Skill Leveling

I know my original plan for DA was to use character classes instead of (or in addition to) skills. The primary reason for that was to try to kill off the jack-of-all-trades class that skill-only systems seem to encourage. However I eventually came back to the skill system with the modification noted below to help prevent that.

Skill systems aren't new, but the leveling of them seems to fall into two categories: (1) each incremental step gets some amount harder than the last step, or (2) the skill is capped based on the character's current level. A lot of MMOs use both. What I would love to see is a game without character levels that is entirely skill based - kill (2). Also I'd like to see some sort of plateau system; initially skills are hard to pick up, then they get easier, and then back to harder. If you know statistics, think of the Gaussian distribution curve where the y-axis is the amount of benefit you get from learning and the x-axis is the current skill level. You'd pick a spot on the left side of the curve to start learning at (skill default if you want) and learning progresses to the right. Its only a minor change from (1), but perhaps a little more realistic, and also helps keep the purity of skils so that you don't have every character end up being a jack-of-all-trades.

I think skills should be increased based on frequency of use, rather than dumping points into them you earn. Nothing new, several MMOs do this, but again the new focus of this blog is to list the things I'd like to see combined into one MMO. Also I'd like to see the frequency of use be tempered by repetitive use. To clarify, if you use a sword skill to hack up orcs, you should have diminishing returns -- you aren't learning anything new by fighting orcs. However, start using that skill to hack up goblins and now you're learning again. Some things would be inherently "harder" so would garner you more experience than easier things, but I still think that you should get benefit out of "new" even when it is "easy".

Realistically skills decay over time if not used. I don't like this idea as-is (I think UO tried it), but I do think it might be worth experimenting with the idea that frequently used skills get a small boost. Over all it looks like decaying with disuse, but it never drops below the original learned level, and I wouldn't want the amount of boost be high enough that people feel obligated to constantly cycle their skills to maintain the boost. Perhaps you can only have some number of skills with a boost at any given time, or maybe the boost is a "pool" of points that is spread out based on frequency of use.