I remember it before that. Not everything of note only happened this decade; and the rest being old-people-stuff.

Any Dev that said the PC is you, is fibbing. It's clearly not the player, and they have no way of matching the PC to the player, and they are possibly very narrow minded then, seeing as how there are positively players out there that don't want to play themselves in a game; they play to escape that. When the PC is not the player, the PC has had a life, has learned a few things, has an aptitude or a knack that is not the player's handiwork, they should even exceed the player's ability at it. Percentile allows this; learn by doing does not.

So you remember RPGs before D&D, which is widely considered the first real RPG?

Please, do go on.

I remember playing D&D and not ever pretending the character was me, that was some strange news I learned about online.


If I rolled a Fighter and gave him a name, and he starts out a trained infantry worthy combatant [1st level]. That's certainly not me starting out as an inexperienced peasant turned fighter. What do you say about elves and halfling PCs? That's supposed to be the player too? Would it not have to be human only, and the other races merely set decoration for the adventure?

Game streamlining tends to make some incredibly broad and self-righteous assumptions about the player, and hem them into that reduced play-space; and I don't mean the open world. The beauty of the older RPGs, is that unlike the ones we get these days, the potential characters one can create in them are not ALL shoehorned into being a Rambo-Avatar, like modern devs unquestioningly assume; [with apparently only rare exception].

That's where the whole "idealized version of oneself" thing comes into play.

Funny, because I recall older RPGs usually being so poorly balanced that you were shoehorned into basically playing the same character every time, because basically nothing else worked.

On the other hand, Skyrim offers far more effective gameplay styles then past TES games did, and there's far more effective gameplay builds in Fo3 and NV then there were in past games.

Indeed, its fairly sad the way often stated to be the best to play Fo2 is to get PA right at the beginning, and then not care about anything else really, whereas most modern RPGs have a "play whatever way you want because they all work to roughly the same degree" to them. Being rambo-gods works, but so does not doing so.

Sure they do. Just not the way that would suit you. And no I'm not changing any arguments, just providing examples that might mitigate the problems at hand. If an accuracy increment every 10th skillpoint means nothing, then you adjust it mean something. The "false by default" argument does nothing. The lockpicking example removes the threshold to attempt and gives the ability to try every lock, and succeed at it (though without it depending on how good you are with a minigame), making every single point you put in it to count for that success "immediately" not just "eventually" as it is now.

I'd be happy if they retained the skills even at least as 1-10 scale and gave every skill level a profound enough effect (I've made countless suggestions towards that end). But that doesn't seem to be the case here either; as far as we know, there's only perks (and be they considered as skills or perks or skillerks, the otherone is lost).

No, they simply do not fix the previously mentioned problem of the already existing skill powers being too weak due to being spread across too many levels.

It would solve a problem of skills not offering enough powers themselves, but that's not was being discussed.

You are conflating two entirely different problems as being the same, and then solving one instead of the other which is being discussed.

That's what I mean, why assume an idealized version, why not a far more limited version? The strange truth of it is, that in RPGs, the weaker, quirky characters are often far more memorable and fun to play... unless for that player who is only looking for power.


One of the most fun [Fallout] characters I played was a 90 pound weakling diplomat that was so likable and convincing, that he convinced the mariposa supermutants that he was a secret operative for the Unity, and had the run of the base; they all left him alone. But he could talk to them, even overheard one mutant explaining a recipe for Rat surprise to another... Eventually he left, and went to Junktown... You don't get that playing the Dovahkiin all the time.

I don't know man. Already existing skill powers being too weak because they're spread too wide being a problen not being fixed through readjustment and possible increase of effect does not compute with me. I kinda went with the assumption that the discussion was about fixing in general, not specifically about keeping the weak effects we already have and then trying to justify the long ranges they - the specific they - are spread in (which I was not trying to do; and which makes no sense at all to even discuss) -- but if the latter was really the case, then sure, I misread and there's a problem there.

Except that's not whats actually going on in your scenarios, in your given scenarios all you are doing is adding bonus powers on top of the broken ones and saying that fixes the broken ones when it does nothing to effect the broken ones really.

The conversation was based on fixing the ineffectiveness of individual skill levels not adding any sort of effective increase to your character.

In your gun example, adding in bonus weapon accuracy every 10 levels would just mean that 1 point of accuracy would have to be removed from the natural increase in accuracy one gets from every skill level, in order to provide a bigger bonus to accuracy every 10 levels, while still keeping balance.

At that point, why not just reduce the skill to 1-10, since those 10 levels are the only ones that offer a bonus to accuracy large enough to be noticeable? Or better yet, why not just remove the skill entirely and make a 10 level perk? The 10 level perk achieves the exact same thing as the skill is doing now anyways, offering 10 levels of increases to weapon accuracy that actually matter, now you just removed a "skill" that had no reason to exist anymore, and merged the effects with another system, whilst still keeping all the same gameplay mechanics as before.

Keeping the skill at that point just becomes "for the sake of having skills in order to maintain a traditional looking character system" rather then "because skills are actually needed or do anything", and that is just pointless.

Longer scales are meant to be more fine-grained. The effect usually comes off from the knowledge that putting in even one point does immediately do something towards a better (not that you still need 19 or 24 or what ever more points for the upcoming effect to ever take place, but that the progression is constant). That's the point. I did mention VATS with the guns example (and the accuracy increments as a mitigating effect for the real time situation), I did mention every point counting towards the success of the check with the lockpicking attempt (and I did imply "no minigame"). Percentige checks in dialog... That there is a gradual immediate effect coming from every point instead of filling the emptiness between the thresholds, even if there still are these chunk increases at certain intervals. This is also what I meant that the solution doesn't suit you, these smaller increments don't seem to be what you are looking for while they would certainly do something for me provided the rest of the design supports that sort of system appropriately (percentage checks). I've played a good number of games where it works the way I prefer, computer and PnP. One shouldn't interpret it merely as a game of numbers to begin with -- it's not a sudoku table to win.

My solution is not to cut the emptiness away, but to fill it with something (and in the case of percentage checks, it's not really about "more power", but "more utility"). I would be a-ok with skills having 1-10 ranges with every level having bigger increase in character effectivity if it is handled well (had that been the case with Fallout 4...). No problem. But I don't think that's the only possible solution. Systems design is not that rigid that it would be an either-or here.

In any case, I'm off.

My Theory

Perks replace skills leveling wise

SPECIAL points replace Perks leveling wise

In practice every level you get a perk every 2 0r 3 you get a SPECIAL point.

An aside Is no level cap conjecture or confirmed?

Conjecture.

Though highly probable.

No, there have been a lot of discussions about that very matter. And I was at one point suggesting that skills should be converted into perks. I later came to a different conclusion, but I don't claim to have the Holy Grail anyway.

You have to invent a whole new system that's smooth, easy to understand, offers great variety and complexity and grants rewards/consequences for your decisions. It's not simply a matter of cutting something.

Another thing to consider.

Bethesda seems to have taken cues from Vegas (Las not New) in regards to leveling in their games.

Like a slot machine there are a steady stream of rewards to keep the player playing.While skill points are a valid reward they ,If allocated poorly, may not seem tangible.

Going to a perks/SPECIAL point variant eliminates this while staying true to the spirit of the original games.

Both Bethesda and Vegas have made a great deal of money using this approach. It may not be perfect but it is a business.