Are weapon skills interesting?

[rusty_shackleford]

If I was tasked with coming up with weapon skills for a game, here's what I'd do.
[…]

This has the same issue as skill points, it detaches skills too much from the gameworld into an abstract concept.

[J1M]

If I was tasked with coming up with weapon skills for a game, here's what I'd do.
[…]

This has the same issue as skill points, it detaches skills too much from the gameworld into an abstract concept.

I think we disagree on this at a more fundamental level, but for me this can be solved with flavor text along the lines of "train in advanced spear techniques to pierce enemy armor, while doing so you also learn some things about armor that can be applied to other weapons".

[rusty_shackleford]

I guess, really, there's two questions here that got conflated into one.
"Are skill points interesting?" as typically implemented, and the answer is 'no'. There's a disconnect where you can level up by killing enemies then learn how to lockpick better. This disconnect needs to be bridged.

"Are weapon skills interesting?" is asking whether putting points into the Sword skill to be able to use swords better is interesting. I say this is also 'no', it unlocks no new verbs… usually. Gothic is a good counterexample. So this is an implementation issue.

Much to think about!

[rusty_shackleford]

"Are skill points interesting?" as typically implemented, and the answer is 'no'. There's a disconnect where you can level up by killing enemies then learn how to lockpick better. This disconnect needs to be bridged.

I don't think typical learn-by-use is the bridge here. Arcanum & KCD(to some extent with combat) are decent examples of how you can use trainers, need to go further.
Any examples anyone can think of?

[rusty_shackleford]

Worth noting that learn by use also only fits into sandbox-style RPGs, it was used in colony ship to mostly negative results, created a degenerate style of optimized play.

[Norfleet]

Specific weapon skills generally increase lock-in, thereby decreasing player choice in actual play. If have weapon skills, players are effectively forced to lock themselves into a specific weapon. This means the decision of what weapon to use is no longer dynamically driven by gameplay circumstances, but by build lock-in. If maces do 50% more damage in this situation, but you do 50% more damage (or more) with swords due to skilltree lock-in, this particular dynamic gameplay decision no longer exists, and you now always use that weapon, regardless of the situation.

I generally hold that a better game has its decisionmaking performed in the game in response to the game, rather than via metagaming your "build".

[maidenhaver IV]

Unsupported weapons are an issue when you need +5 smashing, or everyone but your cleric becomes worthless against the final boss, but that's assets people being fat *******. I liked that EE consolidated melee weapons a bit around exotic and damage type. TES did resistance to basic materials, which bahaves as a magic weapon threshold, but nothing with damage types, leading to spongey enemies and melee always being a larp option.

[rusty_shackleford]

Having to carefully pick your weapon type is underappreciated. Specialization in a certain type is probably not good design(?)

[J1M]

Having to carefully pick your weapon type is underappreciated. Specialization in a certain type is probably not good design(?)

It's not good design. Especially if a player must make that choice before the game starts. Now the gameplay is reading the designer's mind.

"Swords are popular, so they probably put in enough swords. That will save me from restarting"
"They mentioned flails a lot in that one interview"
"**** it, I'll just go read a walkthrough to find out which weapons have support for the last half of the game"

EDIT: I think crafting systems can be the answer to this, but they should be via characters in the world, not "adventurer and part time master exotic weapon smith" character building. In other words, you take some dragon blood back to town and now you can pick a weapon to make +3.

[rusty_shackleford]

Having to carefully pick your weapon type is underappreciated. Specialization in a certain type is probably not good design(?)

It's not good design. Especially if a player must make that choice before the game starts. Now the gameplay is reading the designer's mind.

"Swords are popular, so they probably put in enough swords. That will save me from restarting"
"They mentioned flails a lot in that one interview"
"**** it, I'll just go read a walkthrough to find out which weapons have support for the last half of the game"

Since it wasn't clear, by picking your weapon type I meant before you go into combat not when picking skills, feats, etc.,
I had games in mind where you can have two or three weapon sets and be able to swap between those sets in combat. I like that.

[J1M]

Having to carefully pick your weapon type is underappreciated. Specialization in a certain type is probably not good design(?)

It's not good design. Especially if a player must make that choice before the game starts. Now the gameplay is reading the designer's mind.

"Swords are popular, so they probably put in enough swords. That will save me from restarting"
"They mentioned flails a lot in that one interview"
"**** it, I'll just go read a walkthrough to find out which weapons have support for the last half of the game"

Since it wasn't clear, by picking your weapon type I meant before you go into combat not when picking skills, feats, etc.,
I had games in mind where you can have two or three weapon sets and be able to swap between those sets in combat. I like that.

I agree. Even something as simple as what Diablo 1 did is enough.

[rusty_shackleford]

IIRC, Neverwinter Nights tailors your drops to whatever weapon feats you pick. Which is just a bandaid for a poor system.

[J1M]

IIRC, Neverwinter Nights tailors your drops to whatever weapon feats you pick. Which is just a bandaid for a poor system.

So if you pick the wrong weapon type instead of seeing good weapons you don't want to use, you see no drops?

[rusty_shackleford]

IIRC, Neverwinter Nights tailors your drops to whatever weapon feats you pick. Which is just a bandaid for a poor system.

So if you pick the wrong weapon type instead of seeing good weapons you don't want to use, you see no drops?

It has been a while, but AFAIK NWN uses randomly generated loot?

[rusty_shackleford]

Imagine we took Fallout and replaced the weapon skills with various proficiencies you can learn while playing(optionally pick at creation etc.,)
What would you replace the various weapon skills with then? Generic 'Melee' and 'Ranged' skill? What have other games done in the years since Fallout? Perhaps should contrast with Arcanum, Tim Cain is a good designer.


Would this be seen as 'simplifying' or 'streamlining' the game?


I think I've posted about this before, but things like feats, traits, etc., tend to be much more interesting than "skills".
Much to think about!

[maidenhaver IV]

I like Big Guns/Small Guns/etc skills categories, with different damage types unevenly distributed to each. Cain's had good ideas, but Arcanum's in the same "idea game" boat as Morrowind: they nail a couple things, but the rest of these games suck.

[rusty_shackleford]

Related:
Would power armor be more or less interesting if using it was tied to a skill?
I believe it's a perk in… FNV? And you have to do a quest to learn it? That's pretty good, actually.

I don't think any Fallout games have any skill tied to defense, right? That actually seems kinda weird now that I think about it.

[Tangerine]

Throwing is a skill that I understand why it's put in, but would never specialize in. Seems like a trap pick.

[rusty_shackleford]

Would power armor be more or less interesting if using it was tied to a skill?
I believe it's a perk in… FNV? And you have to do a quest to learn it? That's pretty good, actually.

Anyone want to have a go at this? When should something be a skill or a proficiency perk?

I just enjoy discussing RPG theory.

[Tangerine]

Would power armor be more or less interesting if using it was tied to a skill?
I believe it's a perk in… FNV? And you have to do a quest to learn it? That's pretty good, actually.

Anyone want to have a go at this? When should something be a skill or a proficiency perk?

I just enjoy discussing RPG theory.

I think it should be a proficiency perk if it's difficult to justify granularity. I can imagine someone being clumsy in plate mail as well as someone comfortable with it, but does the in-between state really matter? Using a sword, on the other hand, has states such as clumsiness, basic competency, and mastery.

Maybe the difference is whether the action is passive or active. Wearing armor is passive compared to using a weapon.

[nullSector]

Throwing is a skill that I understand why it's put in, but would never specialize in. Seems like a trap pick.

Its pretty good in mount and blade.
throwing a javelin to someone's face is both strong and fun

[Norfleet]

Since it wasn't clear, by picking your weapon type I meant before you go into combat not when picking skills, feats, etc.,
I had games in mind where you can have two or three weapon sets and be able to swap between those sets in combat. I like that.

Yes, this is what I was referring to: However, too much of RPG design, such as weapon skills, and rare, extremely potent magical weaponry, tends to promote lock-in instead. In contrast, a design like (Ye Olde) X-Comme tends to avoid lock-in: You're not compelled to specialize into a single weapon and use it no matter what, because you only have a single generic "Shootan" skill (and you grind it by usage rather than buying with a limited pool of points) that applies to all your shootans. Grind-through-usage tends to mitigate lock-in while still offering some level of "build choice", since while your character IS initially specialized in something, you CAN learn to use multiple types without real penalty.

[maidenhaver IV]

Fallout and TES dna is Ultima, but the Ultimas didn't do skills. If you wanted powered armor, you bought a set. If you wanted to shoot, instead of stab, you bought a blaster. Its funny how both Skyrim and Fallout 4 pared down their systems to little more than Ultima 1 in complexity.

[Norfleet]

Would power armor be more or less interesting if using it was tied to a skill?
I believe it's a perk in… FNV? And you have to do a quest to learn it? That's pretty good, actually.

I think in the early Bethouts, you had to pick it up as a training, but this didn't really add any level of "interest" to it because you didn't pay for it as a build cost, you just received it through interactions and quests, so functionally it was not "tied to a skill" as such.

If you had to pay for it as a build cost, it would become a lock-in. Either you put it in your build, and are thus obliged to always use it because it's part of your build and the build does not function without it so you are useless, or you skip it, in which case it is not part of your build and you can no longer choose it. If it's THAT good, it then becomes a fixed cost in every build, or if it's not that good, it becomes an always-skip and thus an abandoned system. In contrast, if it is not a lock-in, then you can choose when it is circumstantially appropriate or not.

[maidenhaver IV]

Power Armor's basically your Rad-X alternative in Fallout. Or to patch your **** build, so you can survive head-on vs Mariposa and LA. If you're too dumb to be let into the BoS, well hopefully you're spamming drugs.

[J1M]

Would power armor be more or less interesting if using it was tied to a skill?
I believe it's a perk in… FNV? And you have to do a quest to learn it? That's pretty good, actually.

Anyone want to have a go at this? When should something be a skill or a proficiency perk?

I just enjoy discussing RPG theory.

My opinion is that breakpoints are interesting. Continuous values like a skill that goes from 0-200 are less interesting to me. Talents/perks are essentially all breakpoints (unless they give you 0.5% crit or something). You can band-aid a skill system by adding break points to it (when you get to 100 skill, you get perk X).

I also like systems that are elegant, but complex enough to allow a keen player to find ways to exploit things in unconventional ways. For example, building a character around modifying their auto-attack in a game with lots of focus on active abilities.

[J1M]

Would power armor be more or less interesting if using it was tied to a skill?
I believe it's a perk in… FNV? And you have to do a quest to learn it? That's pretty good, actually.

Anyone want to have a go at this? When should something be a skill or a proficiency perk?

I just enjoy discussing RPG theory.

I think it should be a proficiency perk if it's difficult to justify granularity. I can imagine someone being clumsy in plate mail as well as someone comfortable with it, but does the in-between state really matter? Using a sword, on the other hand, has states such as clumsiness, basic competency, and mastery.

Maybe the difference is whether the action is passive or active. Wearing armor is passive compared to using a weapon.

Too many game designers get excited about adding drawbacks and restrictions to heavy armor. In Pathfinder it is literally just plain worse than light armor. More expensive, skill penalty, heavier, movement penalty, lower protection, vulnerable to certain magic attacks, the list goes on. The heaviest armor should be the best. The idea that a knight in full plate is going to lose a duel to a scrawny guy with a knife is hollywood fan fiction. Like all those shows where swords go through plate armor like butter.

Put another way: "heavy armor training perk" should negate all 'realism' drawbacks associated with heavy armor. I can't think of anything else where you invest significantly into a character building system just to reach "balance" with another path that doesn't require investment.

[Tweed]

Imagine we took Fallout and replaced the weapon skills with various proficiencies you can learn while playing(optionally pick at creation etc.,)
What would you replace the various weapon skills with then? Generic 'Melee' and 'Ranged' skill? What have other games done in the years since Fallout? Perhaps should contrast with Arcanum, Tim Cain is a good designer.


Would this be seen as 'simplifying' or 'streamlining' the game?


I think I've posted about this before, but things like feats, traits, etc., tend to be much more interesting than "skills".
Much to think about!

Skyrim didn't have a bad idea with the skill gain and then pick additional perks to enhance your abilities in those fields, but vanilla Skyrim did almost nothing with it and some perks invalidate or overwrite older ones and that's bad design. Fallout 4 ****** up though because someone decided "Well, players love perks so let's make EVERYTHING a perk!"

Perks are a good way to see all of those skill gains or combination with your stats paying off, but once you go down that route you're headed towards buildfaggotry and some people chimpout at that design philosophy.

[Tweed]

I think (but don't recall and I don't want to look) that CDDA or one of the other roguelikes similar to it had individual weapon skills along with the overreaching weapon skills. I.E. you gain skill in that weapon group, but also familiarity with the specific weapon you're using. So you have a guy who knows how to swing a sword, but his particular favorite is the estoc.

[Tangerine]

but once you go down that route you're headed towards buildfaggotry and some people chimpout at that design philosophy.

True, but I don't see the point in designing to avoid them. If Karl Jobst can sperg out about Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, people can sperg out about anything.