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[nenjin]

No. I mean side areas. Additionally, user choice in how the character advancement manifests itself is good in theory, but it obeys the same rules as everything else. The game can't be balanced in a way that will make the player's progress far easier if they select certain advancements, lest the entire system be rendered utterly pointless (if the balance is weighted in the direction of one ability, why have any others?).

I think the problem here is one of definition and emphasis: the victory conditions in many games are the same. "Kill the dude." That automatically makes some traits more valuable than others. In DC's case, they just remove all the non-core traits from game. (You just have Str, Dex and Int.)

But I believe not all games need to be defined like that. If a game comes out and says point blank "Not all classes/races/combinations are equally effective. Some have severe disadvantages while providing unique advantages" then I think it frees itself from ALL classes having to be equally effective, and ALL combinations approaching the game the same way.

Hell, I've never even finished DC. Just played half a dozen characters. Not all people even play games to finish them, and not all character advancement needs to be defined in terms of "how close/easily does it get me to the end." If your game is willing to say that, then it frees you from a lot of the character advancement traps, where "A Level 12 Lawyer needs to be just as powerful as a Level 12 Demonlord Worldraper of AHZHKLTLSFN."

[3]

I think the problem here is one of definition and emphasis: the victory conditions in many games are the same. "Kill the dude." That automatically makes some traits more valuable than others. In DC's case, they just remove all the non-core traits from game. (You just have Str, Dex and Int.)

Only if the process of killing the dude is overly simplistic, but yes, this is a good example of a game which has avoided redundant facets of gameplay.

But I believe not all games need to be defined like that. If a game comes out and says point blank "Not all classes/races/combinations are equally effective. Some have severe disadvantages while providing unique advantages" then I think it frees itself from ALL classes having to be equally effective, and ALL combinations approaching the game the same way.

I'd agree, but the issue is often more severe than that. Often the game offers the player no choice in how situations are approached.

[Hugna]

I've had a dream with a 3D game based on character advancement. Basically, here how the dream came out while i was controlling it.

The character had about 5 hp, and i was fighting an enemy with 13 hp. I got raped. And it had many things.

Skills which advance as you do more things with them. The skills actually included all types of areas, from fighting through crafting and construction.
A fairy(?) which seems to allow you to create items out of nowhere. (i made a sword first at that point) Dunno why the hell i had that in the dream.
And.. you started in the middle of nowhere.

The enemy i fought looked sorta like a dinosaur... sorta. It's kind of foggy what i fought, but my mind says it was a raptor.

As i thought more on it when i woke up, i thought about adding in a few of a storyline with my imagination (yes, i used imagination in the middle of laying in my bed. Gives me something to do... even if it does slightly keep me up for an hour or so)

Let me be honest. I've yet to find a GOOD game with true character advancement. One that is like a sandbox-ish style version of a game, with the ways to get better as you use more stuff.

But after thinking more about the SUPER LOW hp, i thought it'd make one big game if it was used to go from 5 hp to a massive hp as the game progresses. At this point, i'm thinking more. Maybe the 5 hp thing could be based off of bars of health. Increasing endurance can increase the bar slightly, and when you lose a bar, you regain another bar, and you get less and less battle-ready very slightly, and the only way to become too weak to fight is to be near death, as tired as possible, and lost the will to fight. (morale-wise) Still, as annoying as it seems, most games are based off of "Kill everything than spare", so if it were against certain fights, you won't "die" all the time, but just get knocked out. Maybe if they were too nice to leave you out in the open (like you were in the wild), they'd probably take you back to town, after they tie you up if they have rope or something, maybe take you to a jail if they got one.

Think about it. I LOVE Sandbox games, and also love games with major character advancement. The rust thing would get annoying if it was in a certain game without having a way to turn it off. Hell, i'd love to be able to completely change the gameplay of an entire game to where if i don't like realistic sandbox style, i could go for average rpg game style.

Still, my dream makes me wish for ONCE i could finish one of my dream games. Sadly... i don't have the money for that. With what i hear, the common games people make take millions of dollars, and i'm not made of money...

[nenjin]

In some cases they shouldn't. I don't believe having Charisma type abilities or skills means you should be able to negotiate your way past creeps, or convince the end boss that you don't need to fight. I believe as long as you give players a set of options for game play, and give them interesting things to do with those options, they don't necessarily need to provide solutions for the "Core" game.

This is where I think many RPGs and roguelikes miss the boat. With such easily defined victory goals, that should free them up to do many other things not related to the core victory goal. A rogue-like world, I think, should be approached more as a test bed for interesting things to happen, than just a mechanics-ruled march to the end. I appreciate DC because it's going that direction a little bit, with the runes and the optional areas. It just lacks the back up of a lot of non-combat activities to really flesh it out.

For example: there's no backstory to DC. It makes a point of throwing out any backstory entirely. Zot is evil, that's all you need to know. And that's one less avenue of stuff DC can pursue as a result of that decision. Even to the point of just dropping in flavor text to break up the monotony of finding items and killing monsters.

So what if DC had something like a story? And had a class devoted to uncovering and decoding the story and the bits of text that, while mainly just being flavorful, might provide unique information?

In the context of DC as it is now, that'd be suicide. But that's only because the game presents itself as getting to the Orb of Zot, not experiencing the dungeon or the mythos behind the game.

[3]

In some cases they shouldn't. I don't believe having Charisma type abilities or skills means you should be able to negotiate your way past creeps, or convince the end boss that you don't need to fight. I believe as long as you give players a set of options for game play, and give them interesting things to do with those options, they don't necessarily need to provide solutions for the "Core" game.

Yes, I can agree. But these "alternative" solutions are only inferior for certain reasons: Most of the time, they're tacked-on elements that the game wouldn't be any worse without, and/or they may not fit in with the overall feel or focus of the gameplay. The application of a branching conversation system to a shooter which otherwise sticks to convention isn't worth anything, as it's nothing in context (I don't know if you passed over that Half-Life 2 thread there was a while back, but this is the basis of the argument I was making there). If, however, the extra solutions do mean something in context (that is, they're relevant to the core gameplay) then including them can only be a good thing. Unfortunately, there are only a minute number of games which do this properly.

[Leafsnail]

DC does work well in terms of this, yeah.  Powerlevelling isn't an option - first you get some "Too deep" monsters (ie stuff that's much higher level than what you usually get on that floor) then, if it thinks you're beating them, no monsters at all.

I guess that's the main way around it - force the player to advance through the game.  Although this means people can't play at their own pace, and reduces the sandbox potential significantly.

There's also "Cap their level for this story segment" (Final Fantasy) and "Make things other than killing the same monster again and again get you xp".  The problem with the second is that your player will always be limited by the amount of content you can create (so after completing every quest or whatever, they are essentially identical to everyone else who has).

[yamo]

I really like big sandbox rpgs.  When i played elder scrolls 3 i was a summoner cause i have no thumbs.  I used the pause button a ton and flew up on top of trees, or statues and dropped undead on the baddies.  I might not have been the only person to do this but it sure felt like the character was wholly  mine.  build the tools and let the player build the character.  A pie throwing Baker with a Mithril Ladle?  A Druid leading an army of charmed chipmunks?  The richest merchant in Mordor? Some rpg games should be deigned with the primary goal of engendering metagaming.

[Biag]

In some cases they shouldn't. I don't believe having Charisma type abilities or skills means you should be able to negotiate your way past creeps, or convince the end boss that you don't need to fight. I believe as long as you give players a set of options for game play, and give them interesting things to do with those options, they don't necessarily need to provide solutions for the "Core" game.

Yes, I can agree. But these "alternative" solutions are only inferior for certain reasons: Most of the time, they're tacked-on elements that the game wouldn't be any worse without, and/or they may not fit in with the overall feel or focus of the gameplay. The application of a branching conversation system to a shooter which otherwise sticks to convention isn't worth anything, as it's nothing in context (I don't know if you passed over that Half-Life 2 thread there was a while back, but this is the basis of the argument I was making there). If, however, the extra solutions do mean something in context (that is, they're relevant to the core gameplay) then including them can only be a good thing. Unfortunately, there are only a minute number of games which do this properly.

One of the difficulties with providing non-combat solutions is that usually, these solutions come down to picking the diplomatic dialogue option and hoping for the best. If you fail, it's frustrating, because you couldn't have done anything differently to affect the outcome; if you succeed, it doesn't feel like you did anything at all, because you couldn't have done anything differently to affect the outcome. Providing an "alternative solution" is usually treated as an alternative tactical solution- essentially another battle plan.

Think of how much thought goes into the level design of a typical shooter. You have the "arenas," where the player actually fights, and the "corridors" that the player travels down. Depending on which corridor you pick and what actions you take, you'll have a better chance of succeeding. The design of these charismatic solutions really just adds another corridor, when what it should do is move you into an entirely different arena. You should have a dialogue web (not a tree!) that provides multiple diplomatic solutions, and the same safety that you do in combat.

Basically: if you screw up in combat, you can typically retreat, regroup, and try again, and you can alter your tactics mid-battle to change the outcome. The same should apply to charismatic and other non-combat solutions, but it frequently doesn't.

(Oh, yeah, do you know any of the games that do that properly off the top of your head? My sister and I are typically heavy on the Charisma, but I don't really have any games that satisfy that urge. )

[3]

Yes, that's my point precisely. The game(s) should be designed from the ground up with whatever that's normally a secondary concern as a primary element.

(Oh, yeah, do you know any of the games that do that properly off the top of your head? My sister and I are typically heavy on the Charisma, but I don't really have any games that satisfy that urge. )

I thought I could remember one when I made that post, but I seem to have forgotten it now.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I usually favor the skill advancement system of the kind that's present in Elder Scrolls, and Dwarf Fortress - do something more, you get better at it. It even reflects the decline in experience gain speed - once you are good, it takes you less effort to kill someone, and you get less experience from that, without any arbitrary modifiers.

Lately, however, I came to like the completely non-gradual advancement scheme characteristic of Metroidvanias. A typical game doesn't usually last long enough to make a character's advancement in skill be reasonably believable (MMOs, especially EVE Online, are usually better in this regard), so it would make much more sense not to train up the player character, but to upgrade him. Better weapons, better armor, uncovering plot-hidden special abilities. The character gets better not as much through swinging his sword/firing his gun, but more from exploring and advancing through the plot. Something like this can be present in usual systems too, with powerful equipment being hidden in faraway hard-to-reach places, but the character still mainly improves on his own.

Another good example are games like Tyrian, or Jets and Guns. You do not improve through just shooting things, you improve by obtaining better and better equipment using whatever funds you collect during the game. Stuff like this tends to really emphasize skill, without substituting it for creative ingenuity in abusing monster AI or other forms of experience farming or grinding.

[Cthulhu]

I like Call of Cthulhu style skill advancement.  When you use a skill you put a check next to it, and at the end of the adventure you roll checked skills to see if they increase.  You have to roll higher than your current skill to advance, so the better you are the less there is to learn.

[Sergius]

I think a nice balance is to have more than one pool of experience points. For instance, Fable separates skills in 3 groups: magic, "speed" and combat. Instead of leveling, you purchase more powers/trainings (I don't like levels, unless it is a "secondary" attribute, meaning it is calculated from the amount of skills you've developed). Personally I would use different groups tho, even separate very broad "schools" of magic, such as arcane or clerical (not narrow ones, like "enchant", "summon", "healing" etc) and put all "athletic" skills in a single pool, and "intellectual" skills in another, perhaps.

So yes, playing a lot of soccer may allow you to be better at fighting with axes, but only if you actually spend the points that way. It may sound silly, but at least you're working out... if that bothers you, maybe have an "upper body" vs a "lower body" exercise skill pool. But I think having better legwork is good for any kind of fighting.

Even if simplistic, Dungeon Siege had a system where you got better at either 1) fighting 2) shooting 3) nature magic 4) combat magic, by doing stuff (namely, fighting, shooting and using magic). The interesting part is, the higher your "total skill", the harder it was to advance in one of these. So you could have a jack-of-all trades, or a combat magic specialist, kinda organically, regardless of his starting attributes (unless they already started with a ton of points in one of these) and while you had to be careful not to make your mage fight too much, at least you didn't have to actively avoid things like jumping, running, dodging, talking, buying, sleeping, eating, thinking... like you had to do in Elder Scrolls Morrowind/Oblivion or you would accidentally level with crappy stats.

[Granite26]

Alpha Protocol had this issue in spades with it's stealth system.  First playthrough I ran with the stealth option and encountered 3-4 places where stealth just wasn't an option.  You'd crawl through the shadows into the room, one cut scene later you got control of your character back in the middle of a spotlight, surrounded.

Conversly, (IMHO) it handled dialog trees in a pretty amazing way.

The problem is, in video games, as in real life, violence is the final option.  You can always stop a conversation with a fight, but not vice versa.  Hard to create a situation where social wins, without a bigger force (I.E. government) in the background, which breaks most game models.  Either you ARE the government, or are in the wilderness (criminal or dungeons).

[Myroc]

Lately, however, I came to like the completely non-gradual advancement scheme characteristic of Metroidvanias. A typical game doesn't usually last long enough to make a character's advancement in skill be reasonably believable (MMOs, especially EVE Online, are usually better in this regard), so it would make much more sense not to train up the player character, but to upgrade him. Better weapons, better armor, uncovering plot-hidden special abilities. The character gets better not as much through swinging his sword/firing his gun, but more from exploring and advancing through the plot. Something like this can be present in usual systems too, with powerful equipment being hidden in faraway hard-to-reach places, but the character still mainly improves on his own.

Emphasis on this. I really like the Metroidvania playstyle just because of this. It's a shame I've played so few of them...