What is Pillars of Eternity's approach towards skill checks that the player CAN'T pass yet?

[Kjaamor]

 Unfortunately, there's really no way to make lockpicking a non-savescummy mechanic without this break from realism.

 

In all fairness, the reverse is true. Breakable lockpicks and skill rolls lead directly to savescumming and non-breakable lockpicks and skill checks make savescumming obselete.

 

Obviously all rolls lead to savescumming to a degree, and I certain don't oppose RAND in my video games but I do think for static challenges (i.e. hardly in the heat of the moment) that skill checks are absolutely preferable to skill rolls for the very reasons stated above.

[Suburban-Fox]

Perhaps, but there's a difference between "mechanics that resist a potential exploit" and "ramping the difficulty factor to compensate for that exploit". The former I don't mind. The latter I do.

 

Besides, is it really so important to make it so that there's a constant need to replace lockpicks, or stock up on far more than you could ever carry, just to prevent people from reloading every time their picks break? If people want to quicksave every time they attempt to pick a lock, and quickload if their picks do break, then as far as I'm concerned, that's their choice. I don't mind allowing people the option to play like that if they so choose. What I don't like is being forced to play like that myself.

 

That said, I'm not opposed to save scum resistant mechanics, but it depends on how it's done. Ideally, it should be in a relatively unobtrusive way that would not impact the style of play of people who don't use savescummy methods. Having an automatic success (provided you have the skill to do it) when not in combat/pushed for time would work. Forcing people to carry 1000 lockpicks because they break after 5 uses would not (well, it would, but it'd also annoy people).

[Infinitron]

Don't think "1000 lockpicks that break after 5 uses". Think Deus Ex.

 

(this is all just conjecture though, I don't believe we actually know how lockpicking will work in this game)

Edited March 31, 2014 by Infinitron

[Lephys]

I don't think we know about its finalized state, but, a ways back, Josh talked about designing the system to eliminate repeated manual skill checks. The system he presented is basically:

 

"You want to pick this lock, and your skill is 20? You can pick it, but it's going to cost you 4 lockpicks."

"You want to pick this lock, and your skill is 35? You can pick it with one lockpick."

"You want to pick this lock, and your skill is 19? You can't."

 

The numbers above are purely example numbers, made up just to show how it works. But, yeah.

 

I think it's a pretty good way to go with it, though, I would like if there were some other factors, like "Oh, you're not super masterful at lockpicking, relative to this particular lock? You make lots of loud noises when picking this lock, and use more lockpicks than if you had higher skill." Or, "You get the lock open, but you can't actually close/latch this door behind you, because you've screwed up the lock too much," etc.

 

At least something that produces a functional difference, other than just cost in quantity of lockpicks. But, even with just that, your skill affects the situation, and random numbers of chancical dice rolls are eliminated.

[Frenzy-kun]

I think it's better when you specialice the characters. The point of having different classes is that you choose  what you want to do in the game. If you could do everything, there would not be classes.

 

Also, I think that it improves the replayability value. Being able to do what you were not gives more reasons to replay as a new class. The problem comes when you want to be able to do everything. Then, there is no real choice. If you can have it all, it's pointless to choose. The more symilar each class is, the less interesting.

 

And in the worst case, you are supposed to play with 6 different characters, so you will be able to configure that party to be able to cover as many possibilities as possible. Not like NWN where you got only two characters and you had to deal with that.

[Ell]

As for the lockpicks, I'd prefer them to be non-breakable.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Ell