billy the squid wrote..
How do you have more customisability when there is extensive skill selection present in Skyrim which was removed from DA2? Neither does it create more customizability as I must still sink a certain number of points into a given skill tree to access certain abilities, it improved little from DAO, removing only the liniarity, yet enforcing artificial restrictions on customization.
In addition when mods address glaring issues, bugs, rebalancing and provide new content then yes they are important, whether they are part of the main game as shipped or not is irrelevant.
Simple, the skill trees in Skyrim are unbalanced.
Now, when I first played, I tried to go straight up mage, and focus on two schools of magic, alchemy, and enchanting. That was it. However, once I hit level 42, I realized something; I die in 2-3 hits because my character, despite being a powerful conjurer and destruction spell user, cant take a hit, even after pumping up health.
It was mostly due to the fact that, at that stage in the game, I neglected the armoring tree and the combat trees, which would have scaled the armor to my level instead of finding a hodge-podge of glass pieces around to wear, most of which is hard to find, and hard to enchant on since I focused on that evenly with alchemy.
The eighteen skill trees in Skyrim are unbalanced because certain trees are almost required to be effective for the long run of the game. smithing takes 10 points to max it out if you want to (which you dont have too since you only need 5-6 to get the best armor in-game anyway.) while destruction takes around 21. The master level spells are inacessable because you need that boost in magicka to use them for achieving 100 skill increases as you level up. And lets not forget the fact that you can break the game through exploiting the lack of penalties in the skill-trees. I know some guys who had level 20 characters that couldn't be touched, clad in Daedric Armor enchanted to the point where one hit kills any dragon they face. I guess that's good role-playing, but it's bad game design.
And not to mention that a lot of the trees are useless by design as well. Pickpocketing and Lockpicking, for example, serve little function because the former is rarely uses in-game unless if you go full theif, and the latter is rendered nearly pointless since you can pick a master lock while the lockpicking skill is at level 5. Not to mention the fact that to even max out lockpicking would take a serious time sink to get the benefits of a skeleton key essentially...even though you can find one in-game and, so long as you don't complete the quest its involved in, you don't have to give it up. And it also doesn't help much that in combat, if these skills are your highest you won't survive long either.
The sad thing is, these can be fixed easily through rebalancing. Diminish the returns heavily for the smithing, get a pittance of experience for it, and re-instate a level cap for specific weapons and armor. That glass armor I peacemealed together, let it be available for level 30 players or above, not level 20 players who grinded smithing to 100 early on. Or take it a step further, remove the requirement for the leveling of the skill, and make them only acessible if you receive training from a specific smith. Now you need to work at getting that armor instead of becoming a master through grinding so quickly.
Pickpocketing? Make better use of them in-game through questlines, we rarely see it implemented outside of the theif guild anyway. Lockpicking they need to do the same as well, or offer alternative oppertunites to get an advantage over players through getting through doors and traps like that. Hell, make some dungeons totally blocked off or inacessable unless if you pick a master lock or pickpocket a specific key from someone. That would be more immersive then. Let players use them instead of combat, and try to make less combat-heavy scenarios.
Of course the easy answer is to role-play the game without grinding smithing or something, but even if you do, the balance issues are still there through the design of how you fight. It would be difficult to fight as a thief with maxed out lockpicking, not impossible, but not easy either. While this is rewarding, the problem we then face is that one mistake you are done, And since the game kind of throws the "mod mentality" at you, using waves of enemies as you explore ruins and dungeons, it becomes a chore to get through 9 times out of 10. Simply put, if you role-play you will become too frustrated, and if you don't you have no challenge to really care.
As for Dragon Age II, the reason it works is because of balance. No one tree is more powerful than the other, because each of them gives different benefits to what type of build you wish to play as. Skyrim did not do this, otherwise we would see more builds and character ideas over "100 maxed smithing and blades, no dragon will touch me now." There are restrictions but it makes sense, because being a fast attacker would put a penalty on your defense, or using blood magic would limit healing effects on you since your using your own life bar as the energy to begin with.
But you can work around this through the customization. Build up your HP more if you want to be a blood mage, or focus on a more defensive tree to get bonuses while you have your high-speed attacks going at the same time. It is less exploitable than Skyrim this way too, because everything has a reactive quality to it; in other words, the skill trees balance themselves so no one will be overpowered, making the game challenging without being fustrating.
And yeah, mods can fix a game. But once again, it's an irreleveant point because it didnt ship. I'm just talking about the base mechanics of what was included, otherwise someone would have modded Skyrim already to fix the bugs it has and no one would complain about its shortcomings either.
Modifié par LinksOcarina, 29 décembre 2011 - 02:56 .
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