Forum Overview :: Fallout III
 
On gamism and simulationism by Jerry Whorebach 12/30/2009, 1:11pm PST
Mr.Kool wrote:

I always felt they should combine 2 skills for certain actions. Repairing your weapons should rely on both repair and weapon skill (the old Fallout manual states that high weapon skill also relates to its maintenance). Laser gataling gun should be both big guns and energy weapons. Or repairing the energy fields in Fallout 1 could use science and repair skills.


This certainly sounds more realistic, but it also sounds more complex, and I feel like the SPECIAL system already has a vastly more complicated character-building system than it really needs. As I see it, a computer roleplaying game has one major advantage and one major disadvantage over a pencil and paper one. A computer allows increased complexity of actions, especially combat - things like bullet trajectories and armor penetration can be calculated in real time, with tremendous precision, totally invisibly to the player. But CRPGs are also limited by what the designers can foresee, and more importantly what they have time to implement - you will very rarely have the opportunity to do something clever or unexpected in a CRPG.

So, I believe CRPGs should play to their strengths. There's no point in having a lockpicking skill that ranges from 1-100 if the gameworld only has five kinds of lock. At the same time, there's no reason that what happens outside of character building - the actual gameplay itself - can't be as complex and interesting as an action game like Call of Duty, or an exploration game like Tomb Raider, or a stealth game like Splinter Cell (or a tactical game like Jagged Alliance, for you purists out there).

I think Mass Effect had a very good character system, in theory. A dozen or so skills, ten ranks in each skill, and no vestigial Dungeons & Dragons statistics like "Strength" or "Sticktoitiveness". Ideally, the designers should've been able to make sure that every single point spent in character development had some real impact on gameplay - because, really, why should I have to waste my time assigning points that, at best, are going to have a one percent impact on some subsystem the designers probably never got around to implementing anyway? (The original Fallout, great as it remains, was full of meaningless numbers and inconsequential choices in character building.) Unfortunately, most of the skills in Mass Effect were things like "Shot Gun" and "Assault Gun" and "Other Gun" and "Gun Resistance", so the end result was much worse than it had any right to be.

Mr.Kool wrote:

SirTech in Wizardry 8 and Jagged Alliance 2 had some crazy math set in your game file that would negate the save/reload trick when your action failed. The same action on reload would always happen the same way.


Ha! I still find myself performing pointless actions after reloading a savegame in Fallout 3, trying to scrub my last roll out of the buffer. I have no idea how F3 handles random numbers, and I'd probably do just as well stroking a troll doll's hair, but something compels me nonetheless (mental illness?).
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I have grave misgivings about Bethesda's implementation of the Speech skill by Jerry Whorebach 12/29/2009, 2:30pm PST NEW
    Bitch bitch bitch bitch about RPG's NT by THAT'S ALL YOU DO. 12/29/2009, 2:44pm PST NEW
        Maybe all dem xbox arcade games turned his mind into mush. O_O NT by Jhoh Creexul (custom software) 12/29/2009, 2:53pm PST NEW
        Someone has to do it, now that Bill's gone to that big forum in the sky v_v by Jerry Whorebach 12/29/2009, 3:45pm PST NEW
            Re: Someone has to do it, now that Bill's gone to that big forum in the sky v_v by Mr.Kool 12/30/2009, 7:28am PST NEW
                It's not crazy math, it's just not generating a new random seed. by Worm 12/30/2009, 8:23am PST NEW
                On gamism and simulationism by Jerry Whorebach 12/30/2009, 1:11pm PST NEW
            Re: Someone has to do it, now that Bill's gone to that big forum in the sky v_v by Ice Cream Jonsey 12/30/2009, 9:04am PST NEW
                I agree, one marksmanship skill ought to be enough for any game. by Jerry Whorebach 12/30/2009, 12:18pm PST NEW
                at around lvl 16, dump points into energy weapons by irony 12/30/2009, 6:37pm PST NEW
        There's no room for negativity in Caltrops, mister! NT by Self-appointed mod fag 12/30/2009, 6:17am PST NEW
 
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