Sub-Human said:
It might make more sense and be more 'realistic', but I think it unbalances the game. Besides, it takes away from certain aspects of a skill-based RPG (rather than class-based), i.e. the freedom to shape your character the way you want, not the way your class is supposed to be shaped.
I'd argue that it worked pretty well in Wizardry 8 but that's really the only example I can think of. I'd also say that it works best with combat skills and skills like lockpicking that you use a lot organically. Crafting skills require a grind unless the game can find a way to organically make you craft frequently throughout, which is hard. I also think that part of why it worked well in Wizardry 8 was that you had a party with each character having a different specialty. Also each type of magic had it's own MP so you weren't as boxed into power leveling a single type of magic.
Dragula said:
What do you mean? You shape your own character by training the skills you want. It's just stupid if you go around meleeing down everything in Fallout 2 and then just increase in guns, with no training whatsoever.
Using Fallout as an example, if you want to be good at energy weapons or big guns then you won't even be able to use them until around halfway through the game (without having played the game before), so you'd be at a huge disadvantage. It fucks up the skill balance. Granted, in such a system there are ways to get around it to a cetain extent (have interconnected skills) but still.
Dragula said:
Imo the writer has failed if there is any kind of "You need this much of this skill to do this" in the dialogue, it should be hidden and you shouldn't notice it at all.
I disagree. I think it's a preference and should be an option that can be toggled. I have no problem with Fallout 3/New Vegas telling me what level I need my skills at to complete the task as then I can build my character according to what I want to be able to do.
Sabirah said:
Same. It would make more sense if say, you were better at talking to people because you did it often.
Oblivion tried that and proved, unsurprisingly, that it's completely obnoxious and a bad skill to level in that way. I actually think that merging speech with barter would be good as speech is only used in dialogue sometimes. It removes redundancy.
Granted I'd also be more for a tree like skill system, for instance with Firearms as a category and the weapon types as subskills. It's rather pointless for current Fallout games since you can max everything anyway but it would certainly be great for "learn by doing" systems. That way as you get better with a sword you can more easily pick up other melee weapons and suck less with them and, maybe, level them up faster.