Natural Advancement ("Learning") in SWG

- Rimarath - 10 January 2002 -

[ Other SWG Commentary ]

[Version 1.0: Edited version of posts from dev forum.]

Background

In a recent post (in a thread on the SWG dev forum) from the SWG dev team, Anthony Castoro described skill advancement in terms of "experience points" or, as might be preferable due to the baggage associated with that word, "prerequisite credits" (PC's) that indicate your character's progress towards a skill. PC's towards a given skill would be earned by training, practice, and so on in activities similar to the skill in question.

Goals

In general, for role-play purposes and also to help keep the hidden internals of the game hidden and internal (see below for thoughts on this), it would be preferable to me to abstract these PC's so that the player doesn't directly observe them. Also, it would be preferable to avoid the related idea of a "ding" ("level-up" sound or message) or other direct indication of when a character has fulfilled the PC requirement for a given skill, for the same reasons. But how can a player know when their character is making progress and, especially, when they have advanced? Can this advancement be presented in-game in a natural, intuitive way?

Concept

I believe that it is possible to do away with the numbers and "dings" and hide the PC concept by allowing a character to "advance" to the next skill as soon as they have achieved the previous skill in the tree. In particular, the system could allow the character to "advance" before they've earned any PC towards the skill, that is, before they accomplish any prerequisites. At first, the character would be very unsuccessful at using the new skill, but would gradually get better (still struggling, but gradually better) as more PC's are earned, until eventually the PC requirement is met and the character "gets it," has that skill at the full level, and can proceed to additional skills in that tree.

The character's state after specifying a new skill to acquire, but before they have met the PC requirement, can be described as learning. They would "advance" fully, in the normal sense, when they have met the PC requirement. At that point the character's state is the same as in the simple system where advancement is only possible when all the required PC's are already earned.

Example

If "Greg" knows Basket Weaving and the next skill on that tree is Underwater Basket Weaving, as soon as Greg has mastered Basket Weaving he'll be able to learn UBW. At first, he'll always fail at it. As he gradually earns PC's towards UWB, he'll get better and better. Greg may consult with his trainer/master during this process to determine if he is making progress and to get tips on ways to earn more PC's. Maybe some mechanism for notifying the player when Greg has all the PC's (i.e., has the skill) would be helpful, but it might not be necessary. This is because there would be a big jump as Greg finally "figures it out" upon earning the required PC's, and gets noticeably better at it all at once, emulating the "ohhh, now I get it" aspect of RL learning.

For certain skills, like blaster usage, I am of the understanding that anyone -- even without the required skill -- will be able to attempt it. In this case "Joe," who has chosen to pursue the skill but hasn't earned any PC's, will not have any advantage over "Bob," who is entirely unskilled. Once Joe starts to earn PC's, he will start to be better than Bob, but until Joe earns all the required PC's (i.e., while he is learning) he will never be nearly as good as "Ted," who has already learned the skill and met the PC requirement for it.

Details and Elaboration

In the system as described, unless some enhancements are made, there might as well be a "ding" since upon reaching 100% as any followup skills in the tree would be suddenly available to the character to learn. This change in your skill options would be a pretty reliable "ding" for people that knew to watch for it. Solution? One separate non-"ding" option I liked was the idea of going to a master of the skill to pass a final test when you have your required level of PC's. Perhaps when you notice you're suddenly better as described above, you have the skill but can't pick up new ones until you go to the master and demonstrate the skill. That also has the advantage of verifying that you really do have the skill, and aren't just getting lucky. This feedback from the master could also be used to determine progress during the study of the skill (as described in the example).

An important note which might not be obvious: if a character is already learning a skill in a particular field, and wants to learn a different skill in the same field -- i.e., a different skill that uses the same PC's -- they would stop learning the first skill. A character can only benefit from PC's towards one skill at a time...!

Why No Ding?
As far as the "ding" itself -- a direct, immediate indicator of your advancement -- my objection is mostly to the idea that someone could use overly detailed feedback of this kind to reverse-engineer elements of the advancement algorithms, and record and share that information. Other players could then take advantage of that research to advance their characters more quickly than was designed, putting a player who advances within the game (without reference to these out-of-game sources) at a disadvantage. As much as possible, I would prefer to limit the advantages that can be gained by this sort out out-of-game analysis. This doesn't mean that there can't be mechanisms for measuring your advancement progress or verifying that you've advanced, but I do think they should be less obvious, less accurate, and/or less reliable than a "level up" sound or message, progress bar, or absolute number. I recognize that for many players, this "numbers game" is a big part of the exploration component of the game, and contributes greatly to their enjoyment; I think there are ways of satisfying this desire that won't disadvantage other players.

Related History

The idea is somewhat reminiscent of UO spellcasting, and isn't particularly original, but it might help hide the numbers. It would be very RP-friendly (Q: "how's your underwater basket weaving going?" A: "oh, I'm still learning, fail 8 times in 10" instead of A: "oh, still need 31141 xp"). In the UO case, you could try to cast any spell you had in your book, but if you didn't have the necessary skill level, it would just fail (more or less often depending on how much skill was lacking). Eventually you would have the full skill needed for a lower-level spell and always succeed.

Disclaimer

At this point, any discussion at this level of detail regarding SWG is 90% wild speculation. =)

Rim

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws