Deciding Leveling System

[Lord Vectra 414]

So I'm deciding on a leveling system for my game. In this thread, by skills, it means proficiency. It's how well you're skilled with fire magic, earth magic, swords, axes, etc. It ranges from 1 - 100 but at the start of the game, everything is at 15. I'm trying to decide how I'm going to implement them, and I came up with some ideas, but I don't know which one to go for.

Skyrim-Style
> Skill proficiency increases on use
> Player must raise skills in any combination X times before level up
> X required to level up increases per level up
> Skill proficiencies get harder to increase the closer they are to 100

Distribution-Style
> Player must level up and increase the skills themselves

Leveled-Skill-Scaling-Style
> Skill proficiency increases on use
> Player accumulates pts when a skill increases depending on where the skill level is currently at (higher skill level = more points)
> After you accumulate X points, you level up
> Threshold increases by X amount or X% per level up

Potential-Cap-Style (Not a stand-alone but to be possibly combined with the ones above)
> Skill increases will increase your potential % by a certain amount
> When potential reaches 100%, skills can no longer increase and you cannot level up
Note: But they can still increase via ailments, armors, weapons, etc.

[PhoenixSoul 1,404]

(Just noting here that 'Skyrim-Style' essentially applies to every TES game)

I definitely like this and I myself am working on a similar skill and battle system.

[Kayzee 4,032]

(Every TES game except Arena really. Half of the games though have really wonky level scaling though.)

 

Hmmm, you know, one idea I had ages ago is to combine 'Skyrim-Style' and 'Distribution-Style' in a way that has one of the styles act as a cap for the other. So like a 'Potential-Cap-Style' thing. Now I don't think that's really all that new, but I think most of the time I have seen it done, the distribution points act as the cap while training skills like skyrim act as the way to actually raise the stat. But I was thinking at one time about a system that did it the other way around, with training skills raising the cap and investing points actually raising the stat. Why? Mostly because then everything you do can can train/practice something and you can grind out potentiall without really needing to think about if it's effective because you are at the cap or not.

[freakytapir 55]

I always liked the Skyrim system in theory, but then the game always blows that for me by Automatically level scaling nearly all content, this combined with not all skills being created equal. (And Magic scaling horribly), makes me actively avoid leveling certain skills, because leveling up could actually make you weaker in the long run.

[Kayzee 4,032]

Really the whole way the Skyrim/TES system handles levels is a little silly. I mean, it feels like they just kinda shoved levels in the games in a kind of half-assed way they could and kinda ended up making them worse then useless. If you think about it, the whole skill system basically makes levels more or less completely superfluous. Yes, levels can raise your base stats and hp/mp/stamina, but there really isn't any reason why the game can't be written so those things aren't trained the same way skills are, or the player doesn't gain bonuses in them some other way. It seems like they didn't want to abandon the RPG trope of having levels completely but couldn't think of a good way to make them work.

 

And really it's not like the idea of having skills and levels together couldn't work, even with scaling things based on your level. For example: What if exp for levels was rewarded primarily for quest completion and/or you had to go to a trainer in town somewhere to train up your level or something instead of it going up on it's own? That way the player controls the pace of level ups an can train skills all they want independently of that. Give the player more reasons to want to level up, such as equipment requirements or skill caps or quests having a level requirement to take them. I donno, but I am pretty sure it's possible to figure this stuff out, they just never really bothered trying with TES series.

Edited February 28, 2020 by Kayzee

[PhoenixSoul 1,404]

(as I recall in TES you may reach the next level but you don't gain any more EXP towards the next level until you choose to)

I'm trying to implement a battle system where higher levels doesn't always mean better/easier gameplay, and a stat system that discourages upping all stats to the max.

[Lord Vectra 414]

On 2/27/2020 at 1:43 AM, PhoenixSoul said:

(Just noting here that 'Skyrim-Style' essentially applies to every TES game)

I definitely like this and I myself am working on a similar skill and battle system.

If I say "TES", ppl might not get the reference. Saying "The Elder Scrolls Style" is a mouthful. Additionally, the others have classes which makes the previous games work differently.

 

On 2/27/2020 at 10:45 AM, Kayzee said:

(Every TES game except Arena really. Half of the games though have really wonky level scaling though.)

 

Hmmm, you know, one idea I had ages ago is to combine 'Skyrim-Style' and 'Distribution-Style' in a way that has one of the styles act as a cap for the other. So like a 'Potential-Cap-Style' thing. Now I don't think that's really all that new, but I think most of the time I have seen it done, the distribution points act as the cap while training skills like skyrim act as the way to actually raise the stat. But I was thinking at one time about a system that did it the other way around, with training skills raising the cap and investing points actually raising the stat. Why? Mostly because then everything you do can can train/practice something and you can grind out potentiall without really needing to think about if it's effective because you are at the cap or not.

There will be a "reset" item if you change your mind because nothing is worse than being stuck with bad choices you made early on.

 

On 2/27/2020 at 11:24 AM, freakytapir said:

I always liked the Skyrim system in theory, but then the game always blows that for me by Automatically level scaling nearly all content, this combined with not all skills being created equal. (And Magic scaling horribly), makes me actively avoid leveling certain skills, because leveling up could actually make you weaker in the long run.

level scaling nearly all content? It seemed like most things in the game didnt scale with you at all.

 

23 hours ago, Kayzee said:

Really the whole way the Skyrim/TES system handles levels is a little silly. I mean, it feels like they just kinda shoved levels in the games in a kind of half-assed way they could and kinda ended up making them worse then useless. If you think about it, the whole skill system basically makes levels more or less completely superfluous. Yes, levels can raise your base stats and hp/mp/stamina, but there really isn't any reason why the game can't be written so those things aren't trained the same way skills are, or the player doesn't gain bonuses in them some other way. It seems like they didn't want to abandon the RPG trope of having levels completely but couldn't think of a good way to make them work.

 

And really it's not like the idea of having skills and levels together couldn't work, even with scaling things based on your level. For example: What if exp for levels was rewarded primarily for quest completion and/or you had to go to a trainer in town somewhere to train up your level or something instead of it going up on it's own? That way the player controls the pace of level ups an can train skills all they want independently of that. Give the player more reasons to want to level up, such as equipment requirements or skill caps or quests having a level requirement to take them. I donno, but I am pretty sure it's possible to figure this stuff out, they just never really bothered trying with TES series.

Thought of doing a system where you would use the EXP to buy skill increases but that would mean I would need to adopt a skyrim-style skill system. And EXP for not killing monsters would eliminate the want to kill said monster though doing it only for quests does avoid people killing the boss for XP rather than persuading if it's an option (though the wast workaround is just grant the same EXP but ofc, you'll need some persuasion minigame/skill in the game to make it equal in effort). Capping your skills until you level up is an interesting mechanic though. Equipment would be a little rough to code in though the level-requirement for quest is another good one.

 

Leveling was a bit more important in the games before Skyrim or at least in TES IV: Oblivion since that game had attributes which are pretty much stats (Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Agility, Speed, Endurance, Personality, and LUCK) though Oblivion had the flaw of the player having to micromanage skill increases as some skills made ur STR increase by +5 or +4 instead of +1 or +2 or how your HP increased by 10% of your Endurance so players micromanaged Endurance to maximize max HP. Cool thing with XP is they have a plethora of stats of ATK, PDEF, MDEF, STR, INT, SPD, DEX, SP, and HP so its not as generic when comparing to Skyrim's leveling system.

On a similar note, Skyrim does lack a good leveling system. Its been really hard trying to do a second playthrough on that game for me.

 

22 hours ago, PhoenixSoul said:

(as I recall in TES you may reach the next level but you don't gain any more EXP towards the next level until you choose to)

I'm trying to implement a battle system where higher levels doesn't always mean better/easier gameplay, and a stat system that discourages upping all stats to the max.

you still gain EXP. If it didnt, u could increase skills forever and be level 1. A similar exploit happened in the game before its series, TES IV: Oblivion, where people would pick Major Skills (skills that give u EXP) that they never used and then leave their mostly used skills as minor skills which don't grant you any EXP. As a result, their "true" playstyle would end up making them broken as they'll be godlike at beginning and endgame aka, when they max out their intended skills, they can increase their major skills to increase their attributes and since their "true" playstyle is always maxed, they'll pretty much always be many steps ahead of the enemies.

My intended system is so ppl can't "dump" stats but don't have to become too "average joe" as a result. The potential cap also stops the battle-mage spam and will make it a little tougher to play as but just as rewarding as it would be tough and same with the Jack-Of-All-Trades build. Like, in Skyrim, if you don't just grind smithing to 100 like many do, it is actually hard to skill up but is really rewarding when you do and same goes for enchanting. Now, I do think both are broken, but it is an example. Now, an example of something that is hard to skill with little reward would be destruction as those spells are overpriced as far as magicka cost. I guess they heard magic was broken in Oblivion and went the total opposite where magic is no longer broken but they converted that brokeness to other skills such as sneak; enchanting; smithing; dmg multipliers of one-handed, two-handed, and archery; and shouts which are examples of low skill up requirement and absurdly high reward excluding smithing and enchanting. 

Some skills will have multi-requirements. So a skill might require a certain amount of fire mastery but also a certain amount of martial combat mastery in a skill called something like "Volcanic Fist" or something which would give hybrids unique skills a single-target specialist (pure warrior, pure mage, etc) will most likely not be able to obtain without loosening their scope of specializations.