suggestions and concerns.

[~Pain And Panic~]

I think this skills thing is a cool idea, in theory. However, I think that, as it's been said before, it's hard to make it work in a free writing text-based RP site. Maybe I'm wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time, but it just seems like a little more hassle then it's worth. If all it does is more clearly define a characters barriers, then is it really worth it? If that's the end goal why not just add something to the character creation threads and be done with it.
I must emphasize, I do think this is a really neat idea, and I give props to Ariadne who (I believe, right?) did the whole thing. It took a lot of work I bet and looks awesome. But I just personally think it is too restricting on something that's supposed to be open and free.
Also, I know from people telling me, when they see a text based site, a lot of people don't want to learn tons of new things or have to do tons of reading. I know I was like that too when I first got into this, and still kind of am. A new person, if the system is too complicated, won't try and learn it if they're not really interested. The fact of the matter is, more complication = less people signing up. At least that's how I see it anyways. Maybe I'm wrong. *shrugs*
Just one more thing I have to say though, is that I think this makes it too much like DnD. I like DnD don't get me wrong, but the reason I wanted to join this site was because it wasn't as much a) reading, b) long rules and c) work, than DnD is. The closer it gets to DnD, the less, I fear, I'm going to want to participate.

[Kal Skirata]

Ok, I agree with PnP on the restricting nature. Most of us from what I gather joined tSD because it is a free writing RP site. The problem is not that it wouldn't work, its whether or not this is what most of us want. I think we should discuss this before we do anything further. We need to find out what everone wants before me force this on them.

that being said, should skills end up being what we go with, I'd be up to aiding whom ever wants to do the assigning of skills. I have a fairly good understanding of balance and such things from running my weekly Dungeons and Dragons night(I'm the Dungeon Master, story writer and on occasion a player). So if my help is needed/wanted I'm willing but I believe we must figure out what everyone wants first.

[Zee ♥]

I find all staff going through the bios a little too much hassle than needed, as PnP said. Actually, what PnP said was what I wanted to say, minus the DnD part. I don't play that, so I have zero understanding to the connection it has with this new system.

Secondly, hyperposting is not allowed anymore, unless everyone in that particular thread agrees on the move. So that isn't (Shouldn't!) be a problem anymore. If anyone tries it, Kristin will be sent after you.

[~Pain And Panic~]

*recalls rant* *sigh* *is scared of scary Kristin* ;D

[Ariadne]

tyr: I did read your comments in the other thread, and yes, we will address them here. I have locked that thread now so that we will only have the conversation in one place.

@pnp: The skills aren't really meant to be restricting or to impose limits. Yes, it will help in moderating, but I mean, really, it's just meant to help keep some things a little more real. Also, as far as rules, I think most people would find skills fairly intuitive, without even having to read a huge thing about the rules. Most people understand the concept of skill development from their own experience.

However, I do understand your point about complexity meaning that we may attract fewer people. That being said, I think that the quality of those people we do attract will be higher. (Not to say the people we have are not of good quality, not at all) but that the people who will be willing to take the time to learn about our site will, in the end, be better for us, which is also something to consider.

As far as the goals for the skills there were a few goals we had in mind:
1) To create a more in-depth character development system that would allow players to uniquely customize their characters beyond our previous ability.
2) To allow for growth after initial character creation. With the current system there was no real way to track how your character changed over the course of play. Some people have been here for many years, and the only thing we have about their character is their initial sheet, and their characters have grown and evolved since then. Skills allows characters to grow.
3) To enhance moderation effectiveness and promote fairness for all players.

Those were the main goals that we had in mind when we created this. If Seya wants to add anything to that list, I would stand behind it.

@kal Skrita: That is really an offer to be made to Seya. I'm sure she will read this and let you know.

@zlynn: It would be a lot of work. But I think if we split it up it would be manageable. There are 8 staff members currently. Even if we had 80 characters, that would only be 10 bios each, which wouldn't be too bad.

@all: I think it was PnP who asked in the CBox about our character's previous experiences and if we would be rewarded for those. The short answer is I don't know. You will most likely be compensated so your character's skills match up with what you say they have, but this will be a process for everyone.

I posted this in the other conversation, but I'm going to say it again. We are missing skills. We don't have every skill covered right now. If you have any suggestions for skills that we are missing, please post them so that we can add them. We are aware of this, and we will work with all of our members to make sure that our skill sets are current and reflect the needs of all our characters. That being said, it is a lot of work to input all that data. We want to be accomodating, but you will have to be patient so that we have time to properly implement all of the changes.

[HARDLYhuman]

So I guess right now Skill actually doesn't have any skill at all what so ever. This point system to me seems to have a serious negative affect on this site in my opinion. Like I mentioned in another thread it would have been more convenient to have discussed this before hand rather than immediately creating it and throwing it into the site to watch everyone scramble and complain. I see this new point system as just an unnecessary complication.

Overall I have no intentions of being insulting but if you want this site to grow or at least stay as good as it is I would either remove this unnecessary addition or change it.

[Lt. hello II]

First of all, it was not my aim to in anyway insult your efforts, I realize a lot of work must have gone into this, that being said, I'm glad the rock made your day.
Stuff like "Oh hey I don't know how to swim can you teach me?" is the type of thing is more ideal to the site then skill buying, persay. It's a very ambitious idea and some form of skill tracking isn't bad, but I think we just may be over complicating things...and generates more work, now we staffers gotta be on the watch for what posts earn more skill points then others?
And, idk if this has come up yet...but for example I have 3 characters, how would the skill distribution work? If say Love is the one I post with more because her threads are more active, then how do we separate the points she's earned from Hate who was trapped in a non progressive tread?
PnP is 100% right, I know of some of my friends who were going to join, but when hearing a text based site had a this skill leveling system majig, got scared right off.
Also, I don't play DnD for this exact reason, I don't have the attention span :s
And yes, hyper posting has been ban, BUT centric threads = tall grass. And we can't ban tall grass. It's part of the game!
Final thought: How do we decide what weapon category and skill sets a rock falls under?

[Tetris]

So I have a question about all of this. If before the skill system was added, your character did something that now requires a skill. Does that mean they automatically get a skill... or what?

For example Mercy went into the stream to wash. Does she really need a skill to do this?

Personallym I agree with the others, Im not really a big fan of this whole new skill thing

[Wolfeh!]

Ari, you've done such a great job with all the coding and everything!!! Really, it's great! But I have to remind myself that I have seen other sites with shops and they really don't work all that well... Granted this one is different than any others I've seen since it handles skills rather than items and account privileges so we'll see how this turns out.

I also agree with those that think skills points should be given by staff after reviewing a thread because I am in that group of people that take a considerable amount of time to post. Of course, just thinking about it, I feel sorry for the staff that have to go back and check over every profile as well as dissect every thread to give skill points to all the members on the site. That's gonna be a ton of work...but I guess if they're ok with it...

Lol now I'm gonna be know as the crazy person who goes off on hyperposters--- oh well~ XDD