This is the second threat about skill failure and possible alternatives since the first reached it's post limit.
You can still view the http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1028603 and what has been suggested so far.


To quickly summarize this is about the systems of Morrowind (skills can fail at random), Oblivions (always succeed) or a alternative system which instead has a very broad spectrum of results and "failure" being actually represented by actual failure or a result being to grossly different/minor to the intended result.
I won't repost everything especially since there have been a lot of different ideas but you can look up the previous thread.

New ideas for alternatives or variations of the existing systems are always welcome.

I would recommend changing the poll a bit...a considerable amount of the pointless arguing from the last thread came from disagreements on the meaning of "random." Morrowind's failure still relied on certain factors like skill or difficulty of the action, and as such wasn't truly random. Likewise, more sophisticated failure systems would still almost always be equally random, just with a greater number of factors and outcomes. Misunderstanding that led to a lot of people praising or demonizing "random" without even actually knowing what it meant.

I'd suggest labeling Morrowind as something like "either/or dice rolls" or somesuch, and the "not at random" part of alternatives as, say, "greater outcome range" or something.

Ahh good call, i'll ask a mod to change it.

EDIT:
Poll options change, thanks Rohugh :thumbsup:

As I "voted" in the last poll, so will I "vote" in this one-- None of the Above.

I'd go so far as to predict that, if you were to make that a choice, it would win.

*edit* -- Just because I'm regretting that last statement, and because I'd like to see this thread do better than the last one did-- please clarify for us all Daniel-- is the choice between the Morrowind system, the Oblivion system and AN alternative, or between the Morrowind system, the Oblivion system and YOUR alternative?

A alternative way of course, yea I DO deffend my ideas a lot but really because i think they might work but that doesn't mean other ideas can't be brought in here too. I don't really aim to WIN a discussion, after all, this is about what can make the game better and not who won the "my idea is better" contest .
I should maybe clarify too, I'm not against skills failing in a way, i just don't want to base it on a statistic/dice roll that can "randomly" land on "OK / fail" depending on the likelyhood of a success, but rather several factors that play into it and rather have a looooong bar of possible outcomes between OK and fail.

Oh and i mainly point to the first post because, well, it is one way to explain a possible alternative rather than saying "think of something new" with no base.

Okay-- it might be a waste of time and effort, but I'm going to try to get through to you on this.

It has appeared throughout this that you are sincerely misapprehending the nature of "random" in a role-playing game, and by refusing to consider it AT ALL, based solely on your misapprehension, you're handicapping any effort to come up with a workable system. I might well be wrong in that anolysis, but I don't think so.

See-- here's the thing....

Let's say, for the sake of example, that your character is attempting a notably comples skill at which he is notably poor-- let's say, trying to pick a very hard lock with a security skill of 5. There is-- there has to be-- at least some possibility that the attempt will fail outright. Even if that possibility is 1 out of 100, it exists.

Okay-- there are ONLY two possible ways to deal with that chance of failure. Either your character will fail on, say, the 42nd attempt out of each 100, or he will fail RANDOMLY. There is no third alternative. ALL outcomes that are not precisely defined in advance are, statistically, random.

Now-- as near as I can tell, the things that you refer to as "random" and that you oppose so vehemently are instances in which you (the player) do everything exactly right and your character has sufficient skill to succeed, but then you just spontaneously fail anyway. You're not alone in that. I would presume that everyone opposes (or at least is frustrated by) such a system. But that's NOT the only way in which "random" events occur, and that's NOT the sort of thing that people are suggesting when they argue in favor of "random" failures or of "dice rolls." Again-- ALL events that are not precisely defined and scheduled are, statistically, random. If your character is going to (statistically, and on average) fail on 1 out of 100 attempts, you don't know in advance whether that's going to be the 17th attempt or the 32nd attempt or the 83rd attempt-- you don't know if he's going to fail twice within 10 attempts then never fail again for 300-- it is, statistically, RANDOM.

So when someone posts here that they favor a "dice roll" system with "random" failures, contrary to your vehemently repeated assertions, that does not necessarily mean that they're advocating a precise duplicate of the Morrowind system. The odds are that they're simply arguing, correctly in my estimation, that there has to be at least some failure and that, AXIOMATICALLY, that failure has to be defined "randomly."

Unless you really do support a system in which either:
1) You NEVER fail, no matter what, or
2) You fail on a precise and predictable schedule,
then you too support a system in which failure is, statistically, random.

Again-- there is no third alternative.


Now-- if you disagree with that anolysis of the notion of "random," that's fine. I would suggest though that if you do, you post your own definition of the term, as precisely as possible. That would hopefully go a long way toward heading off the sort of pointless arguments that derailed the last thread.....

I would like Morrowind's style back; except I think there should be a more valid reason to why you failed (such as low Magicka or something similar) rather than just 'random'. Oh and I apologise for voting for the Oblivion style- I accidently clicked it :facepalm:

A better system than some dice roll is simply "at Blade 100, all sword strikes start instantly and occur at the maximum speed dictated by your stats and those of the weapon. At Blade 5, there can be a slight lag between pressing attack and the actual attack starting, and the speed may be as little as, say, 50% of the maximum. This allows the AI time to dodge or block more at low levels, while we don't have any magic space-warping non-hits. If the sword's reach passes through an NPC that is not blocking, it is a hit, as it should be." You can debate about the effects of a strike, but any system that results in the reach of the sword passing through the NPC without making contact is flawed.

Therefore, your only option is to allow the NPC AI extra time to make the "oh, he's attacking. Maybe I should retreat two steps" decision, and then script out the AI in such a way that this path stands a decent chance of being taken.

But there's pretty much no reason to go back to a system that APPEARS to work anything like, say, Daggerfall (magically miss!) It's a sure way to hurt the chances of seeing TES VI or VII to offer up what would be a major regression to most consumers. Remember, making TES games is hardly a free exercise.

Now i DON'T want to make it another discussion about the meaning of randomness but if you want to narrow it down, and PLEASE understand don't get that wrong, the system I'd suggest has no "failures", so it it pretty close to Oblivions, BUT there is a FAR greater variance of the possible outcomes of which a lot COULD be considered a failure.

Let me try to explain with the lock picking, first of my idea is based on a total different system, not Oblivions "pin hopper" or morrowinds "click and watch" style, it still has player interaction though.
In that system you have to move the pins too but they are not visible to you, you can just hear and see when a pin is in it's "sweet spot" represented by a click and the lockpick "shaking" a little.
When your skill is fairly low your character still is quite a clumse so finding that sweet spot is hard, in game that's represented by the spot being very small so finding the right position isn't easy. Even when you do you still have to fix it in place so just finding it is no good, this could be done by finding the spot, holding the button till you hear another click meaning it's locked in place an doing that for every pin.

Now the difference is the locks complexity and your skill, a complex lock will have more pins (maybe like a bank vaults key that even is double sided) and they are much more fine tuned so the sweet spot is harder to find. A very simple lock might only have 3 pins and it's made quite roughly so it's not even that hard to crack for a newbie. This means you not only have to place more pins correctly on a complex lock but the mechanics are also finer so the exact spot for the lockpick is harder to find.
The skill has the same influence, the higher your skill is the bigger that spot becomes since your character can feel it better, kinda like when trying to read braille at first you just feel "some dots" and with training can identify their position better.

However now you say "just give it enough time and you can crack any lock", not exactly. When on very low skill the exact point is pretty much nonexistent so a lock that's far to complex is nearly impossible to open. Then some locks might require special toos to open so you can't do it with a normal lockpick. Also in the time it takes you can get caught (no time freeze on lockpicking). Trying to pick a lock while very unskilled is also noisy and leaves marks on the lock so someone can be attracted by the clicky and crackly noises (specially house owners who's front door you try to open) and people can notice someone tried to/did mess with the lock and be alert, so even when you're in the house already people can be aware of it and search you. So low skill = you're more of an attention magnet == not good for a lock picker.
However your skill also has one influence, your character can "keep cool" longer. The longer you try to pick a lock the more nervous your character gets which again results in the pick spot for every pin shrinking making it harder. Even worse when your character runs out of stamina it can happen that he drops the already picked pins again making all progress useless = effectively failed.

This would make skill progression important to crack more complexe locks, you wan't be able to crack the banks vault at low level but even at high level it won't be childs play.


Well this got kinda long.
Hmm well i guess i could say this, if you submit something maybe say how you imagine a certain aspect to work since, with the lockpick example, the mentioned base systms are very different.

Thats only an argument against something different because *gasp* it might be better. Oblivion's combat system was smoother and more fluid than Morrowind, its just that the AI didn't make full use of it, a problem thats prevailant in a lot of video games. If they can't address that problem (and I doubt that) only than would I even concider returning to dice rolls (and only if they have animations for dodges, misses and so forth).

A further argument against random fails... MMO's use em, do you really want TES to be just another MMO?

The delay idea sounds ok, would fit into a previous idea that low skill also means "low confidence" in that skill.
A thought on that, at high skill it's easier to "redirect" an attack, for example swinging a heavy hammer. At low skill you can only directly swing at where you aimed and not really change the direction in mid swing, with higher skill you might be able to pull it around when a enemy side staps and STILL hit him.

Also, might bring it up again, it was suggested that you don't have a aiming crosshair bu a aiming circle for ALL weapons so, unless you're very skilled already, your attacks can be very off center therefor messing up the point of impact and angle (though this CAN result in a lucky shot too). Various factors like movement direction, kind of attack, speed and character condition as well as enemies relative movements and position would play into this

That's all I need to know.

Best of luck with the new thread.

don't kill this thread please don't kill this thread-

Ok, sorry, i dont really wanna keep that up but that was borderline quote mining, from that you coudl have very well said "i want OBLIVIONS system" since you cut away ANY explenation i gave...

But for the sake of keeping this sane, ok i won't answer to you anymore.

Daniel your system would be brilliant for ranged weapons and daggers, but for everything else, I just disagree, but for those weapons, I would love your system

Uhm why wouldn't it work for other weapons?

For spears the aiming circle would make a precise thrust harder, for heavy weapons it's harder controlling them in mid swing or getting them to the right hight...
You say it works for daggers, so extrmely close AND for ranged so high distance... so why not for the stuff in between range wise? Or even closer, fist fighting.

Well for piercing weapons it would work, you can't pick where you swing a weapon at a precise point

That applies to all weapons really, try swinging a hammer really wide and hit a speciffic point, it's easier with a light weapon but harder with bigger ones. It can even apply to hand to hand combat especially if you use a lot of fast punches or kicks since they become less aimed and more "clobbering" away at someone.

Oh and big point i forgot about evasions:
Same with damage it shouldn't be universal but actually dependant on the individual location.
What this means is certain body parts are easier to pull away and evade getting hit thatn others, for example if your arm is about to get hit you can easily pull it back but if your body is about to get hit it's a little harder and requires more strength to pull out of the way fast. This way it is a bit harder to hit certain areas because your opponent can pull those out of harms way faster. This would especially apply to your opponents head, it's easy to duck or lean your head so hitting it is harder.

This and evasion in general would also largely depend the fighting stance, fighting more offensive reduces your evasion in favor for atting, fighting defensive increases evasion.

Dan, I think if you made a chance to critically fail (0 damage, very rare thought, extremely rare, maybe .5% chance), and made this a mod, it'd get a lot of people.

From what i've read about this idea, I can see it would be a very messy combat with lots of animations going on at the screen and it would all be very confusinng. And how about damage? Is it like oblivions where you do little damage at low skill and much damage at high skill or like morrowinds where you always do full damage when charged all the way?

Morrowind had random fails and it was not an MMO, so this "argument" just does not seem valid to me.

A delay between a button press and your characters actions would not solve anything. It'd just be very frustrating.

People misunderstand "random fails" and "dice rolls". Ever played oblivion, and been unlucky to get staggered when blocking by an enemy attack, making you lose. That's exactly the same thing that happens when "miss" an attack in morrowind, the difference is that in the oblivion case it feels realistic, in the morrowind case, it doesn't, and is very frustrating if you lose the battle because of it.
It's the same thing that makes you miss because of a gun that has a spread circle in an FPS. The problem with dice rolls isn't how they work, but implementation.
So by that logic, oblivion's combat stat system is just a simplified version of that of morrowind, and is for the same purpose, both game are essentially FPS games with stats in combat, and there shouldn't be a difference between stats that change the attack value, and stats that determine fails. But that's not true, because oblivion's system, in theory almost the same is much more easily exploited by the player's superior skill in controlling a character, unbalancing the game.

i pretty much agree with heavymetalarchmage

an easy way to do it is to make the weapons move slower, giving mroe opportunity for the enemy to dodge, however this also works for the player, being able to dodge/block a low skilled opponent
although the 'delay' after pressing before the action actually happens would get frustrating, however just slowing the attacking animation or something could work.
for ranged weapons it might just take longer to draw back the bow string or something (as a slower flying arrow doesn't make sense)

Depends on how you think of "delay". At 60 fps, a one frame delay is .01667 seconds. That's fairly "negligable" for a human. Adding a full tenth? that's pushing it. but 1-2 frames at very low skill levels would barely be noticable. Yes, you could tell if you moved from a high level character to a new one. (ie, one who has enough skill to have a 0 frame delay to one that has a worst case 3 frame delay (that is, about .05 seconds, or *still* quicker than the old junior high reaction time record to start and stop my stopwatch). But it probably isn't enough to be annoying if you cover it with a slight animation (or slow the backswing for it!)