Scars of War Dev Blog Update

The latest Scars of War updates have both been about general design problems. Gareth muses on the hunger/thirst bar controversy of Eschalon: Book II here and discusses the tendency to specialize in one single combat skill here.

So, coming back to combat skills. My original way of countering this problem was to have just a single (Melee) skill, covering all melee weapons. There were special traits you could take to specialise in specific weapons, but for the most part you’d be around about equally skilled with any weapon. Not realistic, but at least it allowed the player to experiment with different weapons without feeling like he was wasting skill points.

But this compromise still doesn’t make me totally happy. Now the little voice in my head does 360 degree turn, complaining that knife fighting and swinging an axe are different and training one wouldn’t train the other, at least not to the same extent. Gah. I drive myself mad like this.

But I decided to play with it a little, see what I could do if I broke it into weapon categories. I could do what Age of Decadence does, and provide skill synergies. As in training your (Sword) skill gives a lesser bonus to you (Dagger) skill because they are similar. But I’m not really keen on that solution. So how could I split the weapon category skills out yet still tempt players to at least try out different weapons? Why would you ever invest training into (Hammer) if you weren’t going to have a use for it once you invested heavily in (Sword) ?