I think the biggest difference between them is the possibility to remain as player's responsibility. I mean, you can't teach physical skills to players through the monitor for sure. But cases like persuading Ciana to stop making crime, or deciding an npc's fate in morally-grey situation could remain as the chance for players to exert their own logic, empathy, something like that. Imagine that you can use speech skill in that situations. You don't need to understand Ciana's background and her character.. only thing you need to do is choosing a dialogue having [Speech] or [Persuasion] at the head of the lines. social skills has the danger and I'd call it waste. Waste of opportunities for roleplaying. Of course physical skills could be used like that, but I never saw the case. Especially at the important moment of the story. I think that leaving the chances for players to exert their own ability as many as possible is important to deliver RPG experience in CRPG. Otherwise, the game will lost the very soul of the RPG: proactiveness.
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Actually, I think the polar opposite: the RPG experience, to me comes from being able to, for some times, not being you.
I think like many of us already tried to make a roleplaying game where players play as themselves but with a little difference in the setting (Mine was called "Cattenom Apocalypse". It was a setting where Vladimir Putin attacked France after the French president scoled him about the Crimea.) only to discover playing as yourself in a dangerous setting ends up being boring as the only things players tries to do is hide and getting safe, because they are, you know...normal people, with normal abilities.
Disagree about that too. Soul of RPG: not being you. To me at least.
Well I didn't exactly mean being yourself. Regardless being yourself or another character, you should decide almost everything in RPG generally. You should still come up with lines and decide what to do even though you are playing as another character. 'If I were in this situation..' and 'If I were V..' make no difference. thing is this mindset itself. If some choices are desntined to go to good outcome and player knows it, it limit the natural ocurrence of this mindset. In other word, it hurts roleplaying.
Hmm, his/her point has very little to do with playing yourself or a different character. Think of it as active vs passive roleplaying.
In passive my character can do X so this is what they will do. What they can do preempts any and all circumstances where they do... anything. It's based on decisions you made previously in character design. I put points into seduction so now my character can seduce. I cannot pick any of the other four options at all. I didn't invest any points into the applicable abilities.
In active, none of the character attributes determine which option is open. They're all available. Instead of being barred from a certain path you think about the character you've built, their strengths/weaknesses, and decide what they would do here or there. Aka, you "roleplay" the character.
I don't think either approach is superior either. They're not mutually exclusive. And.... the area they apply matters.
Combat is probably the best example of the application. It's hard to present the player with, "What would my character do here?", when they're shooting things. Would my character miss? Okay, let's randomly jerk the crosshair around, do a 360, close our eyes, press fire and hope for the best (I'm sure there is a dice roll joke in there somewhere). This would create a very strange experience. It might be in character though....
Kingdom Come Deliverance is an excelent example of "active" role-playing. Combat including. It filters the player ability through character proficiency whithout actually separating the two. Not the only example, but one I'm particularly fond of.
Why would you not being able to pick any of the other options? Aren't you allowed to try and possibly fail?
I see the problem a little differently: your active part is for the player to decide, but your passive part should decide the outcomes.
That thing again really...*rolleyes*
Fact is aim at something with a gun doesn't mean hitting it unless you're skilled enough.
IRL example:
I'm good with a scoped rifle, so when I target something, even a moving target, with it, I hit it.
I'm bad with guns, so not matter how hard I try I keep on hitting all around my target kind of the way a spread circle would.
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It makes a world of difference. Me playing as a Dragon Priest Bigot in Prophecy doesn't makes the same decision that the Dragon Hater I really am.
Minus people tend to naturally try to do what they are good at, even more when it can help them to attain their goal. Is there a specific reason why it would not work the same in RPG?
I mean, are you planning to make a solo build and play it like a netrunner or a techie, or what?
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Let's see why ruling out dialogues with social skill check is good for letting people start looking over the situation. Because, basically, it makes the game unpredictable. You don't know what you need to choose to see good consequences. So you start searching possibilities as hard as you can based on NPC's personality, situational contexts and so on.
If the game have social skills, the game become predictable. Because giving the player bad outcome cause they invested social skills makes the player feel unfairness. It's a obviously bad game design. So the game tend to give the player good outcome when some dialogues have skill check. It does not only erase the opportunity for roleplaying but also makes the game boring.
By the way, In W3 I was honestly surprised when decided to cast axii but another npc recognized it, and they drawed sword, instead they act as I want to. Maybe it could be an good example using skill check but still remain as unpredictable. I don't think it's possible case to speech or persuasion too though.
This is because video games have fixed content. You have to accept quests etc. to proceed and pick from limited dialogue options even if neither would make sense for your idea of character. Good thing V has fixed personality and the choices we can pick in the game are all logical for V.
Also I expect stat, perk and background influence on dialogue and mission path will be fluff only and no significant story decisions will depend on them.
That is useless definition since it applies to almost all video game genres.
It pretty much has to be this way.
While there may be some differences in the extent or implementation of an end game results (think DA: Origins, if you weren't a city elf character there was no way for the city elves to get a representative on the royal council) the major/significant end game results can't be heavily influenced by mutually exclusive character variables (you only get one of the three backgrounds).
Dragon Age trilogy is good example of this being immersion breaking - your character being a mage had no meaningful impact on the story, while it should have.
For Cyberpunk I see some people erroneously talking about us being able to be net-runner or techie classes, which is false, all we can be in this game is solo and we can dabble in other class stuff to provide some flavor. I even suspect you can beat the game without leveling the character*, since damage number comes from the weapon itself so you can just shoot at everything until they die.
* Likely the game will have same stupid mechanic from Witcher 3 where difference between your enemy and you mattered a lot, so in this case you would have to level up, just not spend points.