You worded this beautifully, thank you. My exact thoughts on how itemization and skill trees should go and it makes so much more sense. Makes item hunting and trading a much more appealing part of the community, especially since this game is online only. Items will also be more interesting and have more potential for use. Hyper-specific customisation & creativity should rest within the skill trees themselves. Items, runes, stats, etc. will just be ways to synergise with & improve build choices the player has already made.
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Remember that when game gives possibility of having plenty effects it can be difficult to master some of them only by adding points to these skills/effects. You would need to get more than 1 skill point every lvl up, it breaks the idea of wise points managment. I donât know if my words are clear but i think there should be lot of skills with some variations (but not so many) and the way you can really master them should be by managing stats and gear and you should have possibility to choose how you master it (by increasing critical dmg chance, by increasing % of damage from choosen element or physical damage, by getting lot of +skill points, etc etc). You could of course just use skill (or group of skills) not really buffed because for example your character is hybrid like a meele wizard which uses cold spells just for freezing enemies. Another thing is that the items shouldnât change the skills, just buffing them somehow. Other class skills coming from items? (Barb having some wizard skill from shield?) Cool idea (i like it in d2) but somw time after release, too early implementation can create chaos. Game cannot be too difficult, children should be able to play it effectively to some stage (as blizzard said - easy to learn dificult to master) Just a few of my thoughts after reading the things.
When I first saw the update saying changes to skill tree I as many here thought this will be something a lot better but could not feel very disappointed. After all we are in year 2020 and not 2000. When you look at what PoE, Last Epoch, Grim Dawn, even Wolcen (I know it is not in good state) you can not stay happy with the progress in D4 skill system.
I played a bit with how a skill system could look like and made a simple skill tree for a single skill. In this case Hydra.
Link (because forum does not allow me real link)
lucid.app/publicSegments/view/d830ae77-4bb8-4ca0-bbf0-d52a6492633d/image.png
It allows to allocate 15 skill points. And it has 4 General Nodes and 3 specializations:
General Nodes:
- Area Damage (5 points max)
- Piercing (5 points max)
- More Hydras (5 points max)
- More Heads per Hydra (5 points max)
Specializations:
- Lightning Hydra
- Blazing Hydra
- Frost Hydra
Each specialization then has nodes that you can pick and cost different amount of skill points. For example:
Cold Mist (Frost Hydra)- On impact bolts leave cold mist behind, that deal 20 Cold Damage to enemies that pass it
Chilling Defense (Frost Hydra) - Dense air around Hydra chills enemies and projectiles and slows them by 80%
Chain Lightning (Lightning Hydra) - Changes bolts to chain lightning
Static Field (Lightning Hydra) - Upon hit it has 20% chance to leave static field behind for 3s, that traps enemies that enter it
Molten Lava (Blazing Hydra) - Instead of shooting fire bolts Hydra spits out flames with 60 range
Molten Lava (Blazing Hydra) - Deals no direct damage but upon impact leaves area of fire behind which deals 80-120 Fire Damage per 3s
So if you max out Hydra with 15 points and you like cold damage you could do something like:
Cold Mist (3 SP) + Chilling defense (3SP) + 3 Hydras (3SP) + 4 Heads (4SP) + 2 Piercing (2SP)
Which would allow many Unique builds only with Hydra let alone other skills.
If I can come up with this in an afternoon and have plenty of ideas for skills like Meteor, Blizzard, Frost Orb, Different Shields, Fire Walls,⌠Then I think Blizzard really should do better.
Anyway if people here like it perhaps Blizzard can make something similar.
TL;DR: Check out example skill tree for Hydra I made:
Link (because forum does not allow me real link)
lucid.app/publicSegments/view/d830ae77-4bb8-4ca0-bbf0-d52a6492633d/image.png
7 Likes
Iâve been away from D3 for awhile, so things Iâm gonna say will probably be repeat, but after seeing this latest quarterly update, I felt I had to share my mind.
I love Diablo series, and all I want is this D4 to be as good as possible. So, I want to start with the bigget issue Iâve seen in D3:
Short: When the skill tree and set items tell us what way to play then all the fun is gone.
In detail: The game play in D3 is pre-determined by the devs. Simply, because sets tell you which main skill to use. I know this has been said many times before, but please make âmost ofâ the skill modifiers global. When you say âfrenzy gains %10000âŚâ and give us all the 6 piece we need then all the fun of making a build is suddenly lost. And what I see from the posted skill tree, the game is going almost the same way as D3. Thatâs the main reason I mentioned all these again. And of course item crafting. Give us as much build variety and item crafting as you can. And if weâre gonna have set items in the new game, please make them only good enough to a certain level. The end-game should be able to force us to make custom builds ( with crafted items and modified rares ) as much as possible.
Thanx.
3 Likes
Hello!
So iâve been thinkig about the skill tree a little these days, and i also read some of the comments here and i thought about this.
The tree is a very good start, but it must be more polished and there has to be some more mechanics to it in order to balance our freedom to choose what ability we want, but also change a branch anytime at any level without necesarily investing points in the lesser abilities in order to reach the higher ones.
So i was thinking about 2 solutions to this:
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Every ability, with very few exceptions (maybe only the ultimate or highest level abilities) should be designed as viable and good abilities to play at each and every level. This way we wonât have such a difference between first unlocked abilities and the next, higher abilities on the tree. But this brings the issue of how do we make them scale to each and every level? Maybe by making the abilities grow by both, character level AND ability points. This would mean, every ability would be stronger if you get stronger, but also they would get even more strong by inveting points in them. In this case the tree would be fine as is, but with more polish to the magic categories (branches) and how the tree representes them.
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I also thought about magical tiers and synergy branches. So we can divide the trees crown in like 3 or more horizontal sections that will divide the abilities tier. Higher tier, higher, more powerful abilities. Also vertically I suppose there will be the magical type division of the abilities, like fire, ice, lighting etc. So at each tier level letâs say 10, 20, 30 there should be some connecting branches between all the categories and slots to invest points there. We could have this option to invest ability points in this synergy bridges to unlock the higher tier abilities of a different branch, without investing them in each of the lesser abilities of that type. Give some bonus support effect also to that slots that could benefit both adiacent type of abilities to be as an incentive to try more diverse builds and not focus only on one type or one element.
So to sumarize, because the tree model has a unique starting point that goes only UP, we need some options to get to the other nodes and abilities of other types, without having always to start from the bottom for every type of ability.
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Really good post man ! I totally agree with you. I wrote a long post with an idea like you a few weeks after the Blizzcon.
I think there is some MAJOR problems when your Skill customization come from Legendaries items:
- You are forced to use those items to just start to play your build. Legendaries DEFINE your build (Like the exemple with Teleport sorceress at the Blizzcon Panel). Youâll have to play alternative build until you get those 5 very specific items designed for you
- It completely kill creativity and diversity, because you canât do anything else (Like in Diablo 3âŚ) Build are predetermine by somebody else and you must play it. Thatâs it.
- Blizzard will have to create hundreds and hundreds of Legendaries to give those Legendary power for every Skills/Classes and 99% of them will be completely useless for your own build.
Instead, most of Legendary should be more Generic instead of specific. ( Ex: Your fireball split into 3 smaller VS Your Projectile split into 3 smaller) And Skill changes should come from⌠Skill itself!
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Yes, it is, in D3 vanilla you You had to complete the story 4 times for the four difficulties (Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno). This has changed with the Adventure mode, and the change in difficulty levels.
Your suggestion is cool. It works intelligently with the skills runes of D3.
I think the D4 team should remove the ultimates skills or rework them to bring them up to the same level as the other skills. As it stands, they will bring back the same problems as D3, when players will want to make builds based on them.
Thatâs mean low tier skill will become underpower or useless like D2. You have to be careful not to reach this kind of end. In POE, Wolcen or Last Epoch, there is no skill more powerful than others.
It will bring the same problems as Diablo 2 where we waste points on skills that we do not intend to use.
In D2, synergies werenât a feature but a band-aid on a wooden leg. It didnât really solve the problems she needed to fix. And it didnât really build diversity. Personally Iâm not against the idea, it all depends on how it is set up.
On the other hand the Sorceressâs enchantment is in a way a solution to this problem.
I have very mixed feelings about that new skill point system.
The tree is a big upgrade on the previous ones, many more paths, the roots system, the art⌠but WHY is it a skill tree now instead of a talent tree ??? Itâs a very weird and concerning move in my opinion.
Skills doesnât work like Talents. A Talent always provides some kind of power increase, so having to invest in the lower ones is not a problem. On the contrary, a skill is wasted unless you use it in the skillbar. So being forced to spend points on Fire Bolt AND/or Frost Bolt AND/or Fireball just to get Charged Bolts, like we see in this new tree, really feels bad.
Even more concerning : the UI looks like skills donât have a rank anymore. I hope you didnât move it on the endgame progression system, that would be a huge mistake!
By the way, reading that this endgame system will be âthe other significant source of powerâ makes me fear about the danger of powercreeping. Letâs hope it doesnât end up with the open world being a ride in the countryside like Torment 16 in D3âŚ
However, the other changes you are hinting at are encouraging. Keeping the breakpoints philosophy from ADA, changing the dependency on Legendary powers, the strict item hierarchy⌠that made me eager to read the next Update !
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I am so glad to hear characters will only be able to get 30 to 40 percent of their skill and talent trees. This is a much needed change. It makes our decisions as players about our characters important, meaningful, and consequential. This was a major problem of D3. At no point in D3 does the player ever make a consequential decision about their character and how it improves: not with skills, talents, or even stats. This new approach for D4 is great. It also makes playing the same class multiple times worthwhile, which is something beloved about D2 and causes people to return to it again and again decades later.
I like the new design of the skill tree and talents. My only improvement is to have more depth and complexity. Blizzard needs to decide if progression in each individual skill through the skill tree and/or talent roots should be the same for each player or have enough options that each players progression into, for example, the Hydra skill, could look different. Right now it looks like every person that goes with the hydra skill and continues to put points into that branch will go down the same path as every other player. That makes the decision to choose Hydra and go down that path less significant and consequential than if the Hydra skill had multiple branches you could choose to go down, similar to what Last Epoch does with its skill system. Again, I think Blizzard needs to make a conscious choice about that. Maybe Blizzard wants that level of skill variance and modification to come from legendary items rather than skill points. In general I think there need to be more options for the skill branches and talent roots, just not as much as in Path of Exile.
In terms of the Sorceress Enchant system, It sounds like a cool idea but I am not so sure about it being practical. Being able to slot 3 skills in enchantment slots and 6 skills into skill slots means the Sorceress must acquire 9 skills to make full use of the Enchantment system. This means the Sorceress must spend their skill and talent points across 9 skills rather than 6 skills like all other classes. This could seriously limit the ability of Sorceresses to make their skills as powerful as other classes because their points are spread thinner. This could be accounted for by giving the Sorceress more skill/talent points, but that could get complicated too. Also, the Enchantment system feels similar to the passive system of Diablo 3, which isnât great. I like the idea of the Sorceress being able to manipulate and use spells in more than one way and potentially weave different spells together, which is what I think the Enchantment system is getting at. I donât know what a better system would look like or how to best fix the problems I raise, but those are my thoughts.
Ancestral/Demonic/Angelic Power is an interesting idea, but needs some work. The names are arbitrary and donât actually have anything to do with the stats they grant. The names are used because they sound cool and are related to Diablo, but that isnât enough. I do not like the idea of my gear limiting what other gear I can use or forcing me to not use certain gear just to get the right amount of Power. This is a serious problem in Path of Exile with the number of sockets and colors that make most pieces of gear useless unless you are rich enough to modify the gear so you can use it, and GGG is fixing that in POE 2. So Blizzard, please donât make that mistake or people will just avoid the whole Ancestral/Demonic/Angelic Power mechanic. I think it could work if the source of the Power is outside your gear, something else like talismans/charms or something that wouldnât compromise your gear. It would still make the Power stats desirable and viable and the player would have to make choices about what to focus in or try for a blend of them.
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These videos are a great for the devs to draw inspiration from:
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On the end-game progression system
In Diablo IV seasons the raw power part of the end-game progression system should be restrained and capped at a certain threshold or the end-game progression system should not increase raw power at all but instead create more gameplay possibilities to master.
Should there already be an end-game progression design that increases raw power, my suggestion would be to cap it to the highest power attained by any player, rounded up to a nice number, once there is a player that reaches 8 hours a day for half the season worth of time played in the current season.
So for example if the season duration is 90 days then the end-game progression system power cap would be determined after the first player reaches 45x8 = 360 hours of play.
Players reaching the raw power cap can then focus on getting the best time / score on each of the seasons end-game challenges.
If an end-game progression system is going to be accepted by Diablo 2 fans then the raw power part contribution to the overall power of your character should be limited, i.e. max 20 percent, preferably less.
Making the raw power part of the end-game progression system a system of diminishing returns, or leaving it out altogether, would also be something worth considering.
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Tbh there probably shouldnât be an endgame âprogressionâ system, instead there should be endgame âquestâ and endgame âvariationâ system 
That being said for the first one throne room where youâve collected all the body pieces from various bosses as trophies should be enough :P, for the other it can differ but Iâd say use some of those boss body pieces to place/cast a global curse for all mobs in a dungeon of certain type, for ex:
Azmodanâs nipple ring: Demonic shamans can no longer use projectiles, they have to fight melee instead
Cydaeaâs fangs: All swarmling demons have their high resistances (substitution for immunities) reduced by half
Leoricâs arm: All undead cannot be raised back up for 15 seconds when they die
Leoricâs crown: All undead high-hp-fighters/bruisers deal damage to themselves when they attack
Butcherâs teeth (or whatever :P): all mobs with charge stun themselves
That is OFC, you can put like up to 3 âpiecesâ and try kill all things in a dungeon where everythingâs been buffed to all hell (almost :P)
Yes and/or have these curse/debuffs randomized while also including a challenging boss.
One thing that still irks me to see is the inclusion of mounts. I know they are a source of customization (skins, challenges, etc) but having them does away with a perfectly viable item affixâmovement speed. ARPGs arenât about covering a large amount of territory quickly, they are about slowly progressing through series of levels and zones.
Besides that, there are character class specific skills that could easily replace mounts: Sorceress has teleport, Barbarian (had) leap, Druid can shapeshift. Personally, if I were to choose between being able to teleport, turn into a fast-moving wolf or riding a mount, I would choose the former.
And thereâs still plenty of room for customization and challenge show-boating in those class specifics. You could change the teleport orb/animation or your shapeshift skin. Imagine having a side-quest for druids that led you down a path to fighting some epic beast in the mountains. The reward might not be game-changing but it could be some sort of material / essence and the spirit form / skin of your conquest.
The goal is to give the sorc a unique mechanic / play style. But does a passively applied skill/spell do that?
The unique thing about the sorc that comes to mind is teleport. If there were a few different ways to use teleport (offensive, escape / movement, defensive (like a phase out of physical plane that reduces physical damage x%) then perhaps that would make the sorc play style unique enough. no cool downs so its very active⌠if its too powerful then it could consume more mana or reduce mana regen temporarily after each tp.
Flitting around the battle field, dropping meteors etc. No-one knows where sheâll pop up next to rain down destruction.
MOB design
Grim dawn does a lot well. But one thing I really miss from them is interesting mobs and fights. It feels like you handle every mob the same. Check you have the resists for the area and just repeat standard cycle. Trash mobs just melt. It almost doesnât matter what trash mobs you face in the game - you play them all the same⌠Luckily they have plenty of bosses / hero mobs around - but stillâŚ
While making each class uniquely different to play - I think its important to make sure that areas / mobs have their own uniqueness too such that players need to adjust how they play in certain areas. Some areas will be a breeze for one char but tough for another. You might need secondary skills or eq to help.
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A few thoughts on itemization:
- Try to keep damage on weapons below 200 for the first release and add only 20 to 40 damage or even less on the max for each larger iteration of the game
- Add to the skill tree a way to customize/specialize each skill in multiple ways, use legendary items to complement the customization and then use mythic items to completely change the way a skill works, resulting in new exciting gameplay, without boosting the damage
- Remove 1000+ attack and defense on items entirely or replace it with smaller numbers like +10 or +100 attack and defense
- Most of the characters power should come from the character itself not from items
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I really agree. A lot of people want respec⌠while i think that it could be frustrating to completely wrong a char, I also think that the best that an (a)rpg can offer is play more and more starting and developing a new char. The key word is developing, growing⌠the game is not only endgame.
I think we need:
- fascinating campaign story
- campaign usefull (necessary!) for char develop and power.
- multipath history at least from class to class so that at least playing for the first time with a new class should be somewhat different, with different quests / rewards class specific.
- multipath class development such as I child have the curiosity to try a the same class again with different builds.
- in my opinion, the item drop should be totally revised. Only normal drops until eg level 30. The difference should be in the item itself (eg white sword vs white mace) not in the total power, but in the characteristics. Eg. A sword give itself a little more chc while a mace a little more chd and these properties are valid due to the nature of the weapon (sword, mace, eccâŚ) and so also for blue, yellow and so on. Little differences but nice. So, if I find a sword or a mace with the same stats, they should not be the same like in d3, but have some intrinsic differences.
- magic only from eg 30 to top level⌠rares only at cap⌠legendary only at cap and only at campaign concluded (for each char). Mythic only from quests (I donât want to see a simple skeleton drop a mythic).
- since blizzard is trying to give more power to stats and skills instead of items (correct), legendary items should be rare, but powerfull. I know that this was the initial direction of d3, then ppl crying pushed blizzard to improve a lot the drop rate.
- about respecs, maybe it should be allow only a partial respec to correct some mistakes but not redo the whole char.
- about the possible annoying redo the champain each time, it could be introduce some way to speed up it but only if I have finished the campaign with that class. With a multi path vs classes interesting champaign, it should be OK play the whole champaign with a new class for the first time and then have some speed up if I want to play a second wiz, druid and so on.
Adding something to my previous post⌠the concept of low-level legendary for me is an abomination. The growth of the char should be focused on the skills and on white / blue items. I can find a white axe, a white sharpen axe more powerful, maybe a rare blue⌠at the end game (no Kore skills upgrade), it is OK start improving the gear.
Naah, itâs super retarded to see people leaping/dashing all the time. Mounts are perfectly fine solution in that regard tbh, because they donât have to make mounted speed super fast, 30-50% faster is just enough for both immersion and faster travel
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Think theyâre on the right that regarding ATK/DEF tbh, because itâs highly likely that your attack will depend on targetâs def
BUT, the catch is that basic attacks wonât be the sole source of damage, there is also elemental-damage, damage from hit effects, (in addition to damage from skills/spells that are entirely different)
I could well imagine damage dealt goes something like this:
ATK-targetDEF + (1+(CasterAmp/TargetResist))*Elemental + ((1 + AttackerStat/TargetStat)*HitEffect)
The âdonât do the basic ATK/DEFâ IMO is just overblown argument cause it was super badly implemented in D3 and people objectively so overreact, BUT, pretty sure this time damage-done isnât a weapon-damage multiplier multiplied by character stat, no more of that BS 
And to be frank I like the âPhysicalDamage = ATK - TargetDefâ route more than forced low numbers tbh, makes for interesting variations of gameplay, so would wait a bit futher (for ex. the next quarterly update) until criticizing that