Soft Skills

[Solopopo 330]

In stress test 12 they introduced soft skills. This is our first look at how soft skills could be in beta.

The little meter on the lower left is the soft skill meter. It starts in the middle. You can progress either left or right. If you mend and stitch, it goes to the left. If you craft and build, it goes to the right. You can undo crafting progress by mending, and visa versa. But if you max out the stat in either direction, it stays locked in place (which took forever to prove). The consequences of this are interesting, although I don't know If I am entirely on board with it yet. With the given system, players that spawn are posed with a question. Do they want to be a crafter this life, or a medic? It makes sense to make a decision one way or the other, because otherwise your meter will just balance out in the middle. This is interesting because it provides players the option to choose a sort of soft class, without actually requiring  any decisions to be made about your character in the selection screen. It also allows players to reverse decisions if they want to, up till a certain point. Again, I don't know if I'm on board with it yet though. I liked the idea of being able to max out all of your stats, not just specialize in one. This does however provide interesting coop opportunities, at least in theory. It would make sense for one team mate to focus on the opposite task, one healing, one crafting. But there is a problem. 

 

I managed to max out crafting/building as shown above. I have to say I am a little underwhelmed by the benefit of having maxed crafting. When the meter is in the middle, it takes 5.5 seconds to craft a stick fireplace. At max crafting it takes 4.5 seconds. That is a lot of work to do for one second. Neither mending nor crafting is actually very useful from what I can tell. Being able to craft something one second less isn't really that big of a deal. I suppose you could say the time was lowered by about 20 percent, but still, this isn't really all that much to get excited about, and certainly not enough to motivate someone to deliberately max anything out. For those of you who are curious, it took me about seven hours to max it out in Elektro with no threats or distractions around, taking breaks every once in a while. I was relieved to discover what I set out to, that the bar indeed locks if you max out, but I regretted the time spent to gain the benefit I got. 7 hours of work for a 1 second difference? That's a little crazy if you ask me. If I am remembering right, the purpose of soft skills was to encourage players to stick it out on their experienced survivors, even if things got really rough. This isn't enough to motivate anyone one way or the other. 

edit: One more interesting consequence of this system I forgot to mention is that all those useless items lying around all over the place aren't so useless anymore if you care about your soft skills. 

edit 2 (7/31/22): I was looking up some info on soft skills after a long break and was surprised to find my own thread turned up as a top result on google all these years later. Damn, I can't believe the beta was 4 years ago. It's truly scary how time flies. For anyone still being directed here it's now known there are a few extra benefits to soft skills. Leveling up left increases the chances you will mend clothing to prestine, earns 10 percent more blood from blood collection, and results in more food from skinning. Leveling right increases the chances of getting a higher yield of farmed crafting materials like logs, sticks, etc. Perhaps there are more benefits waiting to be discovered/implemented. I wish the devs would clarify things like this. In early Beta when soft skills launched we weren't given much information. The game has been fully released for a while now and they haven't officially addressed it. I'm glad the thread is still helping people, but it's strange this is one of the few resources on soft skills all this time later. But since it is, I may as well elaborate as to how soft skills currently affect the game, given what we now know. 

Soft skills at first glance may seem kind of random. How are base building and clothing mending opposites of each other? The more apt question is how they are alike. Both clothing and bases are used to store items and keep them safe. The mending specialty encourages a nomadic playstyle, while the building specialty encourages hunkering down and making a home. This is the essential idea behind the soft skill system. If you are always on the move, you are always carrying your items in your clothing, always at risk of being injured, and more relient on hunted food, which you are likely to cook in a random house you are temporarily calling home with no need to craft a fireplace of your own (which would undo your mending skill). If you like to hunker down and build a home of your own you are more likely to build improvised shelters, fire places, fences, etc. These objects have high persistence and are intended to help for you to stay in one place. I don't know if it's been confirmed, but I think it's likely that digging garden plots also increases your building skill, because it makes use of the base building placement system and the shovel is already a required item to build fences. Digging plots also encourages you to remain in one place because it means you don't need to hunt. Lastly, allowing your cloths to become ruined will not have as detrimental an effect on you with a building specialty because you have somewhere else to stash your stuff and to retrieve spare clothing. Having ruined clothing means you can't take your cloths off to dry them faster by a fire or ring them out. But at your base you are protected from rain. With this in mind it begins to makes sense why we aren't allowed to put pieces of ruined clothing back on and also why taking them off dries them faster to begin with. There is really an interesting picture starting to form here, which makes it all the more frustrating the devs haven't confirmed their design intentions with the soft skill system. Not explaining things is kind their MO at this point, but I think the time has come for a little more transparency about this stuff. We aren't in alpha anymore. The game is significantly more fun for players when they understand it. 

Several people in this thread have expressed the idea that soft skills have trivial benefits on purpose because the devs don't want soft skills affecting PvP. While it is true they have said they don't want soft skills having a direct impact on PvP, any system that is trivial may as well not exist. It isn't meant to be a "meaningless grind", and the assertion that soft skills aren't meant to motivate player's behavior is just silly. If soft skills don't motivate player's actions, they fail as a game mechanic. It is now clear that there is a lot more to this system than was initially apparent, although we still hardly know anything about it with absolute certainty. 

 

Edited July 31, 2022 by Solopopo
Update

[amadieus 315]

Interesting to know that it stays locked when you reach the max of either side. I guess (and hope) that they will increase the benefits of choosing a speciality during the course of Experimental. With base building coming up I can see more benefits that specialization will offer (Constructions with higher health?)(Sewing wounds without chance on infection?) Nevertheless, I do like the fact that you have a choice all the way up till you max one thing out.

[Solopopo 330]

19 minutes ago, amadieus said:

Interesting to know that it stays locked when you reach the max of either side. I guess (and hope) that they will increase the benefits of choosing a speciality during the course of Experimental. With base building coming up I can see more benefits that specialization will offer (Constructions with higher health?)(Sewing wounds without chance on infection?) Nevertheless, I do like the fact that you have a choice all the way up till you max one thing out.

Yes, I was very happy it resulted this way. I was motivated to find this out because if it wasn't the case, I would truly despise this system. And thank you, I forgot to mention that as well. Additional crafting and mending features could make specialization more valuable. 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Solopopo

[Whyherro123 2283]

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Me being skilled at carpentry doesn't mean I stab myself in the fingers whenever I try to sew.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." Robert Heinlein

What the actual fuck are the devs doing?

[Lexman61 78]

48 minutes ago, Whyherro123 said:

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Me being skilled at carpentry doesn't mean I stab myself in the fingers whenever I try to sew.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." Robert Heinlein

What the actual fuck are the devs doing?

Totally agree with you.

No soft skill credits for the categories of; "player empathy", "time used for interacting with others",  "limited KOS", "food sharing", "bird and nature watching", "night sky orientation", etc. etc.?? How disappointing!

These soft skill features and they way it is being implemented, is clearly for all the survivor "fetishists" who just can't get enough of these time consuming and ultimately almost useless tasks just to fiddle around a bit more with their character while playing.

Regards

 

 

 

 

[preacherlr 614]

2 hours ago, Whyherro123 said:

What the actual fuck are the devs doing?

It's the first iteration? I'd probably give it till v2 or even v3 before asking that question..

49 minutes ago, Lexman61 said:

These soft skill features and they way it is being implemented, is clearly for all the survivor "fetishists" who just can't get enough of these time consuming and ultimately almost useless tasks just to fiddle around a bit more with their character while playing.

This is what soft skills were always meant to be, as far as I can remember it was always things that would help a little but nothing drastic?

Guessing you'd rather Tarkov style? Be able to throw a grenade 2 football fields? Jump 10 feet? Run 35 mph for 10 minutes?

For something you're going to lose every time you die ( I hope ) Doesn't seem much point to add anything too drastic. It'd be cool to see say slightly fast reloading of mags or SLIGHTLY quicker melee swings.. But to be honest, I feel no soft skills would be the best option, I mean people are only going to complain about them, Amirite?

[amadieus 315]

Why are people so against it? As long as it does not impact gameplay/pvp too much, it can only be a small extra fun thing to work with. Otherwise just ignore it. 

The bonus effect of the current iteration is even so marginal that the effect is next to useless. 

Edited May 25, 2018 by amadieus

[Parazight 1599]

There's nothing wrong with having these soft skills.  They're not going to help you in combat situations.  You're not losing out by not working on your soft skills.  Having meaningless grinds in a sandbox is good for the game.  It helps to keep players actually playing.

 

As far as them implementing it now, it's fine.  If they're working on it right now it's for a reason.  

[Espa 711]

They haven't been fully implemented so I just assume that the Soft Skills effects are heavily WIP. 

However, I do think it's a bit weird that someone would have to pick between either Medic or Builder 'specs' to the detriment of the other. 

I do think players would enjoy it far more if they simply had two separate bars stapled atop each other, rather than along and against each other.

Fine Actions -------------------->

Rough Actions ----------------->

That way, players would be able to attempt to max out both and lower action times of both, as well as restore health to self and constructions while bandaging/building.

Edited May 25, 2018 by Espa

[Solopopo 330]

 

11 hours ago, Espa said:

They haven't been fully implemented so I just assume that the Soft Skills effects are heavily WIP. 

However, I do think it's a bit weird that someone would have to pick between either Medic or Builder 'specs' to the detriment of the other. 

I do think players would enjoy it far more if they simply had two separate bars stapled atop each other, rather than along and against each other.

Fine Actions -------------------->

Rough Actions ----------------->

That way, players would be able to attempt to max out both and lower action times of both, as well as restore health to self and constructions while bandaging/building.

I think I would enjoy it more this way too. 

@Parazight, I agree that these soft skills don't seem like they will be providing significant combat advantages. But I think healing is intended to provide at least some advantage, within reason. I don't think it's unreasonable for a medic to be able to make a difference in combat scenarios. When the devs first spoke about soft skills they said they wanted to include them because they want players to value their character more over time, which is important if we are ever to successfully capture anyone in game and strip them of their weapons. They don't mean for it to be meaningless. If it is meaningless they have failed at what they set out to accomplish in the first place. You use that word often to refer to a lot of work the devs have been doing I've noticed. I know you are trying to make the point that people who don't like it don't even need to worry about it, but its not meaningless. Its clear they put a lot of thought into the current implementation. Its minimal but influential by design. In my opinion the effects are too minimal right now, but I already talked about that. 

 

Edited May 26, 2018 by Solopopo

[Solopopo 330]

18 hours ago, Lexman61 said:

Totally agree with you.

No soft skill credits for the categories of; "player empathy", "time used for interacting with others",  "limited KOS", "food sharing", "bird and nature watching", "night sky orientation", etc. etc.?? How disappointing!

These soft skill features and they way it is being implemented, is clearly for all the survivor "fetishists" who just can't get enough of these time consuming and ultimately almost useless tasks just to fiddle around a bit more with their character while playing.

Regards

I don't think you understand what @Whyherro123 was saying. He was talking about how progress towards one specialization takes the opposite down, and then expressed his opinion on that one specific aspect. He isn't criticizing the entire concept of soft skills, as you are. Thus far they have taken a very conservative approach to soft skills, and it is far from the way you have characterized it. Soft skills have been part of their plan for a while now, and many of us have been eagerly anticipating them. Their main motivation behind soft skill is to give players a reason to try to stay alive even if they have lost all of their gear and have been captured. This is cool and definitely something we all want. It has nothing at all to do with any of that crap you just said. 

My criticism of the system is that it is not beneficial enough to motivate players to stay in game in that situation, however that is my first impression in a stress test setting. 

Edited May 26, 2018 by Solopopo

[emuthreat 2837]

On 5/25/2018 at 12:00 AM, preacherlr said:

For something you're going to lose every time you die ( I hope ) Doesn't seem much point to add anything too drastic. It'd be cool to see say slightly fast reloading of mags or SLIGHTLY quicker melee swings.. But to be honest, I feel no soft skills would be the best option, I mean people are only going to complain about them, Amirite?

For something you are going to lose every time you die, it should be significant enough to add value to avoiding death. This does not.

On 5/25/2018 at 3:16 PM, Solopopo said:

When the devs first spoke about soft skills they said they wanted to include them because they want players to value their character more over time, which is important if we are ever to successfully capture anyone in game and strip them of their weapons. They don't mean for it to be meaningless. If it is meaningless they have failed at what they set out to accomplish in the first place. 

Valuing the character more over time is what I take to be the intended outcome of soft skills. This does not accomplish that at all.  Not only is this meaningless, it meaninglessly permanently punishes a player by locking out at one end of the scale or the other, albeit at an extreme of repetition unlikely to bee seen from normal and indifferent playstyles.

Here goes my rant:

I disliked this concept when it was first announced, and I still feel the same.  Not only does it grossly oversimplify the skills learned by practicing different actions, but forces a false dichotomy of broad specialization, rather than specific skill improvements.  The saving grace in this is that it is so slight as to be meaningless.

But if it is meaningless, then why bother at all?  Is it that the 'bar-based' HUD system could only accommodate one skill bar without being obtrusive? 
Is the problem limiting soft skills having to do with the HUD in general?  I strongly dislike the HUD being visible on normal screen. I would prefer it to be in inventory only unless values change fast or has become near-critical?

As it stands, I hate the implementation of soft skills in this manner.  It is either meaningless, or punishes a player for doing too much of one thing; of which, neither is more authentic, nor adds valuable as a 'gamey' skill system in the supposed "anti-game."

And here is my suggestion to make it more meaningful:

Why not add a proper skill advancement system, but keep it entirely behind the scenes?  No need to see the progress, and no need to focus on grinding.

Just keep the values hidden except for observable results, and make the benefits increase along a f(x)=√x function with an arbitrarily balanced scale to determine the practical maximums.  This would make a steep climb to get to the middle ground, and cause decreased gains after the average maximum to the point of irrelevance.  The tangent slope of the function could be used as a rough percentage scale of completion, with a slope of 1/100 generally understood to be the maximum practical point of mastery.  Each action within the relevant categories could generate an "X" value of experience, and the "Y" value would be the proficiency.  A player would have to apply or 100 bandages, salines, blood bags, morphines, epi-pens, splints, antibiotics, charcoal tabs, or vitamins to effectively maximise their medical competency.  But general class competency would only generate a 50% efficacy at a new task under that class.

Each specific task could have a 50 repetition cap for maximum efficacy.  So if someone grinds bandaging themself a hundred times, they would have 100% general medical competency but only see a 50% efficacy rate applying splint on the first try.  After applying 25 splints, they would see a 75% result--either in time taken to perform the action, or quality of the outcome.

This would lead to situation where a player might say "sorry dude, you're probably only going to get half of this saline bag because I've never done this before. I have a friend in polana who has been alive for like three weeks, and I can give you two can of peaches to help hold you over until we get there.  Do you think we can make it there safely, or do you just want me to try my best and see how much of this saline we can get into you?"
These are the types of interaction that I want to see the game facilitate or even force.

Mechanical, structural, medical, agricultural, naturalist and culinary skills come to mind foremost considering what DayZ already has to offer.  These six categories could be the baseline for soft skills, whereby each available action in the game could be tagged with different modifiers of what skill type affects the outcome of each action, and which actions add to the experience value of each skill type.  Gun cleaning and modification would add to mechanical skills; though a gunsmith and mechanic might both have their mechanical skills fully developed each may only be half capable of switching roles efficiently until the specific tasks were completed by each player enough times to master them.

This would add a level of gameplay decision making that would add to immersion in ways we can't predict.  Players might have their driver of the V3S cargo shot, who also happens to be the most experienced medic.  The next most experienced medic is also the most experienced mechanic. Does he start to work on the truck that crashed when the driver was shot, so they can try to escape more quickly, or should he try to revive the two unconscious players so they can cover the repair of the truck?  Do they delegate the best shot, but the next highest medical skilled player to revive the other two unconscious  players?

 

The concept of soft skills can add so much to the game.

This implementation adds nothing.  It only creates an unnecessary complication of gameplay wherein a player must actively watch a meter to avoid marginal loss of competency at half of all actions in the game.

To this implementation of soft skills, I say Fuck No!

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

On 25/05/2018 at 11:15 AM, amadieus said:

Why are people so against it? As long as it does not impact gameplay/pvp too much, it can only be a small extra fun thing to work with. Otherwise just ignore it. 

The bonus effect of the current iteration is even so marginal that the effect is next to useless. 

Adding next to useless features does not make a good game design.

As of now we have a skill system with a preposterous either/or mechanics (you 'lose' your rough skill by doing soft actions and after 100hrs you can be in the exact same spot as a freshie), which doesn't bring anything to the game, doesn't accomplish anything close to 'care more about your toon' and literally the best you can say about is that it's marginal.

This is such a wasted potential and so much more could be accomplished. Hell, even old-timey classic RPG skill systems are better than this, you know, those with bows, athletics, first aid and bargaining. And you can surely do better than that nowadays.

I check @emuthreat's rant and raise it with mine. This is the worst feature in DayZ and when I first read about it, I thought I misunderstood something or it was a joke.

Devs, please come and speak to us, I'm sure we can talk you out of this. I know you have your reasons, we'll discuss them in a friendly manner, and then we'll convince you to give up on this system, because it consists only of defects.

[pilgrim* 3514]

On 5/25/2018 at 12:58 AM, Solopopo said:

..//..otherwise your meter will just balance out in the middle ..//..

meter in the middle sounds like the best survival tactic to me 

hmm?

Edited May 27, 2018 by pilgrim*
...

[ZomboWTF 527]

guys calm down, these are near impactless soft skills, they won't stop you being able to sew/mend something, they wil only make one thing better than it was, marginally

also, it is the very first iteration on the stress test servers, not set in stone at all, but i agree that this system is unfair

humans can learn very different things very well, just because someone is good at programming doesn't mean he is bad at socializing

 

[Sqeezorz 839]

In principle, we inherently have a tendency to learn some things faster than other things. But the fact is, we can learn everything. Anyone who learns how to fell trees and after work builds a model of a ship in a bottle will be able to do both because he did it and learned it. One maybe faster than the other.

[Guy Smiley 534]

The whole point to the soft skill is to not make an uber soldier. I get it, everyone wants to be the elite killing machine but the idea behind the soft skills is to not have that.  Pick the direction you want to take to and if you don't like it, try a different skill set.

[Whyherro123 2283]

46 minutes ago, Guy Smiley said:

The whole point to the soft skill is to not make an uber soldier. I get it, everyone wants to be the elite killing machine but the idea behind the soft skills is to not have that.  Pick the direction you want to take to and if you don't like it, try a different skill set.

The whole point of people complaining about the current implementation of soft skills is that it is fucking nonsensical, not that we can't do everything.

This is a very disingenuous argument.

If I am a mechanic/carpenter/what-have-you, so long as it is on the 'crafter' side of things...... that doesn't mean I am somehow worse at administering first aid, or sewing up clothing, aka things on the 'mender' side of things. One can FOCUS on being a mechanic over a crafter over a mender, but that doesn't make you WORSE at mending, just the baseline.

But that is what the current implementation of soft skills is doing, in addition to reducing every possibly activity in the game to two axis. BY being a good "crafter", it means that you suddenly turn into a hamfisted moron when it comes time to sew up your clothing. And carpentry has very little to do with cooking, or the shaping of lumber.

It is dumb, and the only good thing about the current implementation of soft skills that can said is that it has no real effect, due to the low effects on actions. 

So much for adding value to a characters life.

Edited May 28, 2018 by Whyherro123

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

1 hour ago, Whyherro123 said:

TIf I am a mechanic/carpenter/what-have-you, so long as it is on the 'crafter' side of things...... that doesn't mean I am somehow worse at administering first aid, or sewing up clothing, aka things on the 'mender' side of things. One can FOCUS on being a mechanic over a crafter over a mender, but that doesn't make you WORSE at mending, just the baseline.

And did you notice that we haven't even started on the ridiculousness of grouping skills like 'first aid' and ' animal skinning' into the same category? Because they are related less than speaking Spanish and growing jalapeños.

[Parazight 1599]

It would be great if proposed soft skills (whatever the outcome) could be used in a practical way somehow and be provide the means to a goal.  

Soft skills have to be balanced and worked out carefully.  It's been a real challenge for designers since the beginning of online gaming to create progression in a sandbox.  It's no different here.  Having a storyline or an easy path to follow has always been critical to linear games that move from instance to instance.  DayZ has none of that, so it's a fine line design-wise to provide this and reap all the benefits a storyline adds to a game. 

It's a sandbox, so pvp combat has to be on relatively equal terms.  A player with a fresh spawn has to be able to rely on his/her natural skills to win interactions, even against players with toons that have been alive for months.  Not only would the game be totally exploitable if this isn't true, but it is much more appealing as a game if your shooting skill is more important than your skill points.  So how much should the game invest into soft skills?  Huge issue here regarding progression (soft skills).  The DevZ know this.  What we've seen so far isn't representational at all of what the end product will be.  So sit tight.

With this in mind, it would be great if the game could really explore soft skills, and put them to the test.

Maybe what DayZ could use (mod or event(obviously)) is something like  The Barkley 100   (as seen here on vimeo) or other ultramarathon like events.  Something you can use possible soft skills on without having to worry about getting shot.

I'm guessing players will make soft skills interesting somehow.  Soft skills are important.  I know that I won't personally value them (mostly because I like to die a lot) but they add a great timesink and additional feature to the game.

 

 

[emuthreat 2837]

2 hours ago, Guy Smiley said:

The whole point to the soft skill is to not make an uber soldier. I get it, everyone wants to be the elite killing machine but the idea behind the soft skills is to not have that.  Pick the direction you want to take to and if you don't like it, try a different skill set.

None of the soft skills many of us would like to see would make anyone a super soldier.  Nobody is talking about reloading magazines faster, or reducing sway.

Things like crafting though, would benefit from starting out at a relatively modest base level of speed or quality, and give players some room to grow as they survived.  80% of players might completely ignore this, knowing that they will run directly to the first shots they hear and roll the dice, and that is fine.

I think many of us are wanting/expecting some sort of systems to add complexity to the game beyond the same playstyles we have been seeing for the past 3 or 4 years.  Even a change as modest as getting a full stack of 5 sticks from a bush with a maxed naturalist skill would be enough to spur many players into thinking about division of labor.  It might spur fresh players to seek out the help of geared players with certain tasks, rather than trying to punch everyone out immediately.  It could mean that a freshspawn would take longer to pick a lock, and therefore might not want to risk running back to attempt breaking into a base they got killed at, until they could get a bit more practice to speed up the process of picking locks.  And rather than immediately trying to fortify a location, fresh players would perhaps be more likely to cover more ground and do the higher risk looting before they have as much to lose.

Most importantly, it would add greater disappointment to dying, and reward players for taking things more slowly in many cases.  Anything to add more variety to player behavior, I see as a positive addition to the game.

[Guy Smiley 534]

3 minutes ago, emuthreat said:

None of the soft skills many of us would like to see would make anyone a super soldier.  Nobody is talking about reloading magazines faster, or reducing sway.

Things like crafting though, would benefit from starting out at a relatively modest base level of speed or quality, and give players some room to grow as they survived.  80% of players might completely ignore this, knowing that they will run directly to the first shots they hear and roll the dice, and that is fine.

I think many of us are wanting/expecting some sort of systems to add complexity to the game beyond the same playstyles we have been seeing for the past 3 or 4 years.  Even a change as modest as getting a full stack of 5 sticks from a bush with a maxed naturalist skill would be enough to spur many players into thinking about division of labor.  It might spur fresh players to seek out the help of geared players with certain tasks, rather than trying to punch everyone out immediately.  It could mean that a freshspawn would take longer to pick a lock, and therefore might not want to risk running back to attempt breaking into a base they got killed at, until they could get a bit more practice to speed up the process of picking locks.  And rather than immediately trying to fortify a location, fresh players would perhaps be more likely to cover more ground and do the higher risk looting before they have as much to lose.

Most importantly, it would add greater disappointment to dying, and reward players for taking things more slowly in many cases.  Anything to add more variety to player behavior, I see as a positive addition to the game.

Keep in mind that this is the first iteration and not even close to being the final stage of it.  I personally like the aspect of focusing of a specific skill which I think should take a long time to master.  I also like the debuff idea of not working on other skill but they should never go into a negative value.  The idea of skills diminishing is a great idea.  When not performing certain skills, you become "rusty".  I also don't think that honing skills should give that much of an advantage but something reasonable.

[amadieus 315]

2 hours ago, Whyherro123 said:

The whole point of people complaining about the current implementation of soft skills is that it is fucking nonsensical, not that we can't do everything.

This is a very disingenuous argument.

If I am a mechanic/carpenter/what-have-you, so long as it is on the 'crafter' side of things...... that doesn't mean I am somehow worse at administering first aid, or sewing up clothing, aka things on the 'mender' side of things. One can FOCUS on being a mechanic over a crafter over a mender, but that doesn't make you WORSE at mending, just the baseline.

But that is what the current implementation of soft skills is doing, in addition to reducing every possibly activity in the game to two axis. BY being a good "crafter", it means that you suddenly turn into a hamfisted moron when it comes time to sew up your clothing. And carpentry has very little to do with cooking, or the shaping of lumber.

It is dumb, and the only good thing about the current implementation of soft skills that can said is that it has no real effect, due to the low effects on actions. 

So much for adding value to a characters life.

Where does it say that you become worse in the thing you do not specialize in?

Nevertheless, I see that even though some people are rather critical on the implementation, most do like it. While I am not that against the current implementation like some others, I do think that having to keep building campfires for example and to never touch sewing to increase the level of building is rather annoying. But even there could be possibilities, for example a certain skill drops much slower when it is a certain point like 70% and even more slower when reaching 80%.

Like someone else mentioned,  the grouping of sewing and building is an odd one and I would not even be against the usual skill tree. So that the player would receive general points when doing building, medical, sewing, fishing and horticulture stuff and he could then spend it the way he likes.

I do think that nobody should become the best in everything though, people need to make choice in what they specialize, I like that aspect so far.

[emuthreat 2837]

11 minutes ago, Guy Smiley said:

Keep in mind that this is the first iteration and not even close to being the final stage of it.  I personally like the aspect of focusing of a specific skill which I think should take a long time to master.  I also like the debuff idea of not working on other skill but they should never go into a negative value.  The idea of skills diminishing is a great idea.  When not performing certain skills, you become "rusty".  I also don't think that honing skills should give that much of an advantage but something reasonable.

The current system is just a disappointment.  It arbitrarily divides all skills into two categories, and forces one to choose.  It's simply not realistic.

The decay sounds interesting and appropriate, but I don't agree with the notion of debuffing or ignoring other skills while one is being improved; that's just not how things work.  The general goal should be to either advance one targeted skill aggressively, or try to make a well-rounded character.
As for skills getting rusty, perhaps a certain amount of loss after no practice seems appropriate, but someone who masters something should never drop to the same skill level as a freshspawn.  For example, I haven't used a lathe since high school, but I would fully expect to remember the basics enough to get better and faster results than someone who has never even seen one before.

The way they have it now is so basic, unnecessarily limiting, and just kinda cheesy.  I would call it a missed opportunity at this point, and I don't see the current iteration being easily balanced out into something any better.  It really just makes me think "why bother."

Edit:  @amadieus  I think the point is that this system splits all actions into two arbitrary categories, of which it seems you can only improve one half at a time, or ever, once one side is maxed out.  I hope that we can never spend points, instead keeping it all behind the dashboard.  As for someone becoming the best at everything, it should take an almost prohibitively long time to survive long enough to do this.  If each distinct action needed to be skilled up individually, 95% of people would never survive long enough to max out their skill types or master even a third of the individual actions; and if they are never aware of the numbers outside of observing the in-game outcomes, it would effectively discourage completionist grinding by the vast majority of players--assuming they could even survive long enough.

There are lots of possibilities, so it's just very curious why they chose to go in this direction with it.

Edited May 28, 2018 by emuthreat

[GaryWalnuts 1680]

The devs have already said that skillsets won't have advantages or disadvantages to combat.  I'm glad they still see things that way, and I'm eager to see what comes of the skills, how they will be categorized and if/how they will be linked.  As for now, I don't like the first iteration of that sliding-scale between repair and building.  How are those two arbitrary skills diametrically opposed?

On 5/26/2018 at 9:19 PM, emuthreat said:

Why not add a proper skill advancement system, but keep it entirely behind the scenes?  No need to see the progress, and no need to focus on grinding.

^ This, I think if the progression is visible then it lends itself to semi-grinding.   If we see that we have only a tiny bit left to go I'm going to stop my hike from Zeleno to Myshinko and start cutting branches that I don't need to or start patching worn clothes - because advancement!  imo seeing progression would be an immersion breaker. 

 

14 minutes ago, Guy Smiley said:

I also like the debuff idea of not working on other skill but they should never go into a negative value.  The idea of skills diminishing is a great idea.  When not performing certain skills, you become "rusty".

I like that particular point as well, but not as a sacrifice to another skill.  Being a good car mechanic doesn't make you a bad gardener (it doesn't make you a good gardener either) I think all skills should be completely unrelated.  Our base skills when spawning should be terrible too, imo we're blank skill-less slates when we wash up on shore, for a new experience every time.

I know it's only the first iteration, so I'm just happy to see it in the build to begin with. I'm curious to see how it gets adjusted over the next few weeks.