Hey all! Was in a stream with Nugi earlier today. Talking about how we can make our game make more sense from a mechanics standpoint. Example:
On our skill trees, when you mouse over a node, having it highlight other nodes that it work with. Does a more modifier on one side of the tree impact poison damage on the other side of the tree.
Would love to open up this topic and chat about what we can do as a dev team to make things make better visual sense instead of throwing walls of text at you.
One thing that I would like to see is nodes dimmed that you can no longer reach, or points that can be applied to nodes reduced as well. It can be frustrating to work on a tree and realize at level 15 or so that there are nodes that you can no longer get to or that you can only apply 2-3 of the maximum points to when you get there.
I think some skills should have more themed branches. Sometimes the branches are a bit confusing and hard to understand the idea behind. Some nodes connected to other nodes donāt really fit. A search feature could be nice (like for the devotion tree in Grim Dawn) to not feel lost.
I was planning on doing this for the wiki. Another thing Iām planning on doing for the wiki skill maps is making icons for for certain skill effects (increased CD, increased Damage, added damage type, etc) and allowing those icons to show up next to the skill node with a filter to show/hide each group. I was also thinking of a colored underlay to show āgroupingsā of nodes (e.g. on summon skeleton there could be groups for the Archer, the warrior, the mage, etc).
Base damage numbers would be useful. Iām not sure about the ARPG genre, but for other RPGs and MOBAs it is weird to have almost all base damage come from the weapon (as opposed to the skills). Some way to show this would be great, even if itās just a āMelee Attack Damage Before Modifiersā stat in the UI.
Health numbers on health bars would be nice (although iād like more detailed Target stats as well).
Lastly affix and implicit ranges are impossible to find, but I canāt really think of a good way to incorporate them into the UI. Potentially having the possible rolls shown on the comparison tooltip could work (for implicits anyways).
Well I hope putting the base damage on all the skills is in that plan. Also seeing how many points we have into a skill and what the maximum points it can have is.
I was about to suggest this. For instance, I didnāt know that the primalistās vine skill dealt so much damage to kill things. I thought just from reading the description that it was meant to act as a support skill.
Iāve also mentioned before that I think that damage should be displayed per type per hit, rather than just per hit (or an option to show damage type numbers instead of hit damage numbers).
I agree with the example provided. I think its a pretty neat way of quickly showing the player which nodes interact with each other.
I also agree with this sentiment. An example of this would be the fire damage/ignite nodes locked behind a poison node on the Primalistās Swipe skill
I think itās a good idea to link, or hightlight skills/nodes or whatever you call them, to each other.
For example, in Diablo 2 LoD, you could see how manye percentages a certain skill, would buff each other.
You could do even better on this, by highlightning, maybe just a simple glow around the skill youāre hovering over, that they are affecting each other, and by how much, and if it reduces something, like a number of projectiles shot, it will show that itās reduced as well, and how much the single target damage will increase.
It doensāt have to be fancy or complicated in my opinion, just the highlight āglowā i mentioned.
One thing Iād like to see is that when something grants % increased damage, that the current value of that damage category/multiplier group be displayed.
For instance, the tempest reckless combatant tree node increases by 15% per point. If that value isnāt itās own multiplier, than having a number at the end of the description that is the current value of that multiplier group would be helpful. It would also be one way of distinguishing when something is additive with other stuff, and when itās a flat multiplier.
A ton of great feedback in here! Hopefully we will see some more. Team will be looking this over during meetings this week and talking about how we can make things clearer.
all the critical points I think have been brought up nicely, Probably could design on a better skill tree layout per each skill, that incorporates how it will change the skills, based on sensible grouping. EXAMPLEā¦ fire modifers be with itās own branch of fire on the primalist swipe skill tree, as awesomely stated by Binkster, and just more sensible pathing to modifiers in general, and better organized, because as it stands, the skill trees are just a branching mess, I think, and they are very confusing for new, and old players alike who cant tell what they want to do with the skill, and how to clearly pick a pathing option on how they want to use them
maybe add little symbols, that are easy to understand, like a tiny flame or a skull for necrotic damage, add that to the skill node, so if you look for necrotic damage, you look for skills with that tiny skull icon. Also a symbol for AOE, Single Target, Duration etc. So every skill has 3-4 small Symbols that pretty much sum up the mechanic. Maybe hovering over a node, makes all the other skills affected by this node flash and highlighted.
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