Incongruent design: The trait system

[Firellius]

Yes, another topic. But I want to shine a slightly different light on it than just 'I want all traits' and 'But what about the challenge?'.

The trait system in Remnant 2 features a variety of perks with various defense and utility related effects, all scaling from 0 to 10 points. There are now 65 (was 60) points to distribute among these perks, plus 20 points from class levels that are hard-locked to specific traits, and then, I think, 5 more points that are distributed according to your main class.

This gives a total of 90 trait points to be distributed over a total of 32 traits. This means that you have access to roughly 28% of traits at any given time once you are full build.

If I recall correctly, the devs have stated that there are two main arguments as to why the trait cap is staying.

Reason #1 is balancing. If a player could get all traits, then the game would have to be re-balanced around this.

Reason #2 is build-crafting. The purpose of this restriction on traits is to encourage players to make meaningful decisions about which traits they want to pick up, and which they are willing to give up.

While these reasons, on their own, are solid enough, I do think there's something wrong with how they apply to the current system. In short: I think that the trait system as is, is at odds with the developers' design goal.

Balancing

Talking briefly about the subject of balance: The devs state that they don't want to balance the game around players having all traits, but this creates a bit of a problem. In my opinion, and from my observation, they already do. Enemy damage scales up quite dramatically with scaling level, to the point that when I did a Yaesha run on Veteran while wearing heavy armour, with five points in vigour and ten points in Barkskin, a lesser boss (Shrewd) was able to deal 100% of my maximum HP in one swing.

Another thread on the page also argues that the level scaling outstrips the players' progression, and even with investments in Vigour to increase maximum HP, the enemy damage scaling wound up outscaling it to the point that they were dying faster than they were before they invested into Vigour.

This suggests that the game is balanced around Vigour being maxed out, which changes the nature of the trait from 'You gain bonus health for every point invested in it' to 'you lose health for every point NOT invested in it'.

This segways into the subject of Buildcrafting

If the game is balanced around traits like Barkskin and Vigour being maxed out, then the game is pushing for up to twenty points being sunk in them, massively diminishing the available, remaining pool of trait points. This, of course, diminishes the freedom players have to actively Buildcraft, but there's a bigger issue at play, in my opinion.

The traits themselves are not designed for buildcrafting.

When we're talking about buildcrafting in Remnant 2, we're mostly going to wind up referring to weapons, mods, mutators, rings and amulets. These elements provide the biggest boost to specific gameplay elements, like the Soul Guard ring rewarding you with durability for summoning, the Cataloger's Jewel giving you free mod power generation, and the various Burden rings making you take trade-offs to boost one playstyle at the expense of another.

You can lean into mods, you can lean into crits, you can lean into general gunplay, you can lean into fire damage or shock damage, you can lean into status effects and damage over time, lean into big single hits or rapidfire, push melee, go for charge attacks, or summons...

And out of all of the builds outlined here, the only ones that have any support from traits are mods and summons. And the latter's not even good.

As mentioned before, the majority of the traits in the game are oriented towards either defense or utility. This means there's very little room in terms of build-crafting. This is exacerbated by some of the perks being utilitarian to the point of simply not serving any combat related purpose: You cannot use Wayfarer as part of any build because it does nothing for any build.

Conversely, there's a lot of picks that will fit within any build, but then, are they really 'build' options? These are things like Endurance, Vigour, Regrowth...

Taking the whole trait system, the only things that really spring out as build options are either going with Vigour, Fortify, Regrowth, Barkskin and Shadeskin for a facetanking build, or leaning into Endurance, Fitness, Untouchable, and Recovery for a dodge-rolling build.

Outside of that, the only buildcrafting I can come up with for the entire catalog are using Bloodbond and Rugged on summoner (not because they're good, but because they actually do -something- with summoning), and Revivalist in co-op. (Revivalist being another perk that seems to be balanced around being maxed; don't bother trying to revive your teammates in a fight without it because it literally cannot be done unless the boss is AFK)

Oh, and Kinship + Amplitude for if you want to use AoE without blowing yourself up. Provided it works that way, I have not tested it yet.

These are not 'build traits'. These are general level-up traits. These aren't things you pick up to 'add' to your build to try and complete it, or to push your gameplay in a certain direction.

When you look at the traits in Remnant 2, you're not choosing what to pick up; you're choosing what you are willing to put down.

All of these traits will work in all builds, with a few rare exceptions. And almost all of them will work universally across different builds. Whether you are going for fire damage or melee mode, Vigour will offer the exact same benefit, either way.

This, I think, is the biggest issue with Remnant 2's trait system: It's been copy-pasted from Remnant 1, while the underlying intention and design have shifted dramatially. The trait cap was slapped on to try and push Remnant 1's system to fit the new direction, but it just creates a frustrating strain between these incongruent designs. The traits, as they are, simply do not support the devs' vision.

So do I think the trait cap should be dropped?

Yes and no. I think there is absolutely no harm in dropping the trait cap in its entirety, on survivor difficulty. That's supposed to be the 'play for fun', picnic mode anyway. Why not relieve the tension and take the cap off, give players something to grind for, and let them pick up traits that they ordinarily wouldn't want to waste their precious points on.

You could even set varying trait caps for the different difficulty levels to put extra strain on the players at high difficulty.

But overall, I think that, should a Remnant 3 system ever happen, the devs need to redo the system from the ground up if they want it to follow those design goals. No big collection of cards with defense/utility effects ranging from 1-10 that can all be picked up together, but actual traits that can support varying playstyles. Things that are obvious pick-ups for one playstyle, but are 'must-nots' for others. Maybe even a sort of 'trait tree', where certain traits become mutually exclusive.

Just not a wide collection of extremely generalised perks that you're told to make a build out of. That just does not work.

Props to the rest of the game though, I've definitely gotten my money's worth. Loved the world stories, hoping we'll continue to see more of Yaesha and the Pan in future. Also still got a lot of curiosity towards the stitched worlds of Losomn, but I don't think there's as much developed lore there.

[johnwick]

not a bad read. BL2 system is the closest working model to this design. At the end of the day though people should consider anything the "devs" say the same way they would a salesperson or any other front facing retail professional, but often minus the professionalism in communication those retailers have acquired the skills for. It leads to this friction where a thing is said but another is experienced. Which is really how i'l summarised your post.

Right now we have 2 separate systems pushed together that have not been fully refined into one. The trait cap in and of itself is not the problem, it's the symptom.

What i would like to see instead, is a communication professional from the studio communicate how they will work towards refining these systems so that this is no longer an issue instead of putting in a limbo where posts like yours are a manifestation of weaknesses in a variety of areas that led us here.

We all know there is something not right, though not all agree how to fix it.

[Trichouette]

Originally posted by Firellius:

This suggests that the game is balanced around Vigour being maxed out, which changes the nature of the trait from 'You gain bonus health for every point invested in it' to 'you lose health for every point NOT invested in it'.

The game is balanced around you dodging and not getting hit.
Focusing on heavy armour & high damage reduction is like focusing on melee.
You can try, but that's not the goal of the game and it definitely won't work in higher difficulties.
(Also there's currently "maybe" a bug with damage reduction...)
A player who focuses on dodging will surely not upgrade vigor and therefore has more points for other traits.

It doesn't matter what kind of argument players are bringing forth, devs will not remove the trait cap.
They're willing to increase it, and change how traits work, but they won't remove it and I think that's a good thing.

Originally posted by Firellius:

Loved the world stories, hoping we'll continue to see more of Yaesha and the Pan in future.

Damn finally someone who doesn't cry about "the story is lame and doesn't make sense"
I like it :D

[D. Flame]

There are no legitimate arguments for why a cap should exist. It is a very safe bet that they will sell you back trait cap increases in the DLC.

A level 10 trait that gives 3% health leech isn't going to break any build that it is added to. If it was something like 50% health leech, then the excuse that they needed a cap might have held more water.

Additionally, when you have near useless traits like "increasing ladder vaulting speed," which no one lick of sense and working grey matter should ever consider taking over something like "faster mod generation" it destroys the claims of "wanting build variety".

If they wanted the cap argument to work, then they should have had much stronger traits.

If they wanted the variety argument to work, then they should have broken offense, defense, and utility skills out into 3 different trees, and each tree should have had its own individual cap. No reasonable person would ever take the ladder-speed trait over a combat skill, but they might take it over some other utility skill.

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by Trichouette:

Damn finally someone who doesn't cry about "the story is lame and doesn't make sense"
I like it :D

The overarching story isn't good though. I am not sure you can even call it a story. I could not care less about anyone in the ward, other than mudtooth and his stories.

The story and lore in the worlds themselves is interested. The Fae world was interesting. The H.R. Giger World was interesting. The Ward and Labyrinth were boring AF.

[BRYWALL]

TL DR: Im mad the game isn't made for ME personally.

[Kappa]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

There are no legitimate arguments for why a cap should exist.

The legitimate argument is that they made their game and decided a trait cap contribute to balance as well as differentiating builds.

[Naewyng]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

There are no legitimate arguments for why a cap should exist. It is a very safe bet that they will sell you back trait cap increases in the DLC.

A level 10 trait that gives 3% health leech isn't going to break any build that it is added to. If it was something like 50% health leech, then the excuse that they needed a cap might have held more water.

Additionally, when you have near useless traits like "increasing ladder vaulting speed," which no one lick of sense and working grey matter should ever consider taking over something like "faster mod generation" it destroys the claims of "wanting build variety".

If they wanted the cap argument to work, then they should have had much stronger traits.

If they wanted the variety argument to work, then they should have broken offense, defense, and utility skills out into 3 different trees, and each tree should have had its own individual cap. No reasonable person would ever take the ladder-speed trait over a combat skill, but they might take it over some other utility skill.

Well I already made a thread with some suggestions for this, since even now they said they're still working on it, so here it is again (with an added suggestion):

[SUGGESTION] - Trait system improvements

Since the developers already said that they won't remove the cap, but in the latest statement they also mentioned that they want to address the "issues with the trait system", it means that they agree that 60 cap is too small, even though they will not uncap it.

Here are some suggested methods to improve it:

1) - Just raise the cap. There are 30 odd traits in the game at the moment, and you have 25 freebies (20 from archetypes and 5 from being alive), that leaves 60 points to put in other traits, which means you can max at most 6 traits (apart from the 2 AT traits). You could just raise this to like 120, so that you can more or less have at least half of them.
This is the laziest way to improve it.

2) - Make it such that you ALWAYS keep the traits from archetypes, with their current level. This means ditching the current system where you can only select an AT trait after you bring it to level 10, and it means that the AT traits are ALWAYS active (so you can have the medic trait, the summoner trait, the engineer trait, the gunslinger trait, etc. all active) and don't count towards the trait cap.
To balance it out, I'd say you would also need to put trait points into the AT traits (maybe not the 2 active ATs), which means this needs a system change where you can keep getting trait points past 60, but you can only allocate 60 in non AT traits.
This is IMO one of the better ways to improve it, while also being the easiest implementation.

3) - Make the cap not on trait points, but on traits themselves, and make trait categories, like "mobility", "functionality" and "combat", and make it so that you can have X number of traits per category, so you'd have 2 for mobility, 3 for functionality and 4 for combat.
I think this would be the hardest to implement, while also the hardest to balance properly.

4) - Again drop the trait point cap, and replace it with a trait number cap. Let the trait points go up infinitely, and allow the player to put points in all traits to be able to max them. But the player has X amount of traits that he can select, and only the selected traits take effect.
This is IMO the best way to balance it. You essentially get the hot-swap capability that archetypes have, while also capping the number of traits a player can have (but more than 6, make it at least 10 + the 2 AT traits) AND satisfy the people who just want to put points into everything. This would also mean that you can change your active traits on the fly.

5) - Again, no trait point cap, but trait number cap. Keep it at just 6 traits, but be able to overcharge traits with extra points (up to like lvl 20) for diminished results (but results nonetheless).
This is another pretty easy implementation, and allows for stronger traits, to justify being able to only have 6.

6) - Be able to max out all traits (in a weaker version of them), but be able to add 10 more points to 6-8 of them, with the extra 10 points giving you a bigger boost than the first 10 points (for example, bark skin lv 10 - 8% dmg reduction, lv 20 - 20% dmg reduction; triage lv 10 - 25% healing effectiveness, lv 20 - 60%; untouchable lv 10 - 15% evade window, lv20 - 35%; vigor lv 10 - 15 hp, lv20 - 35 hp; etc.).
Also the archetype traits should be maxed at 20 points.

[Fluke]

Originally posted by Trichouette:

Originally posted by Firellius:

This suggests that the game is balanced around Vigour being maxed out, which changes the nature of the trait from 'You gain bonus health for every point invested in it' to 'you lose health for every point NOT invested in it'.

The game is balanced around you dodging and not getting hit.
Focusing on heavy armour & high damage reduction is like focusing on melee.
You can try, but that's not the goal of the game and it definitely won't work in higher difficulties.
(Also there's currently "maybe" a bug with damage reduction...)
A player who focuses on dodging will surely not upgrade vigor and therefore has more points for other traits.

It doesn't matter what kind of argument players are bringing forth, devs will not remove the trait cap.
They're willing to increase it, and change how traits work, but they won't remove it and I think that's a good thing.

Originally posted by Firellius:

Loved the world stories, hoping we'll continue to see more of Yaesha and the Pan in future.

Damn finally someone who doesn't cry about "the story is lame and doesn't make sense"
I like it :D

I beat apocolypse with my brother and did almost zero dodging.

Anyway, OP is right. The traits are still geared as level up bonuses which work great with R1's system, but not great with R2s. Make stuff like vigor, endurance, passively built in and give meaningful build traits. Like stamina regen on melee or increased magazine size for all weapons. These ideas as traits would give the player much more flexibility in where to put their points rather then the current system.

There's still a little bit of flexibility, and I imagine DLC's will improve that. But as it is currently, it's a rigid system fundamentally.

[Naewyng]

Originally posted by Kappa:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

There are no legitimate arguments for why a cap should exist.

The legitimate argument is that they made their game and decided a trait cap contribute to balance as well as differentiating builds.

You misunderstood. That's an argument for why they want it not and argument for why it should be.

[Kappa]

Originally posted by Naewyng:

Originally posted by Kappa:

The legitimate argument is that they made their game and decided a trait cap contribute to balance as well as differentiating builds.

You misunderstood. That's an argument for why they want it not and argument for why it should be.

Definitely ( thanks).

My bad.

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by Kappa:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

There are no legitimate arguments for why a cap should exist.

The legitimate argument is that they made their game and decided a trait cap contribute to balance as well as differentiating builds.

Fine, let me rephrase:

There is not a rational or logical defense for why a cap should exist in the game in its current state, beyond their desire to sell you trait cap increases in future DLC.

[Trichouette]

There's really an easy fix to all of this.
Give us more meaningfull traits like ranged/melee/mod/skill damage, weakspot damage, crit damage/chance, mod/skill duration etc...
Then players will really have to make choices

But if I remember correctly, they removed such traits because they wanted rings to be more important.
So I doubt we'll see them return.

[Velmoria]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by Kappa:

The legitimate argument is that they made their game and decided a trait cap contribute to balance as well as differentiating builds.

Fine, let me rephrase:

There is not a rational or logical defense for why a cap should exist in the game in its current state, beyond their desire to sell you trait cap increases in future DLC.

https://www.reddit.com/r/remnantgame/comments/15bidx8/traits_economy_more/

Originally posted by verytragic:

With the Trait cap in place, it allowed us to add Traits that we never had in R1. Things like, Ammo Reserves, Longshot, Strong Back, Untouchable, Regrowth, etc. Well, to be fair, we could have added those in R1, and for the original game, maybe we should have, but we also knew it was raising the baseline powerlevel, which made balancing every difficulty even harder.

[Robot from the future]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by Kappa:

There is not a rational or logical defense for why a cap should exist in the game in its current state, beyond their desire to sell you trait cap increases in future DLC.

This.

Trait cap is just a smoke-screen to cover up the mtx-like framework they built into a non-mtx game. Adding it makes the game less enjoyable, and serves absolutely no purpose that would benefit the player. It's only purpose is to sell you a solution.

If you actually think anything they've said about "balance" or "to many big changes" or "unintended consequences" is actually the motive, ask yourself how they managed to have uncapped traits in the first game?

[MrLuckless]

I think I can agree with the basic premise, but rather then come up with solutions that just lead to "add more trait points" why not just improve the existing traits so that putting points into them has a greater affect. A 6m increase to the range of a gun is nice on most of the weapons in the game, but a bigger effect on the shotguns. If that gets double to 12m suddenly it might have more value as something other then the generic Hunter trait. Same for something like Vigor that only gives 30 health in a game where enemies can routinely hit for most or all of your health. Double, hell triple the effect would suddenly make putting variable points into Vigor a tempting option for even people doing a dodge build as just a way to mitigate the effect of residual damage effects.

As it stands now, no matter what archetypes I play I usually end up using the same traits because they're the most generically applicable to any situation. There isn't a reason not to.