Skyrim:What are the chances they will overhaul the mechanics

[SCO]

The eternal struggle ITT - roleplayers vs dungeon crawlers.








(larpers vs munchkins)

 

[Vault Dweller]

A system that force you to repeat tedious actions, how is that good?

Casting spells is hardly an example of tedious actions. It's only tedious if you have to sit and do it for hours a-la TES. If you do it every now and then, it falls under a normal use, not unlike casting defensive spells just to be prepared, which actually makes sense in Wiz 8 since you can run into a large mob at any moment.

Sure every system can make you do something tedious but "increase at use" is the most tedium inducing. Change Wiz8 to xp system, and you would have less tedious actions to make.

How so? Wiz 8 system was a hybrid. Without the increase by use you'd have to patrol the Arnika road back and forth to level up.

As for the "the very concept of "increase-by-use" forces and locks you into certain things for every encounter" comment, I obviously disagree. What you do in each encounter is determined by the combat system, enemies and encounter design (i.e. these are the driving factors behind encouraging/forcing the player to use different tactics, not the need to raise skills).

So you will end with jacks of all trades that are good at nothing?

How did you jump to that conclusion? If you want to play a Priest and the game keeps you busy casting priest spells, what would encourage you to become a jack of all trades? Like I said, the design determines what you do and whether or not you'll end up a good at nothing jack of all trades.

 

[Shannow]

Pretty much. Oblivion sucked because the game was poorly designed and dumbed down.

The "increase-by-use" system is a solid, interesting, and often more logical alternative to point-buy systems. It was featured in early Interplay games like Dungeon Master and Stonekeep, Prelude to Darkness, venerable Wizardry, and even Betrayal at Krondor, if the memory serves me right.

Much like anything else, such systems can be well designed, well balanced, and hard to abuse, or they can be designed in a retarded, game-breaking way. Well, we know which way Bethesda will pick.

Strange, I seem to remember a discussion when I was a newfag and had exactly the position you now have in this thread while you were more in the "you need to decide where to put your points otherwise it's bad or something"-camp...

Anyway, of all the learning by doing systems I like Morrowind's (never played Oblivion, Daggerfall or Arena but I assume they're not vastly different) the least. And that's because of the tacked on levelling system that just asked to be abused. Generally I'd keep the learning by doing part but get rid of levelling. A system like JA2 where everyone is at least a little competent and having higher levels simply gives you an edge but neither makes you super-powerfull (Morrowind, D&D) nor is pointless (Oblivion, MEh). Remove any UI indication of how far removed you're from the next skill-level and perhaps even add a certain amount of randomness to it. Add trainers. Paying trainers would be far less time-intensive than training by doing, but competent trainers would have to be unlocked via quests, etc. And perhaps trainers could unlock higher skill-levels. Add "good" action-combat and you'd have a solid system, imo.
That has two problems:
1. It'd suck for TES-fans who want to keep their system.
2. Beth cannot into "good" action-combat and they'd fuck the system up anyway.

 

[Kraszu]

A system that force you to repeat tedious actions, how is that good?

Casting spells is hardly an example of tedious actions. It's only tedious if you have to sit and do it for hours a-la TES. If you do it every now and then, it falls under a normal use, not unlike casting defensive spells just to be prepared, which actually makes sense in Wiz 8 since you can run into a large mob at any moment.

It is when you do it to increase the skill, if it useful then you would do without increase at use anyway.

How so? Wiz 8 system was a hybrid. Without the increase by use you'd have to patrol the Arnika road back and forth to level up.

How does increase at use prevents it? You warriors still had to increase they abilities in combat.

If you want to solve that issue you could do it by setting what each char will train before sleep. It could be in big part automated after you choose your warriors to train melee combat they do it until you select something different. It could work in non static world where it is important on how you use your day like in SR2.

How did you jump to that conclusion? If you want to play a Priest and the game keeps you busy casting priest spells, what would encourage you to become a jack of all trades? Like I said, the design determines what you do and whether or not you'll end up a good at nothing jack of all trades.

Not having any priest spell to cast, but having something else that this char could do in combat. Increase at use systems penalize you then.

 

[MisterStone]

Why can't someone use Linley's Dungeon Crawl system for skill gain? You earn XP, points go into a general bank and when you take certain actions these points are burned up as the relevant skill is advanced. When the points are gone, skills do not level up.

Sadly I'm guessing the average gamer (ie the people who think that Oblivion should be Game of the Year three years in a row) would get angry because they can't specify themselves exactly how points are spent every single time.

 

[Castanova]

Eh, Dungeon Crawl's system is prime for just as much abuse. Every time you kill anything worth more than 200 XP, you have to immediately cast, like, Blink 20 times in order to level up your Translocation, etc etc. It's only SLIGHTLY better because there's a limit to the amount of grinding you can do before you're forced to move on and kill something else.

Also, VD:

How so? Wiz 8 system was a hybrid. Without the increase by use you'd have to patrol the Arnika road back and forth to level up.

Strawman argument. If you took away the use-based aspect of Wiz8, you'd obviously need to scale up the rewards for winning a fight so you wouldn't be forced to grind Arnika Road, or whatever.

 

[Vault Dweller]

How so? Wiz 8 system was a hybrid. Without the increase by use you'd have to patrol the Arnika road back and forth to level up.

Strawman argument. If you took away the use-based aspect of Wiz8, you'd obviously need to scale up the rewards for winning a fight so you wouldn't be forced to grind Arnika Road, or whatever.

What rewards? It's a hybrid (use-based plus point-buy & levels). If you take away one element, you beef up the other, i.e. if you take away the use-based element, you'd have to increase the amount of skill points on leveling up. The grinding remains.

That's my point. The grinding in Wiz 8 isn't some unfortunate by-product of a use-based system. It's a design goal. The entire game is basically an endless chain of combat encounters. Obviously, the developers thought that you can't ruin a game by loading it up with combat filler and they shoved in as much as they could.

 

[Vault Dweller]

A system that force you to repeat tedious actions, how is that good?

Casting spells is hardly an example of tedious actions. It's only tedious if you have to sit and do it for hours a-la TES. If you do it every now and then, it falls under a normal use, not unlike casting defensive spells just to be prepared, which actually makes sense in Wiz 8 since you can run into a large mob at any moment.

It is when you do it to increase the skill, if it useful then you would do without increase at use anyway.

Why? Since when doing it to increase a skill is "WRONG!"? Is it a crime to put a few extra points in INT not because your character should have exactly 14 points there but to get more skill points or unlock a feat?

Let's not pretend that nobody here cares about increasing skills and talk instead about acceptable and well designed ways to do so. Like I said, casting bless/shield spells while you're traveling is hardly an example of abusing the system or tedious activities. It's something that a spellcaster would actually do in a dangerous environment.

How so? Wiz 8 system was a hybrid. Without the increase by use you'd have to patrol the Arnika road back and forth to level up.

How does increase at use prevents it? You warriors still had to increase they abilities in combat.

The use system ensured a steady increase of your skills. Without it, judging by the frequency of level ups, you'd have to work (grind) a lot harder to keep the same skill levels, even if the level up rewards were increased. In my opinion, of course.

How did you jump to that conclusion? If you want to play a Priest and the game keeps you busy casting priest spells, what would encourage you to become a jack of all trades? Like I said, the design determines what you do and whether or not you'll end up a good at nothing jack of all trades.

Not having any priest spell to cast, but having something else that this char could do in combat. Increase at use systems penalize you then.

Not having priest spells to cast why? Run out too fast? The mana/spell points regen rate should be tweaked to ensure that your character can play as a priest, if that's a desirable goal, of course. Otherwise, if a goal is battle priest, you start using some combat skills. Simple as that (and still far from "good at nothing jacks of all trades".

 

[Vault Dweller]

Don't really care what's more "logical" in realistic terms - I care what works as a game mechanic.

Surely you are not claiming that increase-by-use doesn't work as a game mechanic.

And you can easily avoid the "only rewarded on level-ups" issue by giving skill points instead of experience, which can be distributed immediately, a la Bloodlines.

You think?

Same as increase-by-use esseantially, just without forcing me to use a specific strategy each time I fight.

Nobody is forcing you to use a specific strategy each time you fight. That's pure bullshit.

First, it's a remote issue in Wiz only because they split magic into domains. Had they gone only with schools, it wouldn't have been an issue at all, so it's a design issue not a system issue.

Second, the game has a shitload of combat and you don't have to use all domains in every fight, much like you don't have to max out your skills in Fallout. In a rare case when you can finish a fight without using all spells, it's more than ok to save them for next fight, which would take place in about 30 seconds, and use the remaining spells there.

There, the problem is solved. Do you have any other problems with the increase-by-use systems?

 

[PorkaMorka]

Pure increase by use is very close to a failed mechanic. It is extremely difficult to avoid encouraging tedious repetitive tasks when trying to raise rarely used skills.

Pure or mostly pure increase by use doesn't have a great track record of success.

JA2 - punching cows, repeatedly hauling tons of equipment cross country, setting and defusing bombs over and over... far better ways to raise certain stats than actually playing the game.

Silent Storm - you have to download a "skill watchdog" mod or none of your skills keep up as you play through normally; the Autoleveled hire-ables will quickly become far more skilled than your characters in all except possibly shooting, as you only get a few opportunities per map to disarm a trap etc.

Ultima Online - You pretty much had to unattended macro your skills and stats overnight, (or sit there for hours training manually), normal play wouldn't take you past a certain point

Far better is the Dungeon Crawl system described above... when you need EXP in your pool to raise a skill, you can make skills reasonably fast to raise. So if you're trying to raise a rarely used skill, you might have to do a few pointless activities like sparring rats or disarming traps you already know about but..... it's very quick.

And most of your skills will raise perfectly well through normal play, especially since you can "turn off" your focus on certain skills so they don't hog too much of the exp.

In my last game the only grindy activities I did were
a) play with a few traps to raise my disarm trap skills
b) practice casting a few spells to branch into new schools.

But the real life time spent practicing was extremely short.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

Repetition isn't a very good way of learning, there should be experimentation as well. I don't exactly know how that would go in the broken TES system, perhaps have a system where for example, you jump down from a very high cliff into water, gain, say, 5 levels of acrobatics on level-up, block different attacks from different weapons, do stuff like that, cast different type and power spells at different targets, and so on. Of course you could also just jump in place, but it wouldn't be as efficient.

I guess it would just lead in supercharacters, I don't know. Have the feats hidden and some faq just spoils them. It's hard to imagine how exactly you would experiment in such an uninteractive game anyway.

 

[7hm]

Part of the reason Dungeon Crawl's system avoids grind is the "push" that the game gives you through starvation and the OOD monsters.

Only crazy people grind like that though. If the game can be completed normally by doing normal things (which every use based system I know of can - excluding MMOs) then the system is fine. If some weirdo wants to spend hours punching cows instead of playing, that's a problem with him, not with the system.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Only crazy people grind like that though. If the game can be completed normally by doing normal things (which every use based system I know of can - excluding MMOs) then the system is fine. If some weirdo wants to spend hours punching cows instead of playing, that's a problem with him, not with the system.

Eh.

The game is fine.

The system is a little messed up.

In normal play a merc may only ever see a point or two of say Wisdom or Agility in the whole game. (Keep in mind 1.13 changed stat gain formula, I'm talking vanilla)

But by use of creative training methods they will go up quite quickly.

The game system messed up when it rewarded you more for 30 minutes of sperging than for playing normally through the whole game.

 

[Zomg]

The inevitable response is, "So don't sperg grind "

It's pretty close to axiomatic to me - "Incentivizing stupid and/or boring bullshit is bad design. Always". If the game has a gameplay-useful but stupid or boring behavior which I forgo as the player because I realize it's so stupid, I am essentially patching a design failure by hand.

 

[MisterStone]

Seriously, the Crawl system is pretty good.
I don't think that grinding is a big problem in Crawl, but as 7hm noted that is due to food being a limiting factor. But if you use the crawl skill training system (gain skills by performing an action, limited by banked exp) in a CRPG and add some of the other mechanics discussed here for limiting grinding, you have the problem licked as far as I am concerned.

It's true that at some point any game system can be exploited somehow by the player, but I feel that the designer/developer's job is to make the game as challenging as possible without the player setting artificial limits on what they can do in order to make it fun. Crawl achieves this IMO, it's a tough game but not impossible to win.

 

[Grunker]

It's not a rare case, VD, and you're still presenting a bloody weak case with the merits of the system. So far, your only defense of it have been LARPing-related - "it makes more sense from a realist standpoint."

I want to know why it makes for a more entertaining/deep game experience - aka: why is it important for heightening the gameplay at all?

'cause if it is not, which is my claim, then there's no point in debating the problems it's got.

Personally, I enjoy a level-up system or direct skill-point usage system much, much more, because I have complete control over the distribution of points. This gameplay-related fact makes me decide the advancement of my party, and thus puts me in full control of my own strategy.

 

[Castanova]

I generally prefer XP/point-buy systems as well but it depends on the character system. For example, if you were to take Wizardry 8 and convert it to a pure point-buy system I think it would lose something because it would be quite irritating to have to allocate 3 or 4 points to some skills that go from 0-100 every time you ding up.

Still, I'd pretty much always prefer a game designed from the ground up to support manual control over character development (although I don't mind randomization thrown in, a la Blood Bowl).

 

[Vault Dweller]

Personally, I enjoy a level-up system or direct skill-point usage system much, much more, because I have complete control over the distribution of points.

Level up systems often (but not always*) give you control over the distribution of points, whereas increase-by-use system always give you control over which skills to develop AND at what rate.

* Take 2E (the Infinity Engine) games, for example. Cleric gets only one proficiency point per weapon. Why? Because. Enjoy your full control over which weapon class (but no bladed weapons, please) to put this point into.

It's not just about realism. Ideally, in a well designed increase-by-use system, you play a game the way you see fit (kinda like you did in JA2) and your skills go up as you go. In my opinion, this is a more harmonic, and like I already said, less arbitrary approach than "you have to gain 10,000 experience points to gain a new level and an arbitrary amount of skill points to distribute (the opposite of complete control, btw)".

The level-up systems are a lot more prone to grinding exactly because the level up reward is often insignificant, which forces you to grind for hours to gain a few more levels and get your skills to where you feel they should be.

 

[Grunker]

I agree - if the ideal system, where an increase-by-use system didn't force me to use skills that I want maxed - but would rarely use (only in bossfights for example). I have a hard time imagining such a system though.

Perhaps if the skills leveled up faster, but had a cap each level or something? I don't know, I just know from the way I've seen increase-by-use systems used so far that I would much rather have something like in Bloodlines and failing that, a standard level-up system.

 

[Kraszu]

The level-up systems are a lot more prone to grinding exactly because the level up reward is often insignificant, which forces you to grind for hours to gain a few more levels and get your skills to where you feel they should be.

How is that different then needing to grind in increase-by-use systems? The increase or benefit from leveling up will either be too low or not. How is the system relevant to that? In XP based systems is easier to balance by awarding allot of XP for doing quest (if the gameworld don't have randomly generated quest but small number of them). Balance in the sense of not having smaller differences between player that grind, and those that don't.

 

[Kraszu]

"you have to gain 10,000 experience points to gain a new level and an arbitrary amount of skill points to distribute (the opposite of complete control, btw)".

Having full control on what stats you increase = total opposite of control.

Being arbitrary or being limited in number of SP have nothing to do with lacking control, you lack control in chess because the rules are arbitrary, or because you can only move one piece at a time?

* Take 2E (the Infinity Engine) games, for example. Cleric gets only one proficiency point per weapon. Why? Because. Enjoy your full control over which weapon class (but no bladed weapons, please) to put this point into.

That is completely unrelated, in increase by use system you also can have limitations like that (cap for some classes), and they can be absent in leveling up system, you don't even need to have classes in leveling up systems.

 

[Serus]

JA2 - punching cows, repeatedly hauling tons of equipment cross country, setting and defusing bombs over and over... far better ways to raise certain stats than actually playing the game.

Not this again. JA2 is actually an exemple of good increase-by-use design. Only a retard or someone anal-retentive would do the above. increasing stats by a few additional points doesn't change anything to your ability to beat the game. What is the point of doing it then ? The only stat that is really crucial - marksmanship is best "trained" in combat anyway.
On the other hand lets take Wizardry 8. In W8 if you want to have an effective 3/4 school bishop or any hybrid good at casting spells you NEED to do some tedious and othervise unnecessary casting. Contrary to Jagged Alliance 2 there is n actual REASON to do it, it makes a difference in the outcome of the game. Ergo nonsensical grinding of magic skills is encouraged by the game. This can be considered a flaw of the system.
There are much worse games using a broken increase-by-use system though. I still like W8 but i realize it is flawed in this aspect.

Pure increase by use is very close to a failed mechanic. It is extremely difficult to avoid encouraging tedious repetitive tasks when trying to raise rarely used skills.

Pure or mostly pure increase by use doesn't have a great track record of success.

Betrayal at Krondor, Darklands and the already mentioned JA2 all disagree with you.

 

[Castanova]

The only stat that is really crucial - marksmanship is best "trained" in combat anyway.

Your argument fails because of this. JA2 is a "successful" increase-by-use system precisely because there's only one truly important stat that gets increases all the time while actually playing the game anyway. On the other hand you have Wizardry 8 which has a full suite of important skills and, lo and behold, the system doesn't work so well.

@VD, does AoD use a increase-by-use skill system? I don't think it does. Why aren't you using it?

more harmonic

What does this even mean? Sounds like something a Bethesda PR person would say.

less arbitrary

O rly? Both systems are equally "arbitrary." They just reward you with skill points at different times: one right after each fight, one after a set of fights. And even if you could quantify how arbitrary they were, and went on to determine increase-by-use is less arbitrary, no RPG gamer in the entire world fails to deeply understand standard XP/level-up mechanics anyway.

And forget your "counter" example about "oh, I leveled up after a sword fight, let's put points into Diplomacy." - just assume your virtual human practiced his Diplomacy at the same time he was taking a shit and eating his breakfast (i.e., off screen). This type of omission is necessary for the game to be, you know, fun.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Not this again. JA2 is actually an exemple of good increase-by-use design. Only a retard or someone anal-retentive would do the above. increasing stats by a few additional points doesn't change anything to your ability to beat the game. What is the point of doing it then ?

To use mercs beyond the few blessed with naturally good stats?

Without some training in the physical stats there are quite a few mercs who will end up relatively shitty (low AP) even with high marksmanship, and some of these mercs are not really fixable through normal play.

The Devs anticipated that players would want to train up certain mercs, which is part of the reason that they implemented a game system for automated training of mercs on the strategic map.

The training system is pretty balanced in that you pay a cost in time and thus cash to increase your skills.

Or you can do it for free, much faster in game time, if you're willing to put up with some tedious repetitive actions.

Keep in mind, this is more a criticism of the system, than the game itself. Pure use based works out ok in most JA2 playstyles, but when you actually go in and analyze JA2's pure use based mechanics on their own, several flaws stand out.

Castanova makes a good point too, if you actually needed to raise other stats besides marksmanship in a normal playthrough, the flaws would become more apparent.

 

[Vault Dweller]

"you have to gain 10,000 experience points to gain a new level and an arbitrary amount of skill points to distribute (the opposite of complete control, btw)".

Having full control on what stats you increase = total opposite of control.

Yeah, let's pretend that that's what I said. You have 0 control over your character development when you grind for tens of thousands of experience points, waiting to hit another level and earn a handful of skill points, which may or may not be enough to justify the hours of grinding.

Being arbitrary or being limited in number of SP have nothing to do with lacking control, you lack control in chess because the rules are arbitrary, or because you can only move one piece at a time?

The analogy doesn't work. First, in both chess and RPGs you control your character(s) whereas we were discussing skills growth, which doesn't apply to chess. Second, I don't think the word arbitrary can be applied to the well thought through chess rules. Very few games offer systems of similar depth, hence my point - since most game systems do feature arbitrary rules, I'd prefer to have as much control as possible over my character development (and which is why I dislike class-based systems).

The level-up systems are a lot more prone to grinding exactly because the level up reward is often insignificant, which forces you to grind for hours to gain a few more levels and get your skills to where you feel they should be.

How is that different then needing to grind in increase-by-use systems? The increase or benefit from leveling up will either be too low or not. How is the system relevant to that?

Let's go back to Gothic 2 again. Let's say you aren't happy with your combat prowess (i.e. you enter the colony but the orcs rape you in seconds). You level up, but they still rape you. You have to go back and kill monsters for a few hours to gain a few levels (because the game is very unforgiving if you move too fast).

Usually it takes a lot longer to kill enough monsters to gain a few levels than to hit monsters enough time with your sword to raise it by the same number of points.

In XP based systems is easier to balance by awarding allot of XP for doing quest...

It's a very artificial balance. Kinda like getting 10,000 xp for doing late-game quests in Fallout or 50,000 per party member in mid BG2, just to help you level up.