cronicler
Lurksalot
To be perfectly honest, Fallout was pretty much barebones and rough in many areas.
If I could go back in time and suggest / implement design changes to the team, I would be advocating for "streamlining" the stat & skill side of the game while simultaneously arguing for the opposite via increasing the system's complexity and integration into the gameworld;
During the character creation / start the game, the player is given access to only the following meta skills (and nothing in the UI suggests that there is anything more), all derived from the Stats and with the option to tag "1" of them.
Primitive Weapons
Fighting
Marksmanship
Speech
First Aid
Education
Survival
After the player performs a certain number of actions, say 10 pistol shots and/or speaking to certain NPCs on key topics and/or paying Specialist NPCs for tutoring and/or finding & studying pre and post war manuals & guides & so on, various specialized (sub)skills start to get unlocked. When fully fleshed out, the skill list would have looked something like this;
Primitive Weapons
-Slings & Stones
-Bows
-Traps
Fighting
-Melee
-Unarmed
Marksmanship
-Pistols (-> Pistolero*)
-Rifles (-> Sharpshooting*)
-Heavy Weapons (-> Support Gunnery*)
Speech
-Barter (->Trading* -> Commerce*)
-Leadership* (-> Command*)
-Gambling
First Aid
-Doctor*
-Medicine*
-Husbandry*
Education
-Science**
-Repair**
-Energy Weapons**
Survival
-Outdoorsman
-Sneak
-Steal
-Lockpick**
The skills with "*" should have associated quests in the gameworld, allowing the player to pursue various trails to earn / unlock relevant skills, like assisting the doctor as Shady Sands prepare Antidote to unlock Medicine and so on.
The ones denoted by "**" are skills that require certain items like a lockpick set or Science or Repair Manuals to unlock.
Lastly, the skills denoted by "->" are skill upgrades that require more complicated quests that unlock additional professional abilities, like establishing your own caravan then your own tradinghouse in the world, mastering specific weapons, learning how to direct NPCs in combat and so on.
As for skill improvement, I would actually reduce the skill point gain by a large factor and only allow spending skill points to improve meta-skills. You spend a skillpoint on Survival, all the sub-skills increase slightly AND you open a training slot for it; which allows the player to spend resources to further improve the sub skill.
Of course, you can always add experts to your rooster as well as better equipment and remedial training to push yourself even further, as long as you have "enough" to fund it.
Such an approach would have allowed a much better and involved integration of the skill growth into the gameplay as a direct part of it, making player progression that much satisfying, imo. In addition, it would have allowed a decent expansion to the currently stub aspects of the game; Bows & Crossbows as alternative primitive weapons, Using slings in conjunction with grenades, Reworking certain niche skills like [Doctor] and close combat skills as enhancements to other skills and making them feel useful options rather than dead weight.
If I could go back in time and suggest / implement design changes to the team, I would be advocating for "streamlining" the stat & skill side of the game while simultaneously arguing for the opposite via increasing the system's complexity and integration into the gameworld;
During the character creation / start the game, the player is given access to only the following meta skills (and nothing in the UI suggests that there is anything more), all derived from the Stats and with the option to tag "1" of them.
Primitive Weapons
Fighting
Marksmanship
Speech
First Aid
Education
Survival
After the player performs a certain number of actions, say 10 pistol shots and/or speaking to certain NPCs on key topics and/or paying Specialist NPCs for tutoring and/or finding & studying pre and post war manuals & guides & so on, various specialized (sub)skills start to get unlocked. When fully fleshed out, the skill list would have looked something like this;
Primitive Weapons
-Slings & Stones
-Bows
-Traps
Fighting
-Melee
-Unarmed
Marksmanship
-Pistols (-> Pistolero*)
-Rifles (-> Sharpshooting*)
-Heavy Weapons (-> Support Gunnery*)
Speech
-Barter (->Trading* -> Commerce*)
-Leadership* (-> Command*)
-Gambling
First Aid
-Doctor*
-Medicine*
-Husbandry*
Education
-Science**
-Repair**
-Energy Weapons**
Survival
-Outdoorsman
-Sneak
-Steal
-Lockpick**
The skills with "*" should have associated quests in the gameworld, allowing the player to pursue various trails to earn / unlock relevant skills, like assisting the doctor as Shady Sands prepare Antidote to unlock Medicine and so on.
The ones denoted by "**" are skills that require certain items like a lockpick set or Science or Repair Manuals to unlock.
Lastly, the skills denoted by "->" are skill upgrades that require more complicated quests that unlock additional professional abilities, like establishing your own caravan then your own tradinghouse in the world, mastering specific weapons, learning how to direct NPCs in combat and so on.
As for skill improvement, I would actually reduce the skill point gain by a large factor and only allow spending skill points to improve meta-skills. You spend a skillpoint on Survival, all the sub-skills increase slightly AND you open a training slot for it; which allows the player to spend resources to further improve the sub skill.
Of course, you can always add experts to your rooster as well as better equipment and remedial training to push yourself even further, as long as you have "enough" to fund it.
Such an approach would have allowed a much better and involved integration of the skill growth into the gameplay as a direct part of it, making player progression that much satisfying, imo. In addition, it would have allowed a decent expansion to the currently stub aspects of the game; Bows & Crossbows as alternative primitive weapons, Using slings in conjunction with grenades, Reworking certain niche skills like [Doctor] and close combat skills as enhancements to other skills and making them feel useful options rather than dead weight.
