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Thinking about an advancement system
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7606308" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I've always liked the CoC system in that it "made sense" that what the player would get better in would be what they practiced doing, and it had built in balance that the better you were the harder it was to advance.</p><p></p><p>Mouse Guard does something similar where to advance you must accumulate a certain number of successes and failures.</p><p></p><p>And that probably makes even more sense.</p><p></p><p>But over the years I've gotten away from always caring about what made sense. Right now I mostly care whether the math works. And for an advancement system, that's mostly questioning whether characters advance at predictable and useful rates so that after X sessions of gaming you have some sense of what sort of characters you'd have to work with and can plan and prepare accordingly. That tends to mean a system that can't be abused and isn't overly random, which CoC system for all it's elegance can be. It's also worth noting that CoC's system in particular puts high emotional pressure on players to cheat, in that you can complete a session and get a lot or get nothing, so that players who are tempted by that sort of behavior are prone to do so.</p><p></p><p>Likewise, from a game play perspective, I really only care whether the rewards are spaced far enough apart that they feel both earned and useful (in that your advance matters at least once before you advance again), and yet spaced close enough together that players don't get depressed waiting for them.</p><p></p><p>How a system achieves that and whether it is realistic is not something I put at a high priority any more.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7606308, member: 4937"] I've always liked the CoC system in that it "made sense" that what the player would get better in would be what they practiced doing, and it had built in balance that the better you were the harder it was to advance. Mouse Guard does something similar where to advance you must accumulate a certain number of successes and failures. And that probably makes even more sense. But over the years I've gotten away from always caring about what made sense. Right now I mostly care whether the math works. And for an advancement system, that's mostly questioning whether characters advance at predictable and useful rates so that after X sessions of gaming you have some sense of what sort of characters you'd have to work with and can plan and prepare accordingly. That tends to mean a system that can't be abused and isn't overly random, which CoC system for all it's elegance can be. It's also worth noting that CoC's system in particular puts high emotional pressure on players to cheat, in that you can complete a session and get a lot or get nothing, so that players who are tempted by that sort of behavior are prone to do so. Likewise, from a game play perspective, I really only care whether the rewards are spaced far enough apart that they feel both earned and useful (in that your advance matters at least once before you advance again), and yet spaced close enough together that players don't get depressed waiting for them. How a system achieves that and whether it is realistic is not something I put at a high priority any more. [/QUOTE]
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