Preview Refundable skills points in Gothic 3

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Gothic III; Piranha Bytes

<a href=http://www.loadedinc.com>LoadedInc</a> has posted a brief <a href=http://www.loadedinc.com/preview.php?temp_view=preview.php&id=129&action=part1>preview</a> of <a href=http://www.gothic3.com>Gothic 3</a>, mentioning this new and highly anticipated feature.
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<blockquote>Gone are the days when you curse your poor foresight in regards to character traits too – you will now be given the opportunity to refund your skills points to be reused as you see fit. However, the developers did hint that this feature would not be as easy to utilise as simply talking to an NPC. It seems that a long and dangerous quest will be in order if you ever want to change your stats…</blockquote>Fuck
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgdot.com/">RPG Dot</A>

 

[Rivo]

What's the fucking use of RPG-stats/feats etc when you can change them later on the game. This pisses me off bigtime.

Tarded dev's. Put them all in one big supression room and watch them inflate. Fun.

 

[Balor]

*sigh*
Clear sign of mainstreamization.

 

[Zomg]

I can understand why PB (and evidently Irrational) want to figure out systems to get around the "I fucked up my first build out of ignorance and the pamphletization of manuals, now I can either be a gimp or restart" problem, but the respec solution seems worse and worse the more I think about it. It's just such an ad hoc MMORPG get-it-out-the-door solution to the problem. Making it dramatic by hiding it behind enemies and secrets is even worse, because it's like building a shrine in your gameworld to a big dumb intrusive metagame consideration.

 

[Rat Keeng]

Bah! So you do the long and dangerous quest, and after that you get to move around skill points indefinetely? What a fucking trainwreck of a decision, jesus christ. Even the synergy solution that Diablo 2 adapted is better than this one.

I mean, I could see some sense in this if it was part of a character system that only allowed a limited amount of points in certain skill categories, and thus focusing on other disciplines would makes older abilities deteoriate or some such, but as it sounds in the preview, it's just lame.

Reminds me of some of those really shitty mods for Morrowind long time ago...
Description: "This adds a super powerful weapon to the game, but you don't just get it right away! You have to do a VERY HARD quest, and then you can have the one-hit kill super sword that also makes you almost invincible. Don't worry, it's not unbalanced, the quest is VERY HARD!"

 

[Slylandro]

It actually doesn't really sound so bad. According to the preview, there will be a long and dangerous quest in order to gain this "feature." If the feature isn't as ridiculous as just simply rewriting your entire character sheet, I don't think it'd be so terrible. A small amount of limited skill redistribution could make sense, depending on the how the quest pans out. Of course, I think LoadedInc missed the entire point though. This feature has nothing to do with "streamlining" or helping out a player who gimped his character. If the said character was really gimped, there's no way he'd be able to complete a "long and dangerous" quest. Therefore, it seems to me that this is just a game mechanic that Piranha Bytes added for powergamers who may want to re-optimize their characters late in game. No that doesn't probably sound any better to some people here, but to me at least it more clearly identifies Piranha Bytes' motivations.

 

[Micmu]

If they're talking about sacrificing few (and limited ammount) of your skills for less learning points as you needed to gain those skills, say, at Beliar's shrine, then it's managable. If you can freely exchange stat values then it's a very retarded feature just to accomodate pussified retards and the developers need to be crucified.

 

[Perishiko]

What's the fucking use of RPG-stats/feats etc when you can change them later on the game. This pisses me off bigtime.

I wish there was an answer to that, which actually sounded logical. Pretty soon RPG characters will just have an action figure that can use every single magic/item in the game at the press of a button. Hows that for choices!

 

[Section8]

Very silly indeed. Given that one of the biggest criticims in terms of narrative plausibility and continuity is the automagic character skill loss between games, it seems really silly to suddenly try and shoehorn a very similar plot device into the middle of the game. Like Zomg said - "it's like building a shrine in your gameworld to a big dumb intrusive metagame consideration."

And the "long and dangerous" bit sounds dubious, given the motivations for including some kind of magical character respec. If you're a gimp, long and dangerous just isn't really an option. If you're talking about powergaming optimisation, then that's a pretty lousy thing to be trading for coherence of setting.

So here's a thought, if there's concern that players might fuck up their "build", then educate them so that they don't, or provide templates to follow.

If it's about giving powergamers their motherfucking chocolate milk, then put a save game editor on the gold master or allow them to enable a debug interface.

 

[Nutcracker]

Sounds like the developers of Gothic have caught a bad case of Oblivion-itis

 

[Bossman]

Personally I don't view it as a "dumb down". I know a lot of players who really liked Gothic 2 but which had to restart the game at least once because somewhere along the line they distributed some skill-points where they weren't needed.

I believe that, ideally, the respec option should be a "one use" feature, sort of like a second chance. If you're pleased with how your character turned out, no problem, you can ignore it, but if you made some bad judgement calls along the way, you should be entitled to a second try. If you still make bad choices with the respec as well, you probably deserve your fate

 

[GTaher]

Personally I don't view it as a "dumb down". I know a lot of players who really liked Gothic 2 but which had to restart the game at least once because somewhere along the line they distributed some skill-points where they weren't needed.

Especially with the expansion pack and more costly skill gains it was easy to waste points and have a non-optimised character. That was certainly true for me when I played. But it wasn't game spoiling and didn't require a restart. I just was not as powerful as I could have been.

I have to agree with most of the posters that this sounds like a negative. Hopefully not the first of many. I have to say the IGN interview sounds perfect and the team's record on delivering is clear.

Just hope we don't get too much more of this sort of thing...

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

<a href=http://www.loadedinc.com>LoadedInc</a> has posted a brief <a href=http://www.loadedinc.com/preview.php?temp_view=preview.php&id=129&action=part1>preview</a> of <a href=http://www.gothic3.com>Gothic 3</a>, mentioning this new and highly anticipated feature.

<blockquote>Gone are the days when you curse your poor foresight in regards to character traits too – you will now be given the opportunity to refund your skills points to be reused as you see fit. However, the developers did hint that this feature would not be as easy to utilise as simply talking to an NPC. It seems that a long and dangerous quest will be in order if you ever want to change your stats…</blockquote>Fuck

Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgdot.com/">RPG Dot</A>

So who were the people who told me how unlikey it is that there might be yet undisclosed bad features in Gothic 3?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Someone told you that? My point was that we can trust in what the developers say based on the track record. Even in the interview with me, Kai admitted that every Gothic game had its share of improvements and fuckups, so what's your point?

 

[Sammael]

In related news, D&D Player's Handbook II (available now) also includes actual rules for re-writing characters. Looks like a trend to me.

 

[Section8]

In related news, D&D Player's Handbook II (available now) also includes actual rules for re-writing characters. Looks like a trend to me.

Historians will look back on this as the "Motherfucking Chocolate Milk Revolution."

 

[Deacdo]

*sigh*
Clear sign of mainstreamization.

Not quite as clear as when they *said* they are targeting a broader audience.

 

[bryce777]

Well, I see this as a bandage to their REALLY POOR STAT SYSTEM. If it were semi balanced, then if you did something fairly obvious it would not fuck your character.

 

[Deacdo]

Personally I don't view it as a "dumb down". I know a lot of players who really liked Gothic 2 but which had to restart the game at least once because somewhere along the line they distributed some skill-points where they weren't needed

I think that's just called "bad balance". The character development system in Gothic 2 was pretty bad. I hope it is improved a great deal for #3 as I stopped playing G2 pretty quick do to lack of character development (and the combat system sucked).

 

[Kraszu]

the combat system sucked

What was bad about it?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I know Gothic 1's combat system sucked. If it sucked in Gothic 2, it's probably because it was too much like Gothic 1, which sucked.

 

[galsiah]

Historians will look back on this as the "Motherfucking Chocolate Milk Revolution."

Perhaps next generation cRPGs should ship with a carton of chocolate milk. There'll be no need to shout for refreshments, leaving players to concentrate on getting their character build right. You'd need cookies to get a truly immersive experience, but that's probably more of a collector's edition feature.

 

[Claw]

Bah! So you do the long and dangerous quest, and after that you get to move around skill points indefinetely?

Do you? What do you know that wasn't written in this preview, because I didn't read anything about moving around skill points indefinitely. I didn't read anything that clearly contradicts it either, mind.

So who were the people who told me how unlikey it is that there might be yet undisclosed bad features in Gothic 3?

I guess I sort of did. I guess I underestimated how far they'd go to appease the dumb mass, especially as I don't recall any great demand for such a feature in the German community. On the other hand, as long as they don't spoil the features I care about directly, I can tolerate some elements I dislike. It's not like the previous games were void of unwelcome features or disprovements.

PS: Unlikely doesn't mean impossible, right? So techncially I wasn't wrong!

 

[undead dolphin hacker]

I don't really see how it's a dumb-down, especially considering how cryptic or dubiously useful some skills tradtionally are in the Gothic series.

I mean, it'd be better if they made all the skills equally useful, sure, but AFAIK no such balance has ever been achieved in any RPG ever.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Wouldn't a better solution be to make every skill have an important use that makes it some-what easier to achieve the end-game or other goals that exist, rather than providing useless skills and a system that allows those to be changed to more useful ones?