The Full Gamut Pool Skill System (For Grim Dawn)

[Scryer]

What is probably one of the hardest things for an ARPG developer to do when it comes to a player’s skill set? – Most likely, getting them to use a wide range and variety of skills. This has been shown through out the history of ARPG’s starting with Diablo. Skill Trees were the first form of these types of skill sets.

Most ARPG’s have followed with a similar system in it's wake. Some have modified it to require a certain level to gain skills. Others have just flat out changed the way skill sets work. I’m going to offer what I believe is the best way to merge traditional and new-age techniques, along with what is essentially awesome about TQ’s style, but putting a twist on that.

- The Full Gamut Pool Skill System (Dual Class Version)

This may be a way for Grim Dawn to set itself apart from its competitors. Essentially, it gives the player freedom of choice, freedom of customization, and better yet – Freedom to play the game the way they want to play it. But it also gives the developer a great tool, which can be used to pace the player’s expenditure of points. You want the player to pick any number of spells, but still give them the freedom to customize? Well, maybe my proposal will help.

Try to imagine this as best as you can, and I will try to explain it as best as I can, in bullet form.

- Each Mastery that is chosen by the player has a “merged mastery pool” system. Essentially, it’s what in TQ, would normally give the player his stat mods etc. The player will get mods for both classes as if they were merged into one. This is mostly for balance reasons (makes it easier). This pool can be any size 30 points or even 60 points. (You could have separate mastery pools but it would require a lower size mastery pool in order to get equality in the each skill pool.)

- The player must put at least 5 points into the mastery pool before hitting a “Wall,” in which they can’t put any more points into the mastery until they start placing points into skills. Skills however have their own “Wall,” and the player can only put 5 skill points into any skill. Some skills may have fewer then 5 skill points; some may just be 1 skill point, for special reasons.

- Here’s the fun part – The player can choose any skill. That’s right, from both Masteries. This gives the player maximum control in customization. Now, here’s where it gets more awesome. Since each skill was limited to 5 points, you could tell the player that, in order to break through the 5 point mastery pool “wall” they have to spend, say, 30 points into their skills first.

- Now, the player has a healthy mix of 6-8 skills / passives. And they have 30 skill points spent. If you now increase the "mastery pool wall" to say, 20, you could tell the player “Once you reach those 20 mastery points pool you can increase the number of skill points you can place into your skills by 5 more.” Once the player reaches that wall, they can spend more points into their already bought skills. But, you can then tell the player “Now to break this wall, you need 40 skill points spent into your skills.” There, You’ve just increased the number of skills a player has to choose before they can continue down the mastery pool path.

- In the end, you give the player ultimate customization and ALL you lose is the dual mastery pool path that TQ had, you simply merge those 2 pools.

- The 2 mastery class skill sets stay separate in order to distinguish them.


This will work if you make sure of at least 2 things –

- All skills are equal and balanced (no super master pewpewlazer earthdestroyer skills) and scale well.
- And you balance the game very well.

- I'm not a big fan of synergies. They often tell you to use skills you may not like, or may never use just because they weren't designed for your play style. Etc.


I hope you found this provocative. Also, if you have questions like “Why doesn’t the player just get all the good skills” look at my statement I just wrote. Lol. Players should customize to their whim. At least I believe so.

All of this is arbitrary explanation and not representative of how it should exactly be implemented, but is a very good explanation in my opinion.

[cel]

I believe we already discussed this - the only difference being that your "walls" are now for individual skills, instead of tiers - and the same problems that haunted the Pool system haunt this one as well.

[Scryer]

What might that be?

Though, I think this system could be adapted to a Dual Mastery Pool system, with 2 mastery pools instead of one combined mastery pool. It would need some tweaks though.

If you look carefully at what I said, essentially, by level 35 the player will have roughly 6-8 skills, and the developers could change this model to fit their goals for balance. They could, say, they want the player to have 15 skills/passives by level 35. And do it very easily.

The difference is, the player gets to choose what skills they want. Min-Maxers will always exist, but if every skills scales the same or offers a unique but non-overpowering ability, then, there is no reason to worry about limiting player's skill choices.

[cel]

Right here. This is essentially the same system with a twist, it has the exact same benefits and downfalls. I remember us having a conversation about the downfalls of pane-type skill systems before the emergence of the poll-thread in another thread as well, but unfortunately I cannot find it, medierra must be playing pranks on me

Anyway, I'm not going to repeat the same arguments in this third thread discussing the same thing, all the necessary arguments can be found in our previous conversations.

[Scryer]

I understand you don't want to repeat yourself.

I just can't see your arguments as being all that effective.

You're trying to say that players will just min-max and choose the best skills.

That's fine and all, but if all skills scale well, then it's really a moot point.

If each skill provided different elemental backgrounds also, you'd then have other strategies to develop once immune monsters appear. And having 6-7 skills by that time would help with strategy.

[eisprinzessin]

Originally Posted by Scryer

Each Mastery that is chosen by the player has a “merged mastery pool” system. Essentially, it’s what in TQ, would normally give the player his stat mods etc. The player will get mods for both classes as if they were merged into one.

Merged pools will difficult (if not impossible). You will already have spent points in your first mastery, when you activate the second. Some people might never activate the second mastery. This is not like D3, where you are supposed to have 3 trees in your sole class.

[Scryer]

I think this skill system was more of a thought experiment of mine, and I wanted to share it with you guys. Obviously it's extremely hard to follow, and I wish I had some visual representation as to how it worked, but I think I could have better presented the idea at the least.