Skill Trees Passive Skills

Having not kept up with your conversation in its entirety I can't really comment. I just happened to spot that comment skimming through. However, what I referred to in my response was someting Richard talked about very early on. This would've been about 2 years ago now and happens to be something that stuck with me.

In my experiencce people tend to interpret comments differently or remember things vaguely. It's not a stretch to go from Richard's comments about raising a potential skill cap to 'unlimited growth' or just not remembering a skill cap was ever mentioned. Devs haven't discussed those particular ideas openly for a long time now. The idea that it was "promised" though.. is misunderstanding the intent of the developers when they discuss things in the hangouts..

Speaking in broader terms and with no particular individual in mind.. a lot of misunderstandings come from reading too much into what's said or not really paying that much attention in the first place.

 

Of course, I'm not blaming him. Very easy to forget things from two years ago. I wasn't intending an attack to his character. I just thought maybe you could provide a reference for where he may have read this particular subject.

 

Well, I haven't read of any great and glorious masters of the shield, but I can tell you what I had in mind. In japan (the asian lands are full of this kind of stuff) those hoping to get some blocking power used items called kote (koh-teh), which were simply metal slats held onto the outside of the forearm. They allowed some degree of blocking when used correctly. They were, however, much less effective than proper shields. I think of that theoretical shield master, victor of a thousand fights, bearer of a thousand scars, and I can IMAGINE that he or she might try to block with their forearm, INSIDE which are contained two BONE slats, the bones of the forearms. Now, when you step from steel triangle shield to wooden circle shield, you lose defense, when you go from wooden circle shield to woven reed shield, you lose more. When you step down to kote, you lose even more, and when you step from kote to just a forearm (perhaps with a vambrace or other piece of your body armor?) you lose even more. YES, it won't give the same defense. But there IS some value to the movement, the raising of the arm, interrupting the incoming blow while it is still in its movement arc, before the full impact is ready to be delivered. I absolutely am not suggesting that merely using the movement should grant full defense, but it should grant SOME. That's just my thinking.

Yep. I agree with this. The tree tops were envisioned as great skills with awesome power, and the progress through the lower tiers was part of the price that must be paid. And they haven't balanced those skills yet. LOTS and LOTS of skills need balancing, and I'm trying to keep my mouth mostly shut about it because I KNOW that the devs have other priorities and that balancing all the skills would just have to be redone again next release and next and next, I am waiting for the combat system itself to get closer to completion. I suspect that when we do so, we will see those skills GREATLY buffed, although I also understand there is a desire not to make grabbing "ultimate" abilities from the tops of the trees a mandatory priority.

Yeah, I see the forced behavior, but cut them SOME slack, the less control they have over our behavior, the more time they spend just reeling from all that emergent behavior.

Now, there IS going to be a system wherein level trumps skill to a certain extent. If I've been playing for weeks, but I'm dumb, and you just logged in at level 1, I'm gonna smack you down. The devs have talked about making the progress curve gentler at higher levels, I have noticed that while the cost of skills increases with subsequent levels, the points awarded for leveling up decrease as your level climbs. So while I WILL always be a certain distance ahead of you as you play and I play, the degree of substantive difference between our combat capacity will gradually decrease. Thus I will always be ahead point wise, but your more intelligent play will catch up and make a difference. Eventually.

Quantify the limiting effect that results from saying that we can only have say, 3 passives. Ok. I get set on an archer build. I pick passives that help me increase range, increase rate of fire, and, oh, increase accuracy. Now I'm an archer. Boom. Class. You can swap out one of those passives, and I will no longer be that archer. Say, remove the rate of fire and put in something that increases chance of critical hit and or critical hit severity. Boom, now I'm a SNIPER. You can keep playing with this for quite some time, but ultimately we will have a maximum set of passive combinations determined as a simple combinatoric equation, minus a subset of waste caused by human inadequacy in the face of eternity. Sets of 3 (or 5, or 9, or 217, whatever you like) taken from the available list of passives, will give us a maximum number of combinations. Then, because nobody can plan for everything, and the more total passives that are available the more often unpleasant abberations will occur, we have to assume that there will be BAD combinations of passives, that work against themselves, or just be pathetically underpowered, that limits the total combinations. Lastly, some really AWFUL combinations will occur (say, passive damage reflection + life drain of any damage dealt + flat damage prevention) and the devs will have to alter those passives, which will set off a chain of re-balances throughout the passive network (which will be more and more violent the bigger the pool of passives is) to compensate, and that will add massive headaches to the dev team.

Why do I keep mentioning the consequences of increasing the pool of passives? Because if the pool is too small, the total number of viable combinations will be small. We will hit a point where the game has perhaps 12 awesome archetypes, and limitless inferior builds. You can guess what will happen then. So we the players will obviously request (if not demand) more passives, and the devs intent (and yes, @Bowen they DID say they intended to add more skill trees as the game progressed and content and levels were added, it doesn't have to be literally unlimited growth on release one, the level cap just has to, as LB said, stay out of reach of the players given the time it will take to reach it) being to add more over time, this pool of passives is GOING to get bigger and bigger, and while that means that the pool of de facto classes will grow over time (yay!), all the problems I cited will be right on their heels, if not proceeding them through the door (boo!).

Now, amongst all these responses to YOUR questions, @niak48, I offer a competing thought, something for you to consider. If instead of limiting the number of passives that can be taken artificially, we simply make the abilities, either passive or active, relatively equal in desirability, and balance them all, then we get a natural limiter on growth, the soft level cap currently in effect. You don't have access to limitless talent points, nor the limitless time it would take to earn them, and your build will evolve around a vaguely specified limit of talent points, namely the number you have time to earn. Then you will have to sacrifice talents you don't actually need for ones that you do, talents you kinda want for talents you really want, and so on. You won't grab every single passive in the game.

Currently there are specific passives, most notably the damage resistance passives, that everyone is grabbing. That's because these talents are only early sample versions. If the devs add more passive and active talents, and buff the talents that aren't being used, then people will be forced to choose between stacking DR and other, equally desirable purchases. That isn't a major design flaw, it's a mediocre balancing issue.

Um, I'm not certain what exactly you are responding to here, I never meant to imply that SotA was or could be literally boundless, but we can aim for a scenario in which there are more viable, entertaining character builds than any one player could ever use all of, or perhaps even encounter, which would give our subjective experiences plenty of room in which to play.

 

@MalakBrightpalm

Instead of using quotes I'll simply write the topic in an underline fashion and address it that way. As our conversation has reached giant walls of text. I hope this is acceptable.

Shields and Reality: I see what you are saying about shields and reality. I understand your analogy about defense. But what I was really getting at is that specific movements in SotA are under the shield category when they really should be generic movements. Being required to train in the shield to learn how to rush at someone isn't necessarily dependent upon understanding the intricacies of the shield. To me, the example (in the context of SotA) that I can train in light armor and wear heavy armor with no negatives throws me off. It just doesn't make logical sense. It doesn't make sense that I can use combat maneuver skills (tumbling) in full plate. Its one of those realism things I just can't abide by.

Maybe I'm too strict in my thinking ... But, the choices I make with my character template should reward and punish me. I shouldn't be allowed to tumble in full plate. That just seems silly.

Skill Trees: At least we both agree that if and when the skill tree is fleshed out to provide a greater degree for being a master and less of a hybrid this would be better for the game. Unfortunately this line of thinking also lends support to the idea of de facto archetypes. I do hope you see how my argument is two fold and how they reinforce each other. Exactly the same way our conversation on the subject of skills not affecting specifics of worn gear reinforce the idea of archetypes, skill trees and passives. Fleshed out skill trees, which turns characters into an actual master of a specific type, also limits passives. They are inexorably tied. However, my fear is that we will be stuck with the current skills which may be acceptable for PvE ... But are not acceptable for PvP ... But that is a different conversation.

Bounds: My thoughts on bounds are as follows; I do not want the developers to tell me I have freedom when I do not. I'm not allowed to do specific things in game until specific milestones are reached. This is not freedom. Also, due to the current deck mechanics the Focus tree is nearly essential to perform any meaningful damage. I can grind WELL outside my level limit by having many points boosting my deck. Unfortunately, the deck is a mechanic and not part of my character. The mechanic doesn't fit ... Its weird ... I don't even understand the lore behind the mechanic. I don't understand a lot of the lore of this new world. But that is an entirely different conversation.

I do agree entirely with your statement which I will quote to be specific.

My biggest fear is that people actually enjoy the current system for building their deck. I for one believe that if I'm a master at something ... I should wreck face with that specific school. Unfortunately I'm a master at Focus, which is a combat mechanic and not an actual skill. I find it absolutely stupid that building a deck with cantrips actually succeeds at anything. That isn't a mage. That is some sort of weird hybrid and won't make for interesting combat.

 

@niak48
Damn, I had just finished renting a separate server to store our next few exchanges! Money down the drain.

Ok, so
Shields and Reality
I also think that putting shield rush as the final ability of the shield tree is a bit odd, I'd put it right after shield bash, and yes, I would allow for a charge that didn't use the shield at first or second tier. In a game with ranged casters, archers, and summons, not to mention those damn spiders, melee type characters WOULD learn to run in close right off the bat, it should be a low tier basic ability somewhere.

I would say that Shield Charge should have some nifty shield type stuff, like knockback, stun chance, and defensive bonus. Perhaps normal charge can be rooted, but Shield Charge cannot. Still, it shouldn't be an end tier ability. Probably normal charge would come from polearms (since charging is a very basic tactic for spearmen and lancers, I believe), but those who will be taking shields anyway can take Shield Charge and shave a few talent points.

I do agree with the tumbling bit. While I have seen demonstrations of just how well a trained combatant can move in full plate, acrobatics seems a bit much. THAT I just quietly lump under "balance issues for later".

Skill Trees
The Portalarium Dev team has elected at this time to use the skill tree categorization. This does allow them to help brainstorm abilities, and to make powerful abilities expensive by making them deep purchases. There are disadvantages to this categorization, one notable one is the delicate balance between pure masters and hybrids. IF the balance is done well, both hybrids and masters will be viable, roughly equal but each suited to different challenges. If those treetop abilities are TOO good, hybrids will die out and yes, de facto class system. One change that comes to mind was the decision made in Rifts. When they started, they had four character groups, each of which had the ability to choose any three trees from it's private selection of 8 trees. Total of 32 skill trees, and when a friend and I ran the numbers, some 4 thousand possible combinations, each of which technically contained up to 3 basic stances of actual point buy, and probably more like 5 or 6 different viable characters that could be made from that combination. Adding in gear variety, and losing a few due to the inevitable poor combinations, I estimated some 20,ooo possible character builds. Just after launch, they altered the 32 trees, and added a one point talent to each at about the 80% mark, in each case giving a customized, very useful buff to it's tree that was dependent on how many points were spent in that tree. It made tree masters significantly more powerful than any hybrid could be, and overnight there were 32 class archetypes.

Currently SotA shows us the opposite end of the spectrum, with the high costs of investment, the reagent price, and of course the lackluster performance make mastering most skill trees an act of a fool. Even people like me who advocate for hybrid survival think that the treetop skills are too weak, and I don't plan to take any.

There is a point of balance, where the advantages of hybrid adaptability and diversity are EQUAL to the benefits of tree mastery. I hope that the Devs will find that point, and recognize it for the jewel it is. I much prefer the 20,000 to the 32. Here's hoping.

Bounds
Ick. You have a lot of points jumbled together here. I commend you for recognizing it.

Addressing only those subjects that I do NOT see as belonging elsewhere,
Total freedom = world destruction. This game is NOT a sandbox, it's a story, so be prepared for the final version to require milestones. They want to tell us a story and say that they will spend a huge amount of time making this story, and I for one am prepared to follow the breadcrumb trail.

The Focus and Tactics trees ARE quite onerous, I note that most of the points I spend in them are just making up for various weaknesses obvious to the SotA combat system. I've thought for some time that most of what Focus and Tactics has really belongs as default. I think most of those skills should be A) fixed at one skill point per, or B) included as a level one effect.

And your final fear belongs in the discussions about the virtues and lack thereof concerning the deck system, and I for one welcome you into one of the most histrionic debates currently infesting these forums.

 

So, after reading that exchange, I'm confused.

Did Miyamoto Mushashi use a hybrid deck while Sasaki Kojiro used a locked deck? Is that why he beat him with an oar? Did Kojiro invest in innates at all? I need to know how this played out, for science.

 

bwahaha

 

Your hand, most likely!

 

Pretty sure character's customization would be better if Innate Skills progression and Active Skills progression went separate ways. My personal preference would be innates gained through use (like in UO) while actives work the way they do at the moment, but there's plenty of other ways.

What's sure is that having limitations to how you spend your skill points is dull... but i think (hope? expect) that's just a placeholder.

 

@MalakBrightpalm I too remember Rift. I believe I tested it and was absolutely loving the freedom of all the different trees. Until I couldn't love all the freedom of the different trees. I think the software development team realized it had a system which required a lot of analysis to properly test. You would actually have to pay people to test all those different branches because the population most likely wouldn't be able to perform all the variations.

I pray SotA is not as "limitless". Because it makes balance difficult. I like to use Dota 2 as an outstanding example of balanced. 110 heros each having 6 item slots with well over 60 items. Dota has very similar attributes much like SotA. There are stats, stat affecting items, flat bonus items, etc. Each hero has a primary stat which affects the hero differently than the other two. It is quite balanced in the scheme of things. But, Dota has been around for years and years. If you don't have years and years you need to start small. Being a master of trees would go a long way initially. Having archetypes to expound on later would go a long way initially. THEN we could see things like an arcane archer (D&D reference and another fine example of balance if you remove monks). But, the real question is how does balance and skill trees affect SotA sustainability?

One thing that could go a long way is transparency. Maybe I've missed it here on the forums, but transparency in how the developer wants something vs how it functions and what the community thinks about the functionality. I'd like the developer to share the purpose of stats to US. I'd like to see HOW damage is calculated. I'd like to know what their end goal is with the deck system with quantification not qualification. I am a financial backer and I am qualified to peer review their work (job wise). Because much of this game's ability to survive in the open market depends on how well the systems interact. A game like this, can't sell itself on the socialization aspect. They have tabletop software which allow people to come together and D&D online now. This same software allows people to have dances in their keeps. This game can't sell itself on the story. It can't sell itself on house building (other games do it better) .Otherwise it is a single player game and I didn't buy into a single player game. It has to sell itself for what it IS. It is an MMO. Guild Wars 2 tried the story thing ... No one cares, you won't have enough financial backers to achieve a great game which will persist. If the game doesn't persist the development team will end up writing the code to allow your extremely devoted Trammel base to host it's own server and then will disappear after this final piece of software. Because stories can be told through writing and provide a much better picture to the reader than a forced one.

Let me give an example of how a standard of done. In my workplace we have a standard of done. That standard of done is, "it isn't done until it is done". I deliver to my financial backers my logic, the software, procedures on how to achieve the end result, training aids and the list goes on. They review a feature of the software every step of the way. From inception to finished product. They are allowed to comment on the feature up until it is finished. Then we test the feature and they pass or fail the feature. It is very bureaucratic and you may be able to deduce who I work for because of the bureaucracy. After the feature is passed it is then released to the end user and the feature is still open to modification. The process repeats itself until no one ever talks about the feature again. Then the feature is done. Notice the feedback loops in the process? This is directly applicable to what I said above because game software development is in a unique position for the software industry.

I am the end user and I am the financial backer. So is everyone else on the forum. Some people on these forums may not be "qualified" to peer review equations. But they are qualified to test equations and quantified features in a roadmap.

In conclusion, until we get this roadmap and a greater degree of transparency I worry for the state of this game.

 

You haven't. If you have, so have I and countless others.

 

How unfortunate. This means the software developers are lacking in their process of closing the feedback loop. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm glad I could point out the flaw of not closing the feedback loop with words that they can understand. Pictures also help ... The following is an example of the Scrum process. Obviously I didn't tailor the picture in any way shape or form ... But you can see the loops. Those loops are what most major software teams are missing. Following along with a previous post of mine in my work place we have a test lead.

Can anyone point me to the test lead on the developer team? Or is the test lead only testing software functionality and not end user test feedback?

 

How much money you got?

 

Why do I have to pay? They either have this role or they do not I know I only paid 45 dollars. But I bet I can find enough people with my views on the game to trump any one or two major backers.

 

Sir, you're applying logic at an alarmingly reckless rate. I'm going to have to ask you sit down and drink this.

 

LOL!!! Sorry I'm logic driven

 

Better than my face, if that's the choice I have to make. This is a world with healing magick and people ressurecting themselves from the dead. If I sac my arm but it buys me time to get in a killing blow, that's a total win.

Sounds to me like you want to be Dev plus. Those who cared enough to pledge more, up to a threshold that filtered out casual commenters like myself, are given much of that information.

 

actually this is not true. Mostly dev+ is used to wet announcements before making them public. And then it is usually two-three days before it is announced.
There is no further insight into any scheduling or timetables. Those are given at a much lower level in the Quarterly announcements, release announcements and daily Standup notes.
You are more likely to get such info from the hangouts than the Dev+ forums.

this is a great point and one that most people miss.
In a world where healing exists a whole new plethora of fighting options become available. The old thing with catching peoples weapons with your actual hand becomes such a more viable and effective option if you are just a few heals from getting your hand functioning again.

Also imagine how much better you can get if sparring can include much more "sharp" and full out training.

Then think of how a hard core group could train on morale by dying and resurrection to train away the fear of death.

Now mind you I don't think that a game would necessarily be better if this was included, but still the thought experiment is intriguing.

 

@Spoon do you know how long their sprints are in duration?

On the topic of weapon catching... This is one thing I loved about D&D. Catch that blade with your arm ... get that arm sheered off. Now pay for the regrowth spell. You know, the wickedly expensive one

 

You know there's one very good rule in combat that is sadly neglected in the combat systems of most games.

Move first. Block 2nd.

Another excellent rule involves specically not being stupid enough to use your hand to catch or otherwise stop block an incoming weapon. Now stopping an incoming weapon by catching your opponnents hand/arm is another thing entirely.