But that''s not so much a skill as an action. Going back to Fallout, throwing a knife is a matter of clicking the knife and then clicking a target. But if I have zero thrown weapon skill, there''s no way I''ll hit the guy, and if by some miracle I do, it''ll do about three damage to him.

On the other hand, I can''t just walk out there and try to cast Ring of Holy Inferno, because just being able to attempt that requires a degree of acquired knowledge and proficiency. I could find a book and try to read the spell out loud, but my incompetence would almost guarantee that I wouldn''t get the intended effect.

So actions can be attempted by anyone who has a basic knowledge of how to do them. For things like throwing, or swinging or taking, the basic requirements would be nonexistent, but skills such as knife throwing, sword swinging or pocket picking could be honed to raise the probability of success.

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Original post by EasyRaider
Some bad combinations leave the game practically unplayable, like Intelligence 1, Charisma 1 and putting all skill points into non-combat skills.

The question is, how much responsibility should we put in the player''s hands? If he finds himself in a tight spot, will he chalk it up and start over, or will he blame the developers and quit?

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Think about how you''d feel twelve or twenty hours into a game when you''ve discovered this. I think most will just give up because the designer has abused their trust. This happened to a guy I knew who played Fallout 1 and got two broken arms; he just gave up, thinking that if the game allowed that to happen, it wouldn''t protect him from worse later on.

In my book, death and abject failure are both uninteresting. As a player I expect the game to get me out of these little pitfalls if they made them possible in the first place, or to terminate my experience immediately as a result of making decisions that they didn''t want me to make. No player should be expected to read the designer''s mind. As part of their obligation to entertain, they should post warnings or prevent obviously disasterous choices from being made.

btw, who''s to say that someone DIDN''T design gameplay for a Char 1, Int 1 peace & love character? Unless we''re saying that players should be smart enough to know that no cRPG will ever reward anything but combat... and if that''s the case, combat skills should be of the mandatory required level in character creation.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

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Original post by Wavinator
Think about how you''d feel twelve or twenty hours into a game when you''ve discovered this. I think most will just give up because the designer has abused their trust.

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If the game was promising otherwise, I would just regard it as a failed attempt and start over. If the game didn''t entertain me up to that point, then it probably wasn''t worth playing further anyway. Likewise, if I played a good strategy game for 20 hours and found myself hopelessly far behind, I''d start over. I think that experimenting is an important part of playing, and if the experiment fails, I rarely blame anyone particular.

On the other hand, it''s easy to see that many other people might feel differently.

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In my book, death and abject failure are both uninteresting. As a player I expect the game to get me out of these little pitfalls if they made them possible in the first place, or to terminate my experience immediately as a result of making decisions that they didn''t want me to make. No player should be expected to read the designer''s mind. As part of their obligation to entertain, they should post warnings or prevent obviously disasterous choices from being made.

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I agree, except that I think failure can sometimes be interesting. These certainly are good principles to work by. As a player, I am usually willing to cut the devs some slack, especially if there are cheats that can circumvent the mistakes.

I don''t think it''s wrong to make it possible for the player to shoot themselves in the foot. I''ll bet it''s less taxing to get through Fallout with no combat abilities and little intelligence than it is to beat "Truth & Reconciliation" on Legendary difficulty (Halo), and the designers obviously built that level to be that hard. I don''t think there''s a single game out there that can''t be enjoyed and beaten with a generally balanced character. Sure, you''ll get out there and think, "Man, I shouldn''t have put so much into my Doctor skill. I don''t think I''ve ever used that!" So next time you''ll just do it a little bit differently.

Fallout, as awesome as that game is, was designed with a limited number of solutions to each conflict. When you get to the Cathedral, you''ve got to either have the engineering skills to activate the nuke, have the talking skills and the disc to tell the Master his mutants are sterile, or have the huge guns and cojones to actually kill the sunuvabitch. Maxing out your first aid, barter, and thief skills won''t let you bet him, and neither will Small guns and melee weapons. There isn''t always a way to win, but that doesn''t mean you can''t have a wonderful time playing the game, and learn how to do better next time.

And how do you get two broken arms? I''ve been through that game a half-dozen times and as that many different character types. I''ve never had a crippled limb. Heck I can''t even cripple other people''s limbs. Maybe I''ll blind someone, but it takes three critical hits to the eyes using a plasma rifle to make that happen, and they''re generally dead by then.

It''s not neccessarily a problem to let the player make a game unwinnable. This is a basic paradox with most of the higher forms of games, Chess, Shigo(GO). Play until theres no more legal moves left. The problem is putting these gamestopping choices as the first move on gameplay. Granted, Chess and Shigo can and does have strategies that start as early as the first move, games like Diablo aren''t as advanced where you have to strategize out to level 30 from level 1. Thats where putting a potential stumbling block right at a point in the game where most players aren''t aware that this stumbling blocks exists is a problem. I but a game, I RTFM maybe, I put in in the CD tray and start up, I don''t know that I could potentially make a mistake when choosing initial stats.

Thats also why I''m not a fan of having the choice of Classes up front.

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Original post by EasyRaider
If the game didn''t entertain me up to that point, then it probably wasn''t worth playing further anyway. Likewise, if I played a good strategy game for 20 hours and found myself hopelessly far behind, I''d start over. I think that experimenting is an important part of playing, and if the experiment fails, I rarely blame anyone particular.

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btw, I just wanted to note that my comments above are what I think *most* players would do. If a game is highly open-ended or strategically varied, I often start over. It took about a dozen or more Civ games before I wasn''t screwing around with triremes by the time the enemy showed up at my door with iron-clads. But the more linear a game is, the less forgiving I am, because I''m usually frustrated by not being allowed creativity to solve problems in the first place.

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I agree, except that I think failure can sometimes be interesting.

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Yes, to me it''s interesting if it''s not completely binary. If failure leads to death, it''s less interesting than if failure leads to different situations. A great example for me was swords breaking in Morrowind, when I got stuck way up in the monster filled mountains and had to use stealth to get down. Though I cursed my way down, I made it and it was an awesome experience (which of course caused me to forever carry 2 swords )

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As a player, I am usually willing to cut the devs some slack, especially if there are cheats that can circumvent the mistakes.

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I think developers are starting to rely on this cheat method to balance out poorly play-tested gameplay, but I agree with you. I''m less ready to send Lucas Arts a pile of dead chicken heads when they let me cheat my way through their impossible end-game missions.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
I don''t think it''s wrong to make it possible for the player to shoot themselves in the foot. I''ll bet it''s less taxing to get through Fallout with no combat abilities and little intelligence than it is to beat "Truth & Reconciliation" on Legendary difficulty (Halo), and the designers obviously built that level to be that hard.

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Haven''t tried either Halo in single player or Fallout as a non-combatant, so it''s hard for me to say. (Truth & Reconciliation is a joke on any level if you play multiplayer and one guy runs ahead to trigger everything, tho'' )

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I don''t think there''s a single game out there that can''t be enjoyed and beaten with a generally balanced character.

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My worry is that new players who don''t know the convention won''t know to balance their character unless the game tells them to.

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Sure, you''ll get out there and think, "Man, I shouldn''t have put so much into my Doctor skill. I don''t think I''ve ever used that!" So next time you''ll just do it a little bit differently.

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Fallout actually did something pretty nice in that it allowed you to balance your stats a bit towards the end. I remember playing a character that had to buy more strength and perception from the Brotherhood''s surgeons before I could get into power armor. Had I had to replay from the start just to be able to beat the end, I''m not sure I would have.

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Maxing out your first aid, barter, and thief skills won''t let you bet him, and neither will Small guns and melee weapons. There isn''t always a way to win, but that doesn''t mean you can''t have a wonderful time playing the game, and learn how to do better next time.

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I think it''s the "next time" that bothers me. If "next time" is a few hours, then sure. But it could take you weeks just to get to the Master, and by that time, if you''ve made drastic mistakes, all you have to look forward to are a few unvariagated random encounters and whatever missions are left.

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And how do you get two broken arms? I''ve been through that game a half-dozen times and as that many different character types. I''ve never had a crippled limb. Heck I can''t even cripple other people''s limbs. Maybe I''ll blind someone, but it takes three critical hits to the eyes using a plasma rifle to make that happen, and they''re generally dead by then.

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Don''t ask me, I''ve only been blinded in one eye in 3 or 4 times playing. Perhaps it was one of those rare events that becomes an inevitable certainty the more people there are to play your game? I dunno.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

I remeber playing Lionheart and trying to create a diplomatic theif. Only to discover after a few hours of play that the game was pure combat and that those skills I had designed my character around where basicly useless after the first few hours of play. There where a couple of bosses you could use diplomacy on but since I had stopped investing in diplomacy I in order to be able to survie I was forced to level train just build up my diplomacy enough to beat the boss. In the end I was left with such a weak character that I had lure enemies in a safe areas and kill them one at time and save after ever fight just to survie. Not a good thing, but without playing the game before the player can''t be expected to know what makes a good or bad character. That one instance where classes are benfical since they allow the player to play an arche type and not have to worry about balancing.

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"Fate and Destiny only give you the opportunity the rest you have to do on your own."
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

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Original post by Wavinator
My worry is that new players who don''t know the convention won''t know to balance their character unless the game tells them to.

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A valid point, but since a very small portion of the gaming population is totally unaware of the basic conventions of character creation AND stupid enough to dump all their points into "basketweaving", you can probably head those guys off by have a few pre-fab character types available. In fact, you could have the character creation screen feature the "Knight", "Wizard" and "Archer" types, and a button labelled "Advanced" that you can push to actually create a character.

I can''t say I''m a big fan of classes. Granted, my reaction depends on how they fit into the game. If the character''s are already well defined and focused, then having them auto-develope works fine. Ironically, the more I get to define the character, the less I like classes. The problem is if the game tells me to make a character my creativity kicks in. I''ll often come up an interesting idea, but find I can''t play if because the class isn''t available. I guess I just don''t like being told, "make up any kind of character you want... out of these choices". It''s fine if the progression arise out of the character''s own story and style, but if I''m asked to determine the style, I don''t like being restricted by archetypes.

I''m also not sure it''s a great idea to lock the character into a given path before the first five minutes of actual gameplay. It''s all too possible for idea that sounds cool to end up either not working well, or clashing with what the player wants to do. Let''s say you had a really rich magic system which catches the player''s attention in game, but they get locked out because they picked a non-magical class before play.
Besides, having a fixed progression doesn''t help immersion. The character might improve skills that they never use, while gaining paltry or no progress in something they end up using every few minutes.

Character templates seem like a better idea. Templates basically pick your starting traits for you. This let''s you make a certain type of character quickly, without restricting your growth. An article about character classes versus template can be found here.

Being a bit of a fan, I''m going to go over how the Quest for Glory series handled this.
You started by picking a "character class" which determined your intitial skills and stats. Then you were given some extra points to distribute as you see fit. Every trait costs the same, but you had to pay extra to buy a skill up from 0. Every skill was available at character creation, but you had to have it above 0 to use it. This means paying extra points to buy it if it''s not already part of your class.
Once you start play, class has almost no impact on how you can develope. Any skill you have (above level 0) can be improved through training. This isn''t to say classes have no further impact. It''s just that they shifted from controlling the story to affecting the plot. You could play a magical thief, but there were a few spells that only someone of the wizard class would be offered. Also, some awards were based on class. A magical thief would get the same grappling hook as a throwing specialist, while even the least magical member of the wizard class would get a spell instead of the hook.

Morrowind was also good about this. Their classes were non invasive, and didn''t really restrict you. After all, you could develope any skills, it would just take a little longer. This made classes more like areas of talent than an auto-leveler. In fact, the ability to mix & match to make custom classes had me practically drooling over the potential combinations. With 2 major attributes, 5 major skills, and 5 minor skills, the system was easy to use while still flexible enough to allow a vast number of variations. I actuall liked thinking up classes and figuring out how to model them using this system. Dragoons, ninjas, blade dancers...