AmstradHero wrote...
Say you release a game that includes a dozen non-combat skills for the player to pick from, but only one of those skills is every utilised in the game? Players would be understably and rightfully outraged. Even a player created mod that completely neglects skills or feats is taking away the much vaunted choice of development that you are so focused on. Picture a mod with no speech skills, no pickpocketing, no traps, no lockpicking... suddenly a massive array of choices for character development are gone.
I agree. I should point out, by the way, that the module of AmstradHero's that I am familiar with -- the NWN2 HOF module
Fate of a City, which won the MOTY Gold award and the GDA for Most Replayable module in 2008 -- was exemplary for its thorough and broad use of roleplaying skills. So he's walked the walk on this subject, not just talked the talk.
Lowlander wrote...
You are massively exaggerating a trivial issue (making mountains out of a molehills).
The reality is that Bluff is hardly used in any module and there is zero outrage. In fact no one cares. Because there are about 30 more useful skills to choose from and almost no one ever gets around to putting points into bluff.
I think you've just helped make our point for us.
In essence, you've just argued that the Bluff skill is useless. If that's the case, then why have it in the first place? Why not, say, combine it with Persuade and Intimidate into a more general purpose social skill, as Bioware did in Dragon Age? Because it would simplify and streamline character creation and scenario design, and that would violate the axiom that anything that does so must be excoriated as "dumbing down" the genre? Even when all that does is remove a skill that you yourself are trying to argue is pointless in the first place?
In fact, however, Bluff is
not a useless skill in Neverwinter Nights. Like any other, it is precisely as useful as the scenario designer chooses to make it. It may be an unnecessarily fine-grained skill, but it is by no means useless. It was put there for a reason: to allow players to role-play having a knack for fast-talking their way through situations and challenges.
Once you accept NWN's design premise of having multiple, distinct, narrow, and synergyless social skills, if anything it becomes crucial to designing effective roleplaying scenarios. Plenty of people care when it is not used, and appreciate it when it's used properly. As a module author, I make a point to use it in my work (and even partly designed one of my companions around the idea of being extraordinarily skilled at it). As a player, I routinely put points in it when I'm designing a character that I want to role-play as being eloquent or quick-witted, and am just as frequently annoyed when I play modules that ignore it. As an AME Member, I give extra marks to works nominated under the Roleplaying and Replayable module categories for using it, and for making use of a broad spectrum of available skill choices in general. And so on.
There are only two reasons why you can get away with suggesting that "there are about 30 more useful skills to choose from and almost no one ever gets around to putting points into bluff." One is that many module authors either don't know how to design an effective RP scenario, or don't care to because they're building for a player base of powergaming munchkins. (I leave it to the reader to judge for himself what, if anything, this has to say about the accusations of "dumbed down lowest common denominator RP design" that we've seen bandied about so recklessly on the BSN for the last year.) The other reason is that with a few exceptions, most builders who
can do good RP design
find the system of fragmented and synergyless social skills in NWN too unwieldy to use in the first place. This is easier and more straightforward with a design like that of DA:O's, where there is one integrated social skill available that can be specialized for use in a variety of related contexts.
There are hack and slash module with no soft skills, and no rogue skills and again no outcry. There are also modules that use many soft skills and many rogue skills... There is no outcry.
If you really believe that, then I've got a bridge to sell you. As a module author, I've gotten feedback and even downvotes from players criticizing my work for perceived omissions and commissions on every point of this spectrum. I've heard it all: from "your module is unfriendly to rogues because you didn't make your plot-key locked doors pickable" and "your small rogue-skill related sidequest is too hard for non-rogues," to "your module has some locked doors and traps so it's too hard for non-rogues to complete." I've even gotten "your module sucks because my Arcane Archer can't simultaneously use his longbow skills and hold the plot item that gives him immunity from mental attacks when he's fighting the psionic monster," if you can believe it. Trust me, if there's an obscure NWN skill anywhere that some players want to use and you're not actively catering to it -- or vice versa -- then you'll get flak for it.
No. You have completely failed to recognize the having a choice between a variety of skills varying greatly in usefulness and general applicability is not "no choice at all". It is the very essence of what a choice is. Making a value judgment based on the information/situation.
Even if 5 skills of the 40 available were completely useless, that doesn't in any way diminish the value of the 35 actually useful skills. It would only be a completely useless choice if ALL your options were useless and they clearly aren't.
Bad skill and game mechanics design of the kind that you describe here most certainly DOES diminish the value and utility of the game's mechanics as a whole. AmstradHero is dead on right about this. The mere fact that an option or a distinction is
available in the ruleset, and thus
might be used by some players, has profound implications for good game design. Character creation, scenario design, and game rules are all fundamentally interrelated and cannot be separated from each other.
You can try it, as you suggest, by picking a tractable subset of skills and abilities to work with, and discarding the rest. But that's only a partial solution, leading to the dead-end of trying to warn players ahead of time in a README with a list of "useful skills" to take in order to get something out of your work (and which most players won't read anyway). Module builders can get away with the consequences of this because they build for fun and don't have their livelihoods on the line. Professional developers don't have that luxury of alienating their player base in this way.
The central problem here, I think, is of
scenario brittleness. That happens when a game loses plausibility or breaks down in terms of plot logic or game balance because the space of possibilities built into the game mechanics is too broad and undisciplined to predict or anticipate. This is very difficult to mitigate without devoting an enormous amount of extra work, just in terms of QA time alone, to playtesting for such problems. What that leads to, in turn, is a shrinking of ambition on the part of modders and developers in terms of the scope and complexity of the plots and scenarios that they otherwise might develop.
And what I think this points up, in the end, is a fundamental difference in terms of game design goals and preferences between players who appreciate, or who bristle at, the streamlining of game mechanics. Do you care about having a specific, evocative, and stylized kind of game experience, with a rich but predictable set of plot and story possibilities that the developer can craft for maximum effect? Or do you find that dispensible in favor of having the "freedom" to "do whatever you want and feel like" in a simulated world? In other words, do you want to experience a game as a work of art, or as a sandbox in which to play in?
That's a choice that every player has to make, and while I don't share their preferences I don't want to knock players who prefer the sandbox approach. But I would argue that it's either/or, and you can't have both. If you want story-based gaming in its highest and most developed form, and one that is accessible to a broad audience of players, then you
have to be willing to accept restrictions on the sandbox, including streamlined game mechanics. If you prefer the latter, then more power to you. But then please
DON'T engage in the insultingly pejorative presumption of calling the alternative "dumbed down."
AmstradHero wrote...
This isn't about having a "builder's perspective" and not a "player's perspective." A builder must understand the system, but also understand what it means for all players. Designers play and love games, but they are players who think about and analyse the mechanics and presentation of the games that they play [emphasis added] ...
So, imagine those skills were never used? What would be the point of having them there? What if the OC had never used those skills? Your primary argument against other games is that NWN has more choice in character builds, but then you happily defend it even when supporting modules that take away that very choice that you complain is absent from DA2. By your very own arguments, those modules are "dumbed down" - the precise thing that you hate about games that aren't NWN.
Precisely. Thank you.
I'm with AmstradHero on this, and also have nothing further to add.
Modifié par AndarianTD, 13 mars 2011 - 08:21 .
