Development Info Josh Sawyer on Utility and Balance in Game Design

[Clockwork Knight]

Would you rather that, at a certain percentage point, say in a covers-all "Medicine" skill that a former "medic," becomes a "doctor?" Would that ease this little fit everyone is having over these two words?

I think the best way to solve this dispute is having a Medicine skill that increases the amount of HP healed by stimpacks

smugface.zip

 

[DraQ]

Would you rather that, at a certain percentage point, say in a covers-all "Medicine" skill that a former "medic," becomes a "doctor?" Would that ease this little fit everyone is having over these two words?

I think the best way to solve this dispute is having a Medicine skill that increases the amount of HP healed by stimpacks

smugface.zip

Stimpaks in their current form should GTFO.

They should be much less numerous, and should only give temporary buff (you know, as in *stim*pak), that may put you below zero if it wears off.
They should be means of surviving immediate danger and borrowing some extra time, not panaceum capable of closing multiple bullet wounds in seconds.

Also, they should cause addiction.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Stimpacks as a whole are terrible. Anyone injecting the contents of a rusted syringe they found in a bathroom's floor into their bloodstream deserves to be corroded from the inside out, not healed.

The problem is that the player needs some form of quick healing, as even the most diplomatic character will get into more conflicts than a normal person sees in their lifetime.

 

[DraQ]

Stimpacks as a whole are terrible. Anyone injecting the contents of a rusted syringe they found in a bathroom's floor into their bloodstream deserves to be corroded from the inside out, not healed.

The problem is that the player needs some form of quick healing, as even the most diplomatic character will get into more conflicts than a normal person sees in their lifetime.

I'd rather have player have many ways to avoid combat damage - partial cover, lobbing grenades, trying to hit enemy while they are reloading (of course, aiming system and reloading should be redone from scratch) running from battles you don't need to fight.

Needing quick healing is indicative of whole other problem - combat consisting of standing there like a lemon and absorbing damage.

In any case stimpaks being 'temporary' healing would allow player to mitigate damage as long as they can take actual care of it before the effect wears off.

 

[Atomic]

hey girl

 

[hiver]

No, no - we are talking about a doctor performing basic first aid - which we just concluded he knows - only he cannot do it in combat - because he is a doctor, right?

It is what we are talking about:

You're not going to get quality treatment for serious injuries from a medic, because his training is geared towards quick fixes to last you through a combat encounter, fixes that may not even be permanent solutions to your medical problem. A doctor focuses on medical treatment proper, treatment that, if performed within the scope of a minute while some assholes are shooting at you, in all likelihood would do little to compensate for damage. These are two different areas of expertise, as what a gp can do for you in combat v.s what a combat medic can do you for on the operating table would clearly demonstrate that their knowledge and specialization isn't interchangeable.

A what?

GP? Like some nice old geezer who talks softly and is all nice and goes around in white coat prescribing pills and does talk shows but doesnt know anything about surgery?
Only he does, right? Because we are talking about doctors who can perform surgery, right? Fix crippled limbs, internal bleeding, major organ damage, that kind of stuff?
Doctors who know advanced surgery but dont know simple first aid stuff, right?

Who for some inane retarded stupid reason, arising just from the fucking retarded split in two skills - cannot... FUCKING CANNOT do anything in combat, right?
Because if they could... why then, the medic-first aid would not make any fucking sense, right?

Therefore - it becomes FUCKING NECESSARY to limit the "doctor" into stupidity, to excuse it all.

Hey doc - can you saw back my leg?
SURE THING!
How about fixing my crippled head and hands?
NO WORRIES!
Err... i also have this nasty gash here and it bleeds..?
NOPE: DONT KNOW SHIT ABOUT THAT STUFF! IM JUST A DOCTOOOOOOOOR! SOOOOORYY!


WW I - a day in the trenches under fire-
Doc...Doctor... help me... im bleeding..im going to die...help!
WISH I COULD SONNY. CANT DO SHIT WHILE THE COMBAT IS GOING ON!



Medicine diversifies into specializations in our society, in peace time - in Post Apocalypse one would scramble to get as much as it is possible.

I think you're just getting confused by the name.

I think youre just getting confused by your ignorance on the matter and ego tripping feeling bad because figuring out that several skills are worthless after a few reloads isnt so majestic as you thought.

Maybe if First Aid was called Combat Medicine we wouldn't need to argue that a Doctor serves a different function.

Same thing. There is no different functions. Its all one science discipline.

Hah! The point is that you need to take care of that kind of injury outside of combat anyway. Because of type of the injury itself - not because of who takes care of it.

But the skills are divided by type of injury, meaning that depending on the type of injury you're going to use a different skill.

There is no fucking different skill!
A DOCTOR IS AN EXPERT! A FUCKING MULTI-SPECIALIST! ESPECIALLY ONE IN A POST APOCALYPTIC SETTING!

(advice: ask me a trick question, how is it then there are NPCs who are not these multi specialist all knowing doctors!)

The medic knows how to keep someone's guts in during a fight, that's the whole point of the class. Why should it be the same, why do we need to eliminate character variety?

The character variety where i can only play a combat smooth talker? (or just combat char)
Because all the other skills are almost just cosmetic gimmicks?

o_O - if that is so then all skills can be overpowered as examples above.
Plus, thats not how medicine works.

That's pretty much exactly how it works. Theoretical knowledge of treatment can stretch far beyond experience and assist with more serious injuries, but that lack of experience also means its going to be a slow and sketchy process.

Are you telling me that... someone is just going to read about medicine and surgery and... then... just do it?
That i can just read about magic and then perform level nine spells?
That i can just hear stories about combat and go and pop moles? Like in CoD?

You first learn the simple shit - then you learn the higher knowledge and gain higher knowledge abilities.

I know that's how it works at the brick and cement factory, but reality isn't like that.

If you would try, you would find out that lugging bricks and cement for a month or two really clears the fucking mind.

THAT is how every other class/skill advances and so should the medicine.

This higher knowledge bullshit does not apply to skills grounded in theoretical disciplines.

Medicine is not grounded in fucking theoretical disciplines.
Shocking - eh?

Forcing you into contact with npc's is not C&C, that's railroading or bust.

In that alternate universe in your head, yes.
Thats the universe where people on an RPG forum are starting to tell me that ... interacting with NPCs is... a bad...thing?

In my universe interaction with NPCs is what the video games are made from.

By junk content I mean content added specifically to make the skill more useful.

Im talking about content added to make the skill relevant and worthy - content that will enable you to fucking role play, not larp.

It's not a bad approach, but I'd still prefer the two skills to remain separate. What if someone wants to make a 50-something Good Natured Doctor who's just really unlucky? You'll want the ability to treat status ailments right off the bat. What you essentially create is a more linear path in the game-world designed for 'Healers', where you just romp around and and collect pieces of knowledge in order to improve your skill. To say that "Well, Doctors don't necessarily need to pick up all the Doctor bonuses to stay viable" is like saying Pac-Man doesn't need to eat all the pellets on the board.

- Then make a 50 year old good natured Doctor with very low luck.-

It is not fucking linear - because it is distributed throughout the game, NPCs, characters, locations, factions. You close and open options through your decisions and choices.

Dangerous raiders - kill them, or heal the boss son/wife who was dying from simple appendix or some infection (whatever) - opening several new non-lethal options, for a quick example. (their shaman cannot help because he doesnt know the proper "trick")
(optional content) - do the reverse and either speed up the death of that one character, or botch the operation, or infect all raiders with some disease.

Surprise twist in the settlement nearby - they dislike you because you helped the raider boss.

Side with raiders and you can learn something from their shaman, or kidnapped doctor, or someone who just learned a few things.
Attack them and you kill the shaman too - loose that specific knowledge.

The settlement nearby has their own "doctor" who would teach you something else. - but in some future quest you would need that trick shaman knew - only now you dont, so you have to figure out something else.
Removing the Raiders also angers a faction that counted on them for their own goals - delayed consequence.
...

C&C
You cannot collect all the fucking "bonuses" procedures, techniques or knowledge.


If youre a fighter, you must collect advanced weapons to be really successful in combat, regardless of the high skill. Weapons are your tools. While practice (skill levels) makes perfect.
A Mage must collect spells, yes? Spells are wizards tools - his skill presents how good is he with them and how many can he get, or use, right?
A doctor therefore collects his tools - which considerably increases options in gameplay, role playing and C&C.




Also:
http://wasteland.inxile-entertainment.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2890&start=180

Not really. Is that what you're trying to do?

Waste of synaptic connections i see.

 

[EG]

What can change the nature of the medical profession?

Hiver, by saying "Thats not how it works!" and "In an apocalypse, it'd be so different!"

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Well, in an apocalypse primitive tribals would have greater access to doctor training than shirt making. So that's kind of different.

 

[St. Toxic]

That's neither necessary nor relevant.
You can always set up your game in such way that player will get a representative sample of gameplay before first level up.

Judging by the answer you gave me, I don't see how it's not a relevant question. Now we know that spreading our skills too thin is still an option, one that depends on how well the 'gameplay sample' is represented. I remember back when you said,

Except that's not given.

Many games change their gameplay formula towards the end for various reasons. Sure, it's shit design, but so is putting in skills that are not supported by gameplay.

So, I guess, now we actually agree that it's in the hands of the player to shape his character build after the initial gameplay, right? The only difference in our reasoning would be that I think there should be a definite penalty for players who are bad at doing so, while you're (presumably) still arguing for any character build to be viable no matter if the player learns anything from the gameplay sample or not.

Quite the contrary. Initial build, if present, is the most important one, because it determines immutable stuff (if any) - attribute scores, tags and so on.

Well sure, but, attributes and tags do synergize well with skills and general character abilities. In general, a character tends to live off his attributes for the first couple of levels, while his skills are still being developed, meaning that if you were to regret your initial lvl 1 spec at level 4, you can still respec without breaking the character and still have some use of the skills you've invested in. Of course, you'd need to find a workable synergy with your stats, meaning skills that your character has, shall we say, a natural affinity for.

As long as you split and add more non-flavour skills than flavour ones it's perfectly realistic.

That really depends on your definition of realistic. The real world has a pretty narrow list of what skills are viable for which types of situations, and we certainly have a lot more flavor skills here than we do core skills.

That depends on synergies.

If there are none present, then specializing in more than one skill already cuts down on the variety of potential builds. If everything synergizes with everything else, with synergies not being merely binary, but also n-ary synergies present (ideal situation), then specializing in half of your available skills actually gives you the most build variety possible.

I think I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure if we see eye to eye here. It's true that the number of potential combinations in making a particular 'build' would increase exponentially based on the number of choices made available, but if we define a build by the amount of total game content it has exclusive access to, which is what distinguishes it from any other build, the amount of total abilities available to it is still going to be proportional to the amount of game content that is available.

Synergies muddle any flat calculation that I could attempt to make here, as while problems or "quests" in a game that has no synergies would be in scale with the number of available skills, there's no general statement to be made about a game where every skill synergizes with every other skill. If we're given the choice of 3 out of 10 skills in the synergy-game, we're able to solve some middle value of a proportional 3/10'ths of all "quests" and 100%.

But suppose that we're talking about a list of 10 combat skills, meaning that in terms of solving particular problems or experiencing exclusive game content we're left with only being able to use particular weapons or employ special abilities exclusive to a particular skill, and all skills naturally synergize with each other as they're all geared towards one goal: defeating your opponent, whether by dealing damage, empowering the damage you're dealing and allowing you to deal the damage in the first place. With 3 skills we'll have access to 30% of the content and abilities -- we might have the choice of 3 unique weapon-types, or 2 unique weapon types and a buff that makes your character deal more damage, or maybe 1 unique weapon type, a buff that deals more damage and a defensive skill that negates some damage. With 5 skills we'll have access to 50% of the content and abilities, meaning that we can fit all the previous examples into a single build.

Weren't you complaining about easymode?

Because if game can be beaten by having less than half of the points you'd normally have in skill(s) you actually use, then it's too fucking easy.

I've been known to complain about devs adjusting difficulty using sub-optimal builds as a guideline, but never about being able to beat the game using a sub-optimal build. If I spend the entire game pushing points into Trading, just so I can afford the all-powerful Kill-O-Zap rifle and kill big bad with mere 5 levels worth of combat skills, I shouldn't expect it to be a walk in the park, or even possible for that matter, but I'm sure as hell not going to gripe if it works.

How is it relevant to our discussion of breadth of possible character builds?

Well, I mean, Ultima Online has a use-based system and I'm familiar with that one, while the only thing I know about Morrowind is that you can train your character to leap across buildings like Superman. Use-base systems are a different beast entirely, because you gain proficiency in the abilities that you're making use of, meaning that it's much harder to make a broken build unless you're spending your game-time doing stupid shit over and over, rather than strategically distributing points based on calculated expectations of the challenges ahead.

Out of the potential 5200-something (pre-ninja?) skill points that UO has available, you're normally allowed a total of 700 once your character is 'capped'. Supposing we go for grand-mastery in 7 skills rather than 14 less useful skills, you can think of the limit as 2½ tags in Fallout. There's like 5 categories to group the skills in, Flavor probably being the biggest one, and still no one gets tricked or cheated because their actions precede the skill-advancement.

We remove or merge skills, while reassigning the content or switching it to generic stat check (for example throwing the outdoorsman out and replacing it with generic PE check or PE/IN - finding water, spotting trouble, etc.).

Dumbing down.

Or, we mark our flavour skills as such.

Pandering.

Still, the best thing to do is fucking think of the content you can make for it while creating the system. The system doesn't work in isolation. If there can be perfectly reasonable content that makes the system behave in nonsensical manner, the system sucks. If parts of the system don't work to support expected content, then the system sucks due to effort being wasted that could be put elsewhere.

Wrong. The system works fine provided it's in agreement with the setting, and content shouldn't be tailored after system but setting. Just create the problems and the tools; leave the solutions to the players.

If they are spells governed by separate skills, then they are skill combinations as well.

Except they are not specifically tailored after spell combinations. It's that validity of this combination is consequence of being able to command your summons to do stuff for you, ability to cast buffs on any targets you desire and inherent resistance of some creature types to some types of damage.

But we're still just talking about a problem that consists of essentially bypassing two specific damage types. A skeleton with fire resistance, or an imp made ethereal by arcane magic, or magic rings and cloaks that negate both types of damage -- these items and spells and combinations are not there by pure chance. Naturally, it's a general problem and these solutions are likely to also apply elsewhere, so what's being represented here are synergies between combat abilities. Though, suppose your fire resistant skeleton has to pass the traps in order to pick the lock of a chest, which can only be accomplished by a combination of Lockpicking and Train Familiar skills on your character, then suddenly we have non-combat skills synergizing in order to solve a problem. Of course, Train Familiar without the use of summons, or in combination with skills that summoned or tamed creatures are incapable of learning, would end up being fairly useless, but that's beside the point.

By running serious, no-bullshit simulationist mechanics, having as much interactive stuff as possible and hoping I have given players enough material to form multiple solutions without figuring out what exactly they all may be.

Having only combat being freeform isn't something inherent to combat, it's inherent to combat being the only mechanics that isn't horribly sketchy. As for simulationism, reality seems pretty resistant to some particularly derpy exploits you can get with multiple systems interacting in unforseen manner - it seems wise to follow its example.

I think it's a noble goal to strive for, as would any sane simulationist. It's just that when you're constructing specific scenarios within a realistic environment, only a select number of solutions will be able to apply. When none of these are available to the character, certain combinations of skills are bound to fall off over the course of the game, meaning that if you want to "solve" it you'll end up butchering your initial system.

A proper simulation would have tons of alternatives that are available to the character, with only a handful of these ever being inherently useful. Realism is a type of balance in itself, but it doesn't take the player into account; rather it forces him to adjust in order to make any progress, forces him to refine his deductive and predictive abilities.

Except you're missing several important details:

1. If the gameworld is rich and mechanics simulationist enough, exhausting list of viable options is simply unrealistic. You don't devise and scripts dozens of approaches to each and every quest. You simply pepper the world with a lot of interactive stuff that can be useful in some manner and count on it being improbably for some stuff to not have multiple solutions. It's effectively making Lord British Postulate do the hard work for you.

You'll end up with a bunch of useless skills, either make shitty content for them or remove them entirely and the whole idea of your simulationist gameworld falls down a manhole. There's also no getting away from a certain amount of scripting if you want to maintain at least some coherent narrative and plot, or construct challenges that operate in the abstract rather than the gameworld. Why the abstraction? Because in order to fit these seemingly plausible scenarios into a game that relies on representations of what a character is physically able to do, you're limited by the ways in which they can be implemented: either you create skills for all major actions involved in solving a particular problem or group of problems, which means you'll end up with buckets of skills that really only see a small handful of uses throughout the game, or you leave it in the hands of the player, which moves the game into a more active non-roleplaying direction, or you have the game simply narrate part of the experience, bridging the gap between key points where character skill is applied. I've seen excellent results come out of all three approaches, but I prefer what you would consider a 'guessing game' in regards to skills which are at best situational, in order to have an otherwise clear representation of what the options are, much more than an interactive story or a game that measures my reflexes and hand-eye coordination.

2. I specifically used gimped build, with all skills used in this scenario being on mere "not quite entirely useless" level and showed how even such skills may be combined for good effect. It's definitely not a minmaxed character.

Oh, that point was not lost on me. It's just that anyone hoarding points into an offensive skill of their choice would, in all likelihood, stomp over the scenario and give less than two shits, while someone who hasn't gone for a skill-combination that allows them the same opportunities as a mage/alchemist in this scenario would feel cheated with whatever they picked. When I say that I've used Good-natured Outdoorsmen or Boxing Doctors to overcome challenges in Fallout, I'm hardly pulling shit out of my ass here, but the consensus still seems to be that anything not relating to Small Arms or Speech, which are the two skills that dominate the game, is effectively useless. Being able to make loud noises and hand out laxative potions is probably not going to cut it in the long run unless big-bad has a weak ticker and a serious gastric disorder.

3. It's ok for player to fail quests. Why should the life of an adventurer be a train of flawless successes? Do account for player being guaranteed to fail some quests in your design, though.

Well, yeah, but how do you guarantee that the players fail because of a decision unrelated to character creation? I mean, suppose you've invested a fair bit into magery, but run into the loud bang/laxative situation before your bangs are loud enough? Suppose you're chasing wolves with a dagger while your character is a peaceful diplomat? If a player wants to engage in combat, but lacks the skills to do so, then the fault lies not only with the active moment-to-moment choice that the player makes, but also with his choice of skills based on what he expects to accomplish.

Unlikely in any exisitng system due to economy breakage. Unlikely in extensive simulationistic system because of other options that also do something else.

So, because most games generally have a broken economy, it's unlikely that barter can ever be useful for anything. And if you're simming, then you obviously wouldn't go for the choice of bartering your way to glory, whether or not it was available, because there would be other equally or more viable alternatives. This doesn't sound like the guy who suggested feeding laxatives to a group of ruffians while they were busy investigating a disturbingly large farting sound as a way of accomplishing a serious objective. Give the idea some serious, creative thought. Barter and Gambling are great starting skills, if your goal is to roll in dough and gear without hours of helping dirty ingrates, and I've used it before to great success. As any starting skill, once the objective has been accomplished it essentially trails off into nothingness, but that doesn't mean we should just shrug it off and ignore it.

Barter may be good if you want to persuade someone to sell stuff they don't really want to, but why not merge it with speech in that case?

Speech is a broad enough category as it is, it should be divided into 5-6 subgroups.

If you want to have autism in your game, you need to have autism in your game.

For example, you may have several separate mental stats accounting for different kinds of intelligence, and for example gimp characters emotional and verbal intelligence, but give them superhuman visuo-spatial and logical skills. There, you have your autist that will be mostly speaking in "durr"s, but will be capable of pumping science skill.

Or, at the very least put in optional trait, that modifies your IN stat depending on whether you're using it in dialogue or science-y subject (and force your content creators to choose when implementing content - no nulls here).

I think there was something like that in Arcanum chargen.

It might be a truism, but if your system can't cover autism, then it can't cover autism.

I couldn't agree more.

It doesn't change that you can't really have a doctor skill without knowing the basics. If you want to cure an eye wound so that the damaged organ regains function, you'll still need to know how to dress wounds and prevent infections.

It's true, and I don't doubt that Doctors make capable... err, doctors. And it is usable when in proximity to hostile characters, so it's not like the 'doctor' side of the character is entirely incompetent at working under pressure. As it is, however, First Aid represents quick solutions to mitigate injuries in the line of fire and that's about it. A real physician who can both take good care of serious and more time consuming injuries and sustain you through a vicious gun-battle is, simply put, in possession of both these skills.

Actually, they are very different. They reload completely differently act at different ranges, their projectiles behave differently, are aimed differently and need to be handled differently when firing, for example, gatling will flip you over if fired without bipod or tripod or at least leaning against something solid, assuming you're a normal person without PA, while rocket launcher may actually *pull* itself from your hands.

So, we're talking about weapons that require lots of strength and stability on the part of the character.

And what with gatling laser? Is it more like a gatling, or like a normal laser weapon, because I am confuse. I mean, normal rifle is small gun, while similar conventional minigun is big, so does that make gatling laser big gun counterpart of normal energy weapon laser? Why not?

None of the kick-back, probably.

The system in FO1-2 is simply illogical.

It's not illogical in terms of simple categories, but as far as skills go then more specific weapon familiarities would make a lot more sense. But, if you're going to group them all together into three skills it's actually not that bad, and none of that 'unlocking tiers of one skill' crap either.

Actually, many rocket launchers have scope, both rocket launchers and sniper rifles require correcting for both wind (although with rocket launchers you may need to correct in opposite direction) and target movement.

The 'tube' in Fallout did have a scope, but you wouldn't be chasing moving targets with it or trying to go for head-shots. You'd probably have to correct for wind on the flame-thrower as well, or at least not have it blowing in your face, judging by the animation.

You might as well argue that rocket launcher and sniper rifle should be merged into long range category, while grease gun in CQB.

Not sure that would make much sense either, weapon skill-wise, though it would make for pretty interesting combat c&c. Short Range, Mid Range and Long Range would essentially dictate what tactics you'd have to use throughout the game, unless you split your points evenly between them.

You don't want smoke or dust. Any occlusion counts as destructible cover. If firing rapidly you don't want to aim at the same spot as you will typically make a lot of smoke and debris with each hit. Shinies take *slightly* less damage.

You don't need to lead target, adjust for wind or bullet drop, you simply aim where you want to hit, possibly even using the same optics for aiming and shooting.

Certainly makes for a different type of gun than the traditional gun-powder variety.

Unlikely.

Radioactive particles v.s Gunshot wounds, which are more immediately lethal and why? Discuss!!!

Not if the only thing you learn is "don't do exactly the same thing".

No, that too, but I think that really depends on how dense you are. You have to be able to draw some inferences.

Anyway, bruteforcing the problem isn't satisfying, or otherwise intellectual, and it does waste a lot of time, I suggest we keep it out of our fucking games as much as possible or at least make it the retard option.

Oh, you and your retard options.

I need to know that potentially crippling decision is potentially crippling (generally satisfied when it's build we're talking about) and be able to find information to make the right choice (generally not satisfied at chargen).

Wait, what? You want a strategy guide?

If you actually intend to put a save and reload puzzle in your game, then kindly shoot yourself in the head.
This holds for chargen as well.

But I thought you liked saving and reloading to solve puzzles? I've never seen it done at chargen though.

First, replayability can be an asset even with single playthrough - people tend to socialize and talk about stuff that interests them - discovering that everyone has their own, completely different experience is much cooler than talking about your synchronous Tali fappage.

Second, to have subsequent playthroughs, you need to have the first one that's good. Discovering that half your skills are broken and the other half doesn't work isn't.

Speak for yourself. I'd find it quite motivational that the game managed to best my seemingly superior intellect with its cunning design. I mean, it's a subjective description of a discovery that you apparently failed to achieve what you set out to do, and whether the game is at fault or if it's your inability to adapt to the rules presented in it does not have an obvious answer, at least outside of circles where you're used as some universal measuring stick. Some people never made it out of the rat-infested cave outside of V-13 because they found the combat too unintuitive or even difficult despite having been instructed in how it operates.

No, it means that Go, and pretty much every other game you play with another person allows you to experience completely different content each time you play it despite using the same (often limited) assets.

Oh, so the rules don't change, the pieces don't change and the board doesn't change. The completely different content must be the time-frame in which the same pieces are placed, abiding by the same rules on the same board. Well, have no fear -- no game has you re-experiencing the same content within the same time-frame as part of a learning curve. Might be space-time continuum, or perhaps because you wouldn't be able to learn anything.

Multiplayer games OBVIOUSLY require you to learn on your mistakes, but a learning cycle isn't tens of hours long, and each learning cycle has different content, despite allowing you to apply the insights you have already gained.

I figure there's more time invested than that into truly mastering a simple game such as Quake 2, and it relies on learning exactly the same content with variables added in the mix. It's adaptive learning, learning on the fly, but if it's completely different content every time you play then there's no chance of you acquiring any remotely useful information, other than perhaps that attempting to do so is futile.

Are you impaired or something?

Shucks, I guess I must be.

Indeed, so?

So you finally agree? Well, good for us both.

No, I'm saying that you can't assess engineering mastery by having contestants tighten screws.
Or swordsmanship mastery by having them slaughter defenceless clumsies.

Well, how about tying a shoe-lace v.s cutting down a birch? Considering that your 'defenseless clumsy' may at this point of the argument be entirely defenseless despite having some combat affinity, in disregard to your initial statement that no combat affinity was needed to land a blow, in a fight against someone with three times the amount of skillpoints invested in a combat skill, which you claimed wouldn't increase his relative chance of success even threefold (a value which at current is infinite) I'd suggest giving your defenseless clutz at least a few different ways to die instead of comparing apples to oranges.

Again, not necessarily.

Skill increase is only benefit if you're fairly close to the competence level required by the task. Too low, and you still can't do shit, too high, and you're already capable of performing the task perfectly.

Google sigmoid curve.

There's also random chance to account for, a roll which may determine where your skill-value will land during the check, or where the minimum value of success will land. But I digress, as it is ultimately irrelevant how a skill-check is implemented to what I was trying to say. The notion that, because a skill-value of 99 does not net you the rewards for a skill-value of 100 means that any increase in the skill from the last reward-point, which may have been 70 or 95 or whatever, is ultimately useless or signifies nothing is blatantly false. The 5 or 20 or 30 points required for the next successful use of the skill are an abstract representation of the skill development necessary to achieve a more difficult task and are in that regard an obvious benefit. If you're able to advance a skill beyond the maximum level of application, we're talking about false representation.

Vertical progression is boring compared to horizontal progression.

Simple challenges are boring compared to complex ones.

General statements are boring compared to specific ones.

Edit:

For example if you max out your swordsmanship, you may be able to best every other swordsman in gameworld in single, fair combat. The thing is that not many combat situations are going to resemble a duel. You will have multiple combatant with weapons working at different ranges, magic, poisons and throwable potions, tactical advantages and stuff like this. Even if you can win while being ganged upon by multiple opponents, then someone may just do what a reasonable PC would in such situation - shoot you with a crossbow. And that's it.

So much for your ability to wipe the floor with every swordsman and its exceptional usefulness regardless of situation.

And then you have enemies like rock golems that can be pretty much immune to swords, with attacks that can't be parried with one.

Or undead that don't seem terribly bothered by getting stuck full of arrows or skewered on a spear if those are your weapons of choice.

Then specializing in one weapon simply isn't viable? Or what? I mean, state your preference by all means, but at least provide an answer. You're either going to gimp one or the other with this thing, right?

How about players successfully pacifist-diplomaticizing they way through 3/4 of the game, with awesome success, no less, only to discover that the remaining 1/4 requires you to hack your way through and they have no skill for that nor means to gain it?

If that's not shit design, then nothing is.

I think combat that's forced willy-nilly on the player is shit design in and of itself, so we may as well agree. For this specific scenario, I'd just throw out a handful of bad-ass followers who can only be recruited by a high diplomacy skill.

Don't be silly. You can love it, while acknowledging it being horribly broken.

See me and Morrowind.

Is Morrowind horribly broken? I know it had performance issues when it dropped in 2005 or whatever, but other than the "You borked up the game" thing it didn't seem all that broken. You won't see me calling skills or features broken if they can be used to beat the game though.

Not enough of it.

More than enough. The random element is certainly essential to both genres.

No, reload because you've played yourself into a corner through repeated application of poor judgement.

A corner? It's a common status ailment. I mean, fine, supposing I play my cards right I'll have the pleasure of commuting between clinics to cure broken bones between adventures, but it's akin to visiting a restourant every time you want your toast buttered without the choice to do it yourself.

So, first aid would presumably be learned from...
Oh.

Oh is right -- the same fucking guy. The difference is that it's a practical skill, so we've learned the efficient application of first aid from practice.

Does forcing you into contact with NPCs hamper your larp as psycho hermit, or something? Because you seem very butthurt about it.

I'm against railroading. If you absolutely have to interact with a specific NPC it better be for a good goddamn reason and not just to unlock the next part of a quest-line by giving you symbolic information you could do without or as the only available option of getting a service which could be filled by any amount of other random strangers on the street or the PC himself. It just adds to the number of invisible and illogical walls in the world.

The fact is that not relying on other people's help is going to make your life nasty, brutish and presumably short.

Oh, absolutely. But impossible? Shouldn't we at least be allowed to try?

Many skills, including doctor, should rely on stuff that may be impossible or impractical to carry. Sophisticated repairs may require a lot of specialized equipment, that you won't be able to carry around, operating someone will need at the very least some place to immobilize them, antiseptics, clean water and not having wind blowing dirt all over you.

Many skills should get hefty penalties for not having proper workstation and crying about it breaking your larp won't change it.

Completely agree.

 

[hiver]

Well, in an apocalypse primitive tribals would have greater access to doctor training than shirt making. So that's kind of different.

No, dont be daft. They would certainly have someone doing various basic and simple stuff. Being a "healer". They would know about medicinal properties of some plants, maybe how to extract the poison of some insect or a snake and make a poison or antidote for it, maybe they kidnapped a kind of "doctor" from some other settlement or faction who would be very grateful if you rescued him, hell maybe they live in an area full of mutated mosquitoes and you notice their wounds are healing much faster? Or they bleed much longer, or are resistant to some disease?

The medical knowledge would be fragmented in a PA setting. Just pieces of it here and there.
If you want - you can easily focus the beginning of the game more on the combat-medic-first aid kind of stuff and pepper it with few bits of more advanced things here and there - deeply embedded into players quests and their C&C.

Needless to say - all this would work much better if the medical healing items were rare.

With this setup, you can actually build and get to play as a Doc Holiday, (provided content for gambling skill is also enhanced, of course)
With the usual setup you can only larp it.

 

[DraQ]

Well, in an apocalypse primitive tribals would have greater access to doctor training than shirt making. So that's kind of different.

Actually, given the archaeological evidence of fucking shirtless tribals routinely doing trepanation, amputation and repairing crippled limbs (with patient surviving) and modern shirtless tribals being capable of repairing even torn intestines despite not even knowing how to make metal tools, I wouldn't consider that unlikely.

That's neither necessary nor relevant.
You can always set up your game in such way that player will get a representative sample of gameplay before first level up.

Judging by the answer you gave me, I don't see how it's not a relevant question. Now we know that spreading our skills too thin is still an option, one that depends on how well the 'gameplay sample' is represented. I remember back when you said,

Except that's not given.

Many games change their gameplay formula towards the end for various reasons. Sure, it's shit design, but so is putting in skills that are not supported by gameplay.

It's still not relevant how much points you get per level up. And you should still be able to pull your weight with any build chargen allows. Then any change with gameplay will be supported by your build.

So, I guess, now we actually agree that it's in the hands of the player to shape his character build after the initial gameplay, right? The only difference in our reasoning would be that I think there should be a definite penalty for players who are bad at doing so, while you're (presumably) still arguing for any character build to be viable no matter if the player learns anything from the gameplay sample or not.

Build being viable doesn't equal (build, playstyle, equipment) tuple being viable. If player plays their build badly or builds bad character for their playstyle, they should suffer and the viable choices of playstyle shouldn't be exactly obvious.

Also, while ideally game should accommodate varying build breadths, I don't think I've ever claimed that the player shouldn't be allowed to fuck up their character building past chargen, only during chargem since, you know, uninformed choice.

Finally, I did mention limiting breadth the hard way (3 tags in FO, 5 majors, 5 minors, in Morrowind, etc.) as valid way out if you can't handle varying breadths.

Quite the contrary. Initial build, if present, is the most important one, because it determines immutable stuff (if any) - attribute scores, tags and so on.

Well sure, but, attributes and tags do synergize well with skills and general character abilities. In general, a character tends to live off his attributes for the first couple of levels, while his skills are still being developed, meaning that if you were to regret your initial lvl 1 spec at level 4, you can still respec without breaking the character and still have some use of the skills you've invested in. Of course, you'd need to find a workable synergy with your stats, meaning skills that your character has, shall we say, a natural affinity for.

Again, twice the points for the same investment.

If your core skills don't overlap with tagged ones, you effectively have whatever you invested the most in at half the normal value.

If that carries you through the game it's bad design due to being too easy (criticism you levelled yourself at spreading your character over multiple melee skills VS one).
If that doesn't carry you through the game it's bad design due to chargen allowing broken builds that you can have no foreknowledge of being broken.

That really depends on your definition of realistic. The real world has a pretty narrow list of what skills are viable for which types of situations, and we certainly have a lot more flavor skills here than we do core skills.

Quite the contrary.

Real world skills are generally arranged in trees or mostly tree-like patterns - generalist skills splitting into increasingly specialist branches.

With regards to gameplay it means you can section each individual tree at whichever level game balance or even better - setting (for example PA having more generalist doctors than RL, as hiver mentioned) - dictates you to and still stay true to life.

Besides, arguing against merging very similar first aid and doctor before bashing very dissimilar computer science, physics, chemistry, biology or at least biochemistry and engineering being merged into one 'science' skill is pure hypocrisy.

I think I see what you're saying, but I'm not sure if we see eye to eye here. It's true that the number of potential combinations in making a particular 'build' would increase exponentially based on the number of choices made available, but if we define a build by the amount of total game content it has exclusive access to, which is what distinguishes it from any other build, the amount of total abilities available to it is still going to be proportional to the amount of game content that is available.

Content is secondary. It's a storyfag icing on mechanical cake. Yes, it's great to have stat-gated content, but:

-many games (think roguelikes) have no traditional content at all and can still be *very* build dependant.
-content may be gated via several stat checks if you want to make it more specific
-content may have multiple, differently gated entry points if you want to make it less specific - content is as malleable as you want it as developer.
-in any case, having access to half the content, but playing very differently depending on build is still an incredibly good deal.
-highly structured game with not just exclusive content, but content that you can access differently depending on your build, party, and what you have and haven't done in game is infinitely more interesting to explore than highly fractured content that's simply mutually exclusive and bears no relation to other content.

I've been known to complain about devs adjusting difficulty using sub-optimal builds as a guideline, but never about being able to beat the game using a sub-optimal build.

And I complain about the very notion of suboptimal build. At least at chargen level.

Wizardry 8 got it mostly right, apart from being horribly combat focused and having level scaling - you make a very subopltimal builds and it surprises you in ways no optimal builds has.

Use-base systems are a different beast entirely, because you gain proficiency in the abilities that you're making use of, meaning that it's much harder to make a broken build

It still assumes that abilities you're making use of will carry it through the game.

And breaking build can still be easy - see oblivious where you can break your build by investing in skills that just don't pull their weight in critical parts of the game despite seeing a lot of use otherwise.

As for character development itself the only difference is between girinding individual skills and grinding XPs to boost skills on level up.

Dumbing down.

Not if you smart it up somewhere else.

Generally skill without generalized mechanics supporting its use should go or be merged into something that has such mechanics.

You can also let player use their own skill instead of putting purely flavour skill in - instead of having latin skill you just put latin text in game and let player translate it if they can, instead of having cryptography skill you can just put actual ciphered messages in game and let player try to crack the code (case in point - Morrowind). You can guard it with generic stat check too.

Wrong. The system works fine provided it's in agreement with the setting

You say?

If there can be perfectly reasonable content that makes the system behave in nonsensical manner, the system sucks.

and content shouldn't be tailored after system but setting. Just create the problems and the tools; leave the solutions to the players.

The system should also be tailored after the setting. So both should agree with each other.

Amd you still have to give players the tools and freedom to use them.

But we're still just talking about a problem that consists of essentially bypassing two specific damage types.

Or of bypassing certain triggers. Or bypassing a portion of dungeon. Or hiring someone to bypass it for you. Or disabling the traps.

A proper simulation would have tons of alternatives that are available to the character, with only a handful of these ever being inherently useful. Realism is a type of balance in itself, but it doesn't take the player into account; rather it forces him to adjust in order to make any progress, forces him to refine his deductive and predictive abilities.

And why the fuck not?

You'll end up with a bunch of useless skills, either make shitty content for them or remove them entirely and the whole idea of your simulationist gameworld falls down a manhole.

If they are useless they are out of bounds of whatever model we are trying to make.

There's also no getting away from a certain amount of scripting if you want to maintain at least some coherent narrative and plot, or construct challenges that operate in the abstract rather than the gameworld.

But you can still keep scripting to minimum and don't assume more than absolutely necessary.

you'll end up with buckets of skills that really only see a small handful of uses throughout the game

I can very well make those universal non-skills and since, as we have established, they are of marginal importance to my model, it won't be any worse for it.

in order to have an otherwise clear representation of what the options are

Why should that even be a goal if it isn't the case in either the RL or PnP RPGs?

Oh, that point was not lost on me. It's just that anyone hoarding points into an offensive skill of their choice would, in all likelihood, stomp over the scenario and give less than two shits

That depends on strength of the bandits and "heroism factor" (how many crossbow bolts in the gut can a character take without keeling over and dying solely by the virtue of being level 20).

while someone who hasn't gone for a skill-combination that allows them the same opportunities as a mage/alchemist in this scenario would feel cheated with whatever they picked.

The point is that they would seek different set of potential opportunities that could be used.

When I say that I've used Good-natured Outdoorsmen or Boxing Doctors to overcome challenges in Fallout, I'm hardly pulling shit out of my ass here, but the consensus still seems to be that anything not relating to Small Arms or Speech, which are the two skills that dominate the game, is effectively useless.

Well, you've got to admit that making outdoorsman allow you to not perish in some survival-hard portions of the map and therefore bypass difficult hostile areas, making stimpaks only temporary health boosts as opposed to consolidated doctor/first aid (and no rest until healed), or making you able to make fortune with barter and hire a small army of mercs would even the table a little.

Being able to make loud noises and hand out laxative potions is probably not going to cut it in the long run unless big-bad has a weak ticker and a serious gastric disorder.

The thing is that having multiple skills, even weak ones at your disposal allows you to McGyver your way out of many situations in sufficiently rich simulationist world, while having few, strongly developed ones allows you tough out some content the hard way (but maybe getting extra rewards to compensate).

Ideally both should be viable, and specializing shouldn't be inherently superior to spreading out because not every problem is a nail.

Well, yeah, but how do you guarantee that the players fail because of a decision unrelated to character creation?

Who the fuck cares? They are guaranteed to fail multiple times for various reasons. The game will accommodate it. There is no more reason to whine for failing a quest over build VS failing it over a diceroll somewhere in the past.

If a player wants to engage in combat, but lacks the skills to do so, then the fault lies not only with the active moment-to-moment choice that the player makes

Yes, it does.

The player should stop wanting to engage in combat and try something else, something their build will handle.

So, because most games generally have a broken economy, it's unlikely that barter can ever be useful for anything. And if you're simming, then you obviously wouldn't go for the choice of bartering your way to glory, whether or not it was available, because there would be other equally or more viable alternatives.

Well, if you suggested hiring a large group of mercs and paying them regularly...



Anyway, I don't see much reason to not merge barter and speech. Barter is part persuasion (speech) and part buying right stuff in right place from the right people in the right moment and selling it to the right people in the right place in the right moment, which is player's agency.

Speech is a broad enough category as it is, it should be divided into 5-6 subgroups.

Actually, I'd split science instead, but that's after giving it strong underlying mechanics.

Remember that you can always run multiple checks at once - for example speech alone might not be enough to intimidate someone, or you might need speech and repair (and background knowledge) to persuade enemy group you're trying to infiltrate that you're that new tech they've been waiting for.

So, we're talking about weapons that require lots of strength and stability on the part of the character.

Not really. Rocket launcher may be pretty heavy, but mitigating its recoil is going to be more of an issue with expecting it to pull rather than push - knowing how rocket weapon works.

Gatling may flip you over if you aren't superhumanly strong, but not if you know how to deploy the tripod, etc.

But, if you're going to group them all together into three skills it's actually not that bad

Infinitely worse than pistol, rifle and heavy, for example.

Or CQB, long range and indirect.

and none of that 'unlocking tiers of one skill' crap either.

That was medical, and it doesn't really have to be explicit tiers, although you still shouldn't expect to automatically be brian sturgeon if you can set broken limbs.

The 'tube' in Fallout did have a scope, but you wouldn't be chasing moving targets with it

Try explaining that to moving vehicles or even charging mutated monstrosities.

or trying to go for head-shots.

Structural weak points in buildings and vehicles can be pretty small.

unless you split your points evenly between them.

Then you'd be pretty sucky at either, but free to change tactics according to the needs, which might still give you a lot of edge.

Certainly makes for a different type of gun than the traditional gun-powder variety.

Similar to gunpowder gun firing high velocity bullets apart from cover considerations and rapid fire. With rapid fire you'd probably have damage scaler rather than usual to-hit roll bonus/penalty.

Radioactive particles v.s Gunshot wounds, which are more immediately lethal and why? Discuss!!!

And which are easier to avoid? Because while you have reasonable chance of avoiding gunshot wounds in post-nuclear setting if you abstain from feeling particularly adventurous, the game is still called Fallout.

Wait, what? You want a strategy guide?

No, I want whatever the game allows me to punch in to work. Ok, maybe minus obviously retarded option (like IN 1 scientist), but then I will still frown at system being sloppy enough to allow it.

But I thought you liked saving and reloading to solve puzzles?

No. I like puzzles where after reloading ten times to solve them and ragequitting several times you can honestly say that you're a fucking moron to not have figured it out on your first try.

You know - hard, but all the information actually at hand.

I've never seen it done at chargen though.

Obviously, because in this case you have "New Game" instead of "reload".

Speak for yourself. I'd find it quite motivational that the game managed to best my seemingly superior intellect

What intellect?

It's pure guesswork.

Oh, so the rules don't change, the pieces don't change and the board doesn't change.

Assets are not the same tier as content.

Content is how those assets are composed and in what context. In multiplayer game chief portion of content is generated by other players and is constantly changing. That is their draw.

Or maybe since computer games use pixels to represent images, two games having purple pixels somewhere is boring repetitive content?

in disregard to your initial statement that no combat affinity was needed to land a blow, in a fight against someone with three times the amount of skillpoints invested in a combat skill

Wait, what.

There's also random chance to account for, a roll which may determine where your skill-value will land during the check, or where the minimum value of success will land. But I digress, as it is ultimately irrelevant how a skill-check is implemented to what I was trying to say. The notion that, because a skill-value of 99 does not net you the rewards for a skill-value of 100 means that any increase in the skill from the last reward-point, which may have been 70 or 95 or whatever, is ultimately useless or signifies nothing is blatantly false. The 5 or 20 or 30 points required for the next successful use of the skill are an abstract representation of the skill development necessary to achieve a more difficult task and are in that regard an obvious benefit. If you're able to advance a skill beyond the maximum level of application, we're talking about false representation.

You didn't get it.

If your skill value is very high, but difficulty very low (or vice versa), adding or subtracting a single skill point has no bearing on outcome (neither has random chance unless you're in the camp that claims that even a perfect swordsman should lop off their own limb in roughly 1 in 20 swings). If your skill value is approximately equal to difficulty level then adding or subtracting even a single point will have significant impact on success rate.

Then specializing in one weapon simply isn't viable? Or what? I mean, state your preference by all means, but at least provide an answer. You're either going to gimp one or the other with this thing, right?

I don't think specializing in single skill should be more viable than spreading yourself equally over the entire skillset.

Swinging your sword masterfully at every problem you might encounter doesn't sound as either a viable solution or interesting gameplay either.

Is Morrowind horribly broken? I know it had performance issues when it dropped in 2005 or whatever, but other than the "You borked up the game" thing it didn't seem all that broken. You won't see me calling skills or features broken if they can be used to beat the game though.

What if they can be used to beat the game in 11 minutes by boosting your stats >9000?

A corner? It's a common status ailment.

And you have no one to cure it.

I'm against railroading. If you absolutely have to interact with a specific NPC

Why 'specific' all of sudden?

Oh, absolutely. But impossible? Shouldn't we at least be allowed to try?

What prevents you from trying to not get critically wounded or crippled?