Combat specialization?

Grim Dawn Development Updates
21

My goal is not really to create a threat-holding tank for group play. The distinction will still be more subtle. It will probably be more a matter of whether you want to play a higher dps warrior that requires a bit more finesse, has to move in and out of combat, or a lower dps tank that can park himself in the middle of a group of enemies longer and slog it out with them toe to toe.

TQ does actually have somewhat of a threat system, so I could potentially add taunt skills to one of these builds.

22

So, we’re looking at some interesting escape mechanics for certain classes eh?

That’s what I gathered…

As for being on topic lets see, I don’t see anything wrong with option one, while option 2 kind of misses the whole point of getting skill points and spending them.

I’d go option one if that’s what you’re looking to do.

23

Interesting stuff. It will require some careful balancing though I think. A taunt skill would be nice. I’m with you on the more subtle distinction of tank and dps for this genre of game but IMHO you still need a few “specials” in the tree to make it worth investing in. As a tank, taunt is certainly one of them I’d say. Not a taunt that’s usable every second though…maybe more of an “oh SH*T” button with a longish cool down which you can use to drag that pesky mob/mobs off the soft and squishy party member that’s getting a pummelling…but only in real emergencies :smiley:

24

I don’t like that. Since the skills already cost points, they to a degree are mutually exclusive already, as each point you get can only be invested in one skill.

Without the limitation I can go with investing fully both (thereby forsaking some other skills), fully in one only or halfway in both. I therefore have more options without that limitation and still can fully invest in one option only if I feel this has some value.

25

I would much rather have skill trees that require investing into for specific builds. Having single skills spreads out skill points too much and doesn’t let the player focus in on one type of attack/skill. Skill trees are a much better idea, which let players concentrate on a specific type of character. Skill trees also eliminate the crazy hybrid classes that can do everything. Although I like hybrid characters, and trying non cookie cutter builds (like using a few spells on a melee character) skill trees help define a character as a “melee” or “caster” type of character. So essentially the skill trees can re-enforce what type of character you are playing, instead of just having a bunch of random skills with no connection to each other.

26

While Torchlight was a fun game, being able to pick any skill without prerequisites kind of killed the replayability. I just hope Grim Dawn avoids letting everyone do everything. As long as they nail that ( they will ) then the skill system will be fantastic. We’ve also still got the alpha and beta to help flush things out prior to the big release.

27

So, if you don’t want everybody to do everything, why not just limit the max number of active skills and passive skills a player is able to get?

I mean, it does the same thing and gets the job done.

28

Cause that would be lame, and not the same thing at all really.

Unless all masteries had the EXACT same number of passives/actives, it wouldn’t work.

Limiting players by stuffing a brickwall into the code isn’t the same as limiting them by adding skill prerequisites. Prerequisites have something you want anyway (if done right), so grabbing said skill, then the next is not a burdensome task, but something that is enjoyable and feels like you’re progressing your character.

Your suggestion, which we’ve heard before, just limits the character with a silly hard cap that does nothing for immersion, character progression, or replayability (which was Kardio’s point)

29

A soft cap in terms of limiting skills really does a similar thing as a hard cap. The only difference is that a hard cap has much more build diversity, that is only if every skill can be used in the end game. Which I don’t know if we should necessarily expect that or not.

30

Lol, whatever. I’m not gonna bother arguing with you.

31

That and some people just don’t like hard caps, it’s cool either way. :stuck_out_tongue:

32

I really agree on the need of prereqs.

But I’d also like to see the in-between character (some from both) to be viably played and not totally gimped. I know this will require a lot of balancing the skills, but I believe it should be possible.

Secondly, one could be allowed to choose the same mastery twice and thus be capable of choosing both sides, getting an extremely specialized character (if game-balancing takes account for the lack of other areas in order to level out this advance?)

33

As it was in TQ, you had like a base skill with 5 ranks, and then an enhancement skill with 5 points, and another enhancement skills with 5 points, and another one. Of course you’d want to max out any skill you do use on a regular basis, and all summed up, there was not much difference to just having a single skill (with more diveres effects) that has 20 ranks.

Also in my presented Idea, those skills excluding each other, would be more powerfull.

If for balancing reasons your fireball should do like xx DPS when maxed, and you had chooce either more damage OR more speed, both choices would be strong enough to lead to xx DPS.

If you skill allows both enhancements at once, they have to be scaled down, so that with more damage AND more speed simultaneously you don’t get more than xx DPS. Since you’ll need to reach that xx DPS to be able to compete at higher difficulty levels, you would have to max out both enhancements. Leading to you having exactly the same skill than anyone else.

If you had to choose either damage or speed, both at the same strength, each player could choose whatever fits her/his playstyle best.

If there’s a second tier of two exclusive enhancements, you’d have 4 different builds of one single skills.

Adding a thierd tier, would lead to 8 different builds of one single skill.

It’s more diversity and more individualisation.

34

Good idea, I was thinking that they should have some sort of spell customization a la D3’s rune system.

35

Actually, I did not want to max out all skills for all trees, sometimes I was skipping a synergy as I did not find it useful enough and rather invested in something else.

Also in my presented Idea, those skills excluding each other, would be more powerfull.

It would be more restrictive, but that is not what I would want :wink:

If you skill allows both enhancements at once, they have to be scaled down, so that with more damage AND more speed simultaneously you don’t get more than xx DPS.

Since xx DPS is completely arbitrary, i.e. you can get it by investing 10 skills points 5 or just 1 depending on how the skill is set up I do not consider this an issue at all. Also, I do not think there is anything wrong with getting more powerful skills by investing more, why would the limit have to be xx and why would I not get it from more powerful and faster combined (and only get xx/2 from either more powerful or faster) ?

All a matter of skill design, I stand by what I said, I do not like exclusions, they take away options, not add them. The fact that skills cost points already makes me think about what is worth spending them on and what is not.

Since you’ll need to reach that xx DPS to be able to compete at higher difficulty levels, you would have to max out both enhancements. Leading to you having exactly the same skill than anyone else.

I never was forced to max any skill to finish the game. I did max some, I could have maxed completely different skill trees or I could have had a mix of two non-maxed skill trees (and sometimes I did not complete a tree because I wanted to invest my limited points somewhere else).

Even if you need to max one tree, the choice still would be which one as every mastery will have 2 or 3 trees as a minimum (I assume).

It’s more diversity and more individualisation.

Only if you assume everyone would otherwise max the tree, which would cost a lot more skill points. If you assume everyone would spend the same number of skill points on it however (not enough to max it), you restrict it more than you otherwise would and end up with less diversity.

36

Aw man, you didn’t get the point I was hinting at.

Look, if every enhancement can be taken at the same time, there will be people that take ALL enhancements to max out that skill. No matter if you would or not - some people will.

You cannot let that one single skill get overly powerfull, out of balance… So the maximum power your skill may have, must be adjusted for a skill with everything maxed out.

So random exmple:

Fireball does 10 damge. One shot per second. -> 10 DPS
Now you have two upgrades: More damage and more speed.
Now let’s assume, for balancing reasons, an upgraded fireball should do 100 DPS.

If you allow both skills to be upgraded, and want to get at 100 DPS
The more damage upgrade allows you to raise damage to 50.
The more speed upgrade allows you to raise speed to 200%.
-> That’s 100 DPS.

If you make those two upgrades exclude each other:
The more damage upgrade allows you to raise damage to 100 (twice as high!)
The more speed upgrade allows you to raise speed to 1000% (five times as high!)
Both of those create 100 DPS on their own.

Combined they would be 1.000 DPS -> that’s too much, if only 100 DPS are in balance.

So in order to allow all enhancements simultaneously, you have to limit their power. Then you are limited too. Your spell can neither get as fast, nor have as high damage than with my idea.

As a refinement to my proposal:
That two enhancements do not need to be strictly excluding each other, so that you can only either raise the one OR the other. It’s just important that both in combination, stay within the maximum allowed power of the spell.

So maybe, if both enhancements could have 10 ranks - then say the limit is 10 ranks for both of them combined.

So you could level both enhancement skills to 5-5. Or you could do 10-0 or 0-10… or anything inbetween.

You claim this to be a limitation - but I really don’t think it is.

37

Or… don’t create overpowered skills? That sounds more viable to me. I don’t mind unique tree upgrades for individual skills, but if your only reasoning is to “balance”… that’s not a good reason at all.

38

I get it, so you want people to be able to customize a base skill using a combination of synergies. That’s a very interesting idea.

So lets say that you have a max number of synergy upgrades to a skill. You can have any combination of 2-4 synergies with a max combined synergy skill count of 20 skill points or whatever it is.

I think this would definitely increase build diversity as long as it’s balanced. If for example, the effects aren’t balanced around each other then it would be a problem.

It’s a more reinforced soft cap, that would probably increase skill diversity a little more.

39

I think I just disagreed with it :wink:

So random exmple:

Fireball does 10 damge. One shot per second. -> 10 DPS
Now you have two upgrades: More damage and more speed.
Now let’s assume, for balancing reasons, an upgraded fireball should do 100 DPS.

If you allow both skills to be upgraded, and want to get at 100 DPS
The more damage upgrade allows you to raise damage to 50.
The more speed upgrade allows you to raise speed to 200%.
-> That’s 100 DPS.

If you make those two upgrades exclude each other:
The more damage upgrade allows you to raise damage to 100 (twice as high!)
The more speed upgrade allows you to raise speed to 1000% (five times as high!)
Both of those create 100 DPS on their own.

I did not reply to your example last time as I thought it is just a bad example, but this time I will as you keep bringing it up.

In this case you created two skills which accomplish the exactly same effect in two ways, making one skill completely redundant. If this is your idea of having to make an ‘exclusive decision’, then there should not be exclusive skills simply because of that. Anyone not going with the faster speed doesn’t understand game concepts, it will always be the better choice.

I do not want skills which achieve the exact same thing in two ways (even if neither were clearly superior) and then call this mutually exclusive. Just roll them into one and do not even have the other. If they are to be exclusive, they at least should accomplish different things, not the same thing.

A better example imo would have been a fireball with identical damage in an increased area versus more damage in the same area.

So in order to allow all enhancements simultaneously, you have to limit their power. Then you are limited too. Your spell can neither get as fast, nor have as high damage than with my idea.

I got that, I did disagree. In that case, do not create overpowered skills, as I said before, they already are exclusive as I can invest a point exactly once. No need to actually make skills which are mutually exclusive, this does not offer more diversity, it offers less.

As a refinement to my proposal:
That two enhancements do not need to be strictly excluding each other, so that you can only either raise the one OR the other. It’s just important that both in combination, stay within the maximum allowed power of the spell.

So maybe, if both enhancements could have 10 ranks - then say the limit is 10 ranks for both of them combined.

So you could level both enhancement skills to 5-5. Or you could do 10-0 or 0-10… or anything inbetween.

You claim this to be a limitation - but I really don’t think it is.

I certainly would prefer this over enforced exclusive skills. I still do not like your example as the result is the same, so it makes little difference what exclusive skill you choose. In that case, just offer one. The effects should be different, not the same. If they are the same it is not an exclusive skill, it is a redundant skill. But that is more a flaw in your example than in the approach.

You can simply view this (limiting the number of skill points invested in a tree to a number lower than the maximum) as an argument against overpowered skills however. But I certainly like it better than making skills mutually exclusive.

I still am not sure why I should not be allowed to take both, as this means I will not be able to take a third skill, say increased fire damage for all skills, which would also help me.

40

First of all first post. This game looks like it will be sweet.

I totally voted for option one. I love skill tree building. However I would like to see option one. In a lot of my favorite games that feature skill trees (for this example diablo 2 and borderlands immediately came to mind.) that the sweet spot for number of skill trees is 3. So this “fighter” or whatever they end up calling him could have defensive, offensive, and possibly a party buff/enemy debuff skill tree (like the paladin from D2 this is just an example and obviously not a definate answer to a 3rd tree). However there needs to be a way to play a mixed character that isn’t gimped if they don’t solely dedicate all their points to a single tree. Add this to the max level being 200 and the replay value of the game will definately be huge.

Lastly i would just like to add the thing that bugged me the most about TQ (great game) was the skill tree’s in it. They were too cluttered and i just didn’t care for the layout.