I realise I'm probably going to regret even making the topic given the nature of the internet, but I've been having ideas again now that I managed to get a properly working inventory up and running which really is the hardest part of doing an RPG code wise. To amuse myself I've been looking specifically at skill points and how they work as well as the 'skilling up' process. I always find myself drawn to the RPGs that are about skill points rather than levels purely because of the sheer variety they offer in terms of gameplay and it's not as limiting as class based gameplay. Although I think that class based gameplay can be fun if it's designed correctly.
I've been mainly looking at Morrowind for the moment, I tried looking at Fallout, but it's filled with normie shit thanks to youtube. I don't know if I should check out stuff like Ultima Online perhaps and older RPGs because that was from a time when gamers were allowed to be autistic with the maths on paper without having to hide everything behind code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2GNNLz1pUU
This is the sort of thing I've been looking at, I'm just interested in learning the maths properly and checking out different systems. Obviously Fallout's SPECIAL stats are fairly iconic, but in the end their formulae isn't that out there. I'm not looking for sperging about skills generally, but specific mathematical formulae. In the video for example it details how much the experience points rate increases based on what type of skill you've put in a misc./minor/major category.
In response to your Ultima Online musing.
The original mechanics aren't much of a standout in terms of interesting complexity. Warrior was just click and wait like watching paint dry. Mage was pretty fun due to good spell variety. Hybrid just didn't work with the skill and stat cap. Almost all skill benefits were linear so of the 700 skill points you had, you almost always wanted a 7x100 maxed skills. Most of the early UO autism manifested in reverse engineering the skill gain code to AFK grind faster, straddling the line between server chunks to double your per hour gain soft cap and exploiting how the RNG for skill gain seemed to use player location as part of the seed and walking in straight in a cardinal direction until you got a "streak". Some of the very early days were spent figuring out which skills added auxillary benefits too I guess. E.g lumberjacking increasing your melee axe damage.
Later updates changed things completely to add a bunch of limit breakers on skill and stat caps and be much more item based with D2-like item properties, and a bunch of complicated hybrid active skills introduced. But I'd fallen off by then so can't really vouch if they were good or balanced. The item grind and the grind for stat cap breakers was just way too much.
Lol I didn't know that about Ultima Online, it's just one of the skill based RPGs I see people chat about generally and I remember it somewhat from the early days, never did end up playing it though, I was an SWG guy.
The whole afk grinding thing reminds me a lot of EVE Online and how exploit ridden even the early game was but I simply didn't know it at the time and that was a skill point based game as well. Little did I know when I got into arguments with the playerbase who tried to claim constantly you could totally solo EVE these utter weirdos were posting without outright declaring it that they frequently exploited the game using bots and multiple accounts meaning if you were a fool like I was and tried to play the game honestly you were putting yourself at a total disadvantage. That's nothing to say of the amount of botting that went on with regards to tech blue prints that completely prevented any new organisations from popping up and fighting the OG crowd on any equal footing, bastards.
It's funny how later on CCP dropped all pretence and now they're openly encouraging people to have multiple characters. Quick glance at the forum and one post I saw immediately confirmed my prejudices. Poor players coming into that game and realising it's still just a gank fest of exploiting autists with nothing better to do than run bots than risk their precious fleets on any meaningful combat.
Rant aside about that particular autism thanks for the heads up on Ultima Online, it's interesting how simplistic some of these RPGs really are when you look at the maths but I suppose that's also a strength. I remember people bitching about a Diablo style RPG that came out fairly recently, forgotten which one it was might have been even Path of Exile and people would often joke it was like you needed a PHD to figure out the builds.
Heh, path of exile is pretty old now, but that's definitely been the butt of the PhD joke many a time. You might be thinking of Last Epoch that released this year that is sometimes called PoE lite.
The thing that makes PoE so difficult to get into is how disjointed it is, it's obvious that it is built up from many seasons of unplanned expansions. You get layers and layers of inter connected systems introduced as you progress through the game. But you have no idea what will be coming layer without looking up outside resources, even though it can drastically affect the build choices you might make in the earlier systems. And the currency is an absolute mess, it's all barter with no gold, only different crafting materials that you get in exchange for selling items in specific sometimes quite complex patterns. Again with no in-game info on what combinations sell for what, you've gotta go look up a wiki or have an obsessive autist's memory.
So yeah, it gets complicated, but it's largely from a lack of user friendly implementation and only about half of it is to the benefit of viable build variety.
The best way to play Path of Exile is to look up character builds that let you ignore as many resource cost and other negative mechanics as possible so you can focus on the 500 APM it takes to not get killed in one hit by basic white monsters.