Skill Levels

[AltarofScience]

One problem I am running into with my game is restricting skill leveling so that a player cannot learn more than a few production skills. After all, a player based economy falls apart if all players can make everything.
Restricting the number of skills you can level just creates a system where players make crafting alts.
So I need a way to make it valuable to specialize. I have a few ideas, but in many cases this leads to boring gameplay.

As we all know, grinding out useless items is boring, pretty much all you can do is sell to NPCs or drop. And in a game where there is no NPC market for goods, its even less fun or useful.
There is a small market in that npc building town or area guards can be equipped with items and items decay, although only of a low level. But if the level is low enough the player could probably level that skill just enough.
Now I can either require grinding or waiting to level a skill, and by waiting I mean essentially automating the actual grind so a player doesn't have to do it, but it still takes the same amount of time to level. This is the EVE model.
Alternatively levels could come from experimentation. Players don't know what resources do at the start, so every time they try a new combination of resources to make an item, or craft with a better or different set of tools, their experience could grow. However I am unsure if this would suck up enough time to make it prohibitive to learn every game skill. Still its my best option so far.
One way I could make this more viable is to have lots of resources, that means more need to experiment, which means that you both level your skill and learn how to make new items.
This however is mainly viable for plant based items, for metal and wood crafting, you don't have so many metals or woods as you do herbs and what not. Cloth is similar, I guess there could be curing or spinning processes to do on fiber, but this would be in the refining skill area of the tree and not the production skill as we see for alchemy. Plus, once players have leveled up, they can trade their herbology, or cloth work books, and then a player will know how to cure and such. Or they can just straight up tell guild mates, and that really cuts down on the time needed to level a skill, which pushes me back to players learning all the skills. I suppose I could remove the ability to trade books on identifying and processing resources? That isn't a critical game feature and it seems like it causes trouble.

Anyways, any ideas on how to limit players ability to learn all skills and also to make leveling themless grindy and dull?

[Chris]

Restricting the number of skills you can level just creates a system where players make crafting alts.
So I need a way to make it valuable to specialize.

I don't understand how "making it valuable to specialize" discourages people from making additional accounts? No matter how I look at it it seem as something that promotes it even more...

[AltarofScience]

Restricting the number of skills you can level just creates a system where players make crafting alts.
So I need a way to make it valuable to specialize.

I don't understand how "making it valuable to specialize" discourages people from making additional accounts? No matter how I look at it it seem as something that promotes it even more...

i don't understand what you are saying. it takes just as much time to raise your level on your main as on your alt. ive explained this like a dozen times and you keep ignoring it. there is no incentive to make a new account because it won't get you better skills than just focusing your main.

[capturts]

I assume what chris is saying is you'd create a main account, and then one for This Particular Skill and then one for That Particular Skill and then they'd give the main account the goodies they were specialised in making...

[AltarofScience]

I assume what chris is saying is you'd create a main account, and then one for This Particular Skill and then one for That Particular Skill and then they'd give the main account the goodies they were specialised in making...

i know what chris is saying. but the way the system is structured, you can't get done any faster using a multi account.
plus that would be really really obvious anyways. but it wouldnt save you time to multi.

[Chris]

Of course it will save you time, since the bot would play the second account for you. It's a browser game, it is trivial to write a bot that craft simple things or collect resources using greasemonkey for example.

[AltarofScience]

Of course it will save you time, since the bot would play the second account for you. It's a browser game, it is trivial to write a bot that craft simple things or collect resources using greasemonkey for example.

well you didn't say anything about botting. we were talking about alting. obviously bots can be a big problem.
there are some ways to crack bots. or also to just detect and delete them. but there is literally no style of game where bots don't screw you over. you cannot design any game system with any sort of grind or repeat of certain functions that bots can't break. i could write a bot to screw over anyone. so your argument is irrelevant.

[Chris]

There is a huge difference between one account that is boting and multiple account that are boting and send resources to the main account I'm trying to say that your "unrestricted transfer of goods" is a deadly combo with "ability to setup a bot on multiple accounts". In my games I simply disallow direct trading, so the damage from a bot is highly reduced (at most it can act as a very dedicated lone player), so even if I completely mess up with catching multiaccounts the game is not completely broken. In your system if you neglect multiaccounts tracking you are totally and completely doomed.

[AltarofScience]

There is a huge difference between one account that is boting and multiple account that are boting and send resources to the main account I'm trying to say that your "unrestricted transfer of goods" is a deadly combo with "ability to setup a bot on multiple accounts". In my games I simply disallow direct trading, so the damage from a bot is highly reduced (at most it can act as a very dedicated lone player), so even if I completely mess up with catching multiaccounts the game is not completely broken. In your system if you neglect multiaccounts tracking you are totally and completely doomed.

Do you understand that every game ever has the same problem? Sure, you ruined the player experience to avoid bots and multies, but most every other browser game in the world is massively vulnerable to bots and multies.

[Chris]

No, not every game ever has this problem. Farmville has not for example, and it is one of the best (most popular) games ever. Also, I don't make "most every other browser game" You are fixated on doing all things the one, traditional, way. It's not bad, but well, you could acknowledge there are great games/mechanics made in a way you loathe and could never play (like WoW, an excelent game I would agonize to play).

Anyway, I don't understand why are you trying so hard to persuade others. We are not in a team with you making this game, you are doing it yourself. What we think is irrelevant...

[AltarofScience]

No, not every game ever has this problem. Farmville has not for example, and it is one of the best (most popular) games ever. Also, I don't make "most every other browser game" You are fixated on doing all things the one, traditional, way. It's not bad, but well, you could acknowledge there are great games/mechanics made in a way you loathe and could never play (like WoW, an excelent game I would agonize to play).

Anyway, I don't understand why are you trying so hard to persuade others. We are not in a team with you making this game, you are doing it yourself. What we think is irrelevant...

because there is no point in botting in farmville and its composed mostly of 14-70 year old women who don't know how to bot anyways, plus its a facebook game. your example is illogical.
i don't really care what you think per say, but I would like to know a way to prevent bots and alts. Its just that your methods are all about crapping on content. I suppose you could consider a portion of my design to be traditional, but not the game. I could think of a dozen more efficient methods to crap on bots than what you suggest, its just that it would ruin the gameplay as much if not more than your idea, and games are about gameplay. I guess it isnt clear that I do not want to sacrifice superior gameplay to avoid cheating. You are really the only person I've ever talked to who thinks its a valid method also and its difficult for me to understand why you would be okay with that. different strokes i guess.

[BlackScorp]

take a look at other games and watch how do they solve it.
Example 1: WoW (ok its not a browsergame, but it has Farmers, Bots) the added an Item to game which you can buy for real money to get Gold(this pet think)

Example 2: tribewars , after making some actions, you have to type captcha but not too much. Botting would be still possible , just not as much as before.

Example 3: Sevenlands. They designed the game that it useless to have more accounts + you have restricted amount of actions so it doesnt matter if a bot klick once every 2 min or you do it.

The best way to solve Problems, is to play games, which are similar to yours. the developers might already thought about Problems and solved it on their way;)

Best regards BlackScorp

[SpaceDoG]

Example 1: WoW (ok its not a browsergame, but it has Farmers, Bots) the added an Item to game which you can buy for real money to get Gold(this pet think)

BlackScorp I have to disagree with that one. WoW does not allow a transaction of real world money for in-game things and vice versa. They only allow real world for unredeemed item codes, and gold for items already or acquired in-game. Now with D3 Blizzard is taking a different stance and will have a real world money auction house that you can use to sell game items for real world cash on.

[BlackScorp]

i dont really know, i saw an anouncment that Blizzard will create new pets which you can sell for Gold and buy for real money, this pet costs about 10$ and you get the equalent gold like from china farmers, just on legal way.. cant find the blog anymore.. but anyways thats another story;)

ahh here is it

http://eu.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=221004877

[AltarofScience]

take a look at other games and watch how do they solve it.
Example 1: WoW (ok its not a browsergame, but it has Farmers, Bots) the added an Item to game which you can buy for real money to get Gold(this pet think)

Example 2: tribewars , after making some actions, you have to type captcha but not too much. Botting would be still possible , just not as much as before.

Example 3: Sevenlands. They designed the game that it useless to have more accounts + you have restricted amount of actions so it doesnt matter if a bot klick once every 2 min or you do it.

The best way to solve Problems, is to play games, which are similar to yours. the developers might already thought about Problems and solved it on their way;)

Best regards BlackScorp

WoW's system won't work that well. tribewars sucks. Neither of those games are similar to mine anyways. as for sevenland, as i told chris, you can ruin the game to stop bots, but you are sacrificing game play, and i refuse to do that.

[BlackScorp]

Ok since everyones tipps which are posted here are crappy for you, i have another example.

Perpetuum Online. In this game a character gains every hour exp to skill up their skills. doesnt matter if youre online or offline, if youre online you dont get faster exp.

if you dont want to add bot protection and destroy your game play, then try to do some other stuffs like your books they could have somethink like amount of using time. so player research for such skill book and this book can be used only x amount of times. you can say, that each user can has one book once in his inventory or stuff.

[AltarofScience]

Ok since everyones tipps which are posted here are crappy for you, i have another example.

Perpetuum Online. In this game a character gains every hour exp to skill up their skills. doesnt matter if youre online or offline, if youre online you dont get faster exp.

if you dont want to add bot protection and destroy your game play, then try to do some other stuffs like your books they could have somethink like amount of using time. so player research for such skill book and this book can be used only x amount of times. you can say, that each user can has one book once in his inventory or stuff.

sounds pretty much like ever

[SpaceDoG]

i dont really know, i saw an anouncment that Blizzard will create new pets which you can sell for Gold and buy for real money, this pet costs about 10$ and you get the equalent gold like from china farmers, just on legal way.. cant find the blog anymore.. but anyways thats another story;)

ahh here is it

http://eu.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=221004877

Interesting... haven't heard about that one yet. Anywho a better reference would be Eve online where you can sell game time codes for in-game currency.

[arai]

Easy.  Just turn everything into a turing test (and punish stupid humans.)