Feedback: Leveling up Skill Specializations

[JiiPee]

Quote from LE forums about a year ago:
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""This game has huge depth in terms of the player’s choice of skills to use and how to build those skills’ trees. It is wonderfully deep.

And yet the devs have made it so horribly painful for a player to experiment with their build. It takes so long for skills to level to 20 (to put it in scope, the very first skill you spec into will hit level 20 about the time you finish the campaign, assuming you have never once unspecced it).

There is just no scope for the player to make mistake or even just try anything else out, because any skill you unspec will be reset to a low level and you need to start levelling it all over again if you change your mind.

Yes, it gets OK towards end game when you can level new skills in under an hour, but players want to experiment most while playing through the campaign and at that point it is prohibitably expensive to risk a respec as it sets you back SO MUCH in terms of TIME to re-level skills.

Multiple hours of play to get a skill back to where you had it, just because you wanted to experiment with a small build change? Come on, this isn’t the year 2000 and Diablo 2 days.

I think this is major flaw, and results in players being forced to follow internet builds very precisely, and thus have all their creativity stifled by a system that is VERY unfriendly to respeccing.""
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And there it is.

I think that the way this game handles skills is one of the best systems in the A-RPG market right now. It's very interesting and gives players a lot of freedom to experiment different builds.

But I 100% agree that the pace how long it takes to level up skill specializations forces players to follow the guides from Maxroll. Even a single mistake or experiment can cost hours of grinding to level those skills back up.

I don't want that the game offers full freedom to change up builds, as I do think that players should have at least commitment to their builds. I don't mind leveling up skills every time I want to do some build experiment.

Again, let me clarify that I do think that the skill system in this game is one of the best systems in the A-RPG market right now. But my issue here is the pace how long it takes to level up skills between 10-20 levels.

[Darcnexil]

I like this system you can do watever you want but you better think of your choice or you gonna waste a lot of time.
And it's avoid to just be always OP with the perfect build for our equipment.

[Tictactucrac]

Once you get to a higher character level it becomes very fast to reach skill level 20. The first time you reached skill level 20 in the campaign is NOT an indication of how long it will take in the future. It takes 10 to 15 minutes to go from skill level 10 to 20 when your character is high level (over 80).

This game is extremely generous, forgiving and casual when it comes to respec.

[Astasia]

"Picking the wrong skill" is not the kind of mistake you should be regularly making. You don't need to follow a guide, but you should have some idea of what your character is trying to do as you play. If you want to fully change skillsets that's when it's time to play an alt, and leveling alts in this genre to try other builds is much of the fun. Also remember you can use all the skill without specializing in them to try them out.

Putting a point or two in the wrong passive on a skill tree, because you underestimated the mana cost increase or because you didn't like a specific interaction, is pretty trivial to undo and get back up to par with your other skills.

I think the system is balanced just fine, skill choices are important, but if you absolutely must change something you can and it doesn't take that long to get it back up to a reasonable level. The last 2-3 points might take some time, but generally don't make that much of a difference. I don't want it any easier, I don't feel like I should be seriously considering full build swaps on one character, this is one of the reasons Diablo 3 was so bad and lacked replayability.

[Anomaly]

Originally posted by Darcnexil:

I like this system you can do watever you want but you better think of your choice or you gonna waste a lot of time.
And it's avoid to just be always OP with the perfect build for our equipment.

Punishing a player by wasting their real life time is a bad game design.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Anomaly:

Originally posted by Darcnexil:

I like this system you can do watever you want but you better think of your choice or you gonna waste a lot of time.
And it's avoid to just be always OP with the perfect build for our equipment.

Punishing a player by wasting their real life time is a bad game design.

Playing a game should never feel like a waste of time. The cost of "respecing" a skill is going out and killing more things, which is the entire point of the game. If that feels like a waste of time to you, you might be playing the wrong game.

[Xetelian]

if the punishment for switching specs is ten minutes of grinding I'm ok with that

I mean of course I'd like to not have to do it at all but I am willing to considering the ♥♥♥♥ you have to go through to get respecs in a bunch of other aRPGs and there are still many that don't let you respec or are so limited it would be better to start your 20 hour journey over than try to get what you need to respec

[Polaire]

you need to reach lvl 80 to have a friendly respec. Weird game design for sure

[Steel]

One of the only design flaws of the game is making respec easier to do the further you get into the game, I think that's a mistake, it should be the other way around. Many people illustrated this in the official forums.

You should be encouraged to experiment and switch skills around early on while you're unlocking stuff like skills, masteries, figuring out what build you want to play, etc. But because you are starved for exp early on, this is hard, and changing your main skill will be a big power drop for some time.

On the other hand, in the endgame you should be expected to already have settled on a build, you should then be DISCOURAGED from radically changing it. However in the current game respeccing in the endgame is the easiest thing ever, you gain so much exp that leveling a skill from 10 to 20 is very quick.
The way it is in the right now is backwards.

My proposed solution: make the Minimum Skill Level default to your highest achieved skill level of that slot, up to 10. This means that changing skills and respeccing is essentially free up to skill level 10.
On the other hand, make it so that skill exp is not affected by endgame exp bonuses like corruption and echo modifiers, making leveling a skill from 10 to 20 at endgame take longer, instead of the effortless process it is now.

That'd achieve making respeccing basically free at early game, and an actual decision with SOME consequence in endgame, but still manageable.

[stefanw1337]

What I don't like with the current system is, item that gives +skills, removing them could royally ♥♥♥♥ the build up, so a total respecc might be required.

Some of the skill nodes doesn't really combine, and picking both, or all three/four leaves you questioning what works and what did you get for trying. Some nodes tells you what happens if you combine, but most don't.

Some nodes you'd want, but you have to dump excessive amount of points into something you don't want or care for, before you can get what lies beyond. Which I do get, but could be done even better.

So solutions. If you pick a node that can't be combined, lock the others. Or make them combinable if possible. Make text telling us what happens if combined.

When an item is removed with skillpoints, invalidate the whole skilltree, until user removes points.

Dumping points more than needed, restucture tree, or give us "ghost points" to fill in nodes we don't want, that inactivates that node. And ghost points could be a limited global set amount across all skills, given to us as a reward somehow, or as a stat.

[sdev09]

i think its ok if a respec requires a 2nd gear set. but game lacks profiles for quick skill / gear swap. wow had it the old way for years and was much better after they added it.