[MUD-Dev] Playing catch-up with levels

[Freeman]

From: Sean Howard
> "Freeman, Jeff" <jfreeman at soe.sony.com>

>> In SWG you could probably remove the skill-system=20 altogether
>> without making much of a difference.

> Getting rid of the skill cap would be a step in the right=20
> direction.

I'm not just saying SWG could remove the skill cap without making
much of a difference, I'm saying the entire skill system could be
removed without making much of a difference.

And I don't mean to be SWG-specific there.  I mean in SWG-like games
(you can) vs. EQ-like games (you cannot).

> But the SWG economy, such as it is, absolutely relies on those
> arbitrary class relationships.

The various horizontal dependencies would not vanish just because
you could, in theory, be the tailor yourself to make the components
you need for the armorsmithing you're doing, to make yourself a suit
of armor that you're going to go fight monsters with, etc.  In
practice, it's too time-consuming, too resource-intensive, the lot
costs are too high and you don't have enough storage space or
free-time to be both a tailor and an armorsmith *and* everything
else.

At some point the player would have to decide, "I'm not going to be
a tailor, I'll just buy from someone else who is." even *without*
the game mechanics stepping in and telling the player, "You *cannot*
be a tailor."

Likewise for combat professions, if you have purchased an expensive
pistol, configured your stats to use a pistol, enjoy pistoleering,
have your hotkeys setup with pistoleer commands, then you aren't
going to be a rifleman even if the game system 'allows' it.  You'll
be a pistoleer.

Which is what I mean by saying you could remove the skill system
altogether without making much of a difference: You'd still have
some people who are pistoleers and others who are riflemen and some
who are tailors and others who are not.

Doing so would require rebalancing a lot of things.  That would be a
lengthy process.  But if you implement from day-one with the idea
that there just wouldn't be a skill system, then balancing for the
lack of a skill system won't take longer than balancing a skill
system.

And it saves all the time spent implementing the skill system
itself.

I'm not just talking about the cap here, I mean the whole system:
skill points, xp, xp costs for each skill, skill tree layouts,
'low-level' commands and items that are deprecated as you move up
the skill-tree, profession names, skill trainers, and a ton of other
things.

They aren't really necessary, cost man-years of development time,
and there's not much difference between having all that and not.

There *are* reasons for doing it anyway, but considering what it
costs to develop and what it adds to the game, you really have to
stop and wonder if it's worth it.
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