Skill Trees Passive Skills

The art of disagreement is in the tone of one's post.

 

Tone is often hard to grasp accurately but you're still overlooking the fact that no disagreement was actually posted. Trying to explain why the devs did something is not the same as agreeing with it..

 

I'll grant you your semantic retreat, I know already that I'd have to crash a small moon directly into your head to drive a point home when you've decided it doesn't exist. I do pity those compelled to deal with you on a daily basis, and sing the praises of the Deity that spared me such a fate.

*I* believe that the method in place to limit players from taking ALL talents in general is more than sufficient, and that the 'right' way to encourage differing paths is to IMPROVE underutilized talents so that they are temptingly desirable, rather than trying to impose punishments and restrictions on people to prevent them from taking the obviously advantageous talents and abilities.

 

And once again.. at what point here have I said that limiting points on passives was the right way to go? The only point I've disagreed with here is the attitude that the devs are forcing you to play a certain way..

As for the rest I really don't care. I just think it's pretty dumb to go back and forth over who actually won a bet for a non-existent shiny dollar. I've no intention of putting any more energy into that isn't worth it.

 

This would be you, circa yesterday, arguing that limiting passives is necessary. So much so that even though you imply that you dislike it, you also state clearly that you will rise to defend it. As usual, Bowen, your contribution is ultimately self defeating.

And I must call you a liar, sir, since you are the one who poured your energy into my rhetorical offer of a bet, and then tried to win. And then looked foolish backing out on technicalities. Heaven forfend that Bowen Bloodgood should be thought to have at any point been WRONG in the eyes of the interwebs. Perish the thought.

Your maniacal need to get in the last word when losing a debate has never ceased to amaze me, Bowen, I wouldn't have you any other way.

 

Explain how anything you just quoted means limiting passives is necessary? I say there they've over powered and "something needs changing".. and within the context of everything else I've said.. that change I've argued for is reworking/rebalancing the skills.. NOT setting limits on them. So that is you.. reading meaning where none was expressed. So if you would stop putting words in my mouth I'd appreciate it.

You can call me anything you like. Honestly, the moment you stop being civil is the moment I stop caring about your opinion. And that is already more response than your personal attacks deserve.

 

Oh, Bowen, "personal attacks"? I'm not attacking you, that would imply that I consider your point valid.

You CHOOSE to defend the forcing of players to spec into diversification in order to prevent "cookie cutter" passive sets. You could have just remained passive as a point having nothing to do with your personal recipe for Baked Alaska (substituting red herring for the salmon and bitterness for the sauce) trotted past, but you chose to post, as another poster noted "shooting down the thread".

This thread's OP is quite valid, and raises a vital issue.
Right now, the leveling system floods us with many "points" early on, and then weans us off, while the talent tree system demands an ever increasing payout of "points" in order to choose from what even the most rabid proponents have admitted is a badly imbalanced and limited set of rather uninteresting talents.

SOME of us are choosing to spend our energy on these forums trying to find a common expression of what needs to change, what we want to see. Some of us choose to spend our time nay-saying every idea that gets posted. Frankly, for all the people saying "It's not a finished product, don't expect so much!", I would have imagined the same level of intellectual generosity would be extended to those trying to contribute something meaningful. Must someone post a fully developed game, complete with code, copyrights, and system specs before their idea doesn't get shot down by the third response to their threads? No, I imagine even then there would be someone leaping up to criticize, saying that it's a dumb idea, and such and such game company already tried it.

Your input into this thread has consisted of nothing but derisive tone and nay-saying. I stand to defend the OP having a valid point.

 

So.. you don't consider "I pity those compelled to deal with you" "I call you a liar" "maniacal need to get the last word in" none of that is personal or uncivil in your mind?

You choose to hold on this idea that I stand opposed to the point in the OP despite repeatedly expressing to the contrary. Fine. I'm not here to debate with the likes of you the meaning of what I have and have not said. Which is in plain text right here in the thread. At no point did I disagree with the OP's comments. Period. You can cherry pick quotes and twist them around all you like. This back and forth is only derailing the topic. Which btw.. you could've been passive about also.

The truly sad thing here is.. we're not even disagreeing on anything in the OP. You simply refuse to see it.

 

Ok just to clarify a little something.. I added a quote to my initial post to make it clearer to whom I was directing my initial comments. I can somewhat see where not quoting early may have led to some confusion for which I apologize.

 

I am not compelled, nor is anyone else on this site, and I personally find you entertaining. But if you treat people in real life like this, well...
No, that's not a personal attack, just noting what many people have said, publicly and privately. You are abrasive. Saying so does not constitute an attack, it is in fact a defense.

You stated that you would waste no more energy on my and my bet in the SAME BREATH that you tried once more to devalue it and escape the hole you dug yourself. As my father was fond of telling me, "The first rule of holes is: When you find yourself in one, STOP DIGGING." I'm just atwitter waiting to see when that will sink in.

Well, you do. Again, it's stating the obvious, not making an attack. I am VERY curious to see when you will stop fighting the meaningless fight.

Personal attacks are things where I say "You bad person. You unworthy. Me say you bad." These were more along the lines of "Dude, normally people beat RECENTLY dead horses, and they use sticks, not the shovels that they dug the horse cadaver up with."

As for being uncivil, I have rarely, if ever, been anything but.

If you REALLY think we are both agreeing with the OP, might I suggest something?

Try opening a post, typing the underlined words below exactly as they appear, and then clicking the button labeled 'Post Reply'

"I agree with you."

 

To encourage diversity and wildly different approaches to gaming SotA needs to create 'roles' that fulfill all these different approaches. Which I'm all for and have the same hopes that you do. If they just stick to the standard 'trinity' of classes; tank/healer/dps then you won't see much different approach to gaming because this has been done to death. What a lot of these companies don't understand is that there ARE other types of players out there who don't want to tank or heal or even just a standard dps machine.

EQ and Vanguard made huge usage of pulling, crowd control, and support classes that I hope SotA incorporates. If they want 'diversity' they HAVE to create other roles than the standard 'trinity' tank/healer/dps. The tank/healer/dps has been done thousands of times already.

 

OK, so skills aren't balanced. The solution is to limit passives to simulate balance? I sure hope that's not Port's plan.

Limiting passives will not deter people from adopting cookie-cutter builds. They will create cookie-cutter builds anyway out of what they do have available. Gamers tend to gravitate to whatever builds they perceive as successful for others. Limiting passives will do nothing to change that.

Besides I fail to see how restricting someone from using something is helping them to diversify. Seriously.

 

And to create these 'other' roles they need to go further than just adjusting SotA's skill trees. They need to set up other systems in the game that create these roles. Creating a pulling class/role not only requires the skills to perform this act but it also requires the mobs to need to be split and pulled. The mobs have to be 'social' in which once engaged they will 'talk' to other nearby mobs that will then try to help them.

If you couldn't tell I have played a pulling class a lot in other games. My point though is that these games have to create the NEED for these other roles. You don't just create these roles by throwing in a bunch of skills in a skill tree. You need other systems implemented that require different playstyles other than tanking and healing.

Now that I'm thinking about it, a role consists a lot of 'saving' the group. A tank saves the group by getting the mob's attention when the mob goes after other group members. A healer saves the group by healing the members who have been hurt. A puller can save the group by making sure the groups of mobs the player group is fighting is manageable. A crowd controller can save the group by controlling a group of mobs that is NOT manageable by the player group. Then you have support classes that instead of being a sole dps class they make the other members of the group better dps classes and in turn bring the group's dps as a whole up and kills the mobs quicker which in turn saves the group more.

It's a pipe dream I know but everyone ALWAYS complains about not enough diversity or they complain about the cookie cutter builds which is by no means the player's faults, it's the games fault due to lack of roles the game has.

 

Yeah it didn't make any sense to me either. Fortunately they've done away with that for R18. I think the new thing they're trying was described as level based limits on ALL skills which I presume to mean you need to be a certain level for either higher-tier skills and/or skills further down the tree? I guess we'll see in a couple of days how they have it set up.

 

The limits aren't going into this build. I think Darkstarr said R19 would be the first that the limits are used. Essentially R18 is back to the way it was in R16, no limits on the number of points that can go into innate skills.

Darkstarr has also commented that the tech is there and ready to go. I don't think they had enough time to implement for this release.

What would be interesting is not only restricting tiers but restricting inside the level. So for strength you could put so many points into strength but then need to be level 20 before you could add more. (Just examples of numbers and levelst o illustrate the point.)

 

Ok, this thread has spiraled a little since the last time I read it. I believe everyone is entitled to their opinion, and there isn't a single right answer on this issue. I think the passives should be meaningful. If everyone is going to select the same 5 or 10 passive skills because they are "the best" regardless of what type of skills you are using, then you are really just paying a skill points penalty for something that becomes inherent to having a character.

I DO think passives should be limited... (so channel your rage in this direction ). More specifically, I think they should be limited to your use and talent for the skills in that tree. Now, that could mean moving passives to higher tiers in the skill tree and interspersing them with combat skills or placing passives in a separate category which is only gained when you have a certain number of total skill points in that tree.

 

I agree. The idea of giving players flexibility and freedom with skills appeals to me. Primarily due to experience with other games that often force, through mechanics or peer pressure, players to take a particular set path in order to be effective. Maybe effective isn't a good term. It makes me cringe just a bit.

 

hhmmm, i think some of yall really need to do some more in depth testing on how to impliment passives, there is no need for a limit, nor are they over powered, there are a couple that likely need balancing but if you just dump on passives with out some forthought to how they are going to help your'build' your probably gimped more than you realise, i imagine a plethera of avatars sporting all of the earth innates still, the fact that i can survive in pvp with out death magic and earth innates leads me to believe they will be fine as is once all the glyphs are balanced and you can pve as something other than a meleer and pvp as something other than a mage.

 

While I agree with the premise you're getting at here.. but if a large majority are taking the same passives then it's a safe bet they're over powered and need either to be rebalanced or reworked somehow to bring them in line with a balanced system.

 

there was probably an imbalance that started a fad, word gets out pretty fast when something works and it results in a lot of followers, unfortunately the followers wernt testing so they didnt get over powered like they wanted to when they copied the build because it has since been rebalanced, i mean some around here still think plate is over powered ......