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[Makrond]

You know it would be cool if you could have like a master swordsmith dwarf and have adventurers from all over the land come to him and give you money/goods in exchange for the master swordsmith's services.

Granularity and usefulness without needing to impact players who don't want their dwarves to specialise in making specific objects. You miss out on a bit of text and a bit of money, maybe a magical artifact or two. Whoop de skip.

Was that really so hard?

[G-Flex]

You mean here, where I put out the arguements against it in a clear and concise and organized manner?

I read that post, and made counter-arguments to those points. That post isn't what I'm complaining about.

Realism is fun because it's fun to be realistic seems to be the sum of your argument. We've spent literally pages trying to illustrate that just because something is "realistic" doesn't mean it's fun.

Huh? I know that. That's why I've given reasons why there is value in it, aside from being "realistic".

His/her point was that a scorecard system would have the same impact to the user. Your rebuttle is that a scorecard system isn't as well designed as your idea. Completely missing the point (unless NK's scorecard suggestion WAS a serious suggestion...  ).

I already explained why the impact would be different, if you care to, I don't know, read.

So, without using the "it's fun because it's realistic" arguement explain how this would add to the game play, how this would deepen the game, how this would cause players to re-think their strategies and fix problems with the skill system that is currently implemented.

I already did. While I find realism to be valuable, "realism is fun" was not the crux of my argument at all.

I'm not going to reiterate points that I've already made. I just plain won't do it again. I'm sorry. And if you don't think points addressing that question have been made, then no, you haven't been reading my posts. I addressed why the concept individualizes dwarves in a way that does impact Fortress Mode gameplay to a degree (and in a positive manner, without having to unnecessarily burden the player), and what effects it could have for creatures outside the context of your own Fortress Mode forts as well, including why it's necessary (in some form or another) in order for DF to fulfill its slated role in simulating the common traits of fantasy fiction. These are points that directly address your question of "What's the point, beside realism", so I don't feel the need to state them in detail again.

[praguepride]

Are you referring to this text bomb?

4 PAGES OF TEXT!!!!

Because I have never seen anyone type up 4 pages of text without saying a single actual idea.

I'll narrate this for you to show that I'm actually reading it. My "summaries" are in red.

You're simply not convincing me this is something that would raise the enjoyment anyone gets out of the game.

NK & my crux aruguement, that your idea would not add any enjoyment to the game.

There have been at least a few people here (as well as certainly a few on the IRC channel, where I've talked about this) who already said they would. I just don't think you grasp why.

You respond by not saying how it would actually improve the game, just that other nameless people agree with you. Who? We don't know, nor is there any quotes to support this, just that "at least a few people" agree with you. Fine, but agree with you on what?

You say that you want to make it so that nobody is forced to care.  (Keep in mind that you can't say "it just means you don't get bonuses", as that's a lie, not getting a reward is the same as being directly punished for all intents and purposes.)  If that is so, then it means that the system is ignorable, and many people on this thread have expressed that they would rather just ignore such a thing.

NK commenting about how you are basically admitting that your idea would have little to no impact on the game. I.e. that nobody would care whether it's in or not because it wouldn't *do* anything except add another screen with even more skills on it. And thus is basically pointless to code in.

I don't know what you mean by this. You aren't "forced to care" in the sense that the difference wouldn't be earth-shatteringly significant; that doesn't mean it wouldn't be significant.

So how would it be significant? If people aren't forced to care about specializations. If there isn't any game impact on micromanaging your specialists as opposed to just mass selecting everyone who can make a bed and telling them to make beds...why even bother putting it in?

I'm also not sure what you mean by "bonuses". Anything I've considered just has dwarves (and other intelligent creatures) specializing a bit more, or has more skills with greater links between them. This is no more about "bonuses" or "penalties" than the current skill system. It would work on similar principles; you do things, you get better at doing that thing. The difference is that the definition of "thing" is just a bit more granular. Yes, this makes it irritating if a dwarf who's made 1,000 cabinets but no coffers can't make a coffer to save his life, which is a drawback of having more granular skill sets in the first place. This is why people are suggesting hierarchical skills, or skill synergies; it would be more fair than the current system. It makes sense for someone to specialize in cabinets if he's worked on those more than anything else, but it also makes sense for that experience to go towards making similar things, like other furniture of that material. This, in concept, is more flexible than the system we have now, where skill levels never affect other skill levels no matter how related they could be said to be (spend your whole life in the current version of DF making metal furniture, toys, chains, weapons, jewelry, and studding objects with the stuff, and you still won't be any better at making armor out of it, which is silly; you should at least get some sort of head start).


The key is, when you have more-specific yet related skills, is to make sure that they affect each other in a reasonable sense (using one skill should help you out with another skill to some degree, depending on how similar the skillset is), while still allowing for enough specialization to be realistic and flesh out the skills a bit.

Here you make several contradictory arguements, it's hard to follow.
First you say that your system would be harsher then the current system because someone who makes cabinets couldn't make coffers.
Then you say that it would be "more fair" then the current system, but it's not. The actual in-game system is very broad. Bed XP is the same as Cabinet XP. That is the most flexible system ever because just about anything in one job family counts towards the other job family. Your system is highly rigid, saying that the only way to level up in cabinet making is to make cabinets OR make 10x as many beds or 1,000x as many other objects made out of wood (if you're referring to skill synergies. This is NOT more flexible. This is a more rigid system as it limits the areas you can gain proficiency in cabinet making.

I'd say that the "gains" of skill synergy are vastly outweighed by the "cost" of losing the current generic system.

Note that you still haven't said why this would be fun, just explained how it would be different.

You say that the reason we should care is that it "individualizes" dwarves.  You say that measuring pupil sizes also individualize dwarves.

This is Nk making a bit of an exaggeration. Basically saying some pointless bit of information like say dwarf bloodtype doesn't individualize dwarves because it doesn't effect anything. A dwarf with O+ bloodtype is the same as a dwarf with AB bloodtype. A dwarf with a pupil size of 1" is the same as a dwarf with a pupil size as 1.1". A dwarf who specializes in bed making (in your system) is the same as a dwarf who specializes in cabinet making in everything but their name. They still can easily do the other's job, it's just that in your system it just takes longer to do it (because XP gain is more rigid). Making things longer isn't a challenge nor does it make things fun.

I never mentioned pupil sizes; you did. Yes, it's one of the more mundane examples, but the amount of work that goes into including that level of detail is extremely small considering the rest of what Toady's been doing. I'm honestly not sure I remember pupil size specifically being in the new raws/descriptions, but hey, if you can correct me on that, go ahead.

No offense, but you completely missed NK's point. She's trying to illustrate her point with an outrageous example that you seem to take literally.

Here's why those answers don't satisfy the question: How often do you really measure a person by their iris size?  Would you really consider two people unique and different if the only difference between those two people are slight differences in eye color or shape?

Again, NK illustrating her point which I have spelled out above.

No, but that will never be the case. Many of the differences between individuals are composed of minute details. Things like how deeply-set someone's eyes are, or how thin their lips are, or how splayed-out their ears are never will be the aesthetic measure of a person when taken individually (unless maybe we're talking political cartoon caricatures), but the amalgamation of them does.

Again, you completely missing the point. Her arguement relates to your skill system. Not how pupil sizes should actually be measured.

For that matter, what about if two carpenters were basically the same, except that one had made more beds?  These are just numbers, they aren't personality. This is exactly why I say that this "individualism" can be matched with a simple scorecard of what dwarves have constructed - it holds the same exact data, with the same impact on how people play.

Again, NK illustrating her point that your system has no real differentiation between your subskills. It's just another pointless item to tally.  For comparison purposes, we'll take my proposed skill system I posted about here: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=50872.msg1080708#msg1080708

Basically, in my system generalization caps at Professional level. So a Legendary Bedmaker would be the ONLY profession that would be able to make masterwork beds. What's more, because each dwarf only has ONE specialization at > Professional levels, if you want a masterwork bed you'd only be able to do it with a dwarf who specialized in bedmaking. Now THAT is an actual impact in the game that individualizes dwarves. Because there is a limit to what each dwarf can do.



Not necessarily, because a "scorecard" doesn't actually do anything. Telling the player "this dwarf has made a billion beds!" doesn't mean much if he's not actually any better at it. You're right that it's "just numbers", but this is a video game. Everything is numbers, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say by that. The point is that creatures being able to specialize in a relatively specific job is interesting, and there's no reason to assume that it would be completely inconsequential or force players to micromanage stuff more than they want to. A player could have a dwarf work exclusively on barrels his entire life and have some really damn good barrels at the expense of that dwarf doing other work quite as well, or he could have carpenters generalize more, such that he doesn't have to rely on individual specialists quite as much.

Also, there's the fact that some notion of interrelated skills (or the other things I mentioned above in this post, like skill hierarchies or what have you) is going to be necessary, because Toady keeps adding skills and certainly isn't going to stop now. There are several new military skills in the upcoming version, for instance, and there will obviously be more civilian skills in the future, considering that not all planned professions even exist yet, like teaching or playing an instrument.

I think one thing that's tripping you up here is that distinguishing barrel-makers from cabinet-makers is not a new concept, it's just an expansion of the current one. Dwarves are already "specialized"; they already have different skills at different levels. The point is to add granularity to the system (or otherwise handle a greater set of skills) that makes it work.

This is getting harder and harder to read, but basically, you're saying that NK's scorecard system is a bad idea. Which is funny because she's basically saying that is all that your system boils down to. Funny, isn't it.

Rather than distinguishing dwaves by eye size or craft_barrel_count, there are about a hundred better ways to personalize dwarves.  As it already stands, the single most readily apparent difference between any one dwarf and another is already their skill/occupation.

NK's summary. Hope I don't have to clear this up...

This is only a very, very, very broad distinction. It's not individualization at all, it's just categorization. Individualization is when Urist is Urist and cannot be confused for Bomrek, not just when carpenters are carpenters and can't be confused for farmers.

No idea what you're saying here, but I can tell it has nothing to do with the *fun* value.

(It is the sole determinate of the color they have, which is the way of distinguishing one from another without cursoring over them.)  Meanwhile, I am suggesting, as a potential alternative means of individualizing dwarves, that dwarves have preferred hobbies, sports, and means of decorating their homes, as well as potentially dividing them by social class.  (Happy, Neek?)

NK giving examples of how dwarf individualization would actually be noticable in game and not buried on some obscure stat screen.

Those are good too, and there's no reason why those can't exist. However, individualization should apply to the skills a dwarf has, too; currently, in terms of skill, pretty much all Grand Master Masons are exactly the same. This simply isn't good enough for a fantasy world simulator, because we would never, ever have, say, a master swordsmith, because hey, he'd be just as good at making hammers and axes and flails and pikes. The concept of specialization occurs very often in fantasy fiction, especially with regards to characters who have supernatural or otherwise abnormally-high levels of skill. This is true of both military and civilian skills. Fantasy is full of people who are extraordinarily good at making or doing rather specific things.

You saying skills should have individualization to them. Which is great but your system doesn't do that. Sure it subdivides what you gain XP in, but it doesn't actually differntiate dwarves to a significant degree. Again, my system is an good example of how to make the differentiation noticable. Only a specialized dwarf can make masterwork items. That's a pretty big impact.

If the only reason we should be wanting to go through making a set of sub-skills is to differentiate dwarves, I don't see this as being a particularly good way of doing it.

NK saying that if differentiation & individualization is your goal, then your idea doesn't accomplish that.

It's not. It's about differentiating them in specific ways. There are many facets to a character, and different ones require different things in order for them to be considered characteristics of an individual and not just broad traits. Yeah, it's great and adds a lot of individual personality if a dwarf enjoys certain materials, colors, decorations, hobbies, and has other behavioral inclinations and preferences, but something's off-kilter if the only way you can describe his skills is by saying "Master Armorsmith". The skills a dwarf has calls for individualization, too, regardless of what happens with the other aspects of his personality, especially considering how important those skills are in defining a character from a social standpoint; it's wonderful to have more trivial/personal aspects of the guy fleshed out, but that's not always what matters, and often isn't. If I'm an Adventure Mode character, it's much more interesting to trek 500 miles to find a man who can forge the greatest and most legendary spear in all the land, and less if I just find a "legendary weaponsmith" who can create any type of weapon he feels like at that same level of skill, for the same reason why this is so often the case in fiction.

You arguing that there should be differentiation in skills. Fine, NK & I agree with that. We want skills to be more personal and individual on a dwarf by dwarf basis. But your system doesn't do that. THAT is what we've been saying for pages now.

Also note no mention of how any of this is fun

If the reason we should be coming up with ways to differentiate dwarves is because that is the way that Toady wants to go (and isn't the purpose of a Suggestion box/thread to suggest doing things that people AREN'T thinking of doing?) then I would think that the sheer fact that, unlike, say, farming improvements, where people agree more complexity is welcome, but disagree on implimentation, the sheer contentiousness over the very notion that this skill system should exist at all, much less what it should look like, would send Toady onto other means of achieving his desired effect.

NK bringing up the arguement that skills as a whole could be going away...

We're actually throwing a lot of ideas around regarding skills, and what is necessary for them, and possible ideas of how to implement those things. I believe I've already described WHY it's necessary to do something, if only due to the current and future inflation of the skill set dwarves possess (which isn't going to just go away), and I honestly don't think that anything I've proposed is that bad, if a bit vaguely explained.

Besides, a lot of things about this game are contentious, but popular opinion/controversy isn't always right. You're not the guy designing the game here, and neither am I; we don't always know what will or won't work, or else we'd be the ones doing the design here. The fact is that we cannot positively know how good/bad such general suggestions are relative to how well Toady could guess that, and so much of it is up to the specific implementation that making broad statements like "these ideas are all horrible" or "these ideas are all amazing" just isn't a good idea most of the time.

Besides, I've seen plenty of cases during development of this version where people have gotten rather antsy about what they consider things that were bad for development while obviously not knowing very much about the design goals of the game, and even then, people tend to overreact a lot to ideas regarding change, especially if it hits a hot-button issue for them. And even if you don't like an idea, nobody's going to like every single thing about Dwarf Fortress, and some people not liking a feature doesn't even mean it's a bad one. DF is a niche product and will probably remain that way. I'm not saying that more people liking an idea is bad, or that accessibility is a terrible thing; I'm just trying to be realistic in saying that Dwarf Fortress isn't for everyone and never will be, and that, as a result of this and its stated design goals, there are going to be ideas that help push the game towards its ideal state despite a significant percentage of people disliking it. If Toady listened and followed through every single time people clamored about what they didn't like, we sure as hell wouldn't have things like appearance modifiers in the next version, which I can bet you right now far fewer people will be complaining about once it's actually out; in fact, I've barely heard any complaints at all lately, mostly just when that stuff was first announced.

You also might have to consider that maybe you're not as good as Toady at designing his game. Hell, I'm not either. None of us are. There are going to be times where the community, to some significant degree, is simply mistaken about whether or not something would be a good idea, especially since fans/users/players tend to be a lot more short-sighted than the developer himself, especially since the vast, vast majority of them aren't developers, and none are the developer of this game. Yes, I'm including myself here; I could very well be wrong myself. Popularity of an idea is not a very good judge.


You making a typical statement of "it doesn't matter what we think because Toady does what Toady does and just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it a bad idea blah blah blah.

God that took awhile. Anyway, the summary of this WHOLE text is that you want individualization and personalization for skills. Great, so do I, and NK probably does as well. NOBODY IS ARGUING ABOUT THAT.

However, as NK has hinted at, your system is basically a big score card. "oh, he made a barrel, he gets 1 xp in barrel making."

...ok. So what?

"Well, that means that he gets .5XP in woodworking in general and .5XP in making beds out of stone"

...ok. So what?

"Well...that makes him different from other dwarves."

 

Nowhere do you explain how this would be fun, nor how this would actually make Dwarf A different from Dwarf B, other then one might have higher bed-making XP then the other. But if the other can easily catch up then again, it doesn't matter...

[G-Flex]

Christ, this is getting bloated.

You respond by not saying how it would actually improve the game, just that other nameless people agree with you. Who? We don't know, nor is there any quotes to support this, just that "at least a few people" agree with you. Fine, but agree with you on what?

There, I wasn't responding to the arguments that it wouldn't make the game more fun, I was responding to the argument that nobody would enjoy it, which is clearly false if anyone would.

So how would it be significant? If people aren't forced to care about specializations. If there isn't any game impact on micromanaging your specialists as opposed to just mass selecting everyone who can make a bed and telling them to make beds...why even bother putting it in?

Not being forced to care about something doesn't mean you can't care about it. I gave specific examples of alternative styles of play, involving more or less focus on dwarven skill specialization, and how it's not something you'd really be forced into taking advantage of, and that if you didn't, it wouldn't really make much of a difference to you in the end, but that if you did, it could be useful. I specifically mentioned what sort of impact this might have.

Here you make several contradictory arguements, it's hard to follow.
First you say that your system would be harsher then the current system because someone who makes cabinets couldn't make coffers.

No, you misinterpreted that. I said that it would be irritating if that were true. I did not say that someone who only made cabinets shouldn't be able to make coffers. I said that it would be an irritating thing and should not be the case, and that this is why skills being interconnected (or specializations of other skills, or synergies, or SOME such system) is a good idea if greater granularity in skill is ever to happen.

Then you say that it would be "more fair" then the current system, but it's not. The actual in-game system is very broad. Bed XP is the same as Cabinet XP. That is the most flexible system ever because just about anything in one job family counts towards the other job family.
Your system is highly rigid, saying that the only way to level up in cabinet making is to make cabinets OR make 10x as many beds or 1,000x as many other objects made out of wood (if you're referring to skill synergies. This is NOT more flexible. This is a more rigid system as it limits the areas you can gain proficiency in cabinet making.

You're not grasping what I mean by "flexible" or "fair". In terms of features, the current system isn't flexible at all. The current system, where every skill is completely isolated from each other, is in fact the most rigid possible system you can have. By "flexible" I don't mean in the sense of what any individual dwarf can do, I meant in the sense of how the system works. The system would be more flexible because things are connected to each other and skill levels can interact in a meaningful fashion. It's more flexible from a design point of view, is what I meant; the system can simply do more. Another reason it's more flexible is because if you have skills that very rarely get used, a dwarf might still be able to get experience in it from a highly-related yet more-used skill, meaning that dwarves aren't as unskilled at things they only have to do seldomly.

A dwarf who specializes in bed making (in your system) is the same as a dwarf who specializes in cabinet making in everything but their name. They still can easily do the other's job, it's just that in your system it just takes longer to do it (because XP gain is more rigid). Making things longer isn't a challenge nor does it make things fun.

"Making things longer"? What?

A dwarf who specializes in cabinet-making is different from a dwarf who specializes in bed-making because they are better at different tasks. Yes, either one could train more in the requisite area in order to become more proficient at the other's specialty, but by that logic, you might as well say that a miner is the same as a farmer, since the only thing stopping you from turning a farmer into a miner is time as well.

In other words, your point here that a dwarf with specialty A and a dwarf with specialty B are the same because they'd only need to take a longer period of time to reach the other's level of experience applies to all skills in general, necessarily.

Again, you completely missing the point. Her arguement relates to your skill system. Not how pupil sizes should actually be measured.

I was referring to how even small differences can make a big difference when considered as a whole.

Basically, in my system generalization caps at Professional level. So a Legendary Bedmaker would be the ONLY profession that would be able to make masterwork beds. What's more, because each dwarf only has ONE specialization at > Professional levels, if you want a masterwork bed you'd only be able to do it with a dwarf who specialized in bedmaking. Now THAT is an actual impact in the game that individualizes dwarves. Because there is a limit to what each dwarf can do.

An "every dwarf only gets one specialty" is an extremely cludgy and arbitrary way to do things. Why only one? Why can't a dwarf work ten times as hard to specialize in something else? What about creatures who live for a thousand years; why can't they put those years to work improving another specialty skill to that level?

This is getting harder and harder to read, but basically, you're saying that NK's scorecard system is a bad idea. Which is funny because she's basically saying that is all that your system boils down to. Funny, isn't it.

No, I was explaining the differences.

No idea what you're saying here, but I can tell it has nothing to do with the *fun* value.

Individualization of intelligent creatures is one of the things the game relies on in order to be fun. If you'd care to look at any of Toady's development goals, plenty of them rely on creatures having individualized personalities, motivations, history, and skills.

NK giving examples of how dwarf individualization would actually be noticable in game and not buried on some obscure stat screen.

The effects of skill specialization shouldn't be "buried on some obscure stat screen" either. If it's done well, then there should be tangible results with regards to what that creature produces in his skills.

You saying skills should have individualization to them. Which is great but your system doesn't do that. Sure it subdivides what you gain XP in, but it doesn't actually differntiate dwarves to a significant degree. Again, my system is an good example of how to make the differentiation noticable. Only a specialized dwarf can make masterwork items. That's a pretty big impact.

Limiting how far a dwarf can go without specializing makes a certain level of sense, yes, but there are ways to do this without a cludgy "one specialty per creature only, please" system like what you propose. This is a computer game; arbitrarily complicated math can be used.

Say a weaponsmith wants to specialize in swords. At low levels, experience in weaponsmithing could easily apply more-or-less equally to weaponsmithing in general no matter what you make (e.g. making a few swords makes you better in making swords, and better at making spears by almost the same degree), since you're still learning the basics, which apply to more general item types, whereas at high skill levels, you're necessarily working at extremely particular applications of skills in order to improve yourself, so you can have the experience points from making, say, swords, count far, far less towards making other items.

In other words, when a dwarf does a very particular thing (making swords), the experience applied to the general thing (making other weapons) drops off asymptotically as the dwarf's skill level in that particular thing increases.

This way, a dwarf can still increase his Weaponsmithing or Carpentry skill to a rather respectable level by making just about anything within those categories he wants, but eventually, the ability he gains in those fields become less and less general, applying more and more to just the item types he's working with. So your carpenter becomes a rather decent carpenter overall just by making beds and cabinets, by once he's fairly high in skill, if he wants to get to REALLY good at making beds specifically, he'll have to focus on that more to the exclusion of other things.

I'm glad you brought up your own system, because it made me think of that idea, which takes some of the concepts you brought up but applies them in a manner that seems a bit less artificial, and more organic. In the end, a dwarf would still have to specialize in order to become Super-Ultra-Legendary at making some particular type of item, but his ability to make beds would initially still be given a very significant boost by making cabinets, since the skill gains would be flatter across-the-board at lower skill levels.

This might sound too complicated for the player to deal with, but from the player's perspective, it doesn't really need to be complicated at all; as a player, you just need to know that a dwarf making specific things raises other related things in a similar proportion near the beginning (he's learning the ropes), but drops off significantly as very high skill levels are reached and he starts specializing.

You arguing that there should be differentiation in skills. Fine, NK & I agree with that. We want skills to be more personal and individual on a dwarf by dwarf basis. But your system doesn't do that. THAT is what we've been saying for pages now.

Also note no mention of how any of this is fun

Of course it results in more individualization, because dwarves' skills vary much more on a more granular level and involve more specialization. Making creatures' traits more precise will individualize them more, put simply.

As far as it being fun is concerned, I did in fact mention how it's much more interesting in a fantasy world for skill specialization to exist, in Fortress Mode and outside of it, and that's where a lot of the fun in this game comes from. If you can have and interact with more interesting characters who are capable of having more characteristics in terms of skill that tend to be seen in fantasy fiction, then that's more fun for the player.

NK bringing up the arguement that skills as a whole could be going away...

I was under the impression that NK was referring to the particular type of skill system I was referring to, making an argument that it's contentious enough to not be implemented.

You making a typical statement of "it doesn't matter what we think because Toady does what Toady does and just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it a bad idea blah blah blah.

No, of course it matters what we think. Toady wants to hear what we want to think, because we have good ideas sometimes. My point was more that we aren't necessarily the best at judging which of those ideas are good for the game, so popular opinion is a poor way to gauge what should or shouldn't be in the game; that's not a very good route to go with game development.

Nowhere do you explain how this would be fun, nor how this would actually make Dwarf A different from Dwarf B, other then one might have higher bed-making XP then the other. But if the other can easily catch up then again, it doesn't matter...

The "easily" is something you're reading into my posts, but that isn't there. Yes, given the current system, it probably would be easy, but we're talking about changing the system anyway. You came up with some ideas for circumventing this, and I expanded upon that with my own earlier in this post.

Also, dwarven skills being too easy to gain is a problem in general, I'd say. Some skills just go up way too damn fast, for instance, and you seem to acknowledge that dwarves being able to trivially gain significant amounts of skill in a short amount of time does lead to there being issues when you try to specialize them at all, hence your ideas regarding skill specialization.



Also, I can't believe I got the formatting of that right on the first try.

... Er, wait, no I didn't. Damn.

Anyway, yelling aside, I think I came up with a decent idea somewhere in this post, that would allow for specialization of skills at high levels while having it actually mean something, and without making it trivial to achieve, but still having it fit a general skill system instead of being an "exception to the rule" special-feature sort of deal.

[Impaler[WrG]]

AHHH EYES BLEEDING, OH THE DWARVANITY OF IT ALL!!!

[teloft]

My grandfathers father was a Cooper, then later became a farmer.


I like the Potential ideas of Synergy, Generalisation, Specialisation, Production- and Material familiarity.

To incorporate these all in one system would be the cool thing.

On Material familiarity

So that I get points in wood, and thus I am better at working with wood.  I get points in fire and I am better at working with flames.  So at the wood-burner workshop I can gain these points. The fire points can then also be useful at the smelter, and the wood points would be used everywhere some wood is used.

I would also like it to be petty complicated, but without needing much player action. So the type of wood used will mater.  So, I have a oak that is wood, so I get points for working with oak and also points for wood. So I am better at working with oak wood than other wood.

Now for the wood cuting, lets say I use a axe chopping down the living oak wood... I should get a lot of points for the ... axe, chopping, living, oak and wood.

Ill stop now...

ok, the cooper

so that the making of the item would grant points in making that item, using that workshop, using wood, using that type of wood, using these tools ...

It works...

[teloft]

now a principle comes to mind

Mediocrity begin the enemy of excellence

So a Cooper will probably make barrels in quantity of mediocre quality for life. ...

[praguepride]

Christ, this is getting bloated.

I don't know what to say. Again, with all that text you have not said what this would actually add to the game (besides a generalized post about how the game is fun because dwarves are individuals...)

I give up. I tried, I tried really hard but it just didn't stick. It never sticks

[kotekzot]

Christ, this is getting bloated.

I don't know what to say. Again, with all that text you have not said what this would actually add to the game (besides a generalized post about how the game is fun because dwarves are individuals...)

I give up. I tried, I tried really hard but it just didn't stick. It never sticks

Yes, it's quite similar to a certain suggestion about a personality tag or something.

In any case, I say "nay". Having more things to micromanage is not something I would enjoy. If the dwarves were smart enough to do all the bollocky in-between stuff after I ordered a bunch of barrels to be made, then I would've been the idea some thought.

[G-Flex]

I definitely agree that anything that further complicates skills would require the game to have much better features for managing dwarves, in order to avoid micromanagement hell.

I don't know what to say. Again, with all that text you have not said what this would actually add to the game (besides a generalized post about how the game is fun because dwarves are individuals...)

The thing I'm confused about is that my proposal is, for the most part, just a suggestion on dwarven skill specialization. You've suggested a system for doing this yourself, and seem to be fine with the general concept, so why are you saying that it wouldn't add anything to the game? I mean, I even threw in an idea for a system that would seem to address both our concerns.

Obviously, you seem to think skill specialization of some form adds something to the game, and I'm here trying to work out a system that does that in an organic way that makes a fair bit of sense, but also makes specialization, well, special enough to matter and not trivial to each, while also not bogging the player down with it, so that it only really matters at high skill levels anyway.

[Silverionmox]

Requiring specialists to adequately perform basic tasks in a fortress is of course no one's intention. Dwarves of average skill, using average equipment and materials ought to be able to run an average fortress just fine.

However, the player who wants to do the effort to specialize an industry or two ought to be able to. If micromanaging the entire fortress makes it a full-time job, that player deserves it . DF shouldn't be a game where the goal is to max out skills or can expect to get a legendary on every profession in every fortress. There's just not much else going on to do right now.

[G-Flex]

That's essentially what I'm trying to get at with my revised suggestion: The ability for dwarves to become specialized when they reach high very skill levels (and organically, just through doing what they do), but without it mattering so much at skill levels lower than that. This way, you don't really have to worry about it as a player most of the time, and dwarves will become specialized simply by virtue of doing something a lot.

The micromanagey part is the part where if you want to take best advantage of this, you have to say "Master Weaponsmith A now works on sword-type weapons, and Master Weaponsmith B now works on spear-type weapons". Obviously, we need better control over dwarves for this to work.

Of course, any idea that adds more micromanagement to the game will be met with a bit of scorn, because of how much there already is, which is why I say that we definitely need better tools to mitigate that (which are planned, of course) before it would work well enough that people could take advantage of it without pulling their hair out.

[Silverionmox]

A simple general order, like "When using resource x, only use the dwarf with the highest skill available." would solve a lot already.

[G-Flex]

Yeah, something like "If making item X, prioritize so the job is given to the best dwarf at making item X who's available at the time". Of course, he'd still have to get better at it in the *first* place, but that might happen circumstantially.


Breaking it down to individual items might be a bit much, though. It depends on how much granularity we really need. I can see "wooden furniture vs. wooden containers vs. wooden weapons (etc.)" working fine without the need of separating skill for every single item, at least not in all cases. In terms of, say, weaponsmithing, the same might apply, with the specializations being broken down in terms of what skill is necessary to use the item (so you specialize in, say, swords, and not two-handed swords/shortswords/scimitars/etc.). It all depends on how much is really necessary, and how much it'll be to deal with.


It's kind of odd how some skills already have more granularity than others. For instance, glassmaking is an EXTREMELY broad skill: The same skill applies to making absolutely anything possible out of glass, whereas with most other skills making similar objects, the skills are broken up a bit more.

[LegoLord]

That's because glass is very flexible in terms of what can be made from it.  Corkscrew from glass?  Doable.  Corkscrew from wood?  Doable.  Corkscrew from stone?  Neigh-impossible.  You can try, but depending on stone type it would be extremely fragile, break during construction, take forever, or any combination of the three.

Once cool, however, glass is very inflexible, hence why smaller weapons and some thinner furniture items aren't made from it.  It'd be a hazard just to make.