Calis
Pensionado
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2002
- Messages
- 1,834
Twenty Sided recently published a pair of short pieces dissecting character systems. The author seems to like lots of non-overlapping, non-trivial stats at his disposal. The first piece was <A HREF="http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1491" target="_blank">about Eschalon's system</A>:
<blockquote>The division of Dexterity and Speed confused me at first. Most games combine these two concepts. But I can imagine cases where you’d have one but not the other. A jeweler or a locksmith might be capable of lots of fine detail work even if they have slow reflexes. A boxer might be very quick yet imprecise. The distinction makes sense, although I’m still unclear on how it works in practice. Since this is a turn-based game and everyone gets a single turn no matter how high or low their speed is, I have trouble understand exactly what the payoff is for putting points into speed.</blockquote>
The other piece published <A HREF="http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1497" target="_blank">discusses SPECIAL</A>, with somewhat of a critical view towards the skill list but lauding its absence of completely trivial stats:
<blockquote>Every attribute is meaningful for every character, and there aren’t any obvious “dump stats”. Creating a character is a matter of balancing tradeoffs, not min-maxing the crap out of your stats. You can if you want, but you will regret that 3 charisma or 2 intelligence before you get very far.</blockquote>
Stat and skill triviality or imbalance can screw up gameplay in a CRPG, kids. There's been a bit of talk on our forum recently on balance in Arcanum, coming back to the same conclusion that was reached shortly after the game's release: no balance whatsoever playing a gunslinger / gunsmith character is a dumb idea (though that's how I finished it on my first playthrough). If you're going with a shitload of skills and stats, you'd better make sure they're all useful in the game and the first-playthrough player isn't forced to play "let's guess which stats the game designers want me to use".
<i>Thanks, Mysterious Contact Form Man whom we shouldn't credit.</i>
<blockquote>The division of Dexterity and Speed confused me at first. Most games combine these two concepts. But I can imagine cases where you’d have one but not the other. A jeweler or a locksmith might be capable of lots of fine detail work even if they have slow reflexes. A boxer might be very quick yet imprecise. The distinction makes sense, although I’m still unclear on how it works in practice. Since this is a turn-based game and everyone gets a single turn no matter how high or low their speed is, I have trouble understand exactly what the payoff is for putting points into speed.</blockquote>
The other piece published <A HREF="http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1497" target="_blank">discusses SPECIAL</A>, with somewhat of a critical view towards the skill list but lauding its absence of completely trivial stats:
<blockquote>Every attribute is meaningful for every character, and there aren’t any obvious “dump stats”. Creating a character is a matter of balancing tradeoffs, not min-maxing the crap out of your stats. You can if you want, but you will regret that 3 charisma or 2 intelligence before you get very far.</blockquote>
Stat and skill triviality or imbalance can screw up gameplay in a CRPG, kids. There's been a bit of talk on our forum recently on balance in Arcanum, coming back to the same conclusion that was reached shortly after the game's release: no balance whatsoever playing a gunslinger / gunsmith character is a dumb idea (though that's how I finished it on my first playthrough). If you're going with a shitload of skills and stats, you'd better make sure they're all useful in the game and the first-playthrough player isn't forced to play "let's guess which stats the game designers want me to use".
<i>Thanks, Mysterious Contact Form Man whom we shouldn't credit.</i>