Once skills are max level character progression feels overly diminished, IMO

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This is of course my personal experience and opinion, but I’d be surprised if I was entirely alone. Past getting my skills up to level 20, usually around level 75 in my experience, my character suddenly feels like they’ve reached an unfortunate state of “un-done doneness” that doesn’t feel great.
Considering you still have 25 levels and usually around the same in inevitable passives, there is of course still some progression available, but those last 25 points (the only reason the levels have any weight now) are largely reserved for min/maxing certain passives, and nothing mechanically different or really noticeable comes from them. You have gearing of course as well, but with a huge amount of it coming from RNG, you can go hours if not days without an upgrade coming your way.

One of my absolute favorite aspects of a game like this is build customization and diversity, and that feeling of a character never quite being “done” because there’s always something else you can stack or add or grind or find. With skills maxing out 75% of the way through your characters leveling journey, again it feels like a massive portion of the character is suddenly written in stone.

I am not asking to have the skill leveling progress lengthened, that wouldn’t be fun. I think something not entirely unlike a Paragon system, but for skill passives, would be awesome. What if, through a random drop, or a “consumable” blessing, or a super rare monolith reward, or something - anything really - you were able to gain “Skill Mastery” points?

You could get a max of 25, and each one you put into a skill passive that you already have selected. These points could increase the benefits of that particular passive by a percentage. Say, 10% per point or something.

If I have a node - for example since it’s right in front of me - the Rogue’s Puncture passive “Perforate” which increases Bleed chance maxed out with 5 points and 100% chance, and I add one of these Mastery points to it, now that node is 110% chance to bleed. If I only have 3 points into Perforate, for 60% chance to bleed, adding 1 points would make that a 66% chance. It increases the value present in the passive, not its min or max points.

Say on a node like “Hunger” which increases the maximum stack count of Bleeding Fury, if you dedicate 10 of your Mastery Points into that passive, you’ll get another +3 stacks out of it.

Not only could this help min/max and increase your characters progression past that stopping point in the endgame, it could help build diversity by allowing us to put fewer points into a passive while leveling, in order to stretch our tree out further, but then come back with mastery points to make up for some of those lost %'s. An example would be only putting 2 points into Perforate for 40% bleed chance, but then coming back later and adding 10 Mastery Points, to bring it up to 80% (like it would be with 4 native points) but allowing you to add those 2 extra points elsewhere in your tree.

Curious what the other players think, and I’m happy to elaborate if I’ve done a crap job of explaining myself :smiley:

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I think they already working on a system for leveling beyond 100.

It’s not finalised yet and will most likely not bring character power.

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That’s rad and I’m excited to see what they come up with, but I’m not really even talking about past 100, more like past 75. If my suggestion were to be implemented, it would be around level 100 that you finish up with (or at least have a handful of) these Mastery Points - and then I guess move on to whatever this ends up being.

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I did not really go into your specific suggestion, but I think there are already a lot of systems , that are still to be implemented, that would make the whole levleing process more interesting, beyond the point, where most people drop a character (Lvl 70-80).

I don’t really like systems like the one you suggested, because it feels like adding something for the sake of adding something.

I would much rather have different “content” that just keeps me excited and want to play the game more, while also obviously still leveling the character.

So just adding systems where you feel like you have some kind of “progress” is something I simply don’t like.

There are two very important parts in a loot based rpg.

  • Moment-to-moment gameplay
  • Progression of your character

Your suggestions falls into the 2nd category and while adding some more systems for progression can be good at certain places, it can lead to “too many things going on at once”.

I really would prefer having some very exciting and new content added, that doesn’t necessarily make me think about “why am I doing something currently”

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This is a really difficult reply for me to understand, I’m sorry if I’m just confused…

  1. You didn’t read my thing.
    but
  2. They’re probably doing it anyway.
    but
  3. You don’t like my thing, because it’s too much like another thing.
    but
  4. You’re fine with other things that are just like other things though if they are different and exciting.
    and
  5. You want to keep playing and obviously still leveling the character.
    but
  6. You don’t like to feel like you “have some kind of progress” because of systems.

Again, forgive me if I am just reading this wrong, but you seem to counter yourself at almost every turn? Especially your last line.

  1. You want new and exciting content, but you don’t want to know why you’re doing it?

I’m not meaning to sound rude or combative or anything, I just truly am having a hard time understanding your stance here.

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I did

?

I don’t like your suggestion, because it’s a progression system within another progression system, which seems like unnecessary complicated.

I don’t want to many systems stacked on top of each other, that are very similar.

I said, that I would like to have exciting content, that is so engaging and fun, that I don’t even think about my “next progression milestone”.

Just play for the sake of playing, because it’s fun.

Also one more thing regarding your OP.
When you reach lvl 75/76, you reach the point, where you have 20 skill points in every skill, which does take away a major “progression system”, but I disagree with the following statement:

I depedns on the build obviously, but the last 25 passive points can make a big difference and I also think that the main progression system is still not close to “done”, which is the “gear hunt”

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This. Definitely. I agree that after level 75 the progression seems less interesting, but it’s not tied to progression itself. If the activity we are in gives us this fun, we will play even without gaining any passive point.

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Okay thank you for clarifying, I get you much better now.

I’m inclined to agree about the overall feel of the game, and not wanting to add unnecessary redundancy, I don’t see a system like this doing that in any capacity whatsoever though, it seems completely intuitive and coming from a game like PoE which is absolutely inundated with mechanics at every turn, or D3 where it’s about as cookie cutter as you can get, I think this would keep LE in its perfectly healthy middle-ground.

This is no more redundant than Blessings (or endgame “passives”) , T6 or T7 mods (or endgame “affixes”), or Mastery (not-quite-end-maybe-middlegame “class”), or adding more affixes to Legendaries (or endgame “uniques”) - we’d simply have “endgame skill points” as well. Seems to fit the theme already IMO.

Also as for the remaining 25 points past 75, of course this is per-build and per-player, but I certainly make sure to have my build mechanically finished by the time I’m hitting monos as best I can. If it means I only have 1 instead of 5 points into a certain passive, that just means that afterwards I’ll be dividing my remaining points into already “started” passives. Not to say those 25 aren’t important, but they are treated more as “filler” and min/max stats instead of meaningful progression to a point.

I 100% agree that the game you’re playing being interesting and exciting makes for a much better experience than simply grinding towards the next progression point - and again, I don’t think this necessarily just blandly adds some meaningless progression for the sake of adding it. Re-read my part about not just being min/max, but adding to potential build diversity as well by allowing you to stretch your skill trees a bit if desired. It’s not just “click here for some extra stats because why not”, it can be sooooo much more.

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Of course, but if we’re just playing it because it’s fun, and not to progress our character, at what point does it stop being an ARPG and start being some single player storyline? Progression is important in a game like this, regardless of what medium it comes in.

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Having gotten into the level 75+ range on my characters, I have to agree that the leveling starts to choke up. I often find that my points become meaningless as early as level 60 - it truly starts to fall into min-max territory after that.

While I am sure that the passive trees will be updated in the future to potentially include more (and more meaningful) nodes, the skill passive trees feel like they cut out too early.

I like the idea of a Paragon style system for the skill passive trees where once you have reached level 20 you can further “Master” the tree - perhaps even resetting to level 0 and increasing the maximum level by one for each time you have reset it.

I am sure there are many ideas out there, I am excited to see what EHG comes up with as a solution.

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Fair point. I’d say that in a single player storyline, your character progresses. See the campaign for example. But I understand. For me, when it becomes repetitive (as the monolith echoes), we know we’re not in a story mode anymore. Even with the false storymode aspect brought by the timelines and the alternative stories.

BTW, for me it can’t stop being and ARPG because it’s never been one. I played the campaign maybe 50+ times and I’ve never made a decision that changed the story. I’m not playing a role. There is no role playing in that genre of game. It’s not ARPG, it’s Hack’n Slash. But that’s not our topic. :wink:

12

I agree that it’s desirable to make the last 30 levels or so more relevant to skill progression. However I think it’s possible to achieve it with a moderate adjustment to the existing skill progression system, rather than piling on new mechanics.

I was thinking earlier that D3 does something pretty neat - you get some new skill or rune at pretty much every character level, so it’s engaging and worthwhile to level all the way to 100. With 100 skill points total, LE should have potential to do something similar but the current system strays in quite a different direction with a more erratic progression. (LE passives are okay but they lack the punch of the active skills system)

Basically, the problem with LE’s skills is that you scale them in parallel. That means you end up with 5 skills at a similar level, either scaling up even slower than your character level or sitting idle and capped out with 30 char levels left to go.
Why not serialise them? That way you can have interesting things happen about 5 times as often (sort of), and it becomes much easier to borrow D3’s philosophy and keep the whole level curve interesting by spacing out the delivery of the goods to the level cap.

To elaborate:

  • Skill points are spent from a shared pool. Max number of points = character level.
  • Existing mechanics like losing skill points when respeccing, gaining/recovering skill points by gaining XP and a minimum number of skill points now apply to a shared pool. However the regeneration is quite fast and the minimum = 50% of character level.
    • The idea is to slow down new players using a cap instead of slow respecs that punish experimentation.
  • On the other hand we drop the idea of Xp progression per specialized skill, per-skill minimum levels or a target skill level for fast XP gain.
  • There is a cap on points invested per skill. It progresses as you level - quickly initially but slowing down a bit as you unlock more slots. However it should comfortably outpace 20% of the available skill points throughout most of the progression (so you can focus points a little), and cap out at level 20 at about lvl60-70 so you first get max level skills at a similar time to now.
  • Bonus skill levels from items are basically the same, just need some steps to avoid making respecs awkward
    • +X to the skill point cap for that skill
    • +X free points to the skill ie. the first X points do not cost anything from the shared pool (this can refund points to the shared pool when you equip an item)

This way you keep getting significant benefits all the way to level 100. You get an interesting choice in mid levels of how hard to specialise or spread your points, and a smoother and more exciting power ramp at 60+. The pace of leveling up your mainbutton skill on a new char will also be faster at first, which is no bad thing imo.
Pushing the core skill progression to be more focused on character level and the main XP bar probably also makes leveling a bit more exciting overall.

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