Poll: Autolevel vs manual management of skills

[rogerdv]

In RPG (single player or online), do you prefer to raise automatically the skills while you use it or do you like to distribute skill points manually?
_________________
Programación|Juegos| Linux
Game programming news for newbies

[sago008]

I choose "Like to place them manually"

I Diablo II, I thought it would be fair if some of the passive skills was developed automatically.

Since I played "Dungeon Siege" I dropped the idea of autoplacement. It's not fun! Then you place them manually you show dedication to a skill. In DS I got a feeling that I didn't do anything at all!

However manual stat/skill placement can be too advanced sometimes.

[cybersphinx]

I chose "mixed". Skills are increased by practice, either explicit by practising (increase the values manually) or implicit by using them (increasing automatically.

[rogerdv]

Dungeon Siege system is fun just the first hour of gameplay. After that, you find that skills that you could use in certain moment arent as developed as you would need. Without mentioning that lmaybe an interesting story would keep your mind away from thinking in skills.
_________________
Programación|Juegos| Linux
Game programming news for newbies

[SpoonMeiser]

I was really fustrated playing a theif in Neverwinter Nights... My idea of a good theif is someone who can sneak in, get what he wants, and get out without being detected. However, you got no experience for this.

I found myself having to utilise one skill to develop another.

I think auto-leveling (with the player perhaps having some manual intervention) is a good idea. However, it has to be balanced very well, giving the player ample opportunity to practise a wide variety of skills so that they can avoid ending up with too narrow a skill base.

[Pxtl]

In general, CRPGs are still stuck in '70s era RPG gaming. By the '90s, very few games had "character classes", or "levels" or anything else. You never rolled your states. You designed your character from scratch using various types of point values, and then you would get more points through the course of the game. Most games would include systems to design equipment and spells to help the GM maintain play-balance.

Meanwhile, CRPGs often have characters with random stats, overly-constrictive character classes, and "levels" as the only method of development. Equipment is designed by the game-designers on an ad-hoc basis and play balance has to be manually tweaked after the fact for each individual piece of equipment.

[rogerdv]

[Elanthis]

The system I've been working on for AweMUD makes use of a pure skill system with a class system layered on top.

Each skill is broken into a main category. Using a particular skill earns you XP, most of it into the skill's category and the remaining small portion into the general category. You can purchase new skills using a combination of generic XP and XP from the skill's category.

The class system is essentially just a list of desired skills and some simple heuristics for selecting what order to purchase them in. You select a class and play, and as you earn points the system buys the skills for you. You can switch classes at any time. Changing class gives you ZERO benefit - all it does is change the skills that will be purchased with skill points in the future. Players may even select no class if they wish to have complete control over their character.

I designed this system in order to satisfy the two extreme viewpoints on character generation and development. On one hard are people that don't want to ever be bothered with points or numbers or stats, and just want to play the darn game and role-play. On the other hand are people that want precise control over everything to tweak the game to the max. This system satisfies both players. Because of its flexibility, it also easily satisfies all the shades of opinion on character development in between the two extremes.

The categorization even works for people who believe you should only improve in skills you use, although to a somewhat lesser degree than some other pure skill systems. Trying to kill trolls to get better at picking locks won't work, though. If you select wizard as your class and keep hitting things with swords, your magic will not increase much at all while your martial skills will increase fairly rapidly.

To stop multi-specialization, you then add on category penalties. The costs of all skills in a category increases based on the total number of points you've spent in all other categories. Branching out is useful, but costly. If you tweak the math correctly, you will get to the point where high-level skills are impossible to buy if the character already has too many high-level skills in another category.

Why make a game ruleset that only appeals to a minority of your target audience when you can design the game to appeal to almost all of them? ;-)

It's worth noting that using any system where skill use improves skills or grants XP has to have some additional design to avoid abuse. Classically, games only grant XP for killing monsters or defeating traps (things which have risk) or completing quests (things which can be done only once) to stop players from just writing a script to level themselves up. In a game that grants XP for skill use, you need to be able to differentiate between "routine" skill use and "critical" skill use, and to ensure that critical skill use can't be easily and routinely performed.
_________________
Sean Middleditch
http://www.awemud.net

[PauloMorfeo]

This is one of the most interesting questions about RPGs.
I too played Diablo 2 and Dungeon Siege. DS does get very boring if you're not a magician but i think that, in that case, it's mostly because of lack of skills (we only have Ranged, Combat(?), Nature Magic, Combat Magic) than because they get auto assigned.
If Diablo 2 had skills auto assigned, i believe it would still be entertaining, using FireBalls or Frozen Orbs and watching them increase in skill.

Players assigning skill has a few problems:
- We often use some other skill in Diablo 2, until the skill we want is available or powerfull enough. This is irrealistic and somewhat stupid, increasing one skill using another one that has nothing to do with it.
- Most often (unless we have a generally complicated system that solves it), the experience system is based on character levels. This too has it's problems. Each skill (sword mastery, jumping, playing chess) is suposed to be harder and harder to master the more skilled it is and easier to increase the more untrained it is, as in real life. The character level system kills that. Not to mention that we might find ourselves at level 76, having a tremendous hard time arranging enough XP to gain another level because we have alot of skills spent in FireBall (that is now useless), needing skills in Freezing Orb, having a character that is best left alone to die in the Hard Drive...

But it has it's great advantage. The excitment of reaching a new level and going to assign the skills. Actually, the only advantage i can see but it is a very strong one.

Still, i say i prefer having the skills auto assigned, but having more than 4 skills like in Dungeon Siege, hahaha... I would prefer a system of auto assignment, like DS, with a skill tree like the one of Diablo's. For example, to have access to Meteor, you would have to have 20 points of FireBall and 10 points of FireWall. One of the games i most liked, as far as skill is concerned, is Runescape. It uses very well the auto assignment of skills as well as having them distributed in other usefull stuff that is not merely related to killing others. Also, the mmoRPG Saga of Ryzom has a very interesting experience system that i really liked and that you might want to give a look at.

And also:

[Triplefox]

[Elanthis]

[quote]And I think most importantly, too many CRPGs are focused on advancement instead of actual characterization. The transition from "nobody peasant" to "GREATEST HERO OF THE KNOWN LANDS" is entertaining, but it's not very deep or complex; it forces the game in a very predictable direction.[/quote]

That's all that many people can find fun in. Real role-playing just isn't something that most people really get into, but "winning" is something just about everyone likes to do. Character levels are, in many ways, the RPG's version of mission-number or high score.

I guess, put another way, a deep and complex role-playing game just isn't something that's very commercially viable. Quite a few people who I know that think role-playing is lame and stupid are also major EverQuest or World of Warcraft addicts. Small-time hobbyist MMOs and MUDs are probably the only place you can hope to find quality role-playing systems and players these days.
_________________
Sean Middleditch
http://www.awemud.net

[PauloMorfeo]