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Author Topic: Natural talent  (Read 1054 times)

Deboche

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Natural talent
« on: January 26, 2015, 06:59:27 am »

With the introduction of poetry and music, shouldn't we consider adding a natural talent setting? No matter how long and hard people work, we can't all be Mozarts, daVincis, Teslas and so on.

Perhaps it should exist for all skills that produce something of varying quality and act like a cap on how good the stuff they produce is.

And perhaps we could add "Creativity" which would affect engraving, crafting, music, poetry, clothesmaking and all creative activities. Complicated to implement but perhaps we could discuss it.

Obivously architecture, mechanics, medicine and so on also have a component of creativity but since dwarven technology doesn't move forward, the skill would be irrelevant in non-artistic fields.
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Splint

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Re: Natural talent
« Reply #1 on: January 26, 2015, 07:49:13 am »

Creativity is a thing already, being a soul attribute that affects quality of work (with units with higher creativity consistently producing higher quality goods.)

Although a sort of random "talent" thing independent of castes would be kinda nice.

vjmdhzgr

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Re: Natural talent
« Reply #2 on: January 26, 2015, 11:42:47 am »

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Attribute Just scroll down to the big table near the bottom to see all the skills affected by attributes. Creativity is a big one, but there's more that affect skills. Attributes can be trained, but there's probably a cap to them which causes what you wanted of some dwarves being better than others at stuff. For an example of ridiculously high attributes in action, there's a story where hell was unleashed upon a fortress and the demons killed everyone except for one child who just dodged every attack from the demon's for nearly a year. That would result from incredibly high natural agility and endurance and is quite amazing. So, yeah this system mostly exists in the game already.
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Deboche

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Re: Natural talent
« Reply #3 on: January 26, 2015, 01:08:19 pm »

I see. The suggestion would become getting rid of serial masterpieces then, which is nothing new. Oh well...
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red_kangaroo

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Re: Natural talent
« Reply #4 on: January 27, 2015, 02:55:45 am »

Maybe the talents (and weaknesses) could be related to how fast a dwarf can learn the given skill?

For example, a dwarf can have high Creativity, but he has more of a talent for drawing than crafting and he is horrible when let into the kitchen. Thus, he would gain Engraver skill faster than any craft skills, even though both would use his high Creativity, and Cooking would be very hard for him to train up.
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Naryar

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Re: Natural talent
« Reply #5 on: January 27, 2015, 08:30:00 am »

Random talents would be nice.

It would be nice also that they would be hidden from the player first, and will be discovered as the talented dwarf works in his talented job.

Dwarves being already skilled in the skill they are talented into should have their talent shown clearly.