Preview Age of Decadence R4 Preview at GameBanshee

[Goral]

(...) Fallout 1 starts with you killing rats on a cave, then killing more rats on an abandoned vault, then going to Shady sands where you can kill radscorpions or blow up the cave (until this point the combat has really zero challenge or interesting things going on) and rescue Tandy. There are a few ways to rescue Tandy but it boils down to kill all the raiders or not and it doesn't make much difference.

Killing radscorpions wasn't that easy unless you were a battle oriented character or had Ian with you (or you did save/load many times). And Shady Sands is a very interesting location IMO, there is a certain atmosphere there that appeals to me (I can say the same about AoD locations, they're just well constructed and fun to explore thanks to interesting characters and quest). Very post-apocalyptic like and a huge difference between the rat cave. And there are quite interesting characters there. As for Tandi, her quest is way more entertaining than most quests in RPGs from the last 10 years.

You go to Junktown, the only big quest in the whole town is to kill Gizmo or help him become the mayor of the town and you really are only going to see any consequence on a slide at the end of the game.

Not really. Every other quest in Junktown is more interesting than most quests in modern RPGs (which for the most part are fetch quests or kill someone quests), especially the hostage situation or rescue Killian situation. Baldur's Gate I/II had also such bland quests compared to F1.

If there was a Fallout 1 beta (and it was 20% of the game), it would end more or less at the end of Junktown, really a shinning beacon of RPG awesomeness that beta would be, a really definitive proof of how a by the numbers RPG it was (assuming it wasn't a complete mess) . I think it is a problem of codexlandia jumping the gun. Jesus Christ, it will be awesome to read the butthurt on Torment and P:E beta/alpha/pre-alpha/zeta or delta.

In all honesty I was blown away by Fallout the moment I reached Shady Sands. The first time I played it (it was about 12 years ago when I was 14-15 years old) I hated the turn based combat and didn't have the patience to finish the rat cave. I've uninstalled the game two times and only after 3rd attempt I decided to go through with this while being annoyed that it's so tedious to play. But once I reached the red area I dropped my jaw in awe and from that moment on F1 has become my favourite game ever (along with Sacrifice).

You do have a point though that it might be too early to judge the game based on this "beta". But I can also see how people can be annoyed when after 25 hours of gameplay they find nothing of interest there. In F1 there were tons of interesting things to do the moment you left the cave. In AoD there are superb quests and characters one after another, right off the bat. From what I read W2 looks rather bad compared to them.

In my mind you should have had "soft" consequences for almost every text failure (that is, your "ending" is worse based on text failures, or you get less reward from the quest or whatever), but I'm not sure how much of that you can fix now.
(...)

And in my experience there are soft consequences there. For example when I failed to do two thief quests in a row, instead of being killed for my incompetence I was sent to Ganezzar (partially because I was still useful and killing me wouldn't be too advantageous anyway). That was when I was playing thief-merc. At that time I had my skills located in combat (+ streetwise) and was strong enough to handle myself anyway. When I failed a quest as a merchant something similar happened. I didn't have streetwise high enough to pass the check and I didn't want to use the different ways of gaining support of a certain individual (like killing or swearing my loyalty) and it didn't close many doors to me. I could continue on without gaining skill points but at the same time it wasn't that bad since at higher levels you have to spend many of them. So sometimes it's better to pass on finishing some quest and spend it elsewhere.

 

[Lhynn]

I was wondering, are the majority of social skill checks mid and end game easy enough? like difficulty 3 and 4?

No.

if not, are all the hard ones given sufficient context for them being hard? or just a result of character progression?

Yes.

I was wondering, are the majority of social skill checks mid and end game easy enough? like difficulty 3 and 4? if not, are all the hard ones given sufficient context for them being hard? or just a result of character progression?

We definitely try to give them context. For example, in the MG quest in Maadoran you are dealing with high-born nobles and big leaders of factions, which definitely increases the checks. In Teron, you mostly convince thanks to the power of your guild. In Maadoran, your words alone carry more weight, plus you are trying to convince them to go against the most powerful man on the realm.

Fair enough, sounds really really good.
A good way to make it less frustrating would be to add easier dialogue checks mid and end game, this would make people that invested only a couple points in it actually validate their choice of point allocation.

Also, the thinggy about charisma, who cares if the bonus from it makes end game checks useless? just make it so that outside of the main quest there are ultra hard checks that require you to have both max charisma and maxed skillpoint allocation in social skills.

 

[Elhoim]

With regards to combined skill checks, I can see how in certain cases it doesn't really make sense just to use the total. But a compromise could be to have a minimum for each skill and a minimum for the total. So for example if the skill check is Persuasion and Streetwise, the total of the two has be at least 8 but the minimum for each skill individually is only 3. So you can pass with 4/4 or 5/3 or 3/5 but not with a 6/2, etc.

That's how it's done. Example:

(aod.persuasion + aod.trading >= 7) && aod.persuasion >= 2 && aod.trading >= 2

 

[Elhoim]

A good way to make it less frustrating would be to add easier dialogue checks mid and end game, this would make people that invested only a couple points in it actually validate their choice of point allocation.

There are several of them, mostly on side-quests and in "non-focus" questlines. Not everything in Maadoran becomes super high level. For example, the TG questline has level 3-4 speech checks, and the same goes for side quests like dealing with the preacher mob, or selling the fake badge to the newcomer.

Also, the thinggy about charisma, who cares if the bonus from it makes end game checks useless? just make it so that outside of the main quest there are ultra hard checks that require you to have both max charisma and maxed skillpoint allocation in social skills.

The problem was mostly the implementation of a blanket bonus, having to make different and siginificant bonuses for each charisma point. I mean, the idea is good and we'll probably make a more hand-crafted implementation, but doesn't lend itself well for a blanket bonus like damage increase, extra SP or faction reputation.

 

[V_K]

Yeah, I found that an interesting idea, but in some cases might become too gamey for my taste if applied to AoD. Like, for example, lowering your charisma stat to make a more "compelling" argument?

Why? Consider a situation: you're trying to persuade someone, but you don't quite have the skill. So you try harder, which obviously leaves you tired and less capable for the next encounter. Nothing gamey about that (or at least nothing more gamey than having fixed skillchecks in the first place )
But I'm not saying you should necessarily copy this system completely - just think of adding some sort of resource management for non-combat builds aside from skillpoints.

 

[felipepepe]

Yeah, I found that an interesting idea, but in some cases might become too gamey for my taste if applied to AoD. Like, for example, lowering your charisma stat to make a more "compelling" argument?

You cut your ear off to show how serious you are.

The gamistic part would be it growing back when you rest.

 

[Kz3r0]

In Arcanum intimidation was achieved by having combat skills proficience and a weapon in your hand, just saying.

 

[Grunker]

I can't see shit 'cause I'm on my phone, but did someone just assume I meant Human Revolution when I said Deus Ex :O

 

[felipepepe]

STOP THE X-MAS PARTY, my Codex Sense is tingling!

 

[Grunker]

It's all because AoD lacks non-combat mechanics (except for the skill checks, but bare skill checks barely count as mechanics nowadays - it's like saying that you can still call Pong a "game"). No mechanics at all. And that explains everything. Honestly, I myself get pretty annoyed when people compare this game with fallout (because, in reality, it should be compared to Darklands), but let's look at F2's mechanics (hardly brilliant, mind you - the game was developed quickly and by immature designers) and their implementation. So we have this Metzger-Vic-Slavers situation and we want to solve that early and violently. Since you can't beat them honestly at early levels, what can you do mechanically wise?

1. You can steal from people, so you can steal all of guards' ammo & consumables.

1.a. You can also plant explosives (and, at this point, you can have at least 1 dynamite), so you deal some initial burst damage that way.

2. You can lock doors, so you can lock all doors in the guilds, separating its defenders into smaller chunks.

3. You can stealth out of combat, meaning that you can lure one guard, kill him then cut the chase down by vanishing into a thin air. Rinse and repeat.

4. You can befriend gang at the old church, so you can lure slavers there.

5. You can attack at night so their to-hit chance will be lower.

6. You can use consumables on NPCs and there's lots of alcohol to be found in early game, so you can just get the whole guild drunk, then attack. Even better is the jet withdrawal.

See? Game has some mechanics and allows the free usage of them, suddenly, tons of different approaches is present. And mind you, I don't give a fuck that some of those approaches (most, actually) are on the level of Skyrim's buckethead retardation - we're talking about a fucking RPG, not some kind of simulation. What really annoys me about AoD's defendors is that they always use this "realism" schtick to cover all of the game flaws (when it's anything but realistic).

Anyhow, all of that is the beauty of actually working mechanics and that's why Deus Ex was so good - once again, you just had a lots of actually working stuff. Got that "great physical strength" implant? Cool, now you can open an extra path to that NSF-held building. Got that high-jumping implant? Great, lots of extra paths are open for ya. Know how to use your gear well? Enjoy sneaking past the unsneakable situations with those thermo-optics. etc., etc., etc. Whereas in AoD it's always "put your points into skill and pray that developers actually bothered to implement a check for it". Or, more realistically, "spend - fail - reload - redistribute - succeed". What a fucking game!

And mind you, Darklands actually avoided the same pitfall by not being stingy with both skills and skillchecks - you have a party of four (meaning more skills in arsenal), you have saints (which cover different situations), potions (ditto) and, in most cases, you can actually survive the failure (if you wish to). Like, in Darklands, you lose to the robbers - well, they rob you and beat you and that's it, they let you go. In AoD, obviously they kill you because that's what robbers usually do. Of course, losing all of your stuff merits a reload anyway, but that's because this "just don't reload" is pointless - AoD is harsh and your character is almost always skill-starved. Also, there are no opportunities to grind up and catch up. Therefore, skipping/missing each quest makes your character weaker, making that each following quest also becomes harder and failure prone and, well, it's a fucking slippery slope. So sure, you don't lose instantly - but you lose later, it's just that it's dragged out and your time is wasted. Cool.

That's pretty much it. AoD is still kinda cool because it has lots of content (and, as games like Morrowind show, lots of decent content may compensate for shitty mechanics), but it has zero ways to make that content work and, more importantly, it doesn't have nearly as much content as it needs to flow smoothly. And it never will, it seems.


So much this, TBH. Fallout 1 is a cute game, but really, the only strong parts of it are the Abbey and the Military Base. Rest is rather mediocre filler (with some occasional gems) which is somehow terribly overhyped (like the glow - one of the best dungeons evah, atmospheric, etc., whereas in reality there's little to do there).

1000x

 

[Grunker]

Family is debating pseudoscience, I am reading the 'dex to avoid the disaster of me stating my honest opinion about the hippie bullshit. My cousin is fighting the good fight though.

 

[Tigranes]

As someone who's played over two dozen characters in R1 & R4, and have beaten some of its hardest fights, I 'know' AoD. As in, I 'know' the system, I sympathise with its design philosophy, and I now have an instinctive understanding on how to do well in it. Reading Grunker v. VD from that perspective, I can see both sides, but I do think this is a legitimate criticism that will not go away. Some points:

The trial & error complaint, and the rebuttal that AoD in fact is capable of rewarding 'logical characters', are both valid. You can excel in AoD with hybrid characters, and you can build characters that have many many different permutations of logical skill combinations without knowing every check in advance. However, to get to a point where you the player understand the system well enough, you do need to die and reroll at least half a dozen characters. Not to memorise all the checks, but to understand, for example, how far a 3 or 4 in a skill often gets you, or AoD's own logic about what kinds of situations disguise is likely to be presented. It's not a strange or fucked up logic AoD has; much of its skill placement is very logical (e.g. disguise comes with streetwise, sneaking into homes will get you into lockpick situations, crit strike is a reliable get out of jail card in infiltrations). But given there are so many different situations a player can imagine, and given how different it is from other games, it takes a few rerolls to get to grips with the kind of system-world AoD is, and to start thinking at character creation, ah, critical strike also has a frequent non-combat use, or ah, disguise often goes with streetwise, and can alleviate the need for sneak or persuasion. I'm not sure there is a great solution to this. I can think of a few small ones. The shift to 1-10 skills already helped, but the flavour text for each skill level, while cool, actually obfuscates what a '2 Persuade' means as opposed to '4 Persuade', because most flavour text up to level 5 or so are different ways of telling you you suck ass. Let's take as example an utterly dull, but informative 1-2: Novice, 3-4: Apprentice, etc. - a way of signalling people that with a 2 Persuade you're going to fail a lot of persuade checks, but with 3-4 you should expect to succeed the first few (which is true in Teron). I never play tutorials, but if you're already putting in a tutorial with a couple of fights, then why not throw a couple of locked doors and the like to demonstrate the kinds of skill checks people will face? Really simple stuff.

The too-many-dead-ends complaint, and the rebuttal that AoD already provides plenty of soft failures, are again both valid. If you give up on AoD after having a few characters get stuck halfway through Teron, you won't know this. You have to at least finish the Teron hub in various ways to really begin to appreciate the incredible amount of reactivity and nonlinearity AoD already has built in. Some of the ways in which your character can take an unexpected, convoluted and rather humbling route to the finale is a testament that AoD is a special gem that we are not likely to see elsewhere. That said, there are nevertheless many dead ends; and ironically, in my experience, they happen a lot more in the very early game, because you still don't have a lot of skill points or a good understanding of what your character is capable of, I think.

Let's take a hypothetical player: you start as a mercenary, and die to the assassin. After a few reloads, you try letting him go. It works out. You feel like you failed, but OK, you can live with that. You visit Miltiades at the market square. You suspect you could just walk away, but you don't want to - why play if you actively avoid content? You enter, and have insufficient dexterity to run away. You die. After multiple reloads and solving a couple other problems for SP, you finally beat the bastards down. You feel good, though you had to get past some frustration to get there. You encounter the beggar honey trap. You could get the SP by recommending them to Cado, or by using dexterity and streetwise, but you don't have those stats or background so you don't know for sure that's possible. You discover that the only thing you can do is just walk away or fight the beggars. Again, walking away doesn't feel right; you're just missing out on content. But try as you might, after ten reloads, you really can't beat these guys....

So my point here isn't that any character should have options to solve these situations optimally, or that combat should be easier. Both contravenes AoD's design goals and would in fact make for a poorer game. But it is undeniable that, especially in the first half of Teron, many new players will discover that they have to actively avoid content and to proceed with that lukewarm feeling of "I'm alive but I didn't really get to see what was going on". This is, I feel, different from the Biowarian impulse to 'see all the content and all the sex scenes'. In short, what is required is soft failures that feel like failures, but don't feel like the absence of content - and thus lead you down new paths. A soft failure path shouldn't be as rewarding or optimal as a successful one, but in terms of player experience it should be reasonably rewarding. Now, I can think of several instances in which this does occur in AoD. But I do think, given the kind of game it is, there should be more. Is that reasonable given resource limitations? Perhaps not. I think AoD already has an incredible amount packed into it, many players just don't see it. But that's sort of the point, isn't it? I think implementing a few interesting soft failure options in early Teron would do much to teach the player what to expect from failures in AoD and to give them realistic expectations about AoD as a game. VD, let me suggest specific examples:

What if running away from Miltiades' ambush then allowed you to locate the merchant later and offer him your services as bait, or even as a mercenary? An example of content exclusive to 'avoiding' the other content. What if, having been tricked by the beggars, you can try and report them to Dellar? He will scoff and say your loss, dumbfuck, but with a persuasion or intelligence check (i.e. a different check from the initial interaction) you could get him to spare you one guard to help you deliver justice - he might perhaps say but you'll need to pay him yourself, we don't rent out our guards for free. That would be an example of a different skillset character 'failing' the initial interaction and still managing to get his revenge, but in a decidedly suboptimal way - though perhaps gold cost is not cost enough.

Merry Christmas VD, get back to work and release that shit

 

[AstroZombie]

-shameless and probably useless attempt at brofist harvesting-
Brofist this if you think hiver should get his nose out of Iron Towers asscrack enough to know that not every piece of criticism about AoD is A- negative, B- directed at him, C-uh, im not smart/witty enough to come up with a 3rd one, help me out people.

This ain't facebook/youtube, bro.

 

[Elhoim]

The shift to 1-10 skills already helped, but the flavour text for each skill level, while cool, actually obfuscates what a '2 Persuade' means as opposed to '4 Persuade', because most flavour text up to level 5 or so are different ways of telling you you suck ass. Let's take as example an utterly dull, but informative 1-2: Novice, 3-4: Apprentice, etc. - a way of signalling people that with a 2 Persuade you're going to fail a lot of persuade checks, but with 3-4 you should expect to succeed the first few (which is true in Teron).

Check the latest update

Spoiler

Great post, Tigranes, you are awesome

 

[eric__s]

I agree with a lot of what crawlkill, sea and others have said about social skills and skill point hoarding. SP hoarding happens, it's how rigid skill check systems encourage you to play and it needs to be looked at. I've been thinking about it quite a bit recently and there are a couple things you could do to make it more reasonable and flexible. Making social skills work the same way as combat skills, where the total value of the skill is derived from the skill itself, related skills and related attributes, might be a solution. The example crawlkill gave where he failed a check because he had 4 in persuasion and 3 in streetwise instead of the other way around is something that could be in part alleviated if skills influenced each other. Skills like persuasion, disguise, etiquette and trading all intersect the same way that weapons do; putting points into trading could make etiquette rolls slightly easier the same way that putting points into dagger makes sword easier and would make more flexible, but not eliminate, the rigidity of social skill checks.

Another important thing I think you could do is build in more skill litmus tests where the consequence of failure isn't significant. A couple good examples of these are breaking into the blacksmith's house, getting the jewels from the noble lady, stealing the merchant's pouch in front of the Teron inn, convincing the House Crassus preacher you're the chosen one and the crafting check before finding the jellyfish artifact. The consequence for both failure and success is minimal (maybe not the preacher one, we'll see!) but lets the player know where their skills stand in relation to more meaningful checks in the same area. The difference between failing a hypothetical lore check when talking to the old man outside of the Abyss and failing a lore check inside of the Abyss is huge, but the first failure telegraphs and potentially prevents the second.

 

[Lhynn]

This ain't facebook/youtube, bro.

It was actually from other thread here in the codex, one of the who banned what ones.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Anyhow, all of that is the beauty of actually working mechanics and that's why Deus Ex was so good - once again, you just had a lots of actually working stuff. Got that "great physical strength" implant? Cool, now you can open an extra path to that NSF-held building. Got that high-jumping implant? Great, lots of extra paths are open for ya. Know how to use your gear well? Enjoy sneaking past the unsneakable situations with those thermo-optics. etc., etc., etc.

The problem with this design (the way I see it) is that it's a one trick pony. Got that strength implant? Start looking for things you can move to uncover vents or allow you to jump over things. Like vents, basically. Travel through the vent for the first time - "how exciting, so wow." Then you realize that vents are conveniently located everywhere and that it doesn't really matter which route you take.

 

[Invictus]

Maybe Tigranes says it best; the clearer the options when choosing skills on what they do they less restartitis will the game have and make for a more fun experience...which I would say it is the desire of any game designer; to have a challenging, interesting, deep whatever game but that it is ultimetly fun for its players.
Perhaps the issue the Steam player had with his Thief character is that he didn't know enough about basic character skills a thief would need to succed; perhaps a few highlighted skills which say "hey if you want to be a thief you better have a high disguise skill, sneak and lockpicking to succed, everything else is optional (like a good streewise skill) but those are the base thief skills you might need.
This is not VD of even AoD fault; most RPG games (at leats the worthwhile) require you to have a very clear picture on who your character is and how he tackles problems even before starting the game, and you might not even know what you actualy prefer.
That is why I love the removal of the classes in Skyrim; by allowing your player to try the skills he gets to pick which skills fit his playstyle by actualy using them; hell Darklands did it almost 20 uears before!
I have always questioned games where you can use a skill to actualy level up skills you have not even used because you get to pick and choose where to allocate your skill points regardless of usage. Some games like the D&D games punished you a little for putting skill points into non class skills by making them doubly expensive or always half of the totla you could get from picking "class" skills but it actualy saved you the trial and error restarts

 

[J_C]

Anyhow, all of that is the beauty of actually working mechanics and that's why Deus Ex was so good - once again, you just had a lots of actually working stuff. Got that "great physical strength" implant? Cool, now you can open an extra path to that NSF-held building. Got that high-jumping implant? Great, lots of extra paths are open for ya. Know how to use your gear well? Enjoy sneaking past the unsneakable situations with those thermo-optics. etc., etc., etc.

The problem with this design (the way I see it) is that it's a one trick pony. Got that strength implant? Start looking for things you can move to uncover vents or allow you to jump over things. Like vents, basically. Travel through the vent for the first time - "how exciting, so wow." Then you realize that vents are conveniently located everywhere and that it doesn't really matter which route you take.

But it doesn't matter if it is a one trick pony, or if the vents are conveniently located. The thing that matters is that there are several viable builds and you can complete the mission with using different builds.

 

[Vault Dweller]

They aren't really builds (as neither Deus Ex game had a strong char system), so it was more like "what do you feel like doing at the moment?" Not to mention that you didn't really need any skills to use the vents, iirc.

 

[Johannes]

I do think that the more you play and the more you discover, the more you realize that the game isn't as tight on skill points as you may have originally thought (for most careers anyway). Also, it is possible to succeed with a hybrid character - how much of a hybrid depends on the career. I've played every career and haven't played one character where I focused exclusively on combat skills.

^ This.

Sure. But for a lot of people the process of playing and discovering skill thresholds through trial and error is not so engaging as to keep doing it, it is not an actually rewarding or challenging experience.

Now you might say, such people are not the target audience, so fuck em. But the people who do persevere and save scum until they figure out or luck into (sufficiently) optimal builds, did they persevere and keep playing because of, or in spite of, the skill allocation rumba?

 

[Longshanks]

I think the problem some are having here is that skill checks in AOD have actual consequences. Most games with skill checks have the same problem (1 point off = fail), it's just that it's not that usual for failed checks to really matter. Failed my persuade? No matter, I can cut this chump up in seconds. In AOD it's more like: I failed my check, now I'm fucked. This is an understandable reaction, even though it's not actually true that failing checks will completely fuck you over in AOD, there are almost always other possibilities and they're usually more interesting than most games, but the question I'd ask is: which is better and why? Skill check failure to have little or no consequence, or to sometimes (these are becoming rarer in AOD) require a reload? I know which I prefer and given that, for me, the character build is the absolute heart of an RPG, reloading because my build wasn't quite right is not something that overly concerns me.

Skill checks work the way they almost always do. Some though are expecting AOD to somehow solve a long-standing design problem. I don't think that's realistic and feel that the problem they have is not with the skill checks, but with the sometimes harshness of the game. It can be a valid complaint, but it is something that has improved over time and once you get the hang of the game it almost disappears as an issue.

Investigating other potential mechanics in the future is something Iron Tower should definitely do, but right at this moment they have a game which does traditional skill checks better than any other. The fact that these checks have consequences and failure can sometimes make things tough, is not something I see as overly unfair or some kind of terrible design, it's (and I'd use this word to sum up the entire game and design approach) logical and raises these skill checks, and consequently the importance of character build, above their usual standing.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Sure. But for a lot of people the process of playing and discovering skill thresholds through trial and error is not so engaging as to keep doing it, it is not an actually rewarding or challenging experience.

Clearly. However, is it an actual problem or merely a preference? If it's a problem, how would you suggest to fix it?

We gave it a lot of thought. We went with 2-3 skills to fix "a single skill to win" issue. We went with total and min/max requirements to fix the 'arbitrariness'. We went with a fairly large number of options to support different builds and open new branches. We went with different non-skill-based options to keep the player in control (like deciding whether or not to betray the assassins guild in the first two quests or how to deal with Mercato and his men (have them killed or convince/force them to join Antidas). We lowered the checks' difficulty to give you more options, support jacks, etc.

I'm not sure what else can be done, short of removing skills and checks and calling it an adventure game, but as long as the checks remain people will complain that they were a point short and would feel like they have to save scum.

 

[hiver]

With regards to combined skill checks, I can see how in certain cases it doesn't really make sense just to use the total. But a compromise could be to have a minimum for each skill and a minimum for the total. So for example if the skill check is Persuasion and Streetwise, the total of the two has be at least 8 but the minimum for each skill individually is only 3. So you can pass with 4/4 or 5/3 or 3/5 but not with a 6/2, etc.

That's how it's done. Example:

(aod.persuasion + aod.trading >= 7) && aod.persuasion >= 2 && aod.trading >= 2

I dont see how a combined skill check that counts the total does not make sense in AoD as it is.
Especially in cases and situations where the problem isnt some life or death situation.

For example, why not count the total numbers, if the difference in just one point up or down to each side? Etiquette and streetwise check in the mentioned example of a small side quest? Why not?
3:4 or 4:3 ? Shouldn't the two skills help and improve each other or cover for the lack of single point either way?

It isnt about just making things easier for the players. It still requires that the player spent points on the two skills.
Same goes for any smaller streetwise/persuasion checks, or other such examples.


And you can still have harder checks for specific tough quests and specific situation, or when dealing with very important NPCs and important plot lines - if there is really a need for it.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I think that aside from highlighting some problems with AoD's trial and error approach to dialogue and its developers' overestimation of how well the players will understand its systems, this thread is an interesting window on the whole stat based vs skill based argument. While stat based approach is a hallmark of RPGs (it's required in order to enforce the constraints of playing a role), it's also true that pure stat based gameplay is boring and dull. After all, if your character's stats are the key determinant of your success, as a player, you just sit back and watch what happens, rather than having an active role. For this reason, most cRPGs actually have hybrid combat systems, where the stat based approach determines what abilities and combat characteristics the avatar and/or his party have, but then it's up to the player to actively use those abilities in a skill based manner in order to succeed.

What seems to be a recurring theme here with some people, is that once the player allocates their skill points, the non-combat gameplay becomes entirely stat based, with the player sitting back and passively watching the rest of the game unfold. This is not a problem exclusive to AoD, btw, as most cRPGs do it the same way, but I guess it's exacerbated in this case due to a lack of alternate non-combat mechanics (e.g. exploration), very punishing consequences, and perhaps lack of flavor dialogue options. But personally, I do think cRPGs should do the same thing with dialogue as they have done with combat, that is, integrate player skill into it, while still retaining the importance of stats to some degree. This would no doubt prove to be challenging to implement (assuming it's a good system and not one of those retarded Oblivion type minigames), but it would greatly enhance the experience (just imagine if combat was entirely stat based, your level 10 mage with 50 points in necromancy approaches an enemy, a skill check is made, and the enemy falls down dead).