FatalFailure said:
For starters, the only 'use based' progressions i've come across always seem to combine it with 'real time action' based on player skill.
Sure, same here - though my experience isn't too wide.
So again, can you point me to some titles that have use-based stat/ability gains which you feel would be good examples? If there's something out there that's wicked awesome and can help me see your POV, I'll gladly check it out.
No joy I'm afraid. Perhaps someone else can suggest something, but I haven't played such a game.
In any case, my point isn't that there are good Use-Based systems out there - just that I think there could be. I don't deny there are issues (as with any system), but the present faults seem to be due to a lack of developer resources (i.e. time + thought) aimed at solving the problem, rather than the difficulty of the problem.
What you said first, is similar to saying that there couldn't be a good RPG made in a single province of Tamriel. We have no great examples so far, and two badly flawed ones (I quite like modded Morrowind as a game, but not an RPG).
It's reasonable to say that good RPGs made in one province of Tamriel are unlikely in the near future. I might agree that it's reasonable to say the same for use-based systems.
That's not a failing of Tamriel, or use-based systems - just of the designers using such elements (presuming they're aiming to create a good RPG).
It's difficult to be sure that a great use-based system can be made until we have a good example, but I'm certain that much better can be done than has been so far.
In order for 'use based' to come into play, there has to be a pretty large number of places/situations one can effectively *use* that skill in order for it to be 'worth it' to the player.
Agreed, but these don't have to be equally common for all skills, or equally distributed for all skills. Each skill needs to be balanced within itself, and provide interesting gameplay for the player. That's about it - e.g. there's no reason to suppose that all skills need to be equally useful, just so long as the usefullness of skills is taken into account when balancing character creation / development.
Can you point out some titles that are use-based (RT or TB) and don't force the character to unecessarily grind/etc non-combat skills to make them match their combat ones?
First - no.
Second, you're asking a somewhat silly question. An interesting character shouldn't be a Morrowind/Oblivion style master of all trades. There's no reason why most non-combat skills should get high if he's a combat based character. The reverse is true too, of course.
As to ways to avoid the non-combat grinding, here are a few thoughts:
(1) Make non-combat gameplay interesting, and a viable way to go about completing most quests. There's no need to grind these skills up if you can use them interestingly instead.
(2) Take emphasis away from skill progression as much as possible. Keep things continuous, rather than requiring certain skill thresholds for big bonus perks (this avoids getting the player aiming to get skill X to level Y for perk Z). If there are special techniques to learn, make them e.g.:
Learnable at any skill level, but next to useless at low skill levels.
Learnable through the game world (trainer / granted abilities...).
Cost something to learn (in general terms - perhaps not gold. This will give something to aim at).
These two aspects alone will mean that the player is less likely to focus on skill increase as a goal in itself, and more likely to adopt the more interesting training route of using them where it matters.
Content still has to be carefully constructed of course - diplomats mustn't be forced to spend hours talking to passers-by in order to stand a chance with real challenges.
Also, TES style trainers are actually a good idea, provided:
(1) They can give you a start with a skill, but won't make you great at it.
(2) Increasing skills (through training or use) is significantly harder for non-"class" skills.
(3) The cost of training is significant (balanced economy required).
This means that if a character wants to get a lesser skill to a level where it's at least useful, he can train rather than grind. In fact, I'd say that he ought to be forced to:
Rather than TES style:
Start at 5 (utterly incompetent - at least in MW), grind/train to 30 before using for something important.
It'd make sense to have:
Start at 0 (you cannot use the skill at all), require training to e.g. 20 or 30 (possible in one stage) to use the skill at all.
At this minimum level, the skill would be reasonably useful, so hopefully real use would result rather than grinding. Perhaps more training could get things a little higher (with class based restrictions), but would soon become much less useful (cost more to do less).
Of course Bethesda won't do this, since it'd get in the way of FREEDOM!!!1!
If we have a use-based system, designers need to make sure all skills get equal treatment, or you'll have someone complaining that X skill/ability is pointless and a waste of time.
Not true at all. The entire system needs to be balanced. In no way does that imply all skills need to have the same importance, any more than it means a skill needs the same importance as an attribute / the health bar....
You're assuming that the character creation/progression system is set up in such a way as to make skill equality required for balance. That doesn't need to be the case.
Bethesda seem to do this:
Come up with an uber symmetrical, simple 7 by 3 system
then shoe-horn it into the game.
What needs to be done is this:
Come up with interesting skills and other stats. Build a game. Balance the character creation / progression so that it works well with that game.
That way you have the design freedom to make the important part - i.e. the game -, as interesting and balanced as possible. You are then constrained by that when you design the character system - which doesn't particularly matter, since it's arbitrary in any case.
With Bethesda's model, you waste your design freedom by deciding to go for a certain system first. You then spend your time either making concessions to that system (is it a coincidence that they had a neat 21 skills? Hardly), or failing to and unbalancing the game.
If a character system needs to be complex - particularly in a use-based system -, then it should be. If you want to provide simple alternatives to all the scary weighted sliders and interrelations, then provide a choice of premade classes / races / whatever.
If you want to come up with a good use-based system, take Morrowind, look at it hard - then change pretty much everything. Examine the thought "they might have got
this bit right" with the same scepticism you'd apply to "perhaps I should pitch my tent on the rail-track".
in a use-based system, artificial limits must be imposed by the game to prevent the player from 'exploiting' something relatively harmless. eg: A workshop that allows the player to create/dismantle things, but only gives statgains the first few times it's used, because otherwise the player could sit there and use it ad nauseum until the desired stat level is obtained.
So don't do it artificially.
Think about that situation in real terms. What would happen if someone tried the same task many times over? He'd learn quite a bit the first time (at least potentially), less the second time (but perhaps still a fair bit), then less and less until he's learning nothing new.
Now think about how you'd approach that as a player. You'll likely do quite a few new things, since you'll know that that'll get you more skill. That's good from a design point of view, since it encourages the player to keep moving and try new things.
Also, so long as you apply the same learning drop-off to every similar task throughout the game (e.g. workshops), the player will know that continuing to craft things now (when he doesn't need them) will only mean he'll learn less later - since he's bound to want to craft some things in the future.
In that case he's better served doing things either:
(1) because they're new and gain him quite a bit of skill.
(2) because he needs to do them.
Both of these are desirable.
If something like workshop-crafting is the only means of increasing a certain skill, then it makes sense to replenish the amount of learning possible over time (continuously - no silly arbitrary time limits). That way it'll be useful to use the skill every so often, or perhaps quite a bit if you haven't for a long time, but never to use it for a very long time all at once.
Again, this isn't rocket science - it just needs to be thought through.
Importantly, it doesn't matter how complicated it is behind the scenes, so long long as the system makes sense on an intuitive level. The above does (with carefully balanced numbers), so it's fine.
Use-based can also bar the idea of eureka moments where through accident, hearsay, tutelage or diligence, the character learns something entirely new that might not be related to the skill at hand (say... pathsmanship while searching for herbs/minerals to use alchemy/etc with)
There's nothing to stop that particular example, provided the situation contains elements which could be useful for pathsmanship.
My notion of use-based includes passive gains through exposure to useful situations for the skill. Pathsmanship could easily be improved just by being in a variety of environments, so wouldn't need only to gain through active use. [basically, any skill increase which results generally from a character's actions / environment, rather than from scripted quest gains or menus is what I mean by "use-based". I
think most people agree on this]
or may require an 'advanced' level of said skill (making a stronger item through better/inventive/accidental creation techniques).
I'm not sure I follow you here, or exactly how this (whatever you mean) couldn't occur as part of a use-based system, but could in an XP-based one.
Please explain.
XP addresses the lack of a truly free-flowing world, or worse, covers up for some crappy railroading-type game scripts, or better, frees the player from the possibility of a relatively boring ability grind.
XP can result in "farming" of less dangerous creatures for XP, which is a similar problem to grinding.
All systems have their problems - it's just that Bethesda are hard to beat in designing-terrible-mechanics stakes.
Besides, since we usually don't have the benefit of a decent GM to give us kudos for good roleplaying, XP is a nice fill-in.
To a degree - they certainly have their advantages (though I prefer use-based in theory).
However, I'd say that a cRPG XP system is somewhat like a player left to controll XP rewards and results without any GM intervention.
Any reasonable GM will stop giving XP for repetitive killing of easy creatures without purpose or danger - most XP systems don't.
Any reasonable GM will place restrictions on exactly what the player characters can learn, depending on the situations they've been in / have access to - most XP systems don't.
I'm not saying that XP systems are necessarily flawed in these respects, but they are issues. I think a good use-based system plays more to the advantages of computers - though making a passable XP system is easier than a passable use-based system.