RMXP Deciding on a leveling system

[Lord Vectra]

So I'm deciding on a leveling system for my game. In this thread, by skills, it means proficiency. It's how well you're skilled with fire magic, earth magic, swords, axes, etc. It ranges from 1 - 100 but at the start of the game, everything is at 15. I'm trying to decide how I'm going to implement them, and I came up with some ideas, but I don't know which one to go for.

Skyrim-Style
> Skill proficiency increases on use
> Player must raise skills in any combination X times before level up
> X required to level up increases per level up
> Skill proficiencies get harder to increase the closer they are to 100

Distribution-Style
> Player must level up and increase the skills themselves

Leveled-Skill-Scaling-Style
> Skill proficiency increases on use
> Player accumulates pts when a skill increases depending on where the skill level is currently at (higher skill level = more points)
> After you accumulate X points, you level up
> Threshold increases by X amount or X% per level up

Potential-Cap-Style (Not a stand-alone but to be possibly combined with the ones above)
> Skill increases will increase your potential % by a certain amount
> When potential reaches 100%, skills can no longer increase and you cannot level up
Note: But they can still increase via ailments, armors, weapons, etc.

 

[NPC]

I definitely like the third option the most. I think the potential cap is essential to:

a. Curb the grind
b. Force unique solutions to problems.

Perhaps to enforce unique and varied builds earlier on, however, I could suggest that higher proficiency skills count for more "potential cap %" than lower proficiency skills. So if you like to mash Fireball 1 and it only takes up 5%, then when it reaches two it might be 7%, but since you're a lower level when it reaches Fireball 3 it suddenly takes up 14%.of your potential cap. This would also help to control overlevelling and would create a smoother difficulty increase as players find what fits their playstyle organically, and the levelling system endorses their decisions.

A fun "drawback" you could add to the feature is that opposing skills (I'll use the example of magic v. physical fighting for simplicity) could act as yin and yang. That is, if I were to put all my levels into magic (which starts at 15/100) and raise it to 30/100, then my physical strength might decay to 10/100 or even further (thought I might then suggest having it decay slightly slower than it would increase to give the option of hybrid builds— highly rewarding builds but highly difficult to build).

Let me know what you think!

 

[Lord Vectra]

I definitely like the third option the most. I think the potential cap is essential to:

a. Curb the grind
b. Force unique solutions to problems.

Perhaps to enforce unique and varied builds earlier on, however, I could suggest that higher proficiency skills count for more "potential cap %" than lower proficiency skills. So if you like to mash Fireball 1 and it only takes up 5%, then when it reaches two it might be 7%, but since you're a lower level when it reaches Fireball 3 it suddenly takes up 14%.of your potential cap. This would also help to control overlevelling and would create a smoother difficulty increase as players find what fits their playstyle organically, and the levelling system endorses their decisions.

A fun "drawback" you could add to the feature is that opposing skills (I'll use the example of magic v. physical fighting for simplicity) could act as yin and yang. That is, if I were to put all my levels into magic (which starts at 15/100) and raise it to 30/100, then my physical strength might decay to 10/100 or even further (thought I might then suggest having it decay slightly slower than it would increase to give the option of hybrid builds— highly rewarding builds but highly difficult to build).

Let me know what you think!

I thought of the potential cap because it addresses the flaws of games like Skyrim where you're encouraged to be Jesus and max every single stat in the game lol

I will certainly try that. I won't be doing the last drawback idea though since the player may feel they are wasting some points. There is something like that built-in since when you level up, you increase your stats (max HP, max SP, str, int, etc), so if they attempt a hybrid, they already have to spread their stats.

I also didn't think about ppl overleveling one skill so thanks for bringing it to my attention.