Active skills behind the Specialization - Capstone Skills

I would like to see some powerful new skills added to the various skill trees behind their respective specializations, to serve as capstone skills for that tree, and bring something truly unique to people who are specialized in it. Currently the specializations are the only mutually exclusive choices you can make to define your character, but they tend to be somewhat subtle in their effect. While they are very powerful, people usually can't tell what specializations you have just by observing how you fight.

Having a strong mechanical identity to your character is more important to making the mechanical side of character building fun than simply acquiring more power does. While having large numbers can be nice, it will never be as satisfying as being able to straight up do something that most other characters can't do. People should be able to see that you're a specialist just by watching you fight.

Because of this I'd like to see a capstone skill behind every specialization that gives people an active skill that really defines a play style around that specialization. For example if you're life spec you could gain a powerful chain heal that also buffs people's max HP for a short duration, so hitting people who are already at full health gives them some temporary HP. A specialization in Ranged might give you access to a sniper shot that does extreme damage to unaware targets, including something like 5% percentile damage so it can even weaken bosses if a specialist archer opens the fight.

The Capstone skills would also ensure that when you use a combination of skills that go really well together the choice of specialization isn't so easily reduced to simply crunching the numbers on what serves the spec the most in raw stats. For example, Ranged/Air/Light Armor goes well together, but which two out of those three to specialize in doesn't change the playstyle of the character much, so you just pick whatever is numerically superior. Having active skills in the mix would make the choice a lot more interesting.

 

makes sense to me

 

Would love this, especially since some specializations are really lacking compared to others.

 

I disagree with this, the subject comes up every so often about having caps or classes, but this is not what this game is about, it is about having the freedom to do anything you set your mind to.

Specializations was a step in the wrong direction, because this set a clear focus on which specs were stronger than others, rendering some schools weaker by design. By adding to the already existing bonuses Specialization gives, and making skills locked behind specialization, the gap will only grow bigger. Already there are a few "must haves" depending on your playstyle, making everyone who wants to be on a relatively competitive level (be it PvE competitive or PvP) to follow exactly the same templates :

Polearms/bows + Tactics
Air + Tactics
Fire + Life
Sun + Life
Bludgeon + Earth

If you do anything different, you are usually losing out purposefully on potential, which creates a gap between those would like to have fun creating their class and those who follow the templates, and you suggestion will simply amplify it!

 

I don't agree that it will amplify that issue, by adding active skills and not just statistical improvements from specializations there will be more opportunity to create a unique reason for each specialization to exist and be chosen. The issue you describe where there is simply a best combination statistically, forcing you to pick that, exists precisely because they only have a statistical impact.

I also don't agree that specializations were a step in the wrong direction. Choices are part of the fun of character building, if no set of character options is ever exclusive to others you're also shoehorned into a single most powerful choice, and that is to just learn everything. That simply isn't more freedom, it's less.

 

I think this comes against a core feature because the game have a classless skill system, exclusive skills for specialists would change this core design

 

Classless system means you don't pick a singular path to advance down at character creation, it doesn't mean that the game cannot contain any mutually exclusive choices in character building.

 

That argument never goes over. I tried. There is a very stubborn contingent of long time players for whom "classless" means "all the things all of the time."

 

Don't particularly care about the people who would rather this game be their hill to die on than a hill with a shining city on it. People can have their own preferences, but what does or doesn't make a popular roleplaying game isn't up for debate, you can pretty clearly chart a correlation between the number of meaningful choices you get to make and the popularity of a character building system. Choices are what defines roleplaying games, whether it's in the story or in your character.

 

If you want a class, set it up for yourself, nothing is stopping you, just like how Sara is a swordsman, that is not, nothing else, no fancy tricks, no magic, and it works fine for him.

What this allows him is to concentrate his efforts all in the same place, and makes him the best swordsman in shroud, and anyone can do the same self imposed limitation.

If you bring in specialization specific skills, this means if I want to even test that new skill, I need to drop one of my current specs, lose experience, only to try a new skill, or create a new character and waste time and experience to reach a level that allows me to try it out. I lose creativity because there are skills I wont be able to use do to them being locked, which really honestly ruins the single highest rated feature for me in this game. I want to be able to use blades to cast my spells, or be a debuffer when I group but still have a nice kit the rest of the time. I dont use every single spell in the game, or skill, but having access to it if I do want to try it out, that's my favorite part of Shroud.

Sorry for those who want to block features to "force" diversity, but I feel like I've seen more diverse builds in this game than any other class game.

 

I'd have preferred if "specialization" involved making the gains less diminishing than they are over level 100. Few people are going to dump 800 million xp into a skill, and those who are, aren't going to be doing so in a lot of skills. That's plenty gated enough, it should be more worth it to do so for the small percentage who would.

 

This game doesn't allow much build diversity at all. For example, it's impossible to make a good character who's super strong but slow and stupid, because if you want to keep raising strength the XP requirements get so insanely high that you're just throwing away power by not spending the tiny fraction of the XP it would take to keep dex and int 20 points behind.

If you want to raise Train Strength to 100 it's 12 million XP, raising Int and Dex training to 80 costs a combined 3.6 million. Then it's 81 million XP to raise Train Strength to 120, and only a combined 24mil to raise Train Intelligence/Train Dexterity to 100. See the problem? No matter how much you want to build a hulking moron you can't do it without intentionally passing up easy power. The way XP costs work ensure that gaining more strength is always so expensive that passing up Int and Dex doesn't help. By the time any skill in the game is 40 points ahead of another skill the cost of raising that other skill is less than 1% of what it costs to keep raising the high skill, so you'd just be stupid to not raise the low skill if it has any benefit to you at all.

If, for example, the stat training skills shared their XP cost, and it was their cumulative value that determined how much it cost to gain another stat point I would actually be with you that specializations aren't needed to ensure diverse characters, but as long as the system ensures that the cost of raising anything up to the level of your highest skill is a fraction of raising your highest skills further it penalizes you for not grabbing absolutely everything that has a statistical benefit.