Solik said:
That's an opinion, which you're entitled to, but it's certainly not a hard fact about game design.
I'd say that it is. It's a hard fact about problem solving in general. Introducing unnecessary restrictions early is a bad move - if you're planning to stick to them rigidly. Organising your thoughts is fine, but if you put hard restrictions onto a problem which aren't part of the requirements for a solution, you probably won't find the best solution.
We'll do our best to make each skill as equivalent in usefulness as possible so that every single skill choice is vital.
Because that's the kind of game they wanted to make. Doesn't mean it's necessarily the kind of game you would make, or even the kind of game you'd want to play.
If that is the case, then they're foolish. Skills are different. Trying to make totally different things fit into the same symmetrical framework is a usually bad idea. It might sometimes be possible, but it is usually not. Forcing the design of a game system so that every skill is equally useful is very restrictive, closed minded and unrealistic.
Given that Bethesda have said they're creating world simulators, it makes little sense to have the rules of those worlds dictated by the need for every skill to be equivalent. Real worlds are not simple, symmetric systems. Skills are not all equivalent. This needs to be dealt with, not ignored.
galsiah said:
Again - forget Morrowind. Start from the ground up.
Anyway, I think that's what they did, but they made some of the same decisions they made in Morrowind because they liked parts of the system.
Are you seriously suggesting that Oblivion's system was designed "from the ground up"? With an open mind? It's 95% a straight copy of Morrowind. If they used the same decisions, then they should not have - a lot of them weren't good decisions.
Skills themselves can also be constructed based on the desired gameplay experience to fill the slot. That's probably how the axe/blunt combination occurred -- not because it makes any real sense, but because that satisfied what the skill needed to be to fit the game.
Saying "I want 7 fighter skills" isn't restrictive at all if you're capable of defining every effect you want each of those skills to have up-front. You can combine and split and partition at your leisure to make a balanced set of formula-modifying skills.
If this were an abstract game you'd be right. It is not an abstract game. What you outline above is exactly what Bethesda seem to have done - start from an abstract, arbitrary system, then mutilate the game world until it fits that system.
If you're designing an abstract game, then that's fine. If you're designing a world simulator, then that is not fine. You do not have the freedom to combine and split any skills you choose, since most combinations wouldn't make any coherent sense in the game world. That's why you need to start from the gameplay and from the game world. If after you have the skills you want you end up with more "fighter skills" than "mage skills", deal with it - give them different weightings, create different categories, create relationships between skills, adapt the power balance of skills to compensate...
I'm not holding that Bethesda's method is the "best" way or the "only" way. Just that it's a valid way.
It's a valid way if it gets results - i.e. creates a system that doesn't suck. If Bethesda use an idiotic design process, but get great results, then I'll reassess my notion of "idiotic". If they use an idiotic design process and create a system which isn't any good, then I feel justified in thinking that it is an idiotic design process.
At the moment I can't see ho the majority of the system is any better than Morrowind's.
...that others be "open-minded" and "have some sense"....
By "open-minded" I mean:
Slavishly copying Morrowind's bad design == bad idea.
Considering new alternatives without putting in needless restrictions == good idea.
By "have some sense" I mean that they should think along the following lines:
If we have 25 square pegs and a plan to use 21 round holes to store them, perhaps our plan is stupid.
Rather than:
Our 25 square pegs will be so much more elegant after we force them into our wonderful 21 round holes. We'll need to throw some away, and to ram some into the same hole, but it's bound to be worth it. After all, what is our priority - good gameplay or design symmetry?
I'd make the same argument if it were fitting 17 square pegs into 21 holes. The number of skills is not the point here. The point is the idiocy of forcing the design / inclusion of gameplay elements by restricting them to an arbitrary system without a thought to changing that system.
franc kaos said:
...but the one thing I didn't like was that level up screen going; where you, the player, distributed those few points. I can't really explain why very well, but the sense of accomplishment at going up another level and deciding for yourself where to reward your character is very strong.
The loss of choice is an issue. I just don't think awarding 2 or 3 points to a few attributes is a really interesting choice.
The feeling of accomplishment of going up a level is nice, but I think it points to a deficiency in the game. What should feel more important to the player - a number on a stat sheet increasing, or the results of his actions in the game world? If going from level 7 to 8 has your focus, that is probably for two reasons:
First because you aren't that involved in the game world.
Second, because you are looking forward to gaining some ability...
Personally I think that character development choices should be tied in to the game world, not to an abstract scoring system [here GCD is the abstract scoring system - important, but rightly in the background]. I think that character development choices are best left as
character choices, not player choices. It makes sense to me that becoming skilled in some spell school, and completing a few quests, might allow my mage character access to a secret area of the mages guild, getting access to an extra spell book containing powerful magic... It doesn't make sense to me for extra spells / powers to appear out of thin air.
Similarly,
choosing how to allocate attribute points makes little sense to me. If you want to be stronger, use strength based skills. Once you've used them, your strength increase should be automatic (if strength increase is part of the game) not a player choice.
Awarding character abilities / spells... as a consequence of character decisions in the game world will keep the player focused on the game world. Combined with interesting and involving quests, this should hopefully prevent the player thinking of the game world as a means to increase his stats.
It's true that GCD doesn't do this, but neither does it prevent another mod from doing it. Special trainers could be scripted to offer a choice of abilities when you gain a "level", or at certain skill levels etc. The main difficulty in doing this in Morrowind is coming up with a variety of interesting abilties that couldn't easily be reproduced through spellmaking / enchanting. I have thought about it for a while, but it's difficult.