Is skill trees okay for D4?

General Discussion
21

Greater Rifts are not necessarily the problem, but rather it is how difficulty settings and scaling works.

In D3, higher difficulties just mean that enemies have more health and deal more damage, but that is not necessarily how difficulties have to work.

Sure, you can increase monster health and damage with increased difficulties, but imo increases in monster health and damage should have diminishing returns starting at a certain difficulty and not be a linear or exponential increase like in D3.

You also can increase difficulties in other ways, for example:

  • enemies move faster
  • enemies have more CC resistance
  • enemies have higher (elemental) resistances
  • elites spawn more often
  • elites have more affixes
  • elites have new affixes
  • enemies get new abilities
  • more environmental traps that damage the player
  • things like Molten Explosions detonating faster / having a shorter fuse time
  • improved enemy AI (like they at least sometimes physically dodge missiles or they have new, improved attack patterns)
  • increased monster density
  • enemies take reduced effect from things like for example Crushing Blow or things like the Necromancers Frailty curse triggering at lower life percentages…
  • etc …

With things like these, Greater Rifts could work just fine if they are tuned correctly.

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22

Well I for one hope the developers have more imagination that more GR’s for end game. It is personal for me - I spent a lifetime meeting schedules and years timing processes. I’m retired and I don’t like timed end game events, gives me flashbacks! Ha!

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23

Nothing you said in this post is a positive for not respeccing. You want an inferior system just for the “feels”.

At most, ask Blizzard for a “hardcore” option that doesn’t allow respeccing. Then you can have your “meaningfull” decisions while the rest of the playerbase doesn’t have to be stuck with a bad and outdated system. But something tells me that other players being able to respec at will, will continue to be an issue for you…

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24

I get the feeling that most of those solutions would just lead to less build variability anyway.

The harder you make the game, the less viable builds exist because certain abilities will start being ineffective. Increase CC resistance and we’ll either stop using them or pile CC effects (if such a thing exists). Increasing elemental resistance is the same as increasing monster HP, etc.

You can give enemies new abilities that you have to dodge, but do you really want to turn Diablo into a full-fledged action game?

25

I think it all comes down to whether Blizzard journey type game, where it’s harder to level, but the levels feel more impactful, or the current endgame focus where the game is mostly a tutorial up until level 70.

Both are okay in my mind, but the question of skill trees or not are based on that focus.

26

You know it would be nice for a robust set of ‘game play style’ options at character creation. Traditional softcore/hardcore with added, self found, Veteran mode (hardcore no re-spec) and any other that may be wanted by players.

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27

There are people who like to play at a very challenging level and these people also should be served something to satisfy their desire to do so.

If that difficulty setting is too hard for you, lower the difficulty.

It depends on how for you go with that. 30-35% CC resistance (that reduces the duration enemies remain stunned, frozen, feared, confused, rooted, etc) will not make CC skills useless and piling up CC effects with several character is not even possible in D3 because of how enemy CC resistance works in D3.

So in the end it is just a matter of balance.

No, not exactly.

Elemental Resistance, armor, dodge chance, block change, energy shield, etc are additional layers of defense and not just just health.

If you have affixes in the game like ‘Pierce through xx% of enemies (elemental) resistance / armor / or energy shield’ or ‘Your attacks have an xx% chance to not being able to be blocked, dodged or parried’, than this creates other layers of how you can deal with enemies.

More armor on a specific kind of enemy makes it harder for classes to deal with that specific kind of enemy if they don’t focus on armor pierce, same for elemental resistance and elemental resistance piece…

Again, it is a matter of balance.

And again, if you find it too hard to play at such a level, don’t play on that level.

28

In games with skill trees that have permanent choices isn’t as bad as you think it is. All that is needed to do is the same as it is in the game that has skill trees with Johnny on the Spot repsecs. Learn the basics of what makes a good build then it won’t be that hard to figure out a good build. It won’t take a lot of theorycrafting to do. In fact it might even be easier if the community makes a D4 planner like the D3 planner. It doesn’t take hours upon hours to plan out a build.

An improvement on the skill trees is something that Blizz can take from other games, which is what I expected Blizz to do with this game. I was hoping that D3 would improve the arpg genre like D2 did. Well maybe D4 will do it.

With an improved skill tree system I am sure that after you learn the basics of making a good build it won’t be that much of a problem to plan out a decent build.

That is what makes D2 easy to play.

I had just explained why others would want a system without respecs or limited respecs. That is the way that I understand it. Is it the explaining you were hoping for no, it wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean that I am wrong about the reasons why they want it that way.

I am not saying whether or not it is an issue with me personally, nor shall I do so. I was just explaining it. There is no hidden agenda, the explanation makes sense. Until one of those that wants D4 to have skill trees without respecs or maybe very limited respecs tells me differently I will look at it as my explanation is spot on.

I want to be able to say that in D4 instead of a gear check or check in power of the character. I want to be able to win battles based on skill at playing D4. A game where I might have to interact with the environment in order to beat the enemy. Think of a game where you have a shaman that can summon totems to assist him and his minions.

29

I would not only say that Last Epoch’s skill tree system is the right call/next step for arpg’s atm…I’d almost say it’s kind of expected for D4 because I feel like WoW : Legion’s artifact system was sort of a preview for how they want to handle the “rpg” aspect of their games. Diablo and WoW have an almost symbiotic relationship in that regard(for better or worse) and it seem one copies/evolves the other every other expansion.

If I define the goal as “encouraging different playstyles/skills” in this thread, this is what some of the popular arpg’s offer to force diversity:

  1. D2 - Talent tree + 5 point stat distribution
  2. D3 - Skill runes and sets
  3. PoE - Passive tree and skill gems
  4. Last Epoch - Built in skill tree for all the skills. Not sure what generic power you get from leveling.
  5. Grim dawn - Same as D2 but you have constellations too…which give you more generic power creep/decent procs.
  6. TL2 - Extremely unforgiving yet probably the most simple talent tree.

D3 is an hour long rant on how while the game is good…almost every aspect of it is flawed in my opinion. So I won’t bother for now(lord knows other people have probably covered some of the points in this thread or another). All I can really say is if Legendaryies/Sets are as nearly build defining as they currently are in D3. I’m not going to invest a lot of time in D4.

Torchlight 2 just felt straight up lazy to be honest, but I don’t have a strong opinion about it one way or the other. Mods are probably the saving grace of that game.

D2 and Grim Dawn are good models. Yeah, maybe D2 is slightly unforgiving and Grim Dawn is better in that regard…but ultimately both rely heavily on researching external sources to understand how to even function in the game. This seems like a “no no” from Blizzard’s philosophy(or at least how it feels in D3 anyways since we get relatively no concrete information from their mindset).

PoE is a much…worse…offender in the complexity scale with their passive tree and generic requirement of knowledge of the various aspects of the game to be effective. I love PoE the most out of the examples I mention, but I know there’s no way in hell D4 would want to copy a passive tree or even the gear model.

All that said about PoE though, most if not every game mechanic makes sense in why the devs made that choice. Their goal was basically to respect what they loved about D2…and re-purpose it in a more modern update. All I can really say is I hope D4 can sort of understand why PoE did what they did and “cut the fat” sort of speak so it’s much easier to grasp.

Now Last Epoch is interesting to me, because while I can’t say I’m 100% knowledgeable about the game so far(I tend to just update casually until the game is near release), the skill tree looks almost “exactly” how I’d expect a sequel to D3 to function(whether it was a D3 expansion and they felt like fixing D3 finally, or D4).

I say this about Last Epoch, because it basically combines idea of support gems from PoE(which change how your skills function), but it’s implemented in a format similar to WoW: Legion…aka built in the UI with its own XP bar…and also somewhat importantly…it doesn’t take up sockets/6 links like in poe for that unnecessary hurdle. It can also free up sockets for more customization for your character as well.

Just seems like a win-win…and I wholeheartedly agree with Clueso more or less. If you want to lock in people with build customization(but also give an easy out without having to reroll)…having a built in skill progression system is probably the best option.

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30

Got nothing to do with taking hours to plan out a build. If a person wants to change their build or even try out a new build, they should be able to without needing to make a new character via some form of respec (whether it be free or an item that one must grind for).

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31

Yeah, but it still doesn’t adress the fact that you may want to switch your build, completly, it’s not about planning, it’s about whether you are working on one and the same char, or if you’re activly making new chars because, it’s just easier to start a new char if the respeccing possibilities are limited.

And there can be a multitude of reason for you to switch your build, be that you didn’t like it, they have boosted a skill to be better, you have different builds for different purposes (speedfarming, pushing etc etc),or simply that you’ve played it and you want to try out something else.

The wardrobe funtion in d3 now is probably the best example of this, it’s most likely not 10 different variations of the same build, but several builds, for whatever the player wants to play at the moment. To some degree, you can say that people play the class, not just the build.

32

This has nothing to do with what I was saying.

You’re basically just increasing the HP of enemies by increasing their defenses.

Your suggestions to deal with these different kinds of defense types are basically just variations of “increase attack”. But worse than that, you’re basically advocating for a system in which if your character can’t deal a certain damage type, that it’ll be screwed if mobs with those resistances show up. That’s just bad design for a Diablo game.

And again, this has nothing to do with what I said.

1 Like
33

Skill tree is a must. I got to have some incremental skill progression. The question is what will it look like? It could be like Last Epoch, I’m really looking forward to that but I think it has some drawbacks. I do not like how D3 limited the skill bar to 6 skills and I don’t particularly like the idea of LE limiting it to 5. I also do not like the idea of skills leveling as you use them. I really enjoy the journey of leveling and making that decision to push whirlwind to max or start leveling battle shout is a fun aspect that is lost when skills get their own experience bar. I also like potentially using many skills… from Grim Dawn I have some builds that actively use two buttons, three to four for sticky situations then have other builds that focus on stacking a bunch of DoT spells. So having a limited spell number I feel could impact how you are able to design skills and also for players to make builds more active or passive depending on their preference.

A clear benefit of LE skill tree is the customization of skills which is a must. I think it could be better than D3 rune system with more possibilities and better than PoE because I hate the gem linkage system being tied to gear. Personally I’d like a D2 (no prerequisites) or TL2 or GD (single class, less focus on skill mods) type skill tree and an expanded rune system. There would be many different runes, increasing damage, AoE, projectile count, duration, adding stuff, converting damage… but they can be applied to basically any skill and the exact effect may be different depending on whether it is a buff skill or an attack skill. If a rune is themed to change damage to lightning, then on an attack it would change 100% to lightning but on a buff skill it would affect all damage globally but work at 25% or something -just an example. Then there would be legendary runes that are skill specific and do something really special but cannot be applied generally. All runes would be one of a kind… but they can be 2 or more applied to one skill. I’m thinking that you “attune” them to a certain skill at an npc or shrine or something and then carry them in a pouch that will hold maybe 9 or 10. These could maybe progress by killing, or by empowering at other shrines found randomly or maybe they aren’t one of a kind and you can stack multiples.

I don’t want capital NO respecs. I also do not like how cheap respecs are in Grim Dawn. in GD its often better level with one skill and then respec to whatever you want your build to be. So I want some respec to allow experimenting with a skill to see if you like but if you fully invest in it then you are basically stuck. I also want to allow a little bit of respec so that you can move a few points around for optimization. To those ends, I’d allow buying the last 3, 4 or 5 skill points for a particular skill and have a RARE drop or a quest reward that allows very limited amount of buybacks of an entire skill.

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34

And you completely overlooked asking for this no respeccing thing to be an optional game mode. Why do you want to subject all players to this outdated system instead of making it optional like hardcore mode?

35

Maybe its too simple, but if you don’t like respeccing, then don’t respec? It seems convoluted to put in a restriction or a special mode that doesn’t allow it when you can simply not do it if you want to stick to your choices.

I originally loved D2’s skill system, but as the years went on, it began to irk me because so many of the early skills in a class were useless compared to the big bodda booms that you got later on. While 1.10 helped make those skills more useful with synergies and respeccing let you power up the earlier skills for a more enjoyable early game experience, I still felt like there was something askew to the design.

I believe that D3 helped clarify that. While D3’s approach is flawed in its own way, I like the concept. D2 is at a basic level a bottom up approach to skills. You gain stronger skills as you level that are unlocked by activating weaker skills and those weaker skills can be used to “power-up” the stronger skills (or vice-versa).

With D3 I see it as a top down approach. You have your skills that you unlock as you level. The skills aren’t necessarily better or worse, but are more situational and preferential. Second to that, you have the runes which augment those skills. My personally opinion is that the weapon oriented base design of the game is what kept the skill system from becoming what it could have been.

What I could see is having a paragon-esque system that would then allow you to further boost the skills.

For instance, lets take the Demon Hunter’s skill Vault and use the rune that causes the enemies to be stunned. For that rune then there is a menu that lets you use points to further augment the skill. In this case, one of the options is to increase the stun duration of enemies, a second would be to increase the area of effect for the stun, and a third could be to leave a field effect (such as fire damage over time).

Still using paragon as a template, you would gain “x” number of points per paragon level that would go into a bucket for one of the skill families (or maybe 1 skill point per family). This would force a more strategic use of points instead of just ramping up DPS and it would put the skills on a more even keel so that its more focused on skill utility and player preference.

Just my 2 cents.

36

Exactly. Many people, myself included, may want to change builds depending on situation. One build might be great for one thing but not for other. For example in D3 there are dofferent solo builds for farming and GR pushing, and various different builds for group play to fulfill certain roles. And it’s not that different for other ARPGs.

Effectively being locked in a single build per character severely limits gameplay options.

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37

While admittedly I might’ve missed someone’s post, I don’t think anyone is careless enough to nonironically suggest NO respec options. It’s just a question of how punishing you want it to be. The idea of specific servers dedicated to specific gimmicks(with no respecs being one option) sounds similar to private leagues in PoE which I can get behind(if it was free).

…That said I understand your logic with the freedom of skill runes, and you’re definitely not alone in that regard…but to me this is also starting to sound more of a philosophical debate of what people are looking for in an ARPG game. I remember reading an article that basically split up what “needs” a gamer wants from a diablo game into 3 categories…which are the following

A) Power - This is the category Diablo 3 exemplifies at, and I think it’s the point you want. You want to be able to swap to what is the most efficient for a given situation…these two situations are basically speed and power…you need speed for farming and power for ranking high on Grifts. I presume it’s not fun when you’re not being efficient and/or need to reroll.

B) Self expression - This is probably the category that resonates the most in me for D3 and arpg’s in general, and ultimately why I don’t play this game anymore. This is because Blizzard doesn’t cater to this crowd at all. It takes a genuine level of stubbornness to use legendaries/skills that are FAR weaker than the meta, just because they don’t have the proper multiplier to make them competitive.

And it’s not like this is an issue in D3 solely either. Perfect balance is unrealistic. The most they can do is make a skill model that is easy to balance, then aggresively balance it(or shift the meta), and ultimately offer alternate content so more than 1-3 builds can be viable(meta solo dps, speed farm, and zdps).

C) Combat - I guess this is just people who don’t even value the rpg aspects at all. They just want to play what looks cool/functions smoothly. D3 does run smoothly of course, so there’s a crowd relatively content with D3…but there’s also better options out there in gaming too.

I’m sure we have a little of all 3 in us, but one is usually most dominant within each of us…but ultimately I think they need to do better with D4, and find a balance with skill progression/gear in general to cater to my type of crowd…without disrespecting the current D3 crowd.

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38

I think its fine to give some mechanism for someone who doesn’t want to level a new character to respec and fulfill some niche role, group or otherwise but it shouldn’t be something that can be done freely and frequently. Part of the game is creating well rounded characters. If you want to fulfill a niche role it needs to take a certain amount of commitment. This idea that I can be anything I want at any time is antithetical to the genre.

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39

Then what exactly were you trying to say?

Not exactly, but by increasing different layers of defense. HP and EHP are very much related but still different.

And as I mentioned in another post in this thread, the health of enemies does not have to grow linear or even exponentially like in D3, but the health increase can start to stagnate / have diminishing returns starting to kick in at a certain difficulty and the same for for the effective health pool (EHP) including other layers of defense like resistances, armor, dodge chance, energy shield, etc…

… so if liner/exponential EHP increases like in D3 were what bothered you about that concept, you don’t have to be.

You are confusing immunites with resistances.

An immunity makes a monster, well, immune to a certain element, which basically is 100+% resistance, but I am not suggesting or advocating for resistances of 100% or more or even close to that.

More like a 70% resistance at max on certain elite enemies (not regular enemies) in higher difficulties. So no complete immunities, which means that you can still deal damage against them.

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40

Huge multipliers shouldn’t be a thing to begin with. Without increasing the damage of certain skills you can catch good synergies between them and offer utility way before that.

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