[Suggestion] Adding skills to epoch

[Pertinax]

Im sure this has been mentioned before, ill repost this thing i wrote on the BMRF forums here, as i think it would add something fun to the mod.

 

Interesting stuff id like to see added in epoch would be skills, like climbing, crafting skills, specific weapon skills, which go up as you use them. Books could upgrade those skills maybe, only to a certain point, like it works with vehicles. Like climbing (which raises climbing speed on slopes, could be called fitness or athletics) book1 raises your skill to 10/100, no more or something. Youd get more wood planks out of wood with experience, more meat out of gutted animals, cut down crafting time, If they ever add punching and kicking to dayz/epoch, hand to hand combat book that raises that skill, for slightly more dmg as skill goes up, etc..

Since im on a run, you could have expert skills that open up an actual new move/new skill functionality. So for example, 100/100 shotgun lets you jump to a prone position, and fire at what the reticule was aiming at when the skill was activated, 100/100 hand to hand opens up a skill that has more chances of breaking a leg, 100/100 wall building, slight chance of building a wall that has more HP(where hypothetically the main skill is the speed at which you build the wall), 100/100 cooking beef, food that keeps you full for a longer time, things like that. Getting a bit overcooked here but hey, haha. Dat stream of consciousness. (You could go banananzas with this and add something at every 25/100 tier)

Nothing too op on weapons, maybe only reloading times slightly increased, slight steadier aim, slightly more critical hits (if thats even in the game) with each weapon having its own skill level, or at least each sub category of guns having them.

Some of this could be "exploited" by 2 friendlies on each other, but you could view it in an RPG way as people practicing in a dojo, medical students having access to wounded people to guesstimate the prognostic, etc.. A diminishing return routine should probably be added to all this, at least for some skills.

The current rate of things could be the mid-level of skilled up skills maybe.

This would basically create soft "classes" as people raise their skills. Medic, cook, crafter, sniper, close combat expert (shotgun) etc

If custom buildings were ever modded in for vanilla, books would be a good loot for them. Farm houses near barns for shed building, deerhuts for gutting animals, secluded places near big mountains with climbing books, police stations for firearms books, loggers workcamp for woodcutting book, a library that its main loot is books (with a super rare book that slightly increases the rate at which a skill category is learned, like example "Grandmas cooking techniques" is a book that slightly raises the rate at which cooking beef, rabbit, chicken etc is learned), you could have a firing stand with targets that lets you skill up a weapon to, off the top of my head, 10/100 (with skillups each time you hit the target from X distance), etc etc

 

If you could link skill progress to names, bonus would be you could screw someone over or be anonymous as you do something and change your name but you would lose all the skills of that character

 

I have other stuff i could suggest, ill go into it more if thats something epoch devs ever envision possible/wanted for the mod.

[HARLAN]

Arma is not an MMO engine and does not support these types of ideas.

[Randomness]

Arma is not an MMO engine and does not support these types of ideas.

 

However it could be possible to make someone good in a certain field, by giving it a chance of fail in the other fields. In example, in real life one might have some mechanical experience but have no clue how to properly apply a bloodbag. There could be a character field for being experienced in something (an integer will do), and some in game checks on that integer, whereas a medical background would give a 100% success rate of giving blood, if one would have a mechanical backgorund, this chance would be 75%. 

 

This would not be a leveling system, however it would add a bit of roleplaying perhaps.

[Eegore]

  "Skill systems" are pretty hard to implement and I personally don't see a reason for them.  I'm willing to accept things like faster crafting times after making so many items but I'd stay away from anything combat related.

 

  "Critical" or more damage hits aren't in the game and shouldn't be artificially manufactured. 

 

  If you want to be better at killing someone then actually be better at it.  Practice and aim for the head more.  No need for a magic algorithm that makes your bullet better than the other guys.

[Pertinax]

  "Skill systems" are pretty hard to implement and I personally don't see a reason for them.  I'm willing to accept things like faster crafting times after making so many items but I'd stay away from anything combat related.

 

  "Critical" or more damage hits aren't in the game and shouldn't be artificially manufactured. 

 

  If you want to be better at killing someone then actually be better at it.  Practice and aim for the head more.  No need for a magic algorithm that makes your bullet better than the other guys.

It has nothing to do with magic, if you throw a baseball every day and your aim gets better and better, is that magic?

 

So yea, if you use a shotgun over and over in real life, youll eventually get better at reloading it faster. Its not about making things ez mode, i specifically said no OP stuff. Its simulating a character getting better and better at something hes practicing.

 

Again, nothing to do with magic

 

I mean, my suggestion is the exact same thing that the mod added for vehicles. The vehicle "levels up"

 

 If devs thinks it doesnt fit though, well thats that. Just wanted to suggest it, thought would add more to the mod to do throughout a "playthrough", end game and fend off boredom to reduce the risk of people killing nakeds in the south just cause,

[Sli]

The intent of this is good, but I think it has the danger of being overcooked. I think you would want to keep it limited to only a handful of skills that are distinct from each other but useful to a particular play style, rather than ending up with a system that begins to augment what could be considered a hack (reducing recoil, improving ads). Specifically the gun skills you mention I think would end up being quite cumbersome, typically I find the more I use a gun the better I get at judging ranges, timing and knowing the situations to fire it in and none of that requires it to be programmed in to the game based on play time. 

 

Expanding off of this I would like to see is a sort of 'stamina' or fitness system akin to GTA V. This could actually make running around the map beneficial as your character gets more fit and is thereby able to run for longer and carry more weight without shaking. There is a lot of focus on vehicle gameplay in Epoch and it would be nice to think that running around can be reasonably beneficial in the long term to your character, rather than an exercise in holding down w.

 

Similarly some of the animation times on actions should reduce in time the more you do them, to simulate familiarity. If I sit for an hour converting wood piles to lumber, i'd expect to be doing it considerably faster than a new spawn on his first go. This could definitely add more meaning and value to a late game character.

[Pertinax]

The intent of this is good, but I think it has the danger of being overcooked. I think you would want to keep it limited to only a handful of skills that are distinct from each other but useful to a particular play style, rather than ending up with a system that begins to augment what could be considered a hack (reducing recoil, improving ads). Specifically the gun skills you mention I think would end up being quite cumbersome, typically I find the more I use a gun the better I get at judging ranges, timing and knowing the situations to fire it in and none of that requires it to be programmed in to the game based on play time. 

 

Maybe not recoil, but a steadier aim doesnt fuck with the practice you had with a gun.