Darkfall Online: Skill Based Experience

I have to say, I'm pretty excited about Aventurine's Darkfall Online. While I've never heard of the company up until recently, it looks as if their game is going to be pretty edgy. Currently, Darkfall is promising unrestricted PvP, full empire and town construction, and most importantly, a skill based experience system.

I love skill based experience. The idea of leveling up with a generic EXP meter never really appealed to me at all. This may have to do with my first MMO love, a MUD by Simutronics known as Dragonrealms. This MUD used a skill based system to great effect, and I always wanted the system to work in a graphical game.

With skill based EXP, a player doesn't necessarily level up by killing monsters or completing collection quests. Rather, he or she possesses a set of distinct skills, and each skill corresponds to a certain activity.

For example, in Dragonrealms, my character might know how to swim, climb, use a bow, hide, stalk, and wear leather armor. Each of these things has a corresponding skill. When my character undertakes an acton that might train a skill, such as climbing a steep incline, he would learn a little bit of climbing skill. When he learns enough, the level of climbing skill increases, allowing my character to tackle more difficult climbs.

It sounds very simple, and it is (or at least, it can be). What grips me about the system is the way it realistically rewards the player. I've never liked gaining a level by running errands for goblins in World of Warcraft, or by killing umpteen boars when my character is a druid and wouldn't normally do that. There is no insight in killing boars, unless your chracter is striving to be a world-renown pork butcher.

Now, when you want to be a master of stealth, and you learn how by skulking in shadows all day - or when you want to be a champion swimmer, and you work from streams and brooks to swimming lakes and channels - you feel a more genuine sense of mastery. I think this is the sort of feeling players actually want when they create a finely tailored character.

I'll be keeping an eye on Darkfall. If you find their systems exciting, you should too.