» Thu Dec 19, 2013 12:46 pm I've played Fallout 1, 3, and NV, and recently I picked up Skyrim. Leveling, perks, and RPG had always played a role in why I liked these sort of games, but I have noticed some limitations of each games' skill and perk system. At first, I was immediately in love with Skyrim's system, granting so much customization in how you could play a character. After a while though, it became apparent that many of the skills are complete grind fests and take away time from actually playing the game. Obviously, those are two separate franchises, but they both have their advantages when it came to skills and perks. I do have a solution that I feel works great in most, if not all, situations.
Let's talk about the problems first with each games' system. You can skip to my summary of problems or see the in-depth anolysis below:
Fallout 1 Pros: Heavy on RPG; character creation mattered Talents and skills had a huge impact on how you played Skill level mattered Cons: Locked you into a specific play style - tons of hours potentially wasted if you wanted to change your play style Game play didn't advance or change too greatly as you leveled - you still got out of situations in the same way Fallout 3 Pros: Fairly easy to be a flexible, jack-of-all trades character Easy to change play style on the fly Very little reason to restart a game unless you wanted a very specific perk or to be evil/good Cons: Character Creation mattered very little Some very useless skills Many perks were downright horrible, especially the skill stat boosters Still couldn't be perfect Jack-of-all-trades Skill level didn't matter in some cases Fallout NV Pros: You could still become very effective in many cases/weapons Easy to change play style on the fly Perks were greatly improved, most were very useful for the appropriate play style Skill level mattered much more Cons: Impossible to be a perfect jack-of-all-trades character, hard to be effective at every play style Character Creation still mattered little very little in the long-run Skyrim Pros: Very custom, in-depth play stlyes could be developed Some very cool perks Able to become "perfect" character Skill level was important Cons: Many skills had to be grinded, taking away from actually playing the game Character creation....LOL, what? Some very bland perks were needed to get better perks
Summary
I like it when character creation matters, but part of me also likes to be able to min-max over time. My solution will follow the philosophy that character creation should matter as you play the game, but if you invest enough time, you should be able to become a jack-of-all-trades. I used to be dead-set against that, but I realized the person can always limit themselves in how they want to play - the game doesn't have to do that. Also, Skyrim did a great job in letting players customize exactly how they want to play and in making skill level matter - let's keep that, but get rid of the grind-fest. So the goal here is to create a system that follows these guidelines:
- Character Creation should matter, but shouldn't box the player into one play style
- With enough time, the player can make the perfect character
- Avoid any grinding at all cost or at least make it entirely optional
- Players should be able to pick some very cool perks and be able to ignore the ones they don't want
The Solution
Finally! Here it is: Overall, it resembles a blend of the Fallout and Skyrim systems.
- All skills have some secondary effect. This could range from more damage with a given weapon type to getting better prices to everything in between.
- Skills level up independently from character level. When experience is gained, you always get character experience and bonus experience towards the skill that was used.
- When you gain a character level, you still gain some skill points and 1 perk point to spend.
- No perks that are redundant with the skill’s secondary effect. Skyrim was bad about this, especially with the magic schools.
- Perks are arranged in tiers. Not every skill gets a perk each tier, but some tiers have two or more perks for a given skill.
- Tiers unlock by character level, but some perks have a SPECIAL requirement that must be met. No perk has skill level requirements though (touched on later).
- Perks in later tiers don't require obtaining perks from earlier tiers. However, you must spend the perk point each time you get one.
- While no perks require a certain skill level to unlock, most, if not all, perks grant a small bonus plus an additional bonus dependent on skill (explained in detail later).
- Upon reaching 100 in a given skill, you can choose to reset it and gain either 1 SPECIAL point, some additional skill points, or 1 more perk point to spend. Skills are reset back to the amount determined by your SPECIAL.
- No level cap
Perks
To recap, perks have level requirements and sometimes SPECIAL requirements, but no skill requirements. This means that how you build your character is going to matter greatly, at least for a while. This also embraces some RPG elements as characters that are as dumb as a brick won’t be able to blaze through Science perks just because their skill in that is high. In the long-run though, with the ability to gain SPECIAL points upon resetting, you can eventually get every perk.
In my solution, perks grant an instant bonus and an additional bonus dependent on the associated skill. This solves a ton of issues. You’ll get instant gratification from getting a perk, but if you are skilled in that area, you get even more bang for your buck. At any given tier, this opens up the amount of perks that are appealing to you, even if you can’t use them effectively immediately. By having a standard bonus, the perk retains some effectiveness even when you reset a skill while the additional bonus helps embrace RPG elements.
Some skills won’t need to be tweaked. Some will require a change or two and other may require more creative elements. Here’s some examples that helps illustrate my ideas. Note that any numbers included are just for the sake of an example. They are not intended to be perfectly balanced:
1) Jury Rigging – requires Level 10 and 3 Intelligence You can repair any item with a roughly similar item. Jury Rigging won’t need any tweaking because your Repair skill already governs how much an item is improved when you repair it. So if you take this perk with a low Repair skill, sure you can repair any similar items together, but you won’t be as effective at it. 2) Swift Learner – requires Level 2 and 6 Intelligence You get 10% more experience plus .2% more experience for each Science skill level The standard part is the same as most other Fallout games. 10% bonus to getting experience is not bad, but if you have a Science level of 100, you’ll get a total of 30% more experience – now that’s fast learning! 3) Animal Friend – requires Level 8 and 6 Charisma Most animals are no longer hostile towards you. Speech skill level increases the magnitude of this effect, making larger animals like bears, radscorpions, and even deathclaws no longer hostile. Also, there’s a chance based on Speech skill level that the animal with come to your aid in a fight. This one took quite a few changes, but this skill is vastly improved over its predecessors now. It takes advantage of “magnitude”, an element from Skyrim. Magnitude is independent from level so that that skill never loses its effect. Mad cows, dogs, and rats won’t attack you ever with it and as your speech skill takes off, you’ll be able to calm larger and larger animals. For the aid part, I’d suggest having the chance reduced depending on the animal’s magnitude level. At 100 Speech, rats and dogs always come to your aid, but bears might only have a 75% chance, radscorpions a 50% chance, and deathclaws a 33% chance.
That’s all I have. I hope you enjoy the idea, but I also welcome suggestions and criticisms. In my mind, this system work really well while avoiding obvious flaws from previous games.
