Do people like skill systems where you can 'have everything'

[General Zod]

Final Fantasy and getting everything occured earlier then FF7,

Sure. It was just a famous illustration of the concept.

FF4 was locked by more then even FF1 in classes,

That's not really making choices though, since the game made the class and party choices for you as you progressed. You just found new items and got more experience points to open up the pre-determined skills.

I'm not sure FF1 would be a really good example. Most of the abilities were totally useless, so you really didn't have a lot of choice in what classes to pick if you wanted to make any real progress to begin with.

[Ghost Rider]

For the ultimate silliness of FF1, and how broken items are tangent. People have finished the games with every class, and only one of those characters. So the choices in the end are irrelevant in that perspective.

[Zixinus]

Depends on how the game is structured: if its a linear game, then its just about figuring out which ones the developers favoured the most.

In less linear games, like Diablo, then I find that I can go any way I want to and I'll just end up in the same spot, while wondering whether the other end would have been more fun.

Personally, I prefer skill trees that are there solely to keep the difficulty curve on its merry little way. I hate it when I played trough a game with a certain skillset only to be left wondering whether the other skillsets would be fun: I hate it because I have yet to play a game that wanted me to play it trough again once I completed it (except Dark Messiah, but we all know how that won't happen).

[Vendetta]

This is one of the main things I really like about Final Fantasy 1: you can't have it all. You need to make a choice early on with your classes, then as the game progresses, you have to choose which spells and equipment you want to fill your slots - you have 3 spell slots per level, but 4-6 options for most of them.

There are few actual choices though. Black Mages are pointless because spell damage is not linked to anything, so their strong level up every level in Intelligence (a stat which the game never uses in any calculations) is totally wasted, White Mages are only useful for Life 2 and you're almost certainly better off with the extra melee damage and survivability of a red mage for both anyway. The only real choices are between Warriors, Black Belts, and Red Mages, and whether you want to carry about a Thief, the game's most useless class, for the chance to make him into a slightly rubbish warrior who can cast Fast later in the game.

[Ace Pace]

I think it really depends on how well the game is built. Some games actively reward you for just maxing the entire skill tree or force you to be generic. These games seem to think offering multiple ways to solve the quests means forcing you to use all the ways.

Or driving towards what Stark and several others are saying, it depends on how well a skill tree is built. If it totally breaks your character to just make a few small mistakes in your skill progression to fuck over the game, then yeah, it encourages min maxing. If the skill tree lets you be flexible and restart some things? Well, might make things better.

Personally, I like min maxing and just being the super person in game. Can't say it's the best game method though.

[Qwerty 42]

Not to reiterate anybody else's points here, but it really does depend a lot on the type of game that you're playing. I find myself playing more and more co-op stuff these days, and I find that in most "serious" co-operative games, specialization is key, even when its not thrust upon the player. One of my favorite examples of this, and I find I mention it in a lot of places when discussing good game design, even though it wasn't that good of a game, was Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. In the multiplayer, you select from a pool of four potential characters types that affects what your stats are to start the game, and from there you influence it by the selection of different treasures at the end of each dungeon. In the co-operative game, that leads to heavy specialization fairly quickly: when my brothers and I played, we were divided into a group of healer, DSP-type, and spellcaster. I fulfilled the healer role, and even though my starting stats weren't well suited to that job, I gradually adjusted them over time by selecting more magic and defense boosting treasures to become a more specialized healer. Especially, if there's squabbling over a treasure pool, it helps to have a personal niche to fill so that you would be well-served by treasure no one else would want to take.

Of course, that can all be undone through sufficient application of time: if you were to play that game enough, you could ultimately unlock every treasure for every character, creating the "master of all trades" character type. So, I suppose that FFCC might be a bad example: the designers themselves did relatively little to control character maxing besides assume that no one would spend enough time with the game to reach that point. My brothers and I were fortunate that we had a time limit imposed by the looming fall semester, and therefore we only did each dungeon as much as was strictly necessary to collect certain items (especially, we made three consecutive passes through the same dungeon to collect an item to allow me to cast Cure at any time.)

While it may not be necessarily reflective of good design, it did make me realize that perhaps the best sort of "serious" co-op game might be one where there's a hard time cap imposed, or some other sort of system to prevent item farming. While not strictly forcing the player into a role in terms of class selection, the party will naturally want to diversify so that they can become more efficient in gameplay.

* by "serious" I mean a game that isn't meant to be played at a party in a carousel-format, along the lines of Four Swords or Gauntlet. That's not to say those games are bad- I actually greatly enjoy both- but because of how they're supposed to be played, it's prudent for the designers to create a system where a newcomer has a well-defined role in the party, or that everyone have a ubiquitous role, to lower the barrier to entry.

[Eleas]

In certain types of games, I usually want a hybrid to be a viable build. Notice that I don't say "you can max out everything"; it's because I don't believe it has to be a choice between the one and the other. Hybrids do not have to be cheesy, and oftentimes they're far more interesting to play than straight archetypes. It's the programmers' own fault that "not restricting to 100% archetypes" == "every stat can be raised to 100".

As tabletop gaming systems (by definition forced to employ the most rudimentary mathematics) are able to do these things efficiently and well, so should computer games. Effortlessly, in fact. Given a few programmers daring enough to consider the idea of abandoning old percentile-based cruft, perhaps even interested in treating the skill system as a means to an end rather than an end to itself, we might actually see some much-needed innovation.

I know, I'm positing that gaming devs might choose to do the smart thing. My only defense is that we're on SDnet, so there's some leeway. This is a science fiction forum, after all.

[Drooling Iguana]

I don't trust game designers. I know that, despite the back-of-the-box bullet points saying that there are a million and a half ways to complete a game using a wide variety of builds, in practice that's pretty much never true. Thus, I like knowing that, if I make a mistake and assign myself the wrong stats during character creation I'll still be able to complete the game, albeit with a bit more grinding than I'd have to do otherwise. Forcing the player to specialise their build is nice in theory, but in practice it's just one more way to have the game become unfinishable without the player knowing, so I generally prefer when games don't place limits on how much I can build up my character.

[Eleas]

That, too. Presenting me with a problem and giving me a few factors I can manipulate in order to solve it is what I want. I do not want the level designers to design an optimum path for me while they actively prevent me from seeking alternatives. That sort of shit only penalizes you for thinking on your feet.

That, as an aside, is what physics engines really should have been for, rather than cheap gimmicks.

[Stark]

I've learned most people on SDN play SP-only games, which I guess is valuable. lol. I never thought a thread about tree/Diablo-em-ups would turn into a thread about how nerds have to have everything because they can't handle missing anything - indirectly, this reveals why no games have interesting storylines anymore; nerds would complain that their choices 'limited' them.

I can't think of a single skilltree driven game that punishes the player or restricts content based on build choice. As Ando said back on page 1, games that offer you a starting list of skills you then increase often do, especially in single player. I've never heard anyone make complaints like I've seen here, however, where 'have to play the game again to see all abilities' is seen as a NEGATIVE (as in Mass Effect). I challenge Drooling Iguana to name a game made in the last five years that is 'unfinishable' due to skill choices. Indeed, those games usually simply have skills that are far MORE useful (like F3's hilariously useless skills), but he'd probably say the game sucks because tagging bargain, melee and repair made the game hard.

Putting aside my characterisation of childish 'must become superhero' rationalisations from OCD nerds, are there other skilltree-based games that give you the ability to have such a large proportion of all skills? In Diablo, each ability on the tree isn't limited, so you could sink all your points into one and synergies are what was important. In Titan Quest, you often respec halfway as you have access to higher-level abilities, which have limits on the points you can put into each. Sacred made the 'skills' loot-based and allowed choices in buffing abilities, but you could never have it all. Borderlands on the other hand will allow you to bottom-out two of the three trees (compare with WoW) or grab stuff all over the show. The shallowness and ease of choice seem to suggest the build variety will be pretty low, which could really hurt the coop nature of the game - but the three trees are vaguely themed with 'useful' stuff in all three, so perhaps the intention for players to not really specialise.

But all the people who don't like choices or consequences probably like that, so perhaps it's deliberate.

[Ford Prefect]

To be honest, I'm not sure which I prefer. On one hand I'm not so good with skill trees, but at the same time I thought that Too Human's extremely simple but completely exclusive three tree system was pretty cool, and if I could play online co-op I think it would really interesting to mess about with with another player. At the same time, Mass Effect's skill system, (apart from being basically irrelevant) was in no way limiting apart from some skills requiring a certain level in another (like Garrus needing a certain number of skills in Decryption before he could put points into Electronics). However, it wasn't exactly what you'd call 'deep', and with 102 points you didn't exactly have to make much in the way of choices. It will be interesting to see if they do anything new with it in ME2, but that's getting away from the point. Then there's somethingl ike Disgaea whic is seemingly based around gleefully exploiting the system to get them aximum possible abilities.

Personally, I actually really like skill building. The synergies between skills in Diablo II gave the game a shitload more depth than a point and click game would normally have, for instance. About the only time this is 'bad' is when this is really oblique and you can accidentally break your own character because you didn't quite catch onto what this skill did for another.

[Stark]

Yeah, the complexity of builds in Diablo and MMOs is much of the appeal; and the Diablo synergies are a major reason why later games aren't as good in my opinon. Sacred moved the focus from skillpoint synergy to skills/spells choices, which is less obvious and much slower to develop (and having no respec = terrible).

[Ford Prefect]

Yeah, the complexity of builds in Diablo and MMOs is much of the appeal; and the Diablo synergies are a major reason why later games aren't as good in my opinon. Sacred moved the focus from skillpoint synergy to skills/spells choices, which is less obvious and much slower to develop (and having no respec = terrible).

No respec is the Devil. Personally, It hink the best skill systems which are designed around cooperative play (IE. MMOs and to a lesser extent something like Diablo). I'd like to say it encourages players to stop being self-obsessed jerks and gets them to embrace teamwork, but who am I kidding? I got superexcited about Too Human because you could gurgle all afternoon about how each class interacted with each other and improved their abilities, and a Barb-Pally-Necro trinity in Diablo II is basically a whole bunch of cross-class synergies. Certainly it would be nice if gamers looked at skill systems like that as opposed to the adversarial model they've got currently with all the nerf/buff favoured/hated class nonsense.

[Connor MacLeod]

The compulsive "be prepared for eveything" part of me that I've acquired from early RPGs like The Bards Tale, Ultima and Wizardry always tries to take advantage of the "be skilled at everything" type single player when I can, but there is more of a OCD aspect to that rather than practicality. Sometimes its useful from a puzzle solving point of view, but it can also take away from the experience. More often I simply take advantage of it cuz its there, regardless of whether I can "max out everything" or not. A "Do everything" skill system can be properly implemented in some games, but in most is probably due to powerlevel abuse in a poorly designed one - one designed to appeal to the most casual game player (to attract the widest audience or make it the most idiot-proof.) Anyhow, the chief difference between "deliberate jack of all trades" and "broken system" in my mind will be that you would be capped and the levelling doesnt make skill acquisition too easy - a broken system would allow you to "max out" without putting a great deal of effort in trying to do so (esp if skill acqusition on a level is fairly easy.)

For me Diablo style "specialization" is better because you don't blow through all your character options first time around - you're forced to be more specialized, and that can add soem replayability to the game. It also can allow you to tailor or "personalize" a character (even amongst a few classes like Diablo) to your tastes or playing style (and adds fun in multiplayer) - it can even force you to play intelligently rather than simply grinding through with some choices because off the "hordes of enemy" you get hit with.

That said, alot of this depends on how the skill system is designed. In most of the games I've ever played you invariably run across some skills (very few in good games, many in bad games) that are totally useless unless they get tweaked or revised. This can be fixed if the developers are dedicated enough to "tweak" things progressively until they get better, biut again this varies. This is also especially noticable in "limited skill path" games because if a skill is badly implemented noone will feel inclined to take it.

[Stark]

That's a good point; in 'skill list' games, the list is usually small and several are useless (I think about 30% of the skills in F3 are useless). In tree games, there are many more skills, different points on the tree might be inefficient or suboptimal and thus useless, but they still 'do' something useful. It's worth noting that in Diablo-em-ups and MMOs, everything started as 'no respec' because decisions were meant to have weight (which hurt new players) and now pretty much all allow respec so that players can experiment or shift their focus when necessary. Skill list games seldom do this (although I remember some where you can 'refund' all your skillpoints).

This has reminded me that 'do everything' is one of the things I hate about System Shock 2. Your career choices etc are only relevant in the early game; you get enough skillpoints to buy absolutely everything. This is good because players don't know what skills are useful, but towards the end they literally drop enough points to take 2-3 new skills from zero to maximum, when there's nothing left to do but kill the final (lame) boss. This to me totally undermines the system and makes all the early game and career stuff totally useless.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well I like to use Diablo 2 because they actually had the right idea and intention with the skill system. D2's skill system at the beginning wasn't the best - you had good skills and uesless skills (esp Paladin) but they made some effort at correcting things (They were pretty good about that IIRC I havent played consistently for a while now) and Diablo got pretty fun with its skill system (Esp with the multi-player... one of the reasons Iliked Paladins actually.)

Of course, how many companies really give a shit about players enough to bother trying to "balance" things that way? not many I think. Skill balancing is something that can only be perfected with trial and error, and alot of comapnies don't want ot waste the time and money (its so much cheaper to rush te product out imperfectly tested if not half finished and just release "after the fact" patches, if they even care that far.) So alot of fuckups can be put squarely on the corporate mindset fucking with games.

Another thing to worth considering but I forgot to mention (but you pointed out) is that a limited skill system also forces you to plan and think - you have to put some thougth into your character. (Mind this also depends on a "well thought out" system - if they tell you fuck all about the skills or how they influence your character planning is frustrating trial and error) I liked how Diablo 2 told me what benefits I got from a skill) You don't have to min/max powergaming either in the planning, its more just knowing what the fuck the skills do that is important. While on the other hand a "Do everything" type skill system that allows you to level up is pretty mindless.

[Edi]

I like having restricted choices and specialization rather than getting everything, as long as the choices are meaningful.

I liked the way skill progression was done in The Witcher, even if you ultimately did wind up with nearly every skill. You did have to make choices on how to get there, though and sometimes those choices made a pretty damned big difference.

I also like the skill systems in HoMM 3-5, all of them had some choices and differences, a lot of them even meaningful, though there has been useless shit too. Most of the games being talked about in this thread I haven't played.

[Vendetta]

Overall I think it depends how well the game supports you in choosing to specialise. If you tried to specialise in, for instance, non combat skills in Oblivion completely ignored your combat and durability skills (and not gamed the character so you never levelled) you'd end up screwed because the stealth and diplomacy options are, well, nonexistant and you'd have levelled to the point that enemies would eat you for breakfast.

A game which makes/lets you pick a specialisation should give you something to do with it. This is easy in Diablo-em-ups (q-diabli?) because there is only one way of interacting with the game, you kill shit, and your skill specialisation is about how you kill shit, not whether you kill shit (unless you make a nonviable build, at which point you're fucked unless you can respec, and no respec is the devil). It's not as easy in a game where the options are broader, and even in games like Fallout where you can technically avoid combat, most of that "avoiding combat" is running like buggery and exploiting the engine because the enemies can't keep up.

[Simon_Jester]

I like point caps that force you to specialize, but that are loose enough that let you spread around enough skill that you can do stuff you're not a specialist in. The (somewhat) old game Deus Ex comes to mind; it was a first-person RPG shooter. Over the course of the game you build up enough skills and upgrades to get really good at a restricted subset of things, but you have to choose which of several related paths you'll optimize your character along. And since there are usually multiple paths to approach each objective, some of which favor certain character builds over others, there are multiple viable builds.

But you get enough skill points during the game to be at least competent at more or less everything. Your hacker/infiltrator can shoot straight; your commando can hack the security system. It may cost more effort and resources to do it, but you're not straitjacketed into approaching every problem the same way. And you can still do fairly well by distributing your skills more or less evenly, ending up with a character has to mix up his tactics to avoid running out of the resources to do any one thing. Because that character can do any thing, you have strategic flexibility.

Games that force your character into a single approach to every problem tend to annoy me, especially when it isn't the logical solution- your commando shouldn't just try to blast his way into a fortress full of troops, and your stealth specialist shouldn't be completely helpless if a file clerk stumbles across him in a disused storage room.