One of the things I love most about this community is the feedback/ideas you share. This helps us craft a game that we can all enjoy and factor your thoughts and ideas into development. Whilst I understand not everything will always be to everyone's taste, I really hope this two-way dialog will continue to help us as we build Vitare.
One topic that has come up since our Closed Beta has been Skills in Vitare. I have previously expressed on Discord that we do plan to change how these work over time, so I wanted to dig into the vision for skills in this post.
Where skills are today
When the skill system was designed, the goal was to give players something to work towards and a way in which skills can impact gameplay. We currently have four skills, a progression system to level 20, and rewards for your time investment such as unlocked objects, interactions, faster repair times, hunger boosts etc.
One of the guiding principles of Vitare has been to ensure that we don't end up with a grinding loop or that things become unvaluable. After getting the chance to see how it plays out with real players, and considering future direction of Vitare, I believe the current system has a problem where every skill is levelled up in the same way - you use an object such as the bookshelf and you wait. There is no difference to how you earn your skill and, because every player can max every skill, there is no real reason to lean on others in the game.
In our social MMO, which is all about players and the community, we want skills to be a core part of interactions with others and for them to feel valuable. We also had some great feedback recently in Discord which has validated this feeling for us.
Why we are going to change things
The idea behind Vitare is that you can "be somebody". Your character has an identity, a reputation, and a place in the world that is uniquely yours. The current skill system doesn't support that as well as it should - it can become repetitive and doesn't reward active play. It's very much a passive, AFK system.
For example, as long as you wiggle your mouse, you can skill up. You do not need to find a chef because everyone can earn a high cooking skill. Likewise you don't need to seek out an engineer to help repair your objects because you can easily increase this too.
As the game grows, we want a world where players are known for their unique skills - such as being able to cook up unique food dishes that boosts your motives, where engineers are someone you call when an object decays, or having a high gardening skill means you can grow some rare produce.
We also want this to be more engaging and worth your time, avoiding the need to grind, so that you can enjoy the game, socialising with players, and hang out.
What we're working on
To help improve this, we are going to be making several interconnected changes to how skills work in the near future.
Skills earned by doing activities
You will no longer be able to sit and read a book to reach maximum level.
Whilst this will still be an important part of skilling, skills will need you to level up in other ways. Cooking will level up through actually cooking, Engineering through crafting and repairing, Charisma through perfoming on the piano or interacting with players, and Gardening by tending to your flowers and crops. This active gameplay will encourage you to do things in Vitare and lean on other players.
Skilling in the traditional sense - where you read a book / use the mirror - will still exist and have a role. For new players in particular, this will be what allows them to kickstart their skilling journey - but once you hit a threshold you will need to be doing things. This will give Skills Lots an extended purpose by allowing people to perform these activities on their lots!
As part of this, we will introduce active and AFK money objects. The AFK path works the same as money objects today allowing you to earn currency by waiting without neeing to interact beyond selling when done. Your skill will still boost the amount you get. The new active route earns both money and will progress your skill at the same time - for this, you will occasionally be prompted / asked you to make decisions.
The idea behind this isn't to punish those who are AFK, but to reward players who are actively engaging.
Specialisation pathways
At a certain point, each skill will allow you to choose a specialisation path. These are different directions that shape what you can actually do and the benefits that come with this.
For example, if you are working on the Cooking skill, you may choose the Culinary Arts path which produces food that gives a quicker hunger boost to everyone who eats it. A Street Food path, on the other hand, can serve group meals faster and more efficiently - same skill but different purpose.
The same kind of branching will exist across all four skills, and the choices you make along that journey will define how other players see you, things you can do, and what people may come to you for.
Total skill point cap
We will be capping the total number of skill points you can have. You will have a pool of points to distribute across all skills - so you will never be able to max absolutely everything. This means every player has to choose what kind of person they want to be in Vitare.
This will allow greater variety in what skills player have. For example, two players who both invest time in Cooking will make different decisions about what other skills they work on, and that will matter and create different outcomes and possibilities.
Skills Lots remain important!
I want to be clear as I know how much investment has gone into skills lots - both time and V$ that you've worked hard on! Skill lots remain the entry point for every new player learning a skill.
What does change is players above a certain level needing to actively engage with various objects / gameplay to keep progressing. This opens up a new frontier for skill lots with more options and possibilities. A skill lot that offers both the bookshelf for beginners and a workbench for players who want to push further becomes much more interesting.
What will this look like in-game?
When these changes are released, the world will start to feel different in time and with more players. You will start to know who the serious chefs are, which engineer can craft unique things, who has a high charisma skill to help revive you from the dead...
This will make everyone unique, different, and give skills a strong purpose.
What happens to my existing skills?
For players who already have skills, your progress will be converted proportionally when these changes go live. Nobody loses their relative advantage. If you were ahead in cooking before, or even maxxed out, you will still be ahead afterwards. The conversion will be fair and we will share exact details once we've figured it out.
The nature of a Beta is to evolve the game as we see how people interact with the game, the feedback we get, and opportunities that arise. This is one of those opportunities and feel it will be a positive change in the long run.
We are also considering a one-time V$ bonus to players as spending time skilling up so far has helped us evolve this.
What next?
These changes are in development now. We will share more detail as we get closer to release, including the exact numbers and how the specialisation paths work for each skill. This post really is to articulate the high level approach to this and to give insight into this planned change.
In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you! What kind of skill specialisations excite you? Are these skills you would want to see added in the future? What would make your character feel truly unique in Vitare?
Let us know and share any feedback you have!