[MUD-Dev] Curing skill spam (was: Moving away from the level base system)

[Justin Rogers]

[Batir]

> In real life, practicing one song gives you greater ability to play
> that one song, and some marginal improvement in playing any song.
> Unfortunately every usage based system I've seen does not follow
> this.  Instead of being able to play one song much better, and all
> slightly better, by spamming, or macroing, I can now play all songs
> much better.

In order to help with this you really need to take a look at the basis
on which you advance each item.  For instance you mention that if I
practice Song A then my ability to sing Song B is also affected.  This
is certainly true to a certain point.  Maybe each skill should have
several things that it is based on rather than one.  For instance a
certain song could require some base stats:

  Dexterity        {Finger Movement}
  Instrument Skill {Ability to use your instrument}

Each of these can contribute to some % of the song's total power, but
never breach that limit.  For instance if you have Dexterity of 1000
and Instrument of 1000, maybe the maximum it can contribute to the
total skill of the song is 40%.  So if the other 60% of your song is
at 60 skill then only 40 skill points of your Dexterity and Instrument
skill get counted and your total skill is 10.  But when you start
practicing the times that the other 60% take up you get the added
bonus of seeing your Dexterity and Instrument giving you additional
bonuses even though your not working on them.

So what I would propose for say "Love Song" would be the following:

  Components:
  Dexterity			15%
  Instrument			15%
  Unique			50%
  Charm				30%

Now.  To get your total amount of skill in this item you find the
Component that is going to grant you the capping component by
comparing them all together.  Once the cap component is found then the
total amounts that each component is allowed to contribute can be
calculated and added to the final amount of skill.

In the above example Unique is the % of the skill that must be learned
by use of that skill.  The unique may start out at say a base of 10.
As it is used the base will go up and the limits of the other
components will come into play.  In this way you ensure that
practicing a single thing or macro'ing will have as limited an effect
as possible.

I would also recommend building in an exhaustion meter for all
Unique's.  This exhaustion meter means that you can only advance a
skill so many points in a given time.  Once the meter runs out, no
more advancement until time catches up and begins to refill the meter.
The capacity of the meter can be based on level or some other set of
numbers.  And the developer can decide whether or not the meter
refills while the character is offline or not (preferable for
non-macro'ing players, with no effect for macro'ing players).

Justin Rogers

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