A better way to deal with skills being removed by algorithm when removing a piece of gear with +skill

Feedback and Suggestions
1

The way it is now, if I take off a piece of gear with +skill on it, the game will choose a skill to downgrade, and not the last one I added. This can cause serious problems and penalize the player by forcing them to downgrade that skill they last added and level up the skill to 20 again. I realize this is done to prevent people from getting free respecs, but you are basically penalizing everyone to keep a few people from respecing for free.

The solution is to remove the last skill added, in order as you remove points… BUT on adding a +skill item back on it adds that same point back on in order. So the only way they can change skills is actually using the remove skill point system.

If they remove 3 skill point items, and remove a single skill point via respec, then first two of three skill points will be added back on if they add on the 3 skill point items again. This way there is no cheating.

So, if you have Fireball at 23 points.
The last 3 skills you added were:
Point 21: Mana Sphere 2
Point 22: Piercing Heat 4
Point 23: Mana Sphere 3

If you remove 3 items, then put 2 back on, it adds Mana Sphere 2 and Piercing Heat 4 back on. If a week later they add another skill point back on it adds Mana Sphere 3.

If at some point they respec 1 point, it erases the last point on the last, so Mana Sphere 3. So the only way to remove all 3 from that list, is to respec 3 points.

If you change one +1 item for another +1 item, or you take it off to forge and put it back on, no needing to add the skill back, because it does it automatically. If you swap items to see which is better on your stats, then switch back, it goes back to where you were before.

Problem solved. No cheating to get free respecs.

2 Likes
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First off, can we stop doing this bullshit where any inconvenience, no matter how minor, is referred to as “punishment”? It’s ridiculous, it doesn’t bolster the argument, and it sounds childish.

Anyway, your idea only works because the example you chose doesn’t break traversal.

Instead, the last 3 points I added are:

  • Point 21: 2/2 Skira’s Gambit
  • Point 22: 1/2 Arcane Divergence
  • Point 23: Igneous Force

Now I take off my +3 Fireball item. Then I drop the 1/2 point in Skira’s Gambit with a respec. Your system can’t add those points back because the requirement for Arcane Divergence isn’t met anymore. Uh oh Spaghetti-os!

Maybe you thought you were thinking of this with “Drop the last point if you respec”, but you very very didn’t. The fact that you didn’t think of how path breaking would work before you even finished typing up your post is why EHG got to chose how this works, and you did not. And that’s just one very low effort example of the many different possible kinds of fuckery that people would play with in order to break a LIFO system.

So really

This problem is already solved, you just need to get over the minor, infrequent inconvenience of it.

3

Umh… while I don’t agree with the terms OP uses… the system would work.

Imagine it in the following way:

The game saves the highest amount of points you’ve ever spent on the tree, the whole setup as well as the ‘position’ it was allocated.

So let’s say you have 3 extra points, and add them. They hence would be position 21, 22 and 23.

You remove it, the state of the skill goes back to position 20.

Now you add it again, or any other item giving extra points, let’s say this time ‘only’ 2.
So it adds position 21 first, then position 22.

You’re back where you left off, no big issue.

It simply removes a bit of hassle and is a nice convenience or QoL mechanic, especially since the system doesn’t tell you which points had been removed when taking off any item.

Also your argument of ‘just get over it’ is one of the worst possible suggestions which I’ve ever heard to date. If people would ‘just get over it’ then nothing would ever be done to improve things.

1 Like
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What I think is bad is removing a +1 WW class relic with another one to level it and every time the points get removed and I need to add them back ^^. It’s not a huge problem but looking everytime where the point was taken out is just not fun. I wish you keep the points in place if you change a +skill item with a +skill item.

3 Likes
5

No, it’s not solved. In fact you literally just said it’s not solved with your “minor infrequent inconvenience of it”. Or they could literally just make the above change and remove all inconvenience completely.

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This is contradicted by the fact that I broke OP’s system to achieve a free point respec with about 10 seconds of thought.

Now this is a legitimate thing that could be improved on.

Just because someone has a complaint doesn’t mean it needs to be resolved. In this case, any inconvenience of the current system is minor, low impact, and infrequent, and the benefit of preventing instant free respecs outweighs it. So “get over it” is the correct answer.

1 Like
7

Not just that, but also to prevent you equipping a +3 gear before the boss to get more damage and then removing it.

Yes, this is annoying. However, it happens because when you equip an item, you first have to unequip it. It’s an algorithm issue and not linear to change. But yes, it would be nice if the game kept track of the skills, ONLY if you switch for the exact same number of +skill. This wouldn’t be abusable and would be a nice QoL, especially when you’re trying to roll those class relics.

This is the main issue for me, to be honest. If it just signaled what node was removed, I wouldn’t even mind having to reapply the point every time, since it would be easy to spot which it was.

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It’s just annoying and not the end of the world. It would be nice if they change the mechanic when they have nothin better to do but right now the world keeps on spinning even though it’s annoying ^^.

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Yes, of course. It’s just a QoL that doesn’t change much. I really like the class WW relics, so this happens to me quite often, but at a certain point I’ve already memorized the ones that change, so it’s not a big issue. Just something to add to the “one of these days” pile :stuck_out_tongue:

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Yeah those class relics will be most likely my late late game chase if i don’t need a special one there. They are just okay to use overall.

1 Like
11

First of all… no, you haven’t. To make it clear why:

The 3 points added in your example would be position 21, 22 and 23, right?
Now you despec Position 20 though! Ok, right.
Now you put the item back on… it can go 2 ways now, and that’s simply a design-choice from there, does nothing with the quick-switch of items without manually respeccing though which was the whole topic here, which you missed btw.

Option 1:

You now have 3 free points as the system knows ‘you removed a point personally’, you have to now spec them again.

Option 2:

It specs into the point you manually removed, plus position 21, plus position 22.

I mean… it’s not that hard to understand the technical logic behind it there. Actually fairly simple. Hard to do though when the main stance is being dismissive, shutting off the ability to think because you’re fixated on your own point.

So no, your example does not ‘contradict’ it, it at best shows technical issues which can happen during the road to finding a proper solution. Thanks for showcasing the example though.

As for the last part:
Absolutely! I agree 100%! But OP’s argument bases on a viably annoying situation, which is actually very annoying if points get removed randomly without your knowledge. There seems to me no rhyme or reason behind it currently, outside of taking them from nodes which allow removing points without unallocating anything fully.
Actually makes it harder to handle this way though since you need to remember 'was it this one I had on 4/5 before? Or was it full? What about the other 2/3 one?

It’s a hassle, period.
There exist solutions which handle it better, so it’s a viable suggestion for a change. Not a ‘fix’… because it’s not breaking anything, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

1 Like
12

It actually does, when you open a skill spec tree, that had a point removed, the removed node is blinking red.

13

They do need to implement this. It breaks my skill every time I switch helmets, I have to respec points, which means I have to level those points again. It is not a minor inconvenience, it is an annoying bug that players shouldn’t have to deal with.

All they need to do is have it take off the last skill you put a point into, just like OP said.

14

I actually just tried this, and it doesn’t. There’s no difference between the node that lost the point and the others.

15

Yeah I have no clue what he’s talking about. It doesn’t blink red.

16

This is exactly what this system tries to deny. Because with this you could basically change skill setups on the fly for AoE vs. ST, echoing vs bossing etc.

The system is meant to be as little abuseable as possible. And it does this very well.
Having swapping gear be the meta is something much much worse than giving us some inconvience.

Everything that requires some work in the menues or changing gear being meta should be avoided and denied as much as possible during regualr gameplay.

1 Like
17

Bro, they don’t even penalize you for swapping items mid-combat. There is no way they thought helmet switching for bossing is too OP. They simply didn’t code this correctly, and that is okay. They are not gods.

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I thought I remembered that it did, and was going to write that that, but when I went and tested it in game a little while ago it didn’t.

19

It’s not a bug, it’s by design, to prevent you from abusing +Skills items to get free immediate respecs. Try to keep up.

20

If it stops free respecs then it should unallocate the points gained from the helmet, but it does not. It randomly chooses it’s preference and always takes a level off of those nodes. It is by no means implemented with some design in mind.

So every 2.3 seconds I can switch to a wrongwarp in my wand build, go invunlerable, timelock the boss, get a spell buff and movespeed buff, get no penalty for it, but I can’t switch helmets for a boss, or have the points last allocated by the thing I am removing be removed when I am taking it off?