Anything but Specialized?

Shroud of the Avatar offers players the ability to be anything they want and I think that is a fantastic thing but it seems to be hurting the balancing of character classes a bit when it comes to things like "Pure Mage" vs "Tank Mage" and so on..

I had a thought, and really that's all it is, so feel free to discuss the Pros and/or Cons of it.

With the Skill System the way it is, when you gain experience, you get points and these points can be placed anywhere regardless of what we did to get them. That's fine, a little different from the Skill Gains that UO used to offer but that is a topic for another thread.

My idea was this. We could group the areas in such a way that if you put points into them they have a background effect of improving that field or area of expertise. Let me give an example.

Example:
If I have 100 Points and I assign them all to Swords then my damage and/or ability to hit with swords should improve by 100% (double or x2). If base was 10, I'd now do 20 dmg.

If I have 100 Points and I put 50 In Swords and 50 In Fire magic then my damage and/or ability to hit with swords should only increase by 1.5 and my fire magic by 1.5. If base was 10, I'd now do 15 dmg.


Basically what I am getting at is that we gain a bonus for areas we choose to invest our points into. Like this a 'Pure Mage" will be able to do twice the damage to targets, while someone who invested only 50% of their points into magery would only be able to do 1.5x the normal damage. Both could cast the same spells and select the same skills but inherently the Pure mage will still outperform the mixed mage when it comes to magic.

Now there may be some issues with percentages and point assignment but I'd like to see if there is a way that would reward specialization of a class area (magery, archery, hand-to-hand comabt) or even break it up into skill trees if need be.

What are your thoughts and how would you go about rewarding class/skill specialization?

 

I like rock-paper-scissors,

 

The system isn't that simple. Swinging my blade generally doesn't cost focus, but a fireball will. A fireball has cast time. It may have AoE range to hit multiple targets.

If the skill trees were effectively identical (X points = X damage) then there would be no point in different trees.

 

idk how i feel about the tree settup

the diminishing returns really encourage hybrid builds, but to such an extent that pure builds dont seem viable anymore

 

Good start and thank-you.. But I'm not trying to compare skill trees persay but rather looking for a way to balance, as an example, someone who would play a 'Pure Mage' vs someone who played a 'Tank Mage'. Should someone who dedicated their skill points to magery do the same damage with magic as someone who has spread their skills out over different fields?

For example a 'Pure Mage' takes Air Magic, Fire Magic, Water Magic, Earth Magic and when he casts an elemental spell the player who took Swords, Shields, Armor and some magic can still do the same amount of damage if in that one skill they have the same 5 points.

The way I was looking at it the Pure Mage would do 2x the base damage because their skills were all magic related and the Mixed Mage would do 1.25x the base damage because their skills are, lets say for arguments sake, divided equally between those 4 areas and only one of them is magic related.

The 'Pure Mage' could later start to learn about swords and armor but then the bonuses for the magic would start to decrease as experience in these other areas increased. I'm just trying to come up with a way to make 'Pure' builds a viable option.

 

I think this is probably the most balanced system out there..

 

these are excellent points and I look forward to watching this discussion. About the only thing i have to add at this time is that the system also doesnt allow for you to focus of just one tree, its just not viable to make a Necromancer for instance that spends ALL of there points in death magic.

 

The nice thing about a skill tree though is that it is very easy to expand on it afterwards if need be.

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I think specialization actually gets penalized in this game because of minimum hand size and combos.

When your minimum hand is 25 cards and you want to, let's say, specialize in fire magic, you have to put pretty much every single fire spell on your hand to consistently have fire magic, and even then you end up with a lot of mismatched fire glyphs instead of being able to build powerful spells quickly and consistently.

With combos you can make stacks from 10 cards instead of just five, so that doubles your chances right there.

It's not really difficult to pick up all the innates that boost damage for both trees of a hybrid either.

 

No, what this does is it nerfs hybrids slightly, which, if balanced PROPERLY would provide prevention of hybrid classes being entirely better than pure classes.

 

So I think grouping based on the commonly mentioned roles of Magic, Melee and Archery would probably be best where heavy armor would be a part of the melee and light armor a part of archery.

Perhaps skilltree specialization bonuses could apply as well but then this would definitely start causing headaches for balancing and playability.

 

The problem is that what RG and Portalarium wanted to build here, promised to build here, is an open system. Which means that while it might not be ADVISABLE, a player should be able to build a plate wearing archer who practices wind magick.

Now, is there merit in building the system so that a character who's combination of powers and gear and tactics all make SENSE being easier than one who's combination does not? Yes. But if someone really really wants to design a plate wearing ninja... I figure they have the right to try, in an OPEN system.

 

I completely agree with the open system philosophy but it's broken. As it stands now, there is no reason to become a 'pure' anything as you would be at too much of a disadvantage. I'm not saying to eliminate the open system but rather to balance it out. Someone who spends all their time studying magic should be able to use it better than someone who is a part time fighter - archer - mage.

 

The problem is that the system is fundamentally flawed to accomplish that goal because the parts are interconnected by concept rather than being really interchangeable according to what they do. As far as I'm concerned, a Character in a roleplaying game has to consist of multiple pieces:

They have to have a survival strategy.
They have to have a combat resolution strategy.
They have has to have an assist strategy.

So for example, the strategy your character uses for survival could be wearing heavy platemail or it could be using stealth, or using defensive magic, self heals, or being extremely slippery and fast.
The strategies a character might use for combat resolution tend to all be damage related in MMOs, so swords, axes, fireballs, arrows. Whatever lets them finish a fight on their own.
The strategies your characters use to assist others are the things that your character can do to make a group more effective than just the sum of its parts, like group healing, buffing, tanking, flanking, booming, crowd control. (So you could say, any feature a character has that lets their survival and combat resolution abilities multiply with other people rather than just add)

As long as the options in each field only ever are exclusive to each other the system remains balanced no matter what type of character you make. You can say "Stealth, Arrow, Group Heals" and it makes a character, just as much as "Platemail, Fireballs, Buffing" would or "Defensive Magic, Fireballs, Booming" for the pure mage or "Platemail, Swords, Tanking" for the pure fighter.

In SoA you have cross restrictions though, for example, Platemail and Fireballs don't mix well. That's because the way restrictions work are based on what certain abilities represent, not what they do. If something is magic then it doesn't work well for heavily armored characters, when from a raw balance standpoint the only type of magic that shouldn't work on a heavily armored character would be magic that is its own survival strategy. You don't want people stacking self heals, platemail and stealth, but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with them building a character that has group heals, platemail and dual daggers. Conceptually self heals and group heals or stealth and daggers end up in similar skill trees though and then simply belong together. That lets you match things according to what is conceptually similar, and thereby removes a lot of restrictions on things that are similar in purpose, and adds a bunch of restrictions to things that are not.

Anyways, just food for thought. Balancing an open system well tends to largely come down to making the restrictions and exclusions between abilities work on what abilities really do, not on how they are explained in the world. That might be a bit weird, but that is really the only way you end up with a system that neither forces people to pick all parts of their character's overall strategy as an extension of a single concept, nor forces anyone who wants to be efficient in a certain activity to mix the appropriate skills from all disciplines.

 

Good discussion Aetrion... You explained your understanding of the system and how you felt it would best be balanced.

I think there may be a solution to 'pure' class development out there, we just need to figure out how balancing everything will allow for that. Keep the discussion going, it's been interesting so far.

 

I think a pure character should be considered to be a character that's conceptually pure, rather than a character that stacks mechanical benefits in a single direction.

A wizard who's wearing a robe should not be a better wizard because he's wearing a robe, the robe should simply be an alternative play style to the platemail. Maybe your character has an "Aura" rating that determines how well he can project his mana around himself, and this rating is negatively affected by heavier armor. A character can then harden their aura against various attacks and make it serve a a kind of adaptive armor.

At that point if you want your wizard to be conceptually pure you can wear the robe and use aura manipulations to defend yourself, but you could also wear a suit of platemail and be a battlemage. Likewise if you want to be a conceptually pure warrior you can just wear plate, but you could also wear robes or light clothes and use aura manipulation to play as a kind of Chi-master/Monk type fighter.

 

Maybe open up certain skills to those who follow the paths of mage, fighter, archer or healer. I guess it can be looked at as a prestige class?

 

An interesting option but one that might conflict, like MalakBrightpalm said, with the open system that they want to have in place.

Love the ideas going around. Keep it up everyone.

 

Welcome to LoTRO?

That is entirely LOTRO combat/skill system.

Group augmentation depending on skill use, and specialization for "classes" depending on skill choice.

They also have a static skill bar.

Just saying.

 

Well from what I've seen the skill tree's are too shallow to specialize, there's just not enough skills in a given field. Not sure if this is the basic skill tree and they'll expand it or if someone who specializes in one field will be at a disadvantage because they have skill points wasted.