PorkaMorka
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2008
- Messages
- 5,090
Many RPGs have skill trees where the player cannot possibly max out all of the available skills. Many of these games do not offer the opportunity for a full respec or make it very expensive. The player has to live with the consequences of his build choice.
However, in these games, the mechanics are often lacking in transparency. This reaches an extreme in Japanese games with poorly translated skill descriptions, but even in games with detailed descriptions you're rarely presented with enough information to make an informed decision at level one about what skills will be relevant at level 100. There is a certain amount of guesswork involved in picking your build, unless you read spoilers. You also have to trust the developers to provide accurate skill descriptions and trust that they made the build you picked viable. But often they don't do either thing. So it's more like guesses and consequences than choices and consequences.
You could look up spoilers on mechanics, but it is often difficult to find information on mechanics that doesn't also delve into build choices. Since your choice of build tends to be a primary determinant of your success, looking up builds on the internet really removes a lot of gameplay.
So what do you do? It's quite a dilemma; without spoilers you're risking severe disappointment when you spend 40 hours building a character and he turns out to be ineffective due to information that you had no in game way of knowing. But with spoilers you're taking a genre with very little gameplay and stripping out even more of it; spending 40 hours copying some other dude's build is kind of sad and pathetic, when it's supposed to be the meat of the game.
I tend to enjoy these games at first, as long as I don't have to spend any points that can't be taken back. But then I have to assign points and I realize I have no way of making an informed decision. So I research the mechanics on the internet, read some build spoilers, realize that I'm not likely to make a better build and quit in disgust. It happened with the Etrian Odyssey games and it happened with Torchlight 2, among others.
I don't think I've ever enjoyed a game with skill trees actually, except ones where I was able to respec quite often. I do much better with other skill systems in RPGs.
I know this is neurotic behavior, but I'm wondering what you guys do.
However, in these games, the mechanics are often lacking in transparency. This reaches an extreme in Japanese games with poorly translated skill descriptions, but even in games with detailed descriptions you're rarely presented with enough information to make an informed decision at level one about what skills will be relevant at level 100. There is a certain amount of guesswork involved in picking your build, unless you read spoilers. You also have to trust the developers to provide accurate skill descriptions and trust that they made the build you picked viable. But often they don't do either thing. So it's more like guesses and consequences than choices and consequences.
You could look up spoilers on mechanics, but it is often difficult to find information on mechanics that doesn't also delve into build choices. Since your choice of build tends to be a primary determinant of your success, looking up builds on the internet really removes a lot of gameplay.
So what do you do? It's quite a dilemma; without spoilers you're risking severe disappointment when you spend 40 hours building a character and he turns out to be ineffective due to information that you had no in game way of knowing. But with spoilers you're taking a genre with very little gameplay and stripping out even more of it; spending 40 hours copying some other dude's build is kind of sad and pathetic, when it's supposed to be the meat of the game.
I tend to enjoy these games at first, as long as I don't have to spend any points that can't be taken back. But then I have to assign points and I realize I have no way of making an informed decision. So I research the mechanics on the internet, read some build spoilers, realize that I'm not likely to make a better build and quit in disgust. It happened with the Etrian Odyssey games and it happened with Torchlight 2, among others.
I don't think I've ever enjoyed a game with skill trees actually, except ones where I was able to respec quite often. I do much better with other skill systems in RPGs.
I know this is neurotic behavior, but I'm wondering what you guys do.