Use-based attribute leveling

[DraQ]

Recent discussions got me thinking about use based systems - tree-like skill structure, multiple skills per action, etc. etc.

Today I wondered if use-based could be somehow used for attributes as well and not in derpy TES multiplier way.

On one hand I like to think of attributes as static - representing innate potential. On the other it's hard to deny that you can hone them by practicing. Combined with aforementioned trees and difficulties with representing abilities like running speed in terms of use-based skills (no failure condition) I hereby propose following system:

Base attribute scores are static, determined at chargen and modified by race, sex, etc. They would modify both checks, modifiers and gain rates/probabilities (depending on the system) for all dependent skills.

Apart from those there is intermediate skill-attribute tier. Skills from this tier form roots of skill trees and each of them corresponds to a single attribute. Progress in those skills is similarly slowed by some function of total amount of skill gains in it, as should be the case with normal skills - it's goal is to discourage JoAT grind, by making levelling stuff not relevant to the build penalized by it impacting the development of relevant stuff.

Now, the idea of attribute-skills is capturing some of the ever elusive "experience". Apart from skill gains trickling down the trees (skill gain in any skill higher in the tree will up the entire branch down to the root, possibly with additional limitation of increase only applying to the nodes with lower value than newly increased skill) there would be high-level checks running in the background at slow rate and without RT restriction allowing for increasing the attribute-skills directly.

For example, surviving torture or large/difficult battle (numerical strength) would have chance of directly increasing willpower.

Beating an encounter with much less losses than would be expected from raw numerical strength or achieving quest goal without passing through expected intermediate phases would up intelligence (implying good tactics or creativity).

I'm not sure about other attributes, so suggestions are most welcome.

For example: maybe speed could directly depend on amount of successful non-trivial (again, via effective score comparison) pursuits/escapes?

So are other thoughts and opinions.

Discuss!!

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I like the idea of relatively static attributes influencing skill gain and growth, but I feel like that could lead to cookie-cutter characters who don't touch anything outside of their area of expertise.

The "learn-by-surviving" idea is interesting too, but it sounds like it would be kind of hard to actually build a character instead of having the circumstances build it for you, since it's mostly reactive (you have good willpower -> you come out of the torture in okayish mind state -> you have better willpower)

 

[DraQ]

I like the idea of relatively static attributes influencing skill gain and growth, but I feel like that could lead to cookie-cutter characters who don't touch anything outside of their area of expertise.

Ideally all kinds of characters would benefit from at least okay-ish scores in all attributes.

Also, JoAT builds should be workable, but their main strength would be versatility as they would be at best mediocre in everything. Playing a JoAT should consist of constantly thinking sideways and wriggling yourself out of tough situations by any means necessary.

The "learn-by-surviving" idea is interesting too, but it sounds like it would be kind of hard to actually build a character instead of having the circumstances build it for you, since it's mostly reactive (you have good willpower -> you come out of the torture in okayish mind state -> you have better willpower)

You'd also have trickle-down effect from skill trees.

 

[J1M]

I wouldn't enjoy this system. it removes the part of character building that I enjoy most: picking the next skill/attribute/feat that my character will learn.

 

[sea]

I don't think raw use-based attributes work very well. The fact is that leveling is all about constant improvement etc., but unless your attributes go to 1000 or something, having meaningful-feeling progression across an entire RPG's length would be difficult. If players can't see change and only see their strength increase once every five or ten hours, that's not necessarily very rewarding or fun, assuming they're gaining levels left and right otherwise with use-based skill raises as well.

What I do think would work instead is to have attributes a direct result of skill use; that is, gaining skill levels will lead to attribute increases as the player works his or her way up the tree. To use an example, if you fight with short blades a lot, at certain capstone skill levels you will gain a one-time bonus to strength and/or dexterity. However, these increases are mutually exclusive across skills - that is, once you have gained a level 10 skill use bonus for an attribute, you can't get another one, but have to continue increasing the skill. This way you could eventually pump your strength up from, say, 5 to 20, but only if you took the time to fully master a given discipline.

Effectively this is pretty similar to the Elder Scrolls setup, but without the overlap between different skills or the conscious choice to boost one attribute over another. Attributes are both inherent qualities as well as things which can be improved through exercise, so being able to say "nah, not going to drop points into charisma after boosting my speech skill" just does not make any sense, when the entire point of a use-based system is to simulate natural growth instead of more traditional game-like character development.

The only thing that I think might work otherwise is to have a Gothic-style setup of skill increases being the result of training rather than XP gain. Attributes would determine your base effectiveness and increase at a steady rate, but you'd only be able to unlock new abilities and upgrades by visiting trainers who can teach you more - obviously, attributes would limit what you can learn to do.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Reminds me of PoE's skill system, where attribute bonuses are something you acquire by necessity on the way to skills like dagger expertise or enhanced elemental damage or whatever. Interestingly, you could create a tree or web using this system which levelled automatically in various directions based on use- using daggers would increase your dagger skill, but also increase your dex a bit on the way to the next dagger skill. Moreover, it could be branching, so that initially, you're leveling towards one handed weapons, then light/dex one handed weapons, then daggers specifically, all by using daggers from the start. Later, you might switch to rapiers, and start progressing along a different branch on the light weapons path, or switch to maces and switch to the heavy one handed weapons branch.

All that said, I never cared much for use based growth. It works for something like dwarf fortress or X-Com where you don't want to manage everyone's shit individually because it'd take forever, but if it's feasible for my to control my character's growth, I want to do it. Otherwise you get annoying stuff like pushing boulders around to train strength or letting rats gnaw at you to train endurance, and then you're not only missing out on choices of how your character will grow, but choices on how to play the game, because you've mashed the two together and to do one you must limit the other.

 

[hrose]

I'm going to use a mixed system inspired by the forgotten Dangerous Journey system. It uses an interlocked system of different attributes, so that for example your skills caps are defined by overall attributes values. Developing attributes then, is not as simple and frequent as improving skills.

Use-base system in games always lead to annoying mechanics and force a player to "game" the system. See for example in Elder Scroll games players jumping around all the time because it improves the skill.

So I'm going for an hybrid system here as well. I'm going to use a basis working like in Dark Souls: you kill stuff or do quests, and you gain the equivalent of XP points. There are no levels, but these points can then be spent as a form of currency. In practice you spend points and then roll the dices to see IF a skill or attribute improved. This is mixed with the use-based system since you only can improve in skills that you used. But usually you just need to successfully use a skill once per session in order to roll for the improvement.

So you aren't forced to grind skills only to develop your character the way you want, and at the same time you also avoid the scenario where the character develops a set of skills entirely different than those he's using.

If more realism is needed, you can tweak this system so that improving skills that weren't used much requires spending more XP points.

 

[Marsal]

In practice you spend points and then roll the dices to see IF a skill or attribute improved. This is mixed with the use-based system since you only can improve in skills that you used. But usually you just need to successfully use a skill once per session in order to roll for the improvement.

Does that mean the XP are wasted if you fail the roll? Or just refunded and you roll for another skill?

Do you roll to see which skill increases and the number of dice rolled is proportional to the amount of successful uses of skills?

Example: If you hit with a sword 3 times, made a potion and blocked two attacks, you'd roll 3 dice for sword skill, 1 die for alchemy and 2 dice for block skill. Let's say you use d6 and 4+ is a success. You roll 3,3,1 for swords, 5 for alchemy and 2,6 for block. You'd be allowed to spend XP to increase alchemy once and block once, but not swords.

 

[Hirato]

I really liked how Elona (japanese roguelike) went about their primarily level-through-use system.
It was a hybrid, you did Level up in the traditional sense too, and these gained you a few skill points (you could invest in skills), more health, mana, and occasionally feats, as well as added more troublesome creatures in the overworld; The overworld was scaled to the player's level, the dungeons all had their own levels and spawned monsters appropriate for that.

This system is pretty simple, it works on the basis of "potential." Whenever you level up a skill or an attribute, your potential in that skill/attribute decreased; higher potential corresponded directly with faster level ups in the respective skill/attribute. Skill increases corresponded directly with training in an attribute, though the two didn't necessarily meet up nicely.
Your initial attributes/skills and their respective potentials are decided by your race and class. You rolled your attributes, class and race decided the possible range of each. eg a certain combination would net you a perception between 3-8 and strength between 11-20. You could reach a point in which it's almost impossible to improve anything quite early on, as a result there are several means of boosting your potential.
First, there are the points you gain on level ups you can spend on your skills, each point invested in a skill boosts its level a bit and potential.
Secondly, food directly corresponded with your attribute potentials, meat would boost your potential in strength, nuts and herbs in Charisma, etc. The food's abilities were enhanced if blessed. And if cursed, they often made you throw up, throwing up decreased your overall potential.
Thirdly, sleeping. If you go to bed when sleepy, you'll have dreams and things which can boost your skills, curse you, bless you and have other weird effect. At the end of it, your overall attribute potential will increase a little bit depending on the last day's progress.
Fourth, there were potions of raise potential, these boosted the potential of a random attribute and when blessed raised everything a little bit. If cursed it reduced your potential.
Fifth and finally, were the platinum pieces, these are rather rare and you have to really work for them. The primary use of these was to give to trainers to teach you skills and raising your skills' potential.

 

[hrose]

It's something I was thinking about. In theory the XP is wasted, but these increments should be frequent enough so that it's not a frustrating side-effects.

I'm aiming to have diminishing returns, so that reaching high level of a skill (I'm using a percent based system) can take a very long time. But I also want to fight a scenario where you have all skills around a medium level as result of using leftover XP. Basically I want to counter the inflation of skills. This can only be done if you have a limit on what you improve each session. Systems based entirely on currencies end up in a sort of "plateau".

I mean: currency systems that are based on items on different tiers, and where each tier costs significantly more than the previous, have the consequence of producing a "flattened" kind of progress. You buy all items on a tier, then you gain all items on the next tier, and so on. Applied to a skill system, this means that all skills would be at a similar level and increase together. While instead you want a system where a character has high values on certain skills and low values on others. More specialized.

In Dark Souls this flattening effect is countered by the fact that the XP costs to improve something progressively increase, regardless of what you use XP upon. So you spend the same amount of XP if you move Strength from 5 to 6 as if you move it from 100 to 101. The costs simply scale up for EVERY point you add.

I need to unify that scenario to the fact that improving an high skill is harder than improving a low one. And that can be done if you have to roll a dice to check if you improved or not, and so XP only lets you ATTEMPT at getting the improvement. The XP costs would rise across the board, while the success rate would depend on the value of the skill. So the XP would be wasted even if the improvement of the skill failed BUT the overall cost for each attempt would not (if it failed). This means that you spend the SAME amount of XP if you want to improve a high skill as if you want to improve a low one. But it's far more likely that the increase is successful (and so XP not simply wasted) if you are improving a low one than an high one. So you take your chances: you can burn your XP by trying to improve an high skill and likely fail, or use it, the same amount, to improve a lower skill, with an higher improvement success rate.

While being reminded that if you decided to improve the lower skill, and it was successful, now the costs for attempting another improvement is higher regardless if next you'll try to improve the high skill or the low.

 

[DraQ]

I don't think raw use-based attributes work very well. The fact is that leveling is all about constant improvement etc., but unless your attributes go to 1000 or something, having meaningful-feeling progression across an entire RPG's length would be difficult. If players can't see change and only see their strength increase once every five or ten hours, that's not necessarily very rewarding or fun, assuming they're gaining levels left and right otherwise with use-based skill raises as well.

Well, the thing about attributes is that they make a solid core of your character. They shouldn't change much. Having an attribute increase should be an exception, not a rule.

However it'd also be nice to have the ability to increase the attribute by training or otherwise using them.
The key problem here is accounting for both innate limitations and practice - basically the attribute gain should be very slow AND there should be trade-off making it undesirable to develop attributes not critical to your build (not class, mind you, build ).

Some more direct anti-grind measures would also be handy.
My most frequently proposed one relies on presence of success/failure check with assessable probabilities (gain equals probability of failure times multiplier on success, probability of success times multiplier on failure).
Another interesting and fully compatible way would be to randomize and delay skill/attribute increases, while also limiting them per unit of time.
For example you can have up to certain number of increases before resting, the increases themselves are randomized with probability of gain replacing gain and multiplier above, and you don't know of them until you rest.

What I do think would work instead is to have attributes a direct result of skill use; that is, gaining skill levels will lead to attribute increases as the player works his or her way up the tree. To use an example, if you fight with short blades a lot, at certain capstone skill levels you will gain a one-time bonus to strength and/or dexterity.

Basically it's the trickle-down mechanics I mentioned.

However, these increases are mutually exclusive across skills - that is, once you have gained a level 10 skill use bonus for an attribute, you can't get another one, but have to continue increasing the skill. This way you could eventually pump your strength up from, say, 5 to 20, but only if you took the time to fully master a given discipline.

I also mentioned such an optional limiting mechanics.

Effectively this is pretty similar to the Elder Scrolls setup, but without the overlap between different skills or the conscious choice to boost one attribute over another. Attributes are both inherent qualities as well as things which can be improved through exercise, so being able to say "nah, not going to drop points into charisma after boosting my speech skill" just does not make any sense, when the entire point of a use-based system is to simulate natural growth instead of more traditional game-like character development.

This.

The only thing that I think might work otherwise is to have a Gothic-style setup of skill increases being the result of training rather than XP gain. Attributes would determine your base effectiveness and increase at a steady rate, but you'd only be able to unlock new abilities and upgrades by visiting trainers who can teach you more - obviously, attributes would limit what you can learn to do.

A hybrid system where training would help raise use-based skill cap might be interesting.

Otherwise you get annoying stuff like pushing boulders around to train strength or letting rats gnaw at you to train endurance

Use-base system in games always lead to annoying mechanics and force a player to "game" the system. See for example in Elder Scroll games players jumping around all the time because it improves the skill.

(...)
you kill stuff or do quests, and you gain the equivalent of XP points.

That's when you don't implement any anti-grind measures.

In badly designed* XP systems you can also do all manners of retarded shit, like sneaking past enemies, then coming back and slaughtering them for moar XP, or achieving awesome dialogue victory, then slaughtering the dude you've just talked down for moar XP, or hunting down all the animals on the map as a druid for moar XP.
This isn't any less grounded than objections against use based systems, but it's far more damning - at least use-based grind doesn't reward completely insane and unreasonable behaviour.

*) Any system giving XP for kills or specific activity rather than just for goals, unless the game is very limited and focused on slaughtering everything in your way.

and then you're not only missing out on choices of how your character will grow, but choices on how to play the game, because you've mashed the two together and to do one you must limit the other.

You have it ass-backwards. How you play is the consequence of how you grow and how you grow is the consequence of how you play. They are the same choice - you build your character and off you go. If your system separates those, it's doing something wrong.

Sure, the system would probably work best with an opportunity to branch-out, but it should come at a price, generally versatility at the expense of raw power, and require some in-universe help - an NPC mentor, a tome of knowledge, noming someone's soul, etc.

 

[hrose]

Any system giving XP for kills or specific activity rather than just for goals, unless the game is very limited and focused on slaughtering everything in your way.

Yes, but it's still meant to simulate a use-based thing. You kill stuff with your sword -> get XP -> use XP to see if your sword skill improved.

"Goals" rewards are used to reward certain behaviors, but in this case XP is just a form of currency you spend to improve your character with minimal increments. Training is a form of "grind". I'm simply planning XP to drop with all sort of activity, so you don't really have to grind anything and just go with the flow.

And I'm deliberately a fan of old school statistics and micro-managing your character. So I don't really like an automated system that works on its own. Even if well designed.

 

[mondblut]

Prelude to Darkness

[/thread]

 

[Damned Registrations]

I've played a game with a use based experience system (specifically, you had random chance to unlock new abilities by using existing ones) that took into account difficulty levels. Did not take long to figure out how to abuse it by learning skills during boss fights rather than normal encounters.

Anti grind measures are at best hoops to jump through. You can make them onerous, but then you're just moving the bar around. Instead of grinding my skill because I only have a 20% chance I'll just reload until I get it right, and won't grind unless my skill check goes under 10%.

But you seem to be in favour of initial build not really changing and character level being glued to the rails anyways, so I don't know why you would even bother with an xp system. Not going to change the game play even the tiniest bit. All you'd be doing is having your skills scale with time played, making power progression completely linear and giving 0 incentive to go off the beaten path.

 

[DraQ]

Any system giving XP for kills or specific activity rather than just for goals, unless the game is very limited and focused on slaughtering everything in your way.

Yes, but it's still meant to simulate a use-based thing. You kill stuff with your sword -> get XP -> use XP to see if your sword skill improved.

"Goals" rewards are used to reward certain behaviors, but in this case XP is just a form of currency you spend to improve your character with minimal increments. Training is a form of "grind". I'm simply planning XP to drop with all sort of activity, so you don't really have to grind anything and just go with the flow.

And I'm deliberately a fan of old school statistics and micro-managing your character. So I don't really like an automated system that works on its own. Even if well designed.

So if you want a use based thing why not use a use based thing?

You have to keep track of XP *AND* skill increases, you add additional layer of save scumming (lol, sword not improved? Reload and try putting XP into dagger instead).
What's the point if you could just keep track of (hidden) skill increases and apply them on rest or whatever?

Why choose poor mechanics and then attempt to fix it by piling cruft on top of it? Why not choose mechanics that does what you want it to do in the first place?

I've played a game with a use based experience system (specifically, you had random chance to unlock new abilities by using existing ones) that took into account difficulty levels.

Which game would that be?

Did not take long to figure out how to abuse it by learning skills during boss fights rather than normal encounters.

If you can afford to grind during boss fights, then boss fights are shit - fix that instead.

Anti grind measures are at best hoops to jump through. You can make them onerous, but then you're just moving the bar around.

If the hoops are placed in such way that the most effective abuse is not abuse but playing the game as intended, then they are successful means of regulating players' behaviour.

Instead of grinding my skill because I only have a 20% chance I'll just reload until I get it right, and won't grind unless my skill check goes under 10%.

Savescumming is a potent gamebreaker in its own right and requires its own anti-abuse means regardless of character development system used.

But you seem to be in favour of initial build not really changing and character level being glued to the rails anyways, so I don't know why you would even bother with an xp system. Not going to change the game play even the tiniest bit. All you'd be doing is having your skills scale with time played, making power progression completely linear and giving 0 incentive to go off the beaten path.

You seem to have missed the point about trainers and mentors. It might be very advantageous to branch out into swordsmanship with your mage, summoning with your warrior or illusion spells with your thief, but chances are that if they attempt to educate themselves by trial and error they will end up dead. This is both realistic and makes for interesting gameplay mechanics as it forces you to weigh your options carefully.

You also don't seem to realize that character build is going to consist of an array of skills that will be used in concert and it will be up to player and their playstyle to decide which of them will grow and which will stagnate. Skill's usefulness also won't be binary - even a basic training in some area can be a great boon sometimes.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The only way to make playing the game more efficient than abuse is to make the game so easy abuse is a waste of time, or so linear you have no options. Case in point, the boss you can grind skills on is possible because the game is non linear. You can prepare for that encounter and go there at the right time to abuse it. If the player can possibly want for more skill at some point, there will be a reason to stop playing normally and grind for it. If I want to do X, but can't for lack of training, there is either the option of becoming able to through abuse, or just being fucked unless I come back later (which is the same as being fucked period, since you likely won't want the reward later.)

The 'realistic' way things would work is that someone would spend money, train a lot, and then beat the shit out of everything while not learning a damned fucking thing. This would make for some extremely shitty gameplay unless the game revolves around money. Why the fucking hell would any warrior ever have less than 15 STR/CON/DEX/Swordsmanship/Dodge/Etc. before getting into combat with a monster? You don't throw cops onto the street without any training, and the chances of anyone even being willing to hurt or kill them are pretty fucking slim.

But it's fun to murder a bunch of ogres through sneaky means even though they should crush you and become far more powerful as a reward. Certainly more fun than running a bunch of quests of linearly increasing difficulty to watch your stats raise incrementally.

The thing is, if you link character growth to character behavior, you force the player to choose whether he wants to behave the way he wants or grow the way he wants. This isn't an interesting decision to make, because one way is going to utterly fuck you if they both matter. You're either going to be stuck doing whatever is easiest, or stuck doing whatever provides the most useful growth, depending on the balance.

All this aside, your best idea for how to deterr people from grinding a skill is making it scale with time and success rate... which means it won't matter where you use the skill, since you get the same growth per X uses regardless of success or failure, and you'll want to do it constantly, since if you waste some time without training you'll have permanently missed out on potential growth. Prepare to jump everywhere, because if you go 5 minutes without jumping 20 times you've wasted your chance to train your jumping skill. Sound familiar?

 

[hrose]

So if you want a use based thing why not use a use based thing?

Because it has side effects I want to avoid, and because I like character development in the hands of the player.

You have to keep track of XP *AND* skill increases, you add additional layer of save scumming (lol, sword not improved? Reload and try putting XP into dagger instead).

Save scumming is easily prevented. The improvement dice roll is made when the first action was successful. When you spend XP points you only "unveil" it. So reloading gives always the same roll.

If you want to exploit the system, still, I could store all the values right at char creation.

 

[DraQ]

Because it has side effects I want to avoid

Such as?
What undesirable side effects are present in use-based system that your system manages to avoid?

Save scumming is easily prevented. The improvement dice roll is made when the first action was successful. When you spend XP points you only "unveil" it. So reloading gives always the same roll.

But you can then spend the XP on something else that succeeds.

With free reloads you either get information or retries to be abused, there is no way around that.
The only ways to limit savescumming are delaying the consequence of player's action beyond the limit of reloading staying practical and discouraging the act of reloading itself.

Use based allows for the former, being able to pick skill and see the result immediately does not.

 

[hrose]

Such as?
What undesirable side effects are present in use-based system that your system manages to avoid?

I said above, the player having to do something just to train a skill. Like repeatedly jumping in a Elder Scroll game. You don't play as you normally would, but you play to maximize the system.

But you can then spend the XP on something else that succeeds.

With free reloads you either get information or retries to be abused, there is no way around that.

If you are rolling for your sword skill, not spending the XP because you saw it fail simply DELAYS when you'll see that dice roll. So as long you want to see a specific skill grow then you have to spend XP to both improve it, or take the failing dice roll out of the queue. You can't "skip" it (since the rolls are specific for each skill, and so the queue is skill-based).

 

[hrose]

I'll explain better what the deal is: what you gain in "realism" in a use-based system you lose on the "fun" side.

World of Warcraft crafting is a kind of use based system, where you have to build a bunch of useless stuff only to train your skill. Use-based in general forces the player to boring repetition of tasks only so that the character develops down those paths.

If instead you have XP as a currency system, then all activities give you XP that goes into the same pool. You can go fight, throw fireballs, disable traps, complete quests, crafting, gathering materials. Whatever you do gives you undifferentiated points. And then you spend those points to improve your character however you want.

So instead of having to do 'x' just because you want that skill, you can simply let the player do whatever he likes, without be concerned that this indulgence pushes the character in an unwanted direction.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

I see one big problem with use-based systems. Unless you want all characters to become superheroes eventually (TES), you need to implement a limit. Once there is a limit (the more skill, the harder they progress, simple cap, whatever), players will avoid using skills they don't intend to use, so that they don't take up the space.

"A stealthy approach would be perfect here, but I must slaughter them with my axe, because I can't afford to screw my build."

The best what can be done now is allowing some sort of respec, and most players will be constantly undoing their accidentally accumulated skills. What the fuck? Who in their right mind would do that outside such stupid metagame?
Or you can make skills deteriorate when not being used. So now the player will keep track of both skills to use and skills to avoid. And every step outside the chosen build directly slows down your advancement. In a game world with limited oportunities (not respawning enemies etc), the slowdown becomes a penalty, period.

And what do we get in return? Your mage can no longer raise his sword skill after frying 20 enemies with fireballs. So he will cut up 50 rats with the sword and get the skill anyway.

 

[Cool name]

Instead of the attributes growing with time or events it could be made that the potential represented by the attributes is reached gradually. The character is created and the attributes define his or her potential. When the game does start only a measure of it is in practice used. As the character grows in his or her mastery of appropriate skill sets the real value would become closer to the final value until they are the same. That would be the end of it. The attribute would not grow beyond the value given to it during character creation and the growth of related skills beyond a point designated by the maximum value of the attribute may be allowed but the rate slower and the gains diminished.

Certain events could give a boost to the grow of the attribute towards its full potential, but not beyond. In the torture example I would not see it as the character's potential growing. If resisting such levels of torture were beyond its potential he would not have been able to do so. He only discovered or developed more of his potential by means of the event. The maximum potential remained the same.

In a fantasy setting the grow of the maximum potential should only be permitted by means of supernatural agency and it should be both rare and costly. 'Pact with the devil' costly. I am not well versed on science fiction settings so I will say nothing on that.

Just my two cents to the topic.