I've actually just got done playing a little bit of Darkfall, and was thinking, a game that might be at the same scale could probably use this. Skills and abilities that deteriorate from disuse. It won't be right off the bat, and it won't be too grievous, but I think it will add a little bit of realism to the game, and support avid multitasking well. I'm not entired sure what skill sets there will be, but perhaps it will/might look like this. Base Attributes (STR) Strength (DEF) Defense (DEX) Dexterity (SMT) Smarts Derived Skills (STR) Fighting (DEX) Shooting (SMT) Repair (SMT) Research etc Each skill can be very dependent on the use of the attribute, and apply bonuses to how the attributes are allocated, and you gain more bonuses/negatives based on how much it's used over the length of play. For instance, you are busy repairing all of your equipment and go without fighting for a really long time (maybe an hour or so) you'll go out a little bit rusty and not as adrenaline filled, so all fighting and shooting scores are at base minimums, meaning you'd only get the bonus added from the base stat. If you leave them in disuse for even longer, you'll start to get negatives, maybe to about -5 on a 1 to 10 dice roll ratio. Say, maybe -1 for every extra 20 minutes of non use? It can even be longer, maybe real time's day worth of disuse (of play) can make it a negative, instead? Either case, it'll make players keep from becoming exponentially powerful, and still let the game be playable on a large scale basis, managing your character should be half the fun after all. The time it takes to raise a skill is about 100 experience points worth of using it. for every level up, (capped maybe at 20 levels? That will give a max of +10 use perhaps, every other level is a modifier increase) you need 100 more experience, so 100, 300, 600, 1000, etc. unless people play for hours literally, they won't be able to reach cap on one skill, and that's only if they work on those few skills. Experience can be given for quest completions (research, or some other skill requiring intelligence or wisdom) combating small (20 exp), medium ( 40 exp), large (70 exp), and colossal (90 exp) for shooting and fighting (dependent on what weapons are used obviously). I'd go more into detail, but this is a basic idea, I'll leave the rest up to the devs if they decide this is a good system to use. All experience for leveling up skills is divided amongst their use, the experience pool for level up, and the difficulty of the planet/ missions (plus or minus to experience bonus per character level) edit: I'd like to add, this game won't be as big or as limiting as Darkfall considering that it's limited to a 2D landscape, there is not much ground to cover when wanting to power up skills for a time. and the skills bonuses will go away quicker than skills getting negatives. The experience required for level ups as I put it above will make it beneficial to the devs to add many things for the players to be able to level up the skills. edit edit: This can also remove the need of the arduous work of "building classes". There will not have to be any sort of reworking and debugging classes to be more balanced. The balancing of this system works on its own, put simply, you use one thing over the other, and you'll likely find yourself lacking in other areas soon enough. Edit x 3: Bah, I just found out they have no plans in incorporating character level/skills/experience. Oh well, it's up there if they ever change their minds.
I wish they would implement a skill system. I seriously wanted one with Terraria. It only makes sense, to me, that the more you use a skill the better able you are at using things related to that skill. Even a basic skill system would be nice.
