How players were going to be updgrading/modifying spells was a huge concern to me. I'm quite happy that the upgrades allowed for a given spell are pre-determined with what appears to be (at this time at least) 2 different options for a given tier. This does make the final balancing of the fully upgraded skills much easier to accomplish and still allows for some small degree of differentiation between players.
In general I like the idea. However, I do not completely understand how skill lines will be supported. Maybe i am completely out of date, but my understanding was, that there will be spells of the same line with different names (so instead of Mesmerize 1 and Mesmerize 2 there will be Mesmerize and Enthrall).
Will an upgrade to Mesmerize affect Enthrall? Or does every single spell need to be upgraded, even if they are from the same line of spells? Are spell/skill lines still a thing at all?
If this has already been stated, please ignore me ... or give me a hint where i can find the information ;)
My first response was feeling somewhat led down. My first thoughts were; Ok what do I need to do in this game? Grind levels and get aa's doing so, max out and grind even more to get the other aa's. (That to me, at first sight, looked a lot how I've trained numerous characters in EQ2, and witnessed players popping a level pot, where they would catch up with a potion reaching 50 levels without moving and earning double that amount of aa's by doing nothing but using that potion.) Considering that leveling up will be noticeably slower compared to other games, will many players enjoy this game at all then? This could turn out to be a slow, tedious grind game. So, that was a big dissappointement to me.
However, earning ability points by questing, exploring, first-killing (not looting) certain mobs is a good approach, one that I can really stand behind. Keep it meaningful, keep it out there in the world.
I like the system of 1/1 - 5/5 - 10/10 - 50/50 - 100/100 ability points progression in one ability. It does lead towards, "well you just need to grind even more to get ability point 101/200 etc." And also, how far can you go into one ability (and spent ability points progressively) without losing impact of those extra points being spent in one ability? Either you hollow out the impact of that extra point spent, or you need to keep scaling up content around it in order to prevent OverPowered setups.
I dislike (and I don't use that word often) the idea of earning ability points just by gaining a level. Gaining a level should be all about gaining stats, your character growing and getting more and more specialized. I don't see the NEED for getting an ability point with each level gained, also can you explain why a character gains an ability when their characterlevel increases, without doing anything "special/specific". When you earn ability points with each level, the actual stats seem to be moved to the backburner as the focus shifts towards these ability points. If you really need to design it this way, I hope to see 1 point per level and 99 points found elsewhere and by other means.
In the case of ability points being dropped as loot, I too hope they reconsider that decision. Camping/grinding certain mobs-loottables/auction bot scenario crosses my mind and is this loot meaningful? Can you really explain that lore-wise? Why would it be dropped, is there a need for it to be a loot-item? Are all other possibilities considered to earn ability points and why would that not be sufficient? Does it bring a neccessary "extra" to the table (table here being figuratively), something that really must be in the game?
I hope for a design where no player can max out in ability points. A player should remain hungry, even when they've reached max level months ago. And I hope the dev's put out expansions or further content before players can max out on ability points. Also, I like to see a design where an expansion allows even more ability points being spent in an 'old' ability. A mix between new abilities and investing in the older ones. A level requirement to be able to invest ability points into certain abilities, seems like a good approach as wel.
Nephele said:1) How should players be able to earn ability points?
2) Should there be different types of ability points to earn, and if so, what should they be used for and how should they differ from each other?
3) If ability points are directly tied into upgrading abilities, how can max-level content be balanced so that it isn't trivially easy for people with all their abilities upgraded, or crushingly difficult for someone who doesn't have many of their abilities upgraded? Should some high-level content be specifically designed for characters with lots of upgraded abilities?
4) In general, how long should it take after reaching max level before we have all our abilities upgraded? How much gameplay should be required to get to that point?
5) How can this system scale if the level cap is raised in expansions later on?
1) Earned by; questing, killing X amount of Y mobtype, used X amount of Y ability, discovery and exploration, looting/investigating unique content (not looting ability points!!), unlocking lore, defeating bosses, obtaining specific loot linked to that ability (example; if I fish up a rare whale, my ability point for fishing (or harvesting abilities in general) can be unlocked. Or when I loot a rare healing item as a cleric, I could gain an ability point because of that), investing into research in order to gain/unlock ability points
2) Different types of ability points; that requires a bit of brainstorming. Bit on the top of my head, tradeskill, exploration, character and combat abilities could all have their seperate requirements to earn related ability points. You could go even deeper; depending on what type of lore you're consuming (positive heroic, tradeskill, aggressive heroic, dark evil content, etc) one could gain ability points that relate to the type of content. Short example; If I'm killing for the greater good, my beneficial abilities can gain points, if I'm destroying civilizations, my combat/damage abilities might gain points, if I'm trading goods with npc's, I could gain tradeskill ability points.
3) It could be challenging to keep creating challenging content for maxed players with max abilities, each time you reach the boarder of the current content. The different methods to gain ability points and the pace they are able to be earned should be spread to the maximum of current content, even possibly going back to earlier content to gain future ability points (if you catch my drift there). Gaining too many points too quickly will undermine the value of them, the abundance of abilities points could actually push away the impact of the characer or gear stats if the influence of the actual abilities outweighs the impact of the stats too severely. For me, ability points are an EXTRA feature build on a stat design and not the other way around.
4) Simply put, it should never be the case for the majority of players (reserving the 5% population that is able to reach this maxing out stage). By the time 20% of the population comes close to this "end stage", the devs should have a new content ready (with possibly further progression chances relating to ability points). Why? If you work with a saturated raid population (where saturated means max level and max abilities), you're going to live in a farm content stage, be that raid or heroic content. This on a medium timeframe will drop the value of the current max level content and will create a continues gap between catching up and those that farm due to be maxed out (getting into a boring grind?). If you put this reaccuring scenario into a longterm life of the game itself, you're going to create an increasing amount of players that will populate that saturated max level player base, which has it's own downsides. (not going into that too deeply here, but I assume you see where this could lead)
5) By not allowing every ability to be maxed out at the same time. Meaning if you have 10 abilities, perhaps only 5 of those can require further points in current content. Adding new content/expansions could open up other abilities from older content or add in new abilities. (look at my previous reply post for further details) I think it's vital to compare the maxed stage of an ability (aka having spent all possible ability points) with the challenge and gear you're providing in the current content. It could be interesting to keep it just under and not equal to and certainly not allowing players to OverPower end content. So in other words, although maxed out in level and ability points, you should still be weaker than the foes you're facing at max current content. If you take away the challenge, you're just creating a grindmill and boredom within the population.
Nephele said:Baldur said:
Lots of stuff
Appreciate you bringing that extra info to this thread Baldur :) I wasn't able to be in Minus's stream afterwards so it's really helpful!
I do want to point out however that the intent of this thread is to get community opinions on the system. The questions I put in the first post were really there just to help people form their thoughts. That's why I used the word should, rather than will.
So with that in mind, what's your take? Do you like the system? Not like it? How do you think it can be improved?
I think that VR is capable and they know what they are doing for the most part. Based on the little that has been said it seems like they are taking this in the right direction and I feel like it is impossible to heavily critique it and give an informed opinion related to the current system. As such the only thoughts that I can provide are things that I would and would not like to see in the system.
I think that maxing out everything should take a decent enough time sink so that everything isn't maxed out shortly after reaching the max level. I would also caution against having ability points dropping from rare spawns with extremely long spawn timers as that sounds as if it would be more of a forced path with a horrible choke point attached vs good design. I really enjoyed EQ's AA leveling system and ESO champion system. I think that allowing the player to continually progress in strength even if they are maxed level is a good thing that adds to the longevity of a game and time spent playing that class. If there is a leveling system like this for skill points that is great, however, I don't think it is wise to expand this system to all characters on an account. In my opinion, this is something that should be character-based aka pick your main wisely.
I believe that there should be different ability points for epic skills and I feel as if these points should be somewhat more difficult to obtain, maybe coming from raid bosses, reputation grinds, special vendors, or long quest chains mid to late game. I don't think that ability points which come from raids should be made into a weekly grind scenario as that is not dynamic. I would also say that on the note of obtaining these from reputation grinds, don't make two upgrades come from opposing factions as this isn't fun. I would prefer that if they do come from drops everyone eligible for that point should receive it vs it being handed out like regular loot. I think that in terms of power these upgrades would also be a bit more OP given the "epic" nature of the ability and the means of obtaining the ability points required VS regular abilities.
As for balancing, I feel like every class should come with its own strengths and weaknesses. Modifications should highlight these strengths and maybe lessen these weaknesses to a minor degree, however, homogenization is not something I wish to see in most situations. I don't think it is wise to use ability points for the purpose of trying to heavily bridge the gap between various classes for most situations. This is not something VR seems to be doing, but I thought I would state it.
As for scaling into latter expansions, this isn't something I can make an opinion about without seeing the extent of imbalance that it initially leads to. I would say that regardless of the expansion a player of X class who has unlocked everything should feel stronger than a player of the same class who has not. This is an issue VR will have to continually look into and adjust. I have also wondered about the progeny system and how it could possibly impact the nature of future expansions. Now there is also a question of how this system will interact with ability points. Is it possible that ability points are account bound in terms of the class that has unlocked them? For example, if I play a cleric to max level unlock everything ability-wise and then decide to re-roll for some unexplained reason does the work I put into this class remain on my account. I know that is a weird question and a situation that has rarely if ever been seen before, but the progeny system is also sort of rare. I think that account-wide specific class progression could be a decent thing especially for the long term health of a game.