Coolthulhu has implemented something I’ve long awaited: split point pools for Stats, Traits, and Skills.
Putting stat points into traits and skills is allowed and putting trait points into skills is allowed. You cannot put skill points in traits or stats, and you can’t trait points into stats. Scenarios and professions increase your skill point pool. You can adjust the value of how many you get of each by default in Debug, the default for them right now is ‘2’.
I really admire his design choices here, it was very well thought out.
Single pool is still an option so no one has to make the jump if they don’t want to, and there’s even a new Freeform option that lets you spend as many points as you like.
It would be nice if the harder starting scenario’s could increase the stat pool instead of the skills pool.
I don’t mind having points set aside for skills and being told that I really should enter the apocalypse with some skills to aid me. However, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be at least a little better than average for starting with a harder scenario and being able to mitigate it.
[quote=“Labtop_215, post:2, topic:11514”]It would be nice if the harder starting scenario’s could increase the stat pool instead of the skills pool.
I don’t mind having points set aside for skills and being told that I really should enter the apocalypse with some skills to aid me. However, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be at least a little better than average for starting with a harder scenario and being able to mitigate it.[/quote]
More skills IS better than average, but I understand what you’re saying. This is the very first implementation so I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point some of the scenarios do reward some stat points.
That’s because scenarios are short-term problems and stats are long-term gains.
You can still gain long term gains in multi-pool by picking a profession with CBMs. Though most high-point scenarios don’t allow those… Maybe they should.
They are trying to stop people from taking “too many” stats because it’s “harder to balance” for.
Basically, they want to make the game harder by limiting the number of stats you can take and limiting the impact of having higher stats while “strongly encouraging you” to take skills.
another interpretation is that endgame is so easy because you could buff stats with points from minor drawbacks and then use your heightened stats to negate those same drawbacks via sheer number of them
I’m glad the old way is still there since I don’t see much point in this - part of the coolness of the original system was freedom and flexibility. Reducing freedom and flexibility is meh. If a person wanted to restrict themself they could already impose that on themself, eh?
[quote=“Labtop_215, post:8, topic:11514”]They are trying to stop people from taking “too many” stats because it’s “harder to balance” for.
Basically, they want to make the game harder by limiting the number of stats you can take and limiting the impact of having higher stats while “strongly encouraging you” to take skills.
Mostly because it’s “too unrealistic”.[/quote]
How to mask not having arguments and not knowing shit about what you’re talking about: mock the opposing opinion, making sure you don’t write a single word of constructive criticism or basically anything worth reading.
I myself have no interest in playing a character so undynamic as to have idiot-savant levels of ability. Youve got to tank one or more attribuites to reach levels Im used to playing with.
8 is average, and for me average has always been bare minimal. I can be coaxed into challenge, but as is Im less happy with taking lower stats with my other start conditions.
I already was using 3 skillpoints, and still had time for 7 stat points.
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:11, topic:11514”][quote=“Labtop_215, post:8, topic:11514”]They are trying to stop people from taking “too many” stats because it’s “harder to balance” for.
Basically, they want to make the game harder by limiting the number of stats you can take and limiting the impact of having higher stats while “strongly encouraging you” to take skills.
Mostly because it’s “too unrealistic”.[/quote]
How to mask not having arguments and not knowing shit about what you’re talking about: mock the opposing opinion, making sure you don’t write a single word of constructive criticism or basically anything worth reading.[/quote]
I’m not mocking you. I’m mocking the position the devs seem to be taking (I’m guessing you would be one, meh) because I think the implementation of this system is half baked. It’s geared towards trying to force you to take a ton of starting skills instead of just a few, again because starting with no skills is “too unrealistic”. That’s the general feel I get from reading https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/14895.
I get what you people are trying to do, but you are kind of being heavy handed trying to get people to take lower stats in general. You should encourage people to take some skills, you shouldn’t try to force or coerce people into taking them over stats like this because it just feels like your gimping our characters at that point.
My concern here is that this system will either not catch on because it’s too rigid, or that the uniform pool option will be relegated to being a debug feature and then dropped entirely for this “free form” option that will include this patronizing “the game will be really” prompt if go over some now invisible point pool where the cost of each option is obscured.
Ultimately, this still dosn’t do anything to de-emphisize the value of stats over traits and skills either. It just makes it more apparent how important good stats are over skills because those skills have a very marginal role in how good your character can be. You need to find a way to buff skills rather than just stopping our ability to take stats because you’ll end up finding the game become more broken as you progress to the endgame when characters buff their stats with mutations and bionics instead.
The endgame will still be broken because skills above 8 will very rarely matter, and any character that isn’t illiterate can maintain them (although in a grindy way), but stats can still be buffed, either temporarily, or semi-permanently.
Skills still don’t play enough of a role in making your character a good character overall, and it’s too easy to be a jack of all trades.
Furthermore, there are other ways to make the game difficult that the player has control over. Basically, they can decrease item spawns, increase monster spawns, set the season times to be longer or shorter, set a permanent season to something unfavorable like winter, deal with NPC’s, ect.
Skills would have to be totally reworked in order to compete with stats on the same level.
Traits would have to be totally reworked in order to compete with stats on the same level.
“You should find a way to make it right” is easier said than done.
Basically, as long as skills can be gained during the game and not just at game start, they are necessarily below stats in priority.
The only ways to change that are:
[ul][li]Separating stats and skills[/li]
[li]Making skill leveling strictly limited in some way (say, if you don’t start with 5 electronic, you will never reach 10 electronics, except with debug)[/li]
[li]Disabling skill leveling[/li]
[li]Making stats fluid, thus making all characters quickly become the same character (like it is the case with Stats Through Skills mod, where characters are defined by their traits, equipment and “age”)[/li]
[li]Combining some of the above[/li][/ul]
So far I haven’t seen a suggestion on how to actually achieve what you’re requesting.
There were suggestions like making skills level faster based on their initial level, making leveling slower and harder etc. but not one of them actually did solve the problem of skills evolving in time and thus being cheaper than stats.
Until skills become somehow fixed in time and limited, stats will be better.
Until someone suggests a way of achieving that, I’m going to balance the game using known, sane methods.
That is, unless we do something insane like making stats not matter at all or making them matter only for the first 3 days.
You should encourage people to take some skills, you shouldn't try to force or coerce people into taking them over stats like this because it just feels like your gimping our characters at that point.
Multi-pool mode is for players who want a challenge without having to gimp own character. Many RPGs give you more points on easier difficulties, this is pretty much the same.
And about the patronizing: Any game where harder and easier mode exists can either name them as harder and easier, or pretend to not do so but still do it (say, name it “story mode”).
Multi-pool mode is necessarily harder than single pool mode. There is no plan to add an extra reminder that you’re playing an easy mode, but there is no way to mask the fact that you’re not playing the hard mode without regressing into players having to voluntarily gimp their characters to get a challenging game.
Furthermore, there are other ways to make the game difficult that the player has control over. Basically, they can decrease item spawns, increase monster spawns, set the season times to be longer or shorter, set a permanent season to something unfavorable like winter, deal with NPC's, ect.
Having quantified world difficulty levels would be cool too.
I don’t like that system, it’s way too rigid. The main problem is that Traits and Stats are in two different categories. Yes, stats always give you many long-term advantages, but don’t forget traits also do. For most part of the game you are not going to mutate and also starting traits can not be purged [as far as I know] and they also predetermine your chain of mutation. Getting new traits is billion times easier than getting better stats, but also is ridiculously costly and the more you go up, the less chance you are going to balance between given negative and positive traits. Still you can use your traits to the full extent since the first day. Doesn’t it remind you of something? Yes, stats essentially do the same thing but they give you an advantage without any losses. Traits, on the other hand, force you to pick some negative trait for better one. It’s an exchange. The fact that there are many “free” negative traits is a balance issue but that’s not something that system can deal with as it’s not its purpose.
What I suggest is connecting traits and stats categories into one, but make stats far more expensive to increase. After all those give you a pure buff. By interconnecting the two we can still make a sorta balanced character and force players to choose whether they want higher all-purpose stats or situational traits. So yeah, traits should take their current amount of points and stats should take more than one from that pool.
Starting skills generally don’t matter unless you play certain challenges. For two points or slightly more you are definitely not going to get some meaningful amount of skills that you couldn’t get by grinding the skill in reasonable amount of time. I actually have a really complex idea of how to change skills and reading and learning to make it 95% less grindy. I just can’t form the text yet, it’s that big. Should it be implemented and starting skill will start to matter quite a lot.
Freeform ftw! Finally, I can easily create my characters exactly how I like and tailor the difficulty to my own personal skill and experience with the game. This is really the only character creation option anyone should ever need, provided they can trust their own judgement on what would be too easy or too difficult.
Skills would have to be totally reworked in order to compete with stats on the same level.
Traits would have to be totally reworked in order to compete with stats on the same level.
“You should find a way to make it right” is easier said than done.
Basically, as long as skills can be gained during the game and not just at game start, they are necessarily below stats in priority.
The only ways to change that are:
[ul][li]Separating stats and skills[/li]
[li]Making skill leveling strictly limited in some way (say, if you don’t start with 5 electronic, you will never reach 10 electronics, except with debug)[/li]
[li]Disabling skill leveling[/li]
[li]Making stats fluid, thus making all characters quickly become the same character (like it is the case with Stats Through Skills mod, where characters are defined by their traits, equipment and “age”)[/li]
[li]Combining some of the above[/li][/ul]
So far I haven’t seen a suggestion on how to actually achieve what you’re requesting.
There were suggestions like making skills level faster based on their initial level, making leveling slower and harder etc. but not one of them actually did solve the problem of skills evolving in time and thus being cheaper than stats.
Until skills become somehow fixed in time and limited, stats will be better.
Until someone suggests a way of achieving that, I’m going to balance the game using known, sane methods.
That is, unless we do something insane like making stats not matter at all or making them matter only for the first 3 days.
You should encourage people to take some skills, you shouldn't try to force or coerce people into taking them over stats like this because it just feels like your gimping our characters at that point.
Multi-pool mode is for players who want a challenge without having to gimp own character. Many RPGs give you more points on easier difficulties, this is pretty much the same.
And about the patronizing: Any game where harder and easier mode exists can either name them as harder and easier, or pretend to not do so but still do it (say, name it “story mode”).
Multi-pool mode is necessarily harder than single pool mode. There is no plan to add an extra reminder that you’re playing an easy mode, but there is no way to mask the fact that you’re not playing the hard mode without regressing into players having to voluntarily gimp their characters to get a challenging game.
Furthermore, there are other ways to make the game difficult that the player has control over. Basically, they can decrease item spawns, increase monster spawns, set the season times to be longer or shorter, set a permanent season to something unfavorable like winter, deal with NPC's, ect.
Having quantified world difficulty levels would be cool too.[/quote]
It wouldn’t be so bad if we could loosen it up a little bit somehow, or if stats moved a little bit, and fluctuated over time based on your actions. Here is a thread where I have a suggestion on how stats could go up or down based on exercise. http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=12249.0
I’m not a programmer, so I can’t make it happen but maybe it can give you some ideas. The general idea is to make it harder to maintain higher stats without appropriate skills to train them, without diluting every character’s originality, or removing the benefits of having better stats in the first place. Basically to make over-investment into stats a possibility by making it difficult or impossible to keep all 4 stats exercised at their maximum at higher levels, but not at lower levels.
Although;
this would be a good start. Also, allowing some of the points taken from more difficult scenarios to be put into stats and traits (maybe half and half? The left over points from traits would go into skills anyway.) would also help the system feel less rigid.
[quote=“Labtop_215, post:19, topic:11514”]It wouldn’t be so bad if we could loosen it up a little bit somehow, or if stats moved a little bit, and fluctuated over time based on your actions. Here is a thread where I have a suggestion on how stats could go up or down based on exercise. http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=12249.0
I’m not a programmer, so I can’t make it happen but maybe it can give you some ideas. The general idea is to make it harder to maintain higher stats without appropriate skills to train them, without diluting every character’s originality, or removing the benefits of having better stats in the first place. Basically to make over-investment into stats a possibility by making it difficult or impossible to keep all 4 stats exercised at their maximum at higher levels, but not at lower levels.[/quote]
I’ve read that thread. The whole idea is incredibly grindy, bringing the worst (from gameplay and “fun” perspectives) traits from skills to stats, but with extra layer of things you have to avoid doing in order not to lose stats.
It would involve learning a whole set of things not to do, favor heavily armored characters, make survivors’ diets even blander than they are now and make things inconvenient without making them harder.
It would mean a whole lot of things to do to maintain stats, but all of them easy and tedious, like Nethack’s boulder pushing (to grind strength) rather than something done automatically at a cost to the character such as “spend x extra hours meditating after every sleep to maintain godly powers”.
Grinding penalty (“repetitive motion injury”) wouldn’t help unless it got so restrictive that it would also affect the non-grinding players.
In general, discouraging grinding with grinding penalties doesn’t work, it has to be done by either removing the opportunity to grind or making the grinding less mechanically efficient than other activities (mechanically, so no making it too tedious). Limitations like that just lead to arms race where the best way to progress is finding unpatched grinding methods.
