Skill Check Problems

[Kid Gloves]

Why is it that skill checks get progressively harder as the game goes along for actions that are essentially the same thing?

Jump a gap in Act 1 : athletics +10 check.
Jump an identical gap in Act 3 : athletics -50 check.

Why?!

This game isn't the only one guilty of doing this, but it is guilty.

[REhorror]

It's an Owlcat game.
It doesn't scale to your level.

And no, it's NOT guilty for doing so, you are free to lower the difficulty if you find it too hard, they even give you the options.

[Hanabi]

Originally posted by Kid Gloves:

Why is it that skill checks get progressively harder as the game goes along for actions that are essentially the same thing?

Jump a gap in Act 1 : athletics +10 check.
Jump an identical gap in Act 3 : athletics -50 check.

Why?!

This game isn't the only one guilty of doing this, but it is guilty.

REhorror's a troll who like flaming people. Take what he says with a grain of salt.

I agree with you, the game doesn't talk about the increasing thresh-holds much or really go into the new rule systems enough to tell you what is a good number of skill to have for your average skill checks. So you flat never know what you're facing.

In act 3 though they didn't really think these things through, or how many debuffs you'd have most of the act. That's on them and will require some balance adjusting. The game is still very much in development, that's just how owlcat games work. By this time next year it should be much simpler to understand and better balanced.

[REhorror]

Oh so I'm a troll because you can't handle downplaying the difficulty when it's too much for you.

[Kid Gloves]

Originally posted by REhorror:

It's an Owlcat game.
It doesn't scale to your level.

And no, it's NOT guilty for doing so, you are free to lower the difficulty if you find it too hard, they even give you the options.

If it didn't scale to my level, the act 1 check should also be -50, or the act 3 check +10.

I'm not asking for everything to be easy, I'm asking for consistency. What we have is arbitrarily harder skill checks because you're higher level now. It's a very clunky 'did you invest skill poiints in....?' check, but it's on what feels like every single check.

Arbitrary difficulty bump because it's a later act? How is that 'not scaling with level' ?

[REhorror]

Originally posted by Kid Gloves:

Originally posted by REhorror:

It's an Owlcat game.
It doesn't scale to your level.

And no, it's NOT guilty for doing so, you are free to lower the difficulty if you find it too hard, they even give you the options.

If it didn't scale to my level, the act 1 check should also be -50, or the act 3 check +10.

I'm not asking for everything to be easy, I'm asking for consistency. What we have is arbitrarily harder skill checks because you're higher level now. It's a very clunky 'did you invest skill poiints in....?' check, but it's on what feels like every single check.

Arbitrary difficulty bump because it's a later act? How is that 'not scaling with level' ?

The skill points are set meaning when you get higher levels, they are easier.

That is NOT scaling to your level.

If they scale to your level, they will either be easy or hard forever because they scale with your stats.

This design is bad because it means there's no surprise to the game, and it makes you feel like you should be able to BYPASS every encounter (even when you shouldn't).

This game does the logical where you are represented with a bad/difficulty scenario, you get the heck out and try again later when you feel comfortable.

[Hanabi]

Originally posted by Kid Gloves:

Originally posted by REhorror:

It's an Owlcat game.
It doesn't scale to your level.

And no, it's NOT guilty for doing so, you are free to lower the difficulty if you find it too hard, they even give you the options.

If it didn't scale to my level, the act 1 check should also be -50, or the act 3 check +10.

I'm not asking for everything to be easy, I'm asking for consistency. What we have is arbitrarily harder skill checks because you're higher level now. It's a very clunky 'did you invest skill poiints in....?' check, but it's on what feels like every single check.

Arbitrary difficulty bump because it's a later act? How is that 'not scaling with level' ?

I agree, if you could leap a 10 foot gap, you should always be able to leap a 10 foot gap unless something is making it more treacherous. It shouldn't get harder because the same gap is in act 3 or 4.

Give a reason the challenge is harder, like climbing a smooth metal wall vs. a rock one and use level design to complement growth.

[REhorror]

Originally posted by Hanabi:

Originally posted by Kid Gloves:

If it didn't scale to my level, the act 1 check should also be -50, or the act 3 check +10.

I'm not asking for everything to be easy, I'm asking for consistency. What we have is arbitrarily harder skill checks because you're higher level now. It's a very clunky 'did you invest skill poiints in....?' check, but it's on what feels like every single check.

Arbitrary difficulty bump because it's a later act? How is that 'not scaling with level' ?

I agree, if you could leap a 10 foot gap, you should always be able to leap a 10 foot gap unless something is making it more treacherous. It shouldn't get harder because the same gap is in act 3 or 4.

Give a reason the challenge is harder, like climbing a smooth metal wall vs. a rock one and use level design to complement growth.

In other words, the game should maintain a steady climb forever and ever without throwing bumps and challenges to you.

Nay, I say that is bad design, especially for video games where they are supposed to throw curveballs and surprise you.

[Pixie1001]

I mean to be fair, the environment is an abstraction not a 1:1 replica of what your character is seeing - often an inspection command will reveal a detail is something totally different than the asset they used to approximate it.

You kinda just have to assume the later Athletics skill checks require the shifting of heavier objects or more perilous conditions, and the jumps less stable surfaces and harsher winds.

It also just kinda goes hand in hand with the extreme rate you level up - if they kept all the skill checks the same, your characteristics would eventually get so high that even u trained party members could do them with 100% accuracy, at which point, what's even the point of having them in the game?

[Kid Gloves]

Originally posted by REhorror:

This design is bad because it means there's no surprise to the game, and it makes you feel like you should be able to BYPASS every encounter (even when you shouldn't).

This game does the logical where you are represented with a bad/difficulty scenario, you get the heck out and try again later when you feel comfortable.

Yes, the design is bad.

Athletics or demolition checks you can do that with (and in my harder play-through I did indeed find myself going back to the ship for the 'oh, I need my <skill> monkey').

Or just reload the game a few save-games back because it happened at a critical 'you can't go back to the ship right now' moment.

Many of the lore checks or similar, though, you can't. You fail it? It's failed. Want to not fail? Reload you save game then try again with a different character / build / whatever.

This isn't a difficulty issue, it's a weird-design-is-arbitrary issue.

The knock-on effect of this means party composition becomes very locked-in. You can't sub out Heinrich for Abe, for example, unless they're both Athletics hyper-focused because you need the bases covered.

The only situation where you can make the choice to not take someone with a skill speciality is if you've already played the content, and know what's coming.

[REhorror]

Originally posted by Kid Gloves:

Originally posted by REhorror:

This design is bad because it means there's no surprise to the game, and it makes you feel like you should be able to BYPASS every encounter (even when you shouldn't).

This game does the logical where you are represented with a bad/difficulty scenario, you get the heck out and try again later when you feel comfortable.

Yes, the design is bad.

Athletics or demolition checks you can do that with (and in my harder play-through I did indeed find myself going back to the ship for the 'oh, I need my <skill> monkey').

Or just reload the game a few save-games back because it happened at a critical 'you can't go back to the ship right now' moment.

Many of the lore checks or similar, though, you can't. You fail it? It's failed. Want to not fail? Reload you save game then try again with a different character / build / whatever.

This isn't a difficulty issue, it's a weird-design-is-arbitrary issue.

The knock-on effect of this means party composition becomes very locked-in. You can't sub out Heinrich for Abe, for example, unless they're both Athletics hyper-focused because you need the bases covered.

The only situation where you can make the choice to not take someone with a skill speciality is if you've already played the content, and know what's coming.

No, it is not.
The game recommends you to run a variety of characters to cover each other's weakness, the game is a party-based RPG, you GIMP yourself by putting out skills, choices and consequences.

And the game even allows you to RELOAD and roll again, and not a fixed set, which is done for characters who mess up their skills. So you can retry again and again.

AND the game allows you to lower the difficulty so that skillchecks are easier.

It's abritary because it's a video game, a video game about exploring at that, you are supposed to be feel frustrated and annoyed and get the hell out of dodge if you can't handle it. Or lower the difficulty.

The game gives you options, but you don't use them for some reasons.

[Kid Gloves]

Originally posted by REhorror:

The game gives you options, but you don't use them for some reasons.

I get the feeling we're missing each other's points.

To be clear: I've played through the vast majority of the game on the higher difficulty. I've used the options - including the options that don't involve lowering the difficulty.

Act 5 I didn't get much into because ... there are other bugs. :|

What I'm saying is it feels arbitrary and nonsensical, not that it's too hard.

Some fairly simple changes Owlcat could make would be:

1) removing the 'you only get one go at this' limit on many of the more incidental checks. Come up with a better model than 'nope.'

2) being more consistent in the application of resource-expenditure-to-overcome-check system. Make it clearer why I might want to use a resource.

3) rethinking/reworking the way failure maluses are applied and removed, to make them interesting rather than another excuse to reload your save game.

4) having better overall handling of failure, so that early game skill checks can actually be 'too hard' for the low level skill usage, meaning you get to experience progress-with-failure and then enjoy progress-without-failure as a result of skill investment and levelling up.

I would much rather see -50 athletics checks in the early game than meaningless action checks in the late game. I'd also want to see a better suite of options for how I can overcome that -50 check, rather than just level-up 'git gud.'

Good stories / adventures / whatever are about -overcoming- failure, not reloading failure and potentially messing with the difficulty settings or re-spec.

[REhorror]

Originally posted by Kid Gloves:

Originally posted by REhorror:

The game gives you options, but you don't use them for some reasons.

I get the feeling we're missing each other's points.

To be clear: I've played through the vast majority of the game on the higher difficulty. I've used the options - including the options that don't involve lowering the difficulty.

Act 5 I didn't get much into because ... there are other bugs. :|

What I'm saying is it feels arbitrary and nonsensical, not that it's too hard.

Some fairly simple changes Owlcat could make would be:

1) removing the 'you only get one go at this' limit on many of the more incidental checks. Come up with a better model than 'nope.'

2) being more consistent in the application of resource-expenditure-to-overcome-check system. Make it clearer why I might want to use a resource.

3) rethinking/reworking the way failure maluses are applied and removed, to make them interesting rather than another excuse to reload your save game.

4) having better overall handling of failure, so that early game skill checks can actually be 'too hard' for the low level skill usage, meaning you get to experience progress-with-failure and then enjoy progress-without-failure as a result of skill investment and levelling up.

I would much rather see -50 athletics checks in the early game than meaningless action checks in the late game. I'd also want to see a better suite of options for how I can overcome that -50 check, rather than just level-up 'git gud.'

Good stories / adventures / whatever are about -overcoming- failure, not reloading failure and potentially messing with the difficulty settings or re-spec.

I'm currently playing on Unfair, and when I fail a check, I either reload, or I come back later when I have sufficient skill levels. Not a problem for me.

And it's hard to take you seriously when you put up "gid gud" here, is this boiling down to your inconvenience of NOT wanting to save/reload rather than your problems with the game?

CRPG is all about save & reload, always have been.

And AGAIN, you can just set the difficulty to be easier, as if you find it to be hard/inconsistent/annoying/"git guder" or whatever word people say about difficulty nowadays.

[Moffin Bovin]

the thing is, the game keeps giving you skill points.

your skills keep going up at a fairly high rate, so the skill checks need to go up with them or else they would become meaningless.

Its not necessarily good or bad. its just how it is. It how a lot of games are.

Its like, your damage keeps going up so enemy hp and armour keeps going up too. it's the same thing.

What it means is, though, is that skill checks tend to be very forgiving early on where usually equiping one item or taking one skill increase will make a huge difference, but towards the end your character need to be specialised.

Combat is the same way. Its just how these games are where making a build is just as important as the rest of the game.

[Kid Gloves]

Well, Owlcat probably won't make any changes - so it's all rather moot. The game is too niche to spend any time/budget making it more mainstream-friendly.

Save-load it is. Arbitrary, nonsense skill difficulty it is.

Does it work for the niche audience? Clearly it seems to. Does this mean it's not able to be improved? No, but chances are it wont be.

I'm clearly not expressing myself well enough - the counter-arguments are all about player skill, and the solutions presented relate to difficulty. That's not the issue, the issue is in how the game handles skill failure and the mechanical options for overcoming it.

The options we have are: reload, or come back later after level-up. Those are really boring options, and for the most part make the skill check itself meaningless. It's a gate for the sake of a gate.

It's not like this is the only game guilty of this sin, but the ones who actually put some thought into this are the ones that win game of the year.

Just sayin.'

[REhorror]

Originally posted by Kid Gloves:

Well, Owlcat probably won't make any changes - so it's all rather moot. The game is too niche to spend any time/budget making it more mainstream-friendly.

Save-load it is. Arbitrary, nonsense skill difficulty it is.

Does it work for the niche audience? Clearly it seems to. Does this mean it's not able to be improved? No, but chances are it wont be.

I'm clearly not expressing myself well enough - the counter-arguments are all about player skill, and the solutions presented relate to difficulty. That's not the issue, the issue is in how the game handles skill failure and the mechanical options for overcoming it.

The options we have are: reload, or come back later after level-up. Those are really boring options, and for the most part make the skill check itself meaningless. It's a gate for the sake of a gate.

It's not like this is the only game guilty of this sin, but the ones who actually put some thought into this are the ones that win game of the year.

Just sayin.'

I'd rather the game stays a NICHE audience and be good instead of being mainstream and be bad.
And no, these aren't boring options. What is boring is expecting you to get out of every situation ever with no surprise or challenge.

So yes, just save & reload. Or lower the difficulty.