One of the lesser used but no less interesting forms of character development comes from the “skill based” system. Please understand that I am not talking about “skill based” in the sense that certain PvP players would have you believe exists in MMOs. I am referring to the Ultima Online style where a skill improves based on use. Since many players these days have neither played nor heard of UO I’ll give a quick break down of what this system entails.
In a skill based system you generally do not have numeric levels. When your character is born it is soft, pink and has a whole list of skills with a lot of 1s. Every character has access to every skill. There are no classes here! Through the use of those skills, like swinging a one handed sword, you build your skills. At the same time, however, you lower skills that you don’t use. Swinging that one handed sword all the time might reduce your ability to cast spells. Eventually you can max a skill and, at least in UO, you could “lock it.” A locked skill would not go down and you are free to work other skills worry free. Ultimately you could only lock so many skills. If I recall correctly, in UO, that was seven skills.
Obviously this is a very different system from level based. These days, given how many level based games I’ve played, I’m a little fond of the idea. It is a shame though that this system ended up in a PvP game. At any rate, on to the good and the bad.
Pros
When it comes to character customization a skill based game is the top of the food chain. Since you have access to every skill you decide what your class is. Are you interested in being a leather wearing healer that can dual wield maces? You can do that! Do you want to follow a more traditional role and be a paladin? That can be done too! Generally there will be some negatives associated with a combination that is generally seen as “not fantasy normal” (like a wizard in full plate) but you can do it!
The grind, after a fashion, disappears. Yes you’re very conscious of working your skills but it isn’t so cut and dry where to go and do that. You can roam around the land and fight things at random or work whatever trade you want. Almost anything can raise your skills so the narrow focus that level based games bring is gone.
You’re not locked into a class or specification you hate. If you suddenly decide that you don’t want to wear full plate anymore because the negative is too high you unlock that skill, open up chain armor and put some on. It won’t be long before one declines and the other rises.
The system is easily expandable when it comes to development. Skill caps can be raised slightly and new skills can be added. Since every character has access to every skill there is no issue of someone missing out on new toys. More importantly, however, you reduce the issue of “my class sucks.” If someone feels that way it isn’t too hard to drop the one or two skills they perceive as bad and pick up new ones.
Cons
Skill based games are not without problems. When it comes to players attempting to group and find appropriate content it can be quite difficult in these games. How do you decide who can group with who to get experience? Can a journeyman swordswoman group with an adept cleric? How will players know which mobs are appropriate for their level? Will they be frustrated when killing a bunny stops giving skill ups? What will indicate that it is time to go kill plains cats? This would need to be addressed.
When you give players the ability to use every skill you’re going to run into two situations. The first is pretty simple. Players are resourceful and they’re going to find “the best” combination. They will min/max and come up with something more powerful than intended. The flavor of the month syndrome will be a frequent occurrence. On the other end of the spectrum you’ll have new MMO players who are armed with less knowledge that create builds that are pathetic and boring. Frustration might set in quickly and make them hate the game.
Designing in a skill based is also a challenge. You have to look at every possible combination of skills and the power that brings. Building loot is also difficult because knowing the given power level of a character is near impossible. The same can be said for designing encounters. Designers won’t know what “classes” will show up to a raid or group encounter.
Ultimately the skill based system is not for the faint of heart. It requires a lot more player knowledge and design hurdles than level based systems. That said, however, I can see it being a much more popular system if it actually saw some use.
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My skill based experience comes from playing Eve, and looking over at Mortal Online. Your first character will almost always be of piss poor “design” when it comes to skill choice. Despite any goals you might have long term wise, short term things get in the way. People see near shiny and stop going after the further down shinier piece. The New Player Experience in Eve is counteracting this to some extent, less starter skills to wonder what they do, decreased time to train for a while. Also splitting the starter mission into 3 separate parts and giving needed skills and ships for those areas a long the way. It all keeps the short term pleased while trying to teach about the longer term as well.
One way to get around the issue of new players getting frustrated is to clearly label what goes where in terms of metagame categories: tanking, melee DPS, ranged DPS, healing. To some extent Eve has this (gunnery, industry, science) but in other categories you have defence skills with character improvement skills (engineering has shield improving and energy improving skills). If you can group skills into categories that are obvious as to what they do overall your players will more easily be able to build what they want. Come up with some original, flavourful, names for these categories otherwise your RPers get a little pissed when they have to talk about tanking in character.