Various role-playing RPG game stuff not deserving its own thread

[Rand]

Go so far as to say I'd rather just pick a class and start the game than spend an hour weighing if I want 1 more point in this attribute or that attribute, which skills to prioritize etc.,

I have no more interest in percentage points systems, or even a 10 or 20 point system.
I am now firmly on the side of skill levels.

For example:
• master
• expert
• journeyman
• novice
• dabbler
• untrained

And you need training from another in order to rise up the tree. Go ahead and implement a system using points to allow the possibility of an upgrade, but make the character actually need to learn from somewhere other then intuition.

Anyway, this solves one of the development problems. Why does an 85 succeed when an 80 fails? And how many skill points could a character have by then to potentially pass it?
**** that. Everyone intuitively understands the difference between a master and an expert and it's easy to assign difficulty and to know your skill level relative to the gameworld.

[Rand]

I'm fine with skills that make you better at doing something, and skills that unlock new abilities as it's raised, but skills that just let you do something that has an arbitrary difficulty threshold you need to keep up with suck.
"everything just gets harder to do as the game goes on because… it just does, okay???"
that's lame, it's just level scaling wearing a different coat of paint.

D&D 4th edition. The DCs get harder for doing the same things like crossing an icy path without slipping, because your skill numbers went up. Horrible treadmill gaming.

[Stack of Turtles]

I'm fine with skills that make you better at doing something, and skills that unlock new abilities as it's raised, but skills that just let you do something that has an arbitrary difficulty threshold you need to keep up with suck.
"everything just gets harder to do as the game goes on because… it just does, okay???"
that's lame, it's just level scaling wearing a different coat of paint.

D&D 4th edition. The DCs get harder for doing the same things like crossing an icy path without slipping, because your skill numbers went up. Horrible treadmill gaming.

That's truly incredibly bad. This is why all game designers should be beheaded.

[rusty_shackleford]

Go so far as to say I'd rather just pick a class and start the game than spend an hour weighing if I want 1 more point in this attribute or that attribute, which skills to prioritize etc.,

I have no more interest in percentage points systems, or even a 10 or 20 point system.
I am now firmly on the side of skill levels.

For example:
• master
• expert
• journeyman
• novice
• dabbler
• untrained

And you need training from another in order to rise up the tree. Go ahead and implement a system using points to allow the possibility of an upgrade, but make the character actually need to learn from somewhere other then intuition.

Anyway, this solves one of the development problems. Why does an 85 succeed when an 80 fails? And how many skill points could a character have by then to potentially pass it?
**** that. Everyone intuitively understands the difference between a master and an expert and it's easy to assign difficulty and to know your skill level relative to the gameworld.

I like when RPGs avoid numbers for things that aren't quantifiable.

[Rand]

Go so far as to say I'd rather just pick a class and start the game than spend an hour weighing if I want 1 more point in this attribute or that attribute, which skills to prioritize etc.,

I have no more interest in percentage points systems, or even a 10 or 20 point system.
I am now firmly on the side of skill levels.

For example:
• master
• expert
• journeyman
• novice
• dabbler
• untrained

And you need training from another in order to rise up the tree. Go ahead and implement a system using points to allow the possibility of an upgrade, but make the character actually need to learn from somewhere other then intuition.

Anyway, this solves one of the development problems. Why does an 85 succeed when an 80 fails? And how many skill points could a character have by then to potentially pass it?
**** that. Everyone intuitively understands the difference between a master and an expert and it's easy to assign difficulty and to know your skill level relative to the gameworld.

I like when RPGs avoid numbers for things that aren't quantifiable.

Although I am hard pressed to like this particular system due to the inclusion of both "modest" and "fair", or "good" and "professional", or "novice" and "beginner".
Tell me: which is the higher skill level? And then argue the exact opposite. It's actually easy.

[rusty_shackleford]

Tell me: which is the higher skill level?

The one with the lighter color

[Rand]

Tell me: which is the higher skill level?

The one with the lighter color

Okay, lemme get out paint.net and see what the color codes come back as...

[Norfleet]

Badly designed skill checks suck*

Is there such a thing as a well-designed skill check? At its core, skill checks are not exactly thrilling gameplay: You buy a number, probably blindly with no idea if that was enough. If you bought enough number to satisfy the developer, you pass. Otherwise, you fail it, and the points you put into it were wasted. Skill checks are just build taxes: You must pay this many points out of your buildspace in order to experience the content you paid for. They don't really add gameplay, because the player is not involved. They aren't based on interesting choices, because unless you consulted a guide for it, you're going in blind with no idea how much and what skills are required to see what you want to see, so are just guessing. If the notion of skill "checks" were simply removed and replaced with a binary toggle, "Has Ability (possibly tied to race/class instead)", would anything be lost? Certainly not in gameplay. If, instead of a "Disarm Trap" skill, that you put points into, you simply had "Thieves and Dwarves Can Disarm Traps", would anything have changed?

D&D 4th edition. The DCs get harder for doing the same things like crossing an icy path without slipping, because your skill numbers went up. Horrible treadmill gaming.

I imagine the path gets icier and the ice gets more frictionless, or something. I mean, if the player never faced harder tasks that challenged an increasing skill number, there'd be no reason to increase the skill, and buying more skill than is needed to perform the hardest task available would simply be wasted points. Obviously, though, "doing what amounts to the same thing in a possibly different color with bigger numbers" is the core of level-up games. If you level up and don't face a bigger number to contest your own bigger numbers, then the player becomes overpowered. Treadmilling is fundamental to level-up games. At level 1, I have 10 hitpoints and kill 10 hitpoint monsters. At level 100, I have 1 million hitpoints and kill 1 million hitpoint monsters (we'll ignore the equally common scaling-runaway where I have to fight a 100M HP monster to maintain the same TTK because a mere 1M HP monster would get one-shot).

I have no more interest in percentage points systems, or even a 10 or 20 point system.
I am now firmly on the side of skill levels.

For example:
• master
• expert
• journeyman
• novice
• dabbler
• untrained

So, a 10-point system is too much, but a 6-point system is better? Because that's what this is, a 6-rank skill system. And like any skill system, the expectation set is that you either max it out or it's ******* useless and any lesser investment you put into it amounts to nothing. Unless it's a trap and the game failed to actually implement the high-end content, so effective skill level caps out before actual max level, and the higher levels therefore just exist to waste your money/points/whatever.

Or do you refer to the random nature of skill checks? Honestly, I don't think RNG is a good way to resolve rare player-facing discrete events in a vidya game. You're faced with a situation where ultimately, the only way to overcome the challenge is to savescum. RNG is fine and good for non-player-facing events or continuous noise, but when the player is forced to engage directly with it and is offered no means of doing so other than to savescum, it's not actually a good design. Having "skill ranks" doesn't seem to be random, as such, though. More of a "you must be at least as tall as my beefy arm to ride" deal.

[Norfleet]

Although I am hard pressed to like this particular system due to the inclusion of both "modest" and "fair", or "good" and "professional", or "novice" and "beginner".
Tell me: which is the higher skill level? And then argue the exact opposite. It's actually easy.

And ultimately, it doesn't matter: There is only one skill level that matters, the level that passes. Everything else is a failure. Demograph proposed the notion of "partial failure", but like the saying goes: There is no substitute for success. There's the correct outcome, and then everything else is wrong. How wrong it is doesn't matter.

[Norfleet]

This is not a problem of a skill-based system. This is a dev problem.
Adding starting skill packs is easy, they're called classes.

If you have manually allocatable skills AND the option for a starting skill pack as a "class", this functionally amounts to having an installer with a "custom" and a "default". You never click "Default". Even if you don't end up changing anything, you still have to see what your options are.

[maidenhaver]

Go so far as to say I'd rather just pick a class and start the game than spend an hour weighing if I want 1 more point in this attribute or that attribute, which skills to prioritize etc.,

I have no more interest in percentage points systems, or even a 10 or 20 point system.
I am now firmly on the side of skill levels.

For example:
• master
• expert
• journeyman
• novice
• dabbler
• untrained

And you need training from another in order to rise up the tree. Go ahead and implement a system using points to allow the possibility of an upgrade, but make the character actually need to learn from somewhere other then intuition.

Anyway, this solves one of the development problems. Why does an 85 succeed when an 80 fails? And how many skill points could a character have by then to potentially pass it?
**** that. Everyone intuitively understands the difference between a master and an expert and it's easy to assign difficulty and to know your skill level relative to the gameworld.

I like when RPGs avoid numbers for things that aren't quantifiable.

Although I am hard pressed to like this particular system due to the inclusion of both "modest" and "fair", or "good" and "professional", or "novice" and "beginner".
Tell me: which is the higher skill level? And then argue the exact opposite. It's actually easy.

Might as well be Sad Face, Frown Face, So-So Face, and Smiley Face. ******* ******** system. Needs numbers, or Apprentice, Journeyman, Master or I can't comprehend.

[jdcp]

Is there such a thing as a well-designed skill check? At its core, skill checks are not exactly thrilling gameplay: You buy a number, probably blindly with no idea if that was enough. If you bought enough number to satisfy the developer, you pass. Otherwise, you fail it, and the points you put into it were wasted. Skill checks are just build taxes: You must pay this many points out of your buildspace in order to experience the content you paid for. They don't really add gameplay, because the player is not involved. They aren't based on interesting choices, because unless you consulted a guide for it, you're going in blind with no idea how much and what skills are required to see what you want to see, so are just guessing. If the notion of skill "checks" were simply removed and replaced with a binary toggle, "Has Ability (possibly tied to race/class instead)", would anything be lost? Certainly not in gameplay. If, instead of a "Disarm Trap" skill, that you put points into, you simply had "Thieves and Dwarves Can Disarm Traps", would anything have changed?

I just mentioned it: Skill checks that have a purpose in both the way your character is perceived and how it affects the world. A skill check is a simple thing, I'm repeating myself here but anyway, 1s and 0s. If you had more things to it then suddenly there's 1s 2s 3s and so on, by themselves a skill check is just an obstacle, but it can be more than that if you put more systems along it to enrich the game.

Bad skill checks are what Rusty mentioned, invisible barriers to annoy the player. The game should tell you to develop those skill before hand, not suddenly get in your way because "uh you're not high level enough". If the game is well designed, when you run into a wall you might not have one of the skills required to climb that wall, but perhaps you have explosives skill to blow the **** thing away, or maybe science to make a portal to cross it. The example is irrelevant, but it's a matter of dimension.

I wrote a whole definition of it but it ended up being a bit too long so I will repeat:

Had a detailed answer for this but **** it, I agree.

Still I must mention you just described what a bad skill check is.

@Norfleet It's very easy to rationalize what a good skill check is just with common sense and few of experience with games. That said I wanna answer some more stuff from you:

If, instead of a "Disarm Trap" skill, that you put points into, you simply had "Thieves and Dwarves Can Disarm Traps", would anything have changed?

First of all this is a problem with how the game adresses the skill system, no the skill checks, but in gameplay terms no it wouldn't.

Skill checks are just build taxes: You must pay this many points out of your buildspace in order to experience the content you paid for. They don't really add gameplay, because the player is not involved.

Yes, this is my main problem with how skills work in Fallout in general, and why I partially praise the skills in TES.

In Fallout you gotta allocate points when you level up, this is ********, as you said you're just doing an investment. In TES you gotta develop those skills (except for the main skills, but that's another topic)

Sadly they're both games the oppposite of each other, one let's you train those skills but offers little depth towards them besides combat, the other doesn't let you train them but offers more interesting outcomes with the skills.

One has good skill design, the other has good narrative design. Mix both and you get a pretty good RPG, given the other elements are fine tuned too.

A good skill check is one which the player has given effort to achieve, that he is aware he can deal with.

They aren't based on interesting choices

Unless a problem that needs to be solved with a skill check presents several skills that can resolve them, for example a wall you can either blow up (explosives, perhaps some magic too), climb (acrobatics or whatever), or make a portal to pass through it (magic or whatever) then yes it's a very boring design.

A good design let's you make the best out of it with the skills you have, and the way the game has designed it's progression must have prepared you for that moment, otherwise it's bad game design. A good skill check design rewards the player for developing their skills, a bad skill check penalizes for neglecting a single one (see speech skill, the worst thing ever made, where in some games you can't simply progress without it).

Not every discussion is solved with some honeyed words, but apparently for most games it's either that or brute force. It's stupid. That's a good example of bad skill design.

A good skill check design provides several solutions to a problem, some of them completely devoid of a skill (for example a closed door you can open with a key, blast away or lockpick).

If the game suddenly stops you because of a skill, then again it sucks.

One of the best uses of the skill check is when they let you use NPCs to solve those, for example if you have a thief in your party he can take care of a trap (to put a simple example) This is both good skill design and party design.

I don't like the class design, though I don't hate it, it's very against what I consider proper roleplaying. If you can categorize people entirely according to a single role, then they suddenly have no personality to me.

A thief is a thief, and nothing else. Which is why I use a custom class always if the game lets you.

STILL I "BAD" (as I call them) SKILL CHECKS DO STILL SERVE A PURPOSE:

So yes they suck alone, but they can be a medium to tell a game's narrative in different ways so that every player can have different outcomes according to the things they value the most out of themselves, in that sense, they succeed.

It's easier to call them one-dimensional instead of bad, but I prefer to call them just bad because well, they're both unfair and lackluster, completely devoid of fun.

But they do serve a purpose, which is that imaginary wall to stop you from going too far, it's game design 101.

[jdcp]

Sorry for the long answer, it's a very obvious thing but anyway, this topic is boring.

[maidenhaver]

Fallout disn't have build taxes, because your companions are worthless. You don't have a party. Your character can use every skill, and the game even gives you core skills if you figured out bartering and got the caps. Its baby's first rpg game.

[Norfleet]

Unless a problem that needs to be solved with a skill check presents several skills that can resolve them, for example a wall you can either blow up (explosives, perhaps some magic too), climb (acrobatics or whatever), or make a portal to pass through it (magic or whatever) then yes it's a very boring design.

That isn't intrinsic to a "skill check", though. In fact, some of those options aren't even skill checks. Those are just problems with multiple solutions, SOME of which are skill checks. And, of course, if you can solve the problem WITHOUT having to buy a skill for it...that sorta weakens the value of the skill in the first place.

One of the best uses of the skill check is when they let you use NPCs to solve those, for example if you have a thief in your party he can take care of a trap (to put a simple example) This is both good skill design and party design.

That's not even intrinsically a "skill check", though. That solution could be just go back to the "thieves can disarm traps" thing.

I don't like the class design, though I don't hate it, it's very against what I consider proper roleplaying. If you can categorize people entirely according to a single role, then they suddenly have no personality to me.

Classes can be restrictive, but that's not necessarily bad. Giving people too MANY choices, paradoxically, can result in fewer real choices as the convergence of niches results in your design plowing headfirst into Gause's Law of Competitive Exclusion. If the lack of classes causes the number of niches to converge as a result of genericization, where instead of "Fighters", "Rangers", "Paladins", "Clerics", "Wizards", and "Thieves", you thus ended up with "Melee DPS", "Ranged DPS", "Healer", and "Utility", you end up with a lot less actual variety even though, in theory, the player can now mix-and-match ability sets to taste...since there becomes only one right way to do something, and the flavor of classes at all is entirely lost.

And, of course, absence of explicit classes does not necessarily mean "skills wilth skill checks". I mean, take "Disarm Traps". We can have a "disarm traps skill", in which you must constantly invest points into to keep it relevant, otherwise your investment is wasted because you lose the ability to meaningfully disarm traps, or we can just have a "Can Disarm Traps" unlock. Call it whatever you want. Perk, Feat, Skill, whatever. You just have it. You can use it on any disarmable trap, at any point, once you have it. No more "skill check". No ambiguity in the price of the ability. Either you buy it and you have it, or you don't.

[jdcp]

That isn't intrinsic to a "skill check", though. In fact, some of those options aren't even skill checks. Those are just problems with multiple solutions, SOME of which are skill checks. And, of course, if you can solve the problem WITHOUT having to buy a skill for it...that sorta weakens the value of the skill in the first place.

Yes, because that's my point, skill checks alone suck. Good skill check design, among other things, means proper integration of that along all the other systems that go around a game.

That's not even intrinsically a "skill check", though. That solution could be just go back to the "thieves can disarm traps" thing.

Yes, that was the intended meaning.

Classes can be restrictive, but that's not necessarily bad.

Yes, I'm not entirely against them, just a minor nitpick. I have played with classes, specially in games I am not able to customize a class beyond it's boundaries.

it's just the style of roleplaying I prefer, but going back to skill checks (and this is also relevant to the classes) I don't get mad when I see a bad skill check, I just accept it as it is unless the game is FULL of them, in which case it sucks but if I keep playing it then it's because the game itself is worth it.

The classes are my own example of sure, it sucks, but it does have a purpose and succeed well at it.

Overally I agree with you.

At the end of the day I'm not a game developer, though I've seen it close, but all I'm doing is mentioning the things I believe give more depth to a game and how I perceive the skill checks.

[Kalarion]

Tell me: which is the higher skill level?

The one with the lighter color

Okay, lemme get out paint.net and see what the color codes come back as...

Come on. You really couldn't tell which of those two in particular, and which in general, were better or worse by color shade?

[rusty_shackleford]

The one with the lighter color

Okay, lemme get out paint.net and see what the color codes come back as...

Come on. You really couldn't tell which of those two in particular, and which in general, were better or worse by color shade?

modest/fair do seem to be the same shade tbh

[Kalarion]

Okay, lemme get out paint.net and see what the color codes come back as...

Come on. You really couldn't tell which of those two in particular, and which in general, were better or worse by color shade?

modest/fair do seem to be the same shade tbh

Point. Rand I apologize. I wouldn't have a problem with it in play I think (I'd see the change from one to the other), but you're right, color alone wouldn't be enough.

EDIT: tried to @ Rand and ended up with somerandomguy...

[Irenaeus]

Professional is brighter than good; fair is brighter than modest

[Nemesis]

https://www.gog.com/en/game/drakensang

Drakensang is for the grabs if someone needs a filler

Clarification: The game is not free but heavily discounted.

[Rand]

I imagine the path gets icier and the ice gets more frictionless, or something

You imagine wrong.
Swinging on a **** across a 30 foot wide gap is DC10 at 1st level, and DC 20 at 15th level.
Or numbers close to those. I can't be bothered to look it up but it's all in the rules, explicitly, as is the description.
The moment I read that, I knew there was no redeeming the designers of that nonsense.
Then I did the math. With the DC increase rate, things actually got slightly HARDER as you levelled up!
The DCS assumed not only level increases, but spending of perks, all possible equipment bonuses, and so on, literally the maximum theoretical, to make a 2/3 success rate or whatever their target was.
Which meant you needed to decide which skills to focus your resources on to get a barely acceptable return on and if you had "class" skills you didn't complement, then you failed 55% of the time or so.
Non-class skills would fail 75%-80% of the time at higher level DCs.
If I feel energetic, I'll dig my analysis out of storage and refresh my memory.

[Rand]

the expectation set is that you either max it out or it's ******* useless

That's a design problem.
Not all locks or traps can or should require an expert or master level to counter, even in late-game.
You REWARD the player for taking skills by making every level useful throughout the game.
Secondary skills, anyway. Combat skills may require different handling by the game systems.

[Stack of Turtles]

Okay, lemme get out paint.net and see what the color codes come back as...

Come on. You really couldn't tell which of those two in particular, and which in general, were better or worse by color shade?

modest/fair do seem to be the same shade tbh

Are you sure? I see "Fair" as clearly a few shades lighter than "Modest". I haven't checked the hex values but I got a perfect score on a color discrimination test before.

Okay, I just opened it in GIMP and I was right, the brightness is higher on average in "Fair".

[Rand]

Okay, lemme get out paint.net and see what the color codes come back as...

Come on. You really couldn't tell which of those two in particular, and which in general, were better or worse by color shade?

Professional is brighter than good; fair is brighter than modest

Okay, I just opened it in GIMP and I was right, the brightness is higher on average in "Fair".

I had to zoom in to notice any average difference in the shades.
At the standard resolution Rusty posted, I could see no significant difference.

Certainly massively less than the difference between, say, the bright green and dim green.

[Stack of Turtles]

Okay, lemme get out paint.net and see what the color codes come back as...

Come on. You really couldn't tell which of those two in particular, and which in general, were better or worse by color shade?

Professional is brighter than good; fair is brighter than modest

Okay, I just opened it in GIMP and I was right, the brightness is higher on average in "Fair".

I had to zoom in to notice any average difference in the shades.
At the standard resolution Rusty posted, I could see no significant difference.

Certainly massively less than the difference between, say, the bright green and dim green.

I do see a difference in the zoomed-out picture, but again, color vision varies between people.

[Rand]

I do see a difference in the zoomed-out picture, but again, color vision varies between people.

Do you agree that the differences between some of them is so minor that it is not a good design to expect everyone to be able to tell?
I see very minor differences in the yellow of the skill names, with "climbing" and "tracking" seeming slightly brighter if I look really closely, but I ascribe no meaning to it and wouldn't even normally notice.

In any event, my post stands on the words being ambiguous as to which of the pair is greater, and one may easily make reasonable arguments for both orders.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm able to guess what 'modest' or 'fair' means better than I can guess what 47 in firstaid means

[Stack of Turtles]

Do you agree that the differences between some of them is so minor that it is not a good design to expect everyone to be able to tell?

It depends on whether the difference matters in gameplay and whether you will easily find out which is greater when the time comes. If the game says something like "You need a skill of Fair (6) to get through this door. Your current skill level is Modest (5)." then it's not exactly a problem if the presentation isn't perfect on the character page. Or by the same token, if the only difference between Fair and Modest is your rolls fail 1% more often, but nothing is actually gated on having one more level, then it's fine because you'll never care more than knowing "my skill is vaguely in the forest green zone".

If it's really important to tell the distinction, then sure, they should have made the color difference stronger.

[rusty_shackleford]

Any examples of RPGs that actually support partially specializing and/or hybrid non-combat characters?