Fringe on 15/4/2006 at 06:33
I thought not dying was rewarding the player for powerful single blows as opposed to swinging rusty daggers.
Pisces on 15/4/2006 at 09:57
Exactly, by the logic of more damage=more experiance then doing sneak attacks will give you lots of experiance but slitting somebody's throat from behind doesn't help you duel with a master swordsman (except in the sneak experiance you've learnt). Attacking somebody with a rusty/wooden dagger disadvantages you and teachs you to try to optimise damage, control your attacks etc. which WILL help you when fighting a tough monster which makes your daedric shortsword seem like a butter knife. If you can kill something quickly, good for you, that will help you survive but balancewise, you don't need any more experiance and you shouldn't reward a player just for having a big weapon.
In another example, 2 enemies, same amount of health but one is wearing armour; you are going to learn more off fighting the wearing armour which is represented by the per hit system not the other.
Phatose on 15/4/2006 at 10:27
You're totally ignoring the power attack vs. regular attack motif. Swinging like a madman gets you more XP then calculated blows. This neither makes 'sense' - a lunatic swinging crazily isn't learning to fight, he's learning to swing like a lunatic - nor does it make for interesting gameplay, as the most effective XP gaining tacting is simply to click like a madman.
Not dying would be an 'advantage' if it weren't for the obvious fact people are doing this on mudcrabs and goblins and the like - creatures which pose no real threat. Not to mention that given the general fact you can make two weak blows roughly equivalent to one powerful blow in the same time it takes to make that one powerful blow, even that advantage is illusionary at best.
The practical upshot of this system is that the best way to gain xp in a skill is to get a heal others spell and a weak weapon, then find some poor chump who couldn't hurt you if you were asleep, then click, click, click away.
That's giving rewards for boring gameplay, not exciting gameplay. Linking it to damage, while not ideal and certainly not without it's own set of problems, at least gives the player a reason to get out there and fight the big bads, wield the powerful swords - do all the things that make a game fun to play, instead of rewarding the player who sits back and clicks the mudcrab all day and all night. A game is supposed to be fun, and the rewards should be achieved by doing fun things - not through tests of patience.
And as a note, linking it to damage isn't actually rewarding the player for having a bigger weapon in the long run. If I kill a mudcrab with a dagger, the mudcrab has as many hitpoints as it does if I kill it with a hammer of absolute doom. Same damage done either way, thus same XP. Now, the hammer of absolute doom will kill it quicker, and allow a player to move on the the next target faster - but that's why a hammer of doom is a treasure. Indeed, you *SHOULD* reward a player for having a big magic weapon of doom - that's why they're used as treasure and quest rewards.
The goal of combat in this game is to do damage - attaching XP gains to damage would allow a player to focus on the goal they should be focusing on anyway, without having to worry about being penalized for it.
And all the metalogic about learning more from using crappy weapons - that's a load of bullshit. Swinging away at a mudcrab with a rusty dagger would teach one precisely jack shit about how to score an effective hit against an armored, trained swordsman. Indeed, learning how to swing a dagger better at all isn't going to help you when you switch to a claymore. Yet, these this is exactly what happens - which is why attempting to use that kind of logic to justify a gameplay motif fails. The whole system falls apart the second you actually look at it like that. The only reasonable approach is to see it as a gameplay element, and treat it to maximize fun - logic be damned, because face it, it was damned from the get go.
Pisces on 15/4/2006 at 11:22
Quote Posted by Phatose
The goal of combat in this game is to do damage - attaching XP gains to damage would allow a player to focus on the goal they should be focusing on anyway, without having to worry about being penalized for it.
And all the metalogic about learning more from using crappy weapons - that's a load of bullshit. Swinging away at a mudcrab with a rusty dagger would teach one precisely jack shit about how to score an effective hit against an armored, trained swordsman. Indeed, learning how to swing a dagger better at all isn't going to help you when you switch to a claymore. Yet, these this is exactly what happens - which is why attempting to use that kind of logic to justify a gameplay motif fails. The whole system falls apart the second you actually look at it like that. The only reasonable approach is to see it as a gameplay element, and treat it to maximize fun - logic be damned, because face it, it was damned from the get go.
I train in medieval weapons, guess what we use, crappy wooden swords or blunt metal ones. Now if we were actaully killing somebody in the act it would not teach me more because then I wouldn't be able to score multiple attacks which is what DOES teach me. While given that attacking a mudcrab probably wouldn't teach you very much but not would attacking 10 mudcrabs which in the damage system would do the same XP as a armoured swordsman, that a problem with game system, neither system fixes that. Likewise in my real life weapons training, learning dagger actaully does help me with a claymore but you just pointed out a problem with the new weapon classifications. One hitting an enemy isn't going to teach you anything because if you did it once you can do it 1000 times, doing something 1000 times however is how you train in real life.
Gameplay: You say hit-based training is boring but all damage based XP does is cut out training. You train so you can kill tougher monsters better, forcing them to fight tougher monsters to train is something they could have done in hit-based but now they don't have the option to train rather than just fight. Hit-based still rewards you more for killing tougher opponent because it takes more hits, but they can disadvantage themselves if they want to train quickly. If you do damage based than you can no longer train quickly and to train you have find lots of low damage, high health, low armour opponents. If you want to remove the desire for training and make the game more exciting then just increase the rate you gain skill.
BlackCapedManX on 18/4/2006 at 20:45
I'd have to jump in the perhit>perdmg boat.
Honestly, you don't need a $20,000 shinken to practice with to learn how to fight with a sword when a $500 iaito will have the same balance and weight and just be much less usefull in battle.
You don't learn how to fight by getting in a bar brawl and kicking the guy once in the groin with a pair of steel toed boots like you would after years of boxing practice in a controled ring.
And you don't learn how to shoot guns by launching missiles at cars, just because the explosion is bigger.
Granted, swinging widly probably isn't going to help, but it's closer to realistic than learning by doing more damage. I learn more when I make a dozen shitty paintings than I do with one really really good one, and they may not count for as much, but they teach me more. Fighting with wooden sticks will teach you more about how to kill someone in 2.5 secs than slashing at big targets with an axe (this is true, there's a a Philipino guy in Virginia Beach who teaches the FBI and special agents and such how to knife fight [he has been apparently recorded as being able to stab a man over 200 times in a minute, and he can move faster than anyone I've ever fucking seen, including videos of Bruce Lee actually training] and he trained with a friend of his with sticks and basically just beat the hell out of each other).
On the other hand I think it's really dumb that the trainers teach you how to fight by standing there going: "stab left, duck.... now thrust... jump! There, you've got it!" If I could stand around all day and yell attacking words to get better at swordplay... fuck I'd be the greatest fighter ever.
Also I think you can raise your bow ability by shooting at corpses, because I definately got a lvl up after shooting a dead clannfear (I had nocked the arrow already and I needed to put it somewhere...)
mrPither on 18/4/2006 at 22:12
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
... spells are per successful cast.
So, as I move up from using "weak fireball" to, say, "flame bolt", I'll do more damage but my progress in Destruction skill slows considerably since less casting is needed. Great.
I understand the need to make the advancement in skills progressively more difficult, but this is not very satisfying solution. The better spells you use, the less you progress. No wonder my Illusion skill has shot up like a rocket since I learned the "starlight" spell. I keep using it all the time.
Time to wipe the dust from the good old "flare", and start roasting some minotaurs. It should not be (much) more than 50 or so hits per kill.
Phatose on 19/4/2006 at 01:48
I simply disagree here.
Common sense simply cannot be applied. It's sensible if using a wooden practice katana will train you as much per swing as a real one. It's even sensible that a prolonged battle with a wooden katana will teach you more.
What's not so sensible is that a very prolonged battle with a butter knife will teach you more about using a katana then either one. Or that trained power attacks teach you less then swinging like a lunatic. Common sense simply isn't applicable from the get go.
And simply raising the learning level wouldn't cut out training. It would just have a different set of balancing problems. Now the sword guy is gonna gain at an appropriate pace, but the knife guy is just going to overlevel. The problem isn't the magnitude - it's the relationship between the different rates of leveling for weapons in the same class.
And yes, I would absolutely love to cut out 'training' - it's just old level grinding, and that stat junky in me who thought level grinding was a good use of game time died a while back when I realized how mind numbingly boring it was. It's clear from the attempts at the leveled enemies and loot that the devs realized this too and were trying to make the game something other then a level grinding experience. Pity it worked out so badly.
Lacerta on 19/4/2006 at 09:08
I happen to think that the system works. Fair enough, the more swings you take the quicker you level up, and that theoretically using a blunt dagger against a mudcrab perhaps shouldn't get you more experience than a nice shiny magical blade against a daedra prince. But people seem to be forgetting that as you level up you get better, and even with the blunt dagger you'll still kill a mudcrab in a couple of hits at most, so you'll improve more by fighting stronger enemies (as you'll be able to hit them more often). Added to that - the enemies get stronger as you level up, so you'll still have to hit them several times even with your nice shiny sword. If you choose to attack the daedra with your blunt dagger then that's your choice and a little bit silly - you should expect to be hurt for trying to abuse the system in order to level up quicker. Of course the system is going to be "unrealistic", it's a computer game - at least it's not a case of "well you've killed 10,000 gold worth of bad guys, you're now two points stronger". And if you abuse the system, taking on big bad guys using pathetic weapons, of course it's going to be even more unrealistic.
:)
SD on 23/4/2006 at 23:27
Quote Posted by Phatose
Swinging like a madman gets you more XP then calculated blows. This neither makes 'sense' - a lunatic swinging crazily isn't learning to fight, he's learning to swing like a lunatic - nor does it make for interesting gameplay, as the most effective XP gaining tacting is simply to click like a madman.
News at 11: computer game fails to accurately reflect real-life. More on this breaking story as we get it.
Phatose on 24/4/2006 at 03:54
Quote:
As for whether or not per swing makes sense - well, simply put, I'd say no. A man who kills a wolf, swingy wildly with 30 swings from a wooden dagger gains more xp then a man who studies a dremora, waits for an opening, and kills it with one swing. Really though, it's a moot point anyway - putting gameplay mechanics to a common sense test will always result in a fail before too long. Evaluating them as anything other then gameplay mechanics is waste of time.
Quote:
And all the metalogic about learning more from using crappy weapons - that's a load of bullshit. Swinging away at a mudcrab with a rusty dagger would teach one precisely jack shit about how to score an effective hit against an armored, trained swordsman. Indeed, learning how to swing a dagger better at all isn't going to help you when you switch to a claymore. Yet, these this is exactly what happens - which is why attempting to use that kind of logic to justify a gameplay motif fails. The whole system falls apart the second you actually look at it like that. The only reasonable approach is to see it as a gameplay element, and treat it to maximize fun - logic be damned, because face it, it was damned from the get go.
11 O'Clock came early today.
