I fail to see how this is a "better" barrier gameplay than a stat check.
Probably because I didn't add any details and left it as vague as possible. The underlying concept is that "any team can overcome any challenge". Bring a team of all mages and you can still tackle every combat encounter. You might have to swap out some gear to do it, but it's possible.
Whether you have to develop your characters' stats in a certain way or you have to acquire and use the "correct" equipment in a certain way does not fundamentally make a difference in terms of player choice.
The problem you're having here is that you assume "correct equipment" is some form of hard stat check. It really isn't. Quick and short rundown of the systems in place:
3 Attack stats, 3 Defense stats. Attack, Speed, Magic. Defense, Reflex, Magic Defense. Each character has their own initial stat spread in these attributes to make them good at some things and worse at others. This can be changed through your own stat distribution, but that isn't always a smart idea as each character is designed for a few "builds".
Each "Build" essentially is how their "Skills" can be optimized. The thief utilizes mostly Speed and Reflex in place of each of its skills so if you dump a ton of items that increase "Magic" into them, you are essentially wasting those points. This ability to put points into a stat that doesn't necessarily help the character is why the largest stat bumps come from equipment. Still, if you dump points into Magic Defense on the Thief, it isn't wasted. You can also dump stats into the Thief's "attack" stat if you only plan on using their weapons to fight instead of their skills.
Each attack has an "element" associated with it. Slashing, Bashing, Piercing, Fire, Water, Lightning, Strength, Speed, Magic. Each weapon does one of these damage types and each skill does one of these damage types. Each enemy is weak to 3 of these elements, strong or immune to 3 others, and neutral to the rest. Boss monsters drop down to 2 in most instances.
Each weapon is designed to create interesting options in combat and not every character has access to every weapon. Each armor piece is designed to create strengths and weaknesses and not every character has access to every piece of it. For example, you could throw "Plate Mail" on your character and get a heavy resistance to "Slashing" and "Bashing" type attacks, but Piercing attacks will still connect and anything with "Magic" in it will do double the damage to you. Likewise, Plate Mail will give you a significant boost to your "Defense" stat, but also drop your "Reflex" stat. You'll be able to take heavy physical hits, but if you go up against an enemy that's faster than you and uses "Speed" as their skill stat, they will wreck you pretty quickly.
Each "state" in the game is uniquely powerful and useful to inflict on enemies. They are also powerful when inflicted on the player, so they need to be cured quickly in most instances. Almost every enemy is weak to at least 3 states, immune to 3 others, and then have the standard "chance" to have anything else inflicted on them. Boss monsters drop down to 2 in most instances.
So what does all this look like in practice?
Let's say you have an Earth Elemental to fight. It's got high Defense, low Reflex. Characters that utilize the "Speed" stat will do a lot of damage to it. Characters with a lot of "Defense" will be practically immune to it. You can increase the Defense stat through just swapping out equipment or through increasing it with the stat items you get from doing quests. You can also swap out characters to high defense ones before the area you fight the Earth Elemental in. But, you can also hit it with Bashing weapons to inflict a lot of damage on it. In fact, if you have a Silver or Lead made Bashing weapon, you can exponentially increase the damage done against it with that weapon. But, maybe you don't have someone with Bashing in your party, so you have to rely on other elemental weaknesses. You could hit it with Water. Maybe you have a weapon with the "Water" element on it. Or, you just have a Mage that can cast Water spells. Or, failing that, you just have "Magic" element skills/equipment that will put it down and it doesn't really matter what else those skills are. But, let's say you just don't have ANY of those options available. Let's say you've managed to just make every bad decision there is and your party just has no way to manage this enemy covered above. Well, then you have states. You could paralyze the Earth Elemental which keeps it from ever moving again in combat (incurable without a skill or consumable). Or, you could charm it so it attacks itself or its own party. You could even put it to Sleep so that it has a small chance of waking up each time it takes damage. You could whittle it down with what you have.
But, then there's the last option. The very last option.
Maybe, the enemy is just too weak for your party because your stats are too high, so none of the above really matters all that much. You can just hit "attack" and it dies. Why? Because you've already cleared this area and this monster is no longer any sort of real threat to you.
And if you assume that XP grind is required to bring up the skills to a certain level, I will just as well have to assume that gold grind is required to purchase the "correct" equipment, making things equal in player effort as well.
Inexperienced and terrible players will have to "gold grind". Anyone else who learns each lesson being taught really won't have to grind for any gold what-so-ever. The primary sink for Gold in my game isn't equipment. It is Consumables. Which are the only way to heal up outside of using an Inn. No Dedicated Healers in my game and nobody learns a "Cure" type spell. Use a Consumable to fix your mistakes, and play better to make fewer mistakes.
The primary loop of the game is the player picks up a Quest, gathers intel on the quest (so they know the easiest way to tackle the content), make sure they have enough Consumables on hand to deal with any mistakes, and then set out to the location to do the deed. The first few fights in the new location will be the "rough" portion, where the player is subjected to whatever tricks and tactics I can think up to hurt them, they figure out ways to overcome those tricks and tactics, figure out ways they can use those same tricks and tactics themselves, and then no longer have an issue in the location until the boss monster. Each location usually contains treasure of equipment and some other nice little items the player might want (with few of them being money or consumables), and the boss usually drops some sort of gear or guards some sort of gear. The player gets their stat items from completing the Quest, and decide how to use them. The player then returns to the HUB area for the quest reward.
You cannot essentially tell me "no, in my game it's all based on the narrative" and at the same time go "in your game it's all about mindless grinding, because that's what MMOs do" without even considering that progress in my game might work differently.
My game is based on narrative. Can't get around that. New Equipment and Stat Points are locked behind Quests. Combat is less about what stats you have and more about how you approach it.
As for your game... I know very little about your game. The only assumptions I can make are the ones I've already prefaced before. Also, yes, that's exactly what those systems do. Create mindless grind. Why? They're designed specifically to do that in a singleplayer game. They're MMO systems. When you introduce an MMO system into a singleplayer experience, this is exactly what happens. Pointless and mind-numbing grind. This is fact. You cannot get around it just because you wish it weren't so.
Game devs would be better served by studying PLAYER BEHAVIOR and PLAYER PSYCHOLOGY rather than "how a system is put together" and "how can I implement something I enjoy into a game?". Devs are better served by analyzing why they do the things they do in games, why their friends do those things, why other video game players do those things, and then figuring out how to deal with that. "Fun" does not happen just because you manage to make something "functional". "Fun" doesn't happen just because you think implementing something automatically makes it fun.
Fun is a coalescence of mood, activity, and synergy in the correct blend to create a unique experience. An experience that is memorable.
What does that mean for my game? I have no idea. My game might not be fun at all. Granted, I am having fun, and playtests have resulted in the correct behavior from my players... But is that fun? Maybe? Probably not? I don't know. I'm doing all sorts of new things in my game. Cutting my own path through the jungle. I prefer to innovate rather than to engage in "tried and true" methods. I want to see things nobody else has seen. Try things nobody has ever bothered to try before. I want to fail on my own merits rather than because I did the exact same thing someone else did, but didn't implement it properly.
Will my game be fun? I don't know. I hope so. I don't hold out hope that it will. My expectation is that it will fail in such a spectacular fashion that I will learn a lot from it. My actual hope is that even if it does fail, it gives other devs new ideas to work with and maybe they can refine what I've done in order to create an even better experience.
I appreciate strong opinions, but at the point when they're brought across as "the law", they aren't going to produce any new insights.
Except that we should probably avoid each other's games, but who knows
Except that they are "new insights" for most devs. These are things most devs (even on these forums) have never considered before. I bet you never even knew that the "stat check" mechanic was created and designed for MMO's to begin with. I bet you never even thought about why it might not work in a singleplayer environment. I'd wager you never even considered what it does to player behavior.
Facts are facts and don't really care about what a dev thinks or wants to believe. If you do X, you get result Y.
My specialty is analysis of play. More specifically... probably something close to "player psychology". If I want a player to do something, I know how to get them to do it. If I want a player to avoid a behavior, I know how to entice them to stop doing it.
It sounds grandiose and impressive (or like something to brag about), but it isn't. It's little more than just taking the time to understand someone else's point of view and consider the world from their perspective. It's a mix of empathy and the ability to put yourself into their shoes. Anyone can do it, provided they care enough to try. Few devs do it.
Why do few devs do it? Because we're Creatives. Our worlds begin and end with us. Designing a book, a movie, a song, a painting, a game... it's all out expressing OURSELVES and not about what the audience sees. Creatives have a difficult time putting themselves into the shoes of someone else, unless they can already relate to that person. Even if they can relate, they seldom take the time to do except in a way to think about themselves instead of the other person.
The problem is that we're game designers. We can't think that way. We can't go along the dangerous road of, "I'm creating my vision and the audience be darned". Games aren't worth anything unless your audience tells you they are. Your grand and sweeping vision is meaningless unless your audience discovers their own meaning within it. It is meaningless if the player does not enjoy their time with it. It is meaningless if it does the same thing every other game on the market does.
A video game only works if it is designed from the perspective of "this is for my audience" rather than "this is for me".
This is the type of design I specialize in.
This design is also how most of my posts take shape. They're intended to teach you something and make you think. To make you consider points of view that aren't already in your head. My posts are designed for the audience and not for myself. Designed that way in the hopes that the audience will learn something new from the advice given, even if they don't agree with it.
EDIT:
@TheGentlemanLoser
Sorry, didn't see your post until after I'd made a reply.
I prefer instead of stat checks, you have just the binary way of things working. If you have the skill, it works on all instances where it should work. If you have walls that can be punched through, just getting the skill to punch through walls works on every single one of those. No need to level it up. No need to have it do "Tiers". I have the skill, it works. Same of "mind control". If I have it, it works on anyone who can be mind-controlled. I don't need to invest points into it to make it more effective.
My examples are vague so I didn't have to go into the exact detail. Mostly because they are examples. The "stat checks" we use in games can be handled the exact same way with the "binary" option of just having skills. This eliminates the tedious grind and also allows players to "come back later for their power fantasy" if they want to.
Maybe you just didn't have "punch through walls" when you were here earlier, but now you do, so you can punch through those walls and do those things. Maybe you didn't have "Hack Security Systems" last time you were here, so you had to stealth, but now you do, so you can turn them all against the guards this time. There's no need to have "stat checks" for these things or these moments.
There really isn't. The stat check is "arbitrary" in most instances. It is likewise fairly useless and nonsensical in almost any iteration.
Let me put it this way:
It is more engaging to have things work in the style of most Zelda games than it is to have them in the style of tabletops done digitally. That is, if you have the skill/ability to do something, you always have it and can always use it. Got Roc's Feather? You can always jump gaps. Got Iron Boots? You can always push down stuck switches on the floor and sink to the bottom of bodies of water. On or off. It's more engaging than having skills like:
Jump: 15/33 (Failure!)
Strength: 18/15 (Success!)
A stat check, by and large, grinds the game to halt. If a player sees one they can't pass, their immediate thought is usually, "how can I level up quickly to get the required points for this?" unless it's pretty far out of reach at which point they go, "can I put off this quest until a much later time when I have the stats?". You might have a few players who think, "okay, I can't do this, is there another option?", but that's sort of "few and far between". it is likewise easy to accomplish this same line of thinking by using the binary option rather than an arbitrary stat check.
Granted, it requires more work from the dev... but it feels better to the player in most instances. Tends to feel more immersive as well.
Finally, yes I know exactly what min/maxing is. A system that requires stat checks makes me want to min/max. If any of my stats can come into play at any time for a random check, then I will seek to maximize all of them to get all the options available and pass all the skillchecks. This is what having a skillcheck does to most players. If they can't max out the skills on a single character, they will hyper specialize their entire party to max out those skills (like in the case of Wasteland 3, where it's more beneficial to create a custom party rather than take on any of the NPC's as party members).
Fallout 3 was actually my first experience with this form of min/maxing. When any stat could come into play for anything I might do, I went out of my way to max out every skill to 100 as quickly as possible as well as my entire "SPECIAL" stats. Then, I watched all my friends do the same. Then, I saw how many guides existed that helped new players do the same, and how many comments those got. From that point forward, I began paying more attention to how players engaged with these sorts of systems, and yeah... most of them do exactly this. If they need a random stat at a specific amount, they put off the content until they have it (if they can) and generally seek to max out every stat they can, just in case it comes up.
Why do players do this?
Because it is less important about being able to pass the content than it is about having the options to pass it. Players don't care that they can unlock the door in 5 ways. They care that they have, at any one time, 5 ways to open that door and they can PICK which of those ways they want to use. If you can open that door no matter what, 'cause you have at least one of those options, then the door may as well be binary to you. Can it be opened? Yes/No. The fact that it has so many options to open it, indicates to a player that some methods of opening that door are going to inherently be BETTER than other options. Or rather, might cater to how the player wants to tackle area better.
Stat checks, by and large, exist as a binary option. Succeed/Fail. In those cases, they don't need to exist. Replace them with skills that make the option succeed no matter what.
Now, if your stat checks aren't "Succeed/Fail" and are instead measures of success or failure and do different things based on where those stats are... then they make sense. Maybe this door requires 57 Stealth to open it silently. But, maybe if you have 50 stealth, you can still open it and not raise the alarm of ALL the guards. Or, maybe if you have more than 57 stealth, you can walk through it and pretend you're supposed to be there and the guards will interact with you as if you're a new employee instead. Etcetera.
If you want to use stat checks, my suggestion is that you don't use them in a "binary" way. Which is, you know, the way everyone is using them and wants to use them. If your stat check is binary, it doesn't even need to exist. Especially since it destroys a ton of gameplay and immersion. Just turn it into a skill, save yourself the headache of trying to balance things, and be done with it.
TRIHAN holy shnikes...I remember you!
(Improving on the thumbnails, by using assets from the day's news.)
