Engaging ways to learn skills

[TheTrueShadow]

There have been tons of ways too learn skills in RPGs throughout the time, but I was wondering what ways of learning skills you find most engaging and enjoyable.

Personally, I favor more open systems that allows you to put your own strategies together for battles. I guess Skill Trees is my best example of this. I also tend to enjoy Job Systems a lot too, again, because most of them are open enough for me to create my own strategies.

I really don't like systems like the one used in Final Fantasy 4, where you gain new skills by leveling up. A system like this can be open enough for me to have a lot of skills to use, but that usually happens late in the game. So yeah, I feel like systems which gives you skills in a "set" pattern takes away some of the analogue.

What do you think? What ways of learning skills do you enjoy or hate?

 

[Bell Kruz]

I personally enjoy learning skills by levels but if it's passive skills like increasing the characters attack, I prefer the skill trees. Why? because I personally like passive skills and when I play the game with skill trees I mostly max the passive skills before actually get the active skills.

What I hate the most is learning skills in battle. So the characters is automatically get the skills when they meet the requirements in battle. This kind of game is rare but I have played it once (forgot the name, though). Well, that's my opinion~

 

[Wavelength]

My favorite system is probably where you spend points to unlock new skills of your choosing.  This has the advantage of giving the player tons of freedom in how they build their character, and additionally is one of the least confusing ways to do it.  The drawback is that you have very little control over this aspect of the player's experience as the designer.  But as a player I really, really love this kind of system.

The way I'm doing it in the game I'm working on now is that characters who survive boss fights receive a "Credit" that they can use to unlock one of three different skills.  The two that you don't pick are gone forever (which isn't as bad as it sounds since it's about a 2 hour game).  This makes the choice feel significant, and gives me a little more control over the player's repertoire - I can, for instance, make sure that two spells that would be broken together will never be learned together, and that any skills that you learn now will be useful in the upcoming fight.

In any kind of system, the most important thing is that the skills themselves are unique and situational.

 

[Lowell]

I prefer Romancing SaGa's method of skill learning, where you'd glimmer/spark the skill mid battle. Using a particular weapon or skill would yield the possibility of learning a new ability in the heat of battle.

 

[Sketch XII]

I would like to eventually make a sort of skill system that combines real world knowledge of physics, general programming logic and Paper Mario's style of "Action Commands" to make something to where learning and mastering a skill actually means the player has to learn and master that skill for themselves... as in, they could do it in the beginning of the game if they know how to and have the experience to pull it off. This of course can be limited by having a limited amount of magic power or whatever and certain "spells" requiring certain resources, while levels and dungeons would have to have different harder/easier versions of themselves based on skill "paths" taken in-game.

This sort of system is something I don't plan to have in my first game (RPG Maker VX), but once I start making a future game, possibly second or third in an engine that isn't RPG Maker, I would like to try something like it.