I just want to say that you inspired me to start learning pixel art, animation, and game design so that I could make my own RPG one day. Thank you for being a positive inspiration and a treasure trove of practical wisdom!
You just saved me from falling into the trap of doing skills first when I want a theme lol thanks the skill ranges part of the video was INVALUABLE. literally nobody talks about the actual number ranges and how big of an effect it has, it’s like designing a space game without considering floating point limits
I think a big question that should be answered before going too far into the design of your skill system, is how much you want the players to be focusing on skills as part of the gameplay. If there's a big emphasis on going deep into the character development mechanics, where a lot of the fun is min/maxing and builds, and figuring out the synergies, etc.. then it makes sense having a 0 to 100 system with multiple sources of bonuses, and supporting mechanics (building up two or three different skills gives a bonus to all of them, etc). However, if you have a lot of the gameplay depending on player skill (say, a first person shooter environment, with lots of platforming and puzzles), and you don't want the skills number crunching to take time away from those elements, you may want that perk-style of 0 to 5 or 0 to 10. This makes the skill improvement have a solid impact for each increase, so it feels like you've gained something tangible with your selection, but without taking over the gameplay to do so. This is where the "setting, then story" stage is important.. maybe to keep the alliteration we can use the word 'style'. "Setting, then story, then style... then the mechanics".
Hi Tim :D Thank you so much for answering my questions! :DD This video has really been the highlight of my day :D I approached the skills for my game the other way around and had to quickly (and painfully) learn that your way of 1.Setting 2. Story 3. Mechanics is the better way, as I really enjoyed the idea of certain skills that I had to then ditch later on (bye bye pyromancer class :'( ).
Would love to hear about world design in terms of thematic cohesion - How does one hook the player into a theme that encompasses the entirety of a designed world when it comes to factions, landscape etc. This is something that impressed me about both the original Fallout and the Outer Worlds
Greetings to all! Tim, thanks for making the video. Thanks to the community for watching these videos!🙃 A couple of questions for everyone: In what cases would you choose a character growth mechanic based on experience points, and in what cases would you choose based on using a skill over and over again? What abstractions do you have to resort to when developing? A little background: I'm tinkering with a home engine for RPG games and in the process I think I've realized how and why two game abstractions appeared: experience points, firearm damage spread. In real life, we learn something in the process of activity, as shown in the games of the TES series, and this seems to be the most native way of development, but such development is very difficult to balance, and most importantly, to do quests that push for this. The second point is the spread of weapon damage, especially if we are talking about firearms - a rifle is fired with the same force almost every time, all other things being equal, but it can hit different protected and unprotected parts of the body, and this is much more difficult to calculate, even if You have a full-fledged 3D model with marked sectors of vulnerabilities and armor.
As, not a videogame designer, not necesarily a tabletop game designer either, but just a guy who likes making things to play with his friends, this video and alot of your videos have helped me alot with being more confident in making those little things.
Very commonplace ideals, but very insightful. A balance of straightforward game mechanics balancing rewarding in-game effects or items can seem easy on surface, but without a balance, skills can become useless or dump stats in lieu of broken objects for a player to collect rather than focusing on an ability and giving rewarding or incentivizing objects for a player to use within that ability.
Hey Tim, as a person that has been working in the industry as it evolved from small teams to hundreds of people working on multiple hundred million budgets, how have you experienced the apparent pigeonholing in what big game companies can produce? I know that you've mostly worked on RPGs, but that deciding how Fallout was meant to be played looked very different to something like The Outer Worlds, that to me at least, feels like it was required from a very early point in production to fit into what a double A company like Obsidian 'has' to produce for a wider audience. I feel like in 199x it was much easier to try new things and still get a budget, while nowadays games of a certain size require to do, ie, 'choose one from Skyrim-like, FPS, Uncharted-like, Soulslike or Ubisoft-like open world'. Is this something that's enforced from the outside, or are these general templates the best we get? Are games like, say, Disco Elysium, outside of what can be even considered for a big studio? Is it the themes? The look? A fear that such games may give a bad ROI? I feel like 'author' games are kind of dead in the West. I can name many designers from the late 90s, early 00s, but as time progresses there seem to be very few replacements, and many simply leave the games industry to do something else. I guess it's similar in movies, where the name of the studio pushing the movie seems to be becoming more important than the director, and even big productions jump directors between sequels, and sometimes you cannot even tell.
This was an extremely helpful video, going through all the math, ranges and applications so specifically. You really make it obvious very quickly how the math and bounds influence the entire design of the game, leading to things that work and things that don't. This kind of thing is exactly what I need right now, because I'm working on a Western rpg, but because I never got into pen-and-paper roleplaying games, I have very little in the way of math expressions behind me to know how to come up with ranges and formulas to describe skills, damages, effects. One more thing for anyone reading, I really love Oblivion's 1-100 skills. I read formulas on the wiki recently. It's important to know that this 1-100 range doesn't always scale your power level linearly in a given skill. With spellcasting, regarding efficiency of Magicka use to cast a given spell, you're basically worse than bad below 30, even at and above 30 then increasing rather linearly, but I believe around 80-100 you really take off and get way more bang for your buck- spellcasts get cheaper. One thing this means is that if you keep enchanted items that give you +10 in a given magic skill, you'll start to hit the exponential portion of that curve much faster (70 or so) so you'll be overpowered more quickly. Math's really everything when it comes to this stuff.
This is truly an example of what makes RU-vid awesome. This information could be sold as a course and it would have tons of patrons. But instead we get all of this incredible information from someone who has decades of experience for free. Thanks Tim!
One of my problem with skills is how they are often treated equal by the rules, but are not of the same value. Chief among those, I separate all skills into three categories: One, Many and All. One skills are skills that only requires one user in the group, maybe two for redundancy, but where a single success rewards the entire team. Chief among those are the diplomacy affiliated skills (hence why the concept of a "party face" works) or lockpicking, as the door doesn't close after one crossing. Many skill usually have success making sense per character, but with potentially global effect. Perception reigh supreme in D&D and most other system, one person can find the ambush but everyone can easily try and only those having a success are not surprised, for example. All skills fails as soon as one doesn't succeed their check. No surprise here, but anything stealthy tends to fall in that category, and some traversal skills such as swimming or climbing also enter the equation. As such, investing in stealth when at least one member of the team isn't means that you are get a lot less mileage from your investment, and conversely, you make it a forced cost to the entire team to even attempt. Meanwhile, that knowledge of magical creatures is surely not worth having in double, and the lesser of both user invested in nothing. Numerical help from magic items are also affected by this: the ninja cares not about +10 stealth accompanied by a loud ogre barbarian, and giving three +1 underwater basketweaving items is bound to become an in joke at your table
I feel like the notion of “skills” here is very restricted, which is interesting. I personally get stressed out by skill trees, but the Fallout approach is straightforward enough. I’m currently prototyping a skill system where skills improve only through use, but have shared “subskills” that help diffuse the effort. My problem now is, how to make “Spam jump to get better at jump” less optimal? (Because fun path and best path should coincide.) My ideas are: 1. Exhaustion system. Game is composed of short bouts, so can reset regularly. Now “leg strength” is a resource you have to manage. 2. Heuristics. Damp experience from repetitive actions using math. 3. Just accept that some players will jump endlessly in a corner to improve. In the interest of grounding gameplay in reality (but at superhuman ability), I’m leaning towards the exhaustion system, but I foresee many obstacles with it. Really curious if Tim has ever pondered such a skill system!
Coincidentally, I am working on making a video about skill based progression right now, and you’ve discovered one of the problems with them. Namely, they encourage the player to behave in odd, unfun ways because that leads to progression. I will have suggestions but no real solutions to this problem.
of all the games ive ever played, my absolute fav skill lvl sys is the way iron tower studios does it: they go 0-10, you assign a handful of points at char creation and after that the only ways to increase them is to use them (very rewarding and immersive) or pay npcs to train you (rare and not cheap)
I've always been a fan of smaller ranges. For two reasons: Firstly they allow for each increase to feel impactful. Each point can provide a massive boost which makes leveling up feel rewarding. Secondly it prevents dead ranges. For instance in Fallout Vegas there is no difference between 1 and 24 locking skill. Putting all your points into a skill just for it to do literally nothing feels unrewarding. Its worth noting I don't think having items give massive bonuses is a bad thing. It makes them feel more impactful. It would likely require you to make these items more rare, but that only adds to their impact. Additionally you could allow bonuses to put you over your limits, (Fallout 4 does this with Stat bonuses).
Ive begun writing my own tabletop RPG using a lot of the advice you give and my own intuition. How skills work is one of the parts ive been stuck on. I want to skills to give a bonus when taking an action thats in that skills wheelhouse, and also to have certain actions locked behind a certain level of skill. For example having a high enough tier in swordfighting allows you to parry with swords. I've already stacked the roll system to be more likely that an action will succeed when unmodified, now im thinking about whether or not to make negative modifiers more or less common. In the system your chance to succeed is always the same the only thing that changes is your level of skill and negative modifiers, negatives being like armour or dodging which "spoil" your attack. Making only the highest negative and positive modifer be the one which applies is a good approach as mentioned here and ill try that. That also solves the issue of being able to stack armour and being good at dodging, maybe active defense like parrying with a weapon applies in addition, or circumstance like darkness or distance.
As a side note, Quantity of skills? How many is too many? How much should they overlap with each other? Should they overlap? How vague of an interpretation should the player/gm have to make about how its used? One problem ive had with 5e is always some skills being way too specific to be useful and others being vague enough that you can kind of justify using it for everything. The more vague it is id say the more fun it tends to be as the player has to invent a reason that they can use that skill in that situation, however it does leave a lot of responsiblity on the GMs lap to adjudicate that.
I've always been interested in how modern RPGs handle game content scripting. In the early days, scripting was a subsystem that utilized either simple text parsing or compiled binary that was then processed and hooked into the low-level code (C/C++), hiding complex engine and/or game codebase and (particularly) memory management behind simplified operations for scripters and sometimes even non-coding staff to efficiently script content, entity behaviours and in-game dramas. Today however, engines like Unity already come with a scripting backend that effectively becomes the developers' "native" code, meaning that their game's low-level code is built upon even lower-level code (C++) using exposed scripting API (C#). Due to complexity and dynamic nature of RPGs, I believe RPG developers still need abstraction and simplification for game content scripting (for instance, as far as I know, Obsidian used external node-based tool for scripting in PoE games). To consolidate the question - what approaches in handling game content scripting are available in modern general-purpose engines for RPG developers?
hi tim, i remember playing fallout 2, and there was a vendor in new reno (the one that killed the son of a family ith the poisoned jet), and somewhere in the world the player could find some glasses, and if you have those glasses in the inventory when talking with him, he would say that the glasses would be helpful for him, so the player could give him the glasses. The mind blowing thing was that after that if you ask him if he is enjoying the glasses or something like he would respond with something like "dont expect a discount" or something like that, and if the player ask about the glasses like 30 times in a row, he would just get annoyed and give you some stuff for free. How did this idea came up??? i think i have never seen anything like that in any other game, and it blows my mind. THanks for everything tim!
To go along with the "what type of play does this game support," the thing that bugs me in most fantasy RPGs is that magic just overlaps with everything else and yet its treated as a specific type of play. This is how I approach it: classic: combat, stealth, magic -> NO!! rather: strategy + mechanic = flavor strategies: attack, evade, manipulate + any mixture of the three mechanics: combat, stealth, dialogue or magic, magic, magic flavors: barbarian - attack with combat bard - manipulate with dialogue/magic, attack with combat, evade with stealth warlock - attack with magic, manipulate with magic etc To me, this helps recontextualize magic as not being a strategy for a player, but being *one* of the tools a character might have access to. A lot of the reason magic is OP in many games is because a single spell will often replace another class's entire skill, so why isn't every character in the world at least partially a mage? I like Tim's point that deciding the setting first should help you filter out early how things should be laid out later on (if you want to build a consistent world, you don't have to I guess).
Hey Tim! Just discovered your channel and love all the content and all the work you’ve done. I have a question and was wondering if you could shed some light on in a video. What was your original plan for the Enclave? I know you had an original plan idea for the vaults but was wondering if you could establish more on the Enclave running everything. In your “why I left Fallout 2” you explained that the Enclave was very different when you left to the original project such as Frank Horrigan not being there and that they orginally had a starship. What was the Enclave gonna be like, what was their plan and what type of story were you gonna tell with them? Where they gonna be the main evil bad guys like they are now or was there a different path? Did you still have an oil rig base as well or did they use something else? Was the FEV project still a thing with them? Really appreciate everything you do and would really love if you could go more into depth with them. Thank you so much!
I love 20 as a scale because I think intervals of 5% perfectly strike a balance of being more precise than 10% ones, but not so small that increments feel too fiddly or meaningless (as with percentage based systems). There's a nice, psychological difference between +4, a 20% chance; and +5, a 25% chance. I get so sick of games where, for example, I'm choosing between a gun with 22% faster reload speeds vs a gun that does 13% more damage or whatever.
Just a quick follow-up (multi-part) question on this topic: Could a skill range be too large? Would there be a downside to skills going from, say, 1 - 1000? Or could even just doing the design of a system with very large numbers, but then dividing by the lowest common denominator once all the modifiers are in, work? Thanks in advance. Really love the videos.
Looking at some gold old RPGs, When its a basic D&D like RPG, you have a character with the basic stats, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom. For one of my favorite games, Hard Nova, a Sci-fi RPG, you have both ground and space combat. You should see the stats you can upgrade. But in games like Battletech: Crescent Hawks 1 & 2, you have those same 5 but renamed Engine Dexterity, Gyros and heat sinks are Constitution, Sensors are like intelligence, and then a slight different stat set for your character out of the Mech. Essentially what Mr. Cain said is spot on. The world you make is what should determine what your Skill design is and how it benefits the game play. You may even make things difficult by having a speial skill only one player or character has that if you don't have them, the player is prevented from continuing or even finds themselves at a dead end. Like for Hard Nova, you have a navigator who is the only one that can take your ship through star gates. If he dies, you may as well reload because you can't get another one. (There is one "home" area for them but you cant get one more there either.) Or in Crescent Hawk's revenge, you need three team mates that specialize in a field of study to get through an end puzzle. It's so much fun because you can have whole quests to find a specialized character that has a skill, no one else does.
As for the skill ranges: this hugely depends on how the ranks are implemented. A range from 0-5 with diminishing returns could very well use bonuses. For example: in the TTRPG game System "Savage worlds" the points you invested tell you the die you're roling for that skill: 1 = D4, 2=D6, 3=D8, 4=D10 and 5 of course is D12. Now normal challanges just require you to roll a 4 or better. so that means 25% chance for D4, then 50% -> 62.5% -> 70% -> 75% for D12. The first few points are huge, the latter ones are still of impact but not as important anymore. On top of that items with +1 or even +2 do make sense with this... That being said: Arcanum's design idea of having skills and mastery perks in parallel where skills improvements are up to the player and the mastery perks have to be gained from the game world lives on for me in my homebrew TTRPG. I just found this such a great concept I had to incorporate it! 🤩
Really awesome insight and video! With skills that go to "high" numbers (of course it's all relative) like 100, do you worry that can 1) water down the value of a single point, or 2) discourage a player if they feel like they got boxed into the "wrong" build and want to pivot (one thing that I liked that Outer Worlds did was up to 50, skill points improved a set of skills)? And I guess this really speaks to a larger discussion on do you like skill-based design (where skills only enhance what a player can do) or a perk-based design (where perks may enhance what a player can do but also add something new)?
It's been fascinating listening to your experiences, I just hope they don't stop. Small question- what was development like in terms of beta content for Arcanum and what was removed and added during the early days? I remember seeing screen caps of scenes in the game I was eager to find during my play through -including an ominous scene where some dead guy was surrounded by a bunch of Necromancers using quench life? I wanted to know so much about what was going on considering Necromancy played a huge part in the lore.
Does any RPG have really in-depth but non-limited skill ranges? Like if you do X action, you would get better and better with it over time, but there would be no set requirements as in "next lvl is 1000 XP away and after that you can do Y". If we use Skyrim as example, you could pick any lock from the get go, but the more locks you pick, each time it gets easier by a diminishing return. On top of that, each type of lock (easy, med, hard...) has its own modifier that counts the same way but for specific locks. Or some game like Starfield - Each gun would wobble when aiming down the sights, but the more headshots you manage it shakes less and less for each increase (but never zero). And then have sub-modifiers for type of gun and the enemy aiming at... Maybe overtime your character would be comfortable shooting at men, but not at women or something like that, just on the basis of previous actions. Major gripe for me in RPGs is that each leavel up is a 10% step up or some ability/perk out of the blue that you didn't work towards but can still select it.
What your take on showing detailed stats, buffs and result-rolls to players? Should the player know all numerical details of the games mechanics (items, skills, attack calculation), or should detail be hidden and rather experienced?
Would love a deep dive on characteristics vs skills, as in having both SPECIAL and skills, or SAEWIC and skills. I'm pretty sure I will skip the former in my own CRPG as I think it it can create a little bit of a weird overlap (e.g. what does having low Strength and Agility mean if the player maxes out the Athletics skill.)
Hi Tim,are there any genres or concepts that you feel have a lot of unexplored potential in them? Do you have any general rules to follow when searching for such kinds of hidden or less obvious design space?
Great topic. Unbounded skills would be a solution to the problem you presented of having a range that's too compressed. It feels like a character building trap in games like Fallout New Vegas where maxing out a skill renders any bonuses from items or consumables effectively useless to that skill, whereas, with unbounded values, a character with max skill would be even better with items and consumables than someone of low skill using those to give them an edge.
Wonderful question and insights! Thank you for the video! I really like 0-100 ranges as they also yield percentage based interpretations of the skill (e.g. the character succeeds on an average difficulty task SKILL % of the time or something similar). I'm curious about your thoughts on skill progression and specifically whether it is worth structuring skills in a way that it creates more well rounded characters. E.g. in some games you'll find groups of skills like combat, social, exploration etc and at each level up you gain points in each category that you can only spend in skills of that category. I know the divinity games did that and i believe Pillars 2 did a form of that as well (with weapon proficiencies vs exploration skills vs class abilities). Do you have a preference? Thank you again for the great video and have a great day!! 😊
Hey Tim! I'm currently working solo on a small game in Unreal 5 that takes most of its deisgn from the original Deus Ex. I've got a bare bones dialogue and inventory system and I feel lost on what I need to do either polish them up or continue building the rest of the game. What would your approach be to solving such a critical design/priority issue? Also as an aside, could you talk about how dialogue in Fallout worked and how you approached building said systems?
I'm guessing these ideas came after Fallout because it did have a bunch of skills that either needed no point (like steal) or their effect was redundant or practically useless (outdoors, first aid, throwing) and I don't believe the range to the maximum 300% was ever needed to be utilized.
I felt guilty about the last video because I've asked the same question(About the Baldur's Gate 3's success and general view on CRPGs) twice and the last part about the same question part hit me good lol. I watched almost all your videos and taking notes with it most of time but I didn't realise the some parts by asking questions so I'm sorry if I made you feel bored(I didn't know how to put it) while reading my comment again. I know you've mentioned reading all of the comments but can't answer all of them because of time is not simply enough for them answer. I value your time and effort doing these videos because most of the people probably won't even do it. I promise you on my part I won't ask you same question again and be careful about the question similarities that you've mentioned. Love you Tim!
Question for Tim: What are the best approaches to gamifying non-combat aspects of adventuring that you'd care to point us (the audience) towards and are there any good breaches in that direction that you would like to praise? By non-combat aspects I mean (not trying to be systematic and provide an exhaustive list): negotiating the quest with a quest giver, collecting rumors, tracking, designing traps, planning an ambush, climbing, overland pursuit, deciphering cryptic glyphs, learning spells, constructing mechanical devices. By "gamifying" I mean - turning it into something more than an option in a game, but making it a full blown system. Potentially as something that's to be used as an option by the player in a classical RPG fashion. OR ALTERNATIVELY gamified in an ad hoc way that provides something to get "Zen" about. As in - using reflexes, hand-eye coordination, something time sensitive. An alternative to just clicking on an option, interface and gameplay-loop wise. I really hope you'll see this because it's the most interesting topic I can think of in the realm of game design! Cheers!
Hey Tim, I'm wondering what you think makes for good companion design in RPGs. You worked on a lot of games with companions. And I know you expressed some regret over how Fallout handled its companions. But I'm curious how you think it's done right. So things like, how much control players should have over companions in gameplay. How much influence the player should have over how companions develop skills, if it should be as robust as the player character creation, if the player should make a couple choices or if it should all be automated. How companions skills interact with game content. Balancing the utility of different companions. How the companions react to story content and other companions. How easy/hard it should be to miss companions or have companions leave the group. I know companions are a really big part of the appeal of RPGs and don't think they've been the focus of a video yet, so am curious what you'd have to say.
on skill levels, as far as "1-5, 1-100, etc.' I think it makes more sense to have an idea of what 'tiers' of skill you want the players to be able to experience low tier = no effectiveness with the skill medium tier = somewhat effective with the skill high tier = very effective with the skill and then from those tiers, figure out how much differentiation between those you want and how much 'effort' it takes to get from one tier to the other that sort of thing
Hey Tim, Since the numbers of abilities or spells that could be added into RPG's could be near limitless, what are some constraints or methods you use to trim a ability/spell list to maintain balance/theme/gameplay elements?
@@quatreraberbawinner2628 honestly I think it appealed to the people Bethesda wanted it too, but as a fan of the earlier games at the time of its release I was mainly dismayed by it having less RPG elements than ever, including the loss of skills.
Well perks are a more of a horizontal progression adding more unique ways to improve compared to skills especially if we're talking about the kind found in Fallout 1/2. This is really something you should look to Tim to answer there's nothing I could say that puts it better than he has in this and other videos 😂
Having worked in both gaming in the 80/90's and now modern gaming, I would really like to know your opinions and overall thoughts on modern gaming, things like game design, graphics is a big one since they have changed so drastically, even the way code is written and managed since you had to so conservative with memory back in the day.
As Chris Avellone had mentioned in a interview that: "Villains are best when they are just allies you haven't out debated/out maneuvered yet." Do you think the same way on writing an antagonist/is that the best way to write an antagonist? Like a rival effectually?
Should items/gears that you can buy increase your basic skills level, or should they give some other bonuses? I ran into a problem while designing my game - I have 8 skills in range to 25, and the items in my shop where giving points to those skills, and these items are also wear out. While play-testing I understood that they are useless, I better save money for direct skills upgrade ( through gym mini-game) rather then buy those items. So now I am questioning why I need those items at all… I guess they should give more valuable and unique bonuses maybe not even related to the skills for the context - I am doing racing game manager, and you can buy helmet for your driver
Do you have opinion on additive vs multiplicative player bonuses stacking, especially percentage based, like damage reduction? Is multiplicative too difficult for players or are devs too lazy and just go for additive?
Hi tim! Long time player and enjoyer of your games, how one get into game development if my skills aint suitable for making a demo? My art skills or programming/working with engines is nonexistent, i tried to learn to work with some engies but it's just a frustrating nightmare my ADHD brain refuses to deal with, but i have several game ideas with high detail, plot, have a good grasp of the mechanics, even UI elements, as learning about video games is something i love, basically if i got all the other game dev skills other than art and programming, how one get seen by studios to work with? (Fully accepting the game will change during development with insight from others in the team)
I still recommend making a demo. Use a game engine like Twine or Narrat, which are specifically made for making narrative games with RPG elements. No art or programming is needed.
@@CainOnGames Thanks! I'll check all of them, and in case somehow I get hired, how one makes sure no one crunches and how to manage development time to avoid last moment surprises? making games is fun and all, but not if it's done in an unhealthy work environment after all.
@LillyP-xs5qe That’s a great question and I wish I had a one-size-fits-all answer, but I don’t. My recommendation is to focus on getting a job, and take care of those details later.
Hi there Tim! I was wondering if you've ever played any mods for the classic Fallout games, such as Olympus for fo2. Are there any mods for any games you're fond of in particular? And if you could have, would you have made the classic fallouts more moddable?
Hey Tim, got a few questions for you. What new projects are you working on? And can you give out the code? Would love to use it for my projects. Also what are your thoughts on the unity price changes? Hehe 😉
Hi Tim, is us.. everyone. Your videos are amazing. This is great, what about the learn as you use model (like early elder scrolls) how would that fit in. your design for skills plan if at all. would you implement any critical fail / success system.
think about skills that grow from use, then activate perks at different stages wich then grow bý themself through use in different stages, like bow drawspeed 10-20-30 percent.. thats like perks naturallý get established through use rather than choose things for ýourself.. for example ýou use handguns so often that one daý ýou can dualwield them naturallý, and thats the reason whý.. not cause ýou just spend a magic point on it
its then a completlý different feel cause the goal is not the next level up.. its do what ýou love and get rewarded for exactlý that.. ýou than dont need level ups at all
Hey tim, Been watching for a while, recently my professor mentioned that we should try making connections with people in the industry, specficially people who work the places we want to work, from someone who's hired people, whats your perspective on the best way to get my foot in the door somewhere especially major studios?
You could try emailing the hiring manager at a studio you like, and explain that you’re a student looking at game studios. Several studios give tours to local schools, so you could do that too.
Hey Tim, can you please talk about the best OS to use in your experience for programming and designing, does it even matter for the user in those professional grounds?
Does anyone know what skills in video games that buff the player character and makes them stronger for several seconds maybe even 1 minute? Like berserkers rage like abilities what are the categories these skills are in called?
@Timothy Cain What is your opinion where is gaming going to head into the future? Do you think VR/AR is the next gen gaming experience or something completely different? What is your preferred way of consuming the games? PC I would guess?
Would you want to work for Bethesda to create a Fallout 5 or Spinoff? They keep inviting you to their launch parties so they like and respect your work. Surely they are working on something Fallout related or at least would be willing to green light New Vegas 2.
Im not them obviously but I dont think Bethesda has any plans for a new fallout spinoff (if the leaks from last year and their tolerance of megamods like FOLON are anything to go by) and FO5 itself wont be coming till at the very least after the starfield DLCs, TES6 and then the TES6 DLCs which likely puts it more than a decade down the line.
What is an example of a game that does not make the game easier as a means to make the player feel better at the game? When I get a more powerful weapon and as a result defeat enemies easier did I get better at the game or did the game become easier? I suggest that it was the game that became easier. Not sure how a developer would do that. I suppose that the old arcade game PacMan would be an example of the game not getting easier but actually getting harder. But a game like that is not interesting to me. Not enough world. I like rpg.
you've made comments previously about how you are a 'bad writer' and, I want to make a point: you may not be a good writer, but, you seem to have VERY GOOD story ideas I figure you know there is a difference between being able to 'write' literarily vs. create story ideas. good writers can often love good ideas to write with, and story is not to be confused with writing
imo there is a difference between where you are at in a game. If you are still "progressing" i agree with tims sentiments. If you get to the end of the game but are still looking for things to do, removing limiting caps on skills/stats can be a good way to incentivize further play. Just over the top, max everything to a 100. Your reward for progression should be feeling like a god walking in the developed world. A good non-rpg example would be guns with unlimited ammo in Resident Evil, awarded after X playthroughs or gathering X amount of Y
A system where you do not recieve any skill improvements for a character. If your character has skills for a specific situation, or requires expending resources. Those skills have more limited opportunity for use by a character. Those skills that have a more wide application would still be in demand. However, a very specialized low use skill would need a trade off making it worthwhile. There are many cases where if a player can determine the frequency of skill neccessaity. That player will more often opt to only take those skills. If the player is granted an opportunity to be selective on skill selection. In the situations I have seen this occur. There appears that developers on older titles. They may implement a separate play through for a player to experience this content. The balancing act for passive, active, reactive, and situational skill has a lot to do with the content. Pointless skills are never fun, and this is addressed by knowing the setting and story.
I feel like its quite hard to create a totally pointless skill, unless its something extremely specific. But with extremely specific skills you end up with having too many in the first place. If its a CRPG you cant have too many otherwise theres not gonna be enough content/time to implement them all in a satisfying way. Ideally every skill should have a passive, active, reactive, and situational application.
@@IEEEE50 I know of a game that usually results in a player having over 100 skill/spells. You are right about implementation of large number of skills. Where there are some that are nonessential, and the actual use for them is very low. I however find it satisfying having that many options. The main reason is for alternative play styles. There is always going to be a meta. People usually play the meta. However, when I can stray from the meta, and still meet the requirements to succeed. I enjoy this immensely, yet its very rare I see this done. The more choices, then there is more to balance and give purpose.
@@josephpurdy8390 Agreed, however i find the thought of meta little bit deceptive. From a roleplay perspective why wouldn't my character whom has a wealth of options not choose the means which makes him most likely to survive? If you have a setting with readily available firearms then why would i ever pick up a sword.(or spend XP on learning to use it). Which leaves me with the POV that there ought to be a meta choice, the most effective way of doing something, but have it be predictable or easy to counter. If heavily armoured knights are the most capable way of fighting in your setting have it be common place that defenders have means to counter them. (Defending/fighting where horseback is difficult or impossible, fight where theres terrain thats difficult to move around in the bulk of armour, pick them off with archers, have spells wizards created specifically to deal with the problem)
Tim, everyone knows million dollar ideas are cheap, but few people describe their idea in terms of budget rather than profit. What's your billion dollar budget idea? It must be an interactive game-like experience, and must eventually make the money back whether it's five years or a hundred.
Hey, I am very curious what you think about the skill system of Disco Elysium. I know you said you don’t review games, so forgive me if you think this is that kind of question. Have a nice day!
they aren't skills as much as they are abilities that give extra insight into the mind of the writer/creators as you the player bumble along getting played (the game plays YOU) worst game I've played in a lonnnng time was very excited for it, PS:T is my favorite game finally went to play DE a few weeks ago, and... one of the worst games ever written by a clueless pseudo-intellectual nihilist painful, horrendous, despicable
@@user-ih5jr8rt5q It really depends on whether or not you like the writing or not. If you find their writing style insufferable i can imagine why you hated it. The critisim of the skills simply being insight into things that the writer has predetermined to be insightful/interesting is fair however you could say the same about other CRPGs where you require a certain skill to preform a certain action specifically the way the developer intended. In that respect you arent really making decisions with your skills there either your just taking the path the developer created for people who picked those skills. DE is kind of the same except theres only one path you just learn different things depending on your skills.
I Personally quite like the DE skill system, the game is more comparable to a visual novel than a CRPG in my opinion. I like that the way my character perceived the world was coloured by the skills i chose for him. I also think that seperating the skills into 4 subcategories was inspired and does away with a bit of the DND "Well i rolled these stats so i guess thats what im doing!".
no the way the character sees the world is determined by the writer's 6th grade understanding of the world/society etc. and their mocking of ALL of everything reducing all to a nihilist vapidness coated in a sophomoric pseudo-intellectual pretense @@IEEEE50
it's not ';the writing' that is insufferable, it's passable as far as writing skills go@@IEEEE50 learn to read better the ideas behind the writing, eetc.
Theres a lot of rpgs about class conflict but ive yet to see one about slave morality and master morality, would be interesting. The value system would be different for each so signaling wealth could boost your reputation with the wealthy but nerf your reputation with chirstians and envious and leftist people,vice versa. A world were reputation is so sensitive it becomes a constant part of gameplay, like our own 👾
Trying to implement something like this in my RPG called "Identity" which is based off your characters previous life up to the point you started controlling them. It is a skill which can apply negatives or positive modifiers to actions depending on the demographic you are interacting with. For example a criminal character might have an easy time socialising with thugs and shady people but have a hard time socialising with by the books types like law enforcement or bureaucrats.
dum and restrictive and is only a means for you to use as a tool/vehicle to push your own understandings of such dynamics and how they should go stop stop stop use behavioral psychology as a means to understand, stop PERPETUATIING stereotypes as if it's the same as archetypes FFS society is doooomed btw this fuhkery is a prime example
10:45 restricting a player from doing something before reaching a certain arbitrary character level is killing player creativity. Strongly disapprove. Let people do their crazy things.
@@elio7610 to be a part of player progression system. Bear with me, fallout 1 through 3 and NV allows you to put all your skill points into one skill maxing it out early. Say it is lockpicking. If you want so you are free to become expert in this skill by level 5 or 6. Now no lock is a challenge for you. Fallout 4 otoh says "screw you, you won't be able to open certain locks until a certain level". This is what I hear in Tim's words, and this is what I'm arguing against.
@@badunius_code Do you mean mean "level" is a requirement in addition to "skill" stat"? I thought you meant that players shouldn't need to increase anything.
@@elio7610 in Tim's own words "and you don't want the player to be able to pass a hard skill check until a certain level". _This_ is terrible. And this is exactly what fallout 4 did. You may encounter tier 3 locks early on, but you won't be able yo unlock them until level 20 (or something).
