Tweak of some Skill Levels

[DrZ]

I like the skill level system and would not want to miss it. However, after playing a lot on interloper I noticed that not all skills progress that smoothly (which means logically for me, as you gradually become a master - not all of a sudden).

Rifle, mending, harvesting, e.g., seem fine to me. Fire is interesting as level 3 looks on paper like a big jump getting rid of tinder but in the game it does not make a hugh impact. So I think it is fine. If I could change something here I would award long-duration fires as well (like every started 5h-intervall for a continously running fire). The reasoning is that you use your matches sparingly and so your progress gets hindered by you beeing resource-concious. On the other hand a higher skill lets you burn fires for longer so "training" with long-lasting fires seems like a fair addition to me.

My main focus for this discussion is on archery and cooking. If you are playing interloper you are either on 5 or not (for crouched shooting and spoiled food+no parasites, respectively). So why not smoothen those skills out a little bit? A suggestion would be to be able to shot the bow while crouched with level 4 but the bow handles like level 2. So you have to judge if it fits the situation. For cooking I would suggest to make carnivore meat parasite-free starting with level 4. So you can widen your diet before you can eat "everything".

Right now it feels like I have to race those two skills no matter what while I can let the others just progress with my game.

[oplli]

I agree on the long duration fire, this would be great to have. What I dont agree though is that fire without tinder is useless. When i need tinder to light fire, i always collect all tinder I find beacause I dont wanna run out of em that would be stupid. When I reach level 3 firemaking i can drop all those tinder and it leaves 2 or 3 kg in my pack and it makes a huge difference for me beacause i usually travel with between 20 and 25 kg in my pack maximum plus the 10kg bunus from well fed and the moose hide sachel. so I can go quickly as hell  . it is not a big of a deal but i think it is a great touch. I too agree on smoothing the skills bonus progession, the bonuses helps you a LOT at level 5 but they do not help you that much at level 3 and 4. 

 

Another thing I dont like that much is that there is only 5 Level of skills. it is easy to be at day 100 and having completed the most important skills. If you survive 300 this means that you do not improve nothing during the 200 next days.

Edited October 23, 2020 by oplli

[RegentRelic]

I do wish progress wasn’t so obtuse.

[oplli]

what you mean?

[DrZ]

On 10/23/2020 at 6:46 PM, oplli said:

[...] What I dont agree though is that fire without tinder is useless. [...]

Just to clarify: That's not what I meant when I said "Fire is interesting as level 3 looks on paper like a big jump getting rid of tinder but in the game it does not make a hugh impact. So I think it is fine."

I wanted to contrast it to the big jumps in archery and cooking. It is a jump and a nice one, but not a "game changer". Carrying more other stuff is nice but crouched shooting and eating ruined food open complete new possibilities and play styles.

On 10/23/2020 at 6:46 PM, oplli said:

Another thing I dont like that much is that there is only 5 Level of skills. it is easy to be at day 100 and having completed the most important skills. If you survive 300 this means that you do not improve nothing during the 200 next days.

Interesting observation. What I could envision here would be higher levels with exponential requirements to reach them (like it is now but just continued) that give a small bonus. Like, for archery, 2% sway reduction at each level. Then you can still progress but the game does not need big re-balancing of any kind and you can introduce 20 new levels that long time players probably will never reach. Which is my kind of thing since I think even a master can still improve.

[oplli]

1 hour ago, DrZ said:

Interesting observation. What I could envision here would be higher levels with exponential requirements to reach them (like it is now but just continued) that give a small bonus. Like, for archery, 2% sway reduction at each level. Then you can still progress but the game does not need big re-balancing of any kind and you can introduce 20 new levels that long time players probably will never reach. Which is my kind of thing since I think even a master can still improve.

That would be great

[Mroz4k]

Skilling up is something that kinda comes to individual gameplay. For example, I am a annoying meta-gamer in this case. In my new game, I race across the whole world, almost entirely exclusively only looting the non-container items (they degrade faster, items in unsearched containers dont degrade until after you searched them) and most importantly, I look for skill books. Example, from the times Hushed river valley just got added into the game.

I dont even fire a single rifle round until I have read every single rifle book in the whole game. I dont even read a single copy of "Guns, guns guns!" until I am sure I read every single frontier guide or until I reach lvl 3 at which point it no longer provides benefits. I play almost exclusively with "Lot of loot" option in my games so there is quite a few books in the whole world. 

But I am pretty sure Im the one of few that are crazy to meta-game like that. I do agree that the progression in some of the skills is not all that in tune with the rewards you get from them.
 

On 10/23/2020 at 5:03 PM, DrZ said:

If I could change something here I would award long-duration fires as well (like every started 5h-intervall for a continously running fire). The reasoning is that you use your matches sparingly and so your progress gets hindered by you beeing resource-concious. On the other hand a higher skill lets you burn fires for longer so "training" with long-lasting fires seems like a fair addition to me.

Interesting idea, but I would not like it personally. For starters, the skill is "fire starting" (which is a weak argument from me, because it does actually teach you in time to extend the amount of burn time on items, especially indoor fires last longer.) But, wouldnt burning "more wood" on fire actually mean you are wasting resources? It would promote wasting firewood for a sake of improving a skill. The "resource-concious argument" in my opinion doesnt really apply here. You burn more firewood on fires out of neccesity. For cooking, for warming up, for keeping the predators at bay during a sleep in the wilderness... But, those might just be my opinions.

I think the best way would be to introduce new "rewards" over the progression. And maybe in the future, we will get them. Take cooking for instance - maybe in the future, we will be able to cook new recipes with the items we have in the game due to us, progressing to lets say level 3. My favorite idea was being able to cook soups of different kinds. Stews, broths... using the meat we get from the animals and water. This would obviously require a use of a cooking pot - and would provide a food item that would spoil very quickly, but would provide an option of a food item which can be re-heated and would apply "warm core" bonus for significantly longer time then a cup of birch tea would. Additionally, broths or stews from the big game animals (bears, moose) could provide a sort of bonus like coffee does with exhaustion, only with "hunger" instead. As in 5 hour buff that would decrease the feeling of hunger. Normal meat would obviously still have its use - you can cook it without a pot, doesnt need water to be cooked, would be cooked faster.

For fire-starting, I was always a big advocate of being able to forge an improvised firestriker. This would be a forge option you would get at certain level of firestarting skill, and would craft an item that could be used to create fire indoors without the use of matches, could not be used to light up torches, but could be used to create fires at a lower chance then matches would. Finally, in order to use it, you would HAVE to use tinder, it would not be optional. This would be an interesting option to create fires that would not make you rely on magnifying glass so much, but would make use of other items like lantern fuel or accelerant, or by burning books even at high level to offset the penalty it would bring.
 

2 hours ago, DrZ said:

Interesting observation. What I could envision here would be higher levels with exponential requirements to reach them (like it is now but just continued) that give a small bonus. Like, for archery, 2% sway reduction at each level. Then you can still progress but the game does not need big re-balancing of any kind and you can introduce 20 new levels that long time players probably will never reach. Which is my kind of thing since I think even a master can still improve.

This sounds a lot like the secondary survival skills we have right now. Sharpening and firearm cleaning.

I dont think this is way to go, because you would eventually reach quite riddiculous levels, or they would have to introduce some ceiling to them, while scaling down the existing skills.

What if, instead of this, you could still progress at level 5,  with no ceiling to how much exp you can, however there would be no improvements forward on (as you are already a master). However, not using skills over time would decrease them. To a point where you could actually lose rank 5 and its benefits because you "became too rusty". Research books could be used to "refresh" this knowledge by researching them again. This would give them another use after they were already reseached. But, you could only refresh your skills at much smaller rate - aka lets say gun, guns guns! add 100 rifle points, refreshing on that book would only refresh 10 rifle points for re-reading it again.

That would be the concept at least. This means there is a constant need to re-use these skills to sharpen them.

(Or, another train of thought would be that research from research books cant be lost, however you can lose what you earned through training).

How quickly the survival skills degrade could be a setting to a difficulty of the game and in custom game settings.

P-edit: If the skills degraded over time, reaching those high levels of skill 5 would take up significantly more effort.
 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Mroz4k