Tutoring and Leadership Options

[Minthos]

This is an idea for a system where players with high skill can guide and train players with lower skill. I combine the two things because they would be very similar in implementation and most probably affect each other in some way or another.

It is based on my very dynamic idea of how skills should be limited, which I've not yet explained on this forum.

I don't know exactly how it should be implemented, but let's say a party leader always is the "leader/teacher" for everyone in the party. If the leader/teacher has a skill higher than his students/followers, they get a to their effective skill level when they use that skill. The leadership bonus should be dependent of the leadership skill of the leader and the difference between the leader's skill and the follower's skill, but maximum let's say 20% (depending on how much skill points matter in actual game play). The tutoring bonus should be similar, but higher (max bonus perhaps around 100% somewhere, if the master has both the skill you train and tutoring skill at very high level, and the student is at least 30 skill points (if 100 or so is about max) below the master).

Should teaching be allowed without actually doing anything?
Well - if it should, then something should also be done to prevent afk learning. I suggest a limit to how much you can be taught - that you can sit with a tutor and learn let's say max 5 skill points in a specific skill before you have to go out and actually practice your skill on your own until you have gained some skill, before you can benefit from more theory from a master.

Leadership and tutoring skill should increase when used, just like all other skills. A player should get to choose whether he wants to focus on leading and/or teaching, and doing either should drain his mental capacity. Higher leadership/tutoring skill should increase the number of people he can instruct at once and the effectiveness of his instructions, and decrease the energy he has to spend to instruct.

A leader should also recieve a little bit of skill in return when he instructs people, to a maximum of let's say 5% (max 5% of the tutor's skill points can come from teaching others). So if you want to reach maximum level in a skill, you instruct someone in it, at least a little bit. But then, with my skill system, the maximum limit for a skill isn't a fixed number but rather a result of several variables including your skill points total in all skills, so if someone wanted to focus on one skill only, they could probably achieve higher level in that skill than someone who trains a lot of other skills as well, such as tutoring and leadership.

As I brifly mentioned, the number of people a leader/teacher can instruct should be dependent of his leadership and tutoring skills, and if the limit is exceeded, then the amount of bonus should decrease drasticaly.

I haven't given this a lot of thought, and of course the formulas and variables depend on how the rest of the game and skill system works, but this should be a decent description of what I have in mind. Maybe some kind of system with formal apprenticeship or leadership ranks is in place.. Ideas are welcome :)

[exocrine]

I think that a teacher/student system could work really well, but there are a few things I'd be concerned about.



I'd have to say not. Being able to gain skill just by sitting around screws up the balance of risk vs. reward. In any given situation, more risk should mean more reward, less risk = less reward, no risk = no reward. By allowing a player to gain skill without really doing anything, you're giving them a reward without any real risk (or effort, for that matter).

The other thing is that teaching/learning should not be so efficient or heavily bonused that anyone who doesn't take part becomes hopelessly outpaced. Or that, for what ever reason, it becomes the only viable playstyle.

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In regards to your rough draft system, are you suggesting that the teacher/leader get these bonuses as well as the student/follower? That doesn't seem to make sense to me. Shouldn't the teacher/leader be less effective (and learning less) than he would normally be? After all, in addition to doing his usual thing, he has to instruct or lead as well.

Anyway, any specifics about a system like this are dependant on having a skill system to base it on. So hurry up and post about your skills idea already, inquiring minds want to know. Then again, I'm one to talk... I have 11 unfinished ideas saved as txt files on my hard drive. :)

[Minthos]

In regards to your rough draft system, are you suggesting that the teacher/leader get these bonuses as well as the student/follower? That doesn't seem to make sense to me. Shouldn't the teacher/leader be less effective (and learning less) than he would normally be? After all, in addition to doing his usual thing, he has to instruct or lead as well.

No, that's not what I'm suggesting at all. I'm suggesting that the teacher/leader gets his very own, very small, specific bonus as experience from leading/teaching, in addition to the skill points he get in leadership/tutoring skill.

I also mentioned mental strain for the leader/teacher, which is an important part of my skills idea. I don't know exactly how it should be implemented, but increased mental strain should make him generally slower and less effective at everything he does, because he has to focus on multiple things at once.

[exocrine]

Ok, I had a little trouble understanding your first post, so I wasn't sure. What you mention is pretty much what I was thinking myself.

On the subject of mental strain, ironically enough one of those 11 ideas of mine deals with that. But in the interests of preventing a thread hijack I'll leave the specifics for another time. :)

Getting back on topic though, I think teaching and leading should be more seperate than what you seem to be suggesting. Instead of teaching in a regular group, I think it should be done in a smaller specialized "class". This leaves Leading as the default role of whoever is the leader of any given group.

Forming a Class would be an ability unlocked through the Teaching skill. A class would form in the same way as a regular group, but only those players the teacher can teach are able to join the group. Each class would be focused on a single skill, for which skill growth rates would be boosted for all students based on the skill levels of the teacher and the number of students. That is to say, that a single student will learn faster than a group of three students. The more students a teacher is instructing, the smaller the bonus each student recieves, the worse the teacher's own performance is, and the more mentally draining it is. However as the teaching skill improves, these side effects lessen.

The same might also apply to a Leader, with larger groups being harder to manage. Or instead of a passive bonus based on skill level, perhaps as the leadership skill increases, it unlocks group-focused abilities?

A nice side effect of having Leading be mentally draining is that the big, dumb "tank" types will naturally make for poor leaders, while a quicker thinking character will excel. Just like in real life.

[Japheth]

Are you suggesting, then, that skills would be gained in game play (i.e. after "class") at an increased rate for a fixed number of points above the students' previous skill score depending on variables such as teacher skill level, student skill level, teacher teching skill level, (student intelligence?), number of students, and amount of time spent actively in class?
What is "actively in class"?
I like these ideas.
Japheth

[exocrine]

That's pretty much how I was imagining it, with a small exception.

What I had pictured was a "practical experience" approach. For instance to teach swordsmanship a teacher would have his students fight mobs with their swords. Theoretically the teacher would stand by the sidelines, guiding and correcting his students. The same approach would work for any skill. For a crafting skill, the teacher would watch his students making whatever, and correct mistakes etc.

The other way to do it would be a classroom style "theory" approach like you described. The problem with doing it that way is how do you prevent people from starting a class, and then going AFK while their toon builds up a learning bonus?

[Maxwell]

The only way I can see preventing people going afk is to have a test afterwords that would be in the chat box. Another way would be if there was a way to tell if the character was AFK. This would mean they could not just sit there, but it means that they need to continue to press a button and if they go AFK then they would be eject from the class.

[exocrine]

That would probably work, but to be honest that sounds like just another a boring time sink. The way I see it, if it's not going to be fun in and of itself then there's no point in including it.

[Maxwell]

I personally do not think there should be a theory part of this. I think I should all be taught out in the world. A person watches someone battle mobs and then comments on certain styles that they do.

[exocrine]

I have to disagree about passive learning, it might make sense from a realism standpoint but I think it's a bad idea.

Like you mentioned, it would have to be slow. On top of that it would need some sort of limit, to prevent players from leaving their clients running overnight for big skill point gains. But if it's going to be slow and limited, what's the point of including it in addition to active learning? It certainly won't have much impact on advancement speed, and if that's the issue you could just tweak the bonuses for active learning. The only benefit that I can see would be that it's realistic. But learning/teaching should be a fairly transparent process, so that realism would almost always go unnoticed. The way I see it, the addition of passive learning is extra coding time that doesn't really add anything to the game.

Or am I missing something?

[Maxwell]

It's like if you just going over the fine points of battle with your teacher. They just tell you what needs work. There really would not be a whole lot of skill gain. Its like to work on a skill you fight in battle for 95% of the time while on the way back you get pointers of what to do better more like techniques you could use. That would make you want to sit there and read what they have to say. That is 5% of the skill point. Then you go out to practice and understand what your doing wrong in order to teach that skill. then it starts over.

Something like that. This is what I understod. It is quick. So sorry if it does not make sense.

[exocrine]

I know what you're talking about, and I admit, it's realistic. I'm just not sure how much added utility passive learning will bring to the game when it's always linked with active learning. Downtime for travelling or healing will happen in classes anyway, so why go to the trouble of writing the extra code for passive learning?

[Maxwell]

I understand what you are saying now. And yes I fully agree with you.