xaeris
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Post by xaeris on Jan 28, 2013 12:27:58 GMT
well my thoughts are You get a skill point per level to spend anyway you like. Level cap of XX levels so you have XX skill points to spend. The higher you go in a skill "tree" the more the next branch or node costs. Sort of like most MMO's these days except no limitations on what or how many skill trees you can choose. Dump everything into archery and you will be one hell of a archer however your armor is shit and if you try picking up a sword you would probably cut yourself with it. Pump everything into daggers and stealth great, but don't try picking any locks or picking up a bow. Now I am not a game designer and pretty sure the min maxxers would find a way to fuck that up but..... Min-maxxers? More like your average player would come up with absolutely broken (read: worthless) builds. Isn't this the very reason why they moved away from the Morrowind system? They made it a little less complicated for Oblivion by removing the levelups gained by Minor Skills so that people weren't getting x5s in stats they didn't even want or need, and then in Skyrim, they removed stats altogether because people were still screwing their characters up AND it was such a hassle to try to level certain skills to get those x3 or x5 in the stats you wanted/needed? IMO, Skyrim is the right way to do it -- who needs that Strength, Agility, etc crap when Skyrim shows us that we can do a pure skill related system and do it good. However, making some point buy system I'm not sure is the right way to go about it, either. And if they did something like that, it would have to be REVERSIBLE, allowing you to "un-learn" those, because MMORPGs traditionally want you to invest quite a bit of time into a character -- having to re-roll due to bad decisions during your newbie days is not healthy for an MMORPG. The only bad thing about Skyrim, however, is that it allows everybody to be anything/everything at the same time. If they could find some sensible way around this without breaking that awesome "Elder Scrolls" feel, then the game will be good. Otherwise, it won't feel like "Elder Scrolls" if we're suddenly doing WoW-style talent trees, or doing Istaria/FFXI school/job swapping, etc.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2013 13:15:40 GMT
The SWG system (pre-NGE) would work well for this imho. You get a set number of points that you can apply into skills as you learn them. When you max out, you are maxed out. But at any time you can drop skills and take a different path without repercussions.
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Post by jingles on Jan 28, 2013 16:34:05 GMT
The SWG system (pre-NGE) would work well for this imho. You get a set number of points that you can apply into skills as you learn them. When you max out, you are maxed out. But at any time you can drop skills and take a different path without repercussions. that would be perfect as long as you did not have the flavor of the month overpowered skill like early SWG was plagued with. What should I be this month? a Creature Handler, Pistoleer, Commando, Teras Kasi...wait till patch day to find out
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Post by AA0 on Jan 28, 2013 17:41:32 GMT
Thats the nature of MMOs, its profitable to nerf a build and cause a lot of respecs right? In STO we have a tiered skill system. www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/And like mentioned it creates mostly fail builds by the average player. They die a lot so they red line hull repairs, which is a completely ineffective way to stay alive. The first three points give you 18 skill, then the next three 10 skill, and the last three 5 skill each. You have X amount of XP you can throw towards the system in total, each tier costs more than the tier before. You can choose to specialize, its not as effective, and if you sacrifice by maxing offense you end up attracting all kinds of agro with less defense, meaning you don't last long enough to use it. You can spec for defense as well, but not be able to get agro if you are a tank, but the worst builds are people who just react to themselves dying constantly. My shields fail! Lets max shield performance, except shield performance doesn't enhance your shield's abilities, just your shield's power system (which they have set wrong anyway). I like the system, it lets you customize quite a bit, the STO one has some odd positions of skills in some tiers (many useless ones are tier 4/5) Though most of my characters seem to get specced quite similarly.
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Post by FrithRae on Jan 30, 2013 6:47:47 GMT
Well last I read..and it certainly could have changed at this point. I've not gone back to check; unless I get into beta I don't much care to explore and find out yet.
There is a class system. There are classes to choose from, and you must pick a class. However it is also -
A "Use the skill, gain points in that skill" system (NO LEVELS! Its a feature!), with abilities unlocked the more you use that skill. Want to be great at archery, then use it alot and the more you use it the better the abilities you will get to unlock (which I'm sure has a max); and I'm sure weapon options to work on are limited by class.
Within the classes, there are supposedly myriad of ways to spec into whatever you might want to do - I guess somehow dependent on what weapons/skills you work on. But suposedly here is where the classes become less "locked down" to a class roll.
Wether or not you get mulitple specs, or can respec at a cost, or any of that..I had not heard specifically yet. But...this information is months old so who knows.
~~~
And yes, it is possible to make a system where you can respec at will and learn every single weapon in the game; no classes at all; no levels at all, and not built around the holy trinity...
As I said..that is called Secret World. And..they actually pulled it off pretty damn well. IMO.
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Post by jingles on Feb 1, 2013 17:18:18 GMT
Al. Want to be great at archery, then use it a lot and the more you use it the better the abilities you will get to unlock and in a level based system if you go out and use the bow a lot you level and unlock abilities. Same thing almost
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Post by FrithRae on Feb 2, 2013 3:38:12 GMT
oh yea; I've never found the attraction or "innovatin" to the whole "its not level based, its skill based!" system/logic.
NO matter what you call it, you're hitting things for bigger numbers...that get you higher abilities. Wether you call ita level, or a skill point - its really the same thing.
But for some reason people spoooge over the idea of a skill based system. WoW had it at launch..and they took it out soon enough when they realized it was pointless...lol.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2013 11:17:26 GMT
The appeal is typically not the skill vs level in itself, but rather the freedom that is typically associated with it as opposed to a specific class. For example, in Elder Scrolls games if you want to be a swordsman you simply practice with your sword. But, if you change your mind and want to use magic or decide to start backstabbing folks and stealing stuff you have that option as well.
Skyrim is a little more constrained than previous games in my opinion because it does have levels and your talents are tied to that. Not sure if there is a respec or not.
Originally SWG was more open-ended. It had classes, but you could "forget" them and re-learn something else if you chose to. Thats a neat system and allows for lots of replayability. It can also be a confusing system for the masses who simply want to be told that "X is the most powerful" or for the hardcore players who are always looking for the absolute best combinations.
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xaeris
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Post by xaeris on Feb 2, 2013 15:32:26 GMT
Skyrim is a little more constrained than previous games in my opinion because it does have levels and your talents are tied to that. Not sure if there is a respec or not. I don't know how much you played Morrowind or Oblivion, but Skyrim is a lot LESS restrictive. Not because of the Talent systems, but because of other things: In Morrowind and Oblivion (but NOT Skyrim), you had actual statistics such as Strength, Luck, and so on. You choose skills to be your Major and Minor skills. Whenever you gained a level in one of those skills, you would eventually gain x2, x3, x4, or x5 in the stats that those skills were governed by. For example, Blunt weapons were governed by Strength. If you gained enough levels in the Blunt skill before your next character levelup, you might see an x3 or x4 in Strength. You could pick 3 of the what, 5-6 stats to increase during each levelup. It took ridiculous planning in what skills you picked as Majors/Minors, and which skills you actually used before your level up, to make sure you don't end up with a broken build. For example, in Morrowind, a very easy way to start the game is to game the Alchemy system. You'd go to the 2nd town (what was that called again, Balmora?) and you'd buy cheap ingredients and mix potions, sell the potions back. However... you'd gain LOTS of levels in Alchemy and Mercantile. If these were not "Misc Skills", you'd gain lots of x4s and x5s in Intelligence and I think Personality, was it? AND you'd gain lots of levelups (because levelups happen when you gain skills in Major/Minor, but not Misc IIRC). So if you didn't know that ahead of time, you'd end up being Level 5-6 with nothing but a boatload of Personality and Intellect... but yet no magic skills, no armor skills, and no weapon skills. As you level up your character's REAL skills, you'd find that you'd be weak as anything other than an Illusionist mage, your Strength, Speed, Constitution or whatever those stats were called, would be nil because you could gain, at best, 1 point per level while gaining 5s in Intelligence/Personality. Skyrim got rid of all of this. Now ALL skills give you progress towards levelups, but there are no stats at all. Now you don't have to worry about a broken character if you spend hours trading items between towns. You will, however, have a very high Speech skill. But it won't make you a weak swordsman and restrict you to using nothing but Illusion magic. In Skyrim, you could use nothing but bows, sneak, and one-handed weapons and then mid-game go "you know what, I just want to smash someone's face in" and then grab the best two-hander you could find, stick on some Heavy Armor and go out and smash faces. Except... You'd have to practice, first. Going into a new dungeon, you'd get killed very quickly. However, dungeons you visited earlier in the game kept track of what level those monsters were when you first discovered that place (or was it when you first cleared it?) so you could easily make rounds through all of the places you'd been earlier in the game and raise your skills that way. But at least you didn't have to worry about x3s, x4s and x5s ruining your stats. If you did this in Oblivion or Morrowind, your Strength skill would be far too low to ever do any damage with a 2h weapon if you specialized in being a Sneak/Archery/One-Handed character. Edit: Oh, and the talents? There's enough talents (81 of them!) that you can pick several different things to be skilled at. Enough that you could easily be a Destruction Mage who is also good at Archery, somewhat good at Sneak, AND good at a weapon skill. AND, a lot of the "battle" talents (One Handed, Two Handed, etc) aren't all that important. Most any player will tell you that the BEST talents are those having to do with crafts: Enchanting (for the two enchants per item), alchemy (for boosting enchanting), Smithing. These are things that benefit ALL characters regardless of how you choose to do battle. In my own Skyrim experience, I almost never put points into any Melee type (One-handed OR two-handed). Archery, I only take a couple talents with. I usually end up putting a few into Sneak, just enough into Pick Pocket to get that delicious +100 carry, Smithing to get to Dragon Smithing, Enchanting to get the double enchants, and Conjuration only to get the "bound weapons always soul trap" talent. The rest? Meh. I'll spend a few here-and-there to pick up other neat utility things and I think most players do the same. I think they intentionally made battle talents 'meh' so that people didn't feel weak. Even with no talents at all, you can still be an effective archer, or melee user, or even spellcaster. Without any talents at all, I was still easily killing people with my lightning spells for example. So no, the Talent tree isn't restrictive at all.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2013 21:36:59 GMT
Hundreds of hours played in each of them. The talent system is very restrictive in Skyrim, once you spend the points they are spent.
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xaeris
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Post by xaeris on Feb 3, 2013 15:50:02 GMT
Hundreds of hours played in each of them. The talent system is very restrictive in Skyrim, once you spend the points they are spent. But yet, in your opinion, the permanent x3, x4, and x5s to stats in Oblivion _aren't_ restrictive? It takes someone with some serious knowledge of the game to design a build that will give them 99s in all stats and then a fairly skilled player to use only the skills they should use to ensure they get those x4s and x5s in 3 stats every levelup just to get those "good stats". Otherwise, your average player is going to start out with a set of skills that "makes sense" and he is going to have several levels where he's missing multipliers for certain stats. For example, many mages might choose a couple magic skills (Destruction, Restoration?), maybe Light Armor, Alchemy (since he will need a boatload of potions) and let's say he chooses, I don't know, a third magic type, maybe Conjuration. When this mage uses his chosen skills and plays his character as a mage for most of the game, he's going to see x3-5 in Intelligence, he'll see a few x2-3s maybe in Speed, and the very occasional x2 in something else depending on what Misc skills he uses (Lockpick, Armorer, etc) while adventuring. This is very restrictive because later in the game, he is completely unable to be viable as, say, a Melee person. Why? He's going to have a 99 in Intelligence, but only, perhaps a 20-30 Strength and he's going to be fighting monsters with hundreds of HP. His skill will be low, but he can level that. But even if he did, he'll land several strikes with his melee weapon, and won't even put a scratch in them, so he's basically forced to continue playing as a mage the whole game. Compare that to Skyrim -- If you did the exact same thing, if you did nothing but Destruction, Conjuration, Restoration, wore Robes (I think they're Light Armor IIRC?) and Alchemy and put talents into only those skills, what happens when he dons heavy armor and a two-handed axe? He'll hit as hard as anybody else who does the same, except his Two-Handed and Heavy Armor Skill will be a little low. Once he gets his skill caught up (which is very fast and easy due to the high-level weapons he'd have access to), he'll be reasonably effective even with zero talents spent in Two-Handed OR Heavy Armor. Now yes, I do agree they should let you unlearn at least Battle Talents. Craft Talents, not so much. And there should be a decently high price to do this, otherwise you'd have min-maxxers dumping all of their talents into crafts to make a couple items and then buy them back and put them into battle talents before they go out and slay more monsters. But that's better than being forever locked into a certain playstyle because of stat multipliers at levelups.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 3, 2013 22:32:54 GMT
I think perhaps we are not talking about the same thing. What I mean by restrictive in Skyrim is that once you have spent points on Destruction, Conjuration, Restoration, etc you cannot go back and re-spec. Once you've gained the levels you don't get more points so your only recourse is to start a new character.
It is the level system tied to the Talent system that in my opinion makes it restrictive. If you could re-spec Talents or if your talents weren't tied to levels then it would be less restrictive and more free.
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xaeris
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Post by xaeris on Feb 4, 2013 0:02:38 GMT
I think perhaps we are not talking about the same thing. What I mean by restrictive in Skyrim is that once you have spent points on Destruction, Conjuration, Restoration, etc you cannot go back and re-spec. Once you've gained the levels you don't get more points so your only recourse is to start a new character. It is the level system tied to the Talent system that in my opinion makes it restrictive. If you could re-spec Talents or if your talents weren't tied to levels then it would be less restrictive and more free. Well, my point is once you gain those levelups (in Oblivion) and achieve max level and/or get all of your Major Skills to 100, you can no longer improve your stats so the guy who got to whatever max level was using Major Skills that highly favor Intelligence can never raise his Strength, Speed, etc scores and be unable to do anything that uses those skills effectively. I'd think that would be even MORE restrictive IMO, but oh well.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2013 13:34:07 GMT
You are right, that is restrictive as well.
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Post by FrithRae on Feb 4, 2013 20:15:10 GMT
Ahh, okey - then I've not gotten the "appeal" for MMORPGers since I've not played a game who had that specific system.
I've seen games that build around the "if you want to get good at it, use it" philosophy of skill points - but I've not seen one that let you then mix and match EVERYTHING all at once equally. So the "use it and get good at it" was still limited by class or "level" like related restrictions.
Secret World lets you mix and match every single weapon and tank/dps/healer hybrid model on one character. But its not skillup points because you can swing an axe and use it to get points to be better at assault rifle..or whatever. Its not tied to "leveling" because there are no "levels" for your character; but it is tied to "experience points" in a form of leveling - because as you gain experience and fill up a bar - you get certain number of points to spend in whatever weapon/armor/area you wish to spend them. Your abilities get better by how many points you invest to unlock them; but there is no "level 5/10/15/45" identified with those points. They're just eternal point gains...
So its not exactly the same; but does offer the "freedom" of a skill based system in that there are no classes and nothing keeping you from changing specs between each and every fight if you want. From healer to tank...if you want...literally on the "fly."
Elder Scrolls has never been free like that; yes you could train most anything - but there were always limitations and negatives if you played half the gam eone way and then wanted to switch. So no, I don't see ESO trying to do a "anyone can be everything just by doing it" mechanic. I'm just hoping the way they are doing classes is more open-ended; as that was always a strength of the series (having craptons of classes early on with all types of combainations and then of course getting rid of class in Skyrim altogether and just limiting you by how much time you're investing and where you spend your points).
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