Hello All-
With the new stat pool system I only have two points to put into my stats before I have to re-shuffle. I’m used to putting a lot of points into stats so everything is 8-10, where I followed the guides on the wiki. (Outdated, I know, but I used them for years as a guide)
There were a lot of rules in those guides, 10 STR to not get your weapon stuck and use a Recurve Bow, 10 PER to detect landmines. Are these rules still in play? What do most folks do with the new stat pool system?
“Use another stat system”, generally. If scenario bonus points added to stat points, rather than skills, I might be tempted into the multiple point pools, but as it is, I’d rather have the character flexibility of the single points pool option.
The way Multi-Pool works right now could definitely use some tweaking. Supposedly 7-11 is the normal human range, and supposedly the game is balanced around this. However even a cursory glance at the game can tell you that this is bullshit. (13 (borderline genius) INT to understand SICP which is an introductory text that goes out of it’s way to use bad puns and other mnemonic devices to help make the complex topics more palatable) I wouldn’t mind seeing an update that allowed professions to give small stat boosts (Nothing major just a +1 here and there) to emulate the training\ education required to reach that point. Really anything that would encourage players to specialize without horrifically gimping them in other areas. E.g. I should be able to build a proficient archer who isn’t brain damaged.
Note: You don’t need 13 Int to ready SICP, but it’s easier if you have it.
Yea, I’ve tried arguing for that already.
The general consensus is that multiple pools is supposed to make the game harder by forcing you to choose skills over stats, and to make the starting scenarios more balanced by preventing you from using them for stat gain since those are temporary problems that your character can get over.
From a design perspective, why even have bonus point granting scenarios to start with if they can only impact on skills?
They make the game effectively shorter, by giving you skills and recipes that you would otherwise need to struggle to acquire.
They offer little change over the normal game characters, since you will reach exactly the same plateau as other characters with other, simpler, starts.
It’s far easier to trivialise the early game, and the starting scenarios that are supposed to be tricky, with high starting skills than it is high starting stats.
The way to balance character creation is:
Accept that 1 skill point is fundamentally less valuable than 1 stat point and charge accordingly, so sacrificing a point for several skill points becomes tempting, just as certain Professions are. (using 1 higher tier point gives 2+ lower tier points in exchange).
Limit the actual point cost to scenarios to more accurately represent their real, long term penalties as well as their short term starting hurdle. Like Hospitals probably being worth more than 2 points considering they’re spitter death mazes with no trolleys or decent gear, and the winter start being worth less than 8 points considering how easy it is to get through the winter even with a no skill survivor.
[quote=“Pantalion, post:6, topic:12248”]The way to balance character creation is:
Accept that 1 skill point is fundamentally less valuable than 1 stat point and charge accordingly, so sacrificing a point for several skill points becomes tempting, just as certain Professions are. (using 1 higher tier point gives 2+ lower tier points in exchange).[/quote]
That’s actually a horrible idea if you think about it: it gives you a choice between instant, non-grindy start that gimps you in the long term and a grindy, slow start that is strictly better in the long term.
Multiple pool start was created to fix the following problems:
[ul][li]Professions that don’t grant extra points being worthless[/li]
[li]Skills at start gimping the character in the long term, being a bad choice[/li]
[li]Starts being grindy, slow and brainless because of the above[/li][/ul]
It did wonders for all of those. Didn’t fully fix the last one, because some skills are worth more than the others (fabrication can be trivially grinded to lvl 3, first aid and electronics are hard to level up) and because it doesn’t grant good equipment at start, but it is still a giant improvement over single pool.
Not all scenarios are balanced for it (hospital start was never balanced), but there are scenarios with non-0 score adjustment that ARE balanced for it, unlike the old system and any suggested system so far that placed skills in the same pool as stats.
Skill points are worth skill points and equipment points. They are not worth traits and stats. If you have problems with too low stat point value, suggest changes to stat point pool or the way stats work, not introducing faults in the point system that can be exploited for more stats.
What you call a horrible idea, I call a fundamental aspect of game design: The Short vs. Long term trade-off, that the player has a choice between something good now, or to hold off and get something better later. The golden standard of design is to make choices rewarding for the player, not restrict player choices. The current Multi Pool system fails on both metrics. It does not make it rewarding to the player to sacrifice their only 2 stat points, and massively reduces the variety of play.
To try and go into the underlying issues, I’ll break down what you’ve said:
Instant, non-grindy, start:
I actually like the early game. It’s the only time I feel particularly challenged, since it’s the time I have the fewest resources and the hardest time acquiring more as I scour every house for skill books and try and balance eating and drinking enough to survive with staying out of trouble long enough to learn. In the Cata design document I believe this is referred to as the “survival” phase of the game, when the player must struggle to earn their place in the post-cataclysmic environment.
While I don’t disagree with allowing a player to bypass some of this if they choose to, I do not consider enforcing bypassing it through game mechanics to be good design. While I agree there’s a problem in balance, I consider it to be one of cost/reward, not a core system issue.
Brainstorming: To alleviate early game grindiness.
[spoiler]The ideal would be to have any progress the player makes to be organic, without painful, artificial walls to progress.
One possibility would be to open up some of the earlier recipes to all characters, and to remove artificial barriers to player progression that make the system feel “gamey”. Mechanics is a good example:
A starting player can coke up and remove advanced cybernetics from their own rib cage at 0 First Aid, even if they will probably fail.
A player who has read an introductory Mechanics text book up to level 1 cannot change a tyre, or even attempt to.
A player with tailoring less than around 4 is probably going to have a bad time trying to do so much as darn a doily.
By allowing the player to attempt at lower levels you increase risk (aka fun), while increasing training opportunities. I can barely make toast, but I can try to craft lasagna, maybe even succeed without producing a burnt mess, and probably get a lot more experience cooking by overextending myself than making a dozen pieces of toast.
Likewise, in reality when we wish to achieve a skill, we practise. In game, the only way to do this is to expend resources (fine) and time (fine for the character, not so for the player) trying to achieve something specific, yet simple, over and over again.
Why not abstract this? Simply have a command or recipe “Practise: Sewing/Electronics/Fabrication.”, that takes up resources and time to simply improve the skill in question.
The player creates a garish abomination with nine sleeves, a gaping hole in the front where the stitching came undone, and the zip is lopsided, and they cut it back up into rags when they’re done, losing materials in the process.
The player has more motivation to scavenge (danger = fun) for materials to continue practising.
Books are still useful, because they let you learn faster, and without the resources (and progress to higher skill levels, and recipes you can try even at a lower level with a high risk of failure…).
Most of the grindiest parts are abstracted into simply sourcing the appropriate materials and trying your luck failing to create things with a small chance of success (which gets double mileage of risk = fun and unlikely success against all odds = fun).
[/spoiler]
Skills at start gimping the character long term is a bad choice.
I could go on ad nauseam about short vs. long decision making design choices as I mentioned at the start of my post, but I’ll just point out that pretty much every single pick in character creation is short vs. long.
Martial Arts traits? Short term gain, the books are everywhere.
Bionics starting character? Short term gain, since you can find the parts elsewhere, or one of the nastiest starting disadvantages with Broken Cyborg.
Skills? Any skill is temporary unless it’s level 7+ dodge or something (which is more or less a permanent, unreplicable bonus, just like stats, considering how hard it is to reach higher levels of dodge).
Night Vision? Quick? Fleet-footed? There’s mutagen for that.
You are theoretically gimping your character by choosing any of these things, and there are precious few things other than stats, MD and Parkour Expert that aren’t just there to make your early game less random, and that’s 100% fine, there’s no problem with traits because traits are better balanced and can make a serious difference to early game consistency, and that advantage (and inherent advantage of being more reliable long term) is worth the trade-off in long term power.
Brainstorming: Narrowing the gap between short and long term skills vs stats balance.
1: To reduce balance problems between stats vs skills.
[spoiler]There are two ways to approach this. Either stats are worth more than skills, or skills are worth less than stats. In a perfect system you would be prepared to sacrifice long term benefits for short term benefits, because that’s already largely the case for Traits.
My first suggestion was a 1:3 exchange rate for stats into skills (this matches pretty well to what professions give on top of gear, bionics et al). You suggest that this would introduce a flaw to allow more points for skills, but I believe you are mistaken here. There is no way to reduce your skill points below 0, so the player could only buy extra skills with stats, not the other way around.
Also note that with a 3:1 point variety, the “strictly better” issue diminishes. With a 1:1 system taking 3 points of Dodge equates to maybe 25% of your total stat (assuming 12). With a 3:1 system, it’s 8.3%. Still, short term vs. long term strategy, but better balanced.
The other problem is that stats are simply too cheap to specialise. >3 points in a skill raises the cost to 2 points per pick, while you can raise stat points 6 points before the price increases. You would need 24 points poured into stats before you started losing efficiency. Combined with your starting abilities being more or less unchangeable that makes it significantly better and cheaper to focus on stats, which isn’t ideal.
To alleviate this, we can apply the same restriction: 8-11, 1 point. 12-13, 2 points, 14-15, 3 points, 16-17, 4 points, 18-19 5 points, 20: 6 points.
Together, this means that if a player chooses to take skill points instead of increasing one stat to 12, that’s a 6:1 advantage. That early game advantage becomes as cheap as chips, while the end character is pretty close in power.
For a lower power level early game, instead of making skills cheaper we can simply add 1 point to those modified stat costs and keep skills the same, resulting in a lower power start all around. Selling points below 8: 1 point. 8-11, 2 points. 12-13, 3 points, 14-15, 4 points, 16-17, 5 points, 18-19 6 points, 20: 7 points.
Once again, you have long term investment, but with this system it’s a significant long term investment - getting one of your stats up to 11 costs 6 points that could have got you some decent skills, multiple traits, and a much better chance, overall, of surviving to your first birthday.[/spoiler]
2: To reduce balance problems between professions and anything else.
[spoiler]Many professions are arguably already a pretty good deal, giving rare bionics, or irreplaceable traits (skaters and MDs, for example). Making the non-skill benefits work out is a question of tweaking prices so that it represents both the price of the bonuses and the lost opportunity cost (you could have picked another, different, awesome profession or one that granted bonus points). A profession that grants Karate should be overall cheaper than a trait that grants karate, because you can have twelve traits but only one profession.
The primary issue with skill granting professions is that unless you’re specialising anyway low level skills are not valuable, regardless of pool system - +2 dodge from ballet dancer is either +2 skill points gratis, or +10 and reaching unattainable levels of epicness, depending how many points you mix-maxed into dodge. Feast or famine, your profession is either irrelevant the moment after you start the game, or has granted you something that nobody else can easily get.
One possible way to ensure that professions are always desirable is to have their starting skills go hand in hand with permanent learning speed bonuses in their chosen fields - For example, a Juvenile Delinquent would take as much effort to go from Melee 5->6 as a Survivor would from 6->7.
Meanwhile, to help maintain balance, defining what actions gain skills would be unchanged. A ballet dancer and their +2 starting dodge would not be able to improve against a zombie child, since their dodge would be 2 already, but would never rust (since it rusts as though they had 0 skill) and improve rapidly against a zombie up to level 3 as though they had 0 dodge.
This would mean that your profession not only defined your early game through its gear and skills, it also defined your adventuring career by showing where your character’s personal strengths are as an individual.[/spoiler]
3: Resolving the unresolvable divide between stats and skills:
[spoiler]There are two fundamental differences between stats and everything else:
They cannot be amended, your base stats are all but permanent.
They have affects that cannot readily be replicated.
The most simple would be to allow mundane and extraordinary stat growth. Extraordinary is easy,
a single charge artifact type deally granting a chance to permanently boost a stat by 1, autosaving as it does so, with chances worsening as stats get higher. Effectively Granades, with more of the gradually shaving off pieces of your psyche to dark higher powers in exchange for power. If stat increases become mathematically feasible, if difficult and random the higher you go, then high starting stats become just another short term advantage.
Mundane on the other hand, could come in various ways, the easiest being the inclusion of skills. Stats give flat rate bonuses to the best of my knowledge, so while they could still benefit from these self-same skills (not penalising them for their playstyle), any flat bonus from a non-stat source diminishes the value of the stat itself.
Weight lifting: Adds to the amount the player can carry, trained by being near or over your maximum weight limit.
Toughness: Increases the amount of health the player has, and how readily they overcome diseases. Trained by: Being sick, getting injured, and healing back up again.
Crafting: There’s melee and marksmanship, why not a crafting overskill that gives you overall bonuses of success or speed during manufacturing jobs?
Literacy: Your speed at reading books increases the more you get used to reading.
Trapping: Already increases your chance of finding traps, and could/should give experience by doing so if it doesn’t already, making it less tedious to level if you hang around minefields practising.
Precision: Increases your chance of landing critical hits. Improved by: Landing critical hits and hitting things normally (though slowly).
To retain overall power level, the current bonuses from stats could even be diminished slightly to account for the bonuses from the new skills, leaving overall balance unchanged.[/spoiler]
These or similar approaches would hopefully serve to tackle the root issues that multiple pools aims to address, while retaining the maximum degree of freedom to the player on where to focus their limited resources.
Not many games have much of that and for a good reason:
Permanently gimping the character for short term gain is a pain to design around.
It’s something mostly old, badly designed games have.
It’s very easy to mis-apply it resulting in grind at best, total lack of balance at worst (Poschengband’s racial XP penalties, DDA single pool system are both good examples of it done wrong).
As for good examples, it generally means things like holding on to healing items to use them when needed, strong activable items to use on strong enemies etc. Not many games have trade-offs like “take wand of 10 fireballs or 1 strength forever” and for a good reason - this only makes sense if the game is short enough that those fireballs will matter.
The golden standard of design is to make choices rewarding for the player, not restrict player choices. The current Multi Pool system fails on both metrics.
Choices in multi-pool are more rewarding AND actually more meaningful than in single pool.
That is because there are only 2 real choices in single pool: intentionally gimp self or go for the “win” and be as strong as the game allows.
If you think the choices are not rewarding, you’re either only playing in the low point scenarios or not planning enough. The starting recipes allow much more choice than single pool characters, which all have to put points in stats to avoid being gimped. Additionally, the multi pool system allows picking the professions with bionics in them without making it a horrible choice.
The choice restriction only restricts the no-brainers, delayed instant-win characters.
What you call “restricting player choices” is the same kind of restriction as not allowing infinite points everywhere. If you don’t like having limits, try freeform.
It's the only time I feel particularly challenged, since it's the time I have the fewest resources and the hardest time acquiring more as I scour every house for skill books and try and balance eating and drinking enough to survive with staying out of trouble long enough to learn.
This is one of the things that multi-pool system addresses. Not perfectly, but it’s certainly an improvement that smooths out the progression from early “can’t do anything but run, dies instantly if caught” into “god of cataclysm, can’t be stopped”.
You see the problem, but are trying to avoid connecting it to the reason it exists because you dislike “limiting choice”. Choice between “win instantly” and “try to win by shooting stuff” is not really a choice, choice between “try to win by shooting stuff” and “try to win by bashing stuff” is a choice.
While I don't disagree with allowing a player to bypass some of this if they choose to, I do not consider enforcing bypassing it through game mechanics to be good design.
You can still pick bad starts with low skills. There is no bypassing, only saner balance. You only can’t pick weaklings that instantly snowball and who will make game progress from early game into god mode. Well you can, just not in the one point mode that actually has some balance in it.
Martial Arts traits? Short term gain, the books are everywhere. Bionics starting character? Short term gain, since you can find the parts elsewhere, or one of the nastiest starting disadvantages with Broken Cyborg. Skills? Any skill is temporary unless it's level 7+ dodge or something (which is more or less a permanent, unreplicable bonus, just like stats, considering how hard it is to reach higher levels of dodge). Night Vision? Quick? Fleet-footed? There's mutagen for that.
I actually planned to move martial arts into skill point costs, just didn’t get to it yet. Yes, martial arts are too short term to be in the same category as pain resistance, quick and parkour.
Bionics - exactly, they’re short-mid term. That’s why it makes no sense to bundle them with stat costs. Broken cyborg was balanced for the unbalanced system, that’s why it’s weaker - because in its original form, it was mid-term penalty for indefinite term gain.
Skills are temporary, that’s why it doesn’t make sense to bundle them with stats.
Mutagens are still quite badly designed so that’s a semi-valid point. But they are still not as temporary as skills of bionics. Mutagens are unstable, post-endgame crap. Mutation roulette, which is a fault in the whole design, pretty much requires you to have a full set of everything collectible and perform a boring grind by the time you’ve already “won” the game.
To reduce balance problems between stats vs skills.
This doesn’t solve the problem at all. In fact, it only makes it worse. It makes it so that you have a choice between boring early game full of cautious grind or an early game that starts in midgame but results in non-viable characters that suck afterwards.
Additionally it makes it impossible to balance the game. If we balance the game for long term characters, the ones who picked fast start will be fucked. If we balance it for the short term ones, the long term ones get a RNG start where survival depends far more on luck than on player skills, but then safe endgame where death only happens if the player sucks or gets too bored to play well. And player burnout due to game being too easy is the primary cause of death of single pool characters that manage to raise their skills to 5 or so.
The only real way of balancing stats and skills against each other is making both grindable or non-grindable, thus either making the starting choices not matter much and all characters converge into a bland “end game dude”, or making the characters not grow at all. That is, without adding a time limit of some sort - lack of time limit or endgame objective is why it’s a horrible idea to have stats and skills in the same pool.
I skimmed the other suggestions but none of them were The Solution to stat vs skill problem.
"Not many games have much of that and for a good reason:"
On the contrary, it’s ubiquitous. Try Dungeons and Dragons: Fighters have a great class chassis, are very survivable at early levels. Wizards have the worst chassis, are virtually useless at low levels. By the end of a character’s lifespan the fighter is less survivable, the wizard matures into unstoppable magical engine of destruction. Character archetypes in many RPGs (including modern games like LoL) are not designed to be equal in power for their whole career, but to wax and wane against the other classes. Even grand strategy games like Civilisation are built around this premise, early rush based civilisations come into their unique buildings and units sooner than late game civilisations, and they use their early benefits to try and establish an unbeatable early game advantage to work from.
Same too, with the old classic, Nethack. Classes are defined by how good they are early on, not their final degree of power, because it’s the early game that’s the problem.
Is it a tradeoff between 1 strength and a wand of 10 fireballs situation? Sometimes, yes. It’s not a question of length of game, it’s a question of survival. There are more occasions where a low level character can die due to the lack of a good fireball. Maybe they can use that fireball to hold up a store, or kill the guy who thought 1 strength was the better bet? And that’s assuming I’m a warrior! If I’m a wizard you bet I’m taking the fireball, I’ll threaten to fireball the fighter if he doesn’t carry my gear for me.
So yeah, if it’s a question of 50% acid protection at the start of “acid death mountain” and 100% acid protection afterwards? I know which I’d pick. Long term is not always the optimal choice.
That is because there are only 2 real choices in single pool: intentionally gimp self or go for the "win" and be as strong as the game allows.
If you break it down that far, those are only two real choices in any system, multiple pools hardly precludes optimal play. It’s vastly more advantageous to do exactly the same thing as I mentioned before: Stack Dodge to epic, unattainable levels, grab only bonuses that cannot be acquired later through play, enjoy bonuses above and beyond regular mortals who gimped themselves by not taking 10 points in dodge, for some reason. Now forget grinding and go hit zombies with your weapon of choice until you’re an expert before wandering around town for bookstores.
More realistically speaking, however, most builds that are not mechanically optimal are gimped in some fashion. It’s very viable for lab starts to get a few points into computers, because those early CBMs and martial arts books can make life a lot easier for you setting up your character, and can get you through labs where you would otherwise fail because the only stairs being computer locked and you couldn’t find a book. There’s a full spectrum between pure stat ubermensch and Macguyver everyman, I think you’d find many people took sub-optimal, quality of life, traits like Night Vision rather than putting an extra 2 points into Strength.
But if we stop talking about winning and losing, let’s talk archetypes, because that’s really what I’m talking about when I’m talking choice in this sandbox.
The absurdly strong, nimble and perceptive butler whose derpiness is constantly getting him in trouble. Well, we can drop intellect to nothing for 10/10/4/10, making him slightly above average?
The kung fu genius, strong, fast, cunning and perceptive? Not really doable, if he’s going to be above average in anything, he’s going to be significantly worse in something else.
The guy who knows parkour, can see in the dark, and is good with animals without any particular negative features? Impossible, you’re hard capped to 2 points net positive in traits, 4 points if you dump stats.
How about the junkie with no practical survival skills who starts out having a very bad day who grows up and finds herself as she’s forced to come clean with the collapse of civilisation? It’s doable, but it feels like kind of a waste to have to skip 16 points worth of skills to avoid starting as Macguyver on Speed.
The only choices in Multiple Pools appear to be Savant/Everyman/Macguyver. The guy who is either mostly average, below average save for a single redeeming feature, or is crippled at half human average. Every powerful athlete in multiple pools is probably competing in the paralympics, since they’re half blind and packing a 50 IQ.
And yes, there is still the balance issue. It’s straight up gimping yourself to ever put your stat points anywhere else, regardless of single/multi pool. I might consider 2 points into traits if I had a particular goal in mind and somehow couldn’t work around the 12 point leeway it gives. 2 stat points on skills, though, hits the same problem - low level skills are the easiest to acquire, and therefore the least valuable, but they’re all you can buy. It’s 1 strength for a wand of fireballs when wands of fireballs grow on trees all around you. At least with traits they’re Trait locked, making them stick around through purifiers, skill points added at character creation are functionally identical to skill points added by reading a book found in any suburb.
This doesn't solve the problem at all. In fact, it only makes it worse. It makes it so that you have a choice between boring early game full of cautious grind or an early game that starts in midgame but results in non-viable characters that suck afterwards. Additionally it makes it impossible to balance the game. If we balance the game for long term characters, the ones who picked fast start will be fucked. If we balance it for the short term ones, the long term ones get a RNG start where survival depends far more on luck than on player skills, but then safe endgame where death only happens if the player sucks or gets too bored to play well. And player burnout due to game being too easy is the primary cause of death of single pool characters that manage to raise their skills to 5 or so.
You’re being binary again, for no reason that I can see.
Assume I start with 12 points with the 2 points up to 11, 3 points up to 13 etc stat point cost variant I suggested.
11/11/8/8 stats with zero skills: Very weak early game, better long term by 2-3 stat points’ worth in two stats.
8/8/8/8 stats with 12 points in skills: Very strong early game, worse long term by 3 stat points’ worth.
I honestly couldn’t say what difference, under the hood, up to three stat points made, but visibly that’s:
9 HP, 12 kg, 2.3 melee damage.
+2 to hit with Throwing, 45 better “range penalty”.
15% read speed, skill rust bonuses
Alternatively:
10/10/10/8 stats.with 0 skill points.
10/8/8/8 stats with 6 skill points
9/9/9/9 stats with 4 skill points.
12/9/8/8 stats with 1 skill point.
10/9/9/10 stats with 0 skill points.
12/5/5/12 stats with 0 skill points.
5/12/8/11 stats with 0 skill points.
5/12/5/12 stats with 0 skill points.
10/10/9/8 stats with 2 skill points.
9/8/9/8 stats with 8 skill points.
10/8/9/8 stats with 6 skill points.
10/8/10/8 with 4 skill points.
13/8/8/8 with 0 skill points.
12/8/8/8 with 3 skill points.
Note balance-wise that the range is comparatively narrow. You can either have an early game full of cautious grind, a smattering of skills at the cost of being 1 stat point worse off (0.8 melee damage per hit and a few HP), or have no stats and go straight for advanced gear and tools, but it’s a spectrum; you are not significantly worse off long term if you expend 1, costly, stat point for an easier grind. You will not miss an additional 0.8 damage when the damage you’re dealing with skills is 100 per swing of your katana, you will doubtful even notice it.
Even if we straight up double the points, to 24 points free form, your band remains pretty focused:
11/11/11/11 stats with 0 skills.
8/8/8/8 stats with 24 skills.
12/8/12/8 stats with 6 skills.
13/8/13/8 stats with 0 skills.
10/12/10/11 stats with 1 skill.
15/8/8/8 stats with 4 skills.
15/8/10/8 stats with 0 skills.
While I would consider 8/8/8/8 with 24 skills to be a chump’s choice (in all fairness, it’s not actually that much worse in terms of what the stats actually do, what about 12/8/12/8 and 6 skills compared to all 11s and no skills? Or all 10s and 8 skills? Nothing that Alpha Threshold can’t render completely irrelevant.
So to tl;dr, this variant:
1: Increases the cost of stats to something that better represents their value at 2:1 cost.
2: Make stats have the same rate of diminishing returns as skills do, increasing cost by 1 at 11, 13, 15 etc.
3: Maintains or decreases overall player power compared to standard single pool by not making additional points available rather than simply nerfing stats.
This would:
Decrease the maximum gap between Macguyver All-Eights and Hulky McMaxstrength to a more manageable, balanceable, difference by reducing the upper range of stats organically. Easier, not harder, to balance around.
Make stats, rather than being trivial to get up to 14/14/14/14 on most challenge games, actually require the player to weigh cost versus benefit. 1 point for 0.8 damage is appealing, 2 points is half as appealing, 3 points or more is probably something best reserved for players who have something very specific in mind.
Allow specialists to expend a few points off their dump stats to improve the skills they aim to use without becoming vastly inferior to specialists who just shored up their weaknesses.
Allow dedicated min-maxers to eke a point or two extra if they really want the early game hassle (and they enjoy that sort of thing, so good for them).
Gently herd the majority of players towards a compromise as most optimal play - a few skills in the early game helps make everything go more smoothly, and there is no less downside for the specialist to give up what they don’t care about for something they need - none of which would require hard caps.
I honestly cannot understand how a controlled bell curve distribution such as this produces is significantly harder to balance around than a VBD character or Infected Ballerina starting with a 9 or 10 in Dodge versus a crafter with 3 points in all the various creation skills. Are stats giving significant hidden bonuses not being covered by the game description?
This kind of thing is why I still stick to single-pool. Under multi-pool, if you want to be able to, say, read a high-school chemistry textbook with a meaningful amount of proficiency, you need to be half-blind or have practically no muscles or the like.
Not to mention that trying to focus players on skills is arguably gamier than focusing on stats. “Yeah, I’m just playing a regular old mentally-challenged bodybuilder who has basic training in welding, construction, tailoring, electrical wiring, stick fighting…”
I would totally complain about the multi pool thing but you can always choose single pool and be great with it.
Thhhoooough to continue the discussion it does not really help much to balance stuff in my opinion? It’s great that they are trying though, but the game being an open sandbox roguelike isn’t really made for balance: You can grind all you want as long as you have food and water, basically. And they are really easy to have. And i love it that way!
The original wave of roguelikes was balanced because player progress through the game was easily manageable: they stopped you from grinding infinitely and becoming really powerful simply by making you need to go forward to eat and if not, you die. And by moving forward the player goes level by level, steadily increasing difficulty and also giving more stuff to the player.
But this is a sandbox! It’s supposed to let you go wild mostly, and some people even go with this to roleplay or just to see how the game reacts. It’s quite great. It does not even have a win condition, the only thing being “You are too powerful to ever ever die, congratulations, you survived”.
The thing with the game being a sandbox is that it does not have the balance of the common roguelikes, and it’s supposed to not have it. I mean, as long as you can’t kill hulks with paper bags, of course. But that’s the enemies and items balance rather than player stats.
But hey again! We can choose if we want to apply to the balance or not, so it’s perfect.
It’s cool that there is this more or less focused version, for people that want that.
D&D fighter vs wizard is a great example of why should the whole thing be avoided when possible.
A failure at design as major as D&D fighter vs wizard (or fighter vs priest/druid etc.) issue shows how bad can it get - and not just possibly, but feasibly. And by experienced designers at that.
Character archetypes in many RPGs (including modern games like LoL) are not designed to be equal in power for their whole career, but to wax and wane against the other classes. Even grand strategy games like Civilisation are built around this premise, early rush based civilisations come into their unique buildings and units sooner than late game civilisations, and they use their early benefits to try and establish an unbeatable early game advantage to work from.
This one doesn’t translate well into this argument because of the very important fact I mentioned:
Time limit.
LoL and Civilization matches tend to end in reasonable time.
DDA currently doesn’t end.
Still, even if we assumed DDA ends somewhere around the time player gets 8 in combat skills, balancing stats vs skills wouldn’t be possible without a huge skill system overhaul. Pretty much a redesign.
It's vastly more advantageous to do exactly the same thing as I mentioned before: Stack Dodge to epic, unattainable levels, grab only bonuses that cannot be acquired later through play, enjoy bonuses above and beyond regular mortals who gimped themselves by not taking 10 points in dodge, for some reason.
Did you actually try that out or are you just saying how it looks on paper?
Because if you didn’t try it out and are just predicting, there is a very high chance (90%+) that you didn’t account for some vital information. For example, grab attacks, multi-dodge penalty, stamina, acid/electricity fields (you have to kill some zombies fast, not just safely), just plain bad luck etc.
Dodge gain isn’t perfect, profession skill bonus isn’t perfect, but single pool is a broken design, while those two are just broken elements.
It's very viable for lab starts to get a few points into computers, because those early CBMs and martial arts books can make life a lot easier for you setting up your character, and can get you through labs where you would otherwise fail because the only stairs being computer locked and you couldn't find a book.
Not true. As someone who went through a bunch of lab starts, I can say that skills are not worth the stats here. Certainly not combat skills.
Unless you count escape as victory and end of the game. But then, that’s a very specific situation with a limitation that doesn’t apply to rest of the game.
There's a full spectrum between pure stat ubermensch and Macguyver everyman, I think you'd find many people took sub-optimal, quality of life, traits like Night Vision rather than putting an extra 2 points into Strength.
Night Vision isn’t just quality of life. It’s one of the very few traits that actually rival stats in raw usefulness (except for flashlight flash exploit, which makes NV just nice - but it’s an exploit). It only gets useless when you gain an endgame item set, like NV CBM with means to power it.
Traits like NV and Parkour Expert are the reason traits and skills aren’t on the same pool.
The kung fu genius, strong, fast, cunning and perceptive? Not really doable, if he's going to be above average in anything, he's going to be significantly worse in something else.
Freeform or adjust stat points in settings.
If you’re complaining that you can’t create imbalanced characters in balanced point mode, then you don’t even have a semblance of a leg to stand on here.
And yes, there is still the balance issue. It's straight up gimping yourself to ever put your stat points anywhere else, regardless of single/multi pool.
It’s allowed in multi pool only because some people wanted it allowed and it doesn’t hurt to allow it. It is a bad idea to do so, but it certainly isn’t a balance issue - more of a noob trap or something like that. Multi pool balancing is done with assumption that points are distributed within their own categories. Similar to how single pool balancing has to be done with the assumption that all points will go to stats and stat-quality traits.
The only choices in Multiple Pools appear to be Savant/Everyman/Macguyver. The guy who is either mostly average, below average save for a single redeeming feature, or is crippled at half human average. Every powerful athlete in multiple pools is probably competing in the paralympics, since they're half blind and packing a 50 IQ.
Real life would be a horrible video game. Heavy RNG at character creation, literal pay-to-win at every corner, not to mention the utterly horrible playerbase.
It’s a good thing that we aren’t bound to replicate that abortion of a design in the game.
You're being binary again, for no reason that I can see.
Optimal gameplay is the reason.
If you don’t like “giving your best”, there’s single pool. Multi pool was created with people who don’t want to voluntarily gimp their characters in mind.
And when you push back the time “investment” in stats pay off, you aren’t changing the optimal long term gameplay, you’re just making it take longer.
The only way to fix it is introducing time limits. “Hard” limit (do objective in x time or you lose) or “soft” limit (do objective x to win the game) - doesn’t matter which one, just that there is a limit. But without time limit, the only feasible way to balance stats and skills is to do so separately. A non-feasible way would be to add infinite power growth with speed scaling by taken skills.
Decrease the maximum gap between Macguyver All-Eights and Hulky McMaxstrength to a more manageable, balanceable, difference by reducing the upper range of stats organically. Easier, not harder, to balance around.
Easier to balance around than single pool, because it would be more restrictive. Still strictly harder to balance around than multi pool, because it still allows snowball characters, just with somewhat less snowballing.
I honestly cannot understand how a controlled bell curve distribution such as this produces is significantly harder to balance around than a VBD character or Infected Ballerina starting with a 9 or 10 in Dodge versus a crafter with 3 points in all the various creation skills.
The part where after x days in the game, you end up with 2 characters:
Min-maxed one, with strictly better stats
Early game one (including the “balanced” one), with strictly worse stats
While before y days you have 2 characters:
Min-maxed one, with no skills, who grinds and is boring to play
Early game one (including the “balanced” one), with skills, who is more fun to play (no grind)
Those two can’t be balanced against each other without a set time scale. It also includes a grave sin against game design: balancing with tedium.
Then again, dodge being “off” is a problem with dodge, not an argument to replace a mostly-working system with a mess that promises it will fix dodge stacking. Even if it did fix it, it’s not worth bringing back stat stacking. It’s a better idea to just tinker with dodge and the way profession skills stack with “taken” skills.
Are stats giving significant hidden bonuses not being covered by the game description?
Actually yes, the descriptions are quite old and only include some of the effects.
There was a giant list of exact effects for everything, but I’m not sure if it is updated.
Melee crit rate, “smash” landing damage resistance, bashing damage scaling, recoil management, aiming speed and a bunch of others.
In the end, your suggestion only works as a way to balance the single pool a bit. It could be introduced if someone cared enough, but it’s not a valid suggestion on “how to replace multi pool with something better”, just on “how to introduce some of the advantages multi pool has to single pool, making the balance gap between those two less jarring”.
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:13, topic:12248”]
The only choices in Multiple Pools appear to be Savant/Everyman/Macguyver. The guy who is either mostly average, below average save for a single redeeming feature, or is crippled at half human average. Every powerful athlete in multiple pools is probably competing in the paralympics, since they’re half blind and packing a 50 IQ.
Real life would be a horrible video game. Heavy RNG at character creation, literal pay-to-win at every corner, not to mention the utterly horrible playerbase.
It’s a good thing that we aren’t bound to replicate that abortion of a design in the game.[/quote]
Don’t really care about what you guys are arguing about, but skimming your post, what does this statement have to do with what Pantalion said? It’s the most legitimate complaint about multipool: without debugging in more stats points, you can’t create somebody who’s good in one statistical area without utterly crippling yourself in another. Melee monster characters are half blind or so dumb it’s a wonder they understood the warning sirens. Genius characters, again, are nearly blind, can hardly lift their own limbs, or apparently have continuous muscle spasms.
Particularly, archery under multipool is more or less impossible, because in order to have enough strength to properly pull back your bowstring[size=1pt]*[/size] you have to be such a moron you can barely read the books you need to make good bows or arrows. Even then, you’re going to be eating a total -90 ranged penalty no matter how you distribute your remaining 2 points.
[size=1pt]* assuming reflex recurve, which IIRC requires 12 STR to do in a reasonable amount of time[/size]
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:13, topic:12248”]This one doesn’t translate well into this argument because of the very important fact I mentioned:
Time limit.
LoL and Civilization matches tend to end in reasonable time.
DDA currently doesn’t end.
Still, even if we assumed DDA ends somewhere around the time player gets 8 in combat skills, balancing stats vs skills wouldn’t be possible without a huge skill system overhaul. Pretty much a redesign.[/quote]
Unless you’re save scumming, DDA ends pretty rapidly in the five out of six games where a 0 skill schlub gets spotted. I’ll define our Amulet of Yendor in Cataclysm to be reaching the “end game”, where a character can establish themselves a base, take out top tier threats, and generally survive indefinitely barring carelessness or boredom. This is something I consider to be eminently reachable by any character, even ones starting with 8 in all stat points with “suboptimal” trait selection.
Did you actually try that out or are you just saying how it looks on paper? Because if you didn't try it out and are just predicting, there is a very high chance (90%+) that you didn't account for some vital information. For example, grab attacks, multi-dodge penalty, stamina, acid/electricity fields (you have to kill some zombies fast, not just safely), just plain bad luck etc.Dodge gain isn’t perfect, profession skill bonus isn’t perfect, but single pool is a broken design, while those two are just broken elements.
Actually to make sure it was viable, I ran it before I posted (!!SCIENCE!!). My ballerina walked out of town, through two zombie hordes (static and wandering), got her arms bitten off by two giant worms (she was winning against one, but I didn’t realise there was another in the same dig trail). She then walked through the woods to a mansion where she found a katana and the book of five rings. Currently I’m waiting for daylight and trying to remember which book she needs to fashion a splint, but even armless she’s managed to clear the mansion without taking more than one scratch on the head (her pain was in the 140s thanks to the arm thing). Being grabbed didn’t translate into being hurt.
No, 10 dodge isn’t immortality, but it is a permanent bonus that will do her well in future that nobody else can get - exactly the same as stats are. Dodge stacking is simply “optimal play”, and like I said, every system has optimal play. Fix Dodge or Professions, another Optimal Play strategy will arise, I could have gone with a 9 dodge tweaker VBD for similar results, but this is simply the nature of games.
Not true. As someone who went through a bunch of lab starts, I can say that skills are not worth the stats here. Certainly not combat skills. Unless you count escape as victory and end of the game. But then, that's a very specific situation with a limitation that doesn't apply to rest of the game.
Agreed, definitely not combat skills, there’s very little that you can’t ignore, bypass, or train into a dissector/turret, but 3 points in Computers is the difference between a random game where your run ends with a shut down console and a game where you walk out knowing three kinds of martial arts and enough shotgun shells to drop a jabberwock.
Night Vision isn't just quality of life. It's one of the very few traits that actually rival stats in raw usefulness (except for flashlight flash exploit, which makes NV just nice - but it's an exploit). It only gets useless when you gain an endgame item set, like NV CBM with means to power it.
Night Vision is optional and quality of life because I can get it with a mutagen, with enough grinding and tedium beforehand where I grope around in the dark, or just skip night raiding altogether and read all night with an atomic nightlight. It’s VERY good quality of life, so good that I consider it to be almost mandatory, but make no mistake, it’s gimping your character to sacrifice permanent stats for it, you just don’t notice because it’s worth the trade.
Freeform or adjust stat points in settings. If you're complaining that you can't create imbalanced characters in balanced point mode, then you don't even have a semblance of a leg to stand on here.
I’ve already made clear my issues with multiple pools, “use another system” is very much my go to solution at this point, but that’s no reason not to try and think through ways to make the game better.
And how are a kung fu genius (Str, Dex, Int), a competent archer (Str, Dex, Per), or even a guile hero (Dex, Per, Int) “unbalanced”? I can’t even create myself in multiple pools since I am not terrible enough in traits where I am weak to permit advantages in the traits where I excel. (To be fair, I can’t create myself in Single Pool or Freeform either, since I’m capped at 12 points of negative traits).
When a single player sandbox survival simulation can’t simulate anything but a single character archetype, that’s not “mostly working”, that’s a fundamental design issue. The game is supposed to simulate differences based on peoples’ real life advantages pre-cataclysm, making it harder or easier depending on those advantages (this is why Poor Student and Preppy Student exist). Trying to force everyone into the same gameplay experience is a reasonable design goal for a platforming game, not a sandbox RPG.
Easier to balance around than single pool, because it would be more restrictive. Still strictly harder to balance around than multi pool, because it still allows snowball characters, just with somewhat less snowballing.You end up with 2 characters:
Min-maxed one, with strictly better stats
Early game one (including the “balanced” one), with strictly worse stats
First off, I’ll point out that there are bonuses that simply do not matter to certain characters. I am not better at shooting arrows with 10 intelligence than 8 intelligence and 2 Archery Skill, far from it.
Secondly, I’m inclined to ask “so what?”. Debugging an end game character to lose 1-2 points in every stat does not produce a real difference in their combat, exploration or survival.
I could not care less about Mr Theoretical’s damage per hit. I’m not competing with him, I’m not travelling with him being overshadowed, the difference does not offend me, and it does not represent a balance issue.
The early game being grindy and tedious in parts is a problem, but that should be resolved by addressing that issue. The player should be encouraged to take risks and explore dangerous environments (which was what my anti-grind brainstorming was intended to achieve), not sit in a house navigating menus to craft and break down the same t-shirt over and over again until you have enough skill points to sew on a pocket.
Multipool, at best, tries to wallpaper over this problem by forcing the player to add skills that bypass the grind in character creation, and fails anyway since it’s inevitable to hit that grind on whatever skill you miss unless you spread 2 points into a mix of skills.
In the end, your suggestion only works as a way to balance the single pool a bit. It could be introduced if someone cared enough, but it's not a valid suggestion on "how to replace multi pool with something better", just on "how to introduce some of the advantages multi pool has to single pool, making the balance gap between those two less jarring".
Since we started this discussion with you saying that balancing the cost of stat points was a terrible idea that would make everything worse, I’d call this progress. I do not, however, share the opinion that multipool is flawless, or even close to it, so taking the good things it offers and bringing them together with the advantages of single pool was very much my design goal with this exercise.
That said, this could potentially work to improve a multi-pool system to remain almost as flexible as single pool with the benefits of a more rigid system. A quick revamp of multipool:
1: Scenario points add to Stat points, rather than skills, profession still adds to/takes away from skill points.
2: Points can be transferred from Trait → Stat → Skill (the same order as in the character creation menu) rather than Stat → Trait → Skill.
3: 2+ stat point cost enforced as from my previous post.
Giving:
[spoiler]Evacuee Survivors would range from the zero trait “average”: 8/8/8/9 to “all the bad traits” 11/9/10/9 or more specialised 12/8/7/10 or 13/8/8/9. They would always have 2 skill points “set aside” to pick a profession or skills to ensure that point valued professions remain viable, and the absolute difference between a dedicated specialist and an everyman is around 50% more to a stat.
Meanwhile, since 1 point in a stat isn’t very strong, giving up your 2 stat points to get a 4 point profession instead of of a 2 point profession can be a worthwhile investment into your early game, especially if 4 point professions are reasonably priced for their advantages, or invest that “stat point” into positive traits like Night Vision.
On the extreme end of the scale, VBD survivors range from 12-24 stat points (note the overlap with the above), up to 24, giving the same 11/11/11/11 ubermensch, 11/12/8/12 archer, 16/8/8/7 “savant”, or 4/4/18/4 “Stephen Hawking” from the previous variety.
Once again the majority of characters will fall on the bell curve as they invest in Night Vision, Parkour Expert and other game defining traits. Those that reach end game are likely to have similar capabilities to Evacuee Survivors (the difference between a 13/8/8/9 Evacuee and a 16/8/8/7 VBD is fractional, since stats would have diminishing returns and scaling costs).[/spoiler]
With this:
I could get behind a Multipool system that allows archers etc, maintains parity between builds, and allows variety in character design to remain even after the early game.
That’s Really Bad Day characters. Standard “survivor” ones are pretty safe, even at 0 skill. The only real threats early on are hulks, shocker brutes, angry moose and manhacks.
I'll define our Amulet of Yendor in Cataclysm to be reaching the "end game", where a character can establish themselves a base, take out top tier threats, and generally survive indefinitely barring carelessness or boredom.
That’s an arbitrary definition. Sure, it may work for one system, but I disagree about making it The Definition.
It also depends very heavily on “difficulty” settings. Hordes can turn an otherwise endgame character into a midgame one, fast evolution brings hordes of acid spitters and so on.
No, 10 dodge isn't immortality, but it is a permanent bonus that will do her well in future that nobody else can get - exactly the same as stats are.
Well, that’s a problem with dodge skill then. Not worth making stat stacking mode the default one, but still one that needs a fix.
Dodge stacking is simply "optimal play", and like I said, every system has optimal play.
Of course. It’s just that a well designed games has optimal play that isn’t heavily restrictive, grindy or full of noob traps.
Current single pool certainly is heavily restrictive (points or bust), grindy (all points are in stats/traits, that 3 tailoring won’t train itself) and full of noob traps (bionic commando? sounds cool, I bet it doesn’t suck).
Rescaling point costs will not remove the noob traps and restrictions, just move the optimum point.
Multi pool has some problems, like the dodge stacking, but they aren’t even in the same order of magnitude of severity as single pool.
Fix Dodge or Professions, another Optimal Play strategy will arise, I could have gone with a 9 dodge tweaker VBD for similar results, but this is simply the nature of games.
Optimal playS aren’t a problem, it’s a problem when it boils down to “stack strength or suck”.
Night Vision is optional and quality of life because I can get it with a mutagen
Mutagens are post-endgame in 90% of cases. At this point balancing doesn’t reach that part yet.
Debugging an end game character to lose 1-2 points in every stat does not produce a real difference in their combat, exploration or survival.
It does. Especially if you rely on crits, meleeing hulks, dodging multiple zombies at a time, or sniping.
And how are a kung fu genius (Str, Dex, Int), a competent archer (Str, Dex, Per), or even a guile hero (Dex, Per, Int) "unbalanced"?
Compare to other games. For example, D&D 3.5 with point buy system (both regular 25 and high-power 32). Despite the system having 6 stats, you can’t have 3 high stats in the high-power system.
You could argue that higher point allowance would allow more diverse characters, but a kung fu master genius being inaccessible at default difficulty is perfectly fine.
When a single player sandbox survival simulation can't simulate anything but a single character archetype, that's not "mostly working", that's a fundamental design issue.
Fortunately that isn’t the case, as you can create multiple character archetypes.
Just that those aren’t “hero who is great at everything but x”, but “strong guy who got hit in the head”, “joe slightly-better-than-average”, “smart nerd who is kinda clumsy and needs glasses”.
So there is no fundamental design issue here.
The early game being grindy and tedious in parts is a problem, but that should be resolved by addressing that issue. The player should be encouraged to take risks and explore dangerous environments (which was what my anti-grind brainstorming was intended to achieve), not sit in a house navigating menus to craft and break down the same t-shirt over and over again until you have enough skill points to sew on a pocket.
I’m open to suggestions. So far I’ve heard a lot of ones that don’t work and a lot of ones that can be summed up with “just make it good, I don’t want to think about it but I don’t like how you did it”.
I read your suggestions, but:
The “train” activity, while a good idea (I have considered something like this for a longer while), does nothing to address the restrictive optimal start: no skills, all stats, hole up and level up.
The profession skill progression thing would kinda work for combat skills (would actually make them better than stats in many cases), but would completely fuck up crafting leveling. It also fucks up scenario balance - you’d want to pick the one that grants the most points, tank the early penalties, then quickly become godlike. Thus it wouldn’t be restrictive just to players but also to designers (not that much more than single pool, but still).
Fixing grind is much harder than it looks like. The more variables you consider, the worse it gets. The more time scales you consider, the more you notice that fixes assume only one of them.
I do not, however, share the opinion that multipool is flawless, or even close to it
I’m pretty sure I explicitly said it has flaws.
It’s just that those are orders of magnitude less jarring than ones in any system that tries to balance stats against skills.
1: Scenario points add to Stat points, rather than skills, profession still adds to/takes away from skill points.
And we’re back to start scumming VBD, lab starts and sheltered starts, with any low-point scenario being a challenge one?
This would only work for hospital scenario, unlike current system which works for all but hospital.
2: Points can be transferred from Trait -> Stat -> Skill (the same order as in the character creation menu) rather than Stat -> Trait -> Skill.
While trait balance has been improved greatly lately, there are still tons of traits that are free points.
Allowing traits->stats would mean that optimal gameplay would involve picking all allergies, eye problems and other free point traits.
While current system still allows picking bad traits, the number of good traits that can be bought for them is quite limited, which helps a lot.
- Revised multipool point distribution means that a wider variety of character types become possible - very nearly as flexible as single pool.
But less are viable, regressing back to single pool.
- Balanced stat point costs and the altered cost/reward ratio of stats mean that the "all points into stats" continues to have rewards, but other builds are similarly, if not more, viable. a 10/12/8/12 Archer with Night Vision or skill points in Archery is not significantly worse than an 11/12/8/12 archer, and is outright better at archery than an 11/11/11/11 generalist.
And then early game ends. Then either archery equalizes (assuming old starting skill system) or the character with points in archery stays a superior archer for whole life (with the “chargen skills permanently make it easier to learn given skill” one).
Now, the latter option could be argued to be a good idea, but it would need to solve the two giant problems with the system - crafting and giant profession design restrictions.
- The narrowed distribution between "high" and "low" stats means that Quick Start, Long Term, Short Term and even "roleplaying" characters can all be expected to have a decent or better chance of producing a viable character, and even challenge vs non-challenge can be considered within the same approximate level of power.
So an advantage over single pool, but still much worse than current multi pool.
I could get behind a Multipool system that allows archers etc, maintains parity between builds, and allows variety in character design to remain even after the early game.
Increasing point allowance in current multipool to 6 would allow competent archers without significant sacrifices.
Parity between builds is a giant problem, though the current system maintains it better than your modified one.
Variety in character design is a big problem with the current skill (not chargen point) system. I haven’t read a good suggestion to address that one yet that wouldn’t break a lot of things.
That's an arbitrary definition. Sure, it may work for one system, but I disagree about making it The Definition. It also depends very heavily on "difficulty" settings. Hordes can turn an otherwise endgame character into a midgame one, fast evolution brings hordes of acid spitters and so on.
Arbitrary, perhaps, but it’s in keeping with the design document:
Survival - the stage where you have to scrounge for everything and need to acquire basic survival gear.
Growth - Long term personal development, working on getting together skills and gear.
Influence - Working towards permanent, long term advantages. Sustainable transport, clearing out safe zones.
Transcendence - Building a permanent mobile base, planned mutation and bionic completion, and actively changing the world around them.
So long as the player is capable of changing and influencing the world around them regardless of their starting stats and skills, then I would argue that any power variation early-through-late game is not a design problem at all, but an extension of another core design principle: “Reality Based”. Reality doesn’t employ competitive balance.
Current single pool certainly is heavily restrictive (points or bust), grindy (all points are in stats/traits, that 3 tailoring won't train itself) and full of noob traps (bionic commando? sounds cool, I bet it doesn't suck).
Stats or bust? If I keep playing my 8/8/8/8 blade ballerina with 10 Dodge and she survives to transcendence stage she can and will eventually reach a point where she can produce Alpha Serum in bulk and source all four Bionic boosters. At that point she will be a 17/17/17/17 bladerina with 10 Dodge. I’m pretty sure I can get a character up to 12+ dodge pretty easy with the right build choices.
For noob traps, you have it 100% backwards. They’re bad choices for you, because you are not a newbie and your characters tend to survive a long time, so you’re giving up long term power for an early game advantage you don’t need. They’re great trades for newbies, because newbies die young.
Bionic Prepper? That’s expensive, wow, but look, I get to ignore tools, have the best power source, and can start out making gear instantly? Bionic Cop? Alloy plating, a gun, and can see zombies through walls?
That’s not a noob trap, it’s a crutch that makes getting into the game easier and more fun. It’s much easier to do well with your Bionic Commando with Unarmed 3 and Bioclaws than it is a survivor with 12/12/12/12 stats and a pocket knife who can’t boil water.
Do you keep your bionic commando after you know where to reliably find bionics, basic tools, and how to survive safely while you grind your skills up? No, because you don’t need that crutch anymore you can take a slightly harder start and can focus on late game power. And once you have that down you can focus on hard mode, high difficulty, high reward starts that make your early game hellish (but you’re a good enough player to overcome that by now), and give you the most benefits in the late game.
Natural, organic, progression.
Every single problem that actually exists in the system that you and I actually agree is a problem occurs in both systems.
1: Grinding sucks. - I’d be happy to move to another topic to brainstorm improvements here, but abstraction and removing hard caps on what you can craft would be my go-to choice.
2: It’s easy to waste points on bullshit. - While points in stats and traits are hard to “waste”, points in skills are easy. If I couldn’t stack my 24 skill points from my VBD character into Dodge I’d potentially be doing stupid things like “putting them anywhere else”.
Here’s a list of skills that are easily done without:
Bartering - Irrelevant even with NPCs, scavenge away.
Computers - Unless you’re lab start, in which case you can grab a collapsible rocket launcher from a military area to escape, easily done without until you can find a book.
Construction - Easier to stay in a pre-existing building.
Cooking - Your early game needs are to boil water and if you’re not vegetarian, cook meat. You can very easily do without anything else.
Driving - Does this even do anything? My VBD characters manage just fine at 0 skill even at 0 Int/Dex.
Electronics - Electronics in general can be scavenged or done without for most of the game.
Fabrication - You need 1 or 2 to craft anything vital in the early game, you can easily reach that by grinding those self-same rocks and twigs.
First Aid - Early game scratches do not need extensive first aid treatments.
Mechanics - Grind removing/replacing storage batteries or find a book, cars are nice but non-essential.
Speaking - Easy enough to avoid NPCs until later.
Survival - Search bushes until you have 3 skill levels, then turn rocks and twigs into a perfectly viable survival kit.
Swimming - “Don’t”.
Tailoring - The only worthwhile tailoring happens above level 3 or so, when you can actually repair things and start creating end game gear.
Trapping - Avoid minefields and survivalist houses, you can practise this later or just get a book, since trapping is unnecessary.
And since the game rewards specialisation, you need 3-4 of the following skills at most:
Melee
Bashing weapons
Cutting weapons
Piercing weapons
Unarmed combat
Marksmanship
Archery
Launchers
Throwing
Handguns
Rifles
Shotguns
Submachine guns
And even then, it’s largely unnecessary, since you can either leave a child unpulped and use them as a training dummy/desensitising tool to grind up attack skills easily, or with hordes just let nature take its course as they inevitably swarm you wherever you happen to be.
I rather like Logrin’s suggestion back from December (http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=11782.0) that points invested in skills define your raw talent in those skills. Perhaps a combination of Profession-based early skills and skill point granted “affinity” could help find a happy medium?
D&D 3.5 with point buy system (both regular 25 and high-power 32). Despite the system having 6 stats, you can't have 3 high stats in the high-power system.
Actually yes, yes you can. 15/15/15/8/8/8 is 24 points for a well rounded warrior - “three great stats”. If you’re going Mage, then 14/14/17/8/8/8 gives you two high stats and one excellent stat, with three irrelevant stats that mages don’t care about anyway. 25 point point-buy is perfectly sufficient to produce a functional specialist in their three chose stat fields while remaining slightly below average in three other areas.
Optimal playS aren't a problem, it's a problem when it boils down to "stack strength or suck".
I actually don’t consider strength to be particularly important, since I am married to my folding trolley, but to take your own words:
Well, that's a problem with [s]dodge skill[/s][strength/dextery/perception stat] then.
One problem would be that 8 in two of the stats are straight up bad, not average. A -90 ranged penalty is not average human capacity any more than a -90% melee damage penalty is. 8 Strength gives +5 melee damage bonus. Intelligence 8 gives 100% read speed. Dexterity and Perception are terrible before 12 stat points.
Fortunately that isn't the case, as you can create multiple character archetypes. Just that those aren't "hero who is great at everything but x", but "strong guy who got hit in the head", "joe slightly-better-than-average", "smart nerd who is kinda clumsy and needs glasses". So there is no fundamental design issue here.
“Strong guy who got hit in the head, eyes and face” - 12/7/7/7 with 2-26 points worth of skills.
“Joe slightly-better-than-average” - 9/8/8/9 with 2-26 points worth of skills.
“Smart nerd who is kind of clumsy and needs glasses” - You need at least 13 intelligence to understand college grade text books, so 6/6/14/6 with 2-26 points worth of skills.
Forget “hero who is great at everything but x”, where’s “person who is actually decent at their chosen field”? Doctor: Intelligence primary, Dexterity secondary, Perception tertiary. Athlete: Dexterity and Strength primary. Game hunter: Dexterity and Perception primary. Forget D&D 25-point, this isn’t even 12 point. Your one archetype is “everyman”, with varying degrees of “Macguyver”. If 8 is average and 16 is near peak human physical ability then multipool cannot attain it.
More stat points would help, but what motivation is there to try harder games with long term rewards?
As you say, why would a veteran optimiser play anything but VBD challenge starts if they give you points in stats? Why would anyone bother playing VBD when it gives you nothing but skills? The extra skills makes the “challenge” part irrelevant, because skills make the early game easier, so all the bonus point scenarios achieve is to remove the Survival and Growth sections of the game unless you voluntarily self-handicap.
It does. Especially if you rely on crits, meleeing hulks, dodging multiple zombies at a time, or sniping.
Difference in scale, not difference in kind. 1-2 points lower stats does not stop me from doing any of those things, it makes them almost imperceptibly more difficult.
I still crit frequently thanks to Krav Maga and high melee + unarmed skill, letting me stun-lock hulks bare handed. Get me a katana and Niten style and those hulks are folding like shopping trolleys. 1-2 points does not change this.
I can still take entire hordes of zombies at once because I’m wearing end-game gear.
Actual “Sniping” is ridiculously unrewarding in this game for the investment it takes, but I can still shoot the same “more or less a car away” enemies safely with my bow at 12 Dexterity as I can with 14 (assuming a few low tier mutations and a CBM).
You keep using that one minor problem as if it was the end of all arguments. It isn’t - fixing dodge progression will get rid of that trick, while unfucking single pool is as far from being done as full z-level support.
For noob traps, you have it 100% backwards. They're bad choices for you, because you are not a newbie and your characters tend to survive a long time, so you're giving up long term power for an early game advantage you don't need. They're great trades for newbies, because newbies die young.
They are presented as viable choices. In multi pool they often are. In single pool, it is deceptive to keep them around at all, because the time it takes to replicate all the skills and equipment a 4 point background gets is shorter than the time it takes for a single character who doesn’t consume any food at all to starve to death. And 4 points is a significant advantage.
So not only you want to essentially throw away an entire set of backgrounds just so that your idea of progression is in, you refuse to even admit it.
That's not a noob trap, it's a crutch that makes getting into the game easier and more fun. It's much easier to do well with your Bionic Commando with Unarmed 3 and Bioclaws than it is a survivor with 12/12/12/12 stats and a pocket knife who can't boil water.
Bad choices being more fun is balancing through tedium. ie. one of the few things in game design you should never, ever do.
Crutches are also a bad thing.
Splitting the game into “fun” and “actually playing well” is an unfortunate side effect of balancing at best. Doing it deliberately is a horrible idea.
Do you keep your bionic commando after you know where to reliably find bionics, basic tools, and how to survive safely while you grind your skills up? No, because you don't need that crutch anymore you can take a slightly harder start and can focus on late game power. And once you have that down you can focus on hard mode, high difficulty, high reward starts that make your early game hellish (but you're a good enough player to overcome that by now), and give you the most benefits in the late game.
Split into “fun to play but unviable in the long term” and “boring grind early on but actually has an endgame”.
Why not have a better system: one that starts fun to play and has an endgame? ie. multi pool.
Natural, organic, progression.
Unbalanced, producing unviable abortions and tedious early game.
I’d pick artificial progression anytime.
Actually yes, yes you can. 15/15/15/8/8/8 is 24 points for a well rounded warrior - "three great stats".
3 OK stats. That’s equivalent of DDA’s 10/10/7/7, maybe 11/11/7/7
Wizard is a bit harder, since D&D mental stats don’t translate well, but 14 in DDA stats can easily be like 18 in D&D ones.
One problem would be that 8 in two of the stats are straight up bad, not average. A -90 ranged penalty is not average human capacity any more than a -90% melee damage penalty is. 8 Strength gives +5 melee damage bonus. Intelligence 8 gives 100% read speed. Dexterity and Perception are terrible before 12 stat points.
“It looks bad on paper”
The display is a bit misleading, but you’re still heavily exaggerating it.
It’s not D&D where “has a penalty” means “utterly terrible at it”. Here “has no penalty” in some cases (dex/per ranged penalty) means “is really good at it”.
For example, at 5 in all skills, you have an equivalent of 300 ranged penalty from lack of skills - as if a 10 skill character had 3 in dexterity and 4 in perception.
Why would anyone bother playing VBD when it gives you nothing but skills?
Because skills change midgame heavily. Most important part is unlocking recipes.
The extra skills makes the "challenge" part irrelevant, because skills make the early game easier, so all the bonus point scenarios achieve is to remove the Survival and Growth sections of the game unless you voluntarily self-handicap.
You can pick the long term growth skills or focus on ones that will make the challenge easier. Actual long term vs short term choices, instead of “gimp self forever” vs “grind early on”.
Electronics for infinite light, CBM installation, EMP grenades, laser sights, atomic coffee. Possibly even electric jackhammer.
Computers for electrohack and mp3 player, though only in lab.
Cooking for chemset, zombie pheromones, concentrated alcohol, disinfectant (if taken with first aid). If taken to 5, also early meth, which can be a life saver and giant CBM aid, and royal jelly, which offsets RNG giving you flu, cold or fungals.
First aid for big help with healing (FA is hard to grind early on), disinfectant (if taken with high cooking), saline solution.
Mechanics for welder and actually starting the skill (it’s hard to grind it early on).
Fabrication for duct tape, batteries (with electronics). And possibly some long term recipes, like the mace (though those are behind a horrible “equipment wall” and so are unlikely to happen).
Survival for poppy recipes and zombie pheromone (with cooking).
Tailoring can be taken for the early gas mask and light amp goggles (with high electronics), though it’s generally not worth it.
While there are some “obviously good choices” here, such as 1 survival for poppy, they aren’t as overwhelmingly good as picking stats and they aren’t no-brainers. There is a lot of possible variations here, that allows professions to shine (don’t want recipes? get bionics instead), viable long term vs short term choices and customization when playing high-point scenarios.
The skill system alone isn’t perfect, as it requires a lot of points to really shine, and high-point scenarios don’t allow high-point professions, but it is leaps and bounds ahead of “take stats and grind” that all formulations of single pool so far boil down to.
Difference in scale, not difference in kind. 1-2 points lower stats does not stop me from doing any of those things, it makes them almost imperceptibly more difficult.
Then why fuss so much about archers and specializations?
If you don’t see the difference, are you talking just about numbers on paper (display)?
Gotta agree with Pentalion almost across the board.
And this, I have to quote for emphasis:
[quote=“Pantalion, post:17, topic:12248”]For noob traps, you have it 100% backwards. They’re bad choices for you, because you are not a newbie and your characters tend to survive a long time, so you’re giving up long term power for an early game advantage you don’t need. They’re great trades for newbies, because newbies die young.
Bionic Prepper? That’s expensive, wow, but look, I get to ignore tools, have the best power source, and can start out making gear instantly? Bionic Cop? Alloy plating, a gun, and can see zombies through walls?
That’s not a noob trap, it’s a crutch that makes getting into the game easier and more fun. It’s much easier to do well with your Bionic Commando with Unarmed 3 and Bioclaws than it is a survivor with 12/12/12/12 stats and a pocket knife who can’t boil water.
Do you keep your bionic commando after you know where to reliably find bionics, basic tools, and how to survive safely while you grind your skills up? No, because you don’t need that crutch anymore you can take a slightly harder start and can focus on late game power. And once you have that down you can focus on hard mode, high difficulty, high reward starts that make your early game hellish (but you’re a good enough player to overcome that by now), and give you the most benefits in the late game.[/quote]
You’re missing his point.
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:18, topic:12248”]Split into “fun to play but unviable in the long term” and “boring grind early on but actually has an endgame”.
Why not have a better system: one that starts fun to play and has an endgame? ie. multi pool.[/quote]
Multipool makes NO improvement on the false choice you laid out, it is simply choosing one and making that choice the hardwired way the game works. It’s saying that the “start in the midgame” option is the only way to play.
You like to start with skills? Great for you - feel free. I find that to be skipping a good part of the game.
[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:18, topic:12248”]
Why would anyone bother playing VBD when it gives you nothing but skills?
No, skills ARE the midgame. Starting with a pile of skills SKIPS the first whole part of the game (which I and many other people enjoy). If you aren’t a high-end player, that’s fine, no judgement from me - take your fun however you like it (it is a single player game, after all). But that runs the other way, too - why would I give up stats for skills, when gaining the skills is a great part of the game?
Yeah, some of it is “grind”, which can be a bit annoying… but only some of it, and there’s usually enough going on that I can enjoy THIS while doing a bit of grinding on THAT (or waiting until I find a skill book).
People keep repeating that retarded fallacy, but no matter how many times you repeat it, it won’t start making sense.
Worse: the more you repeat it, the more obvious it is that it is a meme rather than a well thought out opinion.
That’s how character generation systems work.
D&D doesn’t allow you to put skill points into stat points, Deus Ex doesn’t allow you to put starting XP into augs, Dungeon Crawl doesn’t allow starting with 0 skills in exchange for higher stats, World of Warcraft doesn’t allow you to start with few hour debuff to gain a permanent advantage later on.
This is how well designed systems work: they don’t try to force distinct parts of the character generation system into one mismatched mess.
Starting with a pile of skills SKIPS the first whole part of the game (which I and many other people enjoy)
Somehow I find it hard to believe that anyone genuinely likes that brainless “smash locker, rip window, craft knife, craft cudgels, craft needle, sew clothing” start game algorithm that is the necessary optimum play for 0 skill starts.
It’s so menial that a bot could do it.