Customization - Where Depth Begins

[eisprinzessin]

The reason for skill lines/trees is, that you can enhance a basic skill with additional passives. The passives are tailor-made for the base skill. If you do not present them in a line/tree, then people will have a hard time to find them and complain about the poor design.

There can be synergies between unrelated skills, but they would be quite generic - e.g.: an fire spell and a passive, which boosts fire damage. I understand medierra, that he finds it boring, if ALL the passives are like this.

There are certainly some passives in TQ, which do not need to be in a linked line - that's how I understand you - e.g.: Battle Rage, Crushing Blow and Counter Attack from Warfare. Shield Smash, Disable and Pulverize from Defense do not have any prerequisite skill.

But if you removed Heart of Frost and Static Charge from Storm Nimbus (see Storm), then you had to turn them into active skills and people would complain about to many individual buffs.

You've presented an abstract concept - test it, if it is viable. Show us some examples and we might be able to come up with the good idea.

[Scryer]

Thank you for the constructive reply. Alright, let me try to explain this, and you tell me what you think.

First of all, I would like to say that these "boring" passives that could exist outside of a skill (I.E. not modify a skill) aren't really as bad as you might think. Here's some examples of non-boring passives in my opinion -

- Your dodges causes an earthquake dealing X% damage or stunning the enemy for x seconds. That's a powerful passive but it's not boring.

- Your attack has X% chance to cast a defense buff on you and your party. Why would this passive be boring?

- You have a x% chance to gain X% speed when attacked. Yet another interesting passive. In my opinion though.

As for your argument about Storm Nimbus - these passives are specifically linked because they actually change the way the skill works. However, they don't have to be linked in order to change the skill. They could easily be rolled into their own form of customization. Passives that change or effect skills could be dropped items placed into the specific active skill in question.

Broad passives that don't effect any skill, having their own skill pane, would allow the player to select how he / she wants his character to respond to the environment passively. This could be an open pool available at any level, where as the Active skill tree is consolidated into Active Skills + Items that modify those skills to act differently.

These items could easily be found throughout the game world. They would be divided into different major categories, and basically be socketed into the active skill itself. Thus changing what it does or adding onto what it does.

For example - I have Storm Nimbus - With these new items I have 2 choices to make now, I can make Storm Nimbus Shock my enemies (potentially dazing them or something) Or I could make Storm Nimbus Freeze my enemies and slow them for a short duration. As I increases the level of Storm Nimbus all the attributes would scale, so they will only be as effective as what's intended for the # of points. Also, we could make these skill-items that affect the active skill, upgrade in levels also, so that there are 2 ways to increase the power of the skill.

Through skill points and through upgrading the item you socket it with as well.

It seems this would also help customization out as now you'd have to decide what you wanted Storm Nimbus to do, pick the Passive abilities that could help you, and other active skills.

(I guess what I just described was - taking synergies and turning them into a dropped item, that have the added benefit of changing how the skill works.)

Sorry for the long read also.

[eisprinzessin]

Originally Posted by Scryer

- Your dodges causes an earthquake dealing X% damage or stunning the enemy for x seconds. That's a powerful passive but it's not boring.

- Your attack has X% chance to cast a defense buff on you and your party. Why would this passive be boring?

- You have a x% chance to gain X% speed when attacked. Yet another interesting passive. In my opinion though.

I like these skills. If a mastery needs another skill, any of the above would be great to complete the set. But that is no reason to remove skill lines/trees.

In the rest of you last reply your wander from your original subject ... or is this your refinement? You are talking about something like D3's runes (you can put 1 of a few runes on a skill to customise it), aren't you? Funny - the two of us discussed this in all detail in Skill Tree & Multiple Paths from #49 to #76. I haven't seen any confirmation, that runes won't be added ... but I doubt they will.

Originally Posted by medierra

Skill system is something that won't change much. It is perhaps the only system in TQ that I don't think I have seen anyone seriously complain about and seems to have been the most well-received aspect of the game by press and players.

Let's play with the thought. Do I read you correctly - do you suggest to remove passive skills like Heart of Frost and Static Charge from the mastery itself and to put them into runes, which you can apply to some of your active skills?

- the masteries would be pretty empty
- every class could suddenly benefit from modifiers, not native to its base masteries ... you may as well ask if you can have access to all masteries
- twinks would be super-imba, as you would put a rune into every skill you activate

I don't feel comfortable with this and have come to the same conclusion as above:

Originally Posted by yerkyerk

Often restricting players in choices might paradoxically create more unique builds and customization, but from what I've read this will lead to more generic builds and less choices for the player.

[Scryer]

Originally Posted by eisprinzessin

Let's play with the thought. Do I read you correctly - do you suggest to remove passive skills like Heart of Frost and Static Charge from the mastery itself and to put them into runes, which you can apply to some of your active skills?

- the masteries would be pretty empty
- every class could suddenly benefit from modifiers, not native to its base masteries ... you may as well ask if you can have access to all masteries
- twinks would be super-imba, as you would put a rune into every skill you activate

I don't feel comfortable with this and have come to the same conclusion as above:

The modifiers would work specifically to the Active skill selected. For example, you could have a skill-item that can be used to change Storm Nimbus into a freezing Aura. As you level up, you could find higher level skill-items (that require a certain level to use) that also increases the power of the new effect. However, if you had a different mastery and thus a different skill, the effect it changes the skill to would be something that is similar to the main idea of the skill-item but would be different then that of Storm Nimbus.

Take War Wind from Warfare, for example, if you put the same skill-item (from Storm Nimbus I mentioned above) into this ability, it could change it to have a chance to freeze the target or shatter the target into splintering ice that damages other enemies.

All masteries would benefit from this kind of customization because as you level up your mastery, and gain more active abilities, and passive abilities, you'll also have the choice to modify those active skills with these skill-items. I guess you could call them runes, or tokens, or something like that, essentially they modify the skill based on what type of skill-item you put into the skill.

These items could increase in power, but it would cause them to require a higher level to use.

With this kind of system a player could play around with the active abilities by changing how they work.

I guess I realize that Medierra is set in his direction, but at least discussing alternatives isn't a fruitless endeavor, it could bring about other ideas. Yes also, I did evolve my idea a bit when I responded to you, since we're talking about depth of customization also, I figured that a skill-item would actually allow greater diversity for customization.

[eisprinzessin]

I never played Diabolo. AFAIK you don't have dual-classes there. Given this runes (skill items) make a lot of sense on top of the existing skill system. I consider the second mastery to be the über-rune for my first class ... and vice versa of course. TQ has and GD will have the superior design by default.

Originally Posted by medierra

I believe each mastery [...] should contain skills large and small that provide different utility and tactical options that together, depending on where the player invests points, culminate in a particular gameplay style.

[...] Some skills may only be really useful when they are paired with skills from another mastery - but then they really shine.