The existence of "traps" in advancement. A problem?

[T. Reich]

I think it's one of the drawbacks of Deus Ex' pretty good design. There's probably no part where you need swimming to succeed, be it optional or mandatory. It's always possible to substitute it with other skills or some equipment. In turn that makes swimming a bit underwhelming, since most substitutes have more potential applications than the swimming skill.
You could however turn JC into Aquaman, if you wanted.

Same goes for environmental trainng and medicine as well. They are only occasionally useful, but ultimately are a pointless waste of skill points, if you're a power-player.

I take a fairly easy-going attitute towards such kills as long as the rest of the system in a game is decent, for two reasons:
1. It's pretty hard to balance everything to be useful, so if most of everything is useful and fairly balanced, the devs can already be congratulated on the job well done.
2. I'll powergame the shit out of the game system anyway.

 

[Sacred82]

An example often mentioned are the feats in 3.5 that offer a +2 to a skill. Other examples are spells, which lack an apparent practical use.

if it is indeed a trap, then it's shit. However there are a myriad ways to make a maxed out skill worthwhile for the player, especially if there are no rolls involved.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The Buck Rogers games have a couple of skills related to spaceships, which are then mentioned in the Reference Card to not have any use in the game(s).

Also, most of the Traits in the Legend of Grimrock games suck pretty badly, but they're more of "one-off" boosts rather than skills that can be improved via skillpoints.

 

[rohand]

It's been a long time since I've played Darklands, but it also had some useless skills, didn't it?

 

[Norfleet]

The other thread about useless spells, made me think, in general, about all useless powers/skills you can actually have in many RPGs. Supposing enough "good" advancement options exist, is it a problem if a RPG system offers a few of the so-called "traps"? ( i.e, terrible character advancement options, even if sometimes they look good.)

The only reason "traps" in advancement exist is because advancement is somehow finite and irreversible. Real life has advancement traps also: You end up with a degree which only qualifies you to go "Would you like fries with that?". The difference is that you can always just go get another one. In games, however, this is often a one-way trap: if you study a useless skill, your capacity to learn skills is permanently reduced forever by having learned this useless skill. You can't just realize it was useless, shrug, and spend no further effort on it, because your character's brain-ROM has only so much space on it and once a skill is burned into it, can never be overwritten. This, of course, is totally unrealistic. Real people don't have specifically-finite, indelible skill sheets that they allocate point by point, and absolutely nobody becomes a better person by doing this.

 

[T. Reich]

The only reason "traps" in advancement exist is because advancement is somehow finite and irreversible. Real life has advancement traps also: You end up with a degree which only qualifies you to go "Would you like fries with that?". The difference is that you can always just go get another one. In games, however, this is often a one-way trap: if you study a useless skill, your capacity to learn skills is permanently reduced forever by having learned this useless skill. You can't just realize it was useless, shrug, and spend no further effort on it, because your character's brain-ROM has only so much space on it and once a skill is burned into it, can never be overwritten. This, of course, is totally unrealistic. Real people don't have specifically-finite, indelible skill sheets that they allocate point by point, and absolutely nobody becomes a better person by doing this.

Not quite true with regards to "limited" capacity to learn skills. Majority of the games allow a good deal of leeway that could come in form of easily-grindable exp, or "train-with-use" skill system, or simply being generous with skill-points. Some are too generous to the point of being broken. Fallout: New Vegas is a good example of that - a non-modded version of the game provides you with so many skill-points and such a high character level cap and experience gain speed that you're guaranteed to max out all of your skills and experience levels, often way before the actual end of the game. Arcanum was also quite generous with skills despite there being literally dozens of near-useless possible choices, so if you focused on something you still were good to go.

IRL your capacity to advance your skills is actually also quite limited. Most and foremost by time limit - acquired skills IRL are only useful as long as they are in demand. Your skills easily become obsolete with time, sometimes incredibly quickly. In games, not so much. You're also limited by financial resources, and by your free time that you could devote to learning. Finally, there's a limit to your own capacity to learn.

...And actually you totally become a better person by devoting yourself to a specific discipline, as long as you keep applying the learned skills in a meaningful manner.

 

[DavidBVal]

It's been a long time since I've played Darklands, but it also had some useless skills, didn't it?

Darklands is so incredibly fantastically perfectly magically fucking GREAT that no, nothing is completely useless, at least nowhere as in other games where certain skills are a waste of bytes.

Obviously, it's silly to raise weapon skills for weapons you're not going to use, and Ride and Stealth are rarely used, but if you don't get ride, you miss jousting with knights. Stealth is rarely used though, or maybe I didn't find many uses for it. But all the other skills are used.

 

[Daemongar]

An actual trap: Picking weapon specialisation (longsword), then finding out the only magical weapons are daggers, and you need a +3 weapon to fight that demon overlord.

This is a lot more common than the so-called trap feats/perks/skills, where the game has 3 enhanced axes in total and the sky is raining magic swords. At some point, the designers forgot some players might pick axe skill or something.

I think those arguing about trap skills should be ashamed of themselves. What are you raging against? Sub-optimal builds? So designers should just take away skills that aren't useful to 90% of players because everyone plays the same? What do you want, the illusion of building your character, but the game running behind the scenes making sure you don't fuck it up? Do you want each skill being equally useful? So ice magic should always do as much damage as fire magic - just one is white and the other is red?

This may be a problem in Arx Fatalis where you only get about 7 levels in the game. But D&D where games are giving you 20 levels, or Fallout types where you'll get 30? Is this really a problem?

World of Warcraft took away skill trees to make the game idiot proof, and *poof* the game was full of idiots (ok,, the game was always full of idiots.) People couldn't handle the pressure of having to design their own characters and I'm sure Blizzard didn't want to hear any more bitching about useless skills.

Diablo 2 had all kinds of crazy builds, 99.9% of which nobody thought were viable until someone went out and did it. Who are you to demand that designers take away that from everyone? They did, and we got Diablo 3.

Like it or not, you are arguing for Skyrim "skill" systems, and we get Fallout 4...

 

[Daemongar]

Clarification: Ok, I understand that every game isn't 100% in one direction or the other, but my concern is that developers rarely give folks a happy medium. D&D has 30 different feats you can take each level, and there is probably a bell curve of usefulness and what most people take. Maybe power attack in the middle at low levels because it's the door to further skills. But should the curve be tightened up because skills in the 5th percentile just rarely get picked?

Should developers examine skills and just allow a player to pick two semi-useful skills or one very useful skill each level? Would that work?

 

[Average Manatee]

For ARPGs: It's alright as long as the system is complex enough to support extraneous skills that might be considered underpowered, and there is ample opportunity to respec in some way. Having spell A that does exactly the same thing as spell B but worse is just bad design. See Diablo 2's Firebolt vs. Fireball. If you invest 20 points into firebolt you're pretty much screwed. Yes you can farm items for hundreds of hours, but you're clearly better off respeccing so you can sail through nightmare and hell without problems. Diablo-likes that put too much emphasis on constantly increasing numbers always have these problems, either leading to spells that simply don't scale as well or forcing the game to scale EVERYTHING based on the weapon you hold or some shit like Diablo 3 does.

The way to fix the Diablo 2 problem is to flat line the power curve and put the complexity elsewhere. Guild Wars for example caps out very early and the gameplay comes from hundreds of skills that have complex interactions with each other. There are clearly better skills and worse skills, but there's hardly and skills that are obviously outclassed by others. Dark Souls does this well too, since all stats reach a soft-cap fairly quickly the gameplay shifts from knowing ahead of time what stat to pump 100% (this is useless past 30/40 points), and shifts to an emphasis on finding weapons with good movesets and diversifying the character by investing in something else.

For CRGS: It's bad. However, I think a lot of the example are completely missing the point. Taking a +2 skill feat in D&D isn't a trap. It does what it says, and even if you are dumb enough to take it you hardly screw your game. What's the difference in effectiveness between a fighter with a good feat vs. a bad one? Like 10%? Wow, so harsh. Same goes for swimming in Deus Ex. Trap options are stuff like:

Shit options are shit, especially when due to poor design / balance - You create a character specialized in Katanas, then find out that there are no magical katanas in the game...

Other "trappy" choices are when a game radically changes the rules, like in VTM:B where the first half of the game is talky-stealthy gameplay that suddenly becomes 95% combat focused against enemies that tear apart weaker builds without warning. Or NWN2 where rogues get the fun of fighting endless hordes of crit-immune undead for a huge part of the second half of the game with exactly zero means to remain relevant.

TL;DR traps are bad but its only a trap if the game is actively fooling you into thinking that something is useful when its not. Simply giving the option of making sub-optimal characters is not a trap.

 

[Alex]

I think what is most annoying about "trap" choices is that they are basically an unfulfilled promise. I don't really mind if a choice will mean I am able to do 10% less damage or hit 3% less often. But if the character creation or level up skill has a "medic" skill and after investing in it, I discover that all it does is save me some money, that I am able to do everything this skill allows me to do simply by buying an item or paying an NPC, that is a pretty big let down. Especially if it turns out it is more economical to invest in, say, gambling or pickpocketing.

The only reason "traps" in advancement exist is because advancement is somehow finite and irreversible. Real life has advancement traps also: You end up with a degree which only qualifies you to go "Would you like fries with that?". The difference is that you can always just go get another one. In games, however, this is often a one-way trap: if you study a useless skill, your capacity to learn skills is permanently reduced forever by having learned this useless skill. You can't just realize it was useless, shrug, and spend no further effort on it, because your character's brain-ROM has only so much space on it and once a skill is burned into it, can never be overwritten. This, of course, is totally unrealistic. Real people don't have specifically-finite, indelible skill sheets that they allocate point by point, and absolutely nobody becomes a better person by doing this.

I agree completely. GURPS is a system that dealt well with this. In GURPS, you can set up your character schedule for your off-time. After you've put in so many hours of study into a skill, you get to raise it. Furthermore, since GURPS uses character points, it doesn't become harder and harder to learn something new. You can get 4 character points as a reward in an adventure in the beginning of the campaign just as easily as you could at the end.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

The other thread about useless spells, made me think, in general, about all useless powers/skills you can actually have in many RPGs. Supposing enough "good" advancement options exist, is it a problem if a RPG system offers a few of the so-called "traps"? ( i.e, terrible character advancement options, even if sometimes they look good.)

An example often mentioned are the feats in 3.5 that offer a +2 to a skill. Other examples are spells, which lack an apparent practical use.

IMHO: they're fine, I even like the fact they're there. A game isn't better or worse balanced simply because a game has "traps"; it only means players and DM should do their homework. Not to mention pure roleplay usage (especially in PnP, oc), or the fact that maybe there's an unexpected use for that "lame" spell, which even goes beyond what designers had in mind.

I don't like it. I think designers should strive to eliminate holes. HOWEVER, the pursuit of eliminating the holes can become its own problem. I think a designer can become so fierce and determined they rip the heart and soul out of the game. They control it so much it's unable to produce that special something only the unpredictable can create.

So yes I do think the same "flaw" which creates holes can also create special somethings. It's what happens when a game maker and a player come together and make a special brew neither fully understands, but inescapably grasp for.

Am I saying do nothing? No. I'm just saying don't overcontrol.

 

[belowmecoldhands]

The only reason "traps" in advancement exist is because advancement is somehow finite and irreversible. Real life has advancement traps also: You end up with a degree which only qualifies you to go "Would you like fries with that?". The difference is that you can always just go get another one. In games, however, this is often a one-way trap: if you study a useless skill, your capacity to learn skills is permanently reduced forever by having learned this useless skill. You can't just realize it was useless, shrug, and spend no further effort on it, because your character's brain-ROM has only so much space on it and once a skill is burned into it, can never be overwritten. This, of course, is totally unrealistic. Real people don't have specifically-finite, indelible skill sheets that they allocate point by point, and absolutely nobody becomes a better person by doing this.

I agree, although there're consequences in RL to making bad skill choices, especially if you make enough of them. There're only X years to get it right and it's harder when you're older. The problem I think is many game makers have oversteered. Instead of just allowing us to retrain, they allow us to instantly retrain or not even need to retrain at all. Of course, that removes the C&C. It means when you make a skill choice, it doesn't have weight. Not everyon cares, but it matters to me. I think when we make a skill choice, we should at least have some idea how those skills come together to make us effective. It needs weight. Again, I realize not everybody thinks this is important, but can't we have different games for different people?

Given C&C was (almost) the least popular fagism in the recent poll here, I'm not surprised:
1 Story
2 Exploration
3 Combat
4 Systems
5 C&C
6 Interface (I really think this is intertwined with Systems though)
7 Prefers modern "decline" (eh if you prefer the decline then why're you at the codex?)
(link: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/poll-what-type-of-fag-are-you.99821/)

 

[Tabs]

Regarding weapon skill traps: I find this one of the few justifications for extensive crafting systems in a CRPG. Take NWN2 for instance, you could craft yourself a +5 keen frost scythe or whatever madness fits your RP. Yeah it kinda broke the balance, but at least you had options beyond the 100s of great/bastard/long/shortswords.

 

[mondblut]

People bothered by worthless picks need to lrn2play.

 

[Xathrodox86]

I think it's one of the drawbacks of Deus Ex' pretty good design. There's probably no part where you need swimming to succeed, be it optional or mandatory. It's always possible to substitute it with other skills or some equipment. In turn that makes swimming a bit underwhelming, since most substitutes have more potential applications than the swimming skill.
You could however turn JC into Aquaman, if you wanted.

Augs and rebreathers usually worked for me, even in Hong Kong where there was that flooded tunnel, normally very hard to access.