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What I criticized is not the rule itself, but the trend. I just picked up the occasion to rant about those points.

If you start to use that approach for something basic like the skill improvement, you’ll finish to use similar formulas to calculate health, mana, regeneration rates, to hit rolls, resistances and so on. At the end the game will be PERMEATED by those rules.

The point is: Is it possible to instead use a transparent system even for the players that is able to reproduce similar patterns?

That math is really necessary? Is it INDISPENSABLE?

I think it isn’t. There are better, much simpler ways to “translate” those rules.

DAoC is one perfect example of a messed ruleset that even Mythic’s programmers cannot figure out anymore. It grew complicated and inflated and the majority of the mechanics, even those directly exposed to the players, are incredibly hard to figure out and understand completely.

That complexity, imho, is useless. For the simple reason that I believe there are better alternatives.

I don’t criticize the merit of your rule or what it tries to simulate. I criticize the approach. In the case there’s a simpler one available.

Oh, and spreadsheets are probably the worst way to test the balance in a game. They are blind about the gameplay and are more rough approximation than the biased perception of a player.

There’s no need for spreadsheets when the game systems can be tested properly with a piece of paper, a dice and a pencil. That’s enough to simulate EVERYTHING.