First of all, really enjoying the experience so far! There is a great foundation for further growth. Have a suggestion here for companions.
With the current leveling system requiring "doing" actions to increase experience in that category, it is difficult to get companions to level their skills such as tactics, trade, etc. when they start at zero. Most of the missions which focus on these skills (i.e. a trade mission) already require sufficient trade skills even to initiate. We need a way to increase our companion non-combat skills.
A few ways that we might consider doing that:
- Have a dialogue option to tell the character to "Focus on studying _____." I.e. "I would like you to focus on studying trading." This could be a passive skill increase over time. Obviously this would be more helpful at low skill levels due to the scaling at high skill levels. Further leveling at high skill levels could be obtained via missions.
- Have a companion mission that takes them away from party to "Gain experience in ______." Again, this would be more helpful for low skill levels due to scaling.
A few other companion skills suggestions:
- In general, it seems companions are gaining core combat skills too slowly. My archer character, starting at Skill level 50, is now only 53 while I have gained 30+ levels in archery and 20+ in two-handed abilities.
- I assume that there is a lot of work left to do to shape each individual companions skillset to have more non-combat focused characters. It would also make sense that even combat-focused characters would have some leadership, charm, roguery abilities. Currently everyone has zero in pretty much all areas other than combat. I was able to find a medical companion with medicine of 60.
I LOVE that we can send companions to do missions for us, and that they gain skills. Very nice sense of progression. In regards to the above, it seems likely that we will see a lot of changes in the balance of leveling system before Version 1.0, thanks for a really awesome game!
With the current leveling system requiring "doing" actions to increase experience in that category, it is difficult to get companions to level their skills such as tactics, trade, etc. when they start at zero. Most of the missions which focus on these skills (i.e. a trade mission) already require sufficient trade skills even to initiate. We need a way to increase our companion non-combat skills.
A few ways that we might consider doing that:
- Have a dialogue option to tell the character to "Focus on studying _____." I.e. "I would like you to focus on studying trading." This could be a passive skill increase over time. Obviously this would be more helpful at low skill levels due to the scaling at high skill levels. Further leveling at high skill levels could be obtained via missions.
- Have a companion mission that takes them away from party to "Gain experience in ______." Again, this would be more helpful for low skill levels due to scaling.
A few other companion skills suggestions:
- In general, it seems companions are gaining core combat skills too slowly. My archer character, starting at Skill level 50, is now only 53 while I have gained 30+ levels in archery and 20+ in two-handed abilities.
- I assume that there is a lot of work left to do to shape each individual companions skillset to have more non-combat focused characters. It would also make sense that even combat-focused characters would have some leadership, charm, roguery abilities. Currently everyone has zero in pretty much all areas other than combat. I was able to find a medical companion with medicine of 60.
I LOVE that we can send companions to do missions for us, and that they gain skills. Very nice sense of progression. In regards to the above, it seems likely that we will see a lot of changes in the balance of leveling system before Version 1.0, thanks for a really awesome game!
