Yeah, the typical “New MaxLvl is 110” of expansions can easily be put into place for skill Levels later on.
Besides of that I’m sure that we’ll see many changes of the existing trees, both small and large, over the next months. For example the Skeleton tree is a bit “overloaded”, so maybe you can condense some nodes into one single one, or for example give Skeleton archers by Default, reducing some nodes (and the “only mages” “only warriors” “only archers” nodes would of Course remain), stuff like that. Also currently I feel the powerlevel of nodes differs greatly in a tree, with some nodes weakening skills almost, they’d Need Change as well.
In the end, not the Numbers of Skill Points is important, but the relevance of one Point. If you have 8 Points that each add 1% crit, or 2 Points that each add 4%…the result would be the same, if you get 4 times as many Points in the first case. Either you Balance around 20 Points, or 25, or 100.
Actually this thread along with this quote sparked a thought in me, nothing i care to test myself.
But has anyone made up a count of different varieties you can make with the 20 points? And are those varieties “good”.
This kind of count-up would make sense to do, to see if a something see to expensive to reach or to cheap to reach.
While i don’t think we should be looking at buffing at this stage of development, i think balancing should definitely be investigated and this count could perhaps uncover some imbalances in the game.
My main issue is that it’s too arbitrary of a number based on how widely diverse skill trees are. Take marked for death (acolyte). it has 66 possible points to allocate. Then take skeleton (acolyte). it has around 107. 20 is insane for this tree. 20 is perfect for marked for death. I think a percentage would work better like, 30% or something per tree. It REALLY sucks when dealing with a huge tree as is.
I think just raising the cap is lazy and unintuitive. I like the idea of having to sacrifice a lot for minimal gains to min/max. Maybe have an epic quest or challenge to give you the chance to give +1 max level to ONE skill. That would be more reasonable to me.
On the other hand, I like the fact that I can’t “complete” my skills they way I want to. I can’t think of a way in which we get more diversity by having more points to spent. Right now I’m trying Swipe Shaman and I like the fact that I have to choose between crit, flat light, attack speed and AoE. That’s how arpgs should work, min/maxing and making sacrifices. Being able to get everything you need for the type of build you are making, is not good.
I’ve done a bit of testing on most classes/skills with trees now - I am also of the opinion that 20 feels a tad short. I’ve sortof been playing with the mindset that 20 was just what was currently available and this was going to increase in the future, by some means at least. Some kind of in-game challenge content or even DLC.
I would be a bit disapointed if this is capped at 20 indefinitely.
EDIT: If it remains at 20, an idea would be some sort of system where we can sacrifice points from skills to increase others.
I think the issue may that you’re seeing a single skill tree as one skill, but rather, you should see a tree as skill variants. There is no reason why you should be able to cover proportionately the same amount of a tree - a larger tree just means more ways to build a skill.
I imagine you find it short because you have a certain path in mind for the tree and wants to “fill it out”. My question is why should that necessarily be the case?
Honestly? Because we want to. It’s a single player/coop ARPG. this isn’t a competitive game, where any of this matters. We want to have fun. We want to feel powerful, and fulfilled with our characters. Since they are apparently going the way of D3 with an online persistant world with other people, most likely they won’t have modding. No one is asking for the ability to max every skill node in a skill tree for every skill. But when your build feels WRONG or incomplete because of an arbitrary skill cap that doesn’t work with every skill, it becomes something you don’t look forward to playing.
And no, leaderboards aren’t competitive. They just highlight whichever exploitable build is there this month.
I never said anything about not having fun. But having your cake and eat it is not always fun. What would you say to someone who says fun is if I can have a character that can completely max out a tree?
Since none of us have said we should be able to max out every skill tree on every skill, and you continue to throw this unsaid desire in our faces, let’s just agree that you are arguing for the sake of arguing and move on. The system as is is not fulfilling. That’s why we are giving our feedback. Feel free to post another thread saying that you would like 1 skill point per skill for that authentic “sacrifice choice” playstyle. See, I can assume what you want even though you haven’t said that too.
Hopefully as time goes by trees will be optimized a bit more. Look at the skeleton tree for example, no matter what you do you are left with the feeling of wanting more.
I’ve already posted my thoughts that limit per skill may be increased. It’s just not a good time now for doing so.
But this words are more interesting …
So, if I’m understanding you correctly, let me rephrase this: Some trees has low ratio of common node’s amount to amount of key nodes.
If that’s right, than I probably can agree in some cases. But still, it’s a balancing problem, I guess. Size of a tree itself can’t be a real problem. For example: Some time ago I’ve suggested Black Hole and Fire Shield reworks. Both suggested trees have their size about 80-100. But is this a real problem? Every suggested tree has 4-5 ways to advance, and the length of every way is 8-14 nodes with at 1-2 key nodes on it.
But lets return to “Summon skeleton” skill tree and other “large” ones. Yes, it may seem that they have to many common nodes and lack of key ones. But, in my opinion, it’s a problem of balancing and, sometimes, may require partial rework of problematic tree.
I guess the way I feel is that you end up with 5 skills that are all evenly leveled. This means you never really build towards one or two skills, and takes away from the feeling of creating a specific build around one/two powerful skills. This has been the formula for ARPGs for a long long time.
I’m happy to be proven wrong, it’s just that having the skills capped at 20 ‘waters down’ the whole crux of making a ‘build’.
Right now, with max leveled skills, my character build feels like it has not reached it’s potential.
There’s even an argument to be made around the synergy of the talents within the skill trees, and the limit of points hinders reaching some of these synergies.
EDIT: Also, I’m talking about like 25-30 Skill points, rather than 20, and not in every single skill. I firmly believe that some skills should be able to be leveled higher than others at the expense of other skills, there need to be a drawback somewhere.
Thanks for clarifying. I see where you are coming from but I’m more inclined towards @JustLoveHnS perspective which is that this might be a balancing issue.
I mean, in a way, you’re also implying a balancing issue. Just that your solution is to increase the no of skill points per tree. While I’m more inclined to propose compacting the nodes and allow a “full” build to be satisfactorily achieved within 20 points.
I’ll just quote myself from above
I agree that there are many “meh”-nodes you currently have to pick to get to the ones you want, and those points are missing for synergies you do want in the end. On the other hand, that’s a way of balancing different powerlevels of nodes. When you put 3 points of relatively useless points in front of a really powerful one, the powerful one basically costs you 4 points, so it can increase the power of the skill more than a nodeline of 4 good improvements.
Sudden idea: Would the problem be alleviated somewhat, if skill-changing nodes would be at the start of nodelines, and their upgrades are behind that?
Example Skellies: Your first nodes to pick are “Add Archers”, “Better mages”, “Better warriors”, generic upgrade line for all skelly types. Behind “Add Archers” would be “Only archers” as a side branch, behind better mages “only mages” as side branch etc., thus Nodelines in 4 general directions: Improve Archers, Improve Mages, Improve Warriors, Improve Skellies in general (everwhere can be nodes that also improve/add skellies in general of course).
Idea behind this is, that you can decide early on, what direction your skill should go, and the later nodes are more specific and tweak certain parts here and there.
At the end of each line can be a “big bang” node for the skill (dunno, “mages can also cast meteor”, “warriors take half damage” etc. or something) and your points aren’t enough to get two of them. So either you specialize in one line and have some points left for other upgrades, or you balance it out more.
Don’t know if that would alleviate the feeling of “not getting what I want”
