Hi all.

It's old man locke here. Since we are experiencing a bit of a slowdown in the traffic, I thought I'd give up a little rant about one of the more popular components of RPGs, the Skill system.

For many games, the "skill" system has a different name, and often skills and magic are tied together, but all-in-all, a skill system of some sort is almost a key ingredient to RPG stew.

I spend a lot of my time debating systems... combat systems, skill systems, advancement/leveling systems... and skill systems are the ones that I have the most trouble being creative with. It's hard to come up with a truly new and unique way to give "special abilities" to player-characters. But since it's such an integral part of RPGs, I figure it's a puzzle worth pursuing.

Thus this discussion. One of the thoughts I've had... and one way I've implemented skill systems in the past is to eliminate the "choose it from a list" syndrome entirely. If you replace the "skill point", menu driven monotony that we see in many games now-a-days, you can lead players on a new kind of adventure, and something that hasn't been done much in recent games.

Something I've been working on for a while is the idea of having individual skills available through questing. In order for a character to gain a skill he/she must find the trainer for the skill, which may in itself, involve a quest. By wrapping the acquisition of the skill in a quest you generate an opportunity to develop your story, provide custom content for a particular type of character (class/race/whatever), and give the character a unique reward for adventure. Let's do an example.

Say you have a warrior class... very common. High fantasy warriors usually hold a sword and shield, and run around lopping the heads off of evil doers. It's classic. Typically (for example), when you turn level 4 you get "kick" or "bash" or some other skill that enhances combat in one way or another. This could be a skill selected from a list when you ding to level 4 ("you've earned 4 skill points!") or it might be given automagically at level 4 to all warriors ("you learn 'kick'!"). Blah. Let's mix it up a bit.

Let's say when you ding level 4, you get a note from a grizzled old mercenary who says "I've heard good things about you. Come to my hut in the Swamp of No Hope and I'll help you stomp heads better!" So now you have a quest. You might dig it, you might not... but either way, you need to earn it. And earning it is fun! So you enter the Swamp of No Hope, and you wander around killing Giant Lizards and other such things, gaining XP and enjoying yourself, when you stumble across a hut. You go into the hut and the old man says "What took you so long?!"

After a brief chat, he offers to teach you the "Kick" skill. You do, and you are on your way... empowered to introduce your boot to some of those Giant Lizards!

Now let's say... at level 8 you get two messages. One from a Mage in a city far away, and one from a knight of the local kingdom. One offers a special ability -- a simple 'heal' spell -- very useful to a warrior. The other offers a strategic skill "empower", which, if cast before combat, gives you an offensive boost. Now let's say you think to yourself... I'll be smart. I'll do BOTH! So you run off to the Mage's place, and once you get there, she gives you a quest: You must bring her an Enchanted Egg from the King's private stash. Hmm... that might make it so that the knights don't like you much. So you go to the knight and he offers you a quest to slay a "rogue Mage!"... guess who?!?!

Give the player a reason to make choices, and the results will be more valuable. Perhaps you offer the chance to obtain the other option later on through more plot. Perhaps you don't. I wouldn't... but that's another story! Cause and effect are what games are all about. Give them choices, but make the choices count... particularly as they progress. Let them open a door, but make it cost them the chance to open a different door. Again, another story. heh.

Anyway.. you get where I'm going with this. Imagine a scenario where every skill was distributed via a hand crafted quest. You could control it with "notes" and "letters" and other such timed medium... or... you could allow the content to control who has access. If you want to allow a level 20 player to get the "Rend" ability, put the "Rend quest" in an area that only a level 20 player could get to!

Bottom line, use your imagination. There are new way to approach old gameplay mechanics, and the power of VERGE 3 let's us do it our way.

Any thoughts? What are you new skill system (or any other system's) ideas?

-locke

That was me.

SaGa Frontier's skill system was brilliant in its simplicity and sheer awesomeness. Human characters learned new techniques on the spot, more frequently in desperate situations. In particular, they would learn 'counter' skills in response to being attacked. This was particularly interesting when you threw the combo system into the mix. (same idea as Chrono Trigger et al)

It's a real thrill to see the big boss wind up for a killing blow, only to see your hero spontaneously evade and counter the attack. Additionally, the system actively encourages players to go through the game on the 'ragged edge' (ie not powerleveled), which happens to be way more entertaining than breezing through the game at level 99. (either that, or I'm the only person alive who thinks that most RPGs are more fun when you are just barely surviving)

I really liked the side quests in FF5 also. It was one of the coolest parts of the game. Chrono Trigger, also had a similar set up, but you only got weapons. FF5 lets you get cool spells and cool weapons.

About the SaGa Series: The only thing that really bugged me about them was that you had to equip abilities into limited slots. It's pretty stupid if you ask me. Of course, having to equip abilities does offer a bit of extra strategy, but really it is more an annoying limitation then an opportunity to deepen tactics. Ideally, once you learn something you should always be able to use it. Another thing that annoys me is that most attacks are just upgraded versions of other ones. Unlimited SaGa did offer a novel solution to that problem though.

There certainly should be some things in RPGs that are unique to one character or class, or can only be gotten threw particular conditions. It does kind of nag at me when things are "missable" though. Maybe I am just a perfectionist. Luckily, that’s what NewGame+ is for.

This goes back to Hahn's comment about mutual exclusivity. It's a Good Thing.

No, mutual exclusivity would be like SaGa Frontier and Romancing SaGa's Spell system where you can't learn conflicting types. A similar tech system would do well too. But forcing you to only equip X techs, when you can easily arrange them before a battle anyway, is stupid. I am all for strategic mutual exclusivity, but not for dumb arrange-your-skill-set-for-each-boss crap.

Personally, I like "branch"-type ability systems, like SaGa Frontier's. Where if you have a certain ability (ex. "Punch") it leads to another new ability (ex."Bright Fist"). The new abiltity that you gain should depend on what other skills you have as well as your equipment. (Though I think SF's is very random - only depending on you to have one ability, and using the weapon type that learns that ability). This idea plus the tech idea from either Chrono game would make a kick ass battle system. If it were to go even more in depth, it would be awesome if every single technique could be combined with another - and not relying on timing and agility, like SaGa Frontier.

Heh, just my idea. But, I think that would be a cool plan.

SO2's skill system was pretty neat. Except there were a lot of skills I never used, like cooking, since I could find items that would be just as good as if I made it myself.

Er... Wait, isn't that specialities or something..? Sorry, haven't played it in a long while, because the voice-overs got to me.