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oneself

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This should not be an earned skill. Shoving someone is something any person is feasibly capable of. Having higher strength and fighting skills just naturally makes it easier when locked in melee combat.

That is what I thought. Why would people choose something so situational? It would also lock you out of other situational skills.

So what is a earned skill? Suppose that RPGs need earned skills. This is the interesting part because the player has to choose it twice. Once earning it when he/she knows little about it, once using it once earned it.

EDIT: I want to clarify something. Environmental interaction is not a trade-off in character building. Since there is no cost to not using that environmental skill when the situation present itself. I only stand to gain. A key thing to RPG character creation/progression is that there are advantages/disadvantages to the choices you've made during advancement, and only earned skills, when there is clear opportunity costs to that choice display this.
 
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This should not be an earned skill. Shoving someone is something any person is feasibly capable of. Having higher strength and fighting skills just naturally makes it easier when locked in melee combat.

That is what I thought. Things too situational such as those made little sense as a choice skill, because why would people choose something so situational and it would also lock you out of other situational skills.

So what is a earned skill? Suppose that RPGs need earned skills.
Well in the context of melee combat, I dunno, being skilled enough in swordfighting that you can riposte after blocking an attack. Or due to your low int being able to go retard strength mode.

Supposing as skills you mean some sort of combat action and not general statistical representations of the character's abilities.
 

oneself

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That is what I thought. Things too situational such as those made little sense as a choice skill, because why would people choose something so situational and it would also lock you out of other situational skills.

So what is a earned skill? Suppose that RPGs need earned skills.
Well in the context of melee combat, I dunno, being skilled enough in swordfighting that you can riposte after blocking an attack.

Supposing as skills you mean some sort of combat action and not general statistics.

I added a bit of clarification to why I asked you for an earned skill.

Supposing as skills you mean some sort of combat action and not general statistics.

That is exactly what I meant and what I wanted to know. I know it isn't easy and I am glad that you entertained my probing questions thus far. I hope you come up with something to keep the conversation going. It is an interesting topic imo.
 
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Well special combat actions is something you should be very careful about otherwise you end up with PoE stupidity where seemingly mundane rogues can teleport around or become invisible.

There's not much you can invent with guns without going into arbitrary or magical territory, they should be more about different types of weapons, mod attachments and special ammo than stat-earned combat actions.

With martial arts it's easier of course. There's a wealth of material to draw from. (Which all CRPG devs promptly ignore)
 

oneself

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Well special combat actions is something you should be very careful about otherwise you end up with PoE stupidity where seemingly mundane rogues can teleport around or become invisible.

Right. Combat actions such as those uses the same finite resources(ultimately, this is time) as your conventional attack, you replace that attack completely unless you have means to forcefully take away said choice (cooldown)

There's not much you can invent with guns without going into arbitrary or magical territory, they should be more about different types of weapons, attachments and ammo than stat-earned combat actions.

You could, but those "things" are not really combat actions in the same sense as what I said above. They are almost like enhancement to your normal attacks.

The very extreme of this, without cooldown trade-off are present in some ARPGs, where everyone maxed one skill, and just spammed that one skill over and over. There isn't a more effective thing to do rather than do what you do best all the time. One could argue that this is a lack of variation, despite one might have 50 choices in picking the skill you wanted to spam.

How would you add variations in situations such as this without forcing cooldowns?
 
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The very extreme of this, without cooldown trade-off are present in some ARPGs, where everyone maxed one skill, and just spammed that one skill over and over. There isn't a more effective thing to do rather than do what you do best all the time. One could argue that this is a lack of variation, despite one might have 50 choices in picking the skill you wanted to spam.

How would you add variations in situations such as this without forcing cooldowns?
Encounter design, which is completely absent from those types of games. You just spam abilities on increasingly large stacks of monsters.

Also ARPGs going after Diablo are designed to work like that with getting exponentially better stacking stats to retarded level, so it's intentional design there.

If that level of stacking happens in a proper RPG it's the mark of a bad system.
 

oneself

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Encounter design, which is completely absent from those types of games. You just spam abilities on increasingly large stacks of monsters.

Still, doesn't get you away from the core idea of "doing that one thing you do best all the time". There is only a finite types of resistances and resistance breaking move people are willing to take before saying "this is bullshit".

You also limit design space because if you cannot afford to introduce effective means to reduce said resistances because if you do, it is back to "doing that one thing you do best all the time" all over again.

Ultimately my opinion is that without cooldowns or some means to force choice/forcefully remove choice, you need simple systems or you have to be unconcerned about variations. Otherwise it doesn't work.
 
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Encounter design, which is completely absent from those types of games. You just spam abilities on increasingly large stacks of monsters.

Still, doesn't get you away from the core idea of "doing that one thing you do best all the time". There is only a finite types of resistances and resistance breaking move people are willing to take before saying "this is bullshit".

You also limit design space because if you cannot afford to introduce effective means to reduce said resistances because if you do, it is back to "doing that one thing you do best all the time" all over again.
Man if you can make a one-dimensional character that is only good at one thing, it's a bad system. At which point it becomes pointless to argumentate using it as a base.
 

oneself

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Man if you can make a one-dimensional character that is only good at one thing, it's a bad system. At which point it becomes pointless to argumentate using it as a base.

Don't know if AoD is a good example, but people praised it because you have to be utterly focused in your buildpath in order for combat to work. This can be seen as one dimensional in this sense.
 
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Man if you can make a one-dimensional character that is only good at one thing, it's a bad system. At which point it becomes pointless to argumentate using it as a base.

Don't know if AoD is a good example, but people praised it because you have to be utterly focused in your buildpath in order for combat to work. This can be seen as one dimensional in this sense.
But each build has a wealth of tactical choices, there's no one combat maneuver to rule them all.

Specialization is fine, being one trick pony is not.
 

oneself

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Man if you can make a one-dimensional character that is only good at one thing, it's a bad system. At which point it becomes pointless to argumentate using it as a base.

Don't know if AoD is a good example, but people praised it because you have to be utterly focused in your buildpath in order for combat to work. This can be seen as one dimensional in this sense.
But each build has a wealth of tactical choices, there's no one combat maneuver to rule them all.

Those choices are akin to the environmental circumstances. People use them because they are there already and they are not trade-offs in character building. They are always present and they are never wrong to use when opportunity presents itself. Of course, there is the wrong choice just as there is the wrong choice to not interact with environmental circumstance given the opportunity.
 
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Not sure what that means. Of course there's always going to be a course of action that is optimal given the circumstances. That's what tactics is about, making the right choice.
 

oneself

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Not sure what that means. Of course there's always going to be a course of action that is optimal given the circumstances. That's what tactics is about, making the right choice.

I am saying that it is not equivalent to a "earned skill". You didn't have to pick it. There is no opportunity cost to not using it given the circumstance, since you didn't have to earn the skill. It is given.

Things are much more different and less varied if you actually had to choose a feat. that did say, "aimed:head". I personally would choose the aim:leg and aim:arm.

IMO unless forced or subjugated by Vogel's diminishing return style character creation, min/max will drift toward single skill spam simply because it is the most effective thing. CD is not the most graceful way of doing things, but it does force variation.
 
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Not sure what that means. Of course there's always going to be a course of action that is optimal given the circumstances. That's what tactics is about, making the right choice.

I am saying that it is not equivalent to a "earned skill". You didn't have to pick it. There is no opportunity cost to not using it given the circumstance, since you didn't have to earn the skill. It is given.
You keep ignoring the fact that naturally to offer strategical/tactical choice actions need tradeoffs. There is at the very least the cost of added difficulty modifiers because you are trying something harder to achieve. You "earn" those skills indirectly by simply getting better at what you do or putting yourself in an advantageous position to the point where it becomes tactically sound and not a wild gamble.

Locking things behind unlockables and cooldowns is just the laziest way to go about creating this choice.

IMO unless forced or subjugated by Vogel's diminishing return style character creation, min/max will drift toward single skill spam simply because it is the most effective thing. CD is not the most graceful way of doing things, but it does drive variation.
I don't know what makes it hard to understand that if it happens, it's a hint of bad system design. It shouldn't ever happen on a system that has been properly balanced and playtested.

Also of course it might also happen due to poor encounter design.
 
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Don't know if AoD is a good example, but people praised it because you have to be utterly focused in your buildpath in order for combat to work. This can be seen as one dimensional in this sense.
But each build has a wealth of tactical choices, there's no one combat maneuver to rule them all.

Those choices are akin to the environmental circumstances. People use them because they are there already and they are not trade-offs in character building. They are always present and they are never wrong to use when opportunity presents itself. Of course, there is the wrong choice just as there is the wrong choice to not interact with environmental circumstance given the opportunity.
You can't play AoD using only standard attack and expect to do well. So other attacks would still be worth getting even if you had to spend your skill points on them, despite not being strictly superior. That's because having more options makes you more versatile and able to deal with more situations, thus stronger in a sense.
 

oneself

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You can't play AoD using only standard attack and expect to do well. So other attacks would still be worth getting even if you had to spend your skill points on them, despite not being strictly superior. That's because having more options makes you more versatile and able to deal with more situations, thus stronger in a sense.

AoD avoids dealing with problem of single-skill spam by giving you those skills, avoiding the problem of choice.

Given choice, players will always make the best one possible.
 

kwanzabot

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man this is the best thread i have ever read the debate is so intelectual talking about really complicated combat systems in games fk yes i LOVE combat someone shuld maybe remake diablo 2 in toee's engine = best game ever ?



Aimed shots in FO and FO2 don't count, there is nothing special about them.
For certain builds you always use them, for others you never do.


na shooting frank horrigan in the balls and watching him drop on his knees was pretty special
 

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As for the crafting, I'll take AoD's straightforward and deterministic system all day
The problem is that core components of items and enhancements are not separated in crafting. If you could by default remove your extended magazine or scope from previous rifle and place it into new item without picking shitty perk that only allows picking 1 item and makes components 10% weaker half of tediousness would be gone.
And then there's that thing that some enhancements have quality, level and requirements too...
I think the definition between core parts and extra parts should be clear, and quality should only affect core parts.
 

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