At the start of open enrollment we will (hopefully) have a lot of new players starting. A lot of these new players will be new to either open skill selection style games or Pathfinder or even both.
Our putative new player will therefore come into game thinking hmm I like the sound of being a mighty barbarian. His first problem is "wow what a lot of skills what should I train first to achieve my life dream of striding through the forests of Golarion clad in naught but a rabbit skin loincloth".
I thought I would start this thread so we could discuss how this sort of player can be helped without feeling totally dependent on the goodwill of others answering quite basic questions.
Two games I have played had systems to give such guidance to new players so I will start by mentioning those. The first is Eve with its skill certificate system, the second is TSW with its deck system. Both help the new player who can find a suitable profession amongst either certificates or the predefined decks. These then allow them to get started without feeling they need to be asking basic questions.
So the questions are
1) Are there other such systems worth considering from other games?
2) What are the pro's and con's of each system?
3) Do we feel a system of some sort is needed (obviously I feel it might be :) )
Goblin Squad Member
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Secret World's system is a subset of the old skill/tech tree development systems that have been used for many years in RTS/builder games. I suspect but do not know that Eve's system is similarly based.
I would look first at using a 'tree' system to describe the training path for the main (trinity) class types expected by most players supplemented by the significant variants (such as monk/monk subsets).
Tech tree systems are almost intuitive to the Western mind because of our emphasis on categorization.
@Being
Indeed there are many ways to present the data
One of the things I like about the eve system is it is quite modular for instance so often certificates are composed of other certificates. Also certificates have multiple levels so it becomes quite natural to train towards higher certificate levels. It comes across to me as slightly more bottom up as it encourages more flexibility for switching direction
TSW provides to my mind a more singular guide whereby you choose your final role then train towards that role, decide to switch role and sometimes the skills you need are not any of those you learnt.
One thing I think however both systems fail on is the teaching aspect. While saying take this skill and this one is all well and good, some explanation of why you want to take that skill (other than just the dry skill description) may be more assistance to players in the long run.
One thing that would be good to do which from memory TSW allowed was you could create a deck and share it by posting some xml or somesuch on the forum. So for instance GW provide the basic archetype skill decks. Then I could come along and create a deck for Pirate ( a mixture of fighter,rogue and boat handling skills)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Skill trees may not be all that simple since many abilities will be general or belong to several archetypes.
I see two main ways of sorting skills:
-by stat requirement, since higher <stat> skills typically require some number of lower <stat> skills (to build the stat) without necessarily requiring specific ones. This would show you the efficient paths to gaining a specific skill.
-by archetype, with core skills being those required for the next "level badge" and supporting skills being those leading to abilities associated with that archetype. This would show you the efficient paths to gaining a specific "level badge" (at least for a single class character)
When EE comes around, I'll happily volunteer to help organize the info in any number of ways ;-)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the idea of building 'decks' that result in a role type that isn't limited to cleric/mage/fighter. This might be a very useful project for those fortunate ones who take part in Alpha, to get a start on exploring and documenting the possibilities and presenting those as 'decks' to the community here for comment/suggestion.
If you think of it, please reminds us once Alpha is announced.
I was thinking of it as something that shouldn't take much work to implement and would take some pressure off helpers at start of OE, certainly we should start gathering data earlier though.
If goblin works don't do it I am sure someone will put an app together to help skill planning such as they did for Eve...(see EveMon)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Unless I am run over by a bus between now and alpha I fully intend to share such interesting things as I can with the community. I suspect Nihimon our Palibrarian will likely feel positive toward such an effort as well, and with his organizational skills we should be able to deliver some collection of data that will be useful.
Speaking of which, it seems we Alpha types might want to organize, similarly as Hobs' Guides are doing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being,
You mean "As is happening in the Guide Program." They're not Hobs' Guides...they're just Guides (with "just" denoting the omission of Hobs, rather than to diminish their individual importance as Guides).
When I first read "Hobs' Guides" it sounded like I owned them...like some kind of twisted slaver of Guides. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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TSW does okay with their decks...but there's still something of a learning curve to be dealt with, hehehe. I don't know how detailed the combat system for PFO is going to be compared to TSW though. Trying to combine active & passive skills from different skill sets can be a swift pain. TSW has so many different "States" you can be in that's it's annoying. Hopefully PFO won't go too far in that direction.
@Korvak
Precisely why I thought this thread was worth doing. Find a good way of leading players new to sandboxes or pathfinder through the skill minefield without them having to seek help everytime they get enough xp to buy a new skill.
The states in TSW can be extremely powerful when you work out how to use them
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Goblin Squad Member
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TSW has so many different "States" you can be in that's it's annoying. Hopefully PFO won't go too far in that direction.
The states in TSW can be extremely powerful when you work out how to use them
I'm not familiar with this aspect of TSW. Can someone go into a little detail about it, or perhaps point me at a relevant resource?
In general, I hope PFO has some fairly complex state interactions. I'd much rather have a game that challenges my mind rather than challenging my manual dexterity.
@Nihimon
Some of the skills in TSW set states such as hindered
Other skills in TSW will do extra damage or effects when applied to a hindered target.
So for example if all your dps can exploit a hindered state on their target and the tank player sets up his skills to keep the target almost constantly hindered you get a party synergy going.
I haven't played TSW for a while so can't remember what all the states were but I seem to remember there was at least 4.
Due to the open nature of TSW skills where you could pick any 7 active or passive skills you knew a party that spent a few minutes optimising builds for synergy before embarking on either pve or pvp had a big advantage over those that didn't
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would look first at using a 'tree' system to describe the training path for the main (trinity) class types expected by most players supplemented by the significant variants (such as monk/monk subsets).
Tech tree systems are almost intuitive to the Western mind because of our emphasis on categorization.
The big thing I would change here would be to refer to the Four base roles of PFO (cleric, fighter, thief, and wizard) rather than the Trinity of themepark MMO roles (DPS, healer, and tank). Hopefully, PFO will represent a step away from those categories.
(Side note: I suspect that thief, archer, etc., collapsed into DPS because in a solo, themepark game, you couldn't have too many traps or locks, and social interaction was just menu trees of responses to canned NPC dialogue. With everything but backstab removed from their portfolio, thieves really were little different from sneaky rangers.)
I am not even sure trinity is particularly relevant in PfO terms, certainly it wasnt particularly so in TSW where it wasnt unusual for different people to be healing at different points of an instance. Trinity in addition being more pve focussed may be less important in PfO
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some of the skills in TSW set states such as hindered...
In case it advances this discussion:
Afflicted - affected by a Damage-Over-Time effect
Hindered - affected by a Slow or Root effect
Impaired - affected by a Stun, Knockdown, or Silence effect
Weakened - affected by a damage-dealing or to-hit-chance reducing effect
Not all DoTs, for example, set an Afflicted state, so creating synergies requires care in setting up your character's current skill load-out, and in your usage patterns and strategies.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For anyone who wants more info on the EVE Certificate system, here is a pretty decent introduction.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm hoping that they use a system similar to Eve's certificate system, but instead of arch types, they guide the player towards certain roles.
Players can of course, add to or subtract various skills from those roles, but I think that GW should present an idea of what skills they believe the role should have.