Non linear character development

[Mars]

quick question: do obsidian actually take any notice to these topics/boards? Like reply at all or what

[EnderAndrew]

It comes and goes. Occasionally they are quite active. Akari used to be active in asking for feedback and answering questions. I see a lot more developer posts in the NWN:2 areas these days.

 

I don't know if they're reading the whole board.

[Tigranes]

It may be realistic, but it's one of those things you don't want anyway. Like eating, or sleeping. Runescape was the *devil* just because when you start the game you're sitting there whack, whack, whack, cook, cook, cook, chop, chop, chop... oh, another example of this was Dungeon Siege.

 

So unless you want half the game to be "Practice being a Swordmaster"... I personally like the idea, too, but have yet to see any suggestion for a proper implementation.

[Elad]

I like this idea, almost like a communist way to develop your character.

 

Like the better you get, the better you get.

[EnderAndrew]

The concept of development being tied into your actions isn't bad. It's the scale implemented that doesn't work.

 

Starting out rather weak, and practicing forever isn't fun. In Ultima Online, you have to start out killing bunnies for practice. A dear might kill you. It's realistic, but not fun.

[Squidget]

Meaning no offense to the Original Poster, I would argue that Learn by Doing is the worst system I have seen used in a CRPG. The problems with this system tend to fall into four major groups:

 

Issue 1 - Tedium: One of the biggest flaws of the LbD system is that it encourages needless practice. That is, it encourages you to use your skills for the sake of raising the skills rather than because you actually need to use them. I can think of few things more tedious than actually going through the fifty push-ups my fighter does every day, and few things more ridiculous than jumping from town to town to gain levels as you could in Morrowind.

 

If an Archer is rewarded for repeatedly shooting a target (even if the rewards are not as great as shooting an actual creature), you are encouraging the player to sit and shoot the target until they are far above the game's challenge rating or the target stops giving them experience. Players will do what is necessary for rewards, but if the path to those rewards is tedious they will blame the designers for it. Unless your system somehow differentiates between practice and reality (which gets difficult - where do you draw the line between killing weaker monsters and practice, for example?)

 

Rebuttle:

More realistic though....

 

Says you.

 

Says I, the realism of the system exists only in theory. In practice, LbD systems almost universally require the player to do unrealistic things in order to progress. The player is encouraged and rewarded for taking an option that doesn't make sense tactically (such as sneaking by a monster again and again to raise Stealth), and in most uses of the system the game is uncompleteable without it. A 'realistic' system is one that allows the player to take the best tactical option they are given.

 

Issue 2 - Balance: Another problem with LbD systems is that they are essentially impossible to balance for. There is no way to be sure of how much 'practice' the player has gone through at any given point in the game, or what skills they have chosen to focus in. When the developers design the campaign they must have some idea of where the player's skills will be in order for the game to be properly balanced.

 

If a player chooses to practice and practice until they are 2X or 3X the 'normal' level for that part of the game, they will naturally find it very unchallenging. However, human nature (and specifically Gamer nature) being what it is, they will blame this on poor game design rather than their own choices to practice - after all, if they didn't want players to do it, why would they have allowed it?

 

Or the player who hates tedious game mechanics and never practices at all? He will end up with 1/2X the skills necessary to progress, and again, he will blame this on poor game design rather than his own choices.

 

And this remains an issue no matter where you set X. Y ou will have problems with people at one end or the other - raise X and more players will resent the need for tedious practice, lower it and more players who feel practicing to raise their skills is a part of the game will feel disappointed. In a level-based system with quest-based XP, this is not nearly as much of an issue because skills are given in distinct 'blocks' and you can have a rough idea which 'block' the player will have achieved by that point in the game. At the very least you can usually predict a small range of levels; far more than can be said for an LbD system.

 

Issue 3 - Character Diversity: LbD systems also have the effect of turning out 'carbon copies'. If you continue to raise skills by practicing, all skills will eventually reach a maximum value, and theoretically someone who practices all skills to that point will be identical to any character who has done the same. All characters move towards the same endpoint, while in a system with skillpoints or levels you are given a limited number and must spread them between skills and make choices. Two max-level characters in D&D will only very rarely be identical, but two max-level characters in a LbD system will usually be so.

 

Rebuttle: But you can solve this by capping the total number of skills a player can gain, so someone who is a world-class fighter can't be a world-class mage as well.

 

This is true, but at that point you encourage further metagaming. If players know there is cap coming they will be meticulously only use certain skills and never even thinking about raising any others. A character might not run when being chased by a dragon in order to avoid raising their running skill. Likewise, it sets characters into a specific path early on - if you start using a sword you can't ever even think about picking up an axe, because it splits your points before hitting the cap for no real benefit to the character.

 

Issue 4 - Opportunity: Finally, there is the question of how much certain skills are used. For skills to be balanced in a Learn by Doing system it is necessarily possible for every skill to be used equally in every single module. Consider the implications of that. If your module (or campaign of any sort) has more combat than it does lockpicking you must either add more locks to your adventure (even if it doesn't at all fit the story and setting) or use some arbitrary mechanism. Both will set constraints on adventure design, however, because both force certain skills to be used only a certain amount in all modules, no more or less. The system basically encourages the campaign designer to ignore story and setting and just build so every skill gets an equal share.

 

Rebuttle: But you could fix this by having skills mature at different rates, so raising a lesser-used skill (like Pick Pocket) takes less successful attempts than to raise a more commonly used skill (like Combat).

 

The problem is that this requires a perfect balance in both the OC, expansions, and any modules the community makes if the game includes a toolset. So if you make it easy to raise Pick Pocket because there aren't many pockets to pick in the OC, what if someone makes a module where you play as a thief who goes around picking pockets all the time? The skill shoots up very high very quickly because the OC made it so easy to raise. On the other hand, this makes skills like Combat stagnate because they are more used in the OC and more difficult to raise (as an example) so any module not focused in combat will prevent its players from gaining any combat skill at all.

 

Also, if you weigh skills differently, you kill the alleged realism of the system. There is nothing so difficult about picking a lock that you deserve several skill points for doing so once, and there is nothing to make combat so difficult that it should take many fights to raise the skill a single degree.

 

Challenge: Design and propose (or simply point me towards) a Learn by Doing system that solves the issues mentioned above. One that does not encourage metagaming, maintains balance within itself, allows and encourages character diversity, and maintains an equal opportunity for use regardless of the module.

 

Here's a hint - It's impossible.

[grayjo]

Not impossible to make though, just extremly hard.

 

non linear char dev would probably not work in a linear enviroment, unless there was somethiing pressing you onwards, like a time limit or something, and i don;t think they are very popular.

 

I was thinking more MMORPG, because sure, you can spend 100 hours getting excellent at everything, then get whooped by someone who spent 100 hours on a single stat.

 

There would also have to be a difficult rating. Shooting an arrow at a tree would be relativly easy to say shooting an arrow into the eye of a flying dragon.

 

The only way i can really see this working is if there is something keeping you constantly on the go, so you cannot stop and spend countless hours "practicing" that people complain about, but arent supposed to do.

 

It could also be made that the more you repeat a specific task, like chopping, the less you improve, you have to do different things, just to add variety.

 

It can be more realistic, if designed properly. Even if people chose to be boring and spend a gazillion hours in the first area in order to improve, the hero could have done the same thing.

 

you would probably have to have skill degredation too, so if someone spends hours working on one skill, the rest fall behind.

 

But as i said, its only an idea, i didn't really expect such a detailed response

[EnderAndrew]

I was thinking that Morrowind's learn by doing system could work. However, I'd merge it with an experience/level up system.

 

As it is, Morrowind keeps track of how much you successfully use each skill. Those successes automatically improve skills. When you level up (from 10 class skills being improved) you have the ability to improve your attributes based upon which skills improved, and how many of them.

 

This system is abuseable by spamming skills.

 

I propose a system where you level up due to experience points. However, the game still tracks skill usage. When you level up, attribute and skill points are distributed according to usage. However, instead of a variable scale like Morrowind's that rewards jumping for 2 hours to get more attribute points, you always give a flat number of points for skills or attributes per level up.

 

Where they get distributed is based upon your use.

 

So spamming the jump button to level up will only increase your athletics. Futhermore, you won't level up unless you get experience.

[Squidget]

First off, apologies for writing out such a long post/rant. Learn by Doing is a pet peeve.

 

I propose a system where you level up due to experience points.  However, the game still tracks skill usage.  When you level up, attribute and skill points are distributed according to usage.  However, instead of a variable scale like Morrowind's that rewards jumping for 2 hours to get more attribute points, you always give a flat number of points for skills or attributes per level up.

 

Where they get distributed is based upon your use.

 

So spamming the jump button to level up will only increase your athletics.  Futhermore, you won't level up unless you get experience.

 

This is an improvement, IMHO, but only insofar as it isn't a full LbD system at all. It has its own issues though. For one, doing things like this will essentially set you into one path at the start and make you stick with it.

 

Let's say that I have a Fighter who likes swords, and uses them for a good portion of the game, raising his skills all the way. That works both mechanically and realistically, right?

 

So what happens when my Fighter finds, partway through his journies, a really cool axe?

 

In a conventional system like D20 or GURPS, I'd start putting points into axecraft on my future levels and pretty quickly I'd be able to use said really cool axe. As far as IC translation of these mechanics, my Fighter is practicing with the axe in his off-time while he continues to use his sword for actual adventuring.

 

But in your system, I can't do that. I have to go back to the combat dummy, then the rat cellar, then the goblin caves, then the spider forest, ect, ad nauseum. If I try to use the axe on those creatures I was fighting with a sword I won't stand a chance, so I'm left with no other way to diversify then fighting meager creatures to no end.

 

Is that realistic? Maybe. Is it fun? No.

 

Likewise, you still run into metagaming/story issues. If someone is focused in carving things up with an axe and I, as a builder or DM (Obsidian or otherwise), put in a situation where their equipment is taken and they're stuck with a rusty knife, am I forever crippling their character build if they level up and forcibly gain proficency in rusty knife rather than axe?

 

Overall, I think it's a better system, but it still has its issues.

 

  Not impossible to make though, just extremly hard.

 

non linear char dev would probably not work in a linear enviroment, unless there was somethiing pressing you onwards, like a time limit or something, and i don;t think they are very popular.

 

I was thinking more MMORPG, because sure, you can spend 100 hours getting excellent at everything, then get whooped by someone who spent 100 hours on a single stat.

 

There would also have to be a difficult rating. Shooting an arrow at a tree would be relativly easy to say shooting an arrow into the eye of a flying dragon.

 

The only way i can really see this working is if there is something keeping you constantly on the go, so you cannot stop and spend countless hours "practicing" that people complain about, but arent supposed to do.

 

It could also be made that the more you repeat a specific task, like chopping, the less you improve, you have to do different things, just to add variety.

 

It can be more realistic, if designed properly. Even if people chose to be boring and spend a gazillion hours in the first area in order to improve, the hero could have done the same thing.

 

you would probably have to have skill degredation too, so if someone spends hours working on one skill, the rest fall behind.

 

But as i said, its only an idea, i didn't really expect such a detailed response

 

I agree with you in part - such a system does work much better in a non-linear environment like Morrowind, and it actually becomes really workable in an MMORPG.

 

In a game like Morrowind, issue 2 (Balance) is resolved because the game does not have a set idea of where the character is at any given stage. In a non-linear world if you run into an area that's too strong or too weak for you, that is just a part of the game and not seen as anything bad in the design.

 

You have some interesting ideas here as well, but I think the best incentive to make players not want to do tedious things to progress is not giving tedious things the ability to make them progress. I quite like this aspect of Ender's system (since you can't learn unless you're actually out gaining XP), and you have some good ideas that could perhaps be used to refine it.

 

Be aware as well that my comments are in reference to linear CRPGs, of the sort Obsidian has and is making at the moment. If you shift the question to another genre, like MMORPGs, then I think LbD can actually work quite well. MMORPG systems are basically designed around making players practice until the social network effect kicks in, and a LbD system makes for a rewarding feeling through practice. Use a skill X number of times and it goes up a tick; this is a reward and can be made addictive quite easily.

[grayjo]

I agree with both of you mostly. I like the balancing aspect of ender's idea. It makes leveling up more believable.

 

Oh, and about the axe, i had figured a system where using a sword doesn't just improve sword skills. Like using a sword will increase ability with that particular sword, swords in general, accuracy, strength etc, all the things you normally would improve on. If you switched to an axe halfway though, you would be at the begining for axes, but would still have the strength and accuracy to give it a boost, until you become more experienced with an axe. I don't really like the idea of "practicing in your spare time" because, when is this spare time? the only time you dont see them is when they are asleep. You could say you don't see them when they are traveling or that you just dont see them do it while wlaking around, but this could be incorporated into a LbD system. Also, with the axe, or other things, there would be several ways to increse exp, hopefully many. Like with your axe, just say you keep using the sword, but use the axe to cut down trees for firewood or cut away groth etc you would gain exp for that.

 

But yes LbD probably should stick to MMMRPGs