Why am I here? Because I Believed in the Dream of Julian Gollop - the man who left a place in the History of the games. Many people consider him the Founding Father and I believe that PP proved it Again.
Now about aching pain.
I want to speculate that if the Design Scales were Broken?
I see this Fault Line between the Basic Mechanics of the game (ballistics: refusal of %hit, destruction of the environment, manual aiming …) and Skills / Statistics (and their combination) “with broken logic inside it”. (Skills and statistics are broken, but balancing them is eliminating the consequences, not the causes.)
Basic Mechanics were created as Reality (100-200% damage), and the “Skill System” from on the top floor say: “my dad will hit your dad to such an extent that he will fly into space” (300-2500% damage). Both are games, put together it doesn’t fit well.
I see two ways:
back closer to the Basic Mechanics: any soldier / enemy can perform (skills/statistics) the Feat as in reality (125% - max150% in the stack), in the game frame quite often (depending on the level of difficulty).
keep going forward, but Open the Modding Tools and give the opportunity to customize the game for Yourself. (let Hard players help the Moders, than a lot of hostile chatter on the forum).
Both. I mean, game should be balanced as well, but it doesn’t mean we don’t need modding support (it was promised by JG like 2 years ago, hope he’ll keep it).
Option 1. I have no objection to a skills sandbox, but not to the point where it is breaking the game, as it is at the moment.
So skill use should be limited, and should act more as a ‘get out of jail’/‘push yourself to the limit’ mechanic than as the current magical superpowers menu it currently is.
But Nattafarin is right - the more modding support it has, the longer the shelf-life of the game will be, as people can tailour it to their own particular tastes.
My reasoning … Mastery does not mean Strength. Strength has a limit, Mastery has no limits.
Learner trains to increase/use Strength, while the Master focuses not on strength (25-75%), but more on Timing and Place/Point.
A combination of 3 receptions is to take only the necessary part from each and to unite.
(1-x)+(1-y)+(1-z)<1+1+1, fragments of receptions weaker than each of the receptions
(1-x)(1-y)(1-z)>>>3, combination of fragments is more effective than the sum of receptions
Using less strength, timing, points of impact, but getting more efficiency.