Here we go again. Job Progression!
http://stonehearth.net/2014/10/21/desktop-tuesday-job-progression-update/
Looks promising 
. That third footman ability… a cleave attack perhaps?
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Level Three: Efficient Cuts
nuff’ said… 
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My thoughts exactly.
Yay I’m loving this weeks update. I was wondering, if the trapper is going to be able to level up and catch other animals. Will we get to see the deer, boars, birds, and sheep soon?!
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He did mention catching larger animals… So we can hope so!
One idea that got mentioned in the development blog that I figured I’d share…
What about the ability to retain passives/certain skills across jobs once a certain level’s reached? For example, the faster walking speed from the Level 1 Trapper is kept indefinitely after level 5 or 6 (or some later number). This is done with several RPG series, and it encourages some interesting mixes of jobs and skills.
The one thing that concerned me was how this idea–usually for a party of four units–would fit in a game like Stonehearth where there could be upwards of 60 or 70 different settlers in the late game. It might become a bit much to oversee…
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An idea for the skill set of the footman, could it be a good idea to steal an idea from Guild Wars and have a different skill set depending on what weapon you are wielding, I just think that it would bring more diversity and give the player more options for combat.
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I like the progression that you guys are making on the Job Progression.
However, to me it feels a bit far away from how real cognitive psychology works. In real life, when a person doesn’t perform a certain task for a long time, he will slowly lose his or her skill to do the task. Let’s say you’re a sportsman but decide to retire: over time of not performing your sport, you will lose your skill in that sport.
I would like to have a similar system in Stonehearth because in theory, you would be able to have one guy learning all the skills of every profession. To me this feels very unrealistic. Even though it’s fine for small and practical skills, it becomes more unrealistic as he learns more professional skills from different job trees. Especially if it’s for many different jobs.
I would like to see some sort of cap to the amount of jobs he can remember his skills for, or to the amount of skills itself that he can remember. I also would also like to see something more advanced such as skill deterioration for jobs that he hasn’t been practicing for a while.
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I like that system of passives.
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It can work, but it is a lot to micromanage… perhaps it’s worth having so you can cultivate your “favorite” settlers, though.
My most thorough experience with this sort of acquired passives system is from the FF Tactics series: one would commonly want to train new recruits briefly in a “weak” class to learn a passive ability (such as a reactive Counterattack). However, most of these skills occupied a single precious slot; you couldn’t stack 5 different reaction skills at once. A system like this would allow for tailored cross-training, as well as emergent settler profiles; you might notice Random Footman’s perk from when he was a trapper and remember that time he got spooked by a bear, strengthening your connection mentally.
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This would also be pretty interesting to see–it’d also control players trying to “clear” all of the professions to get all of the passives at once and force more selection and care when combining them. This brings up another possible discussion, too: what if there’s not only limited slots for these passive bonuses, but the total number of slots changes between units based on their stats?
It’s a neat idea in other games, but I’m hesitant to suggest it in Stonehearth. It could be that you end up with a relatively good settler, who immediately falls into a lower tier because they only have one or two slots and can’t use as many potential combinations. Maybe if there was also equipment or research/upgrades that allowed you to expand the number of slots over the course of the game? This could be either for singular units, or–which I sort of prefer at this initial state–a way to overall boost your settlers.
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trapper can still only trap smaller animals, not bears, as he stated. That is the job of the beast master.
Also,
Im not sure how i feel about the switching jobs system still, there really is no debuff associated with switching jobs, they just retain everything.
Come on.
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I agree with you on this.
Well, it’s early days still - first let’s get the basics in, then we can see about limiting it more.
Anyway… yeah I dunno. Probably should be something to punish you for swapping jobs (or perhaps for not doing a job for a long time, in cases where you swap jobs quickly, then go back again).
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One idea I want to throw out there is limiting the amount of traps a trapper can place, like for instance 3 traps, then as they gain levels they can unlock the ability to place 6 or more depending on the level. I think this would help balance the leveling up system because then you would want your settlers to spend more time on say that job to gain the necessities of an effective and efficient job as a trapper.
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really looking forward to this:)
And interested to see other “fun” skills (like the gain a pet skill)
Gonna be good! 
Sooooo… How about the tree ents being added? 
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Since Tom asked us what kind of things we think the Footman’s skills could be…
I think the Footman skills could be more related to the gear he can use and partly related to various passive abilities. You might add some special moves that the character can employ in combat as the final florish on a high level Footman.
For instance, instead of +20% damage, the footman can now equip a weapon that is 20% better than what he had before, but he needs someone to make it for him. For instance, he could upgrade from a wooden training sword (carpenter) to a steel sword (blacksmith). Another example would be that, instead of being 20% tougher all the time, he can now equip heavier armor that makes him 20% tougher. For instance, upgrading from a leather armor (which you can equip straight away when you become a footman) to a chainmail armor (which you need a level x skill for).
Part of the benefit here is that you can look at your troops and see which ones are more experienced right away. That guy using metal gear is definitely more experienced than the guy with a training sword and leather armor. Of course, other combat classes that are even better than the footman would have some other things to differentiate themselves like helmets and even fancier gear.
One idea for a passive ability that can’t be done as an equipment upgrade instead would be having your footmen notice enemies at a longer distance. Another passive ability would be the ability to run faster to get into combat.
A skill that shows up as a unique animation (like the Cleave mentioned by others) makes a good choice for a final skill.
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I suspect this might be something built into the job system. Every job is determined by the tool you are using. So having a different kind of weapon would give you a different job. For instance, we already know about Footman (sword) and Archer (bow). You might have Crossbowman (crossbow) as an upgrade of Archer and Spearman (spear) as an upgrade of Footman. They’ve been a little cagey about what fighting classes will be in the game, so I’m just guessing about the possibilities here.
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