SUGGESTION: Character Development (Backstory and Talent/Skill System)

[Jack Dant 158]

I agree, keep in mind that the skills are mostly just to show off how the system would work in terms of progression with a few general ideas sprinkled here and there. Any stat system will fell gamey. Hell, the new addition of the visibility counter and the whole debug monitor feels gamey. So, in short I agree.

Glad we agree :)

To elaborate, what I strongly dislike are binary or discrete skills. Real life is not generally about "I have changed ten tires already, I can now magically fix punctures without new tires". Any realistic skill should be as continuous and gradual as possible. In real life, it would be more like "I think I fixed the puncture, lets see how long it lasts" then 5 minutes later then tire is flat again.

Training is also a viable option, but I do think that when you do things constantly and enough times you should get better at doing said thing. That is just how real-life works and I see no reason why it shouldn't be implemented as well if they also did training.

Yea, that's what I meant by training. Getting better at stuff because you have done it more often.

As for making the starting survivors worse at things I agree. However, these disadvantages should be absolutely minimal. See my list of intentions for reasons why.

I agree with your intentions, but I don't think minimal is the right word. You should be able to overcome the disadvantages with smart gameplay. But they should be noticeable enough that you care about dying even if you can get back to your corpse or have a camp full of all the best equipment.

[petward 6]

Real life is not generally about "I have changed ten tires already, I can now magically fix punctures without new tires". Any realistic skill should be as continuous and gradual as possible. In real life, it would be more like "I think I fixed the puncture, lets see how long it lasts" then 5 minutes later then tire is flat again.

No, you're right, what real-life is like is "I replaced a tire ten times and I've noticed I can easily patch up the tire itself instead of replacing it due to my experiences dealing with changing tires." That is what I hope this skills seems like. However, I agree that trying new things also boosts experience in any given field. Though I don't know how well that would translate into a game enviorment.

I agree with your intentions, but I don't think minimal is the right word. You should be able to overcome the disadvantages with smart gameplay. But they should be noticeable enough that you care about dying even if you can get back to your corpse or have a camp full of all the best equipment.

I think I may have worded that weirdly... I'm a little tired given that it's 5:30 here...

What I meant was that the difference between new Survivors and Vets. should be purely PvE and only situationally an advantage. General gameplay mechanics should not really be touched. This involves damage, health, that sort of things. The things that would make the Vets harder to kill. Take for instance stealth. A survivor would have no percentile decreases in the amount of sound/visibility they generate, but a Vet would have a slight decrease by 40% making them more apt at sneaking past the zombles.

And I stick by what I said about the increases being almost inconsequential. I want to keep the Loot Based Leveling. I want the skill system to be primarily a very SUBTLE, balancing system that is completely secondary. Anything more would negatively influence gameplay, drives in game, and the DayZ experience itself.