[deleted]

[MasterSmithFandango]

Wiz8 was the bestest.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

This easily creates a death-spiral for skills. If it's not useful enough to use regularlly it will only grow worse and worse compared to other skills.

Interesting way to put that, but ideally there should be no underutilized skills in a game. Unfortunately, those games don't exist.

 

[laclongquan]

I like how the leveling is in Underrail and Fallout 1/2, But I'd like it to where you could only increase skills that you 'used' in the previous level.

Used how? Because the simplest workaround is that you use every skill at least once before level up and that restriction is so much scrap~

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Used how? Because the simplest workaround is that you use every skill at least once before level up and that restriction is so much scrap~

If you found a way to use all of the skills without leveling up, then I guess congratz to you. You shouldn't be able to increase up your gambling skill if you have never actually gambled any to improve.

 

[laclongquan]

Gambling once at smallest allowable threshold should be enough. in F2, it amount to 5 dorra, and can be done as early as the Den (I THINK Klamath has gamble but I am not sure). Mind you, it mean two or three level you can not raise it, but early level should concentrate on combat skills to stay alive anyway.

No no, the restrictions only work on early level and early game. After that, it's so much paperweight.

 

[Mastermind]

Bad systems
Fallout 3 was bad. Could have damn near top score in everything by the time the game ended. Too many points, and INT just adds more

That's not due to the level-up system, it's due to the huge number of skill books found in-game.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Good systems
Fallout 1 & 2 were good, limited points allowing for different playthroughs. INT was op, though.

No skill difficulty curve, underutilized skills, especially outdoorsman.
I'd say it's between good and bad.

 

[Daemongar]

That's not due to the level-up system, it's due to the huge number of skill books found in-game.

Well, I don't want to sound like piling on to Fallout 3 for KKK, and hey, I finished it. I felt the leveling up system kind of just gave the player too much. A perk every level and up to 20 skill points per level (+bonus perk points) seemed to be too fast a power curve. They changed tag skills, diminished the need to max out weapon skills, and added a perk every level. I like straight-line growth or slow growth, but too much of a good thing is... too much. It could have been balanced better with a fixed 10 skill points per level and some other enhancements. Int is already powerful enough, it doesn't need to contribute skill points in this game. I could further go into VATS to demonstrate how quickly one could be "master of the Wasteland" even without meta knowledge of gaming the system.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Well, I don't want to sound like piling on to Fallout 3 for KKK, and hey, I finished it. I felt the leveling up system kind of just gave the player too much. A perk every level and up to 20 skill points per level (+bonus perk points) seemed to be too fast a power curve. They changed tag skills, diminished the need to max out weapon skills, and added a perk every level. I like straight-line growth or slow growth, but too much of a good thing is... too much. It could have been balanced better with a fixed 10 skill points per level and some other enhancements. Int is already powerful enough, it doesn't need to contribute skill points in this game. I could further go into VATS to demonstrate how quickly one could be "master of the Wasteland" even without meta knowledge of gaming the system.

When I played a month or two ago, I felt like my character was still weak as fuck even as a level 20 with max int + skillbooks + all the bobbleheads. Maybe I just played on a higher difficulty level or something, I was still getting smashed by Mutant overlords and shit.

 

[Mastermind]

Fallout 3's attributes were pretty terrible and underpowered, with few exceptions you just need them for perk requirements. Int in particular is shit precisely because you can max all skills without it. I also don't see the problem with a perk every level, the more shit I have to pick every level the happier I am. My only issue with that is that if you exclude the useless + skills perks you'll probably end up getting all of the decent ones, which means there aren't a lot of avenues for specialization since between that and the skillbooks you'll be good at everything. They should've removed the + skills perks and greatly increased the variety of the rest of them. I generally prefer to have access to more skills by the end of the game in a 1 character game but I don't need to be able to master everything. 40-50% of the skillset is the sweet spot for me.

 

[Daemongar]

No skill difficulty curve, underutilized skills, especially outdoorsman.
I'd say it's between good and bad.

Well, I said it was good, not great. For all it's warts, it also gave the player tag skills which increased dramatically key skills but made others slower to raise and your initial tag weapon is probably not the weapon you'll end the game using. It gave Perks every three levels and it was fun to get them - they were infrequent enough that getting one was a moment of quiet contemplation. Skill points were too generous based on Int though, and for that it's not perfect. Outdoorsman, traps, and gambling were underutilized, but overall it would be pretty difficult to master everything without a greater level of game knowledge than a few runthroughs, and it was the rare unlucky slob who tagged any of those. I am certain the system would have been perfect if they had the GURPS license, but overall, I think they did a fairly nice job.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

and it was the rare unlucky slob who tagged any of those.

When I played Fallout for the first time, I ended up making a 'stupid' character and couldn't understand why my character was saying gibberish. It was... frustrating for a 12 year old newbie.

 

[Daemongar]

When I played a month or two ago, I felt like my character was still weak as fuck even as a level 20 with max int + skillbooks + all the bobbleheads. Maybe I just played on a higher difficulty level or something, I was still getting smashed by Mutant overlords and shit.

Maybe you are, I played the game and found the first gigantic mutant outside Three Dogs crib. Pretty much ran around kiting the mutant while blaring away on his legs. No VATs. To be honest, this is first playthrough talking, it was pretty easy to use the environment to get away and heal, then come back and drop mines or whatever. The first one I met I could just run into ruins, heal, then come back out and try to cripple it. Think I was level 7 or so, but I don't think it would matter much.

You know, that fight was tough, but dammit if they didn't give you a big reward for winning! After the fight

Spoiler

you get to felate Three Dog

They did add a lot of challenge in the expansions, though.

 

[Daemongar]

When I played Fallout for the first time, I ended up making a 'stupid' character and couldn't understand why my character was saying gibberish. It was... frustrating for a 12 year old newbie.

May have been hard to see then, but a run-through of Fallout 1 with low INT is practically mandatory! The game wouldn't be the same without that, as much as it may have frustrated you. But hey, if they made it so that every char behaved the same way with the same Int, you might not be here now.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Maybe you are, I played the game and found the first gigantic mutant outside Three Dogs crib. Pretty much ran around kiting the mutant while blaring away on his legs. No VATs. To be honest, this is first playthrough talking, it was pretty easy to use the environment to get away and heal, then come back and drop mines or whatever. The first one I met I could just run into ruins, heal, then come back out and try to cripple it. Think I was level 7 or so, but I don't think it would matter much.

You know, that fight was tough, but dammit if they didn't give you a big reward for winning! After the fight

Spoiler

you get to felate Three Dog

They did add a lot of challenge in the expansions, though.

Those guys were figuratively 'easy' in the fact that they were slow, and you could do your tactic. The guy that I'm talking about,

Spoiler

was a dude in one of the museums where you have to pick up the satellite or w/e.

, he had a tri-laser gun and ripped through me without remorse and could target from miles away lol. Had like a bunch of HP too and eventually I just stealth-boyed past him and got the objective.

 

[Daemongar]

Those guys were figuratively 'easy' in the fact that they were slow, and you could do your tactic. The guy that I'm talking about,

Spoiler

was a dude in one of the museums where you have to pick up the satellite or w/e.

, he had a tri-laser gun and ripped through me without remorse and could target from miles away lol. Had like a bunch of HP too and eventually I just stealth-boyed past him and got the objective.

I did pretty much the exact same thing, but being a greedy XP slob that I am, I always carried about 50 land mines at all time. I did come back and kill that mutant. I'd run backwards and drop land mines like crazy, or leave a pile around doorways when being shot from a distance. Yes, it's cheap, but I picked it up pretty quickly in ... that Police HQ at the beginning of the game.

 

[deuxhero]

Trainers are my favorite idea when the world design support them. For example Gothic/Gothic 2 centers around a few towns you keep going back to and most trainers will logically be around those while Morrowind had all the settlements be fairly easy to reach from one-another, even if some of the best trainers are in the middle of nowhere you should always be able to find a trainer for a skill with reasonable travel (though the base game only had 2 spear trainers, one of which was behind a locked door next to a bunch of guards, and no way to tell a trainer's skill level) however it couldn't just be copy-pasted in something like Fallout where you wander, possibly on a time-limit, and often never go back to towns once you are done and some quest solutions could very reasonably lock off trainers with no replacement. Combining it with books (the ancient scroll allows you to learn some techniques without a trainer) could be an interesting refinement.

Jade Empire had an interesting system where you could pay almost any merchant in the game to teach you something that helped your marital arts (be it actual martial arts techniques or wax-on/wax-off style lessons you could apply to combat), but it was implemented terribly so there wasn't a point in buying any of them (all but the quest rewards and a few end-game ones increased derived stats you start with hundreds of by single digit amounts while not having equally low prices, not that silver had any real use in the game).

The Jade Empire in Style mod however does have an interesting system where, in true martial arts protagonist style, you can learn techniques by watching your enemies use them in battle. The fact that you pay currency for this process, which is just "silver" in JE, is a bit odd, but it could work when the currency has some practical mystic application like "nanites" (System Shock) or "Mystic Ore" (Gothic) or using some different kind of cost (Skill points?).

Interesting way to put that, but ideally there should be no underutilized skills in a game. Unfortunately, those games don't exist.

I meant it more that a skill would be too low level to be useful, not always useless.

If a guns character wants to invest in hand-to-hand for silent attacks and fighting in places he can't carry his assault rifle (I think the no-weapons places were one of NV's best original mechanics, especially as most games just flat out prevent you from attacking in such places) he likely isn't going to get much use out of low level hand-to-hand stuff and thus never be able to progresse it even if it at mid-levels it made you a DBZ character that could fly and shoot laser beams making it the best skill in the game and rendered guns obsolete.

 

[laclongquan]

Fallout New Vegas got a good system going. Though the rate of leveling up is too fast, and you get past early level quick and overleveled for the quests outside of NV, you can eliminate that with a slower leveling up mod.

 

[Alex]

Gambling once at smallest allowable threshold should be enough. in F2, it amount to 5 dorra, and can be done as early as the Den (I THINK Klamath has gamble but I am not sure). Mind you, it mean two or three level you can not raise it, but early level should concentrate on combat skills to stay alive anyway.

No no, the restrictions only work on early level and early game. After that, it's so much paperweight.

It isn't so difficult, really. I think the real issue is that if you make the system actually matter, you will eventually wonder why you didn't use a learn by doing system. For instance, we could give each skill test a "weight". This weight might be proportional to the difficulty and effort the character needs to complete the task. Then, you could add up all the weight the character gets from actions, and limit the maximum skill level accordingly. If you wanted, you could have higher skill points actually requiring actions of a greater weight. For instance, to go over 100 in a skill, you might need actions with weight greater than 5. Since these actions are harder, the player will need to actually invest in the skill before pursuing them.

But again, why not go all the way with a learn by doing system if you are doing all this?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Well, I said it was good, not great. For all it's warts, it also gave the player tag skills which increased dramatically key skills but made others slower to raise and your initial tag weapon is probably not the weapon you'll end the game using.

It allowed to quickly gain hypercompetency allowing 95% eyeshots, though.

Skill points were too generous based on Int though, and for that it's not perfect.

I liked skill points based on Int. Very sensible.

Outdoorsman, traps, and gambling were underutilized, but overall it would be pretty difficult to master everything without a greater level of game knowledge than a few runthroughs, and it was the rare unlucky slob who tagged any of those.

IIRC gambling allowed to gather a lot of money much faster. Lack of certain level of Outdoorsman should really fuck the character up and there should be some places that are simply unsurvivable without Traps skill (maybe the lower levels of The Glow?).

 

[gunman]

Like Wasteland you say?

Haven't played Wasteland yet

 

[Durandal]

I like a system where you pay a trainer to teach you in a skill, you keep using that skill until it hits a certain cap, and then you pay the trainer again for him to unlock a new tier in said skill, which you have to train yourself to the cap again, et cetera.
I forgot which game did this though.

 

[laclongquan]

Isnt that Might and magic 8? It got trainers for each tittle-level, and you invest your skill points until you hit the threshold then you find trainers to get the next tittle and remove that cap.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

When I played a month or two ago, I felt like my character was still weak as fuck even as a level 20 with max int + skillbooks + all the bobbleheads. Maybe I just played on a higher difficulty level or something, I was still getting smashed by Mutant overlords and shit.

That's because super mutant overlords are overpowered stupidly balanced shit added with the DLC to "fix" how easy the game was before that. Same with ghoul reavers and albino scorpions, hp sponges with thousands of hp and a bonus of +30 unblockable damage.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I generally like an 'all of the above' approach. ToME 2.3 had a great system like that- levels gave you generic stats, as well as points to spend, on a skill tree that included both generic stats like stealth or combat, or on specific abilities like walking through trees or the ability to hit more than one monster in a single combat round.