[Game Chat] V: In The Year 20XX AD...

[Milskidasith]

I actually agree that a "let players access everything, but let players pick what they get and when" system could work. As for the theory: Any skill tree without resets is unlikely to have meaningful decisions without the potential for screwing up. Combine that with DIII attempting to be legitimately hard on higher difficulties, and you can't get away with giving players permanent choices to make non synergistic decisions, and there's no way to get remotely close to the theoretical ideal where a random or semi-random allotment of skill points can be as effective, in its own way, as an actually thought out and calculated plan. Of course, you can have permanent suboptimal choices and still allow all players to access all content (see Fallout 3 and New Vegas), but that mostly relies on making the optimization floor significantly higher than the difficulty ceiling (i.e. random build with no coherence still kicks more ass than That One Boss).

[Milskidasith]

Allowing you to choose when you got skills but still allowing you to get them all could work, and I think it has before. No, there's no way to reconcile having a skill tree that allows for suboptimality with actually difficult gameplay like DIII plans to have. You can have the ability to be suboptimal, but combat effectiveness has to either has to be something that isn't the core focus (e.g. Dragon Age, where a random scattershot build can still work on lower difficulties [and the game isn't designed around just beating it on harder and harder difficulties]), or totally irrelevant (e.g. fallout, where picking shitty feats and randomly choosing skill points still results in you soaking bullets like a champ and killing deathclaws with your bear hands.)

[Catbread]

I been looking around online at various Diablo 3 talks and I have come to the conclusion that I should not look at online Diablo 3 talks.
Far as I can see, the game has next to no flaws, and the issues people have said they have with the game are quite startling. Their usual arguments sound like "but I enjoy wasting hours and hours of my life for no reason!"

And I've always hated talent trees and skill builds! Those are for mathematicians!
I don't want to choose between summoned pets and wolfy form
I want both of them

And Diablo 3 says it's got 150+ skills and I can have all of them at once?
That's like a choir of angels to me.
And having played the beta, I can say with confidence that it is exactly as great as it sounds.
Seriously, I am seeing no downsides whatsoever.

[Jacquerel]

Well... you can't have all of them at once. You get six and three passives.
You can change them at the press of a button, sure, but this is hard to do in combat (and impossible while an ability is on cooldown). You literally can't keybind more than six skills.
In addition, harder difficulties add in a mechanic called "Nephalem Valour", where killing packs of rare mobs will grant you a buff increasing the quality of item drops. This buff vanishes if you change a skill, as an incentive to make a "build" and stick with it for a while. Changing this build is quick and painless and can be done at any time, but I think the idea is that you will eventually gravitate towards a fairly specific skillset rather than regularly use all 150 spells!

[Catbread]

Undoubtedly. I just like having the option to pick whichever ones I want.
I'm very indecisive and bad at numbers, and it's hard to try different builds when you're locked into one!

[weirdguy]

it's just that

skill trees are there to show you the overall potential of your character and give you delusions of grandeur, but they're not really that practical in terms of gameplay once you've picked your path, take the sphere grid from path of exile for example

yes, you can do tons of stuff with it, but without a proper way to view that in terms of actual information, that thing is a monster waiting to prey on bad choices, and according to the devs, they're either gonna use resets for cash or just let it be all skill reset orbs that only undo one point allocations that are on the ends of your branches

some people view allocation resetting as a luxury or an optional feature, but in this day and age, you either railroad characters to specific build types to prevent them from messing up with the risk that you have created a suboptimal build (given the game skill blinders that most creators wear when working on their own projects), or give cheap/infinite skill allocation flexibility in order to let people EXPLORE your game's possibilities

sometimes i think developers take advantage of this function by putting a pay door in front of it, just to garner cash for something that gives so much more to a player, to be able to experience multiple aspects of gameplay without having to create a dozen new characters or train them up to the point where they get interesting (having to train up to getting interesting is also another issue that I will talk about some other time)

this is why I like the proposed concept in secret world, because their system is designed to let you pick your loadouts from the entire range of your class abilities, allowing for many, many scenarios to be formed in which these abilities are relevant at one point or another

why pay for admission to one experience that you have to decide on at the start of the game without most of the knowledge pertinent to the choice, and then stay with that choice for the rest of the game? it is like limiting yourself to one section of disneyland. being able to see what's going on with the other side of the fence expands the cumulative value of the gameplay, and ensures that your content is experienced as much as possible, meaning that you're not developing specific assets for only part of your player base, but most of it

[Jacquerel]

Yeah I was quite interested by The Secret World's philosophy too.
Then I learned it has a box price, a large stock of microtransactions and a subscription cost, which is very upsetting. I wanted to play it ):

[Superfrequency]

Agree, weirdguy. If stat allocation isn't fluid there's no point in having it except to inconvenience players.

[weirdguy]

seriously, that grid is like looking into a segmented eye of sauron

[kholhaus]

So I finally was able to attain a massive empire in Civ 5.

As it turns out, M.A.D isn't a worry when you are the only one who made it past the medieval ages in terms of military, and everyone else is too much of a pansy to take you on mano-a-GIANTDEATHROBOT.

I'm hoping that by the time I've plowed through half the world's nations, someone will have developed their own nukes.
It's looking like Egypt is going to be my big rival.

[Lazyboy21350]

seriously, that grid is like looking into a segmented eye of sauron

Well yeah the grid is huge and a bit confusing at first but after a while you learn where everything is pretty easily. All mana based skills are in the top part, strength skills are in the bottom left, and agility skills are in the bottom right. Every part is connected to each other in some way so while you are picking out agility skills you can suddenly take a sharp left and start increasing mana skills which really increases the customization a lot.

With a game like Path of Exiles, I noticed, in the early game, you can afford to not be that picky for a while. Equip whatever you want and you'll be fine. Pick whatever you want in the grid and you'll be fine. Once you defeat the boss in the prison however, by then you are probably experienced enough to start considering going for a specific build but even then you can still experiment a bit. Like you want to make the big beefy guy into essentially a non-squishy mage? Go for it. You can accomplish that after a while, possibly longer than going for a more straight-forward and easier build but you can still do it eventually.

Hell, even when you have an established build, the game can still kick your ass if you arent prepared. You need to keep your equipment up to date to survive most late game encounters, especially when it starts throwing magic skeletons who can cast lighting, ice, and fire at you. All at once. And you left all your elemental resist rings in your stash. Good thing by that point in the game you have identify and portal scrolls coming out the wazoo.

[Namboto]

So I just bought Noitu Love 2, and it's fairly amazing. Great music, great art, wonderful gameplay, and it's fun. (oh, and it's only 4 dollars right now GO BUY IT)

[gingerale]

I'd put some of that ISK towards a game time card. Teach yourself skills needed to pilot a tech 2 ship and find some friends who'll protect you when you go to low sec. What race did you start as?

Well I don't dare to go to low sec yet. And the people I know from the game hardly play it. So right now I'm just training myself to become an explorer/scout. Probing the space for anomalies is so relaxing. Hmm.. Should probably switch to blasters. They have a crazy fast rate of fire and my Catalyst ship is made of tissue paper so I'd be better flying fast at close range, I think...

Gallentean, by the way. Here, lookie. The name's Gin Gerrail. :B

[Hanky Panky]

Yeah, I don't know much about weak ships. When I played, it was for roughly 5 months, and I played Amarr. That was back in 2009, so.

I had either a Retribution or a Vengeance but I can't remember which one it was. I also had an Omen and was working my way up to a Zealot. Can't tell whether I miss that game or just look back upon it with fondness.

[Quirk]

AIR. WHAT IS AIR.



I DO NOT KNOW WHAT AIR IS.

IT'S LIKE IF KAMINA WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT. AND THEN HAD A BABY WITH THE FEMININE PERSONIFICATION OF AMERICA. AND THEN MICHAEL BAY MADE A MOVIE ABOUT IT.

[Karhs12]

IT'S LIKE IF KAMINA WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT. AND THEN HAD A BABY WITH THE FEMININE PERSONIFICATION OF AMERICA. AND THEN MICHAEL BAY MADE A MOVIE ABOUT IT.

It'd be so hotblooded that people'd be bleeding fucking vapor.

EDIT: I am four minutes into the video.
Where the fuck do I buy this game.

[Chirality]

AMERICA

[zeratuljo1291]

coincedentally, this game was made by the same team who makes the armored core series, demons souls and dark souls.

it really comes through doesn it?

[BRPXQZME]

I had the opportunity to play this game. Same story with Steel Battalion.

(for the low, low price of $20 I will breathe on you, but I cannot guarantee any residual awesomeness transfer)

[Portalboat]

holy shit

so much godamn AMERICA

I can't hold all this AMERICA

[Quirk]

holy shit

so much godamn AMERICA

I can't hold all this AMERICA

So American that only the Japanese could do it.

[Jacquerel]

I actually found that one of the least interesting Two Best Friends videos
They barely said anything, it was just incoherent screaming. They let the video be carried entirely by AMERICA and as I was already aware of the existence of Metal Wolf Chaos, this was not something I found incredibly new or exciting

[Portalboat]

Yeah, I actually kinda wanted to hear (and laugh) at the dialog. But it was blotted out by 'WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAPLKUZAFHIJAGSVDJASHVDGJAVSJHGVSDHG BS>M<ZNDLBAJSKBJSKHD HGASVGAHSVN'

[Superfrequency]

I was already aware of the existence of Metal Wolf Chaos

And unfortunately cannot justify buying a Japanese XBOX just to play it.

[BRPXQZME]

It’s like having a NEO·GEO home system. Yeah, you could do it, but the only explanation you could give to most people is something like “my wallet was getting too lumpy”.