Sawyer talks about Gifted

D

Dan

Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
JE saywer, aka Ropekid, has posted his thoughts on the gifted trait we all grew to love.

In this thread on the something awful forums, JE expresses his concern about the Gifted trait giving a little too much while taking a little too less:

<blockquote>
that trait is the most easily abused one in the bunch. seven primary attribute points in exchange for -5 skill points per level and -10 skill points to each starting skill value. only the jack-of-all-trades really suffers from the exchange. the specialist can dump three points into IN (making the net skill point/level benefit +1 over what it was before), and then put the other four points into stats that affect their three to five favorite skills. those stats often bump up the skills over the -10 initial penalty, and the character has higher stats for perk prerequisites, weapon strength requirements, dialogue requirements, and so on.

shifting the penalty to perks and lowering the total attribute benefit to +5 instead of +7 actually makes the tradeoff a difficult one to consider.
</blockquote>

I would have to say I don't see the point of this alteration.
Interesting enough, the posters at the SA forums seem to be against JE's idea... It's almost like he is talking with Fallout fans.

Spotted over at DAC.
 
The rest of Dan's opinon:

"The whole idea of traits is not to just take something away, and give you something else, but to make a certain change to your gameplay.
If someone chooses fast shot, that doesn't mean he becomes "better", it just means he is different. He won't make any called shots, but he'll get more shots to cover for that.

This kind of alteration to the gifted trait will not make it a better trait, it might just balance it a little more. Tweaking this trait shouldn't be just the matter of balancing it, it should also offer a different gameplay option.

Let's look this over.
A player may choose the gifted trait, and get his bonus stat points. When that player reaches 6th level he'll have only one perk as opposed to the two most people will get here. So, this person will be better then others as far as his natural abilities go, but he would be lacking one special bonus. I'm sorry, but I fail to see how that is a good gameplay alteration.

Wait... I have a great idea! What if the gifted trait would give you more stat points, but lower your skill points? That would change the gameplay and can be balanced quite easily...
Oh. Wait, it was already done in the previous games.

Lowering skill points as a negative affect of the trait can be done in more ways then simply giving the player less points per level.
For example, the trait can just lower the maximum you can get with skills.
It can also lower the bonuses you get from natural abilities, thereby making sure the player will have less skills.
There can be a lot of other ways as well, as long as they change the gameplay."

Had to trim down the news post Dan, sorry about that...

Oh and that post is actually from Feb..isn't it..
 
Who would ever pick Gifted trait if it affects perks gaining? In all fallouts perks are most important thing as character development option. That alterned Gifted will be JAFUT (just another f'n usless trait).
 
Odin said:
The rest of Dan's opinon:

Wait... I have a great idea! What if the gifted trait would give you more stat points, but lower your skill points? That would change the gameplay and can be balanced quite easily...
Oh. Wait, it was already done in the previous games.
Click to expand...

This says it all.
 
YOu know, I DID always think that Gifted was unbalanced, I think you'd have a hard time finding a good character that doesn't have it....

However, the basis of Gifted should stay the way it _is_, however, the severity of the affects should be changed, in my opinion.
 
JE says:

oh, make no mistake, gifted will get altered in any future fallout RPG. as is, it's pretty jacked.
Click to expand...

Is there anything in the Fallout system that he considers not jacked? Hope I'm not being too harsh, but it seems like his idea of balancing is to make every possible trait/skill equally worthless. "You get advantage A, which is completely cancelled out by disadvantage B! See, it's balanced!"
If he is going to change it as much as he wants to, it shouldn't be called "Gifted" anymore. When I think of someone who is "Gifted", I don't think of someone who, while more intelligent or athletic or artistic, is my equal because of some disadvantage they have that is equal to their advantage over me. A "gifted" person is called gifted because through some lucky circumstance they were born with a greater potential than most people - as if they were given, get this now, a "gift". It's not really that great a gift if it comes with some serious disadvantages that drag you back to "average".

Besides, gifted isn't that imbalanced as it is now. Its not like "OMG 7 stat points I rule teh Wasteland!!!!". If you're replaying the game for the Nth time and know exactly where to allocate points, then yeah, its a big advantage, but after countless replays there isn't much of a real "challenge" regardless of what you do to your character. The first time through the game is going to be challenging regardless of what you tagged or what traits you picked. And as the success of almost every action in Fallout is determined by the amount of skill points you put in it, gaining stats at the loss of skills is pretty balanced.

If anything, JE should tweak the "skilled" trait, as no one I know would ever take more skill points over perks.
 
The loss of skill points is useless later in the game.

Putting 3 points into intelligence cancels out the lost of 5 points were level and you still have 4 extra stat points. If you focus on 3 skills there is no disadvantage.

Fallout is shorter and the lost of skill points along with less NPC followers made the trait balanced. In Fallout2 your character got to a much higher level and could bring followers to do skills for him. In FO you can rarely change your stats but you always get skill points, by reaching a higher level so the trait is basically a pure boost in Fallout2.

But less perks is a huge hit, perks are most people's favorite thing about leveling up.

I sugguest the same rules that gifted used in the past but only giving the player two skill-tags.
 
What if, rather than making gifted not so good a choice, they made all the traits better? That way you'd have a hard time deciding which to take because they are all USEFUL, not because most of them suck. Like yea, I pick gifted with every character, but thats because no other trait there is really useful. In addition, gifted is a good general trait. It is a good trait for ANY character type. I think the other traits should be similar to good natured, they all are useful for certain characters. I.e. A sniper trait... good with called shots, but when it comes to just pulling the trigger, not so accurate. OR +5-10% accuracy when firing weapon but costs +1 ap to use.

I think if all the other traits were improved, it would make gifted not such an end all trait.
 
"Gifted" could doubled cost of incease skills instead of lowering them. Or it could be exchanged for tag skills leaving character with no tag skills at all.
That would be more balanced.
 
My idea was that when you pick Gifted, it makes the perk level requirement a touch higher. So, instead of getting Tag! Perk at 12th level, you might get it at 15th level.

The best way to look at these things would be to see if you'd still pick those traits given the consequences. Very few people take Skilled now because of the extreme consequences of altering the perk rate. However, if those consequences were lessened, Skilled would be fantastic for lower int characters.
 
I like the idea of lowering the amount of tag skills or increasing the cost of skills or perks as a disadvantage of gifted, as it definitely makes choosing it have a bigger impact but isn't as bad as losing out on perks.
Maybe the skilled trait could have some kind of analogue, ie 1 or 2 less stats for a bigger increase in skills. I'm not sure if this would be worth it, because as Human Shield pointed out towards the end of the game you probably have more skill points than you need. I think it would be a better option than a lower amount of perks for more SP's though.
 
Saint_Proverbius said:
My idea was that when you pick Gifted, it makes the perk level requirement a touch higher. So, instead of getting Tag! Perk at 12th level, you might get it at 15th level.
Click to expand...

I still like the idea of the trait affecting the skills and not perks. Just because that makes the trait more interesting then a simple trade off, it makes you choose a certain way in which your charecter will be played.
 
Mediocre

Mediocre

Balance?

Many of these hobbling hinderences to Gifted appear like convoluted calculus. Make the change simple. Unless there will be a random price to pay at a later date.

So this is to make the game more challenging for "The Chosen One"?

No lone mythic hero against the Wasteland but another cog in a mechanized party of "C"-NPC's. ""Depending on the kindness of strangers...."" The TRUE balance to this Trait change is the improved 'posse' functionality. Or is this SQUAD LEADER stuff idle speculation?

Change for change's sake , or a chain pull to get our attention?

I quess we have to surrender our ego's and learn social skills, like Real$Life.

Making the wasteland safe for mediocrity.


4too
 
Montez said:
Hope I'm not being too harsh, but it seems like his idea of balancing is to make every possible trait/skill equally worthless. "You get advantage A, which is completely cancelled out by disadvantage B! See, it's balanced!"

Besides, gifted isn't that imbalanced as it is now.

If anything, JE should tweak the "skilled" trait, as no one I know would ever take more skill points over perks.
Click to expand...

Actually, that's *exactly* how traits are supposed to work. You get an advantage at the cost of a disadvantage that is supposed to be equal. They cancel each other out, so the net gain is zero. I don't understand why people dislike that idea so much. It's almost like getting pissed off because there's no trait that allows you an extra $5000 to start with at no cost to you. Remember, these are traits, not perks.

Gifted isn't imbalanced? Well, on the surface, it seems like that, but if you look deeper then you'll see how worthless the drawbacks are. Say you had a 5 intelligence for your character, or 15 skill points per level. Assuming you put 5 points into your intelligence (20 skill points per level), and 2 points somewhere else.

Now you have a net gain of +5 skill points per level and an initial hit of 180 skill points. At that rate, you'd break even at level 36. Not a great trait, right?

Well, now remember that most characters never put points into about 5-6 skills (max) throughout the game. Only a jack-of-all-trades would put points into more--and we already know he doesn't want to take gifted. So now, you only have to make up for 60 skill points. That means you'd break even at level 12. After level 12, you actually get *more* skill points per level than a regular character. So taking a few less skill points until level 12 for +2 stat points and +5 skill points/level after level 12 (add 2 levels for each skill above 6 that you train up). Not too shabby at *all*.

Now, imagine that you are actually playing an archetypal "Whatever Boy" character, who tags 3-4 skills max and only specializes in those skills. Now, you break even at level 6 or level 8.

In addition to the "break even point" for skills, you also have all these extra perks that you have available to you. You can add pretty much any perk you need because you'll meet the minimum requirements needed simply because you're "gifted." Skills become essentially useless when you get so many excellent perks. available to you.

Still, I find it interesting how different forums have different play styles. For the most part, an awful lot of the perks were combat perks anyway. On the BIS Forum, many people there felt that Gifted was balanced, but Skilled was overpowered. They saw extra skill points as the panacea, and perks and stats weren't as important.
 
Skills..?

Just remember that the higher you go in a skill, especially over 100%, you can begin to cancel out the deficiencies you may have for said skill in a stat requirement.
 
The way I phrased it is pretty stupid, after re-reading it. What I meant is that when the advantages/disadvantages reach a certain point you are better off not taking it at all no matter what kind of character you play, thereby making it fairly worthless. I think that traits should have a slightly greater advantage than disadvantage, but only for a particular type of character, and definitely not to the level that everyone sees it as a trait that has to be picked. With the gifted trait being so general its a lot harder as it suits almost everyone, but taking away tag skills, skill points, and perks seems to go a little too far. We won't know how much stats/skills/perks affect your game in F3 until its released, so maybe this will be a worthwhile trade-off in that game. As it is though, it seems a little too much. Sorry - late shift + too much coffee = poorly thought out posts.

The reason I see the gifted trait as balanced the way it is: You are trading off having a harder time in the beginning of the game for smoother sailing when you reach high levels. By the time you reach higher levels the loss of skill points isn't that big a deal, but for the first few levels it really does make a difference, especially in combat. By the time you are level 12 or above you have a slight advantage over someone who didn't pick gifted, but to me it doesn't seem like an overwhelming advantage. The same thing with skilled - easier time in the beginning, slightly more difficult towards the end. Add in NPC's, armor, weapons and perks, and the skill/stat difference evens out no matter which of the traits you picked.

It would be a lot simpler to make it so that you can't even out the skill point loss by pumping up your intelligence. It seems like a fairly simple thing to implement, and something that probably should have been there in the first place. From everyone's arguements, that seems to be the only unbalanced part of gifted, the only thing that really needs to be fixed.
 
I've got to say it. The one thing that really bugs me about NMA lately, is when Sawyer has an idea, the news posters feel the need to denounce or appraise it. This may tell Sawyer that he should leave something out, when the Fallout fans here might want it in. It also tells me that my opinion doesn't really matter much, because it's just in the background.

All of the news posters seem to do this, I'm not pointing at one person. It would be great if the the news page is just news, and that the opinions are keep in the comment section. That's what it's for.
 
Well we are allowed to state our opinions, both on the news page and in the comments. That's how it works, we're not that neutral and will never be. Seeing that we have followed Fallout from the start, then we have a right to post our opinon.

Sure you might not agree with our opinion, but then you post so in the comments. That's what they are for, how ever told you that a news post shouldn't include the posters opinion ? That's only the way the gamer sites does it and they only do it like this to not piss off the developers, because then they might not get the inside info or the latest screenshots..
 
or praising, hell look back at our news posts and you'll see alot of praising...
 
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