REALLY! Wow that makes my mind up then. Two games for the price of one. AWESOME. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/delight.gif" alt="" /> Thanks for the input guys. One question, does Divine Divinity have randomly generated weapons and equiptment like Beyond Divinity does or is the equiptment pregenerated?

I also saw Gothic 2 in preowned games for only 17.99 . Maybe I will pick that up too.

In order to reinvigorate this topic,

Which game that you guys can think of has the best skill system?

Diablo (1 or 2)
Fallout (1 or 2)
Wizardry 8
FF series
Planscape: T
etc.

Whats your ideal skill system? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/offtopic.gif" alt="" />

My ideal skill system seems to be a combination of Fallout and Wizardry 8 (Which is similar to Morrowwind). I like it that you train a skill and it will slowly rise, but I also love those percs in Fallout. I wish they would have it so some skills like using a sword would increase the more you use it (rather then dumping skill points into them when you level up) and other skills would be like the perc system in Fallout. They would give you attribute points that you could distribute(ie. strength, agility, dex, etc.)and sometimes it would unlock perc points. Certain percs would be unlocked at high levels and would require you to save points for that perc if you wanted it and other percs would have a low cost at low levels but wouldn't be as great. I also like the idea in some games where you can handicapp yourself in certain areas, but the handicap gives you a bonus in other areas(like being an idiot savant barbarian or something).

Also the skills would have a cap dependent on either (or both) your level or your attributes. So at level 1 you couln't train your sword slashing past skill 20 for example until you either level up or your dexterity is at 16.

IF you combined leveling up with attributes maybe you could have leveling up unlock maybe ten points of a skill and the attributes would modify the amount unlocked. For instance, your a level 2 which caps the amount of skill points for bashing weapons at 20, but since your strength is 18 you get 2 extra points unlocked every level of strength being over 15, so you would have a maximum of 26. As you get to very high levels dumping attribute points into certain attributes would have a dramatic effect on your skill cap.

I also think there should be a manner by which you can forget skills you previously learned if you neglect them. So if your just hacking and slashing all the time, and you never train your pickpocketing then your pickpocketing skill should slowly diminish.
The lower it goes the longer it takes to forget a point so that you don't loose the minimum skill of pickpocketing too quickly, and once you retrain certain numbers over and over those numbers become harder to forget. So if your skill in something which was at 30 goes down to 20 due to neglect and you retrain it back up to 30 then the next time around it will take longer to go back down to 20. So the more you retrain your skillpoints back up the longer it takes for them to diminish back down.

Another idea would be that your skill points would be totally open (ie. you could train any skill to its highest level from the outset), but as the skills get better and better it takes longer and longer amounts of time to increase it, and attributes make it more easy (ie. less time) to train skills at higher levels. Leveling would only unlock percs and attributes.

What do ya guys think? Throw some ideas at me.