The three levels of choice-making in an RPG

What would be cool imho in the scenario you present about 'jumping over the wall' vs "talking" vs "fighting" would be far beyond a mere 3/3 or 4/2 or what have you. What would be 'monocled' would be if anyone with a small % in climbing could attempt to climb. everyone would have a chance for any degree of success but on a very diverse scale.

Say a D100 is rolled. The points in climbing are a modifier added to this roll. Someone with 10 points in climbing could not have the most critical failures but also could not reach the major success as well (say, vaulting the wall is set at 150 or something and they would run 10- 110 as a low/high). BUT allowing low scores to cause vastly different outcomes such as failure (the guard sees you and attacks or attempts arrest) to varying degrees of success . You climb the wall but stumble and now an additional constitution roll will determine the injury.

This doesnt pigeonhole the build and still makes a good C&C argument for builds being monocled allowing for massively diverse outcomes in situations while not making you feel you are being excluded from crucial parts of the game as a result of building towards a meta game that we know is present in most games -

EDIT- This is what makes Table Top gaming far better especially with some house rules to make all the attributes and skills viable in some way. The same could be done in Crpgs to a lesser extent but still far better than what we currently have.

 

AOD does some of this, with different failure states and combinations of success/failure states. What we learn there is that (1) it's pretty damn cool, (2) it's a nightmare to design because (a) you have to create so much content that people aren't even used to even expecting, (b) there are a lot more dependencies that go into your level design and quest design now.

I think it could work better in, say, a Thief-like game where outcomes could be tied to relatively emergent states (i.e. you have dynamic physics on objects and sound calculation, so a failure in climbing might mean you make more noise or land harder, and the consequences it might have in knocking shit around and creating noise and alerting guards doesn't have to be predetermined). Another way is to have many situations where there is no linear success trajectory or an optimal state (i.e. you climb, you lose no resources, you make no sound, tada), but different combinations - e.g. smash the reinforced window (STR req, makes mucho noise, leaves evidence which will be held against you in the scripted police interrogation after the quest), make alchemical mixture to melt window (Alchemy skill req, but takes some time so player may be discovered, expends scarce ingredient), pick the lock on the window (lockpick skill req, but turns out to trigger a trap tied to the lock), etc., etc.

 

They are demonstrably retarded, though.

First, being able to do more than one thing isn't quite being able to do everything.

Second, there is nothing more shallow than single skill gameplay. Either all skills are viable, in which case it's mindless "apply %PCSkill until finished", or not all skills are viable in which case it's "haha sucker! should've picked diplomacy instead of evocation back during chargen, you lose!".

Third, having very few skills at viable levels eliminates possibility of meaningful synergies and lessens number of distinct builds. In ideal situation where every subset of skills has at least one unique synergy you get maximum build variety if a build involves as much as half of all skills.

Indeed, we've always had plenty of morons here, sadly.

Where's the conflict here?

The player says what he'd like to get, then plays what he actually gets the best he can.
It's like saying that players don't want challenging games because they actually try to win.

Then maybe we should drop the pretense altogether?

RPG systems are not exactly trivial to implement, they take a lot of effort that could be put somewhere else, all to ensure that characters are distinct in terms of abilities and supported playstyles.
If we are to embrace that it's doomed to failure then all the effort put into that is effort wasted that could be put into making the game substantially better in terms of action, story, C&C, tactical gameplay, visuals, the amount of content or basically anything else

Everything sucks when done poorly.
If you're implementing multiple options of which only one is really worthwhile and the choice itself is trivial, then you've just wasted valuable time and resources.

Because usually the implementation just sucks.
Not that XP based is any better in that regard.

Agreed.
People often misinterpret it when you talk about no dump stats - they take it to mean no primary stats, while it's not the case. A system may require particular stat(s) over certain threshold for given build yet still make all the other stats equally attractive options and ensure enough character points to be actually able to spend some on them.

If the main challenge in solving the problem is actually having the right skill in your build, then we've already came back to the problem.

How is always more interesting than what, and having more tools in your toolset allows for larger set of more interesting and demanding solutions.

3. Scripting everything effectively amounts to spreading your buttcheeks and ramming curse of combinatorial explosion up your own ass.

Preferably. It's always smart to have your systems do your work for you. Even better if they can handle situations you haven't even specifically envisioned.

Also true, but mind the excessive scripting.

 

The problem with "replayability" argument is that the game in question should be good enough to prompt to replay it in the first place. Personally I don't know a single one that does (and only a few that don't criminaly overstay their welcome). Severely limiting player's options only makes gameplay repetitive, ensuring s/he gets bored early and never finishes the game, let alone replay.

 

Replayability works better when you can have dramatically different experiences based on your character, so it's easier to make a single-character RPG replayable. If the RPG is best tailored to the mage, cleric, thief and two fighter party, it's harder to get players excited about replaying it.

For example, arpg Nox featured three PC classes that played very different from one another: melee fighter, summons and range-focused conjurer, and spell and trap oriented wizard. Almost all equipment had class restrictions. Not only that, but the game started in a different location and ended differently for each class.

 

My point is that to want to replay the game, you should first finish it and not be fed up with it by that time. Limiting gameplay options doesn't help reach that goal in any way.
I played Nox, got bored to death after a couple of areas - precisely because the playstyle with a given class was too focused that it quickly became repetitive and boring.

 

Replayabilty for me is not necessary about content. I've finished Max Payne 5 or 6 times, not because of all the new content, but because i liked the setting, the gunplay, the atmosphere etc and wanted to experince it again.

 

Except replayability is defined by how much can subsequent playthroughs differ.
We already have a word for "good".

 

Yeah i guess.