Re: Feats, and the rest of it too.

[|The SHAKINATOR|]

Feats, do we want them and if so, how do we want them?

I know you guys have been patiently waiting but currently we have come up with two theories in how the “Feats System” should be carried out. Now a ‘Feat’ will basically be a superhuman ability. Something a normal human would not be able to do. Things such as breaking through steel, slicing the air are the more common superhuman abilities however these should not be limited. Everyone should try and come up with unique abilities that match with their characters role or fighting style.
As an example I will use a character with the role of a Shipwright. Let’s say this Shipwright had been working with materials and construction for a while and now has become a skilled assessor of building structure and material. He now knows the weak spots in such materials and is able to break through them by using immense force and accuracy. This will thus enable the character to break through stone using all of his techniques. The techniques will not need updating but the trait will automatically apply. Now this will also allow the Shipwright to use this ability in plot situations. Imagine a Pirate and Marine chase has broken out in a town. The Shipwright would be able to use his ability to break down a piece of this building and cause a blockage for the marines who are following the crew.

Likewise a Musician may gain enhanced hearing and can improve his reflexes by paying attention to the sound of his opponent’s movement and weapon. This will also allow said Musician to be able to scout areas for opponent activity by focusing on footsteps or noise.

Now that you’ve got a general idea of what a ‘Feat’ is, I will offer you to potential systems of which one will be employed.

Style Unlock
Now the first System is the “Style Unlock”. You can apply a set of feats to a ‘whole style’ at a cost of 10,000 Beri for each style, with the first ‘set’ being absolutely free. This will allow your character to access as many abilities in that said Style, as you develop your character, as staff would permit. In a sense you purchase the whole tree rather than individual components. However this will be monitored by the shop in the sense of what “Abilities” you wish to use and these will have to be applied for individually and can be rejected at the staff’s discretion like any other technique. Now upon approval of these abilities, they will automatically apply to all the character’s techniques. This system is very free-flowing and less restrictive however; it has a higher risk of being abused.

Breakdown:
D Class: Feat Slot 1 (Free)
C Class: Feat Slot 2
B Class: Feat Slots 3-4
A Class: Feat Slot 5


So a total of 5 fighting styles can be unlocked via this system.

Ability Unlock
The second system is the “Ability Unlock”. You can apply a ‘Feat’ to an ‘ability’ with each character receiving a free ability at each rank-up and the rest being purchased at 5,000Beri each.
These abilities will be applied for like any other technique as described above. It will be a similar concept but rather than purchasing a whole style you purchase individual techniques. It is a more controlled format with less potential for abuse.

Breakdown:
D Class = +2 Slots (1 free, 1 purchased)
C Class = +3 Slots (1 free, 2 purchased)
B Class = +4 Slots (1 free, 3 purchased)
A Class = +5 Slots (1 free, 4 purchased)
S Class = +10 slots (1 free, remaining purchased)

If you require any further explanation feel free to ask and somebody will answer your questions. If you have any suggestions for improvement or you see a flaw you can also raise your concern.

[Deleted]

We've debated this to glory hallelujah and back again in staff. Some seem set against any system of this kinda at all, some largely indifferent and then me and Shaki are both adamantly for, but in different concepts.

I will not make it a secret then, that I am in favour of the style system. I will not for now argue why, I will try not to influence people (at least to begin with), I'll make a case for it later if it receives a bad press. All I will add, is as this is part of a larger tech system revamp, in which things have been streamlined and no staff seem to object to. There is a chunk of text missing, insofar as this is purely to find out whether feats should be introduced with the other changes. That said I wrote a guide for this new system, and I would like to quote a passage, mostly written by Raab to help you understand the style feat system more, if you so desire. To keep this thread manageable I'll spoiler it.

Happy voting, try to get a grasp of both concepts fairly in your head before selecting one or rejecting both. Voice your opinions and concerns, you can change your vote if you are convinced otherwise. Thank you.

SPOILER: Click to show

Fighting Styles & Feats

While fighting styles are simple, yet integral part of a character’s persona, we as a forum do very little to truly differentiate different styles from one another. Our “swordsmen” and “gunners” tend to be rather run-of-the-mill when marked up against one another, their styles failing to accentuate marked achievements within that fighting style. This, in a way, seems to be what makes One Piece, well, One Piece; kicking reason to the curb and achieving the impossible. This lack of human boundary is exemplified in Zoro’s sword mastery and Sanji’s martial arts, their bodies and fighting styles advancing in such a way that they surpass the normal limits of combat. Feats are what we’d like to call them: breakthroughs of extraordinary means which define an individual’s particular brand of brawling.

Feats, then, are what you achieve. Attaining feats costs nothing, though gaining the ability to attain such remarkable breakthroughs, on the other hand, costs 10,000 beri. This forces you to make decisions based on your character’s personality; are you more a jack of all trades? Or a supreme master in a single brand of combat. You may attain as many feats as you’d like in a single “tree”, completely free of charge. From the start, you may start attaining feats in any one of your fighting styles unhindered; it is only when you wish to gain feats in an additional fighting style does it become pricey. Altogether, you may have five fighting styles that may be upgraded with feats, each with an unlimited capacity for upgrading. These fighting styles can be vastly different, or play off one another in remarkable ways. It is up for you to decide the level of mastery, but keep in mind that fighting style are always judged on an objective basis, and you will be corrected should any number of your fighting styles become too powerful too fast.

This isn’t to say, however, that you can’t have any number of fighting styles that you please. While the number of upgradable styles is five, the number of normal styles is endless. While an individual can become an earth-shattering hammer master, they could also be fairly proficient in marksmanship. Keep in mind that feats are meant to catalogue extraordinary achievements within a single fighting style; any number of your other fighting styles can be proficient, but only within the scope of natural ability. We are not looking to dissuade people from getting creative with their fighting styles, but instead look to document achievements, and give credit where credit is due. After all, isn’t it great letting everyone know you’re the roughinest, toughinest badass around? Of course.

Finally a fruit, which are still free, takes up one feat slot. This means starting with a fruit comes at the price of losing your free feat slot for a normal feat enabled fighting style. If you get one later it automatically fills the second slot but you have to wait until C class to unlock it. As such you're rewarded for waiting by not having to pay the additional ten thousand. The advantage of having that fruit earlier however is that you can justify mastering it faster and will have more abilities within your fruit based fighting style.

[|The SHAKINATOR|]

My problem with the Styles System is simple that it will not stop a member from applying continuously for new abilities. Once they unlock a style, they can create as many abilities as they want. There's no cap. Certain members will feel like creating a new ability per week and it will just cause too much work for the staff. If we do have a Styles System, we still require a cap.

The other thing I don't like about it is the fact you can gain up to 5 Style Unlocks. An unlock to me seems like the ability to master that said fighting style. So somebody can become a swords-master at D-Class technically although I can understand that certain abilities will be rejected at this stage which makes it pointless to have them unlock the whole style if they cannot gain the abilities they want. Just thought of a suggestion, why not have a style unlock and then have free abilities given at each Rank-Up like a set number. That way there is also a cap. But as I was saying, with 5 Style Unlocks, everybody can become a jack of all trades by unlocking 5 different abilities. You can be a master swordsman, amazing doctor, expert martial artist etc. Not saying everyone will do that but considering its available, people will be tempted to and it just makes it so unrealistic to have somebody have so many talents.

Rather than having so many style unlocks, why not just simply get one ability at a time. It keeps it in a controlled system that is easy to monitor for the staff, has less potential for abuse and keeps it fair to all.

[Deleted]

Before I make my own decision on the matter I would like it if someone could clarify a few things. With the Ability Unlock system I just want to make sure I’m on the same page as you guys as to what an ‘ability’ is, you say we can apply a feat to an ability but the feat is the superhuman act e.g. cutting stone with a sword so does the ability correlate to a technique? But after that you say ‘These abilities will be applied for like any other technique as described above’ which leads me to believe they apply to all techniques. This has got me a bit confused but I personally would prefer this tiered Ability Unlock system where you buy a feat that for example lets you cut rock and that applies to all your techniques but then next rank you can buy a feat that lets you cut iron which also applies to all your techniques effectively letting your character steadily grow as a combatant, at least this is my understanding of it.

I don’t agree with the Style Unlock system because from my understanding I could effectively master swordsmanship at D rank. I know staff would never allow that to happen but then having the ability to master four other styles seems a bit ridiculous to me as I’d ever only use the one feat and that would be for swordsmanship. I’d rather have it as a tiered system where I’ve to think about how my character is going to develop their style e.g. one feat for air slashes, one feat for cutting steel etc.

[|The SHAKINATOR|]

The styles unlock applies a feat to a whole style and from where you can add as many individual abilities in that style as you want. So it unlocks all sword abilities in one go such as cutting stone and steel however they must still be applied for one at a time. What you're thinking is the second system where you go up a tree rather than unlocking a whole tree.

[Deleted]

You don't really "unlock them all at the same time" you merely enable feats to be used in that style. No one becomes an instant sword master, you still have to apply for each feat, it's merely free to do so. Part of the template will be your rank, moderators will take this into account. Essentially you just get more abilities. So I don't think the concern about people getting instant anything should be a worry.

However, there is an idea floating around that if you have five slots, people will try and fill five slots. Whilst I hope this generally isn't true, I can see why this is cause for concern. However, just because you hit B rank, if your a marksman, doesn't mean you can take a sword set of feats and be instantly good. It still has to make sense and people would be given an element of trust to use their common sense. If caught abusing this, or it clearly appearing someone is becoming too much of a mary sue. Staff will step in and you would be reprimanded.

Nonetheless, I will try and explain why five styles because I too see at is excessive. But I didn't want to alienate a type of play style. For instance, it's quite conceivable a person would use three. A style of their own, a fruit and say Rokushiki. Perhaps four would be better? Leaving it as one at B rank instead of two?

Still, the reason why I prefer the styles over the static moves is the way they'd make it dynamic. However, if the concern is too many moves, and Shaki's numbering proves better. (Which is begging to sway me) I wouldn't mind seeing it being that each individual feat purchased would be placed into a style? Perhaps achieving a harmony of ideas, if this isn't already what your saying. My only questions then would be, what comes of Devil Fruits - is that one feat? It could potentially work. And two would Rokushiki again, be one feat? If so, I could see the merit of doing it that way. If people fear the scope of the first is too large.

[Kurosaki]

I'm not sure that I like either. Honestly, my problem with the feats is that at first I thought it would be pretty cheap and you'd update all your moves in one fell swipe instead of updating each and everyone of them to include how your character has improved. That, in my opinion, should be the essence of it. Right now, we have tech upgrades that you can purchase, at 100 beri. I could just update all my moves to say "I can cut wood" to "I can cut through iron" and at most for D rank it'd be 1000 beri. That's super cheap and anyone can afford it. It also makes sense and does not limit people into waiting until they can unlock a feat and/or have enough beri to afford it.

At first, to me, feats seemed more about giving members access to things that they didn't have before. Rokushiki, Haki, Auras, Gears. But now it's all sounding like it's just a way to make members have to jump through more hoops and learn more rules. I'm not a fan of either.

[|The SHAKINATOR|]

Kuro it is one fell swipe:

In simple terms, Taro's system allows for a tree of feats to be purchased in one go and then you apply for each one at a time when you want based on your character's Rank.

My system is purchasing one feat at a time and building it up as you go along.

But each feat would in fact apply to all your techniques. So steel cutting would apply to all your previous sword techniques once you add the feat. Once you apply a feat, you don't have to buy new techniques. So in a sense, its not expensive. Especially considering the first one is free in both systems.

[Kurosaki]

If I waited until Kane was at S rank even. And updated ALL of my moves individually. The cost would come out to 3500 at 100 per move. If I were to purchase 1 feat even? That's AUTOMATICALLY about 3X's more just for that ONE feat update. Seems ridiculously expensive and unnecessary. If we go with updating abilities per ability to have feats... That's 4,900 more than I'd pay just to update it. See?

[Cirrus]

I share Shaki's qualms with the Style System, but I still believe it is the better of the two; I'd rather purchase a whole tree of feats and unlock them when it pertains to character than a feat per ability. I just think that a character shouldn't be learning more than say, three 'styles', as it were. The average character has one or two things in which they specialise; it should be rarer to see anymore than that for the sake of realism and for fear of Gary/Mary Stu-ing. For example, my character Islay is both a musician and a brawler, my character Darius is a swordsman and a navigator, my character Gantz is a shipwright and a wrestler, and my character Yannick is simply very smart. There shouldn't be a need for five styles to obtain feats - even the A and S class characters we've seen don't specialise in much more than that: Akainu as my example, is the very best Haki user we've seen so far - that's one style. He fights with his Magma fruit - that's two styles. He appears to have the physical stamina and prowess to move at high speed and go toe to toe with Whitebeard's polearm - that's three styles maximum. Even if a character did reasonably have more than three facets of combat, would they necessarily need a feat for all of them? That seems to be the implication with Shaki's breakdown of the feats system in the original post.

So er, I move we reduce that five styles number to around three, and maybe reduce the price? Whilst one thread may be enough to get you to D class, it is nowhere near enough to earn you the funds necessary to purchase a feats tree. At the moment it seems tailored to the 'old money' of the forum rather than a budding new bright spark looking to take full advantage of as many aspects of the systems as they can, because it'll take a while before they have anywhere near enough money to even begin thinking of feats.

[|The SHAKINATOR|]

Also, don't we need some kind of cap on the style system. Like say how many abilities is the limit. Can I just have like 20 or 30 per style? That is my other concern but I guess cutting it down to three styles would make sense. The pricing is huge though considering like Kuro stated that currently we can update a technique for 100 beri...

However with the styles feat there is no gradual development of the abilities attained. Somebody can go an apply for 5 abilities at a time. So suddenly they can do a number of things in the next thread that they couldn't do before. That would make no sense. One or Two new abilities you could understand but without having a proper fencing, there's too much room for abuse. If these issues can be sorted, I don't see the need to add each ability as a feat.

[Blackwater]

The new guy again.

I was just wondering whether there was an official ruling on this matter or if the talk just died down.

It all seems really interesting whichever way the site decides to go whether it’s style-based feats or a stand-alone feats system. Besides it seems having a feat system of some sort makes sense given that the “experience” system appears to tell how much adventuring the character has done, but doesn’t necessarily highlight the benefits of all that adventuring.

[|The SHAKINATOR|]

At the moment, the feat system has been put on hold. The staff do not see it as a necessity for the site and may obstruct the freedom of character growth. Although it may be available as and optional thing in the future. No real progress has been made unfortunately.