Passive Skill Limits

"Players can now only spend half of their skill points on passive skills."

So, essentially, we now must waste a lot of skill points on skills we don't want?!

 

Not necessarily.. you can either wait and spend them later if you have points left over.. or you can always respec your points after you've filled up your passive skills.

It's not really a fix for anything really if you think about it. It's just a stop gap measure which isn't really going to be all that effective.

 

Yup!

Worst thing ever to happen in combat...... In fact it's just awful. It has been done in the name of "balance" because some players want to spread lots of their points across many skill trees and still compete against those who specialise.

In other words they want their cake and eat it by being "jack of all trades master of them all" with them being master because others now have to waste points instead of specialising in particular builds to become a master.

If this is the direction combat is going, I can guarantee there will be many who will be highly disappointed and many who will turn away from the game who may be sitting on the fence.

I know that there will be lots of balance , however this direction truly sucks.

 

I would think redesigning the passive skills would be a better idea.

 

Well hopefully combat will get it's turn next release R18 that is. I so wish for it.

 

I think that redesigning the active skills to make them more useful and desirable is a better solution. I mean, if a skill is not worthwhile then why is it in the game? They made this change because "the only competitive builds were ones in which most points went into passives" but this change doesn't fix the issue, it only thing prevents you from creating a competitive character. I can't think of a single change in any other game that has so thoroughly turned me off to it.

 

Allocating points used to be interesting. Now it's an exercise in frustration, forcing me to select things I don't want and won't use.
Fun has been substantially reduced.

 

Skill trees have done that anyway. I don't use most of the prerequisite skills in my builds, but I have to buy 3 ranks of them anyway.

I do agree that adjusting the return for passive skills would have been the better option. Provide diminishing returns (to a minimum value per rank) so they are less effective at high ranks, but still allow players to spend all of their skill points.

 

Let's try it before we jump to conclusions. Some one (Themo Lock I believe) said it sounded bad to him until he tested it on the QA server and it was fine.

 

Chainsaw instead of a scalpel.

 

The point people are failing to realize here is that we were always putting points into skills we don't want. The combat system hasn't really changed, our perception of it has. If we're all playing by the same rules (and we are) then what's really different? You pick skills and you use them. You get more points the more levels you have. Eventually you have enough points to use on all the innate skills, you just have to be much higher level than you were before.

So if I'm a developer, what I should be taking away from this is...people REALLY don't like this system when they can't have all the innate skills. Well guess what? Lower level people could never have all the innate skills. So that means that unless you're REALLY HIGH LEVEL, you probably don't like the combat system.

That's the take away.

Themo Lock and Envy were level 100 and level 70. So they really liked all this innate skill business because they had them and could clobber anyone that didn't (which was almost everyone). So who cares about the innate points? The core system is bad, that's what this should be telling everyone.

 

Well, we don't really have a choice.

 

Wrong, my friend.

Since I used locked deck, I had to be super sure I actually had an use for every skill, since my card allowance is only 10 actives.

This forced me to maximize even requisite skills I wouldn't otherwise train but to get the next tier.

Most of the requisite skills I don't use are other passives affecting random decks, go figure! Oh, and the dodge active from light armor. All other actives are in front of me when I press "Z".

 

If you only have 10 active skills you can use...what's changed from R16 to R17? Nothing.

You had to wait for X levels to get more innates in R16. In R17 you have to wait for X levels. The only thing that's changed is X, regardless of if you use a locked or unlocked deck.

 

Now I'm curious to know how the UI will communicate that to the player; that's my concern.

 

...And the amount of useless skills I'm forced to take as padding to get the passives I'd otherwise get much earlier - namely at the same point of R16.

Thanks for nothing!

 

That's what I'm saying...

The only change is how long it takes a person to get the same skills. High Level players will still have those skills they'll just need to grind that much more. Low Level players will see a wider gap of fairness to cross over, while seeing perhaps more people that are closer to their "level" longer than R16. But in the end nothing has changed. Grind and you're powerful.

It's worth mentioning that the "change" of innate skills wasn't designed to fix everything in the combat system. It's just something that the devs felt like they needed to do because no one put their points into anything but innate skills. They'll make more changes and it will get better.

 

Not true. You will ultimately not be able to have as many passive skills. For example, there was a point where I simply wasn't interested in any more of the active skills and pumped my points into things like train dexterity. Now a good portion of skill points will simply be unassigned or put into active skills that aren't effective or relevent to my character.

 

"Players can now only spend half of their skill points on passive skills."

Ok, so if you have 50 skill points you can put 25 in passives.

If you have 100 you can put 50 in passives.

Nothing is stopping you from reaching a point where you have all passives. Will half of your points be used on actives or perhaps actives you didn't want? Ok, sure...but that doesn't change anything. There's still a path (granted longer) to get all the passives.

Now if they said "Players can now only accumulate 100 skill points on passive skills." That would limit your ability to get the skills you wanted.

What you're saying is that you're always going to have half of the skill points on things you don't want. And what I'm saying is WHO CARES if you can still get all the skills you do want? Which you can.

 

I'm pretty sure that there's an ultimate level limit.