How do you prefer to increase stats/skills?

[Serpentine Cougar]

Do you like games that grant you a number of points when you level up that you then allocate to the skills or stats you want to increase? Or do you prefer increasing your skills just be using them? Why? Alternatively, is there a different system for increasing stats and skills that you like better?

Just curious.

 

[Darth Roxor]

By using. It's much more believable to get better through practice than suddenly realising " *DING!* I can construct a tesla rod!" or "Hey, hey, hacking through those countless hordes of monsters has made me better at diplomacy!"

 

[trais]

By allocating skill/stat points when leveling up. "Use" system can be exploited too easily and it's impossible to balance. Additionally, it makes fucked up situations when you're using your weakest weapon to score more hits before killing a foozle etc.

 

[DraQ]

Use based. Although it's difficult to design and balance properly.

 

[Pastel]

It's a tough call. In real life, some skills are learned by study, and some by practice. For example, forgery, lore or etiquette involve application of existing knowledge in practice, with little improvement coming from actual use. Similarily, skills like Trading, Persuasion or Critical Hit make more sense to improve by practice.
Then there's the issue of irrelevance of time. If skills were improved by study, what would keep an INT 10 character from locking himself away in a library and learning everything there is to know?
And regarding gameplay, would it be a good idea to force players to use a particular skill if they want it to be useful in the future?

 

[janjetina]

By allocating the points. The alternative encourages grinding. The only game that had a decent combined system was Prelude to Darkness, while all other good RPGs had the normal advancement method of allocating the skill points.

 

[mondblut]

Use-based sounds great in theory but always degenerates into retarded abuse (read: TES). The only time it works is when the skills are pretty much all combat-related and there are no random encounters (and for the rare non-combat skills the increase opportunities are also one of a kind) - like in Betrayal at Krondor or Nahlakh. Where you pretty much don't even notice how the skills go up, let alone have opportunity to consciously grind them.

Anyway, I favor hybrid systems like in Wizardry 6+ or Prelude to Darkness. You increase skills by use and also get skillpoints to spend on something you can't normally grind.

 

[Crichton]

I like collect EXP for quests and spend EXP with trainers (like Gothic or the Gold Box games where you needed a trainer to level up). It doesn't allow you to learn lockpicking by shooting rats, and doesn't reward you for using low damage weapons or owt like that. The only downside is generally fitting the training NPCs into the world in a believable manner.

 

[Zomg]

I like systems where you train to increase your potential (burning some combination of time, goods/money, and abstracted experience points) and then actually raise it via learn-by-doing.

 

[sheek]

I like systems where you train to increase your potential (burning some combination of time, goods/money, and abstracted experience points) and then actually raise it via learn-by-doing.

CRPG examples?

 

[Gragt]

I remember Beyond Divinity used that system but it isn't the greatest representative of the genre.

I'd like a system of increase by use that can't be abused, else the way it was done in Bloodlines was nice: getting a few xp points of completing objectives, no matter how you did it.

 

[Serus]

Use-based sounds great in theory but always degenerates into retarded abuse (read: TES). The only time it works is when the skills are pretty much all combat-related and there are no random encounters (and for the rare non-combat skills the increase opportunities are also one of a kind) - like in Betrayal at Krondor or Nahlakh. Where you pretty much don't even notice how the skills go up, let alone have opportunity to consciously grind them.

Anyway, I favor hybrid systems like in Wizardry 6+ or Prelude to Darkness. You increase skills by use and also get skillpoints to spend on something you can't normally grind.

This is a contradiction. Explain please: in BAK use-based works or always degenerates ?

Use-based is better but is VERY hard (almost impossible) to balance well making it easy to abuse. There are more good level-based games and latest use-based ones are all very bad (TES IV, F3) but it doesn't mean that good use-based games are impossible.

 

[GeneralSamov]

Use-based is better but is VERY hard (almost impossible) to balance well making it easy to abuse.

Bah. That's what what Todd would want you to believe, seeing Bethesda is incompetent and just setlles for the most obvious solution and packs it into the final game. And so everyone merrily hops around instead of walking...

Instead, there's countless possibilities, you just need a bit of imagination. For example, the already mentioned study to learn, then put into practice to get better. This is sensible, though it still doesn't prevent abuse. So let's go further:
- As you keep practicing the same thing, it rewards you progressively less, to a point it stops rewarding you.
- Learn another skill/ability with affinity to the first one, repeat step one (maybe for a fee in gold, doing a mission,...); higher xp required to get higher knowledge.
Example: Hop around to improve agility/jump height/endurance; at one point it stops being feasible. So you go to a gym, for instance, and keep practicing there. Perhaps from that on, you can only join tournaments, where you have to compete against others (not necessarily), to improve further.
- Make better teachers progressively scarcer (like in the Gothic series), more expensive.
- Put in material requirements for creating tools to learn skills in which you need to use said tools (pickpocket, forge,...). Better tools = better, but scarcer materials.

Just from the top of my head, having taken a bit from here and there, and mixing with personal ideas. At any rate, the possibilities are endless.

 

[Serus]

...

Beth IS incompetent. Use-based rpgs are possible (as i already said). They are harder to make than level-based. No good and balanced use-based crpg since, i don't know... JA2 (not rpg tough).

 

[racofer]

I liked bloodlines's system where all experience points came from quests. No level ups or health increases per level, and you would expend those experience points to raise your skills/feats.

 

[BethesdaLove]

LVL UP - its always a great moment to make a jump, more entertaining than tedious progression.
BLOODLINES - xp for points, drakensang has it too.

 

[Witchblade]

By allocating the points. The alternative encourages grinding. The only game that had a decent combined system was Prelude to Darkness, while all other good RPGs had the normal advancement method of allocating the skill points.

Heh heh, well, I grind regardless, which is unfortunately made near imposibble in the scenario where you get your exp. purely from quests alone..

Anyway, a lot of fun is usually to be made from the lvel up screen, so I enjoy both systems, I suppose.

One is nice for powering, the other one for fiddling...

 

[Witchblade]

By allocating the points. The alternative encourages grinding. The only game that had a decent combined system was Prelude to Darkness, while all other good RPGs had the normal advancement method of allocating the skill points.

Heh heh, well, I grind regardless, which is unfortunately made near imposibble in the scenario where you get your exp. purely from quests alone..

Anyway, a lot of fun is usually to be had from fiddling around in the lvel up screen, so I enjoy both systems, I suppose.

One is nice for powering, the other one for fiddling...

 

[mondblut]

This is a contradiction. Explain please: in BAK use-based works or always degenerates ?

Whenever opportunities for skill increase are not expendable, use-based turns into grinding abusefest.

BAK: very slow increase, all combat encounters are preset, most opportunities to increase non-combat skills are one-at-a-time (like playing music in any single pub). *Despite* that, some skills can be grinded, like stealth (running around a spotted enemies loaded with those elven boots). Also, the tempo of increase makes it a not very fun system.

No good and balanced use-based crpg since, i don't know... JA2 (not rpg tough).

Are you kidding? JA2 has more grind than Daggerfall and Morrowind combined. Take Wisdom 85 to learn better, take an hour crawling around heavily loaded, take an hour mining and defusing mines, take an hour crawling in the enemy's view, take an hour beating a tank with a crowbar, take 100 hours doing anything but actually exploring the world and fighting enemies.

Now it's another thing that JA2 can be enjoyed and completed without all this crap, but, so are all other use-based games, including bethsoft ones. And Failure 3 isn't use-based, for the record.

 

[Lightknight]

In real life, some skills are learned by study, and some by practice.

Yeah. Except you're not actually studying anything mentally complex by killing hordes of goblins, are you ?

Are you kidding? JA2 has more grind than Daggerfall and Morrowind combined.

Its still many times better than just grinding levels, in that grinding levels is more breaking, since you also gain health and sometimes stats. Honestly, if Fallout, for example, didnt have the dumbest ever exp-based leveling it would be ten times better.

Now lets be honest here, i know many people who grinded stats in JA2, but it was always rather dangerous and boring, so many people didnt even bother (me included), but admit it that EVERYONE grinds levels in exp-based systems (me included).

 

[Serus]

This is a contradiction. Explain please: in BAK use-based works or always degenerates ?

Whenever opportunities for skill increase are not expendable, use-based turns into grinding abusefest.

BAK: very slow increase, all combat encounters are preset, most opportunities to increase non-combat skills are one-at-a-time (like playing music in any single pub). *Despite* that, some skills can be grinded, like stealth (running around a spotted enemies loaded with those elven boots). Also, the tempo of increase makes it a not very fun system.

No good and balanced use-based crpg since, i don't know... JA2 (not rpg tough).

Are you kidding? JA2 has more grind than Daggerfall and Morrowind combined. Take Wisdom 85 to learn better, take an hour crawling around heavily loaded, take an hour mining and defusing mines, take an hour crawling in the enemy's view, take an hour beating a tank with a crowbar, take 100 hours doing anything but actually exploring the world and fighting enemies.

Now it's another thing that JA2 can be enjoyed and completed without all this crap, but, so are all other use-based games, including bethsoft ones. And Failure 3 isn't use-based, for the record.

You CAN powergame in JA2 but i was never tempted to do it, in morrowind however it is just obvious and so easy...
Grind is possible in level-based games too, even the good ones like Fallout 2 or Arcanum and in games using D&D rules. You are not maxing your stats but the level, it makes no sense but you CAN, there is no difference.

BAK has an excellent system, your stats increase slowly which is good imho. It's a simple game however, most stats are combat oriented as you said so balancing was easier.

You are right about F3 of curse, put Morrowind instead.

 

[mondblut]

Its still many times better than just grinding levels, in that grinding levels is more breaking, since you also gain health and sometimes stats.

Dead wrong.

Pretty much all level-based games, with only a few notable exceptions, have a hard level-cap. That is, you achieve level X (reach Y xp) and your advancement is over, nil, snuffed it. And then, most of these games are balanced such a way you're reaching that cap near the endgame anyway. So if you go wildly grinding around the first area, you achieve nothing more that you wouldn't achieve in a "proper" playthrough, just much earlier game-wise and in incredibly dull way. And all you get for reward is making the playing ridiculously easy up until the very end, all while robbing yourself of a chance to ever achieve another level throughout the whole rest of the game.

Now look at use-based games. While they are impossible to balance precisely by their very nature, it is a common sense that a properly played character isn't supposed to have all skills of 100 by the endgame, he is supposed either to focus on some fields and neglect the rest, or suck at everything. Not so with abuse, an obsessive skill-grinder will have all kinds of abilities at his fingertips (which is particularly important since use-based games tend to be single-character). While the game still will be ridiculously easy and bereft of further advancement, the stimulus to grind oneself into a Terminator/Gandalf hybrid is clearly more reasonable than the stimulus to grind oneself into a character you're supposed to become anyway, only 10 dungeons earlier than intended.

Not to mention most of the level-based games have mostly preset encounters and the random ones are so wimpy (and therefore xp-light) it would take hundreds of searched for or forcefully triggered battles to achieve something.

Now lets be honest here, i know many people who grinded stats in JA2, but it was always rather dangerous...

Only some skills involve danger in grinding.

Worse yet, JA2 grinding is the most retarded ever from the gameplay point of view. Yeah, fighting a daedralord with a rusty knife or moving in hops excusively isn't exactly a healthy kind of activity either, but come on, bashing tanks with crowbars? Hiking around the mountains loaded so much you can't stand? Endlessly planting and defusing the same mine? If Leslie Nielsen would shoot a parody at Full Metal Jacket, it would look exactly like JA2 training camp. The arulcans probably died from laughter watching that show.

...and boring

What grinding isn't?

EVERYONE grinds levels in exp-based systems (me included).

Killing off every encounter and getting every sidequest? But of course, that's what RPGs are about in the first place. Grinding (literally) the walls to trigger another petty random encounter? For a couple of levels early on, maybe. After that, you're losing more than you're gaining, as I explained in the first paragraphs.

 

[mondblut]

You CAN powergame in JA2 but i was never tempted to do it, in morrowind however it is just obvious and so easy...

Well, the question is not whether you, or anyone else, resisted, or submitted to, a temptation to grind in this, or that, game. The question is whether the game in question provides ample opportunities for skillgrind (and the answer is solid yes).

That which you have to make 30000 clicks in JA2 while in Morrowind you can just stick down a key and go drink tea, is something to blame JA2's click-heavy interface for. Not exactly a virtue really. It's like saying 7.62 is more skillgrind-proof than Morrowind because it crashes all the time

Grind is possible in level-based games too, even the good ones like Fallout 2 or Arcanum and in games using D&D rules. You are not maxing your stats but the level, it makes no sense but you CAN, there is no difference.

See the post above for the difference explained.

Fallout 2 with its "cap" of 99 levels (never normally achieved in a normal game) is one of the few notable exceptions, as are Wizardry 6-7. In Fallout 1 grinding doesn't make that much sense, you'll end up 24th level at some point either way.

 

[ushdugery]

I enjoyed the bloodlines system and I like that it emulates how the PnP game works by designating xp at the end of a session. Used based systems bore me I don't care how realistic they are, I enjoy abstracted systems in my gaming and am not entirely caught up in pursuing some perfect recreationist goal of "realism".

 

[Lightknight]

Pretty much all level-based games, with only a few notable exceptions, have a hard level-cap.

Yeah. Technically. Except in pretty much every game i've seen it was balanced in such a way, that you only needed high level if you just saw the gaming rig yesterday. Therefore if you have a high enough level you will be ridiculously oiverpowered for 100% of the game, and if you reach level-cap - you are god. Not even a demigod, just a pure divine being. Fallout with 24th level char ? Oh my goodness...

The only time it works is when the skills are pretty much all combat-related and there are no random encounters

Ultima Online proves you dead wrong on both conditions.