Red Russian
Scholar
- Joined
- May 29, 2006
- Messages
- 164
Strength, Dexterity, Hacking, etc. from games such as Fallout and Arcanum got me thinking: What's the point of a skill or attribute running from 0 to 100?
Just because you have 20 skills running from 0 to 100, it doesn't make the character system more complex, does it? Think about it. Let's say I was to play Fallout and I decided to invest in the science skill. At what point will I realize (without having read a walk-through of some sort) that investing any further is a waste of time? Or let's assume that a quest requires your character to have a Science Skill of say 200 to hack a computer, and that you are now at 100. How will you as a player know that you will need to reach 200 to hack this PC? I assume normally players will round off the whole skill system to say "Okay, every level I will try to push up these skills by 10". Players start to "dumb-down", if you will, the skill system because let's face it, I don't think anyone actually has sleepless nights about if he should stay at 78 Science or go for 81 Science when he next levels up.
It seems to me that the only reason why this type of system is used, is it may give players a sense of progression over a long period. You level up after a half-hour. That's why you get these "filler-levels" or "filler-points" with skills. You don't really notice anything until you hit some point where a developer decided to make a quest use this skill level and even then you won't know it until you run into the quest. IF you haven't done it yet.
Is skill systems like this REALLY necessary?
Just because you have 20 skills running from 0 to 100, it doesn't make the character system more complex, does it? Think about it. Let's say I was to play Fallout and I decided to invest in the science skill. At what point will I realize (without having read a walk-through of some sort) that investing any further is a waste of time? Or let's assume that a quest requires your character to have a Science Skill of say 200 to hack a computer, and that you are now at 100. How will you as a player know that you will need to reach 200 to hack this PC? I assume normally players will round off the whole skill system to say "Okay, every level I will try to push up these skills by 10". Players start to "dumb-down", if you will, the skill system because let's face it, I don't think anyone actually has sleepless nights about if he should stay at 78 Science or go for 81 Science when he next levels up.
It seems to me that the only reason why this type of system is used, is it may give players a sense of progression over a long period. You level up after a half-hour. That's why you get these "filler-levels" or "filler-points" with skills. You don't really notice anything until you hit some point where a developer decided to make a quest use this skill level and even then you won't know it until you run into the quest. IF you haven't done it yet.
Is skill systems like this REALLY necessary?