Red Russian said:
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?
Smoother stat progression?
Just because you have 20 skills running from 0 to 100, it doesn't make the character system more complex, does it?
Technically it does - compare a hypothetical system with two different values for an attribute with the one with ten. Other things equal, the finer grained stat progression is, the more possible builds does the game allow, and this is pure mathematics, no "if"s or "but"s.
However, the more fine-grained the stat progression already is, the less it will benefit from further refinement, so in case of most actual systems the difference is indeed cosmetic.
Still, for cRPGs where stat system isn't generally the most computationally expensive part, where computer handles all calculations and where variables tend to have minimal lengths and few programmers today work around this because it messes the code immensely, why not?
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?
That's equally relevant whether there are two or two thousand possible values for a stat. If the system is well designed and the game is fine tuned in regard to the system - at no point at all. If the system and the game are sloppily tuned to each other - you can't tell and it will vary wildly from skill to skill, from build to build.
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?
That's pretty retarded question. Usually, you should just assume that minimum value of a skill is a noobtard, maximum value is a 1337 ub3r pr0, and compare relative difficulty of the task to this scale. Besides, what kind of faggot reasons this way? Usually you chose solutions according to the build, not grind your build for specific quest solutions - go play an MMO or something.
Kraszu said:
That system suck, it just make you use your repair/lockpick skill over, and over till you get good roll, you would have to loose something signification with each try to make it a real choice. You could for example loose expensive parts that may be of limited supply first your character would asses difficulty, and then you would decide if you want to risk the part, of lockpick.
Resource loss is good mechanics, but not always makes sense.
And reloading in general is a problem as it creates what amounts to improbable lucky streak from character's POV and throws all the tension out of the window from player's. On the other hand, save points are retarded consolish mechanics that usually amounts to a lot of backtracking and goes against the purpose of saves in the first place, while the ironman is unreasonably draconian in any structured game (one with actual plot) as it forces doing the same thing over and over again if you die.
Since I do not want to repeat myself, go
here if you want to read my musings on the possible alternatives or participate in the discuss!!ion.