RPG Mechanics: Skill Progression and Roles

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For a general comment about RPG mechanics and skill progression... I need them to be interesting and impactful, because during the past few years I've grown less and less interested in gaming altogether. I can start something old like Wizardry, Might and Magic or Fallout and have fun for a while because I find the gameplay interesting even despite it's aging clumsiness, but I can not get into modern RPG's with these modern iterations of these systems that are around, so I kinda feel the need for them to be.... updated towards some past standards with new presentation to feel fresh again, if that makes any sense. As they are (in games around the genre), they feel gamey, streamlined, unimpactful and ergo, uninteresting.

I'm the kind of person who likes to play through the character, not as or with the character. I like to loose an attempt not because my character is not good enough to try or because I can't handle a minigame, but because my character did the best he could and failed. I like subtle systemic effects that affect these odds, I like the organic randomness of these tasks that tell me a story of their own as I play. I like to interpret things.

I get frustrated just like everybody else when a diceroll doesn't go my way inspite the odds, but I take the failure and frustration differently. I don't blame the system, I blame the character for fucking it up, I interpret the situation as part of the game and from therein on out a little bit of situational story is told along with the intended narrative. I take these failings into account in the overall experience when I finish the game, and then I roll a different character to try things differently and see how that goes. That's roleplaying for me. Taking on a character and making the decisions for him, letting him be himself instead of a continuation of my arm.

To what ever extent the systems in CP2077 work to that end, I'd like to be happy with. But it's really hard for me to get into an action game with hard gated stats/skills, or minigames dictated by my dexterity. It's a droll to find that you are one point away from a certain success, or being able to even give it a shot, or that once I open the lock of trying, I can master the easy as fuck minigame. That feels like "gameplay", not like roleplaying. I don't feel gaming the system should be the goal, but rather have a system for gaming.

I suppose I could go on, even at length, but I'm having some hard times concentrating right now so this'll have to do. I'm not going to throw in ideas or anything, I've done that plenty in the past so - just like with everything - I'd only be repeating myself. I'm just making an "in-a-nutshell" commentary on why I post the kind of shit I post (when I do it).

That's all. Carry on.
 
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You can become whatever hybrid you want, but it makes sense to organize everything by archetype.

Out of curiosity, do you mean each and every form of character progression/improvement? I ask because the moment I saw perks were tied to experience and street cred my ears perked up. Not in a good way either.

Always been a fan of skill improvements being dependent on usage because it's a character driven concept. Instead of arbitrarily deciding how to improve the character after a level up the character improves in appropriate areas from performing actions related to them. It not only makes more logical sense but fits with playing the role of the character. The player improves because the character improves. Not the other way around.

Getting to the point, I'd rather a similar theme extend to every aspect of character improvement. With perks and the assumed mechanics of the skill system this would mean restrictions on perk selection via skill gates. Granted, it's possible there are perks tied to the experience system following this model and more general, non-class specific perks applying to street cred improvements.

Stats would be more complicated. It is possible to tie all three of the improvement systems into the above mentioned concept. I have doubts they're going to do so based on the wording of the presented information. The majority of games with multi-faceted improvement systems don't implement all of those systems in this fashion either.

I don't mean to single out your post but it was a good entry point for the discussion above. Just curious how others view this area :).
 
Out of curiosity, do you mean each and every form of character progression/improvement? I ask because the moment I saw perks were tied to experience and street cred my ears perked up. Not in a good way either.

Always been a fan of skill improvements being dependent on usage because it's a character driven concept. Instead of arbitrarily deciding how to improve the character after a level up the character improves in appropriate areas from performing actions related to them. It not only makes more logical sense but fits with playing the role of the character. The player improves because the character improves. Not the other way around.

Getting to the point, I'd rather a similar theme extend to every aspect of character improvement. With perks and the assumed mechanics of the skill system this would mean restrictions on perk selection via skill gates. Granted, it's possible there are perks tied to the experience system following this model and more general, non-class specific perks applying to street cred improvements.

Stats would be more complicated. It is possible to tie all three of the improvement systems into the above mentioned concept. I have doubts they're going to do so based on the wording of the presented information. The majority of games with multi-faceted improvement systems don't implement all of those systems in this fashion either.

I don't mean to single out your post but it was a good entry point for the discussion above. Just curious how others view this area :).
Can you think of any game that has anything like what you are describing, video game or pnp? I am having a difficult time imagining it, but if I knew of an example to use as a starting point that would be helpful
 
Can you think of any game that has anything like what you are describing, video game or pnp? I am having a difficult time imagining it, but if I knew of an example to use as a starting point that would be helpful

No I cannot. It's one of the reasons I mentioned it :).

One similar example is Ultima Online. If memory serves when it came out you had skills and stats. Skills improved by using them, as they reportedly do in CP. Stats were tied to skills in a way where improvement to certain skills led to specific stat improvements. This game did not have a leveling system or perks, however.

Again, if memory serves Skyrim handled it by gating perks behind skill requirements. Yet, Skyrim allowed the player to determine how they were going to improve stats. For clarification, I'd rate health, mana and stamina as a stat system. So the system wasn't completely character driven. Furthermore, the gating on perk selection felt.... clunky.

One way to accomplish a completely character driven model would be to use a split experience system. it could work like the following....

Skills would improve through usage.

Classes would also exist and behave as normal. The one exception would be instead of having a single experience system each class would have it's own experience system. So with three classes...

1. Class A
2. Class B
3. Class C

From here you would "categorize" stats, skills and perks. Each skill would receive a categorization as one or more archetypes (more on this later). Stats and perks would be tied directly to archetypes. So, let's say hacking skill, a hacking perk and, for the sake of argument, the Intelligence stat were tied to class B. When you perform the hacking skill or use the hacking perk you gain experience for class B, but not A or C. Do it enough and you "level up" as class B. From here you could then improve perks and stats related to class B. In this simplified example you could improve stats and select additional perks with the hacking "tag".

In this way the character progression is completely character driven. If you perform actions related to class A from, say, completing a quest as a class A character would (distributing the experience based on quest choices directly) or using class A related abilities (class A skill and perk usage), these are the areas you would be eligible to improve.

You could expand it further by weighting actions. By this I mean the shooting skill might provide 100% experience gains for the Solo class, but 0% for Techie or Netrunner. The hacking skill, on the other hand, might funnel 70% of the experience toward Netrunner and 30% toward Techie. This would have a domino effect on stat and perk selections because those would be tied to the archetypes themselves.

In a nutshell, take the D&D multi-class concepts and implement them in a more fluid, yet completely character driven, manner.

Another option would be to completely do away with any manner of experience system, use something like the UO system for skills and stats and drop perks into the mix. Here your skills improve through usage, with both stat and perk point gains dependent on skill improvements. The advantage is it would be a simplified system. The disadvantage would be everything is dependent on skills.

A third option would be some type of ability point system with or without an experience system. When you really get down to it AP systems are effectively another form of experience system though. I'm thinking of a model similar to the Job system of FF5 here (one of the better FF improvement systems, IMO), but done a bit differently.

The main disadvantage to a fully character driven model like the above is the complexity. It could be argued it limits player choice but I'd disagree. if character improvements are completely dependent on character actions you still get to decide which actions you're going to perform in the game world, and subsequently which areas are going to improve.
 
The real problem with such a system is how easy it is to do any given skill to level it. Skyrim easy and everyone just 100% every possible skill, too hard and people give up because their skills are never good enough.

then internally you have the problem of opportunities to do things, if one thing comes up way more than any thing else it causes a skew in to that being everyone's main skill, even if they wanted to be something else entirely.

I think it's easier to balance them as a bonus for doing something rather than the main way of it getting better.
 
If I'm following the train of thought here correctly (which I may not be). The question/problem is - How do you implement a skill improvement via use system?

To a large extent it depends on how skills themselves are handled. In CP2020 the max skill level is 10 so obviously they can't improve very much very quickly or you'd soon hit that max. One thing you can do is use a cumulative multiplier for improvement. I.E. skill level 1 costs 10 IP (Improvement Points), 2 costs 20, etc. till 10 costs 100. That way it's relatively easy to achieve the first few levels in a skill and pretty difficult to master them. As to earning IP for the first say 3 levels you earn an IP every time you attempt to use a skill, success or failure (after all, when you're just starting to learn something you will make mistakes, and [hopefully] learn from them), from say level 4 and beyond you actually have to successfully use the skill to earn an IP.

The above system is hardly perfect, but it does work. Problem is it's intended for a long term campaign, I seriously doubt there will be 10+20+30+ ect. = 550 locks to pick in CP2077. So you can use a smaller multiplier, say 3 instead of 10.
 
If I'm following the train of thought here correctly (which I may not be). The question/problem is - How do you implement a skill improvement via use system?

The underlying point is I view RPG mechanics as a reflection of the character. If the character is exceptional at utilizing projectile weapons, melee weapons, handling problems with diplomacy, strong or intelligent, etc. it should be reflected in the game. These character attributes should be self-contained within the character. The player should stay within the confinement of those attributes. This is the entire theme behind assuming the role of the character. This appropriate reflection is what defines RPG mechanics, IMO (others can feel free to disagree).

The above interpretation of the player assuming the role of the character should also extend to the progression system. There is no reason the underlying theme applies to one or most areas but not others. Most modern RPG's get away from this concept. Case and point, your character performs actions, gains experience and levels up. From there the player decides how to improve the character. This leads to all sorts of odd outcomes where the character performed actions related to one area or another and magically improves in a completely unrelated area. Why does my character become stronger when they did nothing related to strength to reach the magical "improvement" threshold?

Hence, the amiable views toward skill improvements via skill usage. If the character performs an action or task using a specific skill they should improve at this skill. It shouldn't be an arbitrarily, player decided improvement. You swing an axe and suddenly learned how to pick locks out of nowhere.

The trouble is, even when games use this model, they often allow stats and perks to be arbitrarily improved by the player. It often results in strange behavior. Players end up with characters built to perform certain tasks well but because they picked perk A or improved stat B they can perform unrelated tasks well enough to bypass mechanics dependent on abilities which should be outside their expertise. In other words, it can remove much of the meaning behind those character design choices.

The information on CP stats, skills and perks sure sounds an awful like more of the norm. Skills are tied to usage but perks and stat improvements can come out of left field. It's not necessarily a deal breaker, as I've always skirted around this issue by considering how my character crossed the improvement threshold and improving applicable abilities. It was more a curiosity, to ask if other players have ever had similar thoughts.
 
Out of curiosity, do you mean each and every form of character progression/improvement?
I'm not sure I understand your question. If I take you correctly, in the system I'm speculating, skills would only improve as you use them successfully ... so they wouldn't be upgraded by player choice, but by the player characters actions in the game. Perks on the other hand world be progressed through player choice. So it would be a blended system if I'm understanding it correctly (which is by no means guaranteed).

I ask because the moment I saw perks were tied to experience and street cred my ears perked up. Not in a good way either.
Well from what they have said, it definitely sounds like skills and perks are separate systems, with skills progressing gradually as you use them, and perks being selected by the player using XP and street cred as the resources that allow for more perks.
I think it makes a lot of sense to use both systems as it allows for both gradual character growth through skills, and for active player choice in how the player progresses through perks. I like it a lot at least in concept because it allows for a lot of variety in how you build you character, but also reflects the moment to moment choices you have made as the character in game. The execution will obviously effect the final product ... but it sounds promising to me.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I do still think it makes sense to organize both skills and perks by class archetypes for two reasons. (1) It makes the UI much more intuitive for the player ... which is a big deal to me personally. Also (2) if building into a class archetype gives additional bonuses over time for that archetype's skills or abilities, then it adds another layer of progression which can be satisfying for players.
 
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I'm not sure I understand your question. If I take you correctly, in the system I'm speculating, skills would only improve as you use them successfully ... so they wouldn't be upgraded by player choice, but by the player characters actions in the game.

I was just wondering what exactly you meant when you said you thought it makes sense to organize everything by archetype. In hindsight, it appears you were saying to use a skill gating mechanism for perks in the rampant speculation post. I missed that somehow :) (read that post too...).

I think it makes a lot of sense to use both systems as it allows for both gradual character growth through skills, and for active player choice in how the player progresses through perks. I like it a lot at least in concept because it allows for a lot of variety in how you build you character, but also reflects the moment to moment choices you have made as the character in game. The execution will obviously effect the final product ... but it sounds promising to me.

Yeah, giving players both a character and player driven model is reasonable. It's not at all a matter of claiming it's a bad idea. It's more about personal preference. The preference being to have every improvement decision, for lack of a better way to say it, front-loaded instead of back-loaded.

One player may not care, and wants full freedom in making the choices. The other may want the decisions to be dictated by character action. The former is happy with the above described system. The latter can be happy by making appropriate choices based on how the character actions got them past the proverbial progression tipping point. Like I said, it's not a deal breaker.
 
** Rawls casts necromancy **

Okay so been thinking about the stats / skills as we know of them. Last known stat/skill/perk tree looked like this
CyberPunk_CharacterPerks.png


So my guesses is as to what they do

Cool
  1. Cold Blooded - staying calm in stressful situations
  2. Assassination - stealth and take-downs
  3. Sniper Rifles - sniper rifles aim & damage
Tech
  1. Engineering - Manipulating tech & electronics
Reflexes
  1. Blades - edged weapons use & damage
  2. Rifles - assault rifles aim & damage
  3. Handguns - handguns aim & damage
Intelligence
  1. Hacking - manipulating software for netrunning
Body
  1. Athletics - running, swimming, climbing, jumping
  2. Melee - blunt weapons use & damage
  3. Two-Handed - large weapons use & damage
  4. Shotguns - Shotguns aim & damage
A few notes: (1) Crafting was at one point explicitly mentioned as a skill, so it likely is now encompassed within engineering. (2) Tech and intelligence each only have one skill associated with them, which seems a bit light. (3) It has been stated previously that the devs did not want to lock story details or crafting behind any one build. So knowing all of that, there are two things I want to express. (4) Each skill has 5 perks associated with it.

First, I think it would be beneficial to break crafting back off as a skill so as to give the Tech and Int stats a but more emphasis. Specifically, I think it could be cool to see these two skills added to tech

- Gearhead: (1) better at repairing & upgrading weapons & armor; (2) craft advanced weapons; (3) craft advanced armor; (4) craft advanced weapon modules; (5) craft advanced armor modules
- Chemist: (1) tolerance to chemicals, (2) bonuses to medicine crafting; (3) bonuses to poison crafting; (4) bonuses to stat boosters (5) bonuses to explosives;


Secondly, a crafting skill under INT for hackers would be cool too. I'm not as sold on this one as the other two though:

- Programming - (1) edit defensive & defensive programs, (2) increase range of programs, (3) blend already owned programs together; (4) craft defensive programs; (5) craft offensive programs

My second (and larger concern) is the lack of any mechanical representation of humanity cost on social skills. The devs have said they didn't want to gate dialogue and story behind a social mechanic, and I actually think that makes good sense. However, I would like (or would have liked) for there to have been a mechanic that related to human perception / social from the 2020 PnP. So the thought here is that with a high social, your character can perceive which dialogue options going to work or not. So something like:

- Social - (1) detect aggression; (2) detect fear; (3) detect deception; (4) highlights dialogues that will irritate; (5) highlights dialogues will persuade

So essentially, a high leveled social character can perceive what will be effective more so than other characters. That may sound OP, but this particular skill would be gated by humanity cost. So if V has 20% (just picking a random even number) of her cyberware slots used, then she loses the highest level perk ability under social.

Now there is no empathy stat in the game (which I think makes sense as there is really only one type of skill that would work for it in a cRPG (persuasion / dialogue related ones). Thus, I think it would make sense to tie social to the Cool stat. Being able to perceive what to say while in conversation could be seen as keeping your cool in the moment, though the PnP player in me feels like I'm committing a sacrilege.

Finally, I wish there was a skill linked to economic advancement under INT

- Business Sense - (1) negotiate better contract prices; (2) sell things for more; (3) buy things cheaper; (4) bribe NPCs; (5) sell illegally obtained gear

Something like that. That would make 17 skills in total.

Anyways. Thoughts on digital paper now. Moving on.
 
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** Rawls casts necromancy **

Okay so been thinking about the stats / skills as we know of them. Last known stat/skill/perk tree looked like this
View attachment 11015297

So my guesses is as to what they do

Cool
  1. Cold Blooded - staying calm in stressful situations
  2. Assassination - stealth and take-downs
  3. Sniper Rifles - sniper rifles aim & damage
Tech
  1. Engineering - Manipulating tech & electronics
Reflexes
  1. Blades - edged weapons use & damage
  2. Rifles - assault rifles aim & damage
  3. Handguns - handguns aim & damage
Intelligence
  1. Hacking - manipulating software for netrunning
Body
  1. Athletics - running, swimming, climbing, jumping
  2. Melee - blunt weapons use & damage
  3. Two-Handed - large weapons use & damage
  4. Shotguns - Shotguns aim & damage
A few notes: (1) Crafting was at one point explicitly mentioned as a skill, so it likely is now encompassed within engineering. (2) Tech and intelligence each only have one skill associated with them, which seems a bit light. (3) It has been stated previously that the devs did not want to lock story details or crafting behind any one build. So knowing all of that, there are two things I want to express. (4) Each skill has 5 perks associated with it.

First, I think it would be beneficial to break crafting back off as a skill so as to give the Tech and Int stats a but more emphasis. Specifically, I think it could be cool to see these two skills added to tech

- Gearhead: (1) better at repairing & upgrading weapons & armor; (2) craft advanced weapons; (3) craft advanced armor; (4) craft advanced weapon modules; (5) craft advanced armor modules
- Chemist: (1) tolerance to chemicals, (2) bonuses to medicine crafting; (3) bonuses to poison crafting; (4) bonuses to stat boosters (5) bonuses to explosives;


Secondly, a crafting skill under INT for hackers would be cool too. I'm not as sold on this one as the other two though:

- Programming - (1) edit defensive & defensive programs, (2) increase range of programs, (3) blend already owned programs together; (4) craft defensive programs; (5) craft offensive programs

My second (and larger concern) is the lack of any mechanical representation of humanity cost on social skills. The devs have said they did want to gate dialogue and story behind a social mechanic, and I actually think that makes good sense. However, I would like (or would have liked) for there to have been a mechanic that related to human perception / social from the 2020 PnP. So the though here is that with a high social, your character can perceive which dialogue options going to work or not. So something like:

- Social - (1) detect aggression; (2) detect fear; (3) detect deception; (4) highlights dialogues that will irritate; (5) highlights dialogues will persuade

So essentially, a high leveled social character can perceive what will be effective more so than other characters. That may sound OP, but this particular skill would be gated by humanity cost. So if V has 20% (just picking a random even number) of her cyberware slots used, then she loses the highest level perk ability under social.

Now there is no empathy stat in the game (which I think makes sense as there is really only one type of skill that would work for it in a cRPG (persuasion / dialogue related ones). Thus, I think it would make sense to tie social to the Cool stat. Being able to perceive what to say while in conversation could be seen as keeping your cool in the moment, though the PnP player in me feels like I'm committing a sacrilege.

Finally, I wish there was a skill linked to economic advancement under INT

- Business Sense - (1) negotiate better contract prices; (2) sell things for more; (3) buy things cheaper; (4) bribe NPCs; (5) sell illegally obtained gear

Something like that. That would make 17 skills in total.

Anyways. Thoughts on digital paper now. Moving on.

I think Melee probably includes unarmed skills as well.
 
I also like your ideas for fleshing out the Tech and Intelligence content -- for now, it seems extremely simplistic and just makes me think it's probably not finalized.

I also agree that the Cool stat is probably the best "fit" for social-related skills, but I think it would have been preferable to just have a Charisma stat in the game in the first place. I understand that they're more trying to use your other skills and background in dialogue instead, but someone being skilled with tech doesn't necessarily automatically mean they'll also be good at persuasion. And having a similar background to a gangster doesn't mean you'll automatically know how to use that information properly. Etc.

One of my concerns is the perks themselves. This could just be due to WIP stuff, but all of them have identical icons from what we can tell so far... Does this mean they're just increasingly powerful versions of each other, or do they grant different abilities/access to different weapons (Etc.)?
 
Truth be told, I was always a bit put off by the way P&P Rpgs implemented social skills. A huge bouncer combat monster with dump Stat charisma should be intimidating as hell, and the guy that just shot off your kneecap as a warning and puts the gun to your head is intimidating, regardless of charisma. A tech guy should be good at impersonation of a maintenance tech cause he knows what he's doing. A corpo guy might impersonate a manager cause he knows procedures, corp etiquette etc. - and a charismatic person without that knowledge will fail. Not saying that acting skills won't help to be even more convincing, but charisma by itself should not be the magic social bullet...
 
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I guess they hid most of the skills and perks from us, but if I understood it well, the more you use a skill the better it scales, like weapon mastery from Borderlands?
 
I guess they hid most of the skills and perks from us, but if I understood it well, the more you use a skill the better it scales, like weapon mastery from Borderlands?
The way it works is that using skills improves them, but they are also gated by stats. So if you have a low body stat, you can only get so good at athletics. As you level up you also get perk points which you can use to invest in perks. Those perks are organized into the various skill groups seen above.
 
Can you think of any game that has anything like what you are describing, video game or pnp? I am having a difficult time imagining it, but if I knew of an example to use as a starting point that would be helpful

Call of Cthulhu / Stormbringer works like that (the Chaosium system if I'm correct).
Once you made a critical success roll with a skill, you put a cross next to it, then after the game, you're able to roll it.
If the roll is "in your skill", you win nothing, you used you " known" talents.
If the roll is out, it means you pushed your skills beyond their usualy ability, so roll 1D10, and add the result to your skill.

In that system, you can only improve the skills you're using, or learn a new one if taught or by chance (like you try to do something you're not able to, like riding horse, but you roll by chance a critical, so you'd be able to make a skill increasing roll)

It's pretty simple and intuitive.
 
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