I'm liking the look of this new system a lot...
However, my main concern, which seems to be at complete odds to the concerns of everyone else, is that this might lead to very balanced character progression.
Looking over the list of effects, these are all things that the player does on a regular basis. Most of these are things which the player can scarcely avoid doing. I haven't had the opportunity to see how each skill maps out (ie, it might be much easier to raise one than another), but I'd prefer it if I didn't only ever see characters with a maximum difference of 1-2 levels between each skill.
I suppose I'm coming at this with a view from Bethesda's RPGs (The Elder Scrolls series in particular) which use this system to level up. It makes sense in that setting because you can actually specialise - for example, magic and melee combat are totally separate, and each has about 6 different sub-divisions. Training in any one doesn't give bonuses to the others, so its possible to distinguish between a wizard who uses magic directly to kill enemies as opposed to one who summons creatures to fight for him, or who turns himself invisible at will, etc. Likewise, fighters can vary between heavily-armoured sword-wielding knights and lightly-armoured archers. Each is effective in completely different ways and characters can't easily stop being one type and start being another, as this requires the weaker stats to be trained up to a sensible level first.
My worry is that this isn't going to work so well in POTC because the number of attributes is so much smaller and there's a hefty degree of overlap (e.g. cannons / accuracy and accuracy / fencing, or sailing / grappling / repair, etc.) with different skills being trained through the same situation.
What this may mean is that you won't see player captains doing things such as being expert merchant sailors (full sailing and defence, full commerce at expense of combat-oriented skills) as opposed to pirates...or vice versa, as excellent pirates with limited commercial acumen and to hell with crew losses.
Making it easier to level up in the beginning and more difficult later on is logical, but would conpound this problem even further, ensuring that leveling up will become a relatively smooth transition from level 1 in all stats to level 2 in all stats, etc. etc.
However, my main concern, which seems to be at complete odds to the concerns of everyone else, is that this might lead to very balanced character progression.
Looking over the list of effects, these are all things that the player does on a regular basis. Most of these are things which the player can scarcely avoid doing. I haven't had the opportunity to see how each skill maps out (ie, it might be much easier to raise one than another), but I'd prefer it if I didn't only ever see characters with a maximum difference of 1-2 levels between each skill.
I suppose I'm coming at this with a view from Bethesda's RPGs (The Elder Scrolls series in particular) which use this system to level up. It makes sense in that setting because you can actually specialise - for example, magic and melee combat are totally separate, and each has about 6 different sub-divisions. Training in any one doesn't give bonuses to the others, so its possible to distinguish between a wizard who uses magic directly to kill enemies as opposed to one who summons creatures to fight for him, or who turns himself invisible at will, etc. Likewise, fighters can vary between heavily-armoured sword-wielding knights and lightly-armoured archers. Each is effective in completely different ways and characters can't easily stop being one type and start being another, as this requires the weaker stats to be trained up to a sensible level first.
My worry is that this isn't going to work so well in POTC because the number of attributes is so much smaller and there's a hefty degree of overlap (e.g. cannons / accuracy and accuracy / fencing, or sailing / grappling / repair, etc.) with different skills being trained through the same situation.
What this may mean is that you won't see player captains doing things such as being expert merchant sailors (full sailing and defence, full commerce at expense of combat-oriented skills) as opposed to pirates...or vice versa, as excellent pirates with limited commercial acumen and to hell with crew losses.
Making it easier to level up in the beginning and more difficult later on is logical, but would conpound this problem even further, ensuring that leveling up will become a relatively smooth transition from level 1 in all stats to level 2 in all stats, etc. etc.
