Balancing Innate Skills

Magic innate skills are something that should be useful to magic users. The fact that there are clear benefits to literally everyone is something we want to avoid. None magic users and hyrbids who want to benefit from these skills should either have to make a substantial investment in these skills or do without.

Right now, as of R14 certain innate skills are simply over powering and require little investment. Specifically Earth innate skills. Sun and Moon skills seem likely to be the same.

So a couple ideas came to me.

1: Armor effects innate skill effectiveness for some skills. Much in the same way as it affects spell fizzle chance. This means if you've invested in Earth innates they will be less effective if you're wearing heavy armor.

If you want to improve this, you need to invest in other skills such that getting the most out of the innate skills requires a huge investment in skill points.

2: Equipment requirements. What makes Earth innate skills useful to everyone right now, is the lack of any equipment requirement. If it requires cloth armor for example, then it wouldn't be useful to heavy armor users. It could also be made to specifically require NOT using certain equipment.

 

Ok, so I want to ask you, Bowen, is what is actually WRONG with wanting a character who is a melee fighter who has bonded with magicks of elemental earth to increase his prowess, but couldn't cast a bolt of mystic power to save his life?

 

What's wrong here is that the way it's currently working.. is that literally everyone in the game has no reason not to invest in these same skills. It's like they were designed for min/maxing your build.

 

I was about to say that doing this would further screw melee ..but you are right, everybody takes the earth inates by default.

 

Because the combat system is....wait for it.....based on......wait.....


DPS.

(Blocking and Countering is what we need - but please continue.)

 

Not until it was pointed out to everyone, and likely those powers are going in for a rebalance.

However, where I was really going with my comment was that this kind of thinking leads to nerfle-jerking, systematically diminishing the effectiveness of various skills, classes, and items for the entire life of the game, and finding ultimate balance in making everything equally pathetic.

If the earth passives are hardcore perfect talents, that EVERYONE should spec into, might I suggest that the OTHER magick schools need better passives? Maybe even that ALL skill trees need better passives?

Instead of making one or two skill trees that had the misfortune of being desirable pay the price for this lack of balance, hows about we broaden the desirable choices? Maybe make some of them buff defense, some of them buff damage, some of them buff move speed, focus regen, attack range, etc.

Make it a hard choice by making other things better...

 

There's probably a lot we could think of to change things. Being so close to R15, I'm interested to see the new skills and changes that have been made before I suggest anything other than blocking and countering. But the Earth innate skills are big problem and it's hard to see how any changes or new skills will counter them in a system where having as much innate protection is very important to success.

 

One way would be to award an affinity or mastery to people that put the bulk of the points into one tree. For example if i max every skill in the fire tree i gain a 5% bonus to the effectiveness of those skills, or a reduction of fizzle/focus cost. *shrug* haven't put much thought into it, just seems good as a fresh thought.

 

I could see something like that. RG has talked about people mastering in all the Elemental schools of magic (fire, water, air, earth) might be called a Druid, for example. So I think they may already be thinking in terms of specialists having "something" different about them.

 

And this kind of thinking can lead to just the opposite effect. Everything being over powered.

There shouldn't ever be the one thing that everyone wants and you may not I'm not saying nerf! nerf! nerf! I'm am saying if it's going to be that desirable then it shouldn't be that easy. It should be a choice, not an indirect necessity.

 

I agree with Bowen here, optimal innates is something quite undesirable for the game. But i don't think it's a matter of nerfing something or giving power to other... This issue is there because innates are being handled in a way that the player can choose which innates will use as if they weren't part of a certain Skill tree; if i want those innates, i'll put the minimum amount of points in the first skill and then start maxing out the innates.

My solution is in the line of what Themo Lock said. I think that if instead of innates being matter of allocating points on them their values improve by using the active skills related to that skill tree (as i suggested on this post) and having a max value related to the amount of skill points allocated on the skill tree, innates become less "mandatory" if to have them you need to invest point in active skills and use them.

This concern and some others are best addressed with some changes in the base mechanics. Since we're still in prealpha, i think suggesting this kind of changes is adequate... always better to solve a problem from it's origin.

 

I think one of the problems with innates is that the factors in combat are passive and lacking variety. Nearly all the defensive innates and active buffs involve damage resistance - straight up negating damage. If I told you you could have a skill that directly negated several points of ALL damage or a brief buff that increased your chance to block an attack (but otherwise it would do full damage), what would you take? Consider, too, that you have multiple skills you can stack that negate all damage and it's hard to put your protection in a card-dealing system that ultimately acts as an all-or-nothing option that requires significant player skill to utilize efficiently.

I am, admittedly, new to the game, but at level 27 and some basic armor, I rarely need to Healing Touch while I dual-wield some crappy swords. With all the innates I've taken and the plate armor I'm wearing, 4 elf fighters, 2 elf archers and an elf mage simply don't put any fear of loss in me. The only time I get close to dying is when I go from 1v5 to 1v3 to 1v4, back to back, without putting my swords away so my regen is terrible. While I've gained several levels, it wasn't until I rearranged my skills and dumped a good 50-75 points into innates that I noticed I went from circling NPCs and using Healing Touch to just flailing everything to death with no regard for personal safety.

I think the blanket damage resistance buffs - be they active (Parrying, Dodge) or innate - need to go. We need more variety and abilities to encourage active gameplay. The current system emphasizes rapid, low tier abilities with a vast stock of innates; have a few heals on hand, sit back on your innates and wait 'til you have a 4-5 stack to nuke someone with. Personally, a system of counters and blocks that can be used tactically and actively would make for more engaging combat - both PvP and PvM - as well as adjusting the innates as they are. Earth innates should provide resistance against physical damage (melee, ranged attacks, poison - per the wiki), but not against magic attacks (note: it may not resist magic as of now, but it sure seems like it). Likewise other innates should provide magic resistance instead of overall damage resistance, either through an active ability or a particular skill (I believe Moon is supposed to have something like this).

Much of that can be tweaked as we continue testing pre-alpha combat, but having the ability to throw up a Magic Reflect or block attacks (like Evasion in UO or any temp parry buff in other MMOs) would make things a lot more engaging. This would, more than likely, require some adjustments in how you actually fight (the deck system would need to become far more user-friendly), but that's arguably something that needs to be done regardless of this topic.

 

Personal opinion:
I think innates in the Magic Trees should only affect spellcasting, not be a permanent thing.
The problem with earth right now is that it is always there, regardless if you are casting or not. So buying it for any type of build makes sense.
While if it only goes into effect while casting earth magic spells of that type, then it would be a much more specialized affair.

Most of the magic trees' innate abilities are for casting only. Like Life and Fire etc. Make the same simple rule for all and most of the issues with innates are gone.

 

I agree with KuBaTRizes and Bowen, I really liked the way Elder scrolls Online did there skill, It was learned, so as you progress say you pick up a sword it would hit and miss until a certain level, then as you get better you get mid to upper level of damage the sword can do plus some critical damage. etc. This way you learn as you go, and put skills into special moves at different levels of the specific weapon. Some times there may be nothing to spend points on since you have not progressed enough in the weapon or armor usage, magic, or crafting.

 

if we are talking about balance for PvP, then I believe there will be a PvP skill tree. The earth innates and weapon damage innates are very useful to a mid level PvM, not just to max but to balance. Let's remember that these skills are near the end of the skill tree and cost many many points to fill out.

Most of who are interested in this thread like myself just raced through the leveling process, but the adventuring skill balance is mostly being tuned for those of us that will actually be playing the game.

 

I was under the impression they weren't doing a PvP tree, based on what I've read and people's opinions on the matter. Do you happen to have where it was said they were going to do go through with that? I'd be interested in learning more about it if it's something they're planning.

Edit: Also, the Earth Innates aren't that expensive to max out. I'm a level 27 with my Earth Innates maxed and my Off-Hand Offense and Defense innates maxed, as well.

 

Nope, no PVP skill tree. It has been suggested, but as far as i know there's no plan on implementing one (and i hope they don't).

 

NO! A thousand times NO! That is exactly the decision that killed Rifts! Prior to that patch change, there were over four thousand viable builds, after there were precisely as many as there were skill trees, because that passive bonus for going pure build makes all hybrids weak by comparison.

Unless we want to make a de facto class system take over SotA, that is a horrible choice.

I don't mean to jump on you, but that idea needs squashing.

 

Making a PvP skill, or PvP gear, or even a single PvP trinket, will do one of the following:
A) The PvP dingle blows, and it isn't worth taking. Players ignore it spitefully, and complain MORE because it's there to point out that the devs did it wrong.
B) Either right away or after the aforementioned storm of complaint, the dingle is made effective. Worthwhile. Advantageous.

But it isn't for a certain playstyle, or a certain build. It's for all PvP. All player targets, and a broad enough range of activities that it's ALWAYS useful. Plus, PvP can come kill you at any second. So you NEVER take it off. Ever.

And therein lies the trap, because once there is ONE PvP thingie, more will follow, and the hardcore PvP players will get them all. Then the, I dunno softcore?, PvP players will have to get them, because the difference between a player devoted to PvP skill who is also equipped with multiple PvP dingles and a player who only plays PvP for fun with no dingles is retarded. The player who lacks dedicated PvP dingles might as well not bother with fighting back. Ten of them wouldn't be enough.

So now, all those PvP dingles are your entry fee to PvP. You wanna be good at it, you have to get them. Gear based play. Mandatory specs. And if you wanna get them, you almost always have to "earn" them through PvP, so it's a long boring period of being a sheep in PvP so you can earn the standard outfit of PvP dingles that let you START to play PvP effectively.

All of which serves as a long series of reasons why a player wouldn't want to start PvP. Anyone who's casual, on the fence, thinking of dipping their toes in, will see that world and walk the other way.

 

Hybrids SHOULD be weak by comparison, that is the entire point.