Proficiency system to replace skills

[Badgzerz]

My opinion is that the skill system leaves much to be desired, and skill grinding no matter what is very tedious and boring, but once you have those skills, you have them until you die. I do not like this for whatever reason. I don't like the tedious grind, the always present skills, and the extreme pain of dying because you lost the skills, not the character/ their equipment. 

 

My basic concept is that skills level logarithmically, and they are forgotten exponentially, and yes I am referring to mathematical curves. If you google what they look like you may correctly assume what I am describing. The rate of skill loss is also tied to the rate of skill gain. If you grind master level proficiency within a couple of days, it will be forgotten faster than if you spent a week leveling that skill.

 

Levels are removed in favor of proficiency, which is a percentage ranging from 0 to 100 and books are reduced to 3 levels, beginner, advanced, and master. Books can be re read because skills will be forgotten. Skilled actions will reduce or pause atrophy. Training Materials are the only way to gain multipliers. (this is a new Info tab that shows books, magazines, CD's, and VHS tapes) If you forget a skill, rereading or rewatching will immediately regain most of your lost skill and give you a multiplier, you will regress less the next time as well 

 

Professions serve to ensure that you will forget those skills at a much slower rate and that they cannot fall below the initial proficiency you started out with. They do not increase XP gain unless you are regaining lost proficiency. Traits can be gained by focusing a skill for long enough if they were not started with, and the traits you gain will be counted when you die, so you can see how far your character grew beyond spawn when you died. Maybe even unlocking hidden traits for the next time if you stick around until your character zombifies. 

Effectively your characters skills and traits would feel more organic, as if they are constantly adapting with your gameplay, with the ability to force them along to temporarily binge certain actions such as construction, crafting, or combat. 

 

 

 

[OprahWinfrey]

By the time the character lives long enough to start forgetting skills, I will probably be starting a new game out of boredom. Grinding them up is hard enough, I don't want to have to worry about maintaining an exponential decay. In my opinion, the progression will also feel less impactful (that moment when you level up a skill to 5+ after hunting high and low for materials).

 

Maybe skill decay could be an additional difficulty option that can be enabled in the settings, for those who don't get bored of the late game.

[Badgzerz]

On 12/31/2021 at 3:09 PM, OprahWinfrey said:

By the time the character lives long enough to start forgetting skills, I will probably be starting a new game out of boredom. Grinding them up is hard enough, I don't want to have to worry about maintaining an exponential decay. In my opinion, the progression will also feel less impactful (that moment when you level up a skill to 5+ after hunting high and low for materials).

 

Maybe skill decay could be an additional difficulty option that can be enabled in the settings, for those who don't get bored of the late game.

I shouldn't have to live that long to develop the skill required to fix an engine, or to learn to use a fireaxe properly, or to get fitness leveled up, or to simply fix clothing or add some decent armor to clothes. I shouldn't have to fastforward time doing menial tasks so I can perform a task I won't be repeating for weeks, this isn't compatible with multiplayer. If everybody could grind a skill quickly and never lose it, soon they wouldnt be worth anything, but if you need to maintain that skill, or be conscious of where your playstyle is adapting your character, that's an entirely new gameplay dynamic, currently its static. 

Skill decay isn't a difficulty, nor an easy mode, its a complete re design of how people see skills to something that mirrors reality. You can binge study for an exam, but if you do that you will rapidly forget what you studied unless you use that information in the future.

[OprahWinfrey]

Sounds like your main issue with the current default is that it takes a long time to level up in real time, particularly mechanics and tailoring. Tailoring is really more of a "needle quest" than a grind, as long as you have the skill books. But mechanics needs to level faster on the low levels, I'm with you there.

 

As for the combat skills, I think it is by design that an un-boosted combat skill will pretty much be impractical to level beyond 2 or 3. PZ is an RPG and an unspecialized character isn't really meant to gain high levels of combat exp without stat boosts.

 

The only multiplayer I touch in PZ is co op with 3-4 people, so I don't know if skills are too easy to get or ubiquitous on the big public servers. Since it is impossible to fast forward I added a 2x multiplier to all exp gains on my server to reduce downtime during the multiplayer gameplay.

[Badgzerz]

18 hours ago, OprahWinfrey said:

Sounds like your main issue with the current default is that it takes a long time to level up in real time, particularly mechanics and tailoring. Tailoring is really more of a "needle quest" than a grind, as long as you have the skill books. But mechanics needs to level faster on the low levels, I'm with you there.

 

As for the combat skills, I think it is by design that an un-boosted combat skill will pretty much be impractical to level beyond 2 or 3. PZ is an RPG and an unspecialized character isn't really meant to gain high levels of combat exp without stat boosts.

 

The only multiplayer I touch in PZ is co op with 3-4 people, so I don't know if skills are too easy to get or ubiquitous on the big public servers. Since it is impossible to fast forward I added a 2x multiplier to all exp gains on my server to reduce downtime during the multiplayer gameplay.

It takes too long to level up skills to a functional proficiency while its too good having those skills forever until I die. Grinding mechanics, tailoring, electrical, and combat skills takes an ungodly amount of effort and if you run out of axes, its going to take you forever to get your short blunt or long blunt skill up and you will go from being an axe wielding chad to being some wimp with a hammer. Long blade is a worthless weapon class because you only got a few machetes and maybe a single katana in the world at any given moment. 

In multiplayer skill leveling is too slow because no fast forward, and if it isn't a dedicated server and you aren't the host, you won't ever be leveling your character anywhere nice. 

Once those skills are made, you spent an uncountable amount of time grinding that skill to do something as small as move a stove or construct a couple level 7 rain barrels, or a set of stairs, Or so you could perform once a month repairs on a vehicle's suspension, brakes, muffler, or engine. 

If I want to experiment with pipe bombs, I have to kill my character and start over again with the engineer profession, why can't my character be flexible enough over time to become an engineer, or to develop new traits? Why can't traits I've developed and lost be scored when I die? 

 

[OprahWinfrey]

Do yourself a favor and set all loot to normal and skill exp to 2x. After you survive for months and months, you realize how tedious some of the default mechanics are. Why should there be only a single saw in an entire town? With the settings above, the game is still difficult but just saves much more time irl doing the carpentry/tailoring/electrical grind. The new VCR tapes of the skill shows are a great way for a new character spawning late to quickly gain levels basic skills but they are rare to find (make sure you have a max multiplier before watching the shows).

 

For the weapons, it might be personal preference but if you intend on lots of combat you are shooting yourself in the foot if you don't take some maintenance boost and use up crappier weapons until you have a high maintenance level. No sense wasting a good axe until you have maintenance 3 or 4.

 

Hopefully soon they will do a balance pass and up weapon spawn or durability, make it easier to repair or level maintenance. Perhaps an option to grant all players on the server level 2 of every skill by default would fix the multiplayer issue without changing the way the game is designed.