Did they change that when I wasn't watching?
I still think we are not quite speaking about the same thing here. They implied, a year ago, that skills get better as you use them. Like, you keep shooting your gun and your skill points gradually increase; you don't invest points in them. On top of that, they implied that attributes gate skillprogression and as you level up those are the ones you put your point(s) in so that your skill can keep progressing (as you use it). And shown in the demo, the checks are fast one click endeavors that give the "yes" to the player (and if there's a no to be had, the player need not even click, just look at it and come to the conclusion that there's no point wasting time there).
I'm talking strictly about the mechanic of skillprogression - nothing narrative about it, none - and how that might work in practice when you can't hone (all of) your skills consistently through trial and error, and have to hunt down the locks and electrical boxes and what not, that match or are below your skill level, in order to progress in those skills. This is either handled through (excessive) levelscaling, which kind of defeats the point of the skills existing, or the mentioned skillcheck hunt and grind. It does not work well. It screams frustration and mandatorial busywork so that you can keep up with the game while you are not in the levelscaled areas that track you down. You can't try the checks, you can't fail the checks, you can't learn from the checks (because, if done right, you could learn from failure too). All you can do, is keep your eyes peeled for possible checks and grind them when you can even if you didn't need to at that time, just to keep your character at a pace skillwise. That's what I'm talking about.
If - on the other hand - the game is completely guided, so that your chosen archetype or jack-of-all-trades character always has his opportunities tracked and adjusted so that there is no halt at any point, that you can always pass one way or another... that's another story, but if that was (is) the case, then what's the point of having the skills in the first place? They're just tokens and illusions (I mean, you will always choose one of the open opportunities anyway, not all of them), and the game would probably be better off without them altogether (like Witcher 3 probably would have been).
And the rationale of using that kind of system is what I'd like to hear about from the devs, because it is immediately flawed and rigid by just giving it a minute of thinking.
-------------------
To my recollection, in DA (at least the first one) and KOTOR you invested your skillpoints manually and they did not progress automatically. Contrary to skills in Cyberpunk 2077, as implied by the developer (unless it indeed has changed at some point unbeknownst to me).
And also, in Fallout 1 and 2 you never ran out of lockpicks. There were lockpicking kits that gave a bonus to your skill as you used the item (doctors bags, first aid kits and pliers worked similiarly respectively to their underlying skills). And the check system there worked so that if you had 137% lockpicking skill, the game then checked the difficulty of the lock and subtracted that amount from your skill. So if the lock had a difficulty of 100, your chances of success with the afore mentioned skill level would only be 37%; if, however, the locks difficulty was 10 (leaving a subtraction of 127%), your chances would be at a maximum of 95% (can't remember if that worked towards the other way too, so that even if your chances went to negative numbers, you'd still have at least 5% chance to succeed).
I don't think we're talking about different things, just hitting it from different angles. When I said there is no "learn through exercise" system, I didn't mean that you can't put a system like that into a CRPG -- I mean it doesn't actually
exist if the CRPG
also focuses on delivering a driving narrative.
Take TW3 again. Do you have the ability to gain experience, and level up skills, and better your gear? Of course...but that doesn't happen organically. It happens according to very specific
gates that only award a certain amount of experience at any point. The same is true of Mass Effect, or Baldur's Gate, or Dragon Age, or Skyrim... Your character is not actually learning through experience. It's just a simulation of such,
strictly governed by the episodic nature of the gameplay's narrative (acts, chapters, parts, etc.) And/or, the gameworld will mold itself to your character's proficiency to ensure that the challenge remains more or less consistent throughout (Bethesda-style).
A game like
Mount and Blade or
Kenshi is an honest, "learn through exercise" system that is not regulated in any way. It's a completely open system that allows the player to focus on progressing their character exactly as they see fit. The price? There is no story. No narrative. No overall driving motivation. There can't be. There's no way to balance or pace it. If I wanted to introduce a narrative element...I'd need (for example) to take
Mount and Blade and ensure that I
gated off player advancement along the path of the narrative to ensure that the game mechanics were balanced against the pacing of the story. I'd wind up with
Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Not
Mount and Blade. Right there, I'm making life very difficult on the developers and the players by trying to work this "simulation" of organic learning into what is otherwise a very staged affair.
A better, much more fluent bet is to create a system that doesn't try to be putty...but rather blocks.
Rather than giving players a lump of mush and introducing the very real possibility that they'll mold it into something that doesn't actually function, I instead allow the player to select a certain number of blocks at certain stages of the story. Each one of those blocks fits through a certain gateway in the story. If I don't have the right block, I'll need to find another gate. I'll have to use the blocks I did pick. If I use the right block, it
will fit through the gateway. The player will always be able to progress based upon the blocks they have chosen. The narrative will not only reflect the player's choices, and provide them with specifically designed challenges for that particular skillset, it will ensure the flow of the narrative is not interrupted due to an "organic" system that doesn't actually function sensibly.
Right back to the execution of lockpicking in Fallout 1+2. Yup, that was very much a slow, steady, progressive system where player characters deliberately focused on improving skills a few percentage points at a time. It allowed for a wide range of builds and playstyles. The games were still fun. But it could be wildly frustrating when my progress was blocked, the energy of the narrative interrupted, and my annoyance levels increased because: RNG. It's not that I made a poor choice and had to deal with the consequences. It's not that I tried to do something I was not skilled at. It's not that I did not manage my build carefully and effectively. It's not that I was not equipped with the right gear for the job...
It's that I built a very effective character, accrued the right tools to augment my abilities, played extremely well according my unique strengths and weaknesses, made the right choice at the right time...but a
dice roll came up snake-eyes.
Can I move on from that point? Will the narrative adapt to that scenario? Will the gameplay continue (like it
will in a PnP RPG)? No. I will be shut down on-the-spot with no other options, my character will be killed, and I'll be forced to reload and retry, going through the same story elements again and again and again until I am
lucky enough to progress.
How does that make sense for a narrative experience?
Computer systems are not "organic". They are logical in the absolute: literally a series of 1's and 0's. A game design cannot change that...but they can
use that. Since no computer is capable of coming up with an organic solution to an organic problem, it makes far more sense for games not to introduce organic problems.
Provide the player 1,000 variables that are all guaranteed pathways to success.
Let them choose 100 to determine their unique path.
Challenge the player based not upon
chance -- but
choice.
It's not "guaranteed success"; it's simply that failure is 100% based upon cause-and-effect of the player's actions instead of a random number generated by the system clock. The C(
omputer)RPG can only offer a limited number of pathways forward. It's pointless to deny the player progress if they've made a good choice based upon their character build. That's not challenging, it's trifling.
) :
