Now you can expect the game designers that read OB to jump in and comment :) Skill trees and character progression lead to quite a lot of discussion in Game Design communities …
I think one reason for giving the player full information is to prevent the player from agonizing too much about the early choices he makes—if he has more information about what those lead to, he might not agonize as much. It’s a bit like “Hmm, giving people a menu with a lot of choices makes them unhappy. I know, we’ll put a lot of information on each menu item so that the client can make the best decision!”
A better way of reducing the time the player spends agonizing over options is to give him a system where he can change his mind easily and at low cost. So, items rather than classes, spells rather than skills, etc.
But then, I don’t know what game you’re talking about, nor what were the exact reasons the designers had for making the system the way it is. They probably had pretty good ones too.
Now you can expect the game designers that read OB to jump in and comment :) Skill trees and character progression lead to quite a lot of discussion in Game Design communities …
I think one reason for giving the player full information is to prevent the player from agonizing too much about the early choices he makes—if he has more information about what those lead to, he might not agonize as much. It’s a bit like “Hmm, giving people a menu with a lot of choices makes them unhappy. I know, we’ll put a lot of information on each menu item so that the client can make the best decision!”
A better way of reducing the time the player spends agonizing over options is to give him a system where he can change his mind easily and at low cost. So, items rather than classes, spells rather than skills, etc.
But then, I don’t know what game you’re talking about, nor what were the exact reasons the designers had for making the system the way it is. They probably had pretty good ones too.