Who wants a realistic RPG! That would be a simulation not an RPG.
When I talked about real life I was referring to you sitting at your computer playing and enjoying the experience as a human being. I do not want the game to be realistic by simulating life at all, I want you to gain mental experience as you play the fantasy and when I say you I mean YOU in the real life not your avatar inside the game.
If you were rewarded a 100 points to “spend” then you should be ready to “spend” time not playing the game but clicking 100 times guessing at whether it is better to be stronger or more intelligent, which has nothing to do with the game in any direct sense.
I also did not specify skills exclusively because I included the means of improving health, manna, strength, intelligence, stamina, luck, ambition, holding breath under water <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" /> the number of knee-jerks per second and the speed of growing hair.
I did not have any particular game in mind in comparison, while the target was to minimise the “not-playing” activity and maximise the playing experience.
It is much more rewarding to find a book that explains to you a skill or a funny teacher that you can enjoy learning from, rather than clicking on an icon that have a brief description of the damage the skill can cause to enemy and the cost of using that skill. The teacher can tell you *when* to use that skill and *how* to use it and with what kind of enemy or in which situation.
Another obvious merit is that anything you do gives you either skill or experience or improves your character instantly rather than having to wait until the end of a level.
Myrthos is correct in his fears of maximizing a skill or three that would discourage you from using newly acquired skills as the enemy level grows. However, the balancing can be done superbly by forcing the player to use the new skills because a new enemy is vulnerable to that new skill only while being invincible to your maximized skills.
The level of the enemy is high indeed because that enemy is invincible to your most powerful skill but concurrently you have acquired a new skill with which you can defeat that enemy and improve the skill simultaneously.
What I see is that all the comments posted under this thread were very good indeed.
We are not in opposition at all, even though some misunderstanding might have taken place.
I would be surprised if an RPG did not give me a Godzilla to kill and a score of nasty skeletons that shake my bones.
But I do not want the RPG to be exclusively based on the experience I gain by killing creatures either.
As Myrthos said, the critical criterion is the balancing of the game and I agree with all my heart.
My main target was to get rid of the task of assigning points by automating that task rather than keeping it clumsy and manual.
Kind regards.
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