Limitations in RPGs - A good thing?

[Norfleet]

One of the things that really bothered me in Oblivion (yeah I know, there's LOTS not right in that game) was that there seemed to be too few limits on what a character could do. You could be the best in just about everything (alright, if you invested all that time) and could lead every damn guild and so on.

I don't mind the ability to learn every single skill if you so choose. I mean, you could do this in real life, too. It's a direct effect of there not being a strict fixed point pool, like your character's brain will run out of RAM if you try to store more than 3 skills in it. The "being the head of every single guild" thing is just silly, though.

 

[Zeros]

but you just would not have the time to master them all to 100 and have all their perks. something must be sacrificed, which in itself seems like a c+c

 

[Norfleet]

but you just would not have the time to master them all to 100 and have all their perks. something must be sacrificed, which in itself seems like a c+c

In theory, there's nothing WRONG with it being possible to master all skills to 100. The thing is, such a feat would, for anyone who isn't an obsessive completist, be pointless. Sure, you can max out a skill you never actually USE for any real purpose, but what GOOD would it do you? It is not as if having all the skills is somehow gamebreaking, given that the game already implicitly assumes they exist and can be maxed. Going by the idea that a player should reasonably be able to max out anything he actually seriously USES, for instance, his major skills, the fact of the matter is that maxing out additional skills contributes little or nothing to the character's actual power, since it has long since passed the point of diminishing marginal utility. If I max out one type of melee weapon, maxing out a second type of melee weapon contributes little to the character's actual power, since you can only use one weapon at a time, anyway. Sure, I gain the ability to switch casually between one type of weapon and the other, but powerwise, this adds nothing, as a character could easily already be using either of those weapons with just one skill. As such, the game balance already accounts for the use of either weapon, anyway, and nothing gamebreaking occurs if the player happens to have mastered both, other than that he has spent a lot of time on something that he will only benefit from half as much.

 

[Zeros]

I suppose that if you really want to get into it you have to take time into account, meaning in-game/universe time. MW/Obliv is kinda idiotic in that regard since you can master skills in little to no time (a month? two?), which then ties to other aspects of the game world.

An example, I guess, of kind of an extreme -maybe- would be ADOM. You can start mastering skills by applying them, AFAIK, like the weapon ones, but time keeps running. You start losing resources like your hunger levels, and eventually the corruption by chaos in the world starts to eat it, again as far as I know. There you dont have all the time in the world to master every skill.

That's where the beth sand box model falls. The world is static, nothing ever happens if you dont start it, hence time or age have no effect. Obviously for the purposes of a game you can expect to master a few skills in a short, unrealistic time, but it sure is a long shot to be able to master EVERYTHING the game offers with one character.

It ties to the hand holding much loved by the codexians/hivemind, ties to the no real consequences for the things you choose (if any). No pain no gain, without sacrifice things feel empty, as cliched as it sounds.

Example: being able to be head of many guilds at once. Both stupid and unrealistic (in in-universe terms; were it to happen it'd be a major political shitstorm, which as far as I know does not happen in MW/Obliv).

And this is just in gameplay/game mechanics term. Narratively, I dont think you can justify mastering all the goddamn skills either.

It's just as simple as playing Doom with IDDQD (god mode) all the time. Why play the fucken game then?