Freescape Skill-based Leveling System - Looking for Feedback
zunath
Member Posts: 92
Hi all,
I recently designed a skill-based leveling system and wanted to share it with you all to get some feedback. This is very much a work-in-progress and subject to change.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l7zGG2kGYxaprfPnNB9Nr-v3-SuegWZrAezyhBbpxys/edit
I'm mostly interested to hear if it sounds like fun to you as a player. I'm totally open to all suggestions.
Thanks for any and all feedback!
Discord: https://discord.gg/q38r3gw
I recently designed a skill-based leveling system and wanted to share it with you all to get some feedback. This is very much a work-in-progress and subject to change.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l7zGG2kGYxaprfPnNB9Nr-v3-SuegWZrAezyhBbpxys/edit
I'm mostly interested to hear if it sounds like fun to you as a player. I'm totally open to all suggestions.
Thanks for any and all feedback!
Discord: https://discord.gg/q38r3gw
Post edited by zunath on
4
Comments
The abilities/feats/spells are what's going to be the hardest part, I think! Haven't even looked at how those will work yet.
You can track the progress and contribute here: https://github.com/zunath/Freescape_JVM/
And feel free to join us on Discord to provide additional feedback as things progress.
Discord: https://discord.gg/q38r3gw
I've been playing PotSC again and I feel all pirate-y
The next step will be to stand up the perk purchasing menu followed by implementation of the rest of the skills. Just a couple screenshots below to show the XP tracking.
Every skill level-up gives you 1 SP which can be spent or saved for as long as you like. Perks can be purchased with SP and may have prerequisite skill levels before they can be bought and used. Some perks can be upgraded multiple times to boost the effectiveness.
In my mind, I see perks as fairly far-reaching. I see there being perks available for spells, HP increases, mana increases, on top of your standard combat abilities and passive bonuses. Basically, I want players to have a lot of freedom in their builds to the point where one person with 500 skill points is radically different from another person with the same amount.
Totally open to suggestions on what you like and don't like - I want this to be a pretty public project!
That would be very cool for this skill system and for mods I was considering making.
As soon as it's released, I'll adjust everything to use the new GUI instead of being conversation-driven. I'm really excited about it!
Looking at the blueprint details.
Physically building the structure by "bashing" it with raw materials.
The completed structure.
As the owner of the territory, you're able to use the flag and make adjustments.
Once a flag is built, you're able to build other structures nearby. These range from mundane tables and chairs to advanced crafting devices and persistent storage.
We're currently discussing whether new structure blueprints will be unlocked with higher skill ranks in Construction or if blueprints will be learned by purchasing Perks with SP.
Following
More updates to come so be sure to watch our Discord as well as this thread.
Viewing your perk list
The current category list (there will be many more!)
Evasiveness - a Light Armor perk
Vanity Blueprints - a Construction perk
Defensive Maneuver - a Shields perk
Miner - a Mining perk
There's still a ton of perks to make, so I'll probably continue to do that over the next day or so.
I'm curious what people think about using CEP these days? Back in the old days, everyone had it but I don't know if that's still the case today. Is it still as popular as it once was?
As a player, would CEP turn you off from joining?
- I've added a total of 78 perks now. We still need to make about 40 more at least, but I'm taking a break for the time being to work on another piece of the server. These are pretty draining.
- I set up our hunger system which includes eating (obviously), food poisoning, and starvation penalties. This will be expanded upon when I get to the Cooking skill.
- Among the 78 perks were a handful of magic abilities which should cover the Evocation and Alteration skills.
- I wrote up some technical documentation here which covers tasks like adding skills, perks, and food. I'll be expanding on this to cover other topics as well. It's intended for developers more than players - we will have another avenue for disseminating that information.
My next major task will be the crafting system. I have a few ideas on how I want to approach this but they need to be cleaned up a bit before I post it to get feedback. When the design document is done, I'd love to hear from you all to hear your opinions.
As always, if you want to keep up with development and discussions please join our Discord. Almost all of our development is being publicly discussed and we'd love for you all to be a part of it!
Here's a link to our Discord: https://discord.gg/q38r3gw
We're looking for area builders now. Refer to this link to find out more: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/69727/freescape-is-hiring-area-designers/
And be sure to join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/q38r3gw
Progress continues on the Freescape server.
We'll be aiming for an alpha soon. If you're interested in testing before we launch be sure to join us on our Discord!
https://discord.gg/q38r3gw
Hope to see some new faces!
This project looks absolutely amazing, thank you for sharing your notes and whatnot with us!
One question - what does it do to the character sheet? How does that change from the one we all know and love in vanilla NwN?
As for the character sheet - it works almost entirely the same as vanilla NWN. You have your HP, attributes (STR, CON, etc.), feats, skills, BAB, etc. All of it works like it does in NWN.
The only thing that DOESN'T work the same is your class level. Since it's entirely skill-based, your class will be set to Fighter and will be stuck at level 1. (We force it to Fighter because NWN hard-codes some things based on class and Fighter is the safest one to use for our system.)
Additionally, because we've chosen to use only CEP and no custom hakpaks, the perks you purchase won't show up on your character. They're viewable in the rest menu instead.
As for attribute changes - these are mostly the same as vanilla NWN. The major differences being that they're used for some perks to increase damage, lengthen the time of a spell effect, and so on. We're approaching 100 perks now (with more to come) so it'd take a while to explain the effect each stat has on them! But rest assured that your attributes do take effect where appropriate.
The major differences are in regards to magic...
INT - This increases your maximum mana pool. It's primarily used with the Evocation line of spells.
WIS - This increases your maximum mana pool. It's primarily used with the Alteration line of spells.
CHA - This increases your mana regeneration. It's primarily used with the Summoning line of spells. It also affects farming and other skills as well.
Hopefully that helps clear some things up (and probably opens up more questions, too!
dude, wow, just wow. I will def. have to pop into Freescape when it's up - incredibly curious to see those altered mechanics in action! And a question - all of this work you're doing is for the server, but do you plan to release a base module of sorts, so that others may play around with the system? That would be a must-download, in my humble opinion!
There are a few hurdles for the average user:
- It requires Linux (for NWNX)
- It uses Java and requires the JRE to be installed on the host machine.
- It extensively uses a MS-SQL database (although another DB could easily be swapped in)
- I haven't made any easy-to-use editors for adjusting the data yet. Right now it's all code & SQL. Not user-friendly at all
For these reasons I don't think it would be a good fit for a general-purpose release. Honestly, I think it would be better if people just forked the code on GitHub and wrote their own features to merge back in.
You can find the code here: https://github.com/zunath/Freescape_JVM/