Like SS, Xcom used a system whereby stats increased the more you used them. Guys made to carry heavy weapons would get stronger, guys who did a lot of sniping would get more accurate, guys who panic in combat would slowly get braver.

Yes! If I want to put 15 points in quantum phsyics before I can do basic maths then fine! WEEEEEEEEEE!

Einstein had problems with math, me too (not that im a genius) and i guess others who are good in something have also problems in something else.

I know 2 people who are great in biogenetics but hate math (and one of them even biology itself >P)

Like SS, Xcom used a system whereby stats increased the more you used them. Guys made to carry heavy weapons would get stronger, guys who did a lot of sniping would get more accurate, guys who panic in combat would slowly get braver.

So it's tactical Oblivion, is what you're saying.

 

Oblivion with aliens.

Like SS, Xcom used a system whereby stats increased the more you used them. Guys made to carry heavy weapons would get stronger, guys who did a lot of sniping would get more accurate, guys who panic in combat would slowly get braver.

So it's tactical Oblivion, is what you're saying.

 

Oblivion with aliens.

Learn by doing isn't the trademark of nor defining characteristic of Oblivion.

Edited July 9, 200718 yr by Tale

Fine! Be like that with your complex proving me wrong statements.

Like SS, Xcom used a system whereby stats increased the more you used them. Guys made to carry heavy weapons would get stronger, guys who did a lot of sniping would get more accurate, guys who panic in combat would slowly get braver.

So ... doing strength training gives the character strength; doing hand-eye coordinating tasks increase hand-eye coordination ... and running away like a little girl grants the PC courage?

I would prefer classes to be handled by just providing a small background that you can edit. And then just a few basic enhancements to certain skills based on what background you chose. Everything after that is up to you.

 

Leveling up would just mean getting points to spend on your skills/attributes/whatever. Sort of like Bloodlines.

Esoteric 1.00 am thought. Why not have classes as non-physical stuff. Like how people perceive you and who your mates are.

Like a "detect evil" spell ability, as for a Paladin?

I miss that ability in NWN 1 and 2.

The detect evil ability for Paladins was awesome in BG and IWD too. It kind of pissed me off that they scrapped it for BG2 and IWD2. That and how the holy avenger starting sucking hard post-BG2.

A "detect reputation" spell-like ability through the power of gossip?

I had assumed it would be a skill-based classless system. Now I can only hope so. Class-based crgps are teh suck.

 

ANd I'm surprised to see anybody touting a learn-by-doing system. They never work in a crpg. They are impossible to balance. In a game like XCOM, sure, but not a crpg.

Like SS, Xcom used a system whereby stats increased the more you used them. Guys made to carry heavy weapons would get stronger, guys who did a lot of sniping would get more accurate, guys who panic in combat would slowly get braver.

So ... doing strength training gives the character strength; doing hand-eye coordinating tasks increase hand-eye coordination ... and running away like a little girl grants the PC courage?

 

Yeah, essentally. Though it's more the 'use' of the courage stat (as in, the character experiencing somthing that frightens him, such as a team-mate dying or a psy-attack) that causes the boost in bravary, rather than the stat being exceeded and the resulting panic.

 

ANd I'm surprised to see anybody touting a learn-by-doing system. They never work in a crpg. They are impossible to balance. In a game like XCOM, sure, but not a crpg.

 

I mostly agree with this, yeah. In xcom it was balanced because your men were so expendable, even with 'godlike' stats a few misplaced bullets (or a blaster bomb, shudder) could still take one down.

 

In Silent Storm it was far less so because you would generally use the same (small) team through the entire campain, and could 'level' them in a non-important location just by shooting random bullets and running arond like idiots (which you could do in realtime while still boosting their stats, since combat worked much like an advanced version of Fallout).

Edited July 17, 200718 yr by Nick_i_am

I mostly agree with this, yeah. In xcom it was balanced because your men were so expendable, even with 'godlike' stats a few misplaced bullets (or a blaster bomb, shudder) could still take one down.

 

I always loved it when on one of your early terror missions you would face sectoids and be subject to psionic attacks before you could defend against them. Then you suddenly find out that your godlike soldier with awesome accuracy that you have been grooming for the long haul has a non-existence psionic defense and just went under alien control and launched a rocket into the back of the skyranger and killed half your team. haha. awesome.

 

But yeah, the fact your soldiers are infinite and expendable and ultimately hideously weak until the end game means that any single soldier doesn't have much effect on the overall campaign. The stat increases are just a bit of gravy to make the game more interesting and to provide som eimpetus to keep them alive.

 

My soldiers with bravery lower than 30 were alwasy the ones who stepped through darkened doorways first. heheh.

In one X Com game I actually was able to to have one of my original soldiers go through the entire game. Man, he was a tough lil' bugger after psi-training.

Like SS, Xcom used a system whereby stats increased the more you used them. Guys made to carry heavy weapons would get stronger, guys who did a lot of sniping would get more accurate, guys who panic in combat would slowly get braver.

So ... doing strength training gives the character strength; doing hand-eye coordinating tasks increase hand-eye coordination ... and running away like a little girl grants the PC courage?

 

Yeah, essentally. Though it's more the 'use' of the courage stat (as in, the character experiencing somthing that frightens him, such as a team-mate dying or a psy-attack) that causes the boost in bravary, rather than the stat being exceeded and the resulting panic.

Ahhh, I see.

 

So is there a critical failure where the character is permanently damaged with Post-Traumatic Stress ..? "

Not as far as I know, but having to send your men to therapy after a traumatic battle (thus either keeping them out of action, or risking sending them in juttery) could be quite a cool mechanic in the meta-game.

 

haha, I made a funny.

I meta-caffawkled.

I meta-caffawkled.

You might want a doctor to check that.

I'm not really impressed by the medical profession at the moment.

Xcom was JUST about stats though, you could give your men whatever equipment you wanted and expect them to be able to use them (to verying degrees), though psy weapons required training.

 

Silent Storm was class and skill based. Your character would all have classes, and while any character could use any peice of equipment that they had enough experiance in (for example, medical for bandages), only the relevent classes would get skills to help these abilities, as well as improved growth in them, and high stats related to the skills in question.

 

It would have been great, save that, because of the 'learn by doing' mechanic, and the skill caps on using items, your support equipment, sich as lockpicks would always feel underleveled, with no real way of buffing them up. It also didn't help that the items for support abilities, such as lockpicks, would break after use and were limited in supply, meaning that your support classes (engineer esspesally) would feel like he was essential, yet useless.

How would you fix that?

Probably by giving a greater (or even infinite) supply of the relevent items, and more chances to use them in levels (prefrably giving the player mutiple venues to objectives which would make use of such skills). You can resupply your guys with ammo back at base, but the low levels of items such as TNT and other 'non essential' engineer items meant that you were never encoraged to really use them (as opposed to, for example an AT grenade from your HW guy, the game had very destructable terrain), and as such, had very little oppotunity to make use of the skill.

 

I must have opened every lock/trap the 'correct' way with my Engineer, but by the end of the game, there were still items unusable due to the lack of skill level. Really this is a balance issue though.

 

The other main use of the Engineer was Panzerkligns (power armour, basically), in which they get a lot of skills, at high levels, but the Panzerkligns themselves (again, late game only) screw up the balance of the game so much that i'm not even going to go there.

ANd I'm surprised to see anybody touting a learn-by-doing system. They never work in a crpg. They are impossible to balance. In a game like XCOM, sure, but not a crpg.

Objection!

 

It worked quite nicely in JA2, even if it wasn't a purestrain crpg