The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

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Lywzc
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The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by Lywzc »

As far as I read the scripts, once one of your Primary Skills reaches 100, you master that skill and all of your other skills can not be raised above 95.
But there are some problems.
1. I can raise all my skills to 99 and then raise one of my Primary Skills to 100.
2. Only Primary Skills can be mastered, which means I can raise Major, Minor or Miscellaneous skills to 100 and not master any skill.
3. After I mastered a skill, skills above 95 won't be decreased to 95, they just can not be raised further.
Which means by exploit this mechanic by raising all my Major, Minor and Miscellaneous skills to 100, all my Primary skills to 99 then choose 1 of them and raise it to 100.
I think this mechanic is very broken and needs some work.

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pango
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Re: The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by pango »

I didn't know only primary skills were concerned, interesting. Probably to avoid everybody to become master of Running in classic :D

Anyway, it seems to be hard to exploit in practice (you need a lot of control to raise only specific skills), so personally I don't mind if it stays the way it is now... Which is, I assume, matching the way classic works?
What alternatives are there anyway, capping other skills to 95 after the fact?
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Lywzc
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Re: The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by Lywzc »

Code: Select all

        public bool AlreadyMasteredASkill()
        {
            bool mastered = false;
            List<DFCareer.Skills> primarySkills = GetPrimarySkills();
            foreach (DFCareer.Skills skill in primarySkills)
            {
                if (skills.GetPermanentSkillValue(skill) == 100)
                {
                    mastered = true;
                    break;
                }
            }

            return mastered;
        }
Above is the function to decide whether a skill has been mastered.

And no, actually it is very easy to exploit this mechanic, simply choose skills you can control as primary skills, such as magic skills and jumping. Then only raise them when needed.

There are some alternatives I can think about.

1. After one of your primary skills reaches 100, reduce all other skills that are higher than 95 to 95 and prevent them from being raised higher than 95.

2. Apply different caps to different skills types, for example Primary to 100, Major to 90, Minor to 85, Misc to 75. The value is chosen according to their initial value. Primary starts at 28-31, Major at 18-21, Minor at 13-16, Misc at 3-6.

ifkopifko
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Re: The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by ifkopifko »

Well, to reduce skills is a bit awkward I would say.

How about:
1. Allow only primary skills to be raised above 95, cap the rest to 95 or as you suggested for example... 75 is a bit drastic though.
2. After one primary skill reaches 96, make it the only one that can be raised above 95 and thus be mastered. No decrease is necessary.

Anyway, I think that even though you can exploit the current system, during normal play-through it will not happen probably. You would have to do it on purpose, which means you DO WANT to do it... so why to remove it? :D

Lywzc
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Re: The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by Lywzc »

The biggest effect of this exploit is 1 or 2 max level.
And I think 25 reduction in max skill for misc is just. They are miscellaneous after all.

Firebrand
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Re: The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by Firebrand »

Personally, I think that all skills should be able to reach 100. I've done this in Skyrim, I'm doing this in Oblivion, this should be possible also in Daggerfall. It really helps to continue playing with the same character for many, many months. Everytime, to improve a particular set of skills, you focus on something different, with a completely different playstile. And often, you find out a different approach to the same situations.

Primary, Major, Minor and Miscellanous should only mean the starting point, not the end of a character. It's a much more flexible and modern approch.

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pango
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Re: The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by pango »

ifkopifko wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:14 pm Well, to reduce skills is a bit awkward I would say.
Agreed. Skills up are a player reward, and all the sudden the game would go "actually, it didn't count, I'll take that away from you". Meh.
Which leaves two options I think, either the one used in current "Master of skill" implementation: skills above the threshold are freezed at their current value; or the limit for the different categories of skills are enforced all the time instead of when the first primary skill reaches 100%.

Beside that, took me a while, but I think I'm starting to like the idea of limits based on skill categories. It makes the initial choice of skills even more relevant. The mechanics would have to be adjusted so you end up around the same character level when you increased all your skills to the max though.

I also thought of totally different approaches, like skills being harder and harder to increase above say 75%. So they're no hard limits, no ad hoc rule when you reach 100%, because it would be practically impossible. I'm not sure how that would play, just an idea that crossed my mind.
Firebrand wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2019 8:11 pm Personally, I think that all skills should be able to reach 100. I've done this in Skyrim, I'm doing this in Oblivion, this should be possible also in Daggerfall.[...]

Primary, Major, Minor and Miscellanous should only mean the starting point, not the end of a character. It's a much more flexible and modern approch.
It sounds so bad. If your character can end up being able of everything, then you only ever play a single character. I think this is a terrible approach, that kills both gameplay with your current character (it kills thrill because, in the situation you describe, you always have the skills you already master as a safety net), roleplay, and replayability. That's flexibility in the wrong place in my opinion.
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Lywzc
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Re: The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by Lywzc »

Yes, I am thinking as well. Daggerfall already presents choices that can severely limit your path (You can choose disadvantages that will make you unable to use magic at all thus can not improve magic skills other than training). So generally unlike later games, Daggerfall can and need to be a little harsh on making choices.

Also I agree that decreasing your already increased skills is kinda lame, so I think either Primary 100, others 95 or tiered max skill level will be suitable.

And as for the max level adjustment, it will only be useful for the tiered approach, since the max level then will be 29+14/15. In this case we can decrease the required skill ups for reaching level 2 to 1. The 100/95 approach will make the max level 31+4/15 so no need of adjustments. By the way the max level for all 100 max skills is 32+4/15.

gimble
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Re: The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by gimble »

I would say it works as intended if you roleplay a character. i.e., choose primary skills that actually define the character and will end up being used the most for that character.

On the other hand, for casual play or powergaming styles, it is easy enough to bypass this "limitation".
Lywzc wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2019 12:04 am Yes, I am thinking as well. Daggerfall already presents choices that can severely limit your path (You can choose disadvantages that will make you unable to use magic at all thus can not improve magic skills other than training).
Yes, but daggerfall is also about complete player freedom. Adding artificial restrictions that aren't decided by the player is against the "spirit" of this game. Creating a mod that adds restrictions is not a problem as it then becomes player choice again whether to use that mod or not.

All that said, only magic skills gain significant benefits from a value of 100 vs 95. This is because spell cost is directly proportional to (110 - skill value). Spell point cost is 33% lower at skill level 100 compared to 95. For other skills, the difference between level 95 and 100 is pretty much insignificant.

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Ralzar
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Re: The Master a Skill mechanic is confusing.

Post by Ralzar »

How about restricting max skill % to your attributes? For example, if you have 60 strength, your max Axe, Blunt, Climbing and Jumping skill is 60%. Possibly with a raised max for primary and major skills. So primary skills had a roof of attribute+20 and major had attribute+10, for example.

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