Skill Trees are boring

[Amelyssan]

At first in the beta I was like "awsome, cookie cutter, simple understandable trees" but atm as level 50 and were all hybrids, these trees are bland, uninspiring and boring.

 

Theres at best room for 1-2 changes for optimizing your build. And even then, the skills are like "increases this and that by 1% X" - damn Bioware, more creativity please!

 

Im not demanding a periodic table here with super complexity, but...a good skill tree is something that really makes people ponder, theory craft and are in doubt because there are multiple choices.

[Flitz]

Next patch will introduce EXTREME TREES. Trees of Star Awesome! Bored with regular trees!? Get an Extreme Tree!!! Just at Force Water! Get Explosions! Brand new new Skills! Be the Awesome Star Avenger you want to be!

[Ganadorf]

The one good thing Blizzard is doing with Mists of Pandaria, is getting rid of Talent Trees, as we know them, altogether

 

It's just an antiquated, boring system, in general

[Varghjerta]

The one good thing Blizzard is doing with Mists of Pandaria, is getting rid of Talent Trees, as we know them, altogether

 

It's just an antiquated, boring system, in general

 

Actually i would say that it is a RPG element that i personally i like .

But then you are saying that for example Secret world that do take a AO approach (same company) is outdated aswell when they are making it more complex?

 

And Wow have been catering the players with the attention span of a wrench for quite some time so it is understandable that they remove the talent trees.

 

the dumbed down version they released at Cata was a good example on that

Wow isnt a MMORPG it is more a lobby/facebook game these days

Edited January 11, 2012 by Varghjerta

[sithlordcip]

The one good thing Blizzard is doing with Mists of Pandaria, is getting rid of Talent Trees, as we know them, altogether

 

It's just an antiquated, boring system, in general

 

No one gives a **** about you cancelling your sub or when.

 

On topic : its clear that you whiners now cry about everything in the game , even talent trees which are ok

[LovarBoy]

Age of Conane talent trees are good.

 

Rift talent trees are good.

 

 

WoW WotLK pre-cut talent trees were good.

 

 

SW:TOR talent trees are boring - yeah...

[DLWhite]

No one gives a **** about you cancelling your sub or when.

 

On topic : its clear that you whiners now cry about everything in the game , even talent trees which are ok

 

What? Are you drunk ?

[paul_preib]

After a long time of playing games (be they RPG or MMO) with traditional skill trees I ended up for about the last year playing LOTRO, which forgoes this standard setup for a bit of variety in having traits you slot,

 

7 class traits which gain various set bonuses depending on how deep into a given tree you trait,

 

3 legendaries which were much stronger distinct traits often having a specific overt action (a new skill/pet/etc.)

 

there were also virtue traits you could use to push your actual stats in a certain direction.

 

 

In certain ways this was great, there was a good bit of flex because other then capstone legendary abilities (which require traiting 5 deep into a specific tree) nothing was dependent on having prereqs the way each tier of a traditional tree needs to be unlocked.

 

 

 

Unfortunately the issue falls in how then this becomes obtained and what they mean. Legendaries are pretty much self-evident as you generally pretty much locked into two of your three choices (with some classes locked into all three), a little more flex went into class traits, but your spec allocation (4 in one tree 3 in another for example) didn't see a ton of variance.

 

 

Virtues at this point in time have become extremely encounter-based cookie cutter to where even most different roles/classes have very similar ones.

 

 

 

 

What looks on paper as a nice flexible setup with a lot more wiggle room then your tratiional tree-system ultimately ended up nearly at the same state of sticking with some nearly cookie-cutter choices.

 

 

 

 

 

This isn't to say there isn't a better way, only that even alternative seem to have a way of ending up in something of a cookie-cutter fashion. This is as much a reflection of the gamer/gaming environment itself (with more emphasis placed on min-max even if suboptimal would still be functional) as it is the specific game design its a shame but something of a reality.

 

 

Also I think a more straightforward route llike this is a good option for such a game where the emphasis on storylin/the voice acting while leveling/etc. all feels like it wants to encourage significant alt play.

 

I can't tell you how much I old killing 200 trolls, followed by 400 spiders, followed by 180 yetis to level up virtues got when doing so on multiple toons.

Edited January 11, 2012 by paul_preib

[SwigMcJigger]

No one gives a **** about you cancelling your sub or when.

 

On topic : its clear that you whiners now cry about everything in the game , even talent trees which are ok

 

 

 

Oh thanks white knight, you saved Bioware!

 

 

I completely agree with the talents trees. Oooh 1% to endurance? Adds 3 seconds to the dot?

 

I like talents that change the way skills behave. The more talents like that you can fit in the more variety of builds we will see.

Edited January 11, 2012 by SwigMcJigger

[EricOF]

I agree that there isn't much exciting about the trees. Not that they aren't effective in the long run but there are a lot of incremental improvements in them.

[Amelyssan]

Oh thanks white knight, you saved Bioware!

 

 

I completely agree with the talents trees. Oooh 1% to endurance? Adds 3 seconds to the dot?

 

I like talents that change the way skills behave. The more talents like that you can fit in the more variety of builds we will see.

 

Yeah exactly! Behavioural options to spells and abillities are some of the most funniest! Should the dot end tick with a 2 second stun or do extra damage?

 

Should my heals be fast and flexible (pvp oriented) or slow but bigger, more crits (pve)?

 

The list goes on

[paul_preib]

Yeah exactly! Behavioural options to spells and abillities are some of the most funniest! Should the dot end tick with a 2 second stun or do extra damage?

 

Should my heals be fast and flexible (pvp oriented) or slow but bigger, more crits (pve)?

 

The list goes on

 

This is great in theory, but and I think as with all MMO's once some time live class balancing will be implemented a class or two at a time that revamps to help in this fashion.

 

 

Beyond that often looking flexible on paper stays just that, on paper because the min maxing will always start to dig into saying

 

"a crit build of the spec averages 984.2 health per second while in the same gear a more rapid-fire heal built will shell out 985.3 health per second"

 

 

You may create a couple different cookie cutters, but ultimately that style still usually results in a very set pve (i.e. group/raid) build and a very set pvp (albeit there's usually a touch more personal wiggle room in this one) build-- Cutting out two cookies instead of one doesn't really alter the underlying issue, which is a really hard one to dig into in a proper, fair, and balanced manner.

[Bgiffo]

Oh thanks white knight, you saved Bioware!

 

 

I completely agree with the talents trees. Oooh 1% to endurance? Adds 3 seconds to the dot?

 

I like talents that change the way skills behave. The more talents like that you can fit in the more variety of builds we will see.

 

Is there a special name for people who white knight for trolls?

 

As long as people can do math there will be cookie cutter builds.

[Amelyssan]

This is great in theory, but and I think as with all MMO's once some time live class balancing will be implemented a class or two at a time that revamps to help in this fashion.

 

 

Beyond that often looking flexible on paper stays just that, on paper because the min maxing will always start to dig into saying

 

"a crit build of the spec averages 984.2 health per second while in the same gear a more rapid-fire heal built will shell out 985.3 health per second"

 

 

You may create a couple different cookie cutters, but ultimately that style still usually results in a very set pve (i.e. group/raid) build and a very set pvp (albeit there's usually a touch more personal wiggle room in this one) build-- Cutting out two cookies instead of one doesn't really alter the underlying issue, which is a really hard one to dig into in a proper, fair, and balanced manner.

 

If a skill tree is so diverse, yet comprehensible and with variations, that a hardcore cookie cutter raider changes skills for each encounter...the tree has fullfilled its purpose

Edited January 11, 2012 by Amelyssan

[Reevax]

At first in the beta I was like "awsome, cookie cutter, simple understandable trees" but atm as level 50 and were all hybrids, these trees are bland, uninspiring and boring.

 

Theres at best room for 1-2 changes for optimizing your build. And even then, the skills are like "increases this and that by 1% X" - damn Bioware, more creativity please!

 

Im not demanding a periodic table here with super complexity, but...a good skill tree is something that really makes people ponder, theory craft and are in doubt because there are multiple choices.

 

Welcome to WoW 2009. They copied an old version of a successful game and went from there. Though WoW is still far ahead maybe swtor can catch up sooner then 3 years.

[SySnootles]

At first in the beta I was like "awsome, cookie cutter, simple understandable trees" but atm as level 50 and were all hybrids, these trees are bland, uninspiring and boring.

 

Theres at best room for 1-2 changes for optimizing your build. And even then, the skills are like "increases this and that by 1% X" - damn Bioware, more creativity please!

 

Im not demanding a periodic table here with super complexity, but...a good skill tree is something that really makes people ponder, theory craft and are in doubt because there are multiple choices.

 

There are very few or any games with skill tree character customization system that dont lend themselves to min-maxing cookie cutter builds.

 

It´s the same with SW:TOR, as a SI Sorcerer Healer i have ONE build with a single floating point, as to be an effective healer, same applies to most other classes.

 

Personally i dislike skill trees altogether, they end up giving the player less choice at the end as everyone ends up using the most "effective" builds.

 

Solutions? dunno.

[paul_preib]

If a skill tree is so diverse, yet comprehensible and with variations, that a hardcore cookie cutter raider changes skills for each encounter...the tree has fullfilled its purpose

 

I would argue that if a player is compelled to change his traiting per encounter that it is not beneficial but rather creating a different variation of the same issue, i.e. generally speaking the reason they retrait specifically for an encounter as stated above starts to translate to a very specific spec considered an expectation for each individual encounter (or perhaps each individual wing or raid).

 

 

 

The goal of flexibility ultimately is not a variety of different traitlines each with a very specific optimal arrangement for each very specific purpose. Yes in some ways that is an improvement over a more generic "on spec for all" which this seems to incline towards at present but I wouldn't call it enough of a step up to be worth a reworking to achieve.

 

 

 

While a pipe dream in this day and age for the most part, the true envisioning I see of spec flexibility is that four different healers of the same AC can have four fairly unique specs (say out of 40 available traits at least 10-12 or so are different from one another's) and still be just as viable for the same content.

[Runieux]

I'm expecting good things from the Legacy Skill Tree.