"Tag" skills...?

[_____________wh3lx0r]

(If you've ever played one of the Fallout games, you already know what tag skills are, so skip the paragraph below.)

Essentially, a tagged skill is any plain ol' skill chosen by the player for their avatar that when tagged progresses more rapidly than it would by default. For example, in Fallout 2, if I chose lockpicking as one of my tag skills the game effectively doubled the value of each skill point dumped in to it (i.e. 45%->90%). Thus, a character could choose three -- in the case of Fallout 2 -- tag skills to customize his character, enabling a pretty nice form of specialization. Of course, the character models in Fallout and AO are *quite* different, yet I think that the idea of tag skills could carry over to AO well.

How I'm interpreting skill levels:
+1: dark blue
...
+4: green


Example: As a doctor, my MultiRanged skill is the darkest of dark blues, a sad state of affair since I really want to dual wield my Strike ETE pistols. Despite my vigorous attempts and boosting my MR skill with implants, I still fall short; the IP cost is quite high at upper levels as well. Either I can drop the second weapon, or equip a severely lower QL secondary pistol -- BUT... I don't want to. Tagging this skill (at birth!) would promote this skill to the level of a green skill (+4), or at least add something like +2 to the current level, therefore allowing me to do what I want to do. Never would a tag skill increase the growth speed more than +4, and never would one be able to retag or tag outside of the initial birthing rooms (however, one could tag and untag all he wanted while inside). You can even pass off the extra proficiency in tagged skills as the hobby your character had while growing up or proficiency modules uploaded after stepping out of the OmniMed vats, etc... Overall, tag skills would allow for some wonderful customization. I can see it now: MAs carrying around Novas, smart atrox, doctors that can run. Unfortunately, implementing tags for already existing character could be a problem...


Anyway, think upon it, my fellow citizens.

[Teknolord]

Instead of tag, then implement bonus-skills, where a character picks e.g 1-3 prime skills to develope, and gets an bonus to this. This could be inserted into an item, nodrop, and inserted into one of the slots which there are few or no items for.
Maybe it could be a level based bonus, giving e.g +1-2 per level?

This option would need some in-depth thinking and consideration, as it could make some characters womewhat uber.. Think if people set it into stamina or prime weapon...