A warning against 'training' experience over 'base' experience systems

[RainOfPain125]

Recently I’ve been playing tons of 7D2D and their skill system is great in every way it seems. It is the best ‘base’ experience system, where you get general experience from anything, which gives you experience points to spend on skills. It’s like Unturned’s, except has 5 skill trees instead of 3, and to obtain skills in the skill tree you might first need to upgrade your base skill. Here’s a screenshot.

Now, lets look at the problem of ‘training’ experience systems. Case and point.

Minecraft is a cool game, and has tons of plugins. Notably one of the biggest plugins you’ll find across many servers besides silk-spawners, is McMMO, a plugin which adds multiple skills that you can only level up by doing things related TO that skill.

For instance, to level up your Mining skill, you’d need to mine naturally occurring stone, ore, and so on.

Now that sounds fun, but the underlying problem is the incredible amount of grinding and waste created by this system of experience. You have to slave away mining for hundreds of hours, gathering MUCH more than you’d ever need to get into the higher levels, which reward you more.

Theres much worse examples. For instance, theres another skill called Acrobatics, which lessens your fall damage. The only way to level this one up, is to fall from great heights. People build entire “machines” dedicated to maxing out this skill, requiring the player to build gigantic dumb skyscrapers and climb up and fall down them over and over.

Another terrible example is a “repair” skill. In order to upgrade it, you must repair items over and over. Players do this by wearing a full set of Diamond Armor, and standing on top of a cactus while under the Regeneration effect. Its a large waste of Diamonds to repair, and a huge waste of time.

Also, keep in mind that under Minecraft’s McMMO system you KEEP these skills after dying. In Unturned, we can assume you will loose most if not ALL of them.

BACK To Unturned

So in my assumption of Unturned, we’ll have multiple skills, most notably ones like Sharpshooter. And to gain levels in such skills, is to waste tons of ammo on nothing. Elite players will scrounge up as much ammo as possible and max out their skills, wasting ammo but giving them the upper-hand. If you refuse to waste ammo, then you’re out of luck, buddy.

Compared to something like 7D2D’s experience system. When you die, you dont actually permanently loose your skills, you receive a debuff that temporarily (like an hour or more) takes away your base skills, which may take away skills based on that one

For instance if you need smartness lv5 for car mecahnic lv2, and you die and temporarily drop down to lv4 smartness, then your car mechanic skills will truncate down to lv1, too.

This system is less grindy, less annoying, less tedious, and doesn’t make you unnecessarily waste a bunch of resources to level your way up.

Also side, how are we supposed to level up skills like sneakybeaky - Prone or crouch all the time? Or immunity - subject yourself to the infection and waste tons of vaccines? Or warmblooded - subject yourself to the incredibly hot and cold?

[kvc.6]

Pretty sure Nelson considered doing a system like this, doing things to get upgrades rather than just clicking.

[RainOfPain125]

AFAIK Nelson wanted a system of experience where if you chop trees, you level up your tree chopping skills.

[RedCo]

Your points are indeed valid, however you also need to consider the context of the game. The examples that you have provided are good, however they don’t really compare well to a game like Unturned.

Let’s take the repairing skill you referred to as an example. In Minecraft, you really don’t need to repair, as the only real reason that you would repair a weapon or armor is to preserve enchantments that make the weapon worth repairing. In Unturned however, repairing is much more important, because of two major factors. The first factor is that weapons don’t always spawn at 100% durability, wheras in Minecraft this is for the most part, the opposite. The second is how weapons are acquired in both games. In Unturned, weapons, are, for the most part, spawned in and then found by players, wheras in Minecraft, most weapons are crafted. Therefore, it is unfair to compare a repairing skill from a Minecraft plugin Unturned simply because of how different the two games are.

@RainOfPain125

So in my assumption of Unturned, we’ll have multiple skills, most notably ones like Sharpshooter. And to gain levels in such skills, is to waste tons of ammo on nothing. Elite players will scrounge up as much ammo as possible and max out their skills, wasting ammo but giving them the upper-hand. If you refuse to waste ammo, then you’re out of luck, buddy.

An easy fix to this is to instead level the Sharpshooter (or equivalent) skill based on your accuracy when hitting your target.

@RainOfPain125

Compared to something like 7D2D’s experience system. When you die, you dont actually permanently loose your skills, you receive a debuff that temporarily (like an hour or more) takes away your base skills, which may take away skills based on that one

One concern I have is how this inconveniences solo players, for example is a solo comes up against a duo and trades with one of the two, he’s at a major disadvantage because one of his opponents has better base skills.

@RainOfPain125

Also side, how are we supposed to level up skills like sneakybeaky - Prone or crouch all the time? Or immunity - subject yourself to the infection and waste tons of vaccines? Or warmblooded - subject yourself to the incredibly hot and cold?

I’d imagine certain skills are either base skills - skills that a player can start with, or learnable skills, which the pllayer can learn through books and manuals.

I do like the temporary skill loss thing, perhaps that could be something that server managers could play around with?

[RainOfPain125]

@RedCo

Let’s take the repairing skill you referred to as an example. In Minecraft, you really don’t need to repair, as the only real reason that you would repair a weapon or armor is to preserve enchantments that make the weapon worth repairing.

You still are required to repair tons to lv up, and ontop of this, you’d just die and loose said skills.

@RedCo

So in my assumption of Unturned, we’ll have multiple skills, most notably ones like Sharpshooter. And to gain levels in such skills, is to waste tons of ammo on nothing. Elite players will scrounge up as much ammo as possible and max out their skills, wasting ammo but giving them the upper-hand. If you refuse to waste ammo, then you’re out of luck, buddy.

An easy fix to this is to instead level the Sharpshooter (or equivalent) skill based on your accuracy when hitting your target.

OK. I’ll fire at trees, or anything else that gives hitmarkers. Or better yet, it’ll promote KOSing nakeds for that sweet, sweet EXP. You gotta think about the repercussions of the ideas.

@RedCo

Compared to something like 7D2D’s experience system. When you die, you dont actually permanently loose your skills, you receive a debuff that temporarily (like an hour or more) takes away your base skills, which may take away skills based on that one

One concern I have is how this inconveniences solo players, for example is a solo comes up against a duo and trades with one of the two, he’s at a major disadvantage because one of his opponents has better base skills.

Why would playing in a duo make you inherently have better base skills?

@RedCo

Also side, how are we supposed to level up skills like sneakybeaky - Prone or crouch all the time? Or immunity - subject yourself to the infection and waste tons of vaccines? Or warmblooded - subject yourself to the incredibly hot and cold?

I’d imagine certain skills are either base skills - skills that a player can start with, or learnable skills, which the pllayer can learn through books and manuals.

Base skills are cool, but people were so fundamentally against my genetics idea - which, ultimately, was a balance for positive genetics like being more sneaky or better metabolism. If genetics or positive start effects were introduced I think it would be unbalanced because people are so distasteful of negative effects to balance them out

Learnable skills sound dumb. People will just craft or obtain tons of books for their teammates, or destroy books they find so others can never learn it. In 7D2D, they have something similar, except these books give you +1 lv in a certain skill for a duration of time (30 minutes).

[RedCo]

@RainOfPain125

You still are required to repair tons to lv up, and ontop of this, you’d just die and loose said skills.

RedComm:

However, it’s something that you do regularly

@RainOfPain125

OK. I’ll fire at trees, or anything else that gives hitmarkers. Or better yet, it’ll promote KOSing nakeds for that sweet, sweet EXP. You gotta think about the repercussions of the ideas.

Not really. It could just be limited to combat.

@RainOfPain125

Why would playing in a duo make you inherently have better base skills?

RedComm:

You get into a fight. You kill one, and the other kills you. Instead of just having a deduction or loss of your skills, you’re locked out of your base skills for an hour while their team has one player that still has all his skills.

@RainOfPain125

Base skills are cool, but people were so fundamentally against my genetics idea - which, ultimately, was a balance for positive genetics like being more sneaky or better metabolism. If genetics or positive start effects were introduced I think it would be unbalanced because people are so distasteful of negative effects to balance them out

Not really genetics, I mean, it could be genetics, but more likely it’s as a result of profession and lifestyle.

@RainOfPain125

Learnable skills sound dumb. People will just craft or obtain tons of books for their teammates, or destroy books they find so others can never learn it. In 7D2D, they have something similar, except these books give you +1 lv in a certain skill for a duration of time (30 minutes).

How else do you propose learning a skill like revolver fanning then? Shooting a single-action a lot of times until you magically realize you can just fan the hammer?

[Aj_Gaming]

@RedCo

. It could just be limited to combat.

That makes it worse

[anon24515308]

@RainOfPain125

to get into the higher levels, which reward you more.

This is why I’ve said that skill levels should have diminishing returns.

@RainOfPain125

So in my assumption of Unturned, we’ll have multiple skills, most notably ones like Sharpshooter. And to gain levels in such skills, is to waste tons of ammo on nothing. Elite players will scrounge up as much ammo as possible and max out their skills, wasting ammo but giving them the upper-hand. If you refuse to waste ammo, then you’re out of luck, buddy.

The stabilized aim that in 3.X was granted by sharpshooter could be trained by spending time ADSing. The reduced recoil could be trained by firing ammunition or firing blanks, if you’re just grinding for XP.

[RainOfPain125]

@RedCo

Not really genetics, I mean, it could be genetics, but more likely it’s as a result of profession and lifestyle.

And your profession style would have pros and cons. Similar to my genetics. People hate cons.

@RedCo

How else do you propose learning a skill like revolver fanning then?

How else should the player know how to pick up a gun? Flailing their hands until they get the right combination to grab and wield it? I’m not sure what the point here is, players should know how to fan from the start. Very much how we can aim without needing a skill.

@anon24515308

to get into the higher levels, which reward you more.

This is why I’ve said that skill levels should have diminishing returns.

I suggested Exponential Skills and people did not like that.

[RedCo]

@RainOfPain125

And your profession style would have pros and cons.

N-no? It could, it could not.

@RainOfPain125

How else should the player know how to pick up a gun? Flailing their hands until they get the right combination to grab and wield it? I’m not sure what the point here is, players should know how to fan from the start. Very much how we can aim without needing a skill.

Some things are simple enough to not need a skill. What, you want a skill for learning how to walk? How to breathe?

[skoeldis]

@RainOfPain125

For instance, to level up your Mining skill, you’d need to mine naturally occurring stone, ore, and so on.

Now that sounds fun, but the underlying problem is the incredible amount of grinding and waste created by this system of experience. You have to slave away mining for hundreds of hours, gathering MUCH more than you’d ever need to get into the higher levels, which reward you more.

Well the point of “Training” experience is that you have to focus on the thing that you want to level up and it is supposed to take time, you are not supposed to get full level sharpshooter after 15 min of killing turned.

@RainOfPain125

Theres much worse examples. For instance, theres another skill called Acrobatics, which lessens your fall damage. The only way to level this one up, is to fall from great heights. People build entire “machines” dedicated to maxing out this skill, requiring the player to build gigantic dumb skyscrapers and climb up and fall down them over and over.

And I don’t see why you would need to farm skills, they level up as you play the game as it is meant to be played.
I hope there will be some anti “Skill farm” system that restricts you from easily farming up your skills.
So then you would not be able to build skill farming machines like the one you just showed.

@RainOfPain125

In Unturned, we can assume you will loose most if not ALL of them.

I don’t see how you can be so sure about that, just because it’s like that in 3.0 dosen’t mean that 4.0 will have that shitty feature, the only reason why you lose so much in 3.0 is because you can farm up to full skills fast AF.
And I don’t think you will lose skills in 4.0 like you do in 3.0, sins that system is really not so good, AKA Trash

@RainOfPain125

Also side, how are we supposed to level up skills like sneakybeaky - Prone or crouch all the time? Or immunity - subject yourself to the infection and waste tons of vaccines? Or warmblooded - subject yourself to the incredibly hot and cold?

Well sneakybeaky could get leveld up you sneaking around turned (or animals), so if you are close to them and they don’t detect you then you get sneakybeaky XP points.

Warmblooded could get leveld up by you being in cold environment like cold weather, cold climate, cold water and so on…

Immunity could level up when you get sick, infected, get exposed to radiation or toxins… and much more, you are not supposed to level skills up instantly and they should level up over time when you play the game as it is intended to be played.

[AstronautPug]

You forgot to mention that Nelson could just make it not take 100 hours to max out every skill, and maybe, let’s say, 2-3 hours?

[anon24515308]

@RainOfPain125

I suggested Exponential Skills and people did not like that.

When I suggested it some people were confused or indifferent about it, but I don’t recall anyone actually disliking it.

The following isn’t a response to any one phrase said by any one person, but to an flawed assumption that is prevalent through this discussion.

The skills of 3.X don’t each have to have direct equivalents in the trainable skills of 4.X.

• Nelson has additionally expressed interest in a skill tree like that of Path of Exiles, which has purchaseable skills.
• Clothing and other equipment can give buffs which in 3.X through skills.
• A medical/nutrition system could also give said buffs.
• As Redcomm pointed out skills could be unlocked through skill sets and skill books.
• Most simply, and I would have thought most obviously, 4.X skills won’t just be copies of 3.X skills; 3.X skills can be combined, split, tweaked, or excluded as necessary to fit with 4.X’s mechanics.

[RainOfPain125]

@RedCo

What, you want a skill for learning how to walk?

crawls

@RedCo

How to breathe?

suffocates

@skoeldis

And I don’t see why you would need to farm skills, they level up as you play the game as it is meant to be played.

Because theres always a bigger fish. If you dont spend time upgrading these skills, someone will and HAS already wasted the time to grind for them so that they can out-compete you in every way.

@skoeldis

I hope there will be some anti “Skill farm” system that restricts you from easily farming up your skills.

That will just push people away from skills entirely. ‘Training’ systems will ALWAYS breed the fastest possible ways to level up, even if they’re tedious, wasteful, and unfun

@skoeldis

I don’t see how you can be so sure about that, just because it’s like that in 3.0 dosen’t mean that 4.0 will have that shitty feature

A lot of Survival games have this feature, and Nelson has not disclosed how skill loss will occur. We can only assume that 4.0 will have all the same features as 3.0 until he specifically says otherwise.

@skoeldis

the only reason why you lose so much in 3.0 is because you can farm up to full skills fast AF.

It costs around 2,500 EXP to level up every single skill. Thats a whole lot of zombies, which I’d say on average give you 5 EXP. You’d have to kill 500 of them without dying once.

@skoeldis

Well sneakybeaky could get leveld up you sneaking around turned (or animals), so if you are close to them and they don’t detect you then you get sneakybeaky XP points.

Thats a lot of grinding I hear

@skoeldis

Warmblooded could get leveld up by you being in cold environment like cold weather, cold climate, cold water and so on…

Thats a lot of grinding I hear

@skoeldis

Immunity could level up when you get sick, infected, get exposed to radiation or toxins… and much more, you are not supposed to level skills up instantly and they should level up over time when you play the game as it is intended to be played.

Thats a lot of grinding I hear

@AstronautPug

let’s say, 2-3 hours?

At this rate, assuming Unturned 4.0 will have the same exact skills, it would take 44-66 hours to max out all 22 skills on a single server. Include skill loss on death and thats something I wouldn’t waste my time on ever in forever - but I’m sure elitists would.

@anon24515308

I suggested Exponential Skills and people did not like that.

When I suggested it some people were confused or indifferent about it, but I don’t recall anyone actually disliking it.

Another little topic that gib peak interest

What would you all think about 4.0 having skills that never have a limit to them? IE, as you level them up they go up exponentially with no limit unlike 3.0’s system where leveling up skills is linear and has a set limit. This could for one, open the doors for wacky game modes that levels up a skill a ton. And of course could also add more to the game, as currently I hate maxing out all of my skills in 3.0 and then I have nothing to do with my excess EXP besides overpaying NPCs for items or shar…

@anon24515308

The skills of 3.X don’t each have to have direct equivalents in the trainable skills of 4.X.

We can only assume that 4.0 will have all the same features as 3.0 until he specifically says otherwise. We assumed it will have guns, vehicles, clouds, terrain, survival, zombies, hunger, thrist, and so on.

@anon24515308

Nelson has additionally expressed interest in a skill tree like that of Path of Exiles, which has purchaseable skills.

In 7D2D

@anon24515308

Clothing and other equipment can give buffs which in 3.X through skills.

in 7D2D, which I am basing most of my ideas on

@anon24515308

A medical/nutrition system could also give said buffs.

in 7D2D, which I am basing most of my ideas on

@anon24515308

As Redcomm pointed out skills could be unlocked through skill sets and skill books.

in 7D2D, which I am basing most of my ideas on

[AstronautPug]

@RainOfPain125

At this rate, assuming Unturned 4.0 will have the same exact skills, it would take 44-66 hours to max out all 22 skills on a single server. Include skill loss on death and thats something I wouldn’t waste my time on ever in forever - but I’m sure elitists would.

I was more saying 2-3 hours to max out EVERY skill

[anon24515308]

@RainOfPain125

in 7D2D, which I am basing most of my ideas on

They’re also planned to be in 4.X, alongside trainable skills. You’ve provided good examples that prove that trainable skills aren’t the ideal way to give all buffs, and others have suggested ways that trainable skills can be improved and how certain buffs could be shoehorned into the category, but I still don’t see the reason why it’s being discussed as if either all or none of the buffs could be earned through trainable skills.

[Mercury]

No I hate the current one, it is really stupid, I mean you punch zombies and during that you learn to heal yourself.
No way, I would hate it if this got into it, it means you actually have to practice something to be good at it, now there should be things like books that skill you up without doing it, but come on, the skill points are stupid.

[RainOfPain125]

@AstronautPug

I was more saying 2-3 hours to max out EVERY skill

2-3 hours to max out 22 skills. You cant even do that in 3.0.

@Mercury

No I hate the current one, it is really stupid, I mean you punch zombies and during that you learn to heal yourself.

Balance > Realism

[Mercury]

You would be correct, it is more balanced and real. Better too.

[Tomskbird]

Why is everybody instantly assuming that:
a) You will have the exact same skills.
b) You will have to grind a fucking lot.
c) Skills will be as important and as OP as in 3.0