So a lot of people replying to me in this thread make valid points, but its not a point I ever contested. I am sure there *is* enough points to pass all the necessary checks if you min max well. My point is that it isn't telgraphed what you need to spend your points on
Telegraphed how? The vignette and first quests of each faction use all the skills that will be used in the rest of faction questline for the game.
Merchant: Vignette - trading. First quest - checks with combination of streetwise, persuasion and trading (apart from options for fighters). You can "win" that quest by accepting Cado's offer and Persuasion 2 (invest just one point). From there on, it's pretty clear that investing in streetwise, persuasion and trading will allow you to complete the questline without any hitches. Plus once you are member, you can talk to Zenon and he'll train your speech skills, further reinforcing the message of "This is what you need!".
Assassin: Vignette - Dexterity + CS, persuasion & streetwise. First quest: Fight + persuasion. Shows the importance of CS and dexterity, plus talker paths that can help you. The unavoidable fight shows that you have to fight eventually. Plus we show the importance of CS via the training you get after the first quest.
Imperial guards: Fight, fight, fight. Plus some options for talker hybrids.
Thief: Vignette - sneak, lockpick, steal. First quest: Speech checks are presented. Streetwise+persuasion with the guards (you can see it, invest just 1-2 points in each and pass it), steal+disguise for the mandate (disguise can be bypassed with high steal). Lore + perception for forging the mandate. Persuasion+streetwise with Flavius, which can be bypassed if you are a Daratan liegeman, lockpick + sneak and dexterity + sneak in Kaeasos house, perception or crafting with the stone (low checks), plus small int to figure out. The thief is the questline with more varied skillchecks, but you can get through them with focusing on one of the skillsets. Regarding combat, when it happens you are almost always joined with more than capable companions that allow you to go into a support role, and you can affect the fight using your skillset. Oh, and you can recruit a new member and she'll teach you speech skills.
Now, how should we telegraph it more according to you? We give show you in the first quest the "tone" the questline is going to have and which skills are going to be used, and the checks are balanced around the SP rate you gain just for completing the questline, even providing ways to complete some of the quests without skills to give you chances to invest in what it's necessary for the job. If you are a merchant, persuasion, streetwise and trading are part of the job requirement. There's no way around that, it's just logical, IMO. But apart from that, we provide some options for fighters, better results with nobles if you invest in etiquette, some extra options when you have lore... I think it's pretty clear. Sure, there's no way you can be a thieving merchant (as an example of skills that are not used there), but that's not what the questline is about and we showed it to you in the first quest. The only way to telegraph it more clearly would be after joining a faction to suggesting the player what to invest on.
Also, no need to min-max, once you know which skills your faction requires, the SP is more than pentiful. Medium investment will get you acceptable results, high investment in them allows more options that can open different paths. SP rewards are the same, BTW, so no snowballing there.
How should I know lore is basically a waste in Teron?
Except it's not. Opens up options in TG and MG questlines, and it's necessary to activate the mine, which brings the best reward with HD and opens up the option to join HA, which I consider in some ways the "loremaster" questline, as it gives you access to several ancient locations in which lore is very important.
How should I know you suddenly need lots of dialogue or combat skills as a thief?
Having them in the first quest doesn't count as suddenly, IMO. And especially in the latest updates we added even more paths.
Now, I know that the thief questline is a particular case. Instead of designing it around a single archetype, we tried to provide options for 3 types of thieves: The Burglar (uses traditional thieving skills), the Thug (combat skills) and the Charmer/Conman (uses speech skills). Which of course, can make the balancing and options creation for the quest a bit hard, and we improved it quite a bit in the past updates because the burglar was getting the short stick. We added options to sneak around before fights, using cs+sneak checks (high sneak can bypass CS requirement) to even the odds or bypass fights, plus removed some skill bottlenecks in some of the quests.
And this has been my main complaint all along, but no one has addressed it. AoD is a very large amount of trial and error. That's fine if you like it, but I won't pretend I don't think it is bad design.
I have to disagree with you, then. I think it's well designed. Not perfect, that's for sure, but not badly designed. As I showed above, it's designed like this:
- The starting faction quest show you the skills you are going to need for working with that faction, and gives you a chance to invest on them even if you fail. And we give SP if you fail, to give you that chance, plus training that helps you with it.
- From that point on, it's the player choice if he wants to play that faction questline knowing which skills are required. Faction questlines shape your character as much as you shape them with your choices. You can start with a blank slate character, and getting into the merchants will make him a talker, or going with the guards will make him a fighter.
- The events and faction questlines in Teron forge your character archetype. Once you get to Maadoran, if you explore the city and travel to different locations, you get an extra supply of skillpoints that allow you to diversify your build into different paths, plus each location provides challenges and paths for different builds, but many times at a level in which an hybrid can pass them.
- At the end of Maadoran and in Ganezzar, you are a stablished member of the faction and your actions shape its future using the skills we first showed you in the beggining of the questline.
The only big trial and error is in the first quest, after that, trying to make a character that goes against the archetypes presented it's on the player side, not the design. It requires a different approach to playing it compared to other RPGs, creating a different mindset in which you start to juggle different character archetypes and think "Let's see how a combat guy with minor speech skills does in the MG questline...", or "I'll make a character that betrays his current faction the first chance he has, and then does it again". This is a far cry compared to almost every other RPGs in which I do a combat character with speech skills to get more of the story and some lockpick to open a few chests.
Now, while the faction questlines provide the biggest amount of SP and material rewards, you can definitely make a character that doesn't join them, does the map quest and sidequests, and can finish the game and achieve quite a few things. And that's the fun of the game, IMO. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of doing a loremaster that never joins a faction, just doing sidequests and the main quest. He could focus on combat or speech...
Anyway, I hope this clears up some misconceptions about the design of the game. Now, any of you are definitely in the right to dislike a game in which being part of a faction shapes the kind of skills your character will have if he joins it, but I definitely disagree about it being bad design, and I believe it's presented quite well.
Regarding the "skill plateu", I think I mostly covered it as well. At Teron you character can be forged by his faction, at Maadoran he can diversify, at Ganezzar he can shape his faction. His faction skillset never becomes irrelevant, and are needed to get the most amount of choices at the end. But the SP from exploring the gameworld once you arrive to Maadoran allows expanding your character into other skills sets.