Perks, attributes and major skills would have worked well together. Increases in attributes from within the perk tree would make sense. The problem with the "learning by doing" leveling system is the lack of major skills. Buying, selling and lockpicking is leveling up enemies against my mage ...why?
If there is any flaw with TES leveling system it's that non combat skills allow you to levelup and make you weaker in the progress.
How about we get rid of level scaling and keep learn by doing system?
If RPG's Don't need Stats, Classes, Attributes, Weapon diversity, Choice/Consequence, Multiple Options/Actions to go about things, extensive Character Developement etc etc. WHY do you find it offensive to Say Skyrim is as RPG as COD?
Just imagine this hypothetical COD game with those elements and a mind-blowing story. It still wouldn't be an RPG for the simple fact that the game is the prime example of railroading.
Unfortunately, classic RPG games are measured at their ability to hide this fact, the railroading.
In a true RPG you are allowed to do as you will within the limits of the rules. It woks in P&P because there is a human being taking on the role of NPCs, and that human is vastly more capable of reacting than a programmed AI set. So we have to start with the realization that CRPGs are necessarily limited by their medium. ..
That is a big technological barrier. Some covered that limitation with excellent writing and others just ignored it and created dungeon crawlers, build playing games. My criticisms is after four decades especially counting the last decade, that limitation mustn't be that prevailing.
Your actions define your character, and your gameplay changes and evolves in response to your actions. Confront the assassins' guild, and they take out a contract on you. Impress them, and they try to recruit you instead.
That's how Morrowind was marketed by Bethesda.
do whatever you want, go wherever you want
That's how Skyrim is marketed.
In Skyrim, NPCs can recognize their relatives which combined with a disposition system and RAI could create something incredible but Bethesda does not want what they can't control. They are scared from their own creation.
One particular example that comes to mind is .. Josh Sawyer, who was playing through Fallout New Vegas for the second time. And he decided to piss off both factions in the game, who hate each other. And when you piss off either faction in the game, assassins will attack you, which is pretty typical for showing reputation mechanics in games.
But because he had chosen to piss off both factions, which is something we hadn't accounted for, he woke up in the Mojave Wasteland one morning to find that both assassin squads had spawned in but rather than attack him, they launched at each other, murdered each other, and Josh just went by, whistled, looted all their corpses... And I could have spent like a month and a half trying to do a narrative design solution that would set up that situation, but because of the mechanics Josh was able to have a story all his own because of his actions in the environment.
Narrativists think that you can't avoid railroading. They are wrong. It can be avoided. What I want is, development focus in this aspect. The avoidance of railroading in RPGs.
Bethesda tries to make things as oblivious to each other as possible while they should be going the other way, making the world interconnected as possible. Lobotomizing RAI to avoid chaos, making factions unaware of each others and now, whole disposition system is gone. No one is aware about each other in Skyrim. RS is about expanding on a base(of zero), it is designed to avoid the consequences of an interconnected world. The consequences must be embraced. That is a good thing, Bethesda must trust the maturity of the players, if it is not railroading but my choice to piss off a group and that closes doors to me, that's OK. Failure is a big part of the experience. We value the accomplishments by comparing them to our failures. Why do we fall? So we can rise again.
I mean, if it was possible they would find a way to make both civil war questlines doable at the same time. I am 100% sure, they did brainstorming on this, tried to defeat logic, anywhere possible. Their direction is wrong, that's what I am saying. We are literally going backwards, so much time is lost.
http://youtu.be/3Bd4I0Wu3Ss
I want her to be a real person with a real family. I don't want these abstracted, staged encounters. These are so immersion breaking. I mean, this is the good part of the game. Where I encounter a captive which is amazing, my most immersed moment in the game. But I learned the truth that captives are random generation without a beginning and an end. It is an illusion. The potentially best part of the game is a cheap mechanic to adjust your morality, metagaming at its best. Skyrim is even more oblivious, it is not even trying hiding its railroading. It is just linear.
What I am saying is these parts should be integrated into the world mechanics. Actual NPCs capturing actual NPCs and these having actual consequences in the world. That would be a world. Being able to try bribing every single NPC in the world, or taunting them. That's a mechanic. For example, reporting a crime. Can we do that? With pure mechanics. Can we make a false report? The possibilities are endless.
I go on and on about Morrowind not because I suffer from nostalgia and stuck in the past but because I think it is the one that shows the spark, the ambition towards these ideals. It makes me think about a sequel with all the cool possibilities. It is amazing that ten years later, from that dream inducing poor Morrowind we came to this brilliant arcade game. A brilliant game but it must be understandable why I am pissed here.
This stuff is too important to be discussed under this stagnated RPG genre. Maybe immersive sim would be a better title to talk about progression. I don't trust RPGs to be RPGs.
» Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:22 am 
It's a city building game.
