MSFD on Bethesda's uber next-gen skill system

[Twinfalls]

Pity Tubs ain't there. Wherefore art thou, Tubgirl?

 

[Twinfalls]

nevermind

Bleach

 

[ExMonk]

Not a problem, MSFD. Thanks for the correction.

As I said, sometimes it pays to make sure all the information is in before rushing to judgment.

 

[ExMonk]

You talk about useage. But does that mean successful useage or any?


Oh and VD, I wasn't talking about graphics so much as the concept of generating wilderness when needed, which could be expanded upon in the future.
It does matter for practical and roleplaying purposes. You might want to do stuff besides fast-travelling from quest location to quest location, hunt, collect ingredients for potions, and stuff.
Of course I may be overestimating this feature like many players overestimate Radiant AI.

Besides, it was just about praising one feature, not pinning your verdict of the game on it. "Procedurally generated forest are great but don't make it a good game." ought to be fine. :wink:

"Oh, VD, please don't think I was disagreeing with you. Don't be angry at me. Don't make me turn in my junior VD club badge." Suck up.

 

[Twinfalls]

Hey what - that sounds like Gabriel's Trumpet. You know what that means, kids!

-Yaay, Judgment Day!

 

[ExMonk]

Hey what - that sounds like Gabriel's Trumpet. You know what that means, kids!

-Yaay, Judgment Day!

Actually, Twinfalls, it is a very good thing for you that God is NOT rushing to judgment, if the above was a poke at me or Christianity. :wink:

 

[Twinfalls]

Touchy. You sure are full of fire and brimstone today, Monk...

 

[Fintilgin]

Major, within class specialization: 6.76 uses
Major, non-specialization: 9.02 uses
Minor, within class specialization: 11.27 uses
Minor, non-specialization: 15.03 uses

Ah, see that's cool. A 'combat' class with destruction as a minor will have have to work over twice as hard to get their skill up as a 'magic' with destruction as major.

I'm curious about the exponential curve. It will clearly be much harder to get skills up to 100. Do you guys have a rough 'target' of where the average major skill should be if you just bull right through the main quest to the end? Maybe 70 or 80, something like that, with 90 and 100 reserved for people who play for a long, long time? Seems like you must have some sense of where you'd want a player who rushed toward the end of the game to wind up.

 

[AnalogKid]

Actually, Twinfalls, it is a very good thing for you that God is NOT rushing to judgment, if the above was a poke at me or Christianity. :wink:

Damn Monk... bipolar much? First it's "relentless criticism", then sucking up , then in your good grace you tip off Twinfalls about how lucky she must "actually" be.

And here you are with all the sucking and poking!

 

[VenomByte]

I can't understand why Beth have kept essentially almost the same system.

Are they not aware of mods like GCD, Madd Leveller, and Balor's levelling, which overhauled this system completely (and in particular, removed those damn multipliers) and recieved huge acclaim from the modding community?

I dare say the sheer number of players who've fervently dedicated their games to using GCD easily rivals the man hours Beth's testing team have put in on their own system.

 

[Twinfalls]

Well, first off not to bash on him but mfsd is a typical programmer in that sometimes it's like trying to talk to rain man to get any coherent info out of the dude.

Oh bryce you do make me laff...

 

[Vault Dweller]

I wonder if that's how MSFD feels with the constant barage of "Bethesda sucks! Oblivion sucks. Morrowind sucks. Dumbing down gameplay. Nothing but graphics. Piece of crap. Ugly Npc's. Moronic quests. Actions have no effect on the gameworld. Sell outs" over and over and over and over and over ad NAUSEUM. Relentless and redundant criticism does get to be a bit much, doesn't it, sweety?

I agree. It's not politically correct to point out that the game is dumbed down, that the quests are primitive (MW), and that it doesn't look like the game has anything to offer other than shiny graphics and soothing celebrity voices. Instead we should celebrate the joy of having yet another video game being made!

I was asking VD to praise one feature of Oblivion now. Now if he tells me that he still stands by the comment you quoted, so be it. Otherwise, the bitching must continue.

I always stand by my comments, sweety.

If you dish out the bitching endlessly, be ready to take it endlessly.

You are very amusing.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I didn't sift through anything. I remembered that newsbit immediately as I had also thought this was a promising development, and I also commented positively.

It's one of the very few, if not only, features of Oblivion announced which actually sounded like it was a step forward for role-playing, in that it added some complexity and consequences of choices. So it's stands out like a sore thumb amongst the PR.

Unfortunately, what we have since learned about 'investing in stores' is that it's very simplistic - it amounts to 'you can sell more lewt to them'...

I must admit that with only 4 combat skills, the perks idea sounds less interesting. It's kinda silly having the same perks for daggers and swords, however, something is always better than nothing.

Hey, this sounds a lot better.

Perhaps VD ought to update the news page.

Done. :wink:

 

[Twinfalls]

Its funny that it was MSFD's correction to his initial information which yielded actual new and interesting stuff. It's sounding a lot better than MW all of a sudden. And while I agree that the perks idea suffers in the face of so few skills (and being skill-dependent rather than weapon-dependent - we've been through the "train with a dagger and get perks for a claymore" aspect), but its things like this:

if you're able to increase your armorer skill to the master level, you can repair items beyond 100 percent, whereas at lower levels you may only be able to restore it to 50 percent and be restricted from repairing magical items.

- on top of the new varying rates of skill increases, and this mysterious new 'specialisation' of your character, which have turned things around and made the game now seem much more promising.

It all begs the question - why can't they release this kind of info sooner, and more coherently?

 

[thomase]

The varying rate of skill increase depending on major/minor or combat/stealth/magic was also in Morrowind. They may have tweaked the relative rates, but that is it. Aside from the exponential curve, the system sounds exactly the same as Morrowind.

I would have liked something a bit more elegant though. In Morrowind, major/minor/misc distinction determines base starting value, and specialization along with race adds modifiers to this. It would make a lot of sense for the rate of skill increase to be directly related to the STARTING value of a skill, because this can be thought of as an accurate representation of natural talent. Each skill uses the same exponential curve, but the starting offset is different. This way, it takes the same number of uses to increase A/B/C to 41/26/11 respectively. It will be naturally harder to increase C from 40 to 41 than it is to increase A from 40 to 41, because C will be farther along the curve at that point.

I'm HOPING that they have done something better/different with the multipliers. However, the fact that MSFD has been reluctant to give details suggests that it is not much different than in Morrowind - ie. explaining how the system works will ruin the experience because it will encourage non-intuitive behavior in order to maximize stats.

Clearly, they have given up on trying to create a simple and elegant system through a carefull analytic design process in favor of "tweaking" their current system via empirical methods.

 

[crpgnut]

Clearly, they have given up on trying to create a simple and elegant system through a carefull analytic design process in favor of "tweaking" their current system via empirical methods.

Well said, Thomase. I think the reason they chose to do this is because most of us would rather be emperor than anal :D

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

Its funny that it was MSFD's correction to his initial information which yielded actual new and interesting stuff. It's sounding a lot better than MW all of a sudden. And while I agree that the perks idea suffers in the face of so few skills (and being skill-dependent rather than weapon-dependent - we've been through the "train with a dagger and get perks for a claymore" aspect), but its things like this:

if you're able to increase your armorer skill to the master level, you can repair items beyond 100 percent, whereas at lower levels you may only be able to restore it to 50 percent and be restricted from repairing magical items.

- on top of the new varying rates of skill increases, and this mysterious new 'specialisation' of your character, which have turned things around and made the game now seem much more promising.

It all begs the question - why can't they release this kind of info sooner, and more coherently?

Most people are not interested in the details, I guess. The specialization was in MW too BTW, although I am not sure how exactly it worked there. I had forgot about it too, but It's Magic, Combat or Stealth specialization.

 

[Twinfalls]

'Scuse my poor memory/ignorance. How was this wacky specialisation modifier granted to particular skills in MW? Was it established at chargen?

@Thomase - there'll be multiple tiers of skills with variable rates of progress right from the outset, so how does this not provide a 'talent' aspect? Or is that system you proposed more natural? Feel free to explain it more simply, that stuff made my head spin.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

'Scuse my poor memory/ignorance. How was this wacky specialisation modifier granted to particular skills in MW? Was it established at chargen?

@Thomase - there'll be multiple tiers of skills with variable rates of progress right from the outset, so how does this not provide a 'talent' aspect? Or is that system you proposed more natural? Feel free to explain it more simply, that stuff made my head spin.

I still wish we had three tiers instead of just two, but the specialization kind of introduces "sub-tiers", so that is kind of neat.

Yes, you can select it when you create a custom class. Again, I don't remember what it actually did, but proably something similar to the current implementation.
There was also a "favourite attribute" to select, BTW, I don't remember what that did either...

BTW, If you go back to the original thread, Zingar Baltus proposed removing the whole skill level thing and incorporating it into an extended advantages disadvantages system. That could be a very neat system.

 

[Revasser]

Well, it seems the system will be both better and worse than Morrowind's in different respects. Why they had to stick with what was essentially a shitty system is beyond me. There are several (already named) examples of GOOD levelling systems designed by modders out there. Why not build on one of those instead of rehashing a system that was and is awful and tailored only with munchkins in mind?

I would have loved to see someting similar to GCD, considering that it is superior to the stock Morrowind (and, it seems, Oblivion) system in every respect, that I can see. Hopefully it won't be too long before some clever modder (I'm looking at you, Balor) gives us a levelling system for Oblivion that doesn't suck.

If the game is aimed at being "immersive", it needs to lose artificial levelling and stat point distribution.

 

[ExMonk]

Actually, Twinfalls, it is a very good thing for you that God is NOT rushing to judgment, if the above was a poke at me or Christianity. :wink:

Damn Monk... bipolar much? First it's "relentless criticism", then sucking up , then in your good grace you tip off Twinfalls about how lucky she must "actually" be.

And here you are with all the sucking and poking!

You need to work on the witty thing, kid. It just aint happening for you.

 

[ExMonk]

You are very amusing.

Thank you. So are you. It is the sheer entertainment value of the codex that keeps me coming back for more. It is just too fun to be around anal retentive rpgers who are always waving their little fists at the gaming establishment.

Isn't it interesting how my point was validated? Now that we have more accurate information, the skill progression doesn't look so bad does it? Perhaps it would have been wiser to not be so quick to judge? But what fun would that be? So much more fun to pounce upon any comment a dev makes and skewer them for it. As I said, it's what you do. Shoot first, ask questions later.

Steve Meister should be commended for his tireless devotion to doing damage control and clarifing misinformation and supplying information that is lacking. If his own company wasn't so abysmal at releasing asked for information accurately, he wouldn't have needed to comment on the skill progression.

Normally, you have been quite civil toward MSFD. I was a bit surprised at the skewering on the news page.

Have a nice day, sweety.

 

[Fresh]

You are very amusing.

Thank you. So are you. It is the sheer entertainment value of the codex that keeps me coming back for more. It is just too fun to be around anal retentive rpgers who are always waving their little fists at the gaming establishment.

Isn't it interesting how my point was validated? Now that we have more accurate information, the skill progression doesn't look so bad does it? Perhaps it would have been wiser to not be so quick to judge? But what fun would that be? So much more fun to pounce upon any comment a dev makes and skewer them for it. As I said, it's what you do. Shoot first, ask questions later.

Steve Meister should be commended for his tireless devotion to doing damage control and clarifing misinformation and supplying information that is lacking. If his own company wasn't so abysmal at releasing asked for information accurately, he wouldn't have needed to comment on the skill progression.

Normally, you have been quite civil toward MSFD. I was a bit surprised at the skewering on the news page.

Have a nice day, sweety.

RPG Codex - putting the 'anal' back in RPG.

That said, I'd to share the following wise & illuminating bible quote with everyone:

From The Holy Bible, 2 Kings 2:23-24:

"And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them"

 

[DarkSign]

The Anal Codex - everything you wanted to know about anal sex, codified.

 

[bryce777]

9.02 times? So if I use it 9 times and then think of using it twice I go up?