Limiting skills progression

[Ferodaktyl]

I was thinking about choosing the skills at the beginning just as we do now, but instead of raising the skill value (from 0 to 1 or 2 or whatever), this option would allow you to set some main skills that you can max out with (- let’s say 2 points,) or some secondary skills that you can get proficient at(with 1 point), and the rest of skill to be capped at a chosen level ( maybe 5-ish).
This would imply a skill cap, and this is also a needed feature, because , as other thread was saying, anything over 10 is superhuman and makes the game ridiculously easy.
It would also make more sense, having a char good at some things, ok-ish with others and bad to indifferent with the rest.
Because, let’s face it, no one is the perfect all-rounder we have after a few in-game days/weeks. Like the martial-artist sniper mechanical hacker doctor cyborg mutant we end up having :D.

Also cybernetic implants should have some requirements besides installing difficulty. Like, if you don’t have android/cyborg perks, you can install only the basic parts, and so on. Same for mutations. Some minor mutations for any chars unless they have a “Two headed” perk selected, that allows for deeper more complex mutations. IRL, radiation just kills you, slowly or faster, it does not mutate anything (watch some Chernobyl documentaries about fauna and flora 20 years after the explosion if you like, they are quite interesting), and the zombie creating agent that the game uses as main theme works its magic only after death.

[Benedict]

Is this worth doing in a single-player game, though? I quite like the ability to become superhuman.

If we can think of other ways to allow players to develop past the effective barrier you’re suggesting, then I’d be happy with this. Like some kinda upgrade you can perform on yourself to allow for better skills (maybe a levelling system that allows you to slowly raise the cap on skills?)

[KA101]

No. I’ve played games with skill caps*. Where the player can assemble a party that has varied skills, that can kinda work. Liberal Crime Squad, where the entire point is to build and manage teams, has livable skill caps: they’re based off of stats that increase with experience, and if that fails, someone else can fill in.

You take something like GearHead2, though, and the skills have a fairly strict cap both in number the player can have & amount they can be raised. With NPCs being comparatively ineffective, they couldn’t pinch-hit for the PC. Basically, the skill cap became an artificial limit on the content one character could experience.

(And grinding up new characters was seriously non-fun, IMO.)

*Defined as “limiting a character’s ability to attain maximum usable proficiency in all skills”. Fallout 2 stops the character at 300% in any given skill, but it’s possible to have 300% in everything. (100% is generally enough to do anything; more than that only helps in combat or other negative-modifier situations.) If Cata-skills couldn’t increase past (say) 15(99%), no matter what, that would be a max but not a cap for my purposes.

TLDR: I also rather like becoming superhuman; given the current state of NPCs, I think a skill cap is a “solution” in search of a problem.

[ArgusTheCat]

IRL, radiation just kills you

Radiation kills you in Cataclysm too, the mutations are side effects.

[Ferodaktyl]

Well, to each his own, as they say, but i see no challenge in playing a survival game where the char can enter a new area naked and emerge on the other side with everything dead in his wake and with only a few minor scratches. It just defies the survival part of the game. I have nothing against god-like chars, but only if they meet god-like critters.
And talking about Fallout, at least it had some area where you needed every scrap of skill. And it was Fallout that gave me the idea of tagging the skills we’d like to improve.

[Nopkar]

as it stands even a uber character (10+ in every stat, 5+ in every skill) can EASILY be killed by a mistake or random event.

Maybe have a cap on the number of skill points a player can have in Hardcore mode or something, but in my single player game I don’t have the luxury of forgoing mechanics because I don’t have a mechanically inclined ally nearby to pick up that skill for me, i am my own ally and I need all the help I can get.

if this means a demi-god like being, so be it. maybe that fungal infection will kill me before I get some royal jelly or that cbm installed.

your idea has merit though. +1!