PC Thoughts on skills, XP and perks

[Sethiel]

There are actually 2 separate things that we keep mixing.

First, skills are improved by spending points gotten by earning some general XP. My opinion on this is, it's not ideal, it's a bit too videogame-y, it lacks some of the beauty of LBD, but in the end, is quite satisfying, still does the job very well (you improve the skills you want to improve) and probably is much easier to balance. There was a time the perk system was like this and I enjoyed it a lot.

Second, organizing these skills/perks into "archetypes", nonsensical groups with artificial dependencies. This is just way, way, way too videogame-y for my taste. You simply don't get better with sniper rifles before you put points into perception. But, to get better with handguns, perception does nothing, instead put points into agility. Wut? Let's put the farming perks into fortitude tree. Why? Is it because you farm better if you can take a hit from zombies? Nope ... we just need something put into this tree, because we decided to make trees. They don't quite make sense, so the prerequisites won't make sense either, but whatever.

 

[ktr]

This. With LBD, you don't need to learn any artificial perk or skill tree to know how to get better at something. You just do it. And you are never asked to live with terrible dependencies, like you need to get stronger to cook better meals.

Not quite true. Many LBD systems utilize perks, but perks are typically locked behind the LBD level of a particular skill and, sometimes, locked behind the level of multiple skills. If I want the perk, then yes, I am terribly dependent on the skills and their levels to get that perk whether or not those skills are ones I care to level or not. Steel smithing was similar to this for me A16. I typically didn't start building reliably until mid game. But I did (and still do) heavily use the bow. Steel smithing also locked steel arrows which I very much wanted. I wanted the base arrows, the flaming arrows, and especially the sweet, sweet exploding bolts, but to get them I had to have so many levels of I believe Tool Smithing, what ever the building skill was called, and something else.

So there I'd go, doing things I didn't particularly care to do (upgrading random POIs) in order to get the thing I actually wanted.

tl;dr - LBD often has artificial gates and is far from immune to being riddled with them.

That is my main, and honestly, the only real issue with the perk system compared to the LBD. It forces you, more or less, to meta-game. And that is, by definition, immersion breaking.

How does it force it? My play style has not changed much from A16 to A17-18. If anything my playstyle is now 'more organic' than it has ever been. I pay far less attention to the exp bar than I did the multiple xp bars of LBD. Yes, that may just be me, or those like me, and it's perfectly fine that other people have a different experience. What I do mean is that LBD isn't some king of progression that makes video games 'better than' other systems. And it certainly does not prevent meta gaming at all.

 

[alphaniner]

Steel smithing also locked steel arrows which I very much wanted. I wanted the base arrows, the flaming arrows, and especially the sweet, sweet exploding bolts, but to get them I had to have so many levels of I believe Tool Smithing, what ever the building skill was called, and something else.

As a fellow archer, IMO part of the problem here is that requiring steel heads for the flaming and exploding arrows is just a kludge to make them harder to craft. One of the first modifications I made was changing the recipes to require iron heads.

How does it force it? My play style has not changed much from A16 to A17-18. If anything my playstyle is now 'more organic' than it has ever been. I pay far less attention to the exp bar than I did the multiple xp bars of LBD. Yes, that may just be me, or those like me, and it's perfectly fine that other people have a different experience. What I do mean is that LBD isn't some king of progression that makes video games 'better than' other systems. And it certainly does not prevent meta gaming at all.

I must be pathologically anti-meta gaming, because I was viscerally shocked (and frankly, disgusted) when I first learned that meta gaming character progression was even a thing. So much so, that I can still remember what game I was playing and the circumstances I was in when I made that sickening discovery. :yuck:

The point being that I'm definitely not an authority on meta gaming. But it seems to me that meta gaming character progression is much easier in XP systems than LBD systems. Which makes it more likely that players will do it, which in turn makes it more likely that games will come to be designed around it (to varying degrees, whether intentionally or not).

So it's not so much forced as encouraged IMO. Except in PvP, where its viral nature essentially does force it.

 

[RestInPieces]

Not quite true. Many LBD systems utilize perks, but perks are typically locked behind the LBD level of a particular skill and, sometimes, locked behind the level of multiple skills. If I want the perk, then yes, I am terribly dependent on the skills and their levels to get that perk whether or not those skills are ones I care to level or not. Steel smithing was similar to this for me A16. I typically didn't start building reliably until mid game. But I did (and still do) heavily use the bow. Steel smithing also locked steel arrows which I very much wanted. I wanted the base arrows, the flaming arrows, and especially the sweet, sweet exploding bolts, but to get them I had to have so many levels of I believe Tool Smithing, what ever the building skill was called, and something else.

So there I'd go, doing things I didn't particularly care to do (upgrading random POIs) in order to get the thing I actually wanted.

tl;dr - LBD often has artificial gates and is far from immune to being riddled with them.

Your example involves a case of badly distributed perks and is not strictly a LBD problem. The same thing happened with the perk system too in A17, that's why the devs revamped it in A18 and moved the weapon crafting perks to different trees, to represent different playstyles, because people in the same way didn't want to always invest in e.g. INT to play as an archer. They never made much of an effort to do that in LBD, like for example adding the arrow/bolt perks to the weapon activity itself.

Even when LBD bonuses are carefully distributed so that the player gets what they want from their playstyle, the perk system allows you to instantly reap the advanced benefits of any activity that is irrelevant to your playstyle without ever partaking in it. That's its advantage but it's also a disadvantage at the same time, because the game encourages a rather linear gameplay path. It also gives leeway to the devs to let any activities that are tedious and boring, be exactly that, because the player can always partially "skip" them. This is the real problem and it is much deeper than the perk or LBD systems. But the point is that a good distribution of perks can do wonders for LBD as well.

And it certainly does not prevent meta gaming at all.

Nothing completely prevents meta gaming, but the state LBD was in, did nothing to promote organic gameplay -- quite the opposite. That didn't have to be the case, had they made any serious effort to balance it.

 

[Roland]

I don’t think it’s easier. It’s just more boring.

 

[BobTheBard]

Second, organizing these skills/perks into "archetypes", nonsensical groups with artificial dependencies.

This is my only real issue with the current perk system. The way skills are grouped is so blatantly artificial and illogical that it detracts from the experience, and any playstyle that is derived from them seems fake and forced.

It wouldn't be perfect either, but a more sensible idea (in my opinion) would be to organize the skills by their basic function rather than by the arbitrary stat system and change it so that getting higher perks requires more points while the 'stats' become a more general catch-all. Something like this: Instead of Strength, Perception, Agility, Fortitude, and Intelligence, you have Gathering, Construction, Movement, Trade, and Weapons, and rather than the 'stat' having 10 levels of increasing expense it had 5 levels of 1-point gains that were offset by the perks costing increasingly more points (something like 1/1/2/2/3). This would, in my opinion, encourage a more solid foundation of basic skills (from the cheap, broad 'stat' bonuses) followed by specializations in whatever the player really preferred using. As it is now, the extremely high investment required to reach 10 (or even 7) in a stat often locks you into one of those artificial playstyles because it's much, much more efficient to go for, say, Club perks after reaching Strength 10 for mining purposes than it is to use a knife or a spear. The idea I present would largely do away with that since the barriers to diversification are a lot lower and it's the specialty itself that's expensive.

 

[Kubikus]

How does it force it?

You're being forced to study the perks to begin with. But it goes further, because it is quite reasonable to buy a lot of perks of the same skill-section (like perception, agility, and so on). Because to unlock perks, you have to buy skill-section levels, which are expensive. And that is (probably) why skills, that seem related, are spread over different sections, such as the differen firearms. Common sense says that rifle, shotgun, pistol belong to the same skill set. But it's spread over all of them. Why? So you don't get good with all these weapons but focus on creating a "build".
With LBD, you can just use any weapon you wish and can get better with it as you wish.

Also, another problem of perks is that each next perks becomes more expensive. You have to gather more and more xp for the next level, so when you are level 50, the next perk will be a lot more expensive than the first couple. Makes you really consider what you spend it on, which would lead me to never buy anything that isn't essential, such as all the cooking skills or archery. That also feels like you are forced not to learn/improve these things if you want to play intelligently.