Skill System feedback

[Ron]

Hello again. The skills system is currently fairly underused by most. It is currently completely cosmetic and a really old, outdated feature. Me and Burger have teamed up to completely overhaul it and implement it into the game.

Why?

The biggest part that I'm sure people are wondering is: Why do we need this? By implementing skills it allows people to better reflect, with consistency, their characters inexperience or experience regarding a certain subject. Currently you can weld a door just as fast as a seasoned CE, which honestly makes no sense and there is no way to really reflect this in-game, besides utilizing me's to do so. You might be thinking "But. This is roleplay sever. People can roleplay their inexperience!" The issue with that is people are not, do not, and will not always roleplay going slow or their inexperience in a subject. They will just click the door to weld it. This system gives consistency to inexperience. Nothing is stopping you from roleplaying it still. The skill system will increase the time it takes for inexperienced people to do complex tasks. No matter how many times you watch someone weld while on-station, or how many times they tell you how to do it, you are simply not going to be able to do it as fast as the trained person who has been doing it for a long time. This can easily be reflected through the use of a skill system, while still maintaining the RP aspect that you could possibly learn how to do it ICly (Which is a stretch for most things!). This will NOT block you from doing things.

Now. With that said, a few things will be done.

The current skills will be overhauled

We'll be adding, removing, and changing the current skills quite a bit. We'll ensure that certain actions are grouped together and not too specific, and not too broad to the best of our ability and we'll ensure every job has a relevant skill. The purpose of this is NOT to make you spend 30 minutes picking skills. Every job will have a preset that is appropriate for an entry level person to the job. More experienced people can add on skills appropriately. You might be wondering if this will cause a headache for the staff. Well, no. It will help the staff spot people who just ramp up their skills even if their character is 24, and people who fail to roleplay their character to a realistic standard. That young engineer has the highest level in all engineering related things will be much more easy to spot.

Attributes will be looked into.

We can see about having optional attributes for characters but keep in mind that they will almost all be debuffs of some sort.

Now, before you panic, we have a few ideas on how this can be done.

Time Increase

The first idea, and one I like the most, is that skills only increase the time it takes to do certain actions instead of completely preventing you from doing them. So you can still weld a door, preform surgery, or whatever else but at a reduced rate. If you have the proper skill you do it much faster depending on your training level. This is a good compromise as it still allows you to be instructed on something while also showing that you are still inexperienced in the subject.

Complete Block

The second idea is completely disallowing certain actions without the proper skill. Exactly as it sounds. If you don't have enough construction points, you can't build a wall.

Those are the two main ones. If you have anymore, feel free to reply with them.

Me and Burger are also open to letting people contribute to the coding side of the project. We're planning to implement skills for different departments.

[BurgerBB]

An idea that I had was implementing fail actions for each machine interacted with. For example, if you have a low skill as a chef and you interact with a microwave, there will be an increased chance that the microwave creates burned mess, regardless of recipe.

Interact with a complex computer? Chance to accidentally hit the wrong button.

Try building a complex contraption? Chance for it to malfunction when in use or not to be built at all.

Try using an advanced brute back on someone? Chance for it not to work at all and waste it.

[Butterrobber202]

pls link the PR for us github readers.

But yeah, can you give us some examples of the 'Skills'? Since I assume you are renaming and removing and adding and all that fun.

[Ron]

No PR yet. We are seeing what people want first.

[sonicgotnuked]

This has its own pros I like and cons I dislike. Firstly, it would be interesting to try and restrict certain things for players. Secondly, could we make it so antags can bypass all of their skill fluff? As an antag, you are able to understand more knowledge for certain things. (Lings and vamps can ICly know EVERY mechanic!)

[Ron]

This has its own pros I like and cons I dislike. Firstly, it would be interesting to try and restrict certain things for players. Secondly, could we make it so antags can bypass all of their skill fluff? As an antag, you are able to understand more knowledge for certain things. (Lings and vamps can ICly know EVERY mechanic!)

 

The plan is all antags besides rev and cult (cult can sacrafice a simple animal to narsie for skills) get all skills.

[Ornias]

I really like this. I really like this. People choose not to properly roleplay limitations, and, to be fair, it’s surprisingly easy to do: clicking on a door welds it in three seconds flat. Building a chair takes two clicks and is done practically instantly. Most roleplaying games instate limitations exactly because it is unreasonable to assume that players will always be able to fairly ascertain whether/how long it would take to do any given task, especially in a dangerous situation where tensions are high.

Unfortunately, I do see a few issues with it, in relation to how prone Aurora is to a degree of metagaming.

 

• Expect people to quickly settle into harassment, both IC and OOC, of people whose skills are not at the highest level for whatever their job is. “Your surgery skill is only ⅘? I expect you to let the other surgeon handle all the surgeries unless he’s busy.”/”Your research and development skill is only a ⅗ as a Phoron Researcher?”
• Expect, on the opposite side of this curve, people to start using this as an excuse to start doing multiple jobs. “Why did you break into the R&D Lab? You’re a roboticist!” “No it's ok, I know how to do research, watch.”
  
• Metagaming on the part of syndicate agents. It’s been a longstanding thing that traitors are incredibly highly trained agents who have the knowledge to do anything on-station. If someone sees someone do something at a better level than what they’re supposed to be at, then they’ll immediately know that they’re a traitor, which will not be good for game balance.

 

Though I do like this a lot, and think that we would benefit highly from having more mechanical features that benefit RP.

[Ron]

I really like this. I really like this. People choose not to properly roleplay limitations, and, to be fair, it’s surprisingly easy to do: clicking on a door welds it in three seconds flat. Building a chair takes two clicks and is done practically instantly. Most roleplaying games instate limitations exactly because it is unreasonable to assume that players will always be able to fairly ascertain whether/how long it would take to do any given task, especially in a dangerous situation where tensions are high.

Unfortunately, I do see a few issues with it, in relation to how prone Aurora is to a degree of metagaming.

 

• Expect people to quickly settle into harassment, both IC and OOC, of people whose skills are not at the highest level for whatever their job is. “Your surgery skill is only ⅘? I expect you to let the other surgeon handle all the surgeries unless he’s busy.”/”Your research and development skill is only a ⅗ as a Phoron Researcher?”
• Expect, on the opposite side of this curve, people to start using this as an excuse to start doing multiple jobs. “Why did you break into the R&D Lab? You’re a roboticist!” “No it's ok, I know how to do research, watch.”
  
• Metagaming on the part of syndicate agents. It’s been a longstanding thing that traitors are incredibly highly trained agents who have the knowledge to do anything on-station. If someone sees someone do something at a better level than what they’re supposed to be at, then they’ll immediately know that they’re a traitor, which will not be good for game balance.

 

Though I do like this a lot, and think that we would benefit highly from having more mechanical features that benefit RP.

Those are all valid points. I'll cover the first one last. The second one can be handled by giving staff an easy to use skill overview panel which will mark people who have "suspicious" skills. This includes skills completely unrelated to their job and people having too many high level skills. We're giving the players the freedom to pick ANY skill regardless of jobs at first and staff still have the power to overrule the system and say "No, you wouldn't have this." and shut them down just like they can now. The third one we can fix by letting antags set their skill levels manually when they are an antag so they can act the role if they are trying to blend in.

As for the first one, people probably will do this. The difference between a trained skilled surgeon and a professional surgeon wouldn't be great enough for people to start harassing eachother. The difference between someone not trained at all in surgery and someone who is, will be a large and noticeable difference. Over time I hope people will come to realize that it is IC and won't be idiots over it.

[Itanimulli]

It appears a comment I made in passing has gained traction.

Marvelous.

[Itanimulli]

An idea that I had was implementing fail actions for each machine interacted with. For example, if you have a low skill as a chef and you interact with a microwave, there will be an increased chance that the microwave creates burned mess, regardless of recipe.

Interact with a complex computer? Chance to accidentally hit the wrong button.

Try building a complex contraption? Chance for it to malfunction when in use or not to be built at all.

Try using an advanced brute back on someone? Chance for it not to work at all and waste it.

Of all the rng mechanics I've seen, and the the irritation they've caused....no. Don't. It's just more lag and more pain.

[sonicgotnuked]

Metagaming on the part of syndicate agents. It’s been a longstanding thing that traitors are incredibly highly trained agents who have the knowledge to do anything on-station. If someone sees someone do something at a better level than what they’re supposed to be at, then they’ll immediately know that they’re a traitor, which will not be good for game balance.

 

Of course I can understand this point. You are seen with sudden skills you did not have! Of course when you are a traitor, you only probably wish to know things regarding what ever goal you have set up. Generally, put it this way, you will most likely be doing something bad already! Maybe you hack the door, print some gun for yourself, or remove an implant from the captain? Yes, loyalist and rev should not have this mechanical skill bypass the other antags would have due to it not making much sense.

[DeadLantern]

Please disallow the spawning of those with "God" skill levels, as they are either greifing or dumb.

[BurgerBB]

RNG calculated once doesn't lag. Implementing chance to succeed when doing something you're not supposed to be doing is much better than straight up not allowing you to do it.

[ben10083]

I think when it comes to increasing skill they should have it so people's skill develop as they do the task more and more (construction - building stuff, Anatomy - Doing surgery involving organs and/or bones). To make it fair the occupation they select their character to do will be permanent (unless the HoP reassigns you, which has them have to send the reassignment form to Centcom so it can be changed.)

[Asheram]

+1 i'm all for this.

And I'd also approve of a combination of both a time increase and a block.

An action One step above your skill level should take extra time, such as either someone guiding you through a procedure or reading directly from a book.

An action Two steps above your skill level should be completely blocked.

Edit: And since we're discussing antags. Why not adding an "antag skill packet" to your uplink (or something similar), letting you chose from a set of different pre-made skills in addition to the ones you already know? It'd be the easiest way to boost undercover operatives.

[Butterrobber202]

On the topic of Borgs, how will they work?

And can we get some examples of the Skills?

[Scheveningen]

A great way to balance characters is governing actions through attributes and tagged skills. The more you try to invest into one attribute the more expensive it gets with stat point investment so that you cannot be really good at one thing without sacrificing many other things. Likewise you can only 'tag' a few skills that your character happens to be much more proficient at than other things. This makes characters that are designed to be strong specialists really valuable at what they do and thus it would make sense for them to be employed where they are. Of course they have weaknesses, in the grand sense that they won't have success doing other things not related to their job in the slightest.

There is a concern about potential min-maxing of the system, but it's certainly possible to relegate skill tagging to specific trees or adding traits to the game that add small bonuses with small downsides or big bonuses with equally big downsides, if people are willing to play around those.

Being able to 'tag' skills a la GURPS will allow certain characters to specialize in certain things over others. They benefit even moreso if their tag skill is governed by a high attribute score since it'll modify their chances more in their favor compared to characters without that tagged skill familiarity or the attribute focus pertaining to it.

I honestly think that governing stuff through RNG/dice-rolls is not always the best choice because input should make sense and all that, but I do think the presence of RNG in regards to skill checks makes every playthrough different, unpredictable (at times) and more organic. So I do think its worthwhile just for this case, as RNG happens to govern some specific amounts of combat.

[LordFowl]

If RNG really must be implemented then the devs responsible for this madness should take a good look into the concepts of bounded accuracy and probability implemented in tabletop games. These sources provide have spent years fine-tuning die-rolls into a system that is both sane and sound. The probability for an action should not be simply decided on the randomness of picking a number from 1 to 100 when much better systems have already been designed.

[K0NFL1QT]

I've proposed this before and been told that it is simply impossible to implement, or that it would take too much work. If you really want to have a stab at it, I salute the attempt.

Regarding how to do it; vary the approach.

For example, if you're trying to do surgery, you should check the characters surgery skill. If it's untrained, it should take much longer and you should have almost 100% chance to fail and make things worse. An Amateur, maybe 50/50 chance. Trained should be, maybe, 95% success, with professional being 100% success and possibly completing the task faster.

Likewise, you can scale characters shooting accuracy in a similar way, from heavy penalties for the untrained up to basically how guns work, with minimal extra penalties, now for professionals.

For chemistry, you can add in chances for the wrong chemical to be added to the beaker, with untrained perhaps dropping in a little water potassium for that catastrophic failure effect.

In essence, a 'professional' character will be able to perform their actions near perfectly, and quickly, a trained character can do them with basically the same success rate as everyone currently has, and anything less than that incures heavy penalties. This rewards heavy investment and punishes 'dipping' into other fields. You want your surgeons to have focused deeply on surgery, not dabbled in it while learning karate, gun-fu and electrical repairs. Any investment put into skills your character isn't expected to use for the job they are paid to do, will probably end up being a detriment compared to specialising.

[Faris]

We're discussing this among staff presently, though I have a few concerns.

Off the bat, I can see there'll be issues when it comes to accounting all the outlying factors out there.

Fowl mentioned it in his post. Not all form of randomness is really sane or even "good". How is your system of randomness going to be implemented?

[Ron]

We're discussing this among staff presently, though I have a few concerns.

Off the bat, I can see there'll be issues when it comes to accounting all the outlying factors out there.

Fowl mentioned it in his post. Not all form of randomness is really sane or even "good". How is your system of randomness going to be implemented?

 

The system of "randomness" is not apart of the original thread and instead an extra idea we're discussing. I'll have to look into what Fowl talked about in discord to see what system he is talking about.

[Ron]

Off the bat, I can see there'll be issues when it comes to accounting all the outlying factors out there.

 

 

Could you list a few? I can't think of many situations where the system would apply in one case but wouldn't in another.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Guest

[Ron]

On the topic of Borgs, how will they work?

And can we get some examples of the Skills?

 

Borgs can do anything they can do with their modules. They will be unaffected by the system.

An example of skill will be made once the list of them is finished. Should be sometime today or tomorrow.

[Robinkhaliq]

So, any progress on this? This proposal seems very cool as an idea.

[LanceLynxx]

my energetic +1111111111

i've talked about this casually since I first started playing here, after setting up my first character. It's far too easy to mary sue around. this is especially true for heads of staff like CMO, CE, RD, etcetera.

but that's beyond the point

I would absolutely implement both increased time, chance of failure, both balanced depending on what you are doing and what your level is.

Quick example

Someone untrained in anatomy shouldnt be able to do heart surgery regardless of how much time it takes, for instance. It would take a long time, 2 minutes, but also be 95% chance of failure. This would be a little sadistic, mostly to fuck with people who think they can mary sue regardless of their skill, instead of outright blocking them from doing an action.

An amateur, however, still having the same time, could maybe get a 75% chance of error

A trained, 25% chance of error and time lowered in half

A professional, 95% (5% for error, those DO HAPPEN even with professionals) for a quarter of the time.

This is assuming only 1 skill comes into play. It would get complicated if it was, say, virology, in which you need complex systems, science, biological knowledge, and chemistry. How to balance that? Hard, but doable. And I'd say the effort is worth it.

Another idea I had would be an overhaul of existing categories. It would be separated in KNOWLEDGE and SKILLS.

Skills would be rearranged into more "broad" things like strength, dexterity, etc

Knowledge would be something separate with its own points system.

Why: A heart surgeon and an engineer are people that would have extreme "dexterity" skill, but their fields of "knowledge" are different.

A miner and a security officer both have "strength", but one has "knowledge" of combat while the other one knows how to better destroy rocks and walls and has argably better stamina since they're used to working in EVA with heavy tools, dragging rocks. both also have dexterity, but one for guns, the other for power tools. although there could be /some/ cross knowledge due to KA being similar in operation of a laser gun. but a sec officer wouldnt know how to operate a drill.

It's all very intricate and complex, yes. but it would give skills a much bigger meaning and people would think before they jump. (At least I like to think so), but it could also solve some things, like a character learning how to do everything. Instead, a character may acquire knowledge of everything, but still be unskilled to do them.

Knowledge would affect things like speed when using items, like medkits (or amount of damage healed), info from specialized tools (medical analyzers could provide different levels of info to different "knowledge" levels, multitools could not show wire colors but have them in the same order, etc), a damage modifier in case of combat, hit percentage when firing a gun, many possibilities.

Sure this "knowledge" thing could be done IC. But when was the last time you saw someone who couldn't use a medical analyzer or trauma kit? only if they OOC don't know how.

But this would be more restrictive and people might not like this.

Borgs:

Two ideas. Either they're maxxxxxxed on everything (since they're fukken borgs)

OR

Skills dependant on their module. Although I think their module tools already restrict what they can do anyways, so this would be pretty much moot.

in any case, I'd love to help implementing this system if burger and ron decide to move on with it