Telengard
Arcane
To begin with, it helps to understand what are the main things people like about Learn-By-Use skill systems. Why they like that swimming across the lake for a set period of time increases the character's Swimming skill.
1) Learn-by-use takes the basic rpg premise of the rat pressing the little lever and sometimes getting a treat that is the rpg level-up system, and turns it into to a much more visceral and constant pleasure. With learn-by-use, the player can hammer on the little lever of a single skill and get little treats of skill increases on a regular basis, instead of having to wait for those mass treats from a level increase. Hammer, hammer = +1 treat. Hammer, hammer, hammer = +1 treat. Etc.
2) Learn-by-use "makes sense". That statement essentially being a hugely common quote from proponents.
But why does learn-by-use "make sense"? To take but one example of the skill Construction - why does running around hammering nails into random boards constantly increase the character's Construction skill. And why can the player use this fact to run around hammering nails into every board in the game until suddenly they can craft an aircraft carrier? What do board nailing and aircraft carrier constuction have to do with each other?
Nothing, of course. Which throws out the whole "makes sense" premise. How does it make sense that performing a specific, isolated, simple task raises a general skill instead of raising the skill of that specific task? Why doesn't the character's skill of Hammering-nails-into-boards increase instead? That is, after all, the only skill you're actually "using".
Of course, that's absurd. The skillset of an rpg has to be abstracted down to a level that is manageable by the player. There can't be a billion different specific skills and the game still function. Yet, the very fact that the rpg skills are thusly always abstracted breaks the very notion that the character is learning by use. Instead, the character is learning a skill by performing a semi-related minigame defined by an isolated, singular task - like hammering nails into boards. That little minigame of finding boards and clicking nails into them becomes the means of raising the Construction skill.
So, how does that "make sense"?
Well, it makes sense to the literalist, autistic mind. When they perform this specific minigame task, it causes this specific skill to get a +1 treat. All of the skills thus become neatly placed in their own cubbyhole, isolated from one another. Increasing skills loses any connection to reality, even in an abstract form, and becomes instead a methodology of neatly separated and easily understandable tasks. It thus reduces the complexities of interaction with the world into tightly constructed, numerical-based minigames with no relation to one another or to real life. Or in other words, something perfectly sensible for the autist who doesn't relate to real life to begin with.
Completely divorced from reality for everyone else, though, and thus entirely unintuitive.
The Fundamental Premise of Learn-By-Use Is Wrong: The nonsensical nature of learn-by-use doesn't stop with its minigames, though. Because learn-by-use is not at all how people actually learn. To take an example that I have used here before, since many of you can, I'm sure, relate - computers. How often have you helped someone learn to email or to make a post on Facebook? Quite often? Well then, you already know how things really work in the field, rather than in the theory on the paper.
You teach someone how to Facebook post, and they learn that one task, and then they immediately stop learning. They will thereafter happily Facebook post away, and just as happily refuse to learn anything else about computers, or even anything else about Facebook, for that matter. Then, if they ever want to utilize one of the other features of Facebook, Facebook games for instance, do they spontaneously learn this new task themselves through their previously regular use of Facebook? No, they come back to you and ask you to help them learn how to access the games.
And that is because people do not learn by use. They learn by the trifecta of Expert, Practice, Fieldwork. In the case of Facebook, you are the expert. You teach them the new skill of Facebook posting. Then you observe them for a bit while they practice under your supervision. And finally you set them free to perfect their new skill in the field on their own. So, they do technically learn by practice and repetition, but only to the threshold to which you have taught them.
Learn-by-use thus denies reality itself by cutting out you, the expert. Instead, learn-by-use allows characters to increase skills simply through practice and field work.
Spontaneous Learning: A rare few people do learn things on their own - lets call them inventors. Inventors create whole new things out of thin air. Essentially, they do increase their skill by use. They create something new, and then they perfect that new thing themselves, and thus increase their skill. And then they become an Expert in that new thing, and teach that new thing to others. The fact that inventors are quite rare, though, means that this sort of spontaneous self-improvement is too rare to even be usefully incorporated into an abstract skill system.
Experts: We all actually know that experts are involved in learning, since experts are so much a part of our lives. As toddlers, it is our parents who teach us. Then a bit later, it is our parents and our teachers at school. And a bit later after that, it is our friends and our teachers. And when we enter the work world, it is a system of mentors and guides. Or if you're a nerd, you might replace book learning for any one of these individuals. But that's not really different, as the book has been written by an expert. Thus, you're still learning from an expert, just without that bothersome social contact.
And a number of rpgs, including D&D, have at times attempted to incorporate this fact of human nature into their design. However, despite it being how people really learn, the extra time and trouble of consulting an expert during a game is regularly viewed as a burden. Players want to hammer that lever and get their treat NOW! Not delayed while they go off and find an expert to train them, or wait for a full level gain. That's the whole point of learn-by-use, really, people get their treats now. Any delay in treat giving thus defeats the core purpose.
The Fundaments of Boredom: Yet, it's not just the task of finding experts that regular people find boring - most find the minigames of learn-by-use to be boring in and of themselves. For instance, say you want to swim down to the underwater city and fight the kraken. Under level-based rules, you assign some leveling points to swimming and some to underwater fighting, and away you go. Under learn-by-use, though, you have the minigame grind. This is different to the common thread of rpg leveling grind in order to gain xp leveling points - which are acquired by repeating the core gameplay. Learn-by-use treats each skill individually, and thus increases them separately via an isolated minigame. So, first you need to go grind the Swimming minigame. Then you need to go grind the Underwater Fighting minigame. And only then can you can go down and fight the kraken. Thus, first thing you do in order to achieve your goal is stop playing the game and swim around aimlessly until your Swimming skill gets high enough to dive effectively. For those whom the treats aren't both the end goal and the journey, this is boredom incarnate.
Kludges: Of course, proponents of learn-by-use do try to answer these issues with disparate kludges. For instance, allowing the learn-by-use of hammering nails into boards to only raise the Construction skill so far. So, after rank 20 I have to go build wall frames instance, for instance. But now you're just adding additional odd hoops in my quest to build an aircraft carrier. Plus you're adding an inordinate amount of complexity to an already complex and oddly abstract skills system - a system that is already divorced from reality and common sense. To add complexity to an unintuitiveness system is to then just make a big, jumbled mess.
Which leaves you with Skyrim. The Skyrim learn-by-use system works by essentially not working. You don't need to increase your character's skills to play the game. You can already succeed at any skills level. Increasing your skills just unlocks additional power-ups at certain high thresholds. So, you get the +1 treats, the treats have little numerical bearing on your character's current power level, and occasionally you get dropped an unneeded power perk treat to show you how special you are for having repeatedly hammered that little lever enough times.
Enjoy!
1) Learn-by-use takes the basic rpg premise of the rat pressing the little lever and sometimes getting a treat that is the rpg level-up system, and turns it into to a much more visceral and constant pleasure. With learn-by-use, the player can hammer on the little lever of a single skill and get little treats of skill increases on a regular basis, instead of having to wait for those mass treats from a level increase. Hammer, hammer = +1 treat. Hammer, hammer, hammer = +1 treat. Etc.
2) Learn-by-use "makes sense". That statement essentially being a hugely common quote from proponents.
But why does learn-by-use "make sense"? To take but one example of the skill Construction - why does running around hammering nails into random boards constantly increase the character's Construction skill. And why can the player use this fact to run around hammering nails into every board in the game until suddenly they can craft an aircraft carrier? What do board nailing and aircraft carrier constuction have to do with each other?
Nothing, of course. Which throws out the whole "makes sense" premise. How does it make sense that performing a specific, isolated, simple task raises a general skill instead of raising the skill of that specific task? Why doesn't the character's skill of Hammering-nails-into-boards increase instead? That is, after all, the only skill you're actually "using".
Of course, that's absurd. The skillset of an rpg has to be abstracted down to a level that is manageable by the player. There can't be a billion different specific skills and the game still function. Yet, the very fact that the rpg skills are thusly always abstracted breaks the very notion that the character is learning by use. Instead, the character is learning a skill by performing a semi-related minigame defined by an isolated, singular task - like hammering nails into boards. That little minigame of finding boards and clicking nails into them becomes the means of raising the Construction skill.
So, how does that "make sense"?
Well, it makes sense to the literalist, autistic mind. When they perform this specific minigame task, it causes this specific skill to get a +1 treat. All of the skills thus become neatly placed in their own cubbyhole, isolated from one another. Increasing skills loses any connection to reality, even in an abstract form, and becomes instead a methodology of neatly separated and easily understandable tasks. It thus reduces the complexities of interaction with the world into tightly constructed, numerical-based minigames with no relation to one another or to real life. Or in other words, something perfectly sensible for the autist who doesn't relate to real life to begin with.
Completely divorced from reality for everyone else, though, and thus entirely unintuitive.
The Fundamental Premise of Learn-By-Use Is Wrong: The nonsensical nature of learn-by-use doesn't stop with its minigames, though. Because learn-by-use is not at all how people actually learn. To take an example that I have used here before, since many of you can, I'm sure, relate - computers. How often have you helped someone learn to email or to make a post on Facebook? Quite often? Well then, you already know how things really work in the field, rather than in the theory on the paper.
You teach someone how to Facebook post, and they learn that one task, and then they immediately stop learning. They will thereafter happily Facebook post away, and just as happily refuse to learn anything else about computers, or even anything else about Facebook, for that matter. Then, if they ever want to utilize one of the other features of Facebook, Facebook games for instance, do they spontaneously learn this new task themselves through their previously regular use of Facebook? No, they come back to you and ask you to help them learn how to access the games.
And that is because people do not learn by use. They learn by the trifecta of Expert, Practice, Fieldwork. In the case of Facebook, you are the expert. You teach them the new skill of Facebook posting. Then you observe them for a bit while they practice under your supervision. And finally you set them free to perfect their new skill in the field on their own. So, they do technically learn by practice and repetition, but only to the threshold to which you have taught them.
Learn-by-use thus denies reality itself by cutting out you, the expert. Instead, learn-by-use allows characters to increase skills simply through practice and field work.
Spontaneous Learning: A rare few people do learn things on their own - lets call them inventors. Inventors create whole new things out of thin air. Essentially, they do increase their skill by use. They create something new, and then they perfect that new thing themselves, and thus increase their skill. And then they become an Expert in that new thing, and teach that new thing to others. The fact that inventors are quite rare, though, means that this sort of spontaneous self-improvement is too rare to even be usefully incorporated into an abstract skill system.
Experts: We all actually know that experts are involved in learning, since experts are so much a part of our lives. As toddlers, it is our parents who teach us. Then a bit later, it is our parents and our teachers at school. And a bit later after that, it is our friends and our teachers. And when we enter the work world, it is a system of mentors and guides. Or if you're a nerd, you might replace book learning for any one of these individuals. But that's not really different, as the book has been written by an expert. Thus, you're still learning from an expert, just without that bothersome social contact.
And a number of rpgs, including D&D, have at times attempted to incorporate this fact of human nature into their design. However, despite it being how people really learn, the extra time and trouble of consulting an expert during a game is regularly viewed as a burden. Players want to hammer that lever and get their treat NOW! Not delayed while they go off and find an expert to train them, or wait for a full level gain. That's the whole point of learn-by-use, really, people get their treats now. Any delay in treat giving thus defeats the core purpose.
The Fundaments of Boredom: Yet, it's not just the task of finding experts that regular people find boring - most find the minigames of learn-by-use to be boring in and of themselves. For instance, say you want to swim down to the underwater city and fight the kraken. Under level-based rules, you assign some leveling points to swimming and some to underwater fighting, and away you go. Under learn-by-use, though, you have the minigame grind. This is different to the common thread of rpg leveling grind in order to gain xp leveling points - which are acquired by repeating the core gameplay. Learn-by-use treats each skill individually, and thus increases them separately via an isolated minigame. So, first you need to go grind the Swimming minigame. Then you need to go grind the Underwater Fighting minigame. And only then can you can go down and fight the kraken. Thus, first thing you do in order to achieve your goal is stop playing the game and swim around aimlessly until your Swimming skill gets high enough to dive effectively. For those whom the treats aren't both the end goal and the journey, this is boredom incarnate.
Kludges: Of course, proponents of learn-by-use do try to answer these issues with disparate kludges. For instance, allowing the learn-by-use of hammering nails into boards to only raise the Construction skill so far. So, after rank 20 I have to go build wall frames instance, for instance. But now you're just adding additional odd hoops in my quest to build an aircraft carrier. Plus you're adding an inordinate amount of complexity to an already complex and oddly abstract skills system - a system that is already divorced from reality and common sense. To add complexity to an unintuitiveness system is to then just make a big, jumbled mess.
Which leaves you with Skyrim. The Skyrim learn-by-use system works by essentially not working. You don't need to increase your character's skills to play the game. You can already succeed at any skills level. Increasing your skills just unlocks additional power-ups at certain high thresholds. So, you get the +1 treats, the treats have little numerical bearing on your character's current power level, and occasionally you get dropped an unneeded power perk treat to show you how special you are for having repeatedly hammered that little lever enough times.
Enjoy!