There is an easy way to test if GD needs alot more skill points.
Download GDStash: http://grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23414
Give your character as many skill points as you desire.
Take a build that can farm the crucible from the build compendium: http://grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79419
Make the exact same build of your choice with the same items and everything.
Now allocate those extra skill points and take it out for a spin. See if it still feels balanced.
Out of curiousity Ogi, what other games are you comparing GD to?
Mechanics of never maxing skills an relying on +skill items? That is simply bad idea IMHO.
To what games I’m comparing GD? This would be D2, titan quest and dungeon siege I guess.
In TQ mastery bar was what 32 points? To add to this skill trees were shallower so at level 50 or so yours char was basically ready and rest was gravy. This made feel of progression and power real.
My dirty secret is I loathed D2 and to this day I cannot guess why people like this mess. I mean gameplay was OK but skill s and itemization were terrible.
DS was well… DS. I mean mechanics were almost inexistent yet I still have soft spot for it.
http://grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?p=689984#post689984
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?p=679704#post679704
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=76155
From what i see, at least those pets doubled by endgame gear are maxed or near-maxed. The familiar quintuples it’s shot count between rank 5 and 26
Well, the game uses the TQ engine and Medierra, who is the founder of Crate Entertainment and who’s brainchild GD is, was lead game designer on TQ/IT.
In TQIT you still have to make choices, though not as difficult as it can be in GD. My GD builds tend to suffer from my years in TQIT since I’m used to only using a few skills for my builds.
Nor is it a case of never maxing skills. It’s more that not all skills need to be maxed to be effective in GD whereas in TQIT they do.
I’m not a D2 fan either since I didn’t try it until after I’d played TQIT for a while. It was that ridiculously miniscule inventory bag that did it in for me.
I guess that’s right but I much more prefer situation where skills need to be maxed. There is something pleasing in completing skill, or it’s just my OCD talking.
I prefer maxing skills as well, though that’s probably not the best thing to do build-wise. But if my build takes me to the end of the game with however many deaths it clocks up (because it will have a lot of deaths, believe me) then I’m happy. I’ve enjoyed playing it and that’s the main thing for me.
The other thing that has to be considered is the proccing skills that the devotion system can add to builds. Sometimes you only need a point in a skill because basically you’re only using it to proc a devotion skill.
I’d be fine with getting three skill points per level, mainly because it feels like less of a reward when you level and just get 1 or 2 points. The game seems fairly well balanced around the current point allotment though. Those extra 60 points or so might help casual players like you or I progress through Ultimate, but the min-maxers who populate the Build Compendium have already figured out insanely powerful builds as it is. More skill points would result in complaints about how OP builds have become, leading to more and more rebalancing.
What is bad about one pointers? What is bad about some skills inviting full investment while others demand specific breakpoints? What is the final purpose of these proposed changes? You mention this is a good idea “in your opinion” but there’s hardly anything that amounts to a ‘why’. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Why should there be one pointers? Why should there be specific breakpoints in skills instead of fluid growth?
Reason is simple power builders already “broke” game and no amount of balancing can help there. It would be helpful for other 99% players who aren’t power building, will not spend 30+ hours just farming equipment or have more than two or three characters.
Additionally current model necessitates some pretty heavy optimising and often really counter-intuitive skill spending. That make some concepts impossible, are you able build for example death knight melee who summons skeletons without making it to difficult to play?
Sure you can. You just need to keep your builds priorities in focus. You shouldn’t have much issues beating the game on Ultimate. Can you do Super Bosses with it? Maybe. Maybe not. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Anyway, the debate is largely pointless since Crate purposefully decided on this approach to skill points long ago. They won’t be changing the current leveling scheme in regards to skill points. Any changes of that magnitude would come with the next expac and those changes are not coming.
Modding is the only way you are going get what you want in regards to this particular topic. There are also “cheat tools” that allow you to give yourself extra points, I believe. Crate doesn’t care if you use them if you don’t agree with their approach. Play the game how you want.
You don’t need to be a “power builder” to beat and enjoy the game entirely on Normal/Veteran if you’re a casual player.
If you’re someone that wants to go deeper down the rabbit hole whether it’s because you want a challenge or because you enjoy theorycrafting/number crunching, then I think it’s fitting that you learn the inner workings of build crafting including where to place points for maximum efficiency. If skills had fluid growth, you’d still be learning the same stuff more or less, that being efficient skill allocation. This is no different than several other games out there.
or, you know, you could just as well reduce the power of gear by the effect of that 60 skillpoints to land us at the same level of power. Want to make a mod to that effect?
I have a death knight who wades into melee with skeletons that constantly die and arre resummoned through a devotion proc in revenant.
Also, the only way you can expect (not counting lucky breaks with gear like a sudden mythical will of bysmiel drop) to gear up in 30 hours just farming, is if you already have the ability to do crucible glad 150-170 in sub-8 minutes, preferably 6:30 to give you time to pick up loot. Which requires a fully optimized AND geared build, which you have to farm up in advance… you get the idea. And this requires crucible, as nowhere in campaign can you get both a large number of guaranteed monster infrequents and multiple legendaries in a similar timeframe.
I´m confused. 
What exactly is the definition of “Casual” here? Playtime? Number of toons?
Ogi finished the game. Lvl 74. With this level I assume it was on Elite(?). In my definition of “Casual” I would make a new toon (something different) and will finish it again without real problems, spending the skill points as I like.
But if I want to beat the game on “Ultimate” perhaps even with Lokarr and Crucible 170, I have to optimize. Optimizing a build is a game for itself including farming for items (if I want, I always could use GDStash). It´s about making sacrifices in skills and devotions, augments and components, etc.
Is this still “casual” by definition? Not in mine.
OP, perhaps you are over extending more than you need to. 60 extra skill points is a lot. You can max two or three main damage skills with that, be it AoE or single target.
Why not post your build with Grim tools. and the the conversation will be a lot easier. Imo you are trying to use everything (or almost) from both masteries and you might not need to.
Believe that it’s far easier to post your build and let the conversation continue based on more concrete info. Otherwise threads like these tend to get all worked up and generally end in frustration where each player comes and argues with his on philosophy on games in general or something.
Everyone with less then a few 1000 hours in the game is considered casual 
I consider a player “casual” if they’re not a gamer, like they don’t play games in most of their free time. So basically, even if I had 30k hours in GD, I’d call myself casual because I don’t really play games that often, like, idk, 6 hours a week at max, sometimes 6 hours a month.
I have less than 300 hours with playtime on all my characters combined. Do I qualify for super casual? 
Now there is the questioning of it as a game concept overall, whether games are better or worse off with one pointers, and there’s making a point that it needs to be changed. Provide concrete examples and maybe there can be a discussion.
Kludged together builds can and have cleared ultimate difficulty. It is possible to clear ultimate with a single mastery. It is possible to clear ultimate with NO masteries. Accepting that a player needs some baseline understanding of game concepts (resistances and RR for instance, % damage is perfectly straightforward) to complete ultimate, which many people who endeavored to have, your propositions in their vague context would only serve to dumb the game down towards D3 story mode grade. When you can get tons of skills you are making fewer choices, fewer and fewer choices trends unto non-choices. At its simplest this is a proposal for making the game easier in the wrong way. The ignorant are more likely to succeed because they aren’t given as many chances to fail, anyone else past a certain point will realize the game has lost depth when so many choices were turned into non-choices.
There’s already an option for builds that can’t handled ultimate, it’s called elite.