Tactica Suggest a Skill

Tactica: Maiden of Faith
I don't mind, because that I did open the can of worms again. :p

With a budget ranging in the millions of dollars and a team of professionals, leaving a potion or sword which renders much of the game moot is a bad design.

My project personally randomly generates most loot, and even the few artifact weapons a) won't be powerful enough to do much to help a weak player beat the game, b) will be worthless without having skill to use it, because weapons never affect attack rolls, and c) are challenges to even find, much less acquire. It will take a sheer stroke of luck to find a weapon to do what you've described, and it'll still require playing through the game because you won't be able to use the bloody thing.

Language skills can be used to open up an entirely different path; I think I mentioned that. Relying on that one trick pony though, won't make for an interesting game. As with anything, it makes it worthwhile only if it's in addition to traditional methods. The reason things are done as they are is simply because it works to create a fun game.

A no name cartographer managing to get hired to explore and map an area by a kind because of his mediocre maps sold to peasants isn't well grounded in common sense. The King would already have a favored explorer for such duties, or would commission a military operation for that purpose. And it would be a stretch just to give that skill some use beyond the automap.

Again, you won't manage to make me feel that certain skills are more than tertiary skills; and not worth having to design and balance a system of measured advancement for it. So we'll again have to agree to disagree.


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I assume that people consider those skills "useless skills" which they don't believe lead them to effective kind of (game-) play.

On the reverse, this means that for them, "playing" is = "becoming more and more effective".

To me, this is rather becoming devoid of the "game" / "play" point of view.

A game is a game as long as you can play it.

"Becoming more and more effective" [as a character, for example] is no "play" to me, in the most elementary sense of the word "playing", but instead it is to me what I know as "power leveling" or "munchkin" style of behaviour.

Becoming more andmore effective as a character in a game is to me nothing but a tool. A simple tool which supports gamneplay, or just "playing [around]" in the most basic sense of the word/verb "to play".

Others, however, especuially in REAL LIFE, consider "becoming more & more effective" as a way to gain power, to impress others, like "but I've got a bigger car than you have".

In this case "to play" has been replaced by "to have" or by "to be more effective than others". (Than monsters in a game, for example, through the stats of strength.)

So, what we have here are totally different styles of "playing", which might look similar at the first glance, but have different underlying motivations.

- levelling up as a tool to have easier gameplay (by having a better skill to detect traps and/or treasures chests, for example)
- levelling up as a means to be more powerful than others within the game (than monsters, for example)

Unfortunately this "becoming more effective and thus more powerful than others" playing style have been spread so much via MMORPGs, so that this is the only widely accepted style of gameplay left. Grinding just supports this kind of game-playing style, imho.

That's in my opinion the reason why some people consider some skills as "useless". They merely consider the "becoming more effective, thus more powerful" aspect of the game, like the "I've got a bigger car than thou" kind/way of thinking.

The "just playing around" style of game-playing is eradicated by this speading philosophy of how RPGs should look like and what kind of skills they should include.
 
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I assume that people consider those skills "useless skills" which they don't believe lead them to effective kind of (game-) play.
<snip>
If this is still about the cartography example, it's not that it's useless, but that it can become useless if not done correctly. I would compare it to, for example, two different skills: Sword and Mace, but after you play the game you realize there are no good swords in the game so you always select mace for your character. That's an example of a skill (even combat-wise) that is made useless or obsolete because of metagaming.
The problem comes when you have 10 skill points to distribute, why waste any skill point in swords if you know you won't use it?
I'm not saying that cartography is a useless skill, but that it could be if not done properly, that's why I mentioned that an example of a way to make it not useless is to add randomized things to maps (or even randomized maps), that way cartography would be a useful skill no matter what.
 
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There should be a class "liberal hippie"

restrictions: no use of armor, no use of weapon. only talking

you get xp when you get hit.

eventually, when you got hit enough, and have gathered enough xp, you can choose to change class and get a real "profession".

skill: bribe: you talk yourself out of about 50% of all situations. therefore you have to discuss and have to choose several lines properly. If you say something wrong, you have to pay more gold. If you say something wrong too often, your opponent becomes insulted and will attack. dodge, run and try again. yet the money you used for your first bribing attempt should be gone. If the game mechanics allows, your opponent will buy some better weapon from it. Try to bribe again and choose the "right" answers now (=obey and submit and pay).

Gather money by steal (another skill), yet in a fashion that you have dialogues with random (good) NPCs and convince them to give you money, or otherwise "bad things will happen" (which means not threatingen them with physical force, but pretend that, for example, "the earth will get warmer and we will all drown in the seas!" so they have to give you the money voluntarily, more or less).

-> so basically distribution of money in the game world from good to bad via the character. possible prestige classes/advancements: "liberal non-government worker" - "liberal government worker" - "liberal politician" - "liberal messiah" (highst class, gain much money from peasants and npcs and talk and bribe yourself out of about 90% of situations)
 
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I am very tired right now but i would like to see something similar to the enchanter in EQ1. I think Wiz8 actually had a class similar to this, but it didn't quite peak my interest as much as the whole crowd control and mana regeneration skillset that EQ1 had.

I would add more to this, but I cannot recall much of EQ1 (I know this is not a mmo or anything like that).

I have yet to see a class matrix or skillset as of yet though; I hardly know the theme right now, but that is my 2 cents :)
 
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