Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

[Grauken]

I've always felt that TES has one of the worst ways of handling experience. In theory it's a nice system, but in practice it's always very grindy and in the most tedious ways. I find that you have to go out of your way to play in a very unnatural way if you want to make any meaningful progress with your character, which is ironic for what the system is trying to do.

It could be refined into something even better, that's true. Still, I like how organic it feels versus the traditional system, which is very artificial and encourages being a murderhobo, instead of bringing the player's focus to other things.

Funny how most people play TES games as murderhobo's paradise then

 

[Harthwain]

Funny how most people play TES games as murderhobo's paradise then

Oh, you misunderstood - I meant it encourages being a muderhobo [in a traditional system] in order to get EXP. In TES you can play as a thief and not have to focus on the killing part as much just to progress. My favourite thing in Morrowind was using magic (my first character) and exploration. Killing was just a filler.

 

[Butter]

Deus Ex gives you skill points for objectives and exploration, and it works perfectly. In fact it was a serious downgrade when later games gave XP for kills.

 

[Berengar]

Interesting point he makes is that if Microsoft bought Activision-Blizzard, the Arcanum rights would fall to Microsoft, which means Microsoft's RPG studios could make something with it.

SHOCKING

 

[Hobo Elf]

I've always felt that TES has one of the worst ways of handling experience. In theory it's a nice system, but in practice it's always very grindy and in the most tedious ways. I find that you have to go out of your way to play in a very unnatural way if you want to make any meaningful progress with your character, which is ironic for what the system is trying to do.

I never felt the need to grind in any TES game though I did use to a mod for Oblivion to change how level scaling worked.

Thanks to level scaling you don't have to. But if you want to interact with the skills in Skyrim on a higher level and get "more" out of them then you're gonna have to schlep a bit. The crafting skills require a good bit of dull grind with lots of forcing time to go by to respawn places for more crafting materials. And good luck with leveling some choice skills such as Barter or Speech. Yeah they're useless, but if you *wanted* to level them up, boy, good luck. Then there are some skills like Illusion which can be taken to level cap in a matter of minutes under favorable conditions (magicka cost reduction gear).

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about common tropes in video games, including ones I like and ones I don't like, and what tropes I have used in my own games.

 

[Roguey]

Amnesia makes Cain seethe. Fallout 2 originally started with you playing as the Vault Dweller who gets beaten back to level 1 and left with amnesia.

"I don't like romance options in RPGs." Tim was all for paying for sex and casual flings in games, but long romance arcs? Ick. Though in our post-Tropes-vs-women world we couldn't even get the prostitutes in The Outer Worlds so (good old Sawyer included them in the Pillars games, though I'd be surprised to see them in Avowed).

 

[Alienman]

Going by his take on romance he must have been playing BG3.

 

[undecaf]

Someone ask Tom about dicerolls in videogames; shat he thinks of it.

 

[PapaPetro]

shat he thinks of it.

I prefer it this way.
There's a Shakespearean

quality to it.

 

[undecaf]

shat he thinks of it.

I prefer it this way.
There's a Shakespearean

quality to it.

You really did it. Steinbeck would be proud.

 

[PapaPetro]

shat he thinks of it.

I prefer it this way.
There's a Shakespearean

quality to it.

You really did it. Steinbeck would be proud.

It's just simple literary math.

+

=

Truly all the credit goes to you.
A shatastic display Sir.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Someone ask Tim about dicerolls in videogames; shat he thinks of it.

First, we need to determine whether Tim Cain considers platonic solids to be geometric shapes.

 

[PapaPetro]

Someone ask Tim about dicerolls in videogames; shat he thinks of it.

First, we need to determine whether Tim Cain considers platonic solids to be geometric shapes.

>no D3

 

[AW8]

I've always felt that TES has one of the worst ways of handling experience. In theory it's a nice system, but in practice it's always very grindy and in the most tedious ways. I find that you have to go out of your way to play in a very unnatural way if you want to make any meaningful progress with your character, which is ironic for what the system is trying to do.

Skyrim did improve on how skills are leveled, making it more rewarding to just play the game normally without grinding.

Combat skills in earlier games gained skill experience per strike, in Skyrim they changed it to per damage dealt, meaning you are no longer encouraged to use a dull dagger over a sharp claymore.
Sneak attacks were made to give Sneak experience, which meant you get a small amount of experience when sneaking around enemies and a big chunk of experience when attacking from stealth (previously all that did was removing your source of skill experience).
And by merging Mercantile with Speech(craft), you get a constant flow of minor skill experience for selling your loot, and a big chunk of skill experience when passing skill checks in dialogue, replacing the dumb (Morrowind) and insane (Oblivion) mini-game grind to get Speechcraft experince in earlier games.

But if you want to interact with the skills in Skyrim on a higher level and get "more" out of them then you're gonna have to schlep a bit. The crafting skills require a good bit of dull grind with lots of forcing time to go by to respawn places for more crafting materials.

They smartly removed skills for running/jumping since every player uses those all the time (yes yes, the attrbutes for those should have stayed), but the crafting skills in Skyrim were indeed grindy.
I remember crafting countless iron daggers to increase Smithing - I'm not sure these skills could be increased without mass-producing trash items in order to be able to create the good stuff.
Maybe the superior way would have been to keep Attributes and limit what you can craft based on them.

And good luck with leveling some choice skills such as Barter or Speech. Yeah they're useless, but if you *wanted* to level them up, boy, good luck.

Despite the improvements in Skyrim (the skill increases based on item value instead of per transaction), it's also up for discussion whether "using the shop" should be a skill in a learn-by-doing system, since everyone's gonna do it.

 

[Hobo Elf]

And good luck with leveling some choice skills such as Barter or Speech. Yeah they're useless, but if you *wanted* to level them up, boy, good luck.

Despite the improvements in Skyrim (the skill increases based on item value instead of per transaction), it's also up for discussion whether "using the shop" should be a skill in a learn-by-doing system, since everyone's gonna do it.

It's a minor issue, but you occasionally do increase your Barter skill by selling and buying crap. However these skill increases do nothing for you as you're probably not investing in the perks. All it accomplishes is bump up your level with "dead skills" which is counter productive to you if you are leveling up via non-combat skills. It's not as disastrous as leveling up in unmodded Oblivion is, but it still highlights flaws in the current systems in place. And they aren't exactly hard to spot either. These aren't problems I've sat down to really think about.

 

[AW8]

It's a minor issue, but you occasionally do increase your Barter skill by selling and buying crap. However these skill increases do nothing for you as you're probably not investing in the perks. All it accomplishes is bump up your level with "dead skills" which is counter productive to you if you are leveling up via non-combat skills. It's not as disastrous as leveling up in unmodded Oblivion is, but it still highlights flaws in the current systems in place. And they aren't exactly hard to spot either. These aren't problems I've sat down to really think about.

Those problems lie more with level scaling and lack of non-combat ways to progress, though, rather than with the learn-by-doing approach.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

As always, the issue is with Bethesda's implementation, not something inherent to learn-by-doing system.

 

[PapaPetro]

It's a minor issue, but you occasionally do increase your Barter skill by selling and buying crap. However these skill increases do nothing for you as you're probably not investing in the perks. All it accomplishes is bump up your level with "dead skills" which is counter productive to you if you are leveling up via non-combat skills. It's not as disastrous as leveling up in unmodded Oblivion is, but it still highlights flaws in the current systems in place. And they aren't exactly hard to spot either. These aren't problems I've sat down to really think about.

Those problems lie more with level scaling and lack of non-combat ways to progress, though, rather than with the learn-by-doing approach.

It's because streamlining the design process over the years created this linear problem that feels unrewarding/unjust to modern players.
The early designers like Tim were playing off the cuff and were thinking non-linearly because they were treading new ground.
Back then, imbalance was expected and the best designers/dev teams could master the imbalance (through a lot of cleverness/crunch fixing it so the game didn't janga apart/suck).
Now, it's a math problem they teach at degree mills.

Here's an old but useful video talking about this non-linear/chiral design:

 

[Infinitron]

I talk about the phrase "perfect is the enemy of good" and its implications on game development.

 

[d1nolore]

Stop pretending Skyrim is a good game, it wasn’t good. Let’s make a worse Oblivion but add dragons..

 

[Hobo Elf]

It's a minor issue, but you occasionally do increase your Barter skill by selling and buying crap. However these skill increases do nothing for you as you're probably not investing in the perks. All it accomplishes is bump up your level with "dead skills" which is counter productive to you if you are leveling up via non-combat skills. It's not as disastrous as leveling up in unmodded Oblivion is, but it still highlights flaws in the current systems in place. And they aren't exactly hard to spot either. These aren't problems I've sat down to really think about.

Those problems lie more with level scaling and lack of non-combat ways to progress, though, rather than with the learn-by-doing approach.

I'm just poking holes at Bethesda's character system in general now, and responding to you saying that Barter and Speech might be better off as non-skills, which I agree.

 

[mindx2]

Going by his take on romance he must have been playing BG3.

Exactly what I was thinking! He describes BG3 romances perfectly without actually naming it!

 

[Grauken]

Fallout 2 originally started with you playing as the Vault Dweller who gets beaten back to level 1 and left with amnesia.

Fallout 2 should have continued the story of the Vault Dweller, I always thought this was a big missed chance that led the world timeline advancing too fast due to the time jump, and then we got the F3 nonsense

 

[PapaPetro]

Going by his take on romance he must have been playing BG3.

Exactly what I was thinking! He describes BG3 romances perfectly without actually naming it!

Yeah, I think the first camp scene is fresh in everyone's minds...

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