3101

Is there any game that has a sort of inverted talent tree, where instead of starting with a few options that branch at higher levels, there are a lot of options at lower levels that merge into fewer more powerful abilities at high levels?

Like, the end result is always going to be the Spell of Mastery, but fire bolt and ice bolt both lead to lightning bolt, etc. So, its the lower level abilities on the way that differentiate a character. I think it could work as long as the low level abilities are powerful or scaleable enough that they’re meaningful throughout the whole game. If you have points or something that you use to purchase abilities, you could also potentially sample all of the low level abilities at relatively low cost, but you’d only want to max out a few.

I feel like that would at minimum solve some of the problems people have with re-playing the game to see other builds in a no-respec system. The interesting variety comes early on, and since most people don’t finish the game (let along more than once), the lack of diversity at the top doesn’t matter so much.

3102

Din’s Curse has great class customization. If you haven’t played it I highly suggest you do. You can dual class and by doing so you pick a tree from one class and another tree from another class and make any type of character you could imagine.

It’s not exactly the skill tree you were talking about but the skills open up real early so you don’t have to grind out skills like previous diablo games.

3103

You should ask how people feel about Save Anywhere in games.

3104

How about health packs?!

Oh god what have I done?

3105

I miss health packs. If we can walk over a clip of ammo and have it auto-fill the clip INSIDE OUR WEAPON why can’t I walk over a healthpack and have my wounds auto-seal and my leg grow back!?

3106

Great thread.
I want to add my doubts that gameplay such as this, button-mashing and lewt hoarding, something Blizzard mastered 12 years ago, will engage me and hold my interest after being spoiled by many times more complex games since then.

I’ll probably give up after fruitlessly searching for decisive moral choices and witty sidekicks.

3107

That’s a good point, especially since there’s no cosmetic decisions to be made. Some side system of unchangeable perks + some cosmetic alterations would bring a good sense of “this is my X” without changing the game too much.

3108

Yes. Even if it is their intention for everyone to have access to everything a class has to offer, they need to find a way to at least let us influence the order that stuff becomes available. Something.

3109

That doesn’t always work. If a game is designed to incorporate repeated respeccing, and you don’t do it, you may find that you’ve made the game much more difficult (or nearly impossible).

Your response, while reasonable enough at first blush, can actually be akin to saying, “If you don’t like field goals in football - don’t kick them!”

3110

The difference being, of course, that if you don’t do it and find the game is near impossible you can do something about it that doesn’t involve starting over. And if it bothers your sense of purity that much, you can still do that too. :)

3111

I don’t think “Well just don’t respec then” is going to work. The game, from the sound of it, isn’t designed like that. You don’t even have a “spec” you can change, you just have a hotbar. “Don’t change my hotbar” doesn’t solve the “There are no character decisions to make during the course of the game” problem. Some skills show up much later in the game, I need to be able to try those out, you know? The games designed for you to do so.

There’s also the psychological aspect. Even if I were to say “Alright, Kevin, no changing your hotbar anymore!” it’s not the same knowing that I can just pop open my skills list and swap it out - and having everyone around me doing just that.

I don’t necessarily want it to be exactly like Diablo 2, but I would like to see some sort of commitment to character build. Offer a respec every time you beat a difficulty level or something. So you can experiment from 1-30, you beat the game on normal, then you decide if you want to continue your spec or try something new. By the time you go through nightmare, you should have a pretty good feel for what you like and don’t like, yet you’re still being presented with interesting decisions. Then you’ll get opportunities again at Hell and Insane or whatever. Hell, it’d be kinda cool if the last boss on Insane (or whatever they’re calling the hardest difficulty) had a chance to drop respec runes that you could sell on the AH.

I don’t want the game to be punishing, but it’d be nice if I had some actual decisions to make as a player.

3112

You say that, but the other other stuff you say suggests that the opposite is true. The alternative you’ve offered (I’m well aware you’re not married to it) is certainly punishing.

Although sure, we may have different ideas about what punishing means.

3113

Maybe he means that he doesn’t want it to be punishing for the sake of punishment.

I, personally, don’t mind “punishing” aspects - just as long as it provides a better experience.

Many “punishment” aspects of gameplay are about the “player horizon” - as in making sure there’s something to work towards in the long-term. Removing “punishment” aspects of gameplay is often about instant gratification and that’s about the short-term experience.

I think I’m one of those people who want a balance between short-term and long-term entertainment. Just like in any given MMO, I want stuff like relatively long travelling times - because it makes me FEEL like I’m travelling in an actual world. But then, I DON’T want long travelling times if the world is bland and there’s a lack of immersion.

For instance, I felt Lord of the Rings Online benefitted from having those long travelling times - even despite HATING them on occasion. But that’s because it was true to Tolkien - and it really made me feel like I was IN the world - and not just in some gamey universe.

Have you ever had that feeling when being invited to a social event - that you just didn’t want to go? You didn’t want to bother getting all dressed-up and having to socialise, because you weren’t in the mood. But then you went anyway - and you were really happy about it. It was better than expected. You know?

Sometimes, you can’t rely on the player to understand the entertainment value of the long-term experience - because they may not be aware of what the game will be like several months from now.

This is where we have to trust the developers - and normally I’d trust Blizzard with something like this.

But the way they’ve been handling WoW since TBC tells me they’re not really about the same things they used to be about.

3114

I wish RPGs provided a form of “test” mode arena combat, where you could try out potential skills in customisable battles. That way you could test out various skills and tactics in combat, but without fully committing it to your character. It doesn’t seem too difficult to work something like this into the story either

3115

I appreciate the argument that making permanent choices increases attachment to your character. For me personally, I’m more likely to end up with a unique character if free flexible respeccing is allowed.

Why? Lets say I like the look of the “Ice Branch” of the skill tree, but everyone on Qt3 are saying that the Ice Branch is rubbish. If no respeccing is allowed, I will avoid the Ice Branch and end up with a cookie cutter build. If easy and flexible respeccing IS allowed, I’ll just ignore popular opinion and make an Ice Focused character. If I find my character to be sufficiently powerful for my needs, I’ll stick with it even though the consensus says its a “weak build”.

The days of having enough gaming time to level up multiple characters of one class are well behind me.

Tony

3116

Thats an excellent idea Budvar. I seem to remember reading a review of a game (can’t remember the name) that had a feature like that. It was a free-to-play deck building RTS from a couple of years ago.

3117

I do think there is something to the argument about permanent choices. It’s a bit crazy that the only permanent decisions you can make are what skills your followers use (I’m assuming that’s permanent).

However, these concerns are have very little weight to me compared to the issue of time. I had a lot more free time back when I played Diablo 2, and there are still a very large number of skills in that game that I have never tried. Even in my favourite Sorceress class, I never made much use of Meteor. I tried at one point to level a fire-focused Sorc, but the process of getting there was so tedious that I moved on.

It may sound rather weak to say ‘well, I was bored, so I gave up’. However, I play video games to have fun. If I am not having fun for a long enough period of time, it really take me out of the game and I realize that grinding through this just to flip some bits in the save file makes no sense. I get enough of the ‘suffer now for rewards later’ in my real life.

Lack of permanent choices does take something away from the game, but I’ll trade that for a fast loop between build idea and build implementation.

3118

About the “not enough time” argument brought up constantly:

If I understand this correctly, you have limited time available to play this game. So, you plan to stop playing after a relatively brief period?

If you intend to KEEP playing it for months, or even years, then is the “not enough time” argument really valid?

Naturally, you will spend more time trying to come up with a strong build - but is that time less entertaining if you enjoy the process?

Is your time “better spent” necessarily by NOT having to invest in your character, if it means you’re still going to spend months going through the game hunting gear and optimising your character?

I suppose we’re talking about the “psychological” perception that not having to replay the game is a better usage of time - but in my own case, it’s not valid - and I don’t have endless amounts of time available. That’s because I really, really enjoy the whole process of discovery happening when planning a character and seeing it come to life.

3119

In an effort to avoid being a dick, I’m just going to agree with this. Offering a re-spec every time you beat the game is…not a reasonable solution for most players. If you said a full respec every however many levels (depending on the leveling rate) that might be more reasonable.

There are a couple problems with “trial zones”, although the idea isn’t a bad one. There are some implementation details, but if you’re not allowing global respecs at all, then all it allows is marginal experimentation, and so that doesn’t account for getting halfway down a tree before discovering that it’s useless. If you game is presenting varied challenges, one would expect that what works at a low level won’t necessarily work at a higher level, so some things may be more effective at different times.

But among other things, it requires a player to basically say “I’m not going to progress in the game for X minutes, while I figure out what powers to take”. So, it also fails the “don’t want to waste time” calculus, just in smaller chunks. In fact, psychologically, that may even be worse, because it starts to feel like repeated busy work, and may become an obligation: you’re incentivized to never take a new talent without trying them all out, whether you want to keep moving forward or not. That kind of momentum block can be discouraging.

I feel like what we’re really talking about is a form of grognard capture. If you’re stating that your design expectation is that people will play through your game multiple times, I don’t see how there’s any other interpretation.

3120

I intend to keep playing it until firing it up starts to feel like a chore. Whether that is a short time or a long time depends a great deal on what particular aspects of the experience I enjoy and whether the game emphasizes or undermines these aspects.

For a game like Diablo, I primarily enjoy the atmosphere, encountering a variety of tactical challenges and overcoming them in creative ways. Part of the atmosphere is imagining yourself in the world, slaying demons etc. Lack of permanent decisions somewhat undermines that, but forcing your character to be a one or two-trick pony also undermines it IMO.

A very typical scenario in D2 for me is to lay out what I think will be a good build, forgo a lot of fun and flexibility in pursuit of the build, then finally see it come together. Then I have fun for a while, but before too long the build gets old. I have all the answers as to how I solve situation X, and I can completely disengage my brain.

Time for a new build! Hits the books, think up some new combination, good fun. But now I think about all the low-level clicking, doing almost the same thing I did before for hours on end. So instead I think, time for a new class, or time for a new game!

I really like the promise of being able to experiment. I know you enjoy the whole leveling up process, but for me, the whole prospect quickly begins to seem like work and it prevents me from experiencing a lot of stuff that I would otherwise try out.