[D4] the talent tree sounds stupid-ish

General Discussion
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If my options are to be at 100% half the time and 50% half the time versus being at 75% all of the time, the 75% build is the better option.

It’s reliable and it’s predictable, while the build with power spikes gets no real reward for playing a higher risk game.

As a result character skill doesn’t really mater for the optimized build because the game is going to insist we all play equally anyway. Sure if you look at any one individual mob it might come out ahead, but not if you take an average hour of play time. Everybody will be equal then.

There’s no reward for the risk of having those grave weaknesses if the jack of all trades build keeps up with you 99.99% of the time.

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everything you say is ‘too restrictive’, you basically want a d3 system where you can free switch at your will, and there is no character uniqueness because as it is in d3, you can just switch as you go.

there’s a reason this game was a hard failure, other than the financial success off the diablo name. Free-speccing was one of the awful things they thought was a ‘good idea’

2 Likes
83

Yeah. But maybe if the option is between 100/50 sometimes vs. 70 all the time, then you might get rewarded for playing better with the former build.
Not that ‘70 all the time’ should be possible. If combat diversity is great enough, all builds will have strenghts and weaknesses. How extreme those are will differ. Like, a dual dmg type build will have smaller weaknesses than a one dmg type build, if monsters have significant resistances (which they should have). But the dual dmg type build might still have weaknesses again groups of enemies, bosses, fast enemies, CC’ing enemies etc.

This seems to be exactly what will happen with free respecs. Everyone will use the same optimized builds.
It should not be what happens without free respecs. Then there will be more paths to the same result - none of which might be optimal.
It only seems positive if lots of different builds averages out around the same power over time. That would indicate great game balance.

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Except it wasn’t a failure in any regard except in the eyes of the D2 faithful. Reviewed the same and sold a ton and is still ayed and enjoyed by many.

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You say that as if, years later, many were just copying builds in D2. Not sure, but man I see a ton of fun builds in the weekly challenge rift.

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The best way to build a character will always be to minimize your weaknesses if playing the 100/50 game doesn’t net you any significant benefits.

If long term performance is going to be roughly equal, reliability will always win.

In that case, a specialist build needs to not have such a wide swing in their output. You could also give them a bigger reward for hitting their specialization, but then you run into all that “people will just have optimized characters for specific content” problem I mentioned earlier.

I’d actually argue that in your system, assuming the numbers were balanced correctly, even with free respecs it would be very difficult to create any sort of optimized build.

Optimized builds happen because we know what the end goal is and we can do the math to find the way to get there. If I want to run mythic dungeons in WoW I’m going to be doing a lot of AoE with a bit of CC, so I build for the best AoE damage pick up a few CC options.

However you’re describing so much randomness I don’t know what the end goal is. Will the dungeon be AoE heavy? Single target heavy? benefit greatly from CC? Be strong against a damage type? Nobody knows except the RNG.

Which makes my build feel pointless because in the long run, it’s not really going to matter. The game will see to it that I’m not allowed to perform too well.

This is also probably where Diablo 3 would have gone if they had balanced it a hell of a lot better, but the insane damage boosts just amplified the gaps in damage output between builds.

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I’d say the end goal is interesting, varied and “challenging” combat.

Sadly I think it would quite be possible. As mentioned before, you will still know if you are doing a boss, a key dungeon, world content etc.
With key dungeons you will presumably have some information about the dungeon beforehand, though hopefully not too much. Only infrequent respecs can really prevent that optimization from happening.

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Totally agree, free spec is bad. Should only get like 1-3 with a quest and after that a farmable item or something.

1 Like
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I’m talking about the end goal of what one is trying to optimize a character for.

If you tell me you want a character to do as much single target DPS as possible, I can find the best mathematical setup for that goal.

However “run completely randomized content the most efficiently” has nothing we can theorycraft towards because we don’t know what the conditions are going to be.

That’s where we start shifting back towards the other problem I mentioned before.

If I know a key dungeon will be AoE heavy I can optimize towards that and that is exactly what players will do if optimizing is upwards of 2x the efficiency.

On the other hand, if you randomize the mobs so that it’s impossible to plan ahead(or as close as makes no difference) then it feels like being good at building a character doesn’t matter because my character performance will never be that much better. I really only need to know just enough to avoid completely messing a character up.

That’s why I originally suggested just letting players optimize towards a task, but reducing how much performance you get out of the optimization. That way, it wont feel mandatory to do it but the player is still rewarded for it.

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Which seems quite positive. More viable builds. More replayability.
Still plenty to theorycraft about. It just wont be as simple as rock > scissors > paper > rock, where you always know which one to pick.

They cant do that if respecs are not easily available.

Which is bad tbh. It makes the game less interesting, it reduces replayabily and it kinda ruins the idea of having builds at all (since each class is everything all at once).

Why wouldnt it be better? A better build will still beat a worse build. It will matter just as much as with free respecs and no rng. Actually, it should matter more, since character building will be less simplified.

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To me it sounds a lot like “Your build wont matter much so long as you didn’t make a dumpster fire”.

What’s the point in theorycrafting out a specialized build if I’m barely rewarded for my cleverness in building characters?

But you’re already making it so that everybody will want to be a jack of all trades build because you can’t respec easily and you get nothing worth talking about for being a specialized build. Being ~5% better isn’t something that 99% of the playerbase is going to care about compared to the reliability of a jack of all trades build.

Once you’re past avoiding the dumpster fires, the level of randomness you’re talking about in content would massively mitigate the effects of building a stronger character.

Essentially my character wouldn’t perform much better than the guy who just got a build off Icy Veins or some other site even if I do a ton of theorycrafting(which is already going to be next to impossible since I’ll have very little in the way of goals to theorycraft towards).

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I personally think they should go for that. Play how you want it won’t really matter. With obvious examples to the rule being choosing all defensive skills if that is even possible. That should easily fit the dumpster fire build that would put you at a disadvantage.

Of course, without homogenization of all skills across all classes, theorycrafting will still have its place even if we are talking a few % points better at best. Aiming for a build how you want philosophy will ultimately be best.

Respecs should be easy, hit a button and erase points or clear it all. Just at a cost. Have an inverted volcano approach to increasing cost each time you change during the week. That way those that enjoy running multiple specs can “earn” it and those that don’t still have that option of not doing so. Still not sure why those that are so worried about how others play, seem to admit they can’t be happy ignoring something they won’t use.

This last point is similar to the Shadowlands Covenant system. People have made up their minds which is best for ST, AoE, PvP, but, in each are of gameplay, you may need the others. No one way is “the best” always.

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To me that makes character building uninteresting and boring, because nothing I do ultimately matters once I know how to avoid the obvious dumpster fires.

The main reason I’m saying theorycrafting would have very little purpose is because of the level of randomness in gameplay Shadout is describing. In WoW we can tell you the best build for a dungeon because we know exactly what’s going to be in that dungeon.

If the answer to how much single target, AoE, CC, etc. is needed in the dungeon is “Only the RNG knows that”, you can’t really theorycraft out a best and the jack of all trade builds becomes the go-to because it’s got less swing in its performance than a specialist build that might get screwed on RNG.

I know it was mentioned earlier to put a hard cap on how often you can respec but I think it’d largely be fine just to make it a cost. Just make it a high enough one that most people aren’t respeccing several times a day. Some people will farm insane amounts of the currency needed to respec, but I don’t think those people are really worth designing entire game systems around. It’s going to be such a small percentage of players that do that.

As for Covenants, I have a love/hate relationship with how they’re designed. Though apparently Venthyr is always the best choice for me as an Enhancement Shaman. Granted, the other Covenants are all pretty close to it.

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I dont see why you wouldn’t be rewarded. Some builds will perform wildly better than others. Hopefully there will just be hundreds of them.
You said you wanted the difference in power between builds to be low? Wouldn’t that lead to exactly what you fear? That builds wouldn’t matter.

Considering how crazy people go over 5% differences in WoW and other games, I bet they would.
But yeah, if properly balanced, you should not want to prefer a specialized build over a jack of all trades. Both should be equally viable.
Jack of all trades is not one build though. So even if you ignore the specialized builds for a moment, having jack of all trades builds is not the same as everyone having the same build. Contrary, those builds will be likely be way more plentiful than if you have a few specialized builds for each challenge.
Since build distribution is likely to follow a bell curve.

There is no reason that would be the case. Of course there will be immense power differences between builds (heck, I am arguing for having such differences, although again, way less difference than in D3).
Likely it would happen more here, than with specialized builds and free respecs, where you just pick the 100% performance build each time. Then you wont perform better than everyone else using the same 100% build.

An increasing cost per respec, which resets once in a while, could work very well. Though one issue continue to be that A-RPGs are exceptionally bad at making their currencies stable. Without a cap, it would likely be too easy to keep paying the increasing cost.

Yeah, that is how it should be. If you could respec between covenants every 5 minutes, the whole system would be silly.
I’m quite glad Blizzard didnt give into the demands for free respecs there. Hopefully the D4 team will learn that lesson as well.

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Except you kept telling me that my specialist build wont perform better in the long run because of randomization within each type of content making it difficult to predict what you’re going to be up against.

Yes my specialist build might be wildly better or worse on one fight but I’m talking about farming dungeons for hours at a time and you specifically have told me multiple times I wont have an advantage worth talking about there even with a specialist build.

I’m saying let the specialist builds just be better in the long run, but mitigate how much better they are.

Most people on WoW don’t go crazy over actual 5% differences. What they do go crazy over is the concern that balance in WoW has historically been a lot more than a 5% difference, and Blizzard has no qualms about leaving build options as a dumpster fire for an entire expansion.

When it comes to balance of jack of all trades vs specialized you also have to consider what I’ve been mentioning in that the JoaT builds are more predictable and reliable in performance, which is not something to scoff at.

A build that does 75% all the time will naturally be better than a build that does 100% half the time and 50% half the time. You could make the first build be 70% or lower to compensate, but then you just end up doing what I’ve been saying: The specialist build is now better, just not by a ton.

It’s true that JoaT builds aren’t all the same but they’re all aimed at being sort of good at everything. You can argue that there is differences in how they play within that but then, we could argue that of Diablo 3 builds as well.

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No, but some specialist buidds will perform better than other builds, and some jack of all trades bvuilds will perform better than some builds. Obviously everything wont be equal. If there are millions of theoretical builds, even if well balanced, you will still only have hundreds of viable builds. Theorycrafting will still matter a great deal.

Sure you will. I have not said that. A good build will beat a bad build. Over those hours of farming dungeons.

Which is bad for the game tbh. Having fewer viable builds for no good reason.
How much better do you think the best builds should be? You said 100% is too much, while 5% was not noticeable?

Which is part of their balance of course. That reliability is part of their strength.

Hence, balance. If 5% is not too much or too little to compensate for the lower reliability anyway.
We are kinda also simplifying this a lot by acting as if all builds are either 100/50 or 75/75.
There would be 90/60, 80/70 etc. as well, and everything in between. All potentially being viable too. without being other super specialized or jack of all trades.

Sure, and that seems to be true as well? There are just really few viable builds in Diablo 3.
And of course, Diablo 3 combat is very one-sided and simple, so even if builds play differently, the way you have to kill monsters are the same for most builds.

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I’m also talking about a good specialist build vs a good JoaT build. What you’re describing sounds like the specialist build would have very little reason to be chosen.

Bad builds I’ve already written off as they’re just not going to be used for the most part. They’re builds to be avoided unless you’re specifically trying to challenge yourself(which isn’t a bad thing to have, but it’s rather irrelevant to this discussion).

There’s no reason why it would result in less viable or even competitive builds. Back in TBC on WoW hybrids did ~75% of what a pure could do in terms of DPS and they were played quite a lot at all levels of play.

Even in modern WoW I’d give you about a +/- 25% between the top and bottom DPS builds in the game just due to Blizzard’s wonky balance and specs usually aren’t massively excluded from content unless it gets really bad like Feral Druids at the start of BfA.

Which seems like a pretty good starting place. Numbers can be adjusted if people flock to one or the other too much.

It is a simplification but as a general rule unless the specialist builds got some kind of advantage, you’d be better off aiming to get the X/Y numbers to be as close to each other as possible to minimize the swing in performance.

You could give them more than 5% but then that starts sounding more and more like what I suggested: Let specialist builds be better, just not that much better that people consider them mandatory.

Because what’ll eventually happen is the skilled players will take the specialize builds and use skill to compensate for spiking downwards in power(which is fine, imo if the specialist builds are generally considered a higher skill floor to be able to make use of their advantages).

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Preferably as much reason as a jack of all trades build.

Well, aren’t they relevant for theorycrafting. Theorycrafting is about finding the good builds.

Didn’t you say that nobody wanted them in their groups?

It is totally fine that some builds do 33% more dmg than other builds. Also fine if the difference is even bigger (I mentioned up to 100% earlier). Just no reason why it should always be specialist builds that were 33%+ better. When more types of builds could be viable instead.

That seems quite fine.

If the 5% (or whatever number) only compensates for the specialized builds weaknesses, then they are not better. That would just be part of the balance.
Neither specialized nor generalized builds should be mandatory, or better than the other (but both should have builds that are better than most builds of course).

99

Would a % of total gold be better. Say first reapec is 5%, second is 10%, each one increasing 5% capping at 99% until the reset. Could add in a decay feature if you haven’t in a while in between resets. That way, no matter how inflated gold gets, it will still cost a chunk if you want to change out often.

But that would be for full respecs.

100

If gold has no significant uses outside of respecs, then it wont really matter if you need to pay X% of it.
Gold would then also need to be account based, rather than character based (otherwise you can just move it around before a respec), which would then mean respeccing on one character would make it harder to respec on another. That is not good?

I’d just have a separate currency, “Respec tokens” or whatever, where you can get like 2 each week, up to a cap of 10, with first respec each week costing 1 token, next 2, next 3, next 4. So you can respec up to 4 times in a single week. Though then you cant respec as much for the next few weeks, while you restock.
If you ‘only’ respec once a week on the other hand, you would never run out of tokens. This would be ‘per character’.

I wouldnt be against this currency having other uses as well, making it more gold-like. Then the limit and refresh rate could also be higher.
Like maybe a vendor sold temporary buffs (dmg, defense, Magic Find etc.) for these tokens. And instead the max might be 20 and you got 5 each week. Might also adds a potentially interesting choice of when to use your tokens for a buff, before going for a challenging dungeon or whatever. As well as a choice between respec and a buff of course.

Speaking of respec systems, keep forgetting it, but some people have proposed a “Elders Scroll” style system, where your skills gain power as you use them.
So maybe fireball can get up to 20% more dmg, if you have used it for 10 hours. If you respec, all the skills reset back to default dmg again. I have some issues with that system, but it is a neat way to get completely rid of respec currencies, while still rewarding staying with a build. For those who care about such a thing in games, it could even be considered “immersive”.
One positive aspect is, if you respec, then go out and try the new build and regret it, you can respec again immediately, without losing anything at all (since you already made all your skills go back to default 0% bonus). That solves a lot of the “but what about testing stuff!?” argument.

And of course, a version of that, which I have mentioned before is to mix respec and death penalty together in one system. Could also be mixed with the above.
Like, the longer you stay alive (and kill mobs, so it should be xp gain based), you acquire a magic find bonus (and maybe empower your skills as the above idea).
If you die, part, or all, of this bonus is lost. If you respec, all of the bonus is lost. So if you die a few times, and decide it is time for a respec, the respec might essentially be free, since the bonus was already lost. One good thing about that system imo, is that it is friendly toward those who might need the respec the most; as in those struggling with their current build. While the cost is steeper for those doing just fine with their current build. And like the skill empower idea, multiple respecs quickly after eachother, are completely free.