Where is the interacttivity in RPG

[Vault Dweller]

Yeah, an idea I had a while back was to create rival parties or PC's that are pretty much your equals

Hmm, I like the way it sounds. I never thought about this angle before, but I can already see the possibilities. Say, if there are 4 or 5 factions trying to:
A - reach a final goal
B - do it before anybody else does
C - play against other faction by creating obstacles, framing, killing, siding with one faction against the others and switching sides, sabotaging their quests, etc.

Great idea, He Who Walks with the Snails. One of the CRPG problems is that you are the only dynamic force in a game universe. The rest is static, patiently waiting for you. (I was replaying F2 recently, did the quest to find the weakness in the little warehouse in Den, they told me that there is a party tonight, then i went to Vault City, returned 2 months later, and reported that there is a party "tonight" ). Even if there is a force attempting to keep you from completing a quest, it is a part of the quest.

If it was possible to introduce even one opposing force constantly trying to get you, that would be awesome. I'm not talking about technical miracle, simple scripting should do.
Say, you arrive to a city and start looking for a person you've been told to find. An opposing force (OP) does not know who or what you are after, but if you start asking every passerby (more then 5 people), the OP would know and would try to stop you. After the OP knows, you have 2 hours (game time) to find the contact. After that, he's sleeping with the fishes or sent to 2-weeks errand slowing you down.

I know that many people are opposed to time limits, but as long as it reasonable, it should be fine. I have never had a problem with F1 time limit, but I sure as hell felt the lack of urgency in F2.

 

[Aldin]

Arcanum did one thing rather well. It denied the PC the ability to do everything. If you decided to be a human Diplomage thief you could do a lot, but not even close to all there was to do. This is how RPGs ought to be designed.

One idea for keeping things challenging is to set "guards" at area entrances (whether a forest, city or house) which trigger the area they guard based on the way you get past them. Take a mine, for example. There's a big bruiser guarding the entrance. If you bash her head in, that triggers the mine to 'fight' you. If you talk your way past, perhaps she gives you a command ("STAY") to make the critters avoid you or offers to guard you while you're inside. If you sneak past, that triggers the mine to be seeded with traps instead of critters. It shouldn't be TOO hard to code something like that...

~Aldin

 

[Spazmo]

And didn't it feel like a little reward in F1 when you got rid of that Post-it and you finally got to see the little PipBoy guy?

 

[axel]

Well I think that I sould feel motivated to do the quests but I shouldn't feel as if I have to do them , all at once, as quickly as possiable, NOW!! (rawr!) I like to just take my time, and it would remove an exploration aspect. Not to mention the fact that when playing a game that requires you to explore a little bit, one doesn't always know what to do, or where to go. One might have to look around do a little exploring or something before one decides where to go and what to do.

An opposing force (OP) does not know who or what you are after, but if you start asking every passerby (more then 5 people), the OP would know and would try to stop you.

This sounded interesting in that a delvoped speech skill could be utlized to throw them off the trail so to speak. By asking questions of the locals about something you made up to send them on a wild goose chase. Also you might also be able to send them to fight that big bad ogre guy that kills every thing.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

What I was talking about was that you don't have to do any of the quests at all. If you don't, someone else probably will. There's nothing wrong with giving you choices that actually matter; if exploration is so vitally important to you, you should expect that you might have to pay a price for dropping everything every time you get the urge to find out what's in that far-off corner a couple of weeks journey away. Maybe what you find is worth it, maybe not, it's your call and you've got to live with the consequences of your actions. That's life. Who knows, maybe you can find better ways to spend your time like finding lucrative trade routes while your rivals are spending all their time rescuing damsels and resting up after chopping up anything that moves in dank dungeons.

If you drag your feet too much on something, somebody else should step forward and and take care of it, or else you took too long and something bad happens in the meantime. It's nice and all to be able to take your time, but I usually find myself disappointed when nothing whatsoever changes regardless of how I long I take. Little Timmy's trapped in the well and will probably starve soon? No problem, I'll get back to him in a couple of months after I go sell off all these guns I found, chatting up everyone along the way, of course. That seems to be more the rule than the exception, unfortunately. I'd rather have at least a little pressure sometimes to at least not flatly ignore everything for as long as I want and then come back and nothing's changed, it feels good to have to beat the clock sometimes.

Really what I was talking about with respect to your rivals was more like having a friendly rivalry, though. You know, kind of like someone at school or work or whatever that you always feel you have to show up, and they feel the same way. Just killing them would of course be bad form (unless you're evil), but throwing them off the trail could certainly be something you could try.

 

[axel]

Well what your saying sounds all well and good but what if you wanted to complete the game in this one way that you hadn't already done? Like for example you want to complete these three quest and you've never completed all three of them in one game, but then if you don't rush through everything then someone else steps up. Being rushed is bad. I mean a dynamic and changeing world (like the poor begger in FO2 that strikes it rich and buys a tux when you come back to the den and all that) is nice. And making a time window for completion of quest (for example you have two days to resuce little johnny from the well) is good. But it cculd easily be poorly implemented. And most likely it would end up making you feel rushed about.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Personally, I like being rushed sometimes. It can make you change up your strategy and adds a new dimension to play. Maybe it's a better idea to gulp that potion of healing rather than sleep. Perhaps you should conserve your spells a little more rather than going all-out and then resting after every combat. Perhaps it's not worth it to trudge all the way across the game world to get 10 gp more for that sword you just found. I don't know, some people just really flip out when it comes to this stuff, though. Maybe they need to have a game difficulty switch that lets you turn it off.

As far as replaying the game, I don't know about you but once I've been through a game, I can't really think of any kind of time limits that would allow a person to actually play the game their first time and do anything would really hinder me. I might have to plan out my moves and do as many things as possible in the smallest amount of time, but if anything that makes the game more replayable as it gives you a new challenge when you're playing again and already know how to do everything. Although I can't really see how doing "these three quests in one game" would really be of earth-shattering significance for your enjoyment, anyway.

 

[axel]

Although I can't really see how doing "these three quests in one game" would really be of earth-shattering significance for your enjoyment, anyway.

Have you ever tried to get the good Gecko end? Sometimes it can be a big thing....

About being rushed: I really don't see how you could enjoy being rushed about... because whenever I feel rushed I always feel like i"m missing something.... Maybe if I took my time and looked around a little bit I might find out something cool, like maybe some strange/good/cool/unique/funny quest or somethng like that... myabe if I just mosey along instead of running around the place like a madman then maybe the story will be fleshed out somemore... you see what i mean? I don't mind a sense of urgency... every now and then that is, not a game spanning rush to complete things before the computer parties do. It would seem like I wasn't being allowed to do the things I want, rather than being a motivation to do things quickly and desisively.

It could be done I suppose, but it would be hard to implement it and stil be fun.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

You're really not making a relevant or reasonable comparison here, though. Getting the good Gecko ending should have been possible. AFAIK, it doesn't happen because of bugs, not because of some special game mechanics they wanted to implement. If you're talking about time limits not letting you do multiple quests, it's more like complaining, "But I didn't get to save Billy from the well, and at the same time save the farmer from wolves in the town that's a three day journey away! Not fair!" If there's something that would actually make a difference, you should at least expect it would be possible. If the programmers are too lazy or rushed to keep up with simple things like that, it's not the fault of the game mechanics. If it's impossible to do different things in time, then it most likely was deliberately taken into account you couldn't, probably because you had to choose between mutually exclusive alternatives. You might as well complain that you couldn't kill Bishop's daughter ten minutes after sleeping with her but still have the ending where she has your kid.

 

[axel]

I'm sorry but I'm getting the idea you didn't even read my post... perhaps I was muddling my thoughts. Anyway, the quip about the good gecko ending was specifically aimed at telling you that you may just write off completeing three specific quest in a single playthrough as nothing but sometimes it is something. For example, I never gotten that ending, but I've heard of a method of getting it from someone who seemed reliable in this regard, but havn't tried it myself, (That being said) getting that ending just very welll might become somethng you may play the game through again for. Specifically tring for that quest, that little insigifact result. Thus it's a very revelant comparison to your specific comment that I quoted.

And the rest of your comments seem to me to be built on that one misunderstanding so I think I'll let respond before I try to respond to them.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Basically the way games work, if something wasn't pre-programmed, it's not going to happen. So if it's physically impossible to accomplish something, you don't need to worry about it. Kind of like those annoying chests you used to see in games that were always maddeningly out of reach. Guess what, you couldn't get to them, so they were never programmed to contain anything. If by some crazy way you were able to break the game and get there and open them, chances are the game would crash or nothing would happen as that possibility was never accounted for in the game logic. Sure, you might want to replay a game for just three quests. I probably wouldn't, but I don't dismiss the possibility. If it's just plain impossible, you're not going to get a special ending for doing, it, though. It would never have been accounted for to be possible in the first place.

So basically, I'm just repeating what I already said. If those three quests you've got an itch to solve in the same game can't be solved at the same time, you shouldn't worry anyway, since the possibility was not forseen and you won't get any special ending or treasure unless the designers wanted you to be able to do it in the first place. If it's possible but just takes a little timing, you're replaying the game anyway just to see what happens so how much is that going to hurt you? I imagine what you hear about getting the good Gecko ending is basically a workaround for the bug that broke it in the first place. I don't think they specifically made it to come out that way. So it's really not a relevant comparison.

 

[axel]

Okay whatever you say mate. I havn't the slightest idea why you're saying it, I don't know why you're telling these things (which I already know) and i have no clue why you decided to talk about impossiablities. Which lieads me to conclude that a misunderstanding exsist between us. I guess I'm gonna have to reaxamine the post to see where the fault lies.

Sure, you might want to replay a game for just three quests. I probably wouldn't, but I don't dismiss the possibility

This seemed to me the only thing that you posted that I understood why it was there. And of course I find this odd.. dobn't you like games that you can replay? Generally when I replay a game it is to do something that i didn't do in my previous play throughs, such as completeing specific quest. /shrug.

 

[davmonster]

In response to the "being more involved in tasks such as smithing and theivery", I would suggest maybe having a little subgame associated with a task, such as the fishing and hunting in Breath of Fire II, or the courting in Harvest Moon. I know it would be a pain to implement, but if it was done well, it would make the game far more interesting and enjoyable to play.

 

[Section8]

This has gone a little off-topic from the original post, but when considering quests and completism, I think that most of the problems stem from the following:

Progression good.
Character advancement good.
XP good.
Quest complete = XP.
Quest incomplete = No XP.
No XP = missed opportunity.

The completist attitude that most CRPGers seem to adopt seems to revolve around the fact that you have a finite start and finish to the adventure. If you miss a quest, or fail a quest, then you have missed out on something, and when the all important endgame comes around, you're not going to be as capable of surmounting the challenge as you might have been had you passed the quest. In contrast to P&P RPing, where the DM isn't going to make you face up to anything you can't handle.

It's the same attitude that makes players want to check out every barrel, or kill every monster. What if I'm missing out?

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a great solution. I think Prelude to Darkness handles it admirably by having rewards every step along the way with quests. It makes a failure seem much less critical, and doesn't require perfection to ultimately succeed.

Another way to handle it would be to limit the player in the number of quests they can take on at any one time, either by enforcing it outright, and hiding quest triggers from the player until they have cleared their journal, which is an ugly solution. It's better to try and dissuade the player, by making all quests timed (with mostly excessive timeframes) and making that obvious to the player so they avoid possible quests if they think they might have difficult with the timing.

However, this doesn't address the fact that a player is unlikely to stop talking to NPCs that might give them quests for fear of triggering a new one they can't handle in the given time, and even though a player can avoid the specific conversation option that might lead to a quest, it still doesn't help if there's "Help me! Timmy has fallen down a well and will die if you don't help him soon" type remarks, which by their very nature demand a commitment on the spot.

I think the best solution is to roll with it, and design areas with the completist in mind. If you want some urgent, timed quests, then use them sparingly, so that the player should only ever be attempting one at a time, and if they overstep and take on another timed quest, make sure it's entirely possible to do both.

I think the urgency timed quests offer is a good thing, and in the case of Fallout where certain skills such as First Aid use time as a resource, it's a balancing factor of the character system. However, I'm kind of interested in what people have to say about failing quests, and what would cause them to accept a failure.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Progression good.
Character advancement good.
XP good.
Quest complete = XP.
Quest incomplete = No XP.
No XP = missed opportunity

I think Prelude to Darkness handles it admirably by having rewards every step along the way with quests.

You are absolutely right. No XP is a missed opportunty, that makes a player do every little quest _regardless_ of "alignment". As a result the only role-playing we get is to pick a line in a conversation. If you played Prelude you know how many people missed a better way to handle the temple bombing quest 'cause they rushed to deliver food to the temple as soon as this option became available. Is it role-playing or XP hunting?

My solution is to get rid of all XP points for good. Here are my points:

1. You do quests that fits your profile. Why bother doing quests at all then? Role-playing for one, reputation, possible rewards for big quests, making some money for small ones, etc. Game developers would be motivated to design quests that A - tie to the main plot (like the food delivery was tied to the temple bombing) B - provide an opportunity to role-play you character. I ma sick and tired of "we do provide an opportunity to play an evil character. As far as we are concerned, an evil dude can do all the quests a good dude does because somehow they fit into his totally evil plans"

2. One thing about XPs is that they allow you to increase any skill you want even the ones your character never uses. Prelude's combat skills levelling up was good, non-combat skills barely went up, but that could be fixed, and that's what trainers are for anyway.

 

[Vault Dweller]

However, I'm kind of interested in what people have to say about failing quests, and what would cause them to accept a failure.

It's like asking what can change the nature of a man :D

In case you haven't seen it before here is a link to a discussion about failing some of Prelude's quests.

http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=777

 

[Akilae]

Concerning failure, I think failure should be part of the character progression, though I don't see any way to implement it. After all, we all learn from our mistakes. I most CRPG at the end of the game, we have pretty much succeded at allmost all the quests we've been assigned to, not to mention that mos of them were about saving people an being a hero. Failure doesn't seem to be an option.

That's why I prefer skill improvement based on their use, not on XP awards, in order to provide character advancement based on the actual use of the skills. Quest succes or failure doesn't come into account when determining the character advancement.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Hmm, interesting point, come to think about it. Nobody would accept failing a quest, unless it was done for a reason. Two examples come to mind. First is a fork. 2 or more parties require your services, but you can deliver to only one of them, thus failing the rest. Second is gaining something from your failure, like the Nameless One allowing to kill himself and overhearing a conversation while being 'dead'.

While the first one promotes role-playing, the second one can help dealing with failures. I don't think that something good should come out every time you fail, but there should be some beneficial options.

For instance, a thief guild sends you to steal something in a mansion giving you a clear instruction of 'zero body count'. You make some noise, people are waking up, if you kill a house owner and vanish into the night unseen by others - an assasin guild contacts you recognizing your potential, if you kill everybody in your way, you are being thrown in jail, where you can make contacts with murdering scum like you are, and finally if you manage to steal whatever it is you came for, you proceed with a thief guild line.

What I like about it is the role-playing part, you make a choice that to some degree is a factor of the way you developed you characater so far. If you don't have any thieving skills, you will fail, and you will not continue with a thief guild, 'cause you had no business with them in the first place. If you have a thief blood in you, but not high enough to remain undetected, you make a choice. The game picks up on your choice and give you the most fitting option to continue.

 

[Section8]

That's why I prefer skill improvement based on their use, not on XP awards, in order to provide character advancement based on the actual use of the skills. Quest succes or failure doesn't come into account when determining the character advancement.

I also like the idea of advancement based on skill use, as you get a feeling of improving with practice, and it's nice to get some minor rewards between levels. Wizardry 8 did this fairly well. However, I don't really like the idea of having little to nothing to do come level up time. Level ups are a time to develop your character in the way you want to see them moulded, but also an essential "carrot" to propel the player during times when the character isn't necessarily following the main plotline. It's a constant incentive to keep coming back and playing the game, even if the goals aren't 100% focused.

Concerning failure, I think failure should be part of the character progression, though I don't see any way to implement it. After all, we all learn from our mistakes.

It could almost be rationalised as exactly that. Failing a quest should provide you with some form of XP reward, and you let the player know it's because they are learning from their mistakes. It would be even better if the XP was handed out step-by-step during the quest, and failure at any point gives you 90% of the experience you "missed out" on. My only concern is the way such a method doesn't really compell the player to succeed, but that may not be a bad thing provided the player doesn't see it as "Questing is kind of pointless, since I know I'm getting rewarded either way."

I think the solution would be to provide rewards to players who "RP" consistently. It's very difficult to measure RP, but if each quest is tagged with a couple of identifiers, then it's possible to at least reward evil players for avoiding good quests and vice versa, it does mean that neutral quests must exist also, unlike the seesaw neutral provided in games like NWN. Sure it's yet another abstraction, but a player intent on RP is barely going to notice it, and the munchkins are railed into RP without even knowing it.

Hmm, interesting point, come to think about it. Nobody would accept failing a quest, unless it was done for a reason. Two examples come to mind. First is a fork. 2 or more parties require your services, but you can deliver to only one of them, thus failing the rest.

This is something that definitely irritates the completist in me, especially in games like Arcanum where it results in a huge red stain in the journal. No biggie, but it would be nice if such actions weren't rationalise as failure to the player. A conscious choice was made, which is considerably different to a fuck up, and it would be nice to see that reflected.

Second is gaining something from your failure, like the Nameless One allowing to kill himself and overhearing a conversation while being 'dead'.

Once again, this is something that shouldn't be deemed a failure, because it's a choice made by the player.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Honestly, I like the idea of skills increasing with use in theory more than practice. In theory, it sounds great. In practice, it usually means I wind up doing mindlessly repetitive crap for a while to buff up my character. Like in JA2, I had no problem with the way marksmanship went up with use, since you naturally used it a lot. If you expected to get good with explosives, though, you either started an expert or you sat there like a lab rat pumping the buttons to set and disarm TNT for about 30 minutes; there literally weren't enough traps in the whole game for you to ever really develop the skill naturally, and the consequences for failure were pretty extreme, too. Most of the other skills and attributes followed the same style of mindless repetition if you ever expected to really develop them more than a couple of points without sitting around and training for quite a while.

Really I think experience for failure makes a whole lot of sense and I've brought it up elsewhere. Questing still isn't pointless, but the idea is more to have lots of experiences than succeed at everything. Refusing to do anything is still not going to get you far. If you just forget about a quest, you shouldn't get much. If you sincerely try and fail, I think you should still get most if not all of the experience, though obviously you'll probably miss out on any other rewards.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Honestly, I like the idea of skills increasing with use in theory more than practice. In theory, it sounds great. In practice, it usually means I wind up doing mindlessly repetitive crap for a while to buff up my character

I know what you mean. However, the solution is simple: trainers. Take Prelude for example (if you played), all often used skills go up quickly (all combat, magic, speech), there are trainers for all rarely used ones like lore, barter, lockpick, etc. Some of the trainers offer help only once, but that probably because there are a lot of skill points available.

Side note: If an idea sounds great in theory, but sucks in practice, it usually means that the best, most fitting solution was not found.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Honestly, I like the idea of skills increasing with use in theory more than practice. In theory, it sounds great. In practice, it usually means I wind up doing mindlessly repetitive crap for a while to buff up my character. Like in JA2, I had no problem with the way marksmanship went up with use, since you naturally used it a lot. If you expected to get good with explosives, though, you either started an expert or you sat there like a lab rat pumping the buttons to set and disarm TNT for about 30 minutes; there literally weren't enough traps in the whole game for you to ever really develop the skill naturally, and the consequences for failure were pretty extreme, too. Most of the other skills and attributes followed the same style of mindless repetition if you ever expected to really develop them more than a couple of points without sitting around and training for quite a while.

That's probably the main problem with that approach, the tendancy for people to "macro advance" skills. Morrowind's athletics could be heavily exploited just by entering a house, turning on run, and then taping down the up arrow and going to bed.

 

[Akilae]

Well, it seems that power gaming is the main grief to use-based skill improvement, not the system itself. Maybe, some significant step toward skill increase might be achieved at every critical failure which are random and happend less often to a skilled character might simulate that failure thingie, though it needs some neat system to avoid macro-ing. Somehow it could even reward roleplaying, helping people to assume their mistakes, instead of just reloading. I even think of a feedback using the character diary, like:

"Dear Diary. Today I told Lynette to go screw herself, which she took pretty bad, I guess I hurt that woman stuff, how do they call it ... feelings. "

Exept it wouldn't happend at player's command but like regular critical failures.

 

[Section8]

That's probably the main problem with that approach, the tendancy for people to "macro advance" skills. Morrowind's athletics could be heavily exploited just by entering a house, turning on run, and then taping down the up arrow and going to bed.

One of the guys at MF left his coffee cup on the fire button of the Gauntlet Legends machine overnight and power levelled his character to about level 50 overnight. I remember doing similar things in M&M7 when fighting insane monsters. It was a delicate matter of getting in just the right place where they couldn't hit or react to you, and then taping down a key while your characters shoot arrows for about half an hour, and then going to do something interesting.

When the game system starts dictating player behaviour, everything has gone pear shaped, and the system is working completely contrary to it's intentions. Instead of rewarding the player for actions, the player is performing actions for rewards. It's a subtle paradigm shift, but it's fairly profound.

I'm currently playing Wizardry 8 again, and it's very similar to JA2 in the sense that there are constantly used skills, rarely used skills and passive skills. It's not too bad, because the player tends to use their primary skills constantly, mostly during combat, and passive skills such as Artifacts and Mythology just kind of improve over time, and theres no possible way for the player to adopt any significant behaviours in the name of power leveling passive skills. The rarely used skills are basically anything non-combat, and although they probably improve at approximtely half the rate of combat skills, they are balanced within the confines of the game. While you might need a 70+ Divinity skill to cast spells appropriate for the level of monsters you are encountering at a certain point in the game, locks, traps, etc at the same point seem geared fairly well to around a 35+ skill.

However, I still find that I will "practise" skills, but even that fits well within the realms of plausibility. My Lord and Valkyries heal outside of combat, and it's partly in the name of power levelling, but it also makes sense from a tactical viewpoint, as it saves my Priest's divine spellpoints for battle, and it also makes sense from a "scratch my back" RP perspective.

Offhand, that's the best skill-use based improvement I can think of, and it definitely beats Dungeon Siege. In another thread, I saw Saint mentioning that Dungeon Siege essentially takes it's system from Dungeon Master, but Dungeon Master works so much more effectively, in my opinion.

The main reason is Dungeon Siege's direct rip of the Diablo item system, without considering all of it's components. Getting an item in Dungeon Siege that you don't meet the requirements for provides incentive to improve in a particular skill, which encourages repetition, and behaviour based on rewards, rather than rewards based on behaviour. Falling short of an item's requirements in Diablo is completely different, because advancement requires levelling, which means that it is encouraging the player to play the game not focus on 25% of what the game offers.

Getting back to Dungeon Master, which has no listed requirements for item use or magic, doesn't encourage the same repetitive play, simply because the player has no discrete goal right in front of them. The player is more content to play the game and be rewarded, rather than playing the game with a certain behavioural slant.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

However, I still find that I will "practise" skills, but even that fits well within the realms of plausibility. My Lord and Valkyries heal outside of combat, and it's partly in the name of power levelling, but it also makes sense from a tactical viewpoint, as it saves my Priest's divine spellpoints for battle, and it also makes sense from a "scratch my back" RP perspective.

Offhand, that's the best skill-use based improvement I can think of, and it definitely beats Dungeon Siege.

I think Prelude to Darkness does this very well, since I can't think of a good example of a skill you can actually macro abuse, even though there is skill advancement. I did do some resting to trigger random encounters my first and second time through, but that wasn't about raising those skills, it was about wanting some more money. Prelude to Darkness keeps you fairly low on funds through the entire game unless you have pickpocketing, so I typically murdered a few bandits for the loot to sell rather than advancing my skills. Advancing the skills was just a side benefit of me needing the money.

In another thread, I saw Saint mentioning that Dungeon Siege essentially takes it's system from Dungeon Master, but Dungeon Master works so much more effectively, in my opinion.

The main reason is Dungeon Siege's direct rip of the Diablo item system, without considering all of it's components. Getting an item in Dungeon Siege that you don't meet the requirements for provides incentive to improve in a particular skill, which encourages repetition, and behaviour based on rewards, rather than rewards based on behaviour.

I agree with this, especially when most of the game drops in Dungeon Siege are the kind of drops that do require advancement to use.

Falling short of an item's requirements in Diablo is completely different, because advancement requires levelling, which means that it is encouraging the player to play the game not focus on 25% of what the game offers.

This is precisely the case in Dungeon Siege since attribute advancement is tied directly to skill advancement, so you have a choice in using more skills or wearing and wielding better items.