Bethesda's advertising for positions on a "bleeding-edge RPG" - Fallout 5, Skyrim 2 or something new
93 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Zenreon117;49901952]At this point, the only real next "Bleeding edge" rpg will need to introduce some new mechanic, not just more of them polished well.
Something that would satisfy this would be something like a randomly generating infinite world like minecraft that generates quests and dialogue on the fly. Or perhaps one built entirely around vr.[/QUOTE]
so basically an expanded Daggerfall
[editline]10th March 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49901836]Because games that rely upon pure stat based inputs are anti immersive to me. I get pulled out of them because I'm the type of person who will pull out a pen, paper, and the wiki page and figure out what I have to do so my limited time with a game isn't fucking wasted when I realize half way through the game "Oh fuck now I'm fucking hosed because this game required me to go about it like this a few days ago, welp, time to do it again" that shit is fucking boring and a chore to me.
A system that has me put in points out of 100, or out of 10, always has a gameplay affecting element that I would describe to be a negative because now my shooting isn't tied to my characters skills, my skills, it's tied to a number, and now my enjoyment of a game is hampered because my number is too low because I couldn't magically foresee what the game needed me to do, hence why I'd have a pen, paper, and wikipedia open to understand what I need, thus nullifying my personal enjoyment of games
Fallout 2 did this to me 6 months ago. It was shitty. I enjoyed the game by and large, but that was shitty. Having to restart because the games options to me were limited, because a few days earlier I had made an uninformed decision.
Stat systems work great in games where you're imagining the world, and you're able to do things like you can in DND, where I can say "and now I try clinging to the rafters and sneaking along quietly" and have a roll for it where as in a video game it's "Now I have to shoot this dude. If I had a 6, i'd be good, but I have a 3, so now I'm probably going to die"[/QUOTE]
lmao
if you invest everything into lockpicking and nothing into being good at shooting things, you're not going to be good at shooting things. surprise
Despite how boring I find the rest of Oblivion, I think it mostly did a great job of streamlining Morrowind. My only nitpick is the use of a "Cast Spell" button but otherwise it felt like Morrowind without a RNG. You could try to do stuff that you weren't skilled in, but it would be a hell of a lot harder or far less effective than if you had worked up those skills. I think Skyrim went too far and I feel like a jack of all trades and could easily fight enemies using a sword and shield even if I spent the whole game building up my magic skills.
[QUOTE=elowin;49902060]lmao
if you invest everything into lockpicking and nothing into being good at shooting things, you're not going to be good at shooting things. surprise[/QUOTE]
This post doesn't even tangentially respond to a single one of his points. He's talking about barriers behind stat points that can lock you out of content rather than limiting you by how well you were able to do something. Certain games are particularly tragic at this, even going so far as to say "if you're not at exactly this stat point, you're out" when you could be a single point off. That goes back to how stat points end up forcing you to min/max and set things based off your gameplay goals and proper selection often forces you to do wiki research before you even play the game. Thoughtful choice going into character customization is good but you shouldn't have to go wiki diving to find out you should put in exactly x strength for gear requirements, 20 dex to be able to access major quest A, and then dump into int, etc.
[QUOTE=elowin;49902060]so basically an expanded Daggerfall
[editline]10th March 2016[/editline]
lmao
if you invest everything into lockpicking and nothing into being good at shooting things, you're not going to be good at shooting things. surprise[/QUOTE]
if that's all you took away from it, then great, you managed to misread me entirely
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49902262]if that's all you took away from it, then great, you managed to misread me entirely[/QUOTE]
if you're bothered by your character's skill being represented by a number and that automatically kills your enjoyment then that's a [I]you [/I]problem (at least i think that's what you were saying)
i've literally never seen anyone else that feels that way about RPGs considering it's so fundamental to the genre and video games in general
[QUOTE=RedStar;49898224]skyrim 2: skyrim harder[/QUOTE]
skyrim 2: skyrim with guns
[QUOTE=Elspin;49902160]This post doesn't even tangentially respond to a single one of his points. He's talking about barriers behind stat points that can lock you out of content rather than limiting you by how well you were able to do something. Certain games are particularly tragic at this, even going so far as to say "if you're not at exactly this stat point, you're out" when you could be a single point off. That goes back to how stat points end up forcing you to min/max and set things based off your gameplay goals and proper selection often forces you to do wiki research before you even play the game. Thoughtful choice going into character customization is good but you shouldn't have to go wiki diving to find out you should put in exactly x strength for gear requirements, 20 dex to be able to access major quest A, and then dump into int, etc.[/QUOTE]
This shit even exists in Fallout 4, where skills don't even exist.
If you don't dump into Charisma, you're failing all speech checks. If you don't empty some into Luck, you're missing Scrounger and Idiot Savant. Without strength, you can't do melee mods. Without perception, you can't lockpick. Without Intelligence, you can't hack.
I mean sure, you can work your way up to those by playing the game and taking higher levels of base stats instead of perks, but in any case I'm still going to start the game the exact same damn way every time because otherwise I'm missing out on shit. This doesn't happen in say, Skyrim. If I'm halfway through a playthrough and I decide "man, I should've picked stealth" I can always right then and there start stealthing around and after an hour be ridiculously good at it. You aren't really locked into anything and you don't really miss out on anything unless you choose not to partake in whatever that is. You can develop your character however you want whenever you want, and I feel like that's the best method of RPG.
To be honest, I want my RPGs to work in sort of a mix of Skyrim and Oblivion, where I start off a blank slate like in Skyrim, but as I do shit, that shit specifically levels up (like both). The part where Oblivion specifically comes in is I really miss shit like running faster due to how much you've run or jumping higher because I've jumped 200 times in the past minute. Skyrim lost depth from that, not from loss of building your character in seven minutes at the beginning of the game and working off of that. If I'd started on Morrowind instead of Oblivion I probably never would've even played the Elder Scrolls series until Skyrim because filling all that out and dicerolling every attack would've just pissed me off.
I mean I assume I'm the minority here but I really don't think trying to turn it into a board game is the right move.
[QUOTE=cdr248;49902659]if you're bothered by your character's skill being represented by a number and that automatically kills your enjoyment then that's a [I]you [/I]problem (at least i think that's what you were saying)
i've literally never seen anyone else that feels that way about RPGs considering it's so fundamental to the genre and video games in general[/QUOTE]
in a video game, it's often used as a hard cap to pass certain elements of the games challenges, requiring not skill or player input, but player foresight. In pen and paper games like DND, it's a different concept. When it's placed into a video game, the video game world rules which aren't built to bend or shape or have a person fixing the story for your decisions, such elements as stats being so key to the games structure is a downside.
Stats are not a bad thing. They're fine. They can be used fine, to not be a burden on the player or be used as a hard wall that interferes with an actual games actual gameplay. We've relied on stats for a long time. I think it's perfectly acceptable to find a way around it because it as a genre defining technique may very well be holding the genre back.
And no, that's not at all what I meant. Their skill being tied to a number isn't a problem. That number being tied to the game systems and your progress however can be a bad thing and I personally find many games utterly fuck that up. Sure, it can be "me" problem. I understand that. But I know my problems stem from the way these numbers can relate to the need for a player to "predict" the games requirements, and meet them without necessarily knowing what they need. That element of a game, being tied to a stat, can be a bad thing.
The way I see it, skill walls should be less binary and more of a progressive difficulty curve. Like if you have 49 in Lockpick (even after taking boosts), and you encounter a Lock that requires 50 Lockpick, it shouldn't prevent you from attempting it in the first place. Instead, it should be more like "Recommended skills: Lockpick 50", so you can still try it but it's slightly harder than it would be if you actually had 50 points in Lockpick.
Same applies to weapons with level/skill walls. Rather than outright prevent me from swinging a sword that "requires" a wielder with slightly higher strength than you currently have, it should instead make it a little harder to use than if you were as strong as the weapon recommends. That way, even a newbie can swing an endgame weapon, but not as well as an endgamer could.
It's all in the execution, all about doing it right.
[QUOTE=elowin;49902060]lmao
if you invest everything into lockpicking and nothing into being good at shooting things, you're not going to be good at shooting things. surprise[/QUOTE]
It's really not always that clear cut, and it's often hard to tell if you're playing a new RPG what's useful and what's completely useless. Like, I'm about to play Wasteland 2, and it falls hard in to this shit. Like, there are 3 separate skills for hard ass, kiss ass, and smart ass. Do I need all 3? Which is the most useful? Are they even used at all? How many points do I need to put in to any of these before they're any good? Or how about 'Toaster Repair', yeah, that's a skill. Does that do [I]anything[/I] or is that a useless joke? Alarm disarming? Are there many alarms? Like is there any use to being able to disable an alarm or are there going to be like 2 alarms in the entire game?
In Fallout 2, this is particularly bad because some skills are indeed useless. Like traps, throwing, gambling, and barter. There's a skill for both doctor and first aid and these are apparently distinct from each other. I can pick Energy Weapons and Small Guns! But they don't tell me that I won't be starting with a gun at all, and energy weapons won't appear until much later, meaning I'm going to get devoured early game. Energy weapons is a [I]primary weapons[/I] stat, the kind you assume is a safe choice always, and you might not see it at all until you're halfway through the fucking game. Do I even need a weapon skill or could I get along as some nerdy scientist or smooth talker? All you can do is pick what sounds good, only to then find out that you fucked up and your character is severely hampered because you thought you could ignore lockpicking. And then by the end of it you realize that it's blatantly optimal to pick small guns, speech, and lockpicking, and the idea of roleplaying gets severely hurt.
My SPECIAL determines what perks are available to me, but I have no access to any perk list from which to inform my attribute choices. Like say I'm mid game and find out randomly that there's some perk I could get, but I can't now because I'm missing one fucking perception point. And speaking of the perks, some of them are literally useless. There are perks in Fallout 1 and 2 that do literally nothing and the game isn't telling you.
How about Deus Ex? Environmental training? The fuck is that? Do I actually need it? Or, shit, [I]swimming?[/I] How often am I going to swim that they made it a skill? Am I going to get fucked over and sent back to new game because I hit a part where I have to swim and I don't have the skill for it?
Often, there's literally no way of knowing these things. Well, ok, there's the manual, let's see what it has to say on swimming:
[quote]Swimming.
Swimming is just like regular movement, except that you can move up or down as well as forward, back and side to side. If you face down (using the mouse) while swimming you will submerge, and if you face upwards you’ll ascend. Remember that if you’re submerged for too long you’ll start to take damage, and may drown.[/quote]
Ok, that's the worst fucking description of swimming I've ever read, and I still have no idea how useful this actually is.
Morrowind's another game like this where I have no idea what I'm supposed to pick, it's really not clear or obvious at all, and you can start off doomed to eat shit because you didn't start with the right skills. Apparently you're supposed to exploit the game and become a god at everything, but that's not immersive, balanced, or anything. That just sucks dick.
Even Fallout 4 is like this, almost to a greater extent. The SPECIAL mostly affects what perks you can get, but you have no access to the perk chart, meaning you're pissing in the wind. At least previous games would tell you if what you picked was average, good, or what. In Fallout 4, what [I]is[/I] an average level for a SPECIAL stat? Unless you're playing through the game a second time, you literally have no idea. You just dump shit blindly or look it up, which is unimmersive.
Also, these are fucking roleplaying games. I want to roleplay, and create characters. What if I want to play a character in Fallout 2 who's some tribal healer who doesn't spend time practicing with weapons, and instead focuses on herbs and shit like that and learning under Hakunin. So, doctor, science, and first aid. Well, I can go fuck a dick because I'm going to get eaten by enemies the moment I start playing, forcing me to compromise the [I]roleplaying[/I] in a [I]ROLEPLAYING game[/I], look up shit on a wiki, and meta game the fuck out of everything. I thought the entire draw of an RPG was big, immersive worlds, interesting dialogue, player choice, the ability to create a wide range of characters, and the ability to make characters that you can play as and, y'know, roleplay as if you're them and make choices based on what you know? I never really thought the draw was fucking uninformed stat management.
[QUOTE=Pat.Lithium;49902677]skyrim 2: skyrim with guns[/QUOTE]
Like skyrim with 2's
[QUOTE=ironman17;49902752]The way I see it, skill walls should be less binary and more of a progressive difficulty curve. Like if you have 49 in Lockpick (even after taking boosts), and you encounter a Lock that requires 50 Lockpick, it shouldn't prevent you from attempting it in the first place. Instead, it should be more like "Recommended skills: Lockpick 50", so you can still try it but it's slightly harder than it would be if you actually had 50 points in Lockpick.
Same applies to weapons with level/skill walls. Rather than outright prevent me from swinging a sword that "requires" a wielder with slightly higher strength than you currently have, it should instead make it a little harder to use than if you were as strong as the weapon recommends. That way, even a newbie can swing an endgame weapon, but not as well as an endgamer could.
It's all in the execution, all about doing it right.[/QUOTE]
Which is what Skyrim and Oblivion both do. Have the skill system allow for more powerful attacks and easier actions, without the hassle of the game putting you in a bullshit situation where your arbitrary skill isn't quite high enough.
Dark Souls also kind of tapdances around that by having lenient skill requirement on weapons. The skill requirement for any weapon is for one handed wielding only, and using two hands will greatly reduce the requirement. In Dark Souls 2, having a significantly higher skill than required will even unlock an additional stance when dual wielding.
[QUOTE=TheRealRudy;49902091]eyy shouldn't someone here create a new fallout thread?? the old one kind of expired
i'd love to do it myself but i'm honestly too lazy to do it[/QUOTE]
I'd do it but I don't have the code for the formatted OP.
[QUOTE=Elspin;49900393]Yeah except maybe I'm a long time fan of the game series, longer than a lot of the people who dislike the change (pre-morrowind), and I liked it. A lot of the things people claimed were a reduction in depth make no sense.
For example, stats are not a deep element of character customization, they're the most basic element of customization where you're just scaling the pre-existing state of a character based on a number. That's more depth than no customization, but a skill system has a lot more possibility for depth than that. That's not to say that they handled it the best it could possibly be handled (key phrase in my last post is "has lots of issues"), but a move towards a system that lets you customize your character in much more meaningful ways than a few numbers is great.
That, and there's no possible way you could deny that NPCs having schedules and routines including sleeping and working is more depth than most of them just standing around. That's just a straight objective improvement in depth. I'm not saying every change from the games most people have played from morrowind to skyrim is great, there's even things that were removed in morrowind that I liked in previous games (those changes were [i]actual reductions in depth, by the way[/i]) but trying to claim they just removed all the depth to make it look fancy is objectively untrue.[/QUOTE]
So NPCs having schedules and routines in RPGs is impressive and innovative? Thats been done since 2001, even before Morrowind was released. And on a good scale and graphics as well.
For the next Elder Scrolls game I stand by what I said [URL="https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1266740&p=40618435&viewfull=1#post40618435"]years ago.[/URL]
[QUOTE=Me from the Past]In my opinion, the next single player Elder Scrolls game should take place right on the Summerset Isles. Imagine the game starting out with you as a diplomat or ambassador for the Empire and throughout the game events like the outbreak of the Second Great War get you detained and scheduled for execution by the Thalmor then you know where this is going, you avoid certain death and escape through some sort of serendipity and the actual game commences.
Imagine aiding groups of Altmer opposed to the Thalmor as well as convincing other factions that are on the fence to join the opposition. Other quests would include acts of sabotage like burning the Thalmor fleet in port to prevent it from engaging an Imperial counterattack or tricking the member states of the Dominion into thinking one is betraying the other.
The game would have a much larger focus on magic as well as underhanded plots, subterfuge, and possibly even the Daedra (those moons had to disappear somehow)[/QUOTE]
Remember in Skyrim you could level up smithing, lockpicking, sneak, alchemy and enchanting only and end up with unwinnable fights where the enemy just walks up to you and initiates the killcam on your character? And how Oblivion would turn everything into a damage sponge at high levels with scaling attack? People complaining about the stat system seem to forget that of the past three, the one that was stat focused was far more forgiving if you screwed up your build.
Morrowind had level scaling, but it also had low level areas still. Sure you could create a terrible character with 5 in every combat related skill, but you also had areas where you could train it. Mudcrabs were never particularly dangerous, and easy to get away from if you needed to. The fighter's guild was also willing to train you relatively cheap at that level. And if you somehow managed to piss off the fighters guild, there were other non-affiliated trainers out there.
I don't get the claims that it was so easy to fuck your character up in Morrowind when that's the only game that allowed you to unfuck it when you did something wrong and level scaling didn't make it unwinnable if you fell behind. Not to mention its the only one out of the three where you can try something unlikely to succeed, but still has a chance. The difference between skill 49 and 50 in the three games is a couple % points of chance in Morrowind, and a complete lockout from the skill in Oblivion and Skyrim. That is immersion breaking to me.
The complete removal of the persuasion system as any form of real consequence is also sad. You could bypass entire areas of quests or solve them alternatively if certain NPCs were your friend. Skyrim even had a perfect opportunity for a persuasion heavy character to finally influence something with the peace summit at hrothgar and brokering a real truce between the two sides, but instead it's just a simple choose x or y, but it doesn't really matter which you chose.
That's not to say it's all bad. Perks are a cool addition, and I'd really like to see more meaningful ones. Combat's definitely gotten better over the years too, and I like the movement restrictions(Though I do wish acrobatics or athletics was still a skill that affected them). The AI schedules are cool, even if they aren't particularly complex. Some of the radiant conversation are neat too when they aren't simply means of giving you a quest.(Go down to the dark elf bar in windhelm some time and listen to the customers talking with the barkeep) Actual physics is a big plus too, even if they get hilariously broken sometimes. Stacking things in MW was always weird.
It feels like a lot of the systems in Skyrim would work if Beth just put some effort into them. But in the end Skyrim feels like just that, a bunch of systems that aren't fleshed out or poorly implemented. The story is terrible, some skills have little to no thought put into them, dungeons all feel samey, guild quests are so much shorter, and very few characters have much of a personality.
[QUOTE=Cliff2;49905818]Remember in Skyrim you could level up smithing, lockpicking, sneak, alchemy and enchanting only and end up with unwinnable fights where the enemy just walks up to you and initiates the killcam on your character? And how Oblivion would turn everything into a damage sponge at high levels with scaling attack? People complaining about the stat system seem to forget that of the past three, the one that was stat focused was far more forgiving if you screwed up your build.[/QUOTE]
But in Skyrim using alchemy, enchanting, and blacksmithing allowed you to make retardedly overpowered weapons and armor that made the game easier, not harder.
[t]http://i.imgur.com/fsIPV.png[/t]
And high levels of sneak made you almost invisible, with the last perk in the tree allowing you to reset your stealth just by crouching down again while out of sight.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49902262]if that's all you took away from it, then great, you managed to misread me entirely[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49901836]Because games that rely upon pure stat based inputs are anti immersive to me.[/QUOTE]
literally the first sentence
[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;49902876]It's really not always that clear cut, and it's often hard to tell if you're playing a new RPG what's useful and what's completely useless. Like, I'm about to play Wasteland 2, and it falls hard in to this shit. Like, there are 3 separate skills for hard ass, kiss ass, and smart ass. Do I need all 3? Which is the most useful? Are they even used at all? How many points do I need to put in to any of these before they're any good? Or how about 'Toaster Repair', yeah, that's a skill. Does that do [I]anything[/I] or is that a useless joke? Alarm disarming? Are there many alarms? Like is there any use to being able to disable an alarm or are there going to be like 2 alarms in the entire game?
In Fallout 2, this is particularly bad because some skills are indeed useless. Like traps, throwing, gambling, and barter. There's a skill for both doctor and first aid and these are apparently distinct from each other. I can pick Energy Weapons and Small Guns! But they don't tell me that I won't be starting with a gun at all, and energy weapons won't appear until much later, meaning I'm going to get devoured early game. Energy weapons is a [I]primary weapons[/I] stat, the kind you assume is a safe choice always, and you might not see it at all until you're halfway through the fucking game. Do I even need a weapon skill or could I get along as some nerdy scientist or smooth talker? All you can do is pick what sounds good, only to then find out that you fucked up and your character is severely hampered because you thought you could ignore lockpicking. And then by the end of it you realize that it's blatantly optimal to pick small guns, speech, and lockpicking, and the idea of roleplaying gets severely hurt.
My SPECIAL determines what perks are available to me, but I have no access to any perk list from which to inform my attribute choices. Like say I'm mid game and find out randomly that there's some perk I could get, but I can't now because I'm missing one fucking perception point. And speaking of the perks, some of them are literally useless. There are perks in Fallout 1 and 2 that do literally nothing and the game isn't telling you.
How about Deus Ex? Environmental training? The fuck is that? Do I actually need it? Or, shit, [I]swimming?[/I] How often am I going to swim that they made it a skill? Am I going to get fucked over and sent back to new game because I hit a part where I have to swim and I don't have the skill for it?
Often, there's literally no way of knowing these things. Well, ok, there's the manual, let's see what it has to say on swimming:
Ok, that's the worst fucking description of swimming I've ever read, and I still have no idea how useful this actually is.
Morrowind's another game like this where I have no idea what I'm supposed to pick, it's really not clear or obvious at all, and you can start off doomed to eat shit because you didn't start with the right skills. Apparently you're supposed to exploit the game and become a god at everything, but that's not immersive, balanced, or anything. That just sucks dick.
Even Fallout 4 is like this, almost to a greater extent. The SPECIAL mostly affects what perks you can get, but you have no access to the perk chart, meaning you're pissing in the wind. At least previous games would tell you if what you picked was average, good, or what. In Fallout 4, what [I]is[/I] an average level for a SPECIAL stat? Unless you're playing through the game a second time, you literally have no idea. You just dump shit blindly or look it up, which is unimmersive.[/QUOTE]
First of all, this is kind of a completely different argument than what HumanAbyss was talking about. You mostly just seem to have an issue with games that have useless skills, or don't accurately tell you that a skill might be somewhat niche.
But still, some games having issues with certain skills being useless is an issue with those games, not with the idea of having skills.
I don't think you're going to find a lot of people who thought the Swimming skill in Deus Ex was a great pinnacle of game design, but damning the entire idea of skills just because the developers of Deus Ex fucked up that tiny little aspect of their one, individual system, is just ridiculous.
You should also realize that most older RPGs from the era of boxed games do actually expect you to read the manual. It's maybe not required, but it is what the developers expect you to do, it's why it's there after all. And for your Fallout 2 example, there actually is a perk list in the manual.
It also explicitly tells you in the hints section that you should start off with a good combat skill, and that melee and unarmed skills are the best for starting characters, with small arms also working decently, while the other combat skills are not too useful in the beginning.
I don't really get the Morrowind example at all. I've heard loads of people complaining about it, but I've never heard any really concrete examples of how it fucks you over in the beginning if you don't make your character [i]just[/i] right. I for one never had any issues with it as long as I picked a combat skill in the beginning, and manage my stamina.
And honestly, having to pick a combat skill in the beginning should pretty much go without saying, of course you will end up in combat, so obviously it's best if you aren't shit at it. But hell, even if you don't pick one, it's still doable against early enemies, it's just harder. And the manual probably urges you to do it, too.
[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;49902876]Also, these are fucking roleplaying games. I want to roleplay, and create characters. What if I want to play a character in Fallout 2 who's some tribal healer who doesn't spend time practicing with weapons, and instead focuses on herbs and shit like that and learning under Hakunin. So, doctor, science, and first aid. Well, I can go fuck a dick because I'm going to get eaten by enemies the moment I start playing, forcing me to compromise the [I]roleplaying[/I] in a [I]ROLEPLAYING game[/I], look up shit on a wiki, and meta game the fuck out of everything. I thought the entire draw of an RPG was big, immersive worlds, interesting dialogue, player choice, the ability to create a wide range of characters, and the ability to make characters that you can play as and, y'know, roleplay as if you're them and make choices based on what you know? I never really thought the draw was fucking uninformed stat management.[/QUOTE]
this part really gets my goat though
Without skills, without all those character choices, you wouldn't be able to make... well, those fucking character choices that are no longer there. You do realize that, right?
If you didn't have the option available for you to decide to be a tribal healer who doesn't know shit about using weapons, [i]you wouldn't be able to decide to be a tribal healer who doesn't know shit about using weapons[/i]. How is removing that option a good thing, if your example is wanting to go with that option? What the fuck is this logic?
Yes, it is a sub-optimal character choice. If you read the manual, this should be pretty obvious, since you're going off on an adventure in the big dangerous mutant infested world. Not being skilled enough to fight them off is an obviously bad choice on your behalf, and despite not being a fighter, your character would probably have been instructed in basic self defense before leaving, so there's a pretty good reason to have combat skill even in your character example. But the option is still there to play someone who can't fight for shit. It's not an optimal option, and the game tells you this, but it is an option, and that is in no way a bad thing.
[QUOTE=Hidole555;49906356]But in Skyrim using alchemy, enchanting, and blacksmithing allowed you to make retardedly overpowered weapons and armor that made the game easier, not harder.
[t]http://i.imgur.com/fsIPV.png[/t]
And high levels of sneak made you almost invisible, with the last perk in the tree allowing you to reset your stealth just by crouching down again while out of sight.[/QUOTE]
Breaking the game(That enchantment was gotten through one of the glitches in the game where you enchant gear with +x% better alchemy, make enchantment boosting potions and then enchant better +x% enchantments over and over until making the effect you really want) doesn't apply since you can do that pretty easily in any beth game.(Like the old fortify int alchemy trick, or the 100% chameleon enchantments)
It also relies on you dungeon diving until you get those enchantments, in which case you'll have combat skills.
If you're not gaming the system, you're not going to survive on those skills if you get into an actual fight.(You're also not likely to have any useful enchantments since you haven't dungeon dived til that point) Bandit/Draugr lords will literally one hit you(And you can't try to dodge because killcam will proc the moment they start the attack)
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49906552]So you stopped at the first sentence I'm guessing then
Because yeah, I know lockpicking does't let you kill people that's not even remotely my fucking complaint.
You can't really expect me to argue with you when you just generalize everything I say incorrectly[/QUOTE]
no, but it perfectly summed up what you were saying as far as i could tell, right back at ya with that generalization complaint, lol
Legit though, try to formulate yourself better because if your complaint isn't "I don't like my character having stats that matter" or "I don't like my character not being able to do everything" then I have no fucking clue what it is.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49906552]
Stats are not the only way to do things. That's all I'm saying. There are other methods for us to try.
[/QUOTE]
Such as?
[QUOTE=Dark RaveN;49906720]Such as?[/QUOTE]
I'm not a game dev, that's not really my job.
Skills have been shown that when well constructed they give more freedom.
Why should we stick with that system?
[editline]10th March 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=elowin;49906655]no, but it perfectly summed up what you were saying as far as i could tell, right back at ya with that generalization complaint, lol
Legit though, try to formulate yourself better because if your complaint isn't "I don't like my character having stats that matter" or "I don't like my character not being able to do everything" then I have no fucking clue what it is.[/QUOTE]
Try reading harder maybe.
Because neither of those are my complaint.
I felt like all the talking I did about hard caps would have clarified something for you
[QUOTE=Dark RaveN;49906720]Such as?[/QUOTE]
I've been think about a perk based system for a few years that I think could add depth to a RPG. It's mostly based on the flaws of Fallout's 1-100 skill system since games like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights tend to have fewer, more general skills and a lot of traits to fill in details.
The problem with a linear system is that it doesn't represent how knowledge works in reality, having 50 points in Science makes you equally good at computer hacking as you are at biochemistry and nuclear physics. What I thought to do (and what I hoped Fallout 4 would do) was to split 'skills' into categories of perks or traits. So rather than having a Medicine skill you have a category of Medicine which allows you to unlock various medical skills, from First-aid to general practice stuff to brain surgery, that way it is entirely possible to be a fantastic doctor but still be completely useless when it comes to cracking someone's skull open and messing with their grey matter. Skills like Science would be broken up into different categories such a physics (or Engineering), chemistry (Chemist?) and computers (Hacker or some shit). The important thing is that to prevent you from becoming a nuclear physicist out of the game you would have to get a certain number of simpler skills to unlock the more complex ones, but simpler skills would also be more useful in a general sense. First-aid is something you could probably use a lot, while botany might only be useful in certain areas or quests. Another thing I would have is cross category skills/traits, ones which require skills from two different categories like a Bionic engineer would need skills/traits in medicine and engineering. Some skills/traits would also come with passive effects so they're worth taking if they're used infrequently.
Speech also would be an entire category to itself, rather than a linear progression of the ability to get everyone to do what you want. There should be skills/traits for intimidating, encouraging, lying, flattery, feigning ignorance, being blunt, being kind, being a sarcastic shit, and general manipulation. Barter, rather than being a skill on its own would be either a subset of speech in the form of haggling and boasting or would simply be a system of getting a trader to like you before they reduce their price. Probably the first one.
As for weapon skills I imagine them as being a combination of passive and active abilities. Rather than having a guns skill, an energy weapons skill, and a heavy weapons skill you would have it broken down like this:
Pistoleer/Gunslinger: Increased accuracy, reduced recoil, faster reloads with all pistols. Laser weapons, ballistic weapons, automatic weapons all count, as do sawn off shotguns. Multiple ranks, small benefits.
Rifleman: Increased accuracy, reduced recoil, faster reloads with all rifles. Laser, Ballistic, and automatic all count, as do rifle type shotguns (Double barrels yes, sawn offs no). Multiple ranks, small benefits.
Heavy weapons: Same as above but for rocket launchers and the like.
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Energy Weapons: Increased blah blah blah with energy weapons, stacks with gunslinger or whatever. That way if you have high energy weapons skill and high gunslinger you're good with laser rifles, good with ballistic pistols, fantastic with laser pistols, and shit with ballistic rifles.
The basic idea I would go for is to have a lot of smaller skills which intersect and stack upon each other, allowing you to create characters who are average in many areas while being talented in some areas and useless in others. The way I, and probably many people, play RPGs is to min max the fuck out of the systems. I usually have characters who are useless in EVERY area except he ones they specialise in, where a real human being would be able to do a little bit of many things. It would need a LOT of work to get working right but so does every system. I just think too many RPGs over the years have slavishly tried to emulate DnD or other tabletop games systems, while overlooking the most important thing. In a tabletop games the systems have to be rigid because the interaction is infinitely flexible, in videogames the interaction is completely rigid so the systems should be what becomes more flexible. Not to the point where building a character is meaningless, where you unlock the ability to do literally everything, but with the goal of allowing you to create a well rounded character who isn't punished for not focusing on two or three of the game's twenty skills.
Let's say I'm playing two games of DnD, one is the tabletop game and the other is a fictional videogame with the exact same rule set. I'm a warrior with 4 strength and I'm fighting a Minotaur. In the videogame my ability to fight the minotaur is very limited, I can hit it with my weapon and I can use a couple of set skills against it. In the tabletop game I can use literally anything in the environment, I can tackle the Minotaur, I can attack a specific part of the Minotaur. In both instances my strength will determine what I can do but in the tabletop game it doesn't limit my options, it gives me a roll chance on any option I create for myself.
[QUOTE=Hidole555;49905256]For the next Elder Scrolls game I stand by what I said [URL="https://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1266740&p=40618435&viewfull=1#post40618435"]years ago.[/URL][/QUOTE]
I dunno, that could maybe work if you reduce the importance of the "starting out as a important government person" bit. I feel like Elder Scrolls games need to continue to start you out as "welcome to prison/death." It could work Skyrim style where they go "Oh, I recognize you. You're that diplomat/whatever." already on your way to face punishment, but I'd rather it not be Dishonored style setting-up-the-story-then-bam-prison because that feels like far more character building than I like in my RPGs.
[QUOTE=elowin;49906655]no, but it perfectly summed up what you were saying as far as i could tell, right back at ya with that generalization complaint, lol
Legit though, try to formulate yourself better because if your complaint isn't "I don't like my character having stats that matter" or "I don't like my character not being able to do everything" then I have no fucking clue what it is.[/QUOTE]
Reading comprehension really seems to be the barrier here, so I'll try to put this as simply as humanly possible.
Stats add some basic depth to a character, but they also can lead to awkward mechanics that cause problems for people going in without knowledge of the game's system. For example, say you're working on a character that has some magic and some melee. You're trying to balance int and str, but you're not sure exactly how much to put in each. Then later on, after your character is finished, you find a neat weapon you didn't know about that requires more strength than you had, which you totally could have allocated had you known. Hell, you could be a single point off. That's the kind of nonsense that encourages you to read about all the possible gear, conditionals, etc. I mean you can force yourself to play in a way that leaves you some room to change your character until you've explored the whole game but that's goofy as hell
Skyrim 2: Fallout of DOOM.
[QUOTE=Bitl;49930650]Skyrim 2: Fallout of DOOM.[/QUOTE]
... Not gonna lie, I would probably slap $10 down for that just for the novelty.
[QUOTE=Hidole555;49906356]And high levels of sneak made you almost invisible, [B]with the last perk in the tree allowing you to reset your stealth just by crouching down again while out of sight.[/B][/QUOTE]
I've consistently got this perk to work [I]during combat[/I] in unmodded Xbox Skyrim.
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