This question was asked to Mike Weicker during one of the Q&A streams. Generally, it sounded very unlikely that this would be something they’d do – for a few reasons;
class identity, as Heavy has already pointed out
balancing & potential bug related issues
but the big one is that many skills (and what they eventually want with most skills) have interactions with other skills within the same class (example; nodes of the Shift skill have multiple possible interactions with other skills of the Rouge which a different class would not be able to take advantage of)
allowing other classes to access the skills would remove those options for those classes, so other classes wouldn’t get the benefit of the full skill tree
you’d either be severely limited in your choices within other class skill trees or the dev’s would have to completely forgo adding this additional functionality between skills to allow for other classes to use the skills to their full extent (which seems very unlikely at this point as more and more skills receive interactions between skills of the same class)
I might be missing something further (because I can’t find the source), but these were generally the key notes of that answer.
It was a cool feature in D2 when Paladins could get access to teleport by using the ENIGMA runeword.
But in LE classes have a very balanced skill arsenal. And skills are also very class/mastery specific. This kind of feature would not fit very well, I think.
In general it sounds like a cool feature. But I understand the reasons to not implement it that Andrew quoted.
Luckily it’s up to the Unique design entirely as to which skills we could get access to. Also, just because a unique is focused on a specific skill, doesn’t mean it would necessarily be one that granted said skill. Unique items that do this could be focused around more simple skills, ones that are just damaging skills, minions, nothing that provides a level of utility anywhere near Teleporting, no skills from Mastery Subclasses, etc.
A lot of people seem to be reading this as “let every class use whatever skill they want all willy nilly” and that is not the intended idea.
The problem with stuff like this is, having one or two of those items granting skills to other classes… that’s kinda cool and “unique”… but then people will demand more and more.
Once a system like this is in place, the demand for certain skills will become bigger and bigger and then the question is:“Where do you draw the line?”, it’s really dangerous to implement such features, because once they are in, it’s very hard to revert or dial back some of this, without upsetting people.
This could be said about regular uniques, shards and mods, classes, skills, sets, item bases, passives, subclasses, etc. Almost any aspect of the game. I don’t see much of a difference between people “demanding” more items like this, or “demanding” new skills for the classes, or “demanding” new sub-classes, etc.
Again, every game ever has a few thousand people coming up with brilliant ideas all the time. Maybe like 0.000001% of them ever get anywhere near development, but some do. There are a handful of player designed unique items in a lot of games…even…Last Epoch. The dev’s aren’t giving these creators free reign any more than they pander to the desires of every salty suggestion post where people demand anything. If they’re careful about the skills they choose to do this with, it’s no different than adding a no-class skill like your channeled void staff, which if any class had access to would have just as much impact on their identity as holding a different item that granted a different thing that they didn’t have access to before.
To reiterate: It is not the intended idea to grant access to every skill to every class like shall-not-be-named. It is the intended idea to use already existing skills and passives from other classes on Unique items that grant skills, an item trait not unfamiliar in APRG gearing.
Because implementing a an entirely new mechanic to an item(granting a skill) in a game, that didn’t have that before is very dangerous.
Also demanding new classes or skills is also very different.
expanding the pool of skills within a class is totally fine, but as soon as you implement any mechanics that breaks the usual restrictions (like class restrictions) it can become very hard to balance or expand that without getting the wishy-washy/homogenized “classes” alot of other similar games have.
Now see, this is where I think this mechanic would shine. Using that unique item would come with the downside of not being able to utilize a large portion of that skills tree. The reward obviously, is being able to use that skill. The “risk” is…maybe your 20 points will be a lot harder to get the full benefit of towards the end, because not only can you not utilize those particular passives, maybe the unique (like the Soulfire example used) also converts that skills damage. Removing those options, and severely limiting your choices within that Granted Skills passive tree is the very common trope of “powerful item has powerful penalty” that we already see on a number of uniques in the game as is. “The big one” indeed.
I’m gonna have to disagree and say that adding items and skills to an ARPG is probably a pretty good move.
You said earlier you’d be down with items that granted skills that were not class specific, I’m curious why you think a powerful item like that, that would give a Channeled Void Spell to a Primalist, is less dangerous than giving him the Dancing Strikes skill because you don’t think homie can do a cartwheel - despite having a handful of viable Dexterity focused builds already?
As i already said, adding new stuff and expanding upon a classes tool kits is great.
That should be the longterm goal anyway.
I just want to avoid anything that homogenizes classes too much.
Ideally, if those items would ever make it into the game, you still would have 4 other class-related skills and would retain alot of the class-identity.
While you are correct that primalist has some limited dexterity scaling, he doesn’t have any “agile skills”.
You could also argue that dexterity is only how much finesse a character has with weapons, but it doesn’t necessarily related to how agile a character is.
Seems like semantics. The game is pretty clear about what Dexterity represents. Throwing in “agility” to differentiate sounds like a straw-man since within the game there’s no real difference.
I feel like this is exactly the kind of broken things people are wanting when they ask about these things. They just don’t want to come straight out and say it because it is obviously OP and they don’t want the pushback.
I am against the idea when it comes to active use skills. I don’t feel so bad about triggered or aura type unique skills from items. Them having a skill tree is another thing entirely. Given enough balance, it could be okay.
This actually gives me a thought about what a Legendary could be. Maybe a legendary item is one that levels up and has a whole skill-type tree instead of affixes and you get to customize the item that way.
I’ve said numerous times throughout this thread that it should only be certain skills that are not utility focused and have limited benefit outside of their own skill tree, you can go ahead and give me all the pushback you want friend, but I’m just here to discuss potential coolness in a video game we both like, not start a fight, and I don’t appreciate being called deceptive.
I tried to use examples that were good examples of this: Hungering Souls has no interaction with any other Acolyte specific skills, but does have interactions with minions in general; something most classes have. It also has a number of passives that alter the way the skill deals damage by adding/subtracting projectiles, it has “when hit” procs, and furthermore the Unique Item itself converts the damage to fire - a much more universal damage type than its base Necrotic. A great example of an item and a skill combination that would do really well with this kind of mechanic.
Same with the wolves, they are a very good universal minion tied to an item with limited functionality otherwise. It has some health and minion melee damage, and some base cast speed. This item, to a player seeing it for the first time, screams “I give you Wolves” no matter what class you’re on. Wolves again have a very universal passive tree - within the tree itself lies the “up to your maximum number of companions” functionality with its own +wolves passives. They have lightning damage, cold damage, physical damage, bleeds, and again not a single one of the passives has a something to do with another Primalist skill.
Once again; The title of this thread has the word “certain” in it twice. This is not a blanket “let all the classes use all the skills like PoE” thead.
The Primalist only has 3 melee skills (Swipe, Serpent Strike & Earthquake), 1 of which has the dex tag (but is restricted to polearms, go figure!), so 1/3 of his melee skills are “dextrous”.
Even if I grant that, which would be tenuously at best, the logical leap between what stats “represent” and what it means to a character’s abilities is lost rather quickly in gameplay. They can do all kinds of crazy things whether they have 0 or 200 of a given stat, or any combination of them.
To contrast, Dexterity does seem to relate to the characters precision of movement and general aim. It’s probably fair that these stats are largely there for gameplay mechanical reasons more than anything conceptual, but I do see the attempt at a loose connection.
