The devs said that you can max out every active skill in D4, because you will not just get skill points from level ups, but also from doing quests in the world and from finding items like scrolls or tombs that give you skill points.
And they also said that there will be so many of them, that you can max out every skill. It might take a while, but you can do it. Maxing out 2/3 or 80% of all skills might take even less time, but even 2/3 or 80% of all skills is still a very substantial amount.
And since you can swap out skills everytime you want to, D4’s skill system is (at least at a certain point, when you maxed out a lot of the skills) basically D3’s skill system, just without the runes.
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Yes, compared to D3’s skill system it gives you a (better) sense of progression, which is great, but that alone is not enough, especially if at a certain point it is just like D3’s skill system just without runes.
Why can’t we combine the sense of progression with having to make meaningful choices (aka not having an unlimited amount of points for everything available) and something that completely changes how a skill works (as long as it is optional)?
Think about Last Epoch’s or Wolcen’s skill systems for active skills:
Maybe there could be one of these in D4 instead of a (eventually) worse version of D3’s skill system.
Yeah, it is quite sad. How do you even manage to make a less interesting skill system than D3.
Skill modifications should definitely be part of D4. Adds much more interesting customization, and is a fairly easy way to add depth to skills without having to design 500+ different skills.
Both Wolcen and Last Epoch are great examples.
Making the game worse the more you play is kinda bad imo.
It is like the paragon system. No meaningful choices in there, just because the order in which you place your first 800 points matter slightly.
Anyway, even if you could max all skills, skill modifications is still essential for adding more build customization and and depth to skills.
It was meaningful before getting to 800 became something casuals could do in a couple weeks.
In other words, depends on the timeframe, which wasn’t given. Or at least clue didn’t mention one.
Isn’t that what the legendary items are going to do?
I mean, I’d tend to agree that NO base skill customization would be bad… but at the same time I don’t want to end up like D3 where one Rune just better than everything else, and the base skills are completely forgotten about.
Probably starting at midgame, you eventually will have more than 50% of all skills maxed, which still would be substantial.
I agree, Wolcen and Last Epoch are having the best Active Skill System in the ARPG genre at the moment. It would be a mistake from Blizzard to not jump on that train.
imo legendary items should be more generic bonuses and powers, aka having effects and bonuses that are useful for a plethora of builds and skills, rather than more specific bonuses that only apply to one skill.
Things like changing your Hydra from fire into Lightning could be something that is just on the skill system, rather than having to equip an item first just to change it. Not necessarily like in D3 with runes, but like in Wolcen or Last Epoch where you have skill points that you can invest into skill changing effects.
I also thought that it looks like that they wanna make the game more casual, which is kinda sad…
The original skill tree system in D2 punished mistakes harshly, because what was done could never be undone. They learned a lesson from that, and will never go back to a system where you can’t go back to square one and reassign things. So, even if you only got enough points to level up a handful of skills, so long as it was sufficient for everything on your skill bar, then none of the rest matters.
Either there will be “best” builds for certain classes and tasks, in which case no matter how many choices you could make, you really don’t have any. Or there aren’t, in which case most of us will settle into at most a few different builds that play in a way we like. In either case, having or not having your other skills immediately useable won’t really matter. If you need to switch, you would still be able to go back and reassign things for whatever setup you needed to switch to, and all locking you in to only having a few skills fully leveled up would do is cause some minor irritation when you wanted to switch, because you had to jump through some extra hoops.
Shouldnt stand alone. Especially not if they want more power to be character based.
Have both skill modifications and legendary effects.
Due to the legendary effects, the skill modifications might be less powerful however. Like Wolcens skill modifications could be fine. They are fairly small and simple individually, but they add up when combined.
D3s imbalanced runes is not a problem with skill modifications. Just Blizzards amazingly bad balancing.
To be fair, Blizzard hasn’t even tried to balance the runes for what, 5+ years? They could make them much better balanced if they wanted to.
Agreed.
If only. Except for the free respecs, D3s skill system is mostly fine.
But this sounds like a lot worse than D3s skill system. Going from essentially 125+ skill runes, to 30 skills :S Really sad.
I msotly agree. I think there should be some skill specific legendary affixes, but try to make as many as possible work with multiple skills. Like instead of “Fireball splits into two” make it “fire projectiles split into two” etc.
In some cases that might not be realistic or desirable though. Like, teleport might be so specific a skill, that it also needs to have specific affixes changing it. Likely holds true for most of the non-attack skills.
But yeah, mix it up, have some skill changing effects come through skill modifications on your character, and some come through items.
Since you can only have like 10-13 item slots, a skill modification system will likely also have a lot more choices to make than the legendary affixes can offer.
If we have 6 skills, and like in Wolcen can pick maybe 5 different skill mods for each skill (out of lets say 15 for each skills), that is already 30 skill modification choices being made. vs. the 10-13 from items.
I doubt anyone are saying it should be impossible to respec. It should just have a substantial cost/cooldown. So the choices you make matters.
But honestly, this thread seems to be much more about skill modification choices than it is about respecs.
Yes it will. Being able to freely respec changes the “meta”. It changes which builds will be strongest. And in all likelihood, due to how specialization works mathematically, not only does it changes which builds are viable, it reduces the number of viable builds. Which is obviously a bad thing.
Which, if the extra hoops are significant enough, might be enough to ensure that it was not worth it to respec all the time.
I actually agree.
That’s what I’ve been saying ever since the reveal.
D4 skill system the way they showed it - desperately tries to cater to D2 fans by including a talent tree. However the result is extremely limited and underwhelming, and it definitely won’t have WOLCEN levels of flexibility and customization.
I dont think the talent tree is the problem here. The talent tree is basically just the passive skills in D3 made into a tree.
it is not a replacement for the skill runes. We still need such a replacement. Preferably a better one.
None of it needs to be a tree. The obsession with “trees” in A-RPGs has always been a bit weird imo. I dont mind it being a tree, but it is just not particularly important. Wolcens skill mods work fine without being a tree. Lost Epochs seems to also be nice, while being a tree. A non-issue all around.
Although Wolcens passive tree actually does offer some interesting mechanisms, with the ability to alter how the tree is connected. It brings something new to the table that you couldnt have without the tree structure, but also offers more diversity and customization than the normal rigid tree systems bring.
Anyway, D4 should have both:
Skill modifications on the character (not merely through items)
Passive skills/talents
Legendary affixes that alters skills
D3 offers all of these. Most modern A-RPGs offer all of these. Feels like quite the step back if D4 goes back to having no skill mods.
Also, none of these systems need to be as complex as the most complex systems in other games. The passives do not need to be PoE/Wolcen complex, the skill mods do not need to be Last Epoch complexity. It can be scaled back a bit for the slightly more “streamlined” Diablo experience, and that is fine too. But simply cutting essential build customization systems is a bad idea tbh. You cant make up for that loss through buffing the remaining systems. Because they all offer different things.
Adding more legendary items is not a replacement for skill mods. That is just “more stuff”, not more choices.
But what if respecing comes at a cost? A relatively high cost? Then it would matter.
It is okay for there to be best builds, as long as “the best” is not significantly stronger than all other builds.
imo that specific example could be taken care of by a normal affix called “Increased Area of Effect” (not Area Damage).
Increased Area of Effect increases the detonation radius of explosions and for skills like Magic Missile or Multishot it can increase the maximum amount of missiles you can emanate at once (aka "For all 20% Increased Area Damage, you shoot +x additional missiles).
For Fireball it should increase the detonation radius, and firing multiple Fireballs could simply be a thing on the Fireball Skill Tree (like +2 Fireballs cost x Skill Points)…
If it is only for some very, very few Skills/Legendaries, then it could be okay, but I think for the most part skill-changing effects should come from a system within the skill itself.
So, what I’m getting from this is that if we have collection A of different builds that are suitable for one task, and collection B of builds suitable for a second task, you think we should reduce build diversity by pushing people out of the builds that don’t appear on both lists.
If the goal is to let more people play in ways that they enjoy, then either ALL builds need to be good enough for ALL tasks, or you need to allow people to switch builds to suit the task at hand. If you go the first route, your build decisions matter not at all, because you could be just as good regardless of what you chose.
So then you have to choose, do you let people use all builds that would be good in the circumstances they find themselves in, and switch to suit their needs? Or do you force them to only play builds that can do everything equally well, or at least well enough?
Forcing people down narrow build paths is how we get to where D3 is today. Do you want there to be only a few possible ways for a class to be played, that everyone has to follow in order to not be wasting their time? I don’t. I personally really dislike the fact that in D3, it is unquestionably true that there are clear best “decisions” at every step, and you get better by making your character get closer to the ideal best build.
It is more likely that you will increase build diversity.
Because a build that does 80% efficiency at task A and 40% efficient at task B is now as viable as one that does 60%/60%, or 40%/80% etc. Allowing for potentially endless combinations of builds that performs each task at different efficiencies (only more so if we assume D4 will have more than 2 activites)
It is less likely that one build will be optimal for both (if we are talking fairly different activities anyway, like GRift pushing vs. Rift speed)
Whereas, if you can respec freely, the the ONLY acceptable builds for each task are those approaching 100% efficiency. Bye 60% efficiency build, bye 80% efficiency build, and also bye 95% efficiency build. You just weren’t good enough, due to free respecs.
No. We just need to make sure that a build at even 40% of max efficiency (whatever that means, just using arbitrary numbers here) can still complete the task.
And since you cant respec easily, then doing task B at 40% effiency, might still be perfectly viable and competitive, as long as your build is better at some other task (like 80% at task B).
If your build is performing at 40% efficiency in all tasks, then it is of course just a bad build, and will be unviable in all scenarios. Which is fine too. For good builds to exist, bad builds also need to exist. That is a foundation of A-RPGs.
The latter. Force people into builds that can do everything well enough.
That will in all likelihood lead to more viable builds than otherwise.
It is of course not a free win for Blizzard. They still need to bother balancing their game. That is true with and without free respecs.
Yes, I hate that passionately. And part of the reason it happens is exactly due to free respecs imo.
Without free respecs, you add tradeoffs to everything. If I increase my speed at the cost of DPS, then I will do better at activity A, but worse at activity B.
With free respecs the choice is always; I can do both, easy!
I feel like being able to have all skills unlocked at some point defeats the whole point of leveling your character.
I know it may sound stupid but one thing that made D2 and older RPGs great is that the time you spent playing that specific character meant something. You felt like your character was special to you.
Now how is it different with the current system in D4? Once people find out which skill set is better for leveling, everything else will be useless because eventually you’ll get all of them and be able to change while leveling and once you get to max level. So you’ll see everyone running with the same skill set because that’s what is strong.
If we go back in time and look at games where choices were permanent or semi-permanent then you’ll see people using different skills everywhere because they have to build those skills initially to attein their final build. Sure it requires one to do research initially, but I don’t think that’s wrong because most players will do it anyway to know what is strong.
Blizz has been trying to stop players from having to search online to make builds and it hasn’t worked and will never work. People want to play the strongest builds and so they will always take a look online at which build is strong.
Having permanent choice, or semi-permanent with high cost reset, is the way to go imo.
Yeah I don’t like this idea of eventually unlocking all skills.
The smallest change they could make - skill points cannot be respecced, skill tomes still drop, after a long period of time you could expect to have unlocked ~nearly~ everything. That makes your decisions leveling matter, you have to stick with them for a while, yet they aren’t permanent. If skill tomes are still rare enough, and if you are trying to make drastic changes, then its beneficial to make a new character.
I think that is a good place to be in.
Beyond that, I definitely think the skill modification is now a corner stone of the ARPG genre, thanks in large part to D3 rune system - despite the flaws in implementation, the fundamental idea was great.
As for how that is accomplished, I think it should be split between items and a) rune type system (something like PoE modifier gems) b) last epoch skill tree (with points unlocked from something else like randomly spawned shrines).
Each class would have 2 or 3 class specific items that can spawn with skill modifiers… this is like in D2 where sorceress orbs could spawn with up to 3 + skills except instead/in addition to skills we have modifiers.
Again, people keep pretending that the gear that supplements a build will automatically be present if respecs are more readily available. That’s not going to be the case. Your “cost” will be both finding said skill books, gear, and keeping it tucked away for however many build variants you come to enjoy for a given class. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough that some share items and you save a bit of time here and there, but jumping from a 90-100% build to another 90-100% relative to the activity simply isn’t going to be happening the moment you’re max level. Which is further no functionally different than just swapping to an alt character of the same class that, once you played the game long enough, got rushed/PLed because the early game is ultimately lacking in the more interesting aspects due to a smaller ability pool, weaker affixes, and more mundane challenges.
Myself and others will continue to view this as a false argument of choice. Preaching consequence does not negate the reality of workarounds. Things like finite character slots on an account eventually punish the player for having a wide variety of interests, with D2’s system further being horrendously bad with the deletion of characters despite the ability to create multiple accounts off a single key. There’s no getting around the fact that being tight on respecs curbs experimentation and further nudges those less willing to do so to resort to third-party guides that just become meta in their own way while forcing the multi-char aspect of optimization in party settings.
Some folks need to get over this “rite of passage” mentality that basically asserts that to play the game, you have to screw up a character beyond repair. The rest need to realize that something might work for people who play 40+ hours a week, but not for those who play 10 or less. How about instead of being salty that everyone could possibly bring a gun to a gun fight, you focus on making sure Blizzard makes said gun fights interesting. I’m personally not sold on a key system being the answer since it further emphasizes the hyper-specialization the anti-respec crowd seems to abhor, but that’s about all we know of the endgame at the moment.
Again, I hope they don’t cater to the D3 fanboys and ruin the Diablo franchise AGAIN for the next decade. There needs to be a sense of character identity, which we won’t have if they follow the D3 system again.
I don’t think anyone are saying it will happen the moment you reach max lvl. But it will happen over time. Just like it happens over time in D3. Items is not a hard limiting factor the same way skill points etc can be.
Yeah. I think at minimum some aspects of key dungeons should be hidden until you enter. Maybe you know the location and one dungeon affix, but two more (or more than two for higher difficulties are only added upon entering. Having those random elements in the game is important imo.
Making things interesting is of course even more important. And I have argued endlessly that D4 combat should become much more tactical.
But it isn’t so much preventing people from bringing a gun to a gun fight, as it is about encouraging builds to always carry a gun, in case you run into a gun fight.
And if you choose not to always carry a gun, because you wanted to carry something else, to ensure that this choice is meaningful and have consequences, because for many of us, I believe, that makes those choices more fun.
