The winner is the first option.
(my vote)
Honestly, do you really care for an answer?
I mean, it’s fully okay if you disagree on my opinion. I don’t call it “my” opinion without reason - and I’m fully used to having an opinion that doesn’t go along with a majority of people, and don’t plan on changing that.
So if you just want to display your disapproval of my idea, then I can leave it at that. But if - and only if - you are really genuinely interested in understanding why I’m absolutely sure there would be more diversity, I could open up a new thread for that instead of hitch-hiking this thread.
But I’d ask for a more open-minded approach then. Just thinking it through, and trying to imagine how it could be. Not trying to prove who’s right and who’s wrong. I don’t believe in that kind of “right and wrong” anyway.
I just don’t want this to become a tiresome “just to prove someone’s right”-type of discussion. Those are just a waste of time. In that case I’d rather just stop it here.
I also thought that the trance line from the Dream mastery was the best thought out differentiator skill concept you’ve used to date. It allows you build options within a mastery that you didn’t have earlier.
One of the big limiters that you had in TQIT was that every spirit based build had the death chill necrosis line maxed. It was to be expected. Subsequently this skill wasn’t an in-mastery differentiator. The only differentiation came from the combo masteries chosen in relation to spirt. Dream was totally different. You had three trances that were powerful and synergized with other classes in totally different ways. You could potentially have one evoker combo play totally differently from another evoker combo due to different trances picked (i.e wrath for blaster, and either empathy and convalescence for a pet based build). The differentiation employed allowed you to build two different evokers. (btw. the cost of pets was done pretty spot on; they have to be expensive to help them be a differentiator). You probably want to up the number of points that can go into trances (with power-ups they should be close to 25pts) so that helps focus characters on one or another option.
Also I’m not sure you’ve thought about different focuses yet for chars, but you could borrow from DnD PnP and have dedicated class roles- controller, defender, striker, and leader skill subsets. If you do think of using their roles as guidelines, you want make sure that you have higher tier options that allow them to sub into another role weakly (i.e. the heavy meleeist should be primarily a defender based class but could sub into a weak striker or leader at higher tiers or continue with defender). This can easily be done by making the higher tier skills trance-like, while leaving the base skills similar. That allows them to be the defender role first and then specialize at a higher level (i.e. maybe at 10 or 16 mastery points you then get the option for your trances).
These options allow players to differentiate their character within a mastery combo increasing overall diversity.
Dejnov.
While I like having to choose between skills depending on build, in this one case I’d choose option 2.
Thing is, if you’re playing singleplayer, being a tank that’s nigh-invulnerable but chews away at enemies a tiny piece at a time is DULL. And being a glass cannon that kills enemies quickly but keeps dying to single hits is also DULL.
Whereas running into trouble, and having to choose the right kind of fighter to be to survive the encounter is actually quite fun.
The ideal for me (in TQ terms) would be both skills take about 6 or 8 points to max, and scale with level/equipment - a reasonable investment to get both, but achievable and worth it for the flexibility it gives you.
Having useful but not essential skills depending off the two base skills would make things even more fun - having chosen to be flexible, you still get to choose how to weight your investment…
I’m against the idea of having mutually exclusive skill trees within a mastery. For this reason I would have to vote for the option where you have a single skill tied to bulwark or vanguard, where only one may be active at a given moment. There should be a mechanic that exacts a cost when switching between the two, but please do not design masteries that have boxes or branches locked out. In such cases where you are tempted to do that, consider making a separate mastery instead. In fact, it sounds like you are trying to build two different types of melee fighters anyway. Make the design decision about whether your want one or two melee masteries, and don’t gimp a mastery tree when what you really want to do is have two distinct melee fighting styles.
This is how you create more possible builds. Locking out a branch reduces options, so I take issue with the poll phrasing itself. Unfortunately, I think the decision was made already. [Sent from ADR6300]
Well said. I think the only circumstance that should be filled would be a certain item, skill, or stat. that is required for the effect to take place. Eg., blade weapons for bleeding, blunt for undead or broken bones, arrows for vital organ damage, certain strength score for concusion blows, certain dex score for dodge, etc. Dragon age was notorious for having throw away skills you had to waste points on to get the useful skills. All skills should be useful when appropriate, without wasting those precious skill points on useless skills. Eg. To attack multiple enemies with one attack you need dual wield, to use dual weild you need a dex of 100, to get a dex of 100 you need to be level 5, etc etc. Maybe even provide more skill trees than just masteries. Perhaps a general, defense, regeneration, etc. skill tree. This is just my 2 cents, which doesn’t buy anything anymore.
I think the skill system in TQ is perfect, and would like in GD to be something alike.
The only suggestion on-top TQ skill system I would like to make is the trees to include more tight sinergic skills, that compliment each-other. In other words the tree to be a form of ONE BIG skill.
I am very impressed, from what I have see from the screenshots this seems as though it will fit nicely into the enviornment! Keep up the great work!
Three skills is a lot, that’s right. If it is supposed to be a buff either way, what about just having two synergies that are mutually exclusive? That way only one skill is “lost” after making a choice.
Apart from that, I’ll go with the first option. If you invest skill points into one skill, you always lose another skill - whether that is because you can’t afford it anymore or because you can choose only one of two doesn’t make such a big difference in the long run. Different skill that can’t be active at the same time are, imho, a pretty bad idea - most players will feel like wasting skill points if they invest in more than one, and if they actually do, switching buffs will make the controls more cumbersome.
In my opinion, a melee toon needs every possible combination of offense/defense he can get his hands on so as to survive and also have a reasonable damage output so as to cope with both mobs and be able to close in and hit bosses. thus every single asset which can enhance any of these aspects is useful if not crucial for the toon.
when playing tq, i had a tank templar which i used to beat the game to leg first, and he wass one hell of a tank. due to my lack of knowledge about OA, the toon was best at tanking but from every 5 hits he dealt, only one managed to hit. on the otherhand, i also had a thane that was so weak he did not manage to progress far from orien epic and chugged about 10 potions with every mob… image with bosses…:S!
concluding, i think that if the skills would be mutually exclusive, they must enhance the toon enough to complement for the loss of the other, thus would require more modifiers from its other synergies. but this would make an inevitable waste since the other path would be useless to the toon, thus seeming like wasting skills, of which a melee toon has a good need of.
my guess would be that if the skills are to be mutually exclusive they require strong synergies so that the effects would get amplified and it could even compensate for a weakness the player experienced at the moment.
I read through the thread, but didn’t see anyone mention option #3: If the problem is that two trees is too much, why not make it a single tree? Every skill in the tree would have an offensive and a defensive flavor, which could be switched with an in-game character ability. If it feels like having double the amount of mastery skills available from a single tree is a no-no, perhaps they should be picked permanently from the offensive/defensive choices before gaining access to them. To make abusing this double tree harder, the switch could have a cooldown of 300 seconds and need a character level, or whatever.
I’m not sure how all the spirit and supernatural stuff works in the game world, but this idea could be explained by any number of ways to make sense. For example the character could be imbued with a spirit of bloodthirst and a spirit of sanctuary (replace names as necessary), be they manufactured from otherworldly beings or just naturally occurring supernatural entities. Alternatively they could worship something that grants these abilities, or engage in body modification with whatever branch of magic is prevalent in Cairn.
Since the necro is pretty strong in this post, I’m sure the piece of code dealing with this particular skillset has already been balanced and locked down long ago…
ok, so are we going back to TQ with more than enough random stuff to fight out with in terms of not so much encharntments but ablilites that allow the char to do extra damage or whatnot including self healing as a modifer ?.
I really really enjoy the path of exile . open gameness that path of exile has taken, if you kill off the skill set completely and make a tree that allows you to choose what skill to choose next in any particular circumstance. So you might beable to have plus 5 health in first point. then say either 5 more health and 5 dex as a skill tree keeps on growing in different directions you can select where you want your char’s skill to travel to and try and buff up the char that way.
now as for extra say encharntments as such you could either have one have it where you put a point into a slot to make it a level or you could (b) have certain slots on your char where you have say an object as such that gives you a buff that will give you an encharntment that allows you to level it up as you level. so you dont have to watch it all the time but you can choose when to level it up because it will tell you that its time for it to level.
so after all the arguments which are good/ bad and going forward are we still looking at a TQ or a complete overhaul of the system ?.
what you think ?
I voted for the tree approach. I would find it more interesting to have to commit to a style of fighting, especially if you want to get the high end skills, rather than just being able to cherry pick skills from different fighting styles.
Edit: I just noticed how old this thread is. Why did I never notice this before? :o
I’ll always like more diverse build options, more separate build options, etc.
Pretty much #1 reason why I went from being excited about D3 and forgetting it completely is the lack of builds, just “item builds”. But that’s just me.