Are there any RPGs that implemented skill improving by using, in a decent manner?

[Yoshiyyahu]

Big problem with Morrowind and co (for me) was that you never gained anything from quests. Sure, you get items and gold and whatever, but you don't get anything that enhances your character or shows that they are progressing. Kind of a downbuzz for me, I like completing quests (or even stages of quests) and be rewarded with experience. It seems logical, you shouldn't just get bonus to your repair skill for repairing the pump and bonus to your sneak/steal for thieving the water chip from Necropolis, you'd also gain knowledge and experience in having done something of importance and learned from it. I guess another problem is that it makes the game seem a bit boring overall - either you waste time doing shit quests, or you waste time stabbing people. Problem solving and resolution through quests/goals is pretty integral, seems lame to get more progression from beating a mudcrab over the head with a stick than defeating Dagoth Ur in a magic battle, removing his immortality and seeing off the end of his big golem thing.

 

[DraQ]

Not sure if I understood correctly.
You're saying that no game has ever done it in a proper form. But that it is possible to do so. Is that it?

Yes. The main problem with current use-based systems is that they fail to check for difficulty.

When do you learn from something? When something unexpected happens. If the result is expected to you then you haven't learned anything new, no? Good use based system should tie skill gain per use to the probability of opposite outcome. If the outcome is certain for given situation, then you learn nothing. This means hat you can't learn anything by repeating trivial tasks, you need to find difficult ones. That also means that abilities for which there are no success and fail conditions shouldn't be part of skill system (but can still be regulated by attributes).
I think the first post I ever wrote on the 'dex was about that.

Above system should be supplemented with some sort of no free lunch principle - you generally shouldn't be able to achieve skill increases at no cost or risk.

Additionally, to have a good use-based system, you need to limit character's potential somehow. For example by making every subsequent skill increase, doesn't matter if for same or different skill, more difficult.

You can also add context checking, which wont prevent grind, but may mitigate loopholes. Even bethesda does that now - see Skyrim.

Finally, it's not like XP systems aren't hopelessly broken - they are kill-centric, there is no tie between abilities improving and playstyle, any XP rewards that aren't obtained from combat have to be scripted, which means no freeform problem solving, etc.

If you don't think use based can be fixed and don't want a broken system, then you'r only option is adopting a progression-less one, where you build your character(s) but never improve them.

 

[DraQ]

Big problem with Morrowind and co (for me) was that you never gained anything from quests. Sure, you get items and gold and whatever, but you don't get anything that enhances your character or shows that they are progressing.

You can spend them GPs on training except the economy is borked.

Kind of a downbuzz for me, I like completing quests (or even stages of quests) and be rewarded with experience. It seems logical

How?

you shouldn't just get bonus to your repair skill for repairing the pump and bonus to your sneak/steal for thieving the water chip from Necropolis, you'd also gain knowledge and experience in having done something of importance and learned from it.

How?

 

[Excommunicator]

I would say the least broken system is free point allocation as the likes of Bloodlines and Deus Ex. You can hardly go wrong when you reward the result rather than the method (which skill use and XP both do in some way), and then you can use that reward to increase what you want, when you want. It's flawed yes, in that you can spend your whole game doing one thing and put all the points into totally unrelated areas, but then that's the player's prerogative and as a designer you need to be able to sit back and let them do it at some point. The task then comes down to good world building and associated mechanics so that you can put some some of connection back into the relationship between actions performed and abilities improved

Fader brings up a good point that goes along with point allocation too in that it doesn't entirely fit in a game to have a system of specifically performing a menial task to improve a skill, it should be a generalised character improvement currency which represents the overall successes of the character (the general idea behind the traditional XP). Games are abstractions aimed at trying to minimise the menial tasks and maximise the interesting ones. The improvement currency that you get for performing some task should be seen as the end result of all the countless things you did up until the point at which that currency is awarded to you. Part of the reward of completing the task successfully is then to have the freedom to improve your character freely. Character systems need not have that 100% direct connection between use skill X -> improve skill x as it forgets the abstraction nature of a game, especially an RPG

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Looking at Morrowind, and alchemy in particular. One of the more broken things about it was the availability of reagents in the shops. You could buy them, make potions, and sell for profit. And then repeat ad infinitum.

I fail to see the problem here. If your character's alchemy level is too low he will fail at making potions and waste precious reagents. If not, well, that would be a fine job.

Ignoring the broken potion mechanics themselves, this illustrates sea's point about the number of times you can use a skill. If you can only get reagents from killing monsters, or the shops don't replenish, it might fix one of the issues of alchemy (becoming a master alchemist without leaving town). You can then apply this logic to other skills.

And why should an alchemist fight monsters to become good at his profession? Just let the player bore himself to death playing an non-adventurous alchemist if he wants to.

One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is the degree of success. In most of these games you can grind skills in situations where you have no chance of failure, or ignore the difficulty requirement.
You shouldn't be able to become a master swordsman by slaying rats (or anything that has no chance to defend against you) over and over, nor should you be able to become the greatest healer by casting a "heal 1 health" spell over and over. Or level dodge to the max by encountering some rats and going to sleep, leaving the game going.

 

[Yoshiyyahu]

Big problem with Morrowind and co (for me) was that you never gained anything from quests. Sure, you get items and gold and whatever, but you don't get anything that enhances your character or shows that they are progressing.

You can spend them GPs on training except the economy is borked.

Kind of a downbuzz for me, I like completing quests (or even stages of quests) and be rewarded with experience. It seems logical

How?

you shouldn't just get bonus to your repair skill for repairing the pump and bonus to your sneak/steal for thieving the water chip from Necropolis, you'd also gain knowledge and experience in having done something of importance and learned from it.

How?

When you finish a big quest or quest arc, you gain real experience (not game experience), kinda like a life lesson. I think this should be represented somehow in terms of xp. I guess it kinda seems like all the small pieces coming together to form the big picture.

 

[DraQ]

When you finish a big quest or quest arc, you gain real experience (not game experience), kinda like a life lesson.

What kind of experience? How is it relevant to character growth?

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Simulationfags cannot into abstraction

 

[wormix]

Looking at Morrowind, and alchemy in particular. One of the more broken things about it was the availability of reagents in the shops. You could buy them, make potions, and sell for profit. And then repeat ad infinitum.

I fail to see the problem here. If your character's alchemy level is too low he will fail at making potions and waste precious reagents. If not, well, that would be a fine job.

Ignoring the broken potion mechanics themselves, this illustrates sea's point about the number of times you can use a skill. If you can only get reagents from killing monsters, or the shops don't replenish, it might fix one of the issues of alchemy (becoming a master alchemist without leaving town). You can then apply this logic to other skills.

And why should an alchemist fight monsters to become good at his profession? Just let the player bore himself to death playing an non-adventurous alchemist if he wants to.

The problem is the essentially endless supply of resources. If you can buy reagents, make potions and make more money than it costs to buy the reagents, then obviously the availability reagents should be limited in some way, else you have a positive feedback loop.

Focusing on Morrowind still, the shop items and money that the merchants carry is limited, but replenishes on a timer. But time in this game is a meaningless resource.
Essentially there needs to be something to "break" the loop, whether it's items you make don't sell for as much as it cost to make them, or requiring you to use more expensive and rarer reagents.

You seem to agree with making skill gain tie to the degree of success/difficulty of the skill use. This is essentially turning it into a risk vs reward system. The lower the risk, the less the reward. Getting rewarded for taking no risk isn't satisfying, and if there are scenarios in the game where you are rewarded for taking no risk, and this can be repeated indefinitely, then why ever take a risk?

 

[Eyeball]

Most of them, really. Not the fault of the game if you decide to waste the precious days of your life trying to figure out ways to break the system by devising clever grinding methods.

 

[Dexter]

Ultima Online was the best I've seen. No classes whatsoever and no levels, skills/stats would improve quicker up to a certain point and get slower near the upper limits. There was an upper limit as to how many stats points a character could have, I believe 225 and an upper limit to how many percent of skills you can have at 700. Skills ranged from basic Combat/Magic to Crafting and general purpose like Animal Taming or Camping: http://www.uoguide.com/Skills They could be exploited by repeatedly grinding though.

 

[SCO]

QFG, grinder's hell. Funny to think of it, as it is mostly a adventure... but it's true.

 

[Kahlis]

I'd go with Quest for Glory also.

For the first two games at least, I felt that your skills were never necessarily adequate if you just did the bare minimum or followed a walkthrough, but you didn't have to grind excessively either. That sense is the strongest in QFG1, where character improvement does feel fairly rewarding. Probably because it didn't have to worry about balancing itself against pre-existing characters imported from earlier games. It just feels the most "balanced" to me. Gradually as the series went on though the importance of your stats seemed to become less and less appreciable, and by QFG4 it was practically an ordinary adventure game series as they provided convenient money caches and a gymnasium so that you could get all of the levelling stuff done by just clicking on the same piece of equipment every single day.

 

[SCO]

I actually meant that in order to get into perfect scores you
1) needed to organize some of the games around grinding, because they had time limits (QFG2 especially)
2) needed to grind a hell of a lot, and plan for it (spend all money on stamina potions, etc)
3) needed to find the secret skills on each game unless you wanted to spend 100 free pts on the next game
4) would only have a marginal advantage over a new character (would have more possibilities to do things if you multiclassed though) or a actual disadvantage if you didn't grind in the previous game.
5) grinding spells was hideously tedious

See? Grinding hell, and by god, i did it.

 

[Mastermind]

Finally, it's not like XP systems aren't hopelessly broken - they are kill-centric, there is no tie between abilities improving and playstyle,

Bloodlines only gave points for completing quests IIRC. It's rare to have something other than killing rewarded in most XP systems, but that's because most RPGs focus exclusively or almost exclusively on combat.

any XP rewards that aren't obtained from combat have to be scripted, which means no freeform problem solving, etc.

Combat XP rewards have to be scripted too. There's no reason why you can't have freeform problem solving with an xp system. Heroes of might and magic 4 gave your hero experience for sneaking past creatures for example.

Speech skills: give experience for successful persuasion (like fallout 3/nv do, as well as for hacking/lockpicking). More xp for more difficult tasks.

Sneak: give xp while successfully sneaking around creatures, with creatures more likely to catch you providing more xp.

Any method that would raise a skill in an improve by using system can be used to give general xp in an xp system.

 

[Carrion]

Fight more dudes = level up combat skills

Cast lots of magic = level up spells

Steal lots of things = level up stealing

Combat skills will increase naturally through gameplay in a game where you kill stuff all the time. But pickpocketing? Alchemy? Enchanting? Crafting? Illusion magic? There's pretty much no risk involved in doing any of those things, meaning that you can grind them as much as you want to, and as a result they're balanced in such a way that they increase very little through "natural" gameplay. Limiting the amount of pockets you can pick wouldn't change a single thing because you could still go and check every single NPC one at a time for stuff you can steal. It'd still mean incredibly boring and dull gameplay that would encourage grinding.

 

[sea]

Combat skills will increase naturally through gameplay in a game where you kill stuff all the time. But pickpocketing? Alchemy? Enchanting? Crafting? Illusion magic? There's pretty much no risk involved in doing any of those things, meaning that you can grind them as much as you want to, and as a result they're balanced in such a way that they increase very little through "natural" gameplay. Limiting the amount of pockets you can pick wouldn't change a single thing because you could still go and check every single NPC one at a time for stuff you can steal. It'd still mean incredibly boring and dull gameplay that would encourage grinding.

Pickpocketing in Elder Scrolls games has a high chance of alerting the NPC and the guards. Alchemy and enchanting could theoretically side-effects, like if you fail you get stacking debuffs or damage to your equipment. Illusion magic is just broken due to bad design, but could be fixed pretty easily (using unlocking spells on unlocked doors does not gain XP, using friendship spells on NPCs has long duration and does not stack or work until the last has worn off, etc.). And don't give me the old save scumming argument because you can save scum your way through combat in many games as well (though obviously crafting etc. is rarely as mechanically deep as combat). Those skills are only as boring and dull as you make them, and pointless/stupid skills that seem to exist only to grind (athletic etc.) could be removed and have their functionality passed on to gear instead.

My point here is that you shouldn't confuse the problem of badly balanced and badly designed skills with the skill use XP system they're built within.

 

[Papa Môlé]

No levels. The right way with raise by use systems.



In all seriousness, there are probably games out there. But I always find levels to be a really weird combination in systems where you raise skills/stats by use. It feels a little redundant IMO.

The whole point of levels is to give the player noticeable steps where they are able to develop and progress in how they build their character. You level and you up certain skills, or get a new ability, etc. But with a raise by use system, that's completely integrated in the player's natural progression of skills. So, what's the point? A focal point to design challenges around?

Darklands doesn't get talked about here enough really. It's pretty embarrassing it usually doesn't even seem to register on the top ten let alone the "holy trinity".

 

[Carrion]

Pickpocketing in Elder Scrolls games has a high chance of alerting the NPC and the guards.

You can use the exact same argument to defend the system as it is, and I think we both agree that it's still broken. You want to fix the skill by simply limiting its uses and thus making it less useful, which doesn't really change anything about how it works or how you increase it in practice.

Alchemy and enchanting could theoretically side-effects, like if you fail you get stacking debuffs or damage to your equipment. Illusion magic is just broken due to bad design, but could be fixed pretty easily (using unlocking spells on unlocked doors does not gain XP, using friendship spells on NPCs has long duration and does not stack or work until the last has worn off, etc.).

Yeah, you could do that, but what would it change? Got a debuff from a failed potion? Big deal, I'll just sleep it off. Got a damaged sword from a failed enchanting attempt? Great, now I get to raise my repair skill! Morrowind had a lot of negative side effects from failed skill use (failing a potion destroyed the ingredients you used, failing a persuasion attempt pissed people off etc.), but it still was a game where you not only could but where you actually had to do tons of grinding to increase certain skills.

Those skills are only as boring and dull as you make them, and pointless/stupid skills that seem to exist only to grind (athletic etc.) could be removed and have their functionality passed on to gear instead.

You mean like they did in Skyrim? Removing athletics says more about the whole system than the actual skill. Athletics isn't a pointless or stupid skill because how fast you can move is extremely important for any close combat character. Along with Acrobatics it was also one of the most vital skills for rogue characters, and if any mage can run just as fast and jump just as high as the most agile rogue in the world, something is seriously wrong. In general, I don't think removing stuff should ever be a solution unless we're talking about a completely pointless feature, and athletics definitely doesn't fall into that category.

My point here is that you shouldn't confuse the problem of badly balanced and badly designed skills with the skill use XP system they're built within.

My point is that what you're proposing doesn't change the system in any way. I think the main idea behind an increase-by-use system is that how you play the game defines how your character develops. With non-combat skills in Bethesda games it's more like you increase the skill as much as you can bring yourself to do it without feeling dirty, and that would be just as true even with all sorts of side effects.

 

[DraQ]

Simulationfags cannot into abstraction

I can into abstraction. But there is little point in abstracting results of things you're doing explicitly in game.

There is also the big problem that if you get XP rewards from quests, then instead of taking quests at their value - how will they benefit you or what other reasons you may to do them, you start to think of them as "omg moar xp giev nao!". That's plain bad design and it encourages moronic behaviour on player's part:

-howdy stranger, could you travel to the dread caves of Murderkill and bring me a moderately sized sack of goblin testicles? I can't really reward you for this, despite the journey being perilous, supplies costly and goblins vicious, but I would be really grateful.

And the player responds with:
-OMG YES! I ALWAYS DREAMED OF GETTING REPEATEDLY STABBED WITH NUMEROUS RUSTY SPEARS IN ORDER TO SELFLESSLY HARVEST FILTHY GOBLIN BALLSACKS! SWEET XP - HERE I COME!

But time in this game is a meaningless resource.

Problem #1 identified.

Finally, it's not like XP systems aren't hopelessly broken - they are kill-centric, there is no tie between abilities improving and playstyle,

Bloodlines only gave points for completing quests IIRC.

And that's the better way of making XP-based system. The problem is that in such system character development bears no relation to character's actions.

Another problem is that it may still lead to goblin testicles.

any XP rewards that aren't obtained from combat have to be scripted, which means no freeform problem solving, etc.

Combat XP rewards have to be scripted too.

How? If a wolf is worth 50xp, then any wolf is worth 50xp. You don't have to script this, you just place or generate wolves.

There's no reason why you can't have freeform problem solving with an xp system.

Actually, you're right, but you can have freeform problem solving IF AND ONLY IF you're rewarded with XP for goal completion alone. In any other case you get scripted XP rewards for doing stuff in predefined ways and no reward for doing something creative.

Heroes of might and magic 4 gave your hero experience for sneaking past creatures for example.

Using predefined option in predefined way is not freeform problem solving.

Speech skills: give experience for successful persuasion (like fallout 3/nv do, as well as for hacking/lockpicking). More xp for more difficult tasks.

Sneak: give xp while successfully sneaking around creatures, with creatures more likely to catch you providing more xp.

Any method that would raise a skill in an improve by using system can be used to give general xp in an xp system.

This gives you all caveats of use based but without any of its upsides.

Good job!

Combat skills will increase naturally through gameplay in a game where you kill stuff all the time.

One of chief advantages here is making a game where you don't have to kill stuff to grow in power.

But pickpocketing? Alchemy? Enchanting? Crafting? Illusion magic? There's pretty much no risk involved in doing any of those things, meaning that you can grind them as much as you want to

Let's see - pickpocketing confers obvious risks, alchemy should require at least some expensive ingredients, enchanting and crafting can be balanced through costs, illusion can be made context dependent (for example leveling from invisibility only when you do stuff you don't want to be seen doing while potentially visible) and not liked by NPCs (hell it's mostly used to screw with people's minds and concealing yourself - hard to think of a non-illicit use of it by a random adventurer in a city).

Additionally, a lot of problems are caused by reloading and should be fought accordingly - by discouraging reloads or bypassing reload ability.

For example illicit activity could be detectable not only immediately, but some time after (an NPC "remembers" that you bumped into them in the market earlier this day after he notices his coinpurse gone even unseen murder can be investigated successfully later on, etc.), potions could be only properly identified by drinking or otherwise destroying them (shitty alchemist may notice that his hombrew healing elixir is in fact an explosive potion, or that the cure disease potion sold to some guy killed him instead making alchemist wanted by law) - player won't be as eager to reload several h old save as he would be to reload several s old save.

And that's on top of basic grind-proofing I've proposed.

Athletics isn't a pointless or stupid skill because how fast you can move is extremely important for any close combat character.

No, it's a pointless skill, because it has no success/failure checks.

Movement speed can still be handled meaningfully by attributes. Same with jumping and landing.

 

[Mastermind]

And that's the better way of making XP-based system. The problem is that in such system character development bears no relation to character's actions.

Why is that a problem? XP system is already abstracted. It is assumed, quite reasonably, that you will be raising stats you are actually using, so a relation between development and character action forms organically.

How? If a wolf is worth 50xp, then any wolf is worth 50xp. You don't have to script this, you just place or generate wolves.

If sneaking past a wolf is worth 2xp per second, then sneaking past any wolf is worth 2 xp per second. You don't have to script this, you just place or generate wolves.

If persuading romancing a wolf is worth 50xp, then romancing any wolf is worth 50xp. You don't have to script this, you just place or generate wolves.

Sure, there are some instances where you would have to script xp gains if you want to offer a big reward (like a successful persuasion at a key plot point) but you'd need to script additional skill growth at this point too, so I don't see what it has to do with the system.

Using predefined option in predefined way is not freeform problem solving.

Using predefined option in predefined way is the only way to gain experience from doing particular actions regardless of the system, so this has nothing to do with xp vs use based. Use based does not hold a monopoly on gaining xp from non-combat actions. If anything, use based hampers freeform problem solving because instead of solving things however you want based on the stats you currently have without hampering character progress in the direction you want, you are railroaded into having to solve things by using the skills you are actively trying to grow (made worse if growing skills constricts future growth like you propose) or hamper your development process by taking a detour into raising skills you don't really want to bother with otherwise. Use based = railroaded popamole corridor shooter of character development systems. I'll gladly sacrifice some realism if it means I get to do interesting things once in a while without having to worry that doing so will give me +3 to acrobatics (which i hardly ever use) while costing me a point or two of skill with my sword which I use all the time.

This gives you all caveats of use based but without any of its upsides.

Good job!

There are no upsides to use based (other than realism, which isn't so much an upside as it is subjective preference).

 

[Mastermind]

No, it's a pointless skill, because it has no success/failure checks.

It does when you're racing a bear and the bear wins.

 

[DraQ]

If sneaking past a wolf is worth 2xp per second, then sneaking past any wolf is worth 2 xp per second. You don't have to script this, you just place or generate wolves.

If persuading romancing a wolf is worth 50xp, then romancing any wolf is worth 50xp. You don't have to script this, you just place or generate wolves.

What about dropping a boulder on a wolf, luring a wolf to a pissed off mythical creature of some sort, making a wolf slip and fall down the cliff, distracting a wolf with a piece of meat, etc.?

You can't assign XP value to every possible interaction in a complex system. You can assign or calculate it for elementary options.

 

[Carrion]

Let's see - pickpocketing confers obvious risks, alchemy should require at least some expensive ingredients, enchanting and crafting can be balanced through costs, illusion can be made context dependent (for example leveling from invisibility only when you do stuff you don't want to be seen doing while potentially visible) and not liked by NPCs (hell it's mostly used to screw with people's minds and concealing yourself - hard to think of a non-illicit use of it by a random adventurer in a city).

None of that prevents grinding, it just makes it a bit harder and possibly more tedious. To become good in alchemy you'd still have to make thousands of potions, even though you'd actually only need a small portion of that during the whole game. To become good at pickpocketing you'd have to pick hundreds of pockets, even if you'd never do that in the first place if it wasn't required for increasing the skill. In TES, what should be a natural and logical way of developing your character becomes the exact opposite, so meta that it's ridiculous.

Movement speed can still be handled meaningfully by attributes. Same with jumping and landing.

I agree, because attributes in TES use a point buy system which in general is a much better system when it comes to increasing non-combat skills.

 

[Mastermind]

What about dropping a boulder on a wolf, luring a wolf to a pissed off mythical creature of some sort, making a wolf slip and fall down the cliff, distracting a wolf with a piece of meat, etc.?

You can't assign XP value to every possible interaction in a complex system. You can assign or calculate it for elementary options.

Actually all of those things can be generally scripted by giving xp for:

* monsters dying near you even if you didn't kill them directly(which makes sense, for example if you see someone use a jar of oil to create a slippery surface and a wolf slips and flies off a cliff, the character just learned something)
* proper coding for lures (which should add some interesting non-combat options for ranger character types too, so the extra code would be worthwhile)

More importantly, though, I fail to see what any of the above has to do with skill use vs xp. You'd need to add the additional coding for the solutions above in use based systems too, except you'd also have to determine what skills would go up as well, which may not always be obvious, whereas in an xp system you can just give xp and let the player choose what they want to do with it.