Not the 3D part, but it sounded like it was a big 2D pyramid for all skills?
Yeah, could do that. Honestly, that sounds way more confusing to read for players, than branches that connects to each other. How do you show which upgrades warp to other upgrades?
But, it also dont adress the crossover concept. Sounds like you are just allowing people to jump into another skill pyramid to skip pre-reqs. But each pyramid still only have upgrades for its own skill?
In the tree design, it would be easy to have Fireball and Meteor mrge into the same branch, that offers upgrades that works on both, or like in Lolli42s example, makes one skill transform or interact with the other skill
Whereas extra hydra heads wont do much for your Fireballs etc.
Why limit the amount of skills just because they get more complex?
Generally I dont think the later upgrades should be significantly stronger or cooler than the earlier ones (but the earlier ones can be more generalized and the later ones more specialized). That risks making it a boring system where you go through useless stuff to get to the good stuff. Like D2 skill trees. Make it interesting all the way through.
What happens if you pick both the 2-head and 3-head hydra upgrade?
Best example is probably between Frostbolt and Lightning Spear;
Frostbolt deals additional lightning dmg, ligntning deals additional frost dmg. One point, but beneficial to two different skills.
Most of the other cross-over skills seem to be along the line of one skill using another skill (like hydra casting meteor - which means that all the other skills in the meteor branches, would, presumably, now be improving both Meteor and Hydra, at the same time). This could work in your scenario with warping between pyramids too I guess. Though it sounds a bit more confusing vs. a tree that visualizes the connection.
On the other hand, a benefit of warping, is that you can jump between skills that are not close to each other in the tree.
Sure. Still, nothing prevents you from having 5 different upgrades at the highest tier, instead of 1 or 2 (depending how narrow the pyramid gets I guess). The former just offers players more choices, instead of funneling everyone into the same upgrade.
That is not good design tbh. Shouldnât be possible to pick something that does literally nothing. In a tree design, the 2-head hydra would likely be a pre-req for he 3-head hydra, which at least makes sense for the user.
It serves as a pre-req point. Thatâs artificial constraint the player put itself on him. And you just wanted the design to do it instead of the player minutes ago.
Thatâs the apex of the pyramid. No one asks you to go there. Going there costs you points. Itâs up to you - do you want that effect or not? The effect has to be more drastic, because youâve spend more points to get there. At the same time investing much in a single skill might not be the best option if you want to be good all around.
Yes. When the design does it, it is indeed a pre-req point. You must take 2-head hydra to unlock 3-head hydra, increasing the cost of the 3-head hydra. Or even require you to take âLower mana of hydraâ to get 3-head hydra.
You just said it wasnt a pre-req point in your example, as the player could chose another upgrade instead, and still unlock the next tier.
It would be a âchoiceâ between getting no upgrade vs. getting some upgrade. It is really user-unfriendly, and a player trap, like attributes in D2.
The game kinda asks you. Sure, you dont have to, but if the upgrades at the top are better, as you seem to want, people will of course go for them. By having fewer upgrades at the top, you make all builds more the same, vs. a scenario where the skill got 3 or more different upgrades to choose between as the top.
That is no pyramid!
The above is fine, basically the same as my picture too.
A pyramid implies you end up with 1 option (or close to that) on the top.
It could be, if the player decides to do it. Traps are good, when you fall by your own actions there. In Prince of Persia level 9 there is the option to get in a place without an exit where you canât die, until you know⌠Time doesnât run outâŚ
And they would have the best Hydra in the world dying to a single hit from Zombie. Let them go to the apex, see how is there and make another char :). Highly specialized builds are what the ADA system meant to deliver. Another trap.
Traps where you can spend skill points that does nothing is never good.
Would be easy to solve though.
The 2-head hydra skill could just be â2-head hydra and 25% lower mana costâ, at least you still get the lower mana cost then, even if you go for 3-head hydra.
Or maybe better, though it complicates the tooltip, the 3-head hydra could get some upgrade, if you also have the 2-head hydra upgrade.
No option in an A-RPG should ever be truly useless. Some should be worse or better of course, based on the other choices you have made.
I agree with the Last Epoch skill tree system. Although I agree because it is more interesting to spend points into skill trees like it. It feels as if you are actually customizing your skills because all of the points spent doing so are within that skill. Instead of being generic within the tree.
The thing is itâs not truly useless. It serves as a pre-req when the player wants it to be.
It could even be so in a non-trap way. I go 2-headed Hydra then 3-headed knowing that later Iâll re-spec the 3-headed to another node when I find item X. This way I save more re-spec points for example (if we need to clear the tiers above the one we want to re-spec) when my final build only includes the 2-headed Hydra.
But thatâs not the case here since the 0% (let it be 1%) could be beneficial in certain situations (as in the re-spec example).
Yes, I agree for 99% of the players that wonât be the case and they wonât do such interaction due to planning rather due to being inexperienced, but is it so bad really? I mean if we safeguard them against this should we safeguard them against making bad builds?
