I remember a lot of complaints in the original TSO over the skill decay system and I'm seeing many of the same complaints here; skill decay detracts from gameplay by removing players from social interaction.
The fundamental design problem is that players are unhappy with the amount of time that has to be dedicated to maintaining their unlocked skills. Grinding skills isn't interactive and the player base is too small at the moment to provide the social interaction that skill houses (AKA: glorified chat rooms) need to make them engaging.
With that in mind, I'm proposing a mechanic that does not remove the necessity of skill lots all together but rather reduces the down time of maintaining skills.
This mechanic may be implemented in one of two ways:
A) With the introduction of an entirely new skill line called "Aptitude" or something similar that increases in tandem while you level other skills but at a much slower rate. Think 1 Aptitude point per every 10-20 of the other skills earned. What this aptitude skill line would do is act as a multiplier to the natural skill gain rate of the sim up to a hypothetical rate of 100% for example (2x skill speed bonus).
B) If introducing a new skill line is too difficult, perhaps a simpler solution would be to roll half of these aptitude bonuses into both creativity and logic (representing both the left and right hemisphere of the brain). Meaning that maxed logic and maxed creativity would each yield a 50% boost to the sims natural skill gain rate.
With these changes (if tuned properly) it may even be feasible to do away with skill point locks entirely. Ideally a player juggling three or more skills should have to dedicate no more than 20-30% of their play session to maintaining these skills.
The fundamental design problem is that players are unhappy with the amount of time that has to be dedicated to maintaining their unlocked skills. Grinding skills isn't interactive and the player base is too small at the moment to provide the social interaction that skill houses (AKA: glorified chat rooms) need to make them engaging.
With that in mind, I'm proposing a mechanic that does not remove the necessity of skill lots all together but rather reduces the down time of maintaining skills.
This mechanic may be implemented in one of two ways:
A) With the introduction of an entirely new skill line called "Aptitude" or something similar that increases in tandem while you level other skills but at a much slower rate. Think 1 Aptitude point per every 10-20 of the other skills earned. What this aptitude skill line would do is act as a multiplier to the natural skill gain rate of the sim up to a hypothetical rate of 100% for example (2x skill speed bonus).
B) If introducing a new skill line is too difficult, perhaps a simpler solution would be to roll half of these aptitude bonuses into both creativity and logic (representing both the left and right hemisphere of the brain). Meaning that maxed logic and maxed creativity would each yield a 50% boost to the sims natural skill gain rate.
With these changes (if tuned properly) it may even be feasible to do away with skill point locks entirely. Ideally a player juggling three or more skills should have to dedicate no more than 20-30% of their play session to maintaining these skills.