Let's Talk Learning Skills In Stars Reach: Use It Or Lose It...Well, Not Really "Lose" It, But Fall Out Of Practice A Bit

As Raph Koster and the Playable Worlds team continues its march towards a future launch for their MMORPG Stars Reach, we've been treated to blogs and videos detailing certain aspects of the team's development choices. Some of these topics may seem mundane in nature, like say movement, but the philosophy behind certain decisions for those "everyday" things reveals a lot about how the team thinks...which in turn reveals how they will likely tackle future larger challenges in development.

I've been enjoying looking in from the outside and today is no exception as the team's latest blog talks about skills and progression in Stars Reach.

What can I say, it's as simple as "if you use it, you gain XP." But wait, because it isn't exactly that simple after all. Sure, leveling up your skill with a sword is probably pretty familiar to most MMO aficionados. Remember when using weapons in World of Warcraft leveled up your skill with that weapon? Yeah, it's like that...except you have to actually be useful.

Weapons are an easy example. Fight things and gain XP. Swinging your sword at nothing does nothing. Put yourself in danger fighting something and you'll gain sword XP. Easy enough. However, other skills work the same way. You always have to be useful.

Picture this. How did you level crafting in the last few MMORPGS you played? Chances are you found a pattern or recipe that would level you up, you made a ton of them until they no longer provided gains, and you repeated that process with the next pattern that offered XP or levels.

Then you sold the 100 versions of the same thing you made to a vendor or on the auction house to recoup some gold.

You will not be doing that in Stars Reach.

Remember, you have to be useful.

Making weapons? Cool. You gain XP when people actually use them. Building camps? Great! You level when people use the damn things. This philosophy applies to every skill and its skill tree. By the way, you're free to level any skill tree you like and unlock "Specials", unique special abilities for that tool to trait you're learning. Learn them all if you like, but you can only enable 2 Specials at a time.

In fact, learn every damn skill if you want. You 100% can. However, you cannot actually USE them all at the same time. You can only be running with a certain number of skills active at once. If you want to learn more, one skill you've learned already needs to sit on the sidelines for a bit. It'll atrophy while it is there, too. No, you won't have to "start over" learning it again if you want to activate it again, but yes, you will have to "brush up" on using the skill to bring it back to your full potential.

The chart above just gives you an idea of what things will look like. It isn't what players will actually see. That said, we will get a look at the first few "player-facing" trees in tests coming up soon.

It's an interesting proposition. I'm not quite sure how MMO players will like the idea of skills atrophying. On the surface, it makes sense. In the real world if you don't do something for a while you have to brush up on it to regain your proficiency with it. In a game, though, sometimes going by "real world" behaviors ends up being a bit irritating.

I'm still here for it so far, though. Even if it does mean I might occasionally be saying, "Give me some time, I can't build camps for shit anymore. Gotta practice."