Weapons in Book II - and a suggestion

[AlexH]

Have any changes been made to the weapons in Book II? I read somewhere on here that short-bladed weapons and throwing weapons have been changed a bit, but what about the rest of the weapons?

My suggestion is regarding weapon choices in Book II. Once thing that bothered me about Book I was that Fighters always start with swords as a given skill. Why not let the player choose what kind of weapon he wants to specialize in with his free skill? When the game starts, the player would be a given a basic weapon of that type (like the spot outside the starting house in Book I).

[CrazyBernie]

Personally, I'd prefer that there just not be any classes. If all that differentiates a class is a single free skill, then better to just have the class label determined by that free skill choice.

If there's going to be classes, it'd be better to have specific skills, or extra skills assigned to them to give them more weight. Or at least a "custom" class allowing you to choose that first free skill.

[Evnissyen]

I remember suggesting on the Spidweb forums, a long time ago, that your character(s) should be allowed to develop a skill that they use frequently. That was shot down pretty quickly by the suggestion that this would discourage people from moving to another weapon . . . which I still don't fully think would be an issue. (After all . . . this would be an added feature, it's not as if other skills would be at the same time reduced.)

So . . . Now I'm making the same suggestion here. If you train in swords, or cleaving weapons, or smashing weapons, or bows, or knuckle fighting . . . your capabilities should increase over time in accordance to how frequently you use that weapon [successfully].

[Unclever title]

Personally, I'd prefer that there just not be any classes. If all that differentiates a class is a single free skill, then better to just have the class label determined by that free skill choice.

If there's going to be classes, it'd be better to have specific skills, or extra skills assigned to them to give them more weight. Or at least a "custom" class allowing you to choose that first free skill.

There are other more subtle differences perhaps the most notable being the differences in HP and MP gain. But it is definitely debatable whether or not they are enough to legitimize a class difference.

I do like the idea of custom class determined by a chosen single free skill, but I'd be more enticed if there were included subtle variations between the custom selected class and other classes or custom classes. I'm not sure how this would be implemented but then again I don't fully know the system.

[realmzmaster]

Is it being suggested that Book II have a skill development system like Morrowind or Oblivion? The more you use a skill in Oblivion the more your skill in that weapon or magic increases from novice to apprentice to journeyman to expert to master on a scale from 0 to 100. 100 being master. Each new level brings a different enhancement. You can also train up a skill.

[nottorp]

Unfortunately in Morrowind/Oblivion with that skill improvement system I (at least) always ended up caring more about how my skills will improve on next level up than about playing the game. It may be more "realistic" but it ends up less fun IMO.

[renkin]

Unfortunately in Morrowind/Oblivion with that skill improvement system I (at least) always ended up caring more about how my skills will improve on next level up than about playing the game. It may be more "realistic" but it ends up less fun IMO.

What's even worse is that it encourages mindless, OCD-like and nonsensical grind in order to increase your skills. I remember playing Morrowind and repeatedly jumping down from a rock - with a loud crack from my foot every time I landed - in order to increase my "acrobatics" (or some such) skill. That was quite ridiculous.

[Palog]

Is it being suggested that Book II have a skill development system like Morrowind or Oblivion? The more you use a skill in Oblivion the more your skill in that weapon or magic increases from novice to apprentice to journeyman to expert to master on a scale from 0 to 100. 100 being master. Each new level brings a different enhancement. You can also train up a skill.

That is pure theory, in practice not much skills are really trained in a natural way well merged to the gameplay. One exemple are all skills related to non fighting magic or magic rarely used during fights. You end in stupid casting in void for a boring "training". The second unpleasant effect is that if you don't care, you just don't control anything of you character develop, pure passivity, uninteresting. This so famous system is for me full of flaws in practice and not a good class system. Not to mention that in the only good game of the series, Morrowind, if you manage your training your character ends easily master of anything, mage any kind, fighter, bowman, physical and so on.

[realmzmaster]

Theory? I beg to differ. The only way anyone gets better at a skill is to practice it and/or use it in combat. The best at anything only got that way by practicing their craft. No one tries out a new technique in battle that has not been practiced over and over. Fun no, realistic yes!

Also no skill system is going to please everyone. The most any designer can hope is that the system pleases most of the audience. As far as mastering everything you can do that in any crpg game if you play it long enough and do all the available quests with the same character.

[BasiliskWrangler]

I think the method of skill progression via using the skill makes the most sense to me: the more locks you pick, the better you become. The more you use a bow, the better you become. Skills that you ignore are never developed. I really think this is a perfect system, but it has not been implemented well in the past.

Some RPGs have gotten it right, by limiting the amount of XP you gain as you repeat tasks over and over. So, if you think you can become a master of the War Maul by smashing barrels, think again: each hit brings less-and-less experience to you and eventually you gain no more experience from smashing barrels. This makes sense to me as well.

For the Eschalon series, we will always use the "skill purchase" system at level-up. It is a solid old-school approach that works well for our game. However, I would be open to the idea of implementing a quality "skill-improves-through-use" system in a future game. If we ever try this, we'll be sure to run a lot of ideas past you people before implementing it.

[Unclever title]

If we ever try this, we'll be sure to run a lot of ideas past you people before implementing it.

And we'll be sure to give you our opinions likely including a back and forth debate amongst ourselves that will go on for weeks!

Actually this probably isn't quite so controversial as the save/reload spamming issue.

[kopema]

Some RPGs have gotten it right, by limiting the amount of XP you gain as you repeat tasks over and over. So, if you think you can become a master of the War Maul by smashing barrels, think again: each hit brings less-and-less experience to you and eventually you gain no more experience from smashing barrels. This makes sense to me as well.

That sounds really hard to implement. Don't limit it enough, and you get potentially game-killing exploits. Limit it too much and characters get pigeon-holed. In some games, I find myself at mid-levels suddenly thinking: "Hey, that might be a cool skill to try out." But then realize I'd have to re-tread huge areas just to get the skill up to a level where it would be of some use at that point in the game -- not fun.

I'm not sure this is entirely related, but I've often thought it would be a cool design feature to have random content replayable dungeons throughout an RPG. The problem with hand-designed, progressive content RPG's is that they can be tough to balance. And the problem with randomly-generated content is that it can be monotonous. I've always wondered if it would be possible to combine these things and let players go back and forth as they like.

Maybe put one level-appropriate randomized content dungeon in each major area of the game. That way, whenever the main quest got too hard, you could go there to level up until you think you're ready. That might also be a good place to learn new skills - or just to go when you want to brainlessly kill stuff and adventure without having to worry about quests or anything else. If you end up playing an efficient build, you can skip them and just stick with the main quest, but if you pick a weaker class or non-ideal skill set, you can just power up a bit until you feel ready to move on.