First, the diversity aspect. Are inventory avatars important? Etc
Superfluous diversity is important in social games. It certainly doesn't detract from a single player game, but I think one of the best rules of thumb to use here is that unless the game accounts for a choice, then it can be done without, if there's more important things potentially on the chopping block.
The comparison, is that a social game has other players to respond to your choices. Also, quite importantly, the ability to individualise and visually and descriptively convey your persona. Whereas in a single player game, I'll admit I like to customise the most trivial of details, but I can live without it.
The fun starts when you introduce reactions to choices, such as inate character traits like gender, race, or anything else somebody is likely to harbour an irrational prejudice against. Likewise choices made throughout the game are essential to a quality role-playing experience. This is what made Arcanum shine for me. There was such a richness added to the game world when NPCs react accordingly to race, gender, "nudity" but even better, there were plenty of opportunities to explore these issues and prejudices, and if nothing else it gives you a good basis for a good/evil demarkation. Being a bigoted, hateful fuck is definitely more evil than asking the good guys you just helped to pay you more money.
I also like to see this kind of thing really tightened up and portioned out accordingly. I believe freedom of choice is important, but I also actively encourage certain choices to be denied by the
game world, as opposed to the
game itself. An important distinction.
A
game world will deny choice through it's inhabitants, ie, "you can't join the thieves guild because you're a fucking do-gooder" through obvious decisions, such as the player being completely unskilled to the point of miserable failure with certain items that they can
freely choose despite the crippling handicap.
A
game will flat out refuse to let you do something because you haven't met the requirements dictated by a game mechanic. Generally not a good way to go, but sometimes a necessary evil, System Shock 2 being the best example off the top of my head. Since a stat based FPS generally gives the player enough rope to circumvent character skill deficiencies through the player's own skill, tightening the stat restrictions to outright exlclusion makes a great deal of sense, and in this respect System Shock 2 comes out ahead of it's successors.
I've never been a fan of the Morrowind/IE/NWN credo that the player should be able to experience nearly everything the game has to offer in a single character's lifetime/story. Making player choices dramatic lends so much to the narrative and the player's sense of influence. And then there's replayability, which gives me wood.
Second, what system do you feel allowed for better character creation?
Anything that's ongoing is good with me, ie character
development as opposed to merely creation. In most cases, statistic growth is pretty bland, getting slowly better at doing something isn't particularly exciting, but nonetheless essential in any game with a difficulty curve*. Feats, Perks and other such major character choices add a lot to a character system, especially if they extend the "toolset" a character has at their disposal rather than just a remarkable increase in a certain ability.
SPECIAL pretty much nailed a lot of what I look for in a character system. The drastic impact of varied base stats (such as low intelligence on NPC interaction) was a very positive feature, but it was definitely not without fault. "Gifted" became a bit of an ueber trait (if you're not averse to munchkinism) and a high intelligence gave a great deal of benefits across the board. Skill wise, the tag system is an excellent example of encouraging the player to make obvious choices (in this case paving the way for distinct archetyping of characters) while not denying the freedom to choose other skills.
In a system like Morrowind's I never particularly felt like I was a swordsman, or a thief, or a mage, since most avenues were accessable, and I never seemed to be able to increase my base stats fast enough for my primary skills. Conversely, having a class system like D&D has a very positive archetyping method, but at the cost of freedom, although admittedly, feats were a big step toward allowing a bit more choice.
Third, what kind of system do you prefer for character creation?
I really like something that has a bit of RP and backstory to it, although most systems tend to be ultimately transparent, which I guess is due largely to the desire to stat crunch and powergame. Ultima's Savage Empire games did it exceedingly well, from memory, and KOTOR was terrible. ("As a jedi you come across a generic situation. Do you a) Fight - b) Talk - c) Use thief skills...Hmm, as I thought, you are best suited to being a) Jedi fighty guy - b) Jedi talking fella - c) Jedi thiefsy taffer") Morrowind I was more or less indifferent to the character survey, since I considered custom classes to be one of the system's main strengths, but I did like the way it incorporated character creation as a plot element.
I think that with these sort of survey systems, Jagged Alliance 2 explored some avenues worth devoting time to. Not so much the specialisations it doled out, but the under the hood personality traits that made your character behave in a friendly/psychotic/etc manner, and thus dictated who enjoyed or loathed their company. Much better than a bunch of completely inane voice themes, or voice sets tyed specifically to a certain type of character.
An idea that has been rattling around my head for the while is the idea of recovering memories as an amnesiac. A bit hackneyed as a plot element, sure, but in an open ended game it could have a lot of potential in the place of feat/perk development, especially if the choices made along the way lead to some kind of dramatic element. Here's an example.
A bunch of characters are banished to a kind of purgatory, where they have no memory of their past, and must comptete/work together toward a slightly hazy dynamic end point. The perk tree is firmly tied into a plotline of regaining memories, and as the player progresses it shed's light on their history, to the point of effecting gameplay as the player "falls back into their old ways". For example, a player who picks a lockpicking perk is rewarded moreso when they use it with criminal intent, or a player who picks a medical perk gains better rewards if they use it positively, such as healing, rather than negatively, say inflicting someone with a disease. Of course the whole thing would be completely dynamic and meticulously scripted.
Another aspect of this, somewhat inspired by Psi-Ops, which I would _not_ recommend the PC version of, is the idea of flashbacks. Every time the player earns a perk/feat, they flash back to their past life, and take part in a small scripted situation, where their approach to a certain situation dictates the focus of the feat/perk.
The system basically entails the following.
On reading your system, I think it's exactly the kind of idea I'd like to see and explore the possibilities of. It may frustrate some players, depending on how much freedom you provide and whether or not the choices made also affect the general outlook and personality of a character, ie if I was to let the lockpick "trainer" die, am I a callous shitbag?
I'd reluctantly suggest giving the player freedom to manually override, since you don't want to start the player off harbouring dislike of their own character, but I'd personally be more interested in playing out a character creation vignette and going with whatever happened. Take the good with the bad, like rolling up a character with standard P&P rules on rerolling.
Anyway, that's a response to your first post, onto the rest of the thread <grins>
* Yeah, and on the topic of fucking difficulty curves, I've been playing Bioware's Star Wars mod for NWN, and found a few irritating flaws. Like the fact that my Jedi Consular cannot possibly beat two Terentareks at once, nor has he the stealth skill to avoid them. I was somewhat put at ease by the fact that there was actually a reasonable plot justification for forcing a combat solution on a player! But it's a bit rough when I can wade through every other enemy in the game, light sabre in each hand (hah), and have no difficulty, and then suddenly "Hey! You're fucked and can't progress unless you cheat!"
