There's still the concept of +All Skills and +Warcries (for example). Prehaps we will find items that only boost skills of certain skil-trees in the game? That would effectively have an impact and require different skill trees.
Heroes V uses a skill-progression system that is reminiscent of a skill wheel, with basic abilities in the rim, abilities with prereqs further in, and an ultimate skill in the center which was class-specic.
Its quite similar to what I was thinking but neater and alot more Tiers.
Let's not forget that in Diablo 2 you could have wildly different builds, very unlike WoW. The pre-reqs werent points in a tree before, rather level restriction on skills and a couple of points in pre-req skills, none of this 5-10-15-20-25-30-35-40-45 skillpoints in a certain tree like WoW.
One reason you only have a few viable builds in WoW is that you gain most of your abilities outside the trees, and the trees mostly (though not always) buff the abilities you already got. You don't do so in Diablo.
That alone should lead to more varied builds.
If Diablo ends up with few interesting builds, its not because of the ideas Blizz has released now at least.
People speak of how WoW is making Diablo 'casual'.
Sorry to say it, but around 10 years has passed since the old Diablo games. This has nothing to to with WoW, but the simple fact that gaming has moved on. You could get by with a lot more 'demanding' (or lacking, depending on point of view) games in the 90's (just as it was perfectly fine to have games even further in the past with no save options, requiring players to get through it on one session).
Releasing a game like Diablo today without some reasonably streamlined interface, player friendly options like respeccing etc. would be quite stupid. Releasing Diablo 2 this very moment would have been a disaster, people would have hated it, also many of us who loves it dearly.
Now you might argue some games do exactly that (Sacred 2 for instance, which in many ways are an old-school A-RPG), but it mostly shows the fact that there are a few stupid game designers still around.
The real challenge is to make a game that speeaks to both those who want a somewhat easy time with their game, and those who want to get obsessed with it.
But this is exactly what Blizzard has been the masters of for 15 years, and Diablo 2 is a prime example. Very easy to play, but still fairly hardcore if you went into creating 100 different builds, magic find chars etc (and its the same with WoW for that matter).
Right now we got no reason to believe it would suddenly change with Diablo 3.
Anyway, back to the Diablo talents. One addition I could imagine to the proposed system, would be some incentive to spend most of your points in 1 tree, sort of a way to off-balance the nice skills you would lose in other trees, by stacking more points in one tree.
Example: Every point you spent in Tree 1 (lets call it the frost tree) gives you 1% more frost dmg. Every 1 point spent in Tree 2 'Fire tree' gives you 1% fire dmg bonus etc. (or whatever else it could be, 1% lower mana cost for fire spells or whatever).
This would accomplish two things (In my head at least). 1) it would add even more possible build options 2) it would bring back some incentive for making 'pure' builds, like a fire sorceress or ice sorceress, which I think should be there.
This way, you would have the option between picking 'all the nice talents from different trees', but it would have a small cost by being less specialized into one tree.
One addition I could imagine to the proposed system, would be some incentive to spend most of your points in 1 tree, sort of a way to off-balance the nice skills you would lose in other trees, by stacking more points in one tree.
Example: Every point you spent in Tree 1 (lets call it the frost tree) gives you 1% more frost dmg. Every 1 point spent in Tree 2 'Fire tree' gives you 1% fire dmg bonus etc. (or whatever else it could be, 1% lower mana cost for fire spells or whatever).
This would accomplish two things (In my head at least). 1) it would add even more possible build options 2) it would bring back some incentive for making 'pure' builds, like a fire sorceress or ice sorceress, which I think should be there.
This way, you would have the option between picking 'all the nice talents from different trees', but it would have a small cost by being less specialized into one tree.
so you're proposing synergies
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they'll never see me coming.. life is a sequence of tragedies, inconsistent only by fleeting, elusive moments of pleasure,
serving only to ensure absolute vulnerability to the pain of their inevitable absence.
Not really. Synergies is getting bonuses to 1 skill by taking another, which limits your choices tbh. My idea (and it might very well be terrible :P) would give you the bonus no matter which skills you took in the tree
many skills in d2 increased the properties of more than one other skill.
some even up to 6 other skills (sin skill fire blast for example)
but anyway i like the idea of synergies and promoting specialization.. so i like your idea
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they'll never see me coming.. life is a sequence of tragedies, inconsistent only by fleeting, elusive moments of pleasure,
serving only to ensure absolute vulnerability to the pain of their inevitable absence.
Ah ye true, must admit I haven't had Diablo 2 started up for a while. But the point was that it shouldnt be based on specific skills as it only leads to less choice (e.g. if i take this skill, i really need to take this and this too, to make it useful).
Diablo relies on having lots and lots of options to make your character build (which is why totally free respecs as in WoW would not work, it should be possible, but pretty much cost your left arm to do so, imo), I still have no reason to believe Blizz wont accomplish that though, pretty much no matter how the finer details of the tree setups are, so for now its all good
One thing that I especially like about the new skill tree is that we can't discuss skill trees on the coming heroes anymore Now we have to come up with separate skills instead which is alot wider to discuss when you are not locked by 3 themes.
We are still pretty much locked to 3 themes. Skill trees still exist, they will just be viewable side by side, and if you put say 3 points into juggernaut tree and 2 into battle master, you can get the next tier of all of them now.
The problem is no matter what they do everybody will find the skills they think are best and create a formula that promotes the most efficient use of those skills. This means no matter what they do there will be FAQs with people recommending the best optimized builds for many cookie cutter types of characters.
You can only direct different ways this must be worked around. You can keep this one skill huge tree idea (which I think is really cool by the way) and at least make it so the builds are flexible, therefore increasing the number of cookie cutters, and everybody has fun picking their favs. You can create synergies to make people want to stay within different styles. More points per sub-tree means a higher effeciency for all skills in that sub-tree. You can also make it so more skills points allocated to different styles means higher possible point allocation for those "sub-trees"? I.E. if you add a total of 20+ points to Berserker, all the skills under this sub tree get a higher skill level cap. make a combination of the two or something. This gets confusing and adds a lot of balancing issues, though.
I think complaining about cookie cutters is redundant, and erroneous, because we will always ask, "how did you set your character up?"
The problem is no matter what they do everybody will find the skills they think are best and create a formula that promotes the most efficient use of those skills. This means no matter what they do there will be FAQs with people recommending the best optimized builds for many cookie cutter types of characters.
Is that a problem though. Diablo 2 has been like that for 9 years or so?
You can find guides for the most cookie cutter builds available, as well as guides for some of the more experimental 'just because I can' builds. If Diablo 3 can replicate that I would think they have done a great job.
Diablo isnt as competitive (outside of the possible PvP features they will introduce) as MMOs, which means you don't have to use the cookie cutter builds to succeed (although you would cleearly be able to perform better with such a spec). Pretty much no matter what you throw your points in youll be able to succeed, given the right gear, which by itself allows for endless possibilities in talent specs (and this is probably a place where Diablo 2 failed a bit, you had endless spec possibilities, but gear wise there were often a few items which was so much better than anything else around for your class, so in reality, you had cookie cutter gear sets instead of skill sets)
I have a simple idea. Chances are something like it has been suggested already.
How about keep the skill system just as Bashiok has described it's current form, but add this: every point you have in a skill tree reduces the mana cost (and for those with fury, maybe increase the damage) of all the skills in the tree slightly. So you could potentially see a teleporting sorc with hydras and cold orb... but if the sorc decided to go all fire, she'd be able to do more impressive fireworks, albeit less varied. And by more fireworks I don't mean it's a better build, just higher rate of spells per minute, at the cost of lack of variety (which tend sto be useful).
So it's more efficient to go into one or two trees only... but there'd be no clumsy synergy system cutting down on variety.
Honestly, I have thought long and hard about this system, and I see places where it will succeed and places where it will phail. I think it is way to early to really even give an opinion at this point, its time I wait patiently for Blizzcon09 to see what really happens.
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There are no stupid questions, just a bunch of inquisitive idiots.
"I fight for a better tomorrow not because I believe one to be necessarily forthcoming, but because I believe a better tomorrow is worth fighting for."
Emilemil1 I guess as long as the shoulder pads dont look like this I will be happy.
So this post doesnt get deleted...
Man those skill tree's make me want to have sexual intercourse with a oak tree of similar awesomeness.
^The real scrub filter.^
Its quite similar to what I was thinking but neater and alot more Tiers.
One reason you only have a few viable builds in WoW is that you gain most of your abilities outside the trees, and the trees mostly (though not always) buff the abilities you already got. You don't do so in Diablo.
That alone should lead to more varied builds.
If Diablo ends up with few interesting builds, its not because of the ideas Blizz has released now at least.
People speak of how WoW is making Diablo 'casual'.
Sorry to say it, but around 10 years has passed since the old Diablo games. This has nothing to to with WoW, but the simple fact that gaming has moved on. You could get by with a lot more 'demanding' (or lacking, depending on point of view) games in the 90's (just as it was perfectly fine to have games even further in the past with no save options, requiring players to get through it on one session).
Releasing a game like Diablo today without some reasonably streamlined interface, player friendly options like respeccing etc. would be quite stupid. Releasing Diablo 2 this very moment would have been a disaster, people would have hated it, also many of us who loves it dearly.
Now you might argue some games do exactly that (Sacred 2 for instance, which in many ways are an old-school A-RPG), but it mostly shows the fact that there are a few stupid game designers still around.
The real challenge is to make a game that speeaks to both those who want a somewhat easy time with their game, and those who want to get obsessed with it.
But this is exactly what Blizzard has been the masters of for 15 years, and Diablo 2 is a prime example. Very easy to play, but still fairly hardcore if you went into creating 100 different builds, magic find chars etc (and its the same with WoW for that matter).
Right now we got no reason to believe it would suddenly change with Diablo 3.
Anyway, back to the Diablo talents. One addition I could imagine to the proposed system, would be some incentive to spend most of your points in 1 tree, sort of a way to off-balance the nice skills you would lose in other trees, by stacking more points in one tree.
Example: Every point you spent in Tree 1 (lets call it the frost tree) gives you 1% more frost dmg. Every 1 point spent in Tree 2 'Fire tree' gives you 1% fire dmg bonus etc. (or whatever else it could be, 1% lower mana cost for fire spells or whatever).
This would accomplish two things (In my head at least). 1) it would add even more possible build options 2) it would bring back some incentive for making 'pure' builds, like a fire sorceress or ice sorceress, which I think should be there.
This way, you would have the option between picking 'all the nice talents from different trees', but it would have a small cost by being less specialized into one tree.
they'll never see me coming..
life is a sequence of tragedies, inconsistent only by fleeting, elusive moments of pleasure,
serving only to ensure absolute vulnerability to the pain of their inevitable absence.
some even up to 6 other skills (sin skill fire blast for example)
but anyway i like the idea of synergies and promoting specialization.. so i like your idea
they'll never see me coming..
life is a sequence of tragedies, inconsistent only by fleeting, elusive moments of pleasure,
serving only to ensure absolute vulnerability to the pain of their inevitable absence.
Diablo relies on having lots and lots of options to make your character build (which is why totally free respecs as in WoW would not work, it should be possible, but pretty much cost your left arm to do so, imo), I still have no reason to believe Blizz wont accomplish that though, pretty much no matter how the finer details of the tree setups are, so for now its all good
We are still pretty much locked to 3 themes. Skill trees still exist, they will just be viewable side by side, and if you put say 3 points into juggernaut tree and 2 into battle master, you can get the next tier of all of them now.
You can only direct different ways this must be worked around. You can keep this one skill huge tree idea (which I think is really cool by the way) and at least make it so the builds are flexible, therefore increasing the number of cookie cutters, and everybody has fun picking their favs. You can create synergies to make people want to stay within different styles. More points per sub-tree means a higher effeciency for all skills in that sub-tree. You can also make it so more skills points allocated to different styles means higher possible point allocation for those "sub-trees"? I.E. if you add a total of 20+ points to Berserker, all the skills under this sub tree get a higher skill level cap. make a combination of the two or something. This gets confusing and adds a lot of balancing issues, though.
I think complaining about cookie cutters is redundant, and erroneous, because we will always ask, "how did you set your character up?"
You can find guides for the most cookie cutter builds available, as well as guides for some of the more experimental 'just because I can' builds. If Diablo 3 can replicate that I would think they have done a great job.
Diablo isnt as competitive (outside of the possible PvP features they will introduce) as MMOs, which means you don't have to use the cookie cutter builds to succeed (although you would cleearly be able to perform better with such a spec). Pretty much no matter what you throw your points in youll be able to succeed, given the right gear, which by itself allows for endless possibilities in talent specs (and this is probably a place where Diablo 2 failed a bit, you had endless spec possibilities, but gear wise there were often a few items which was so much better than anything else around for your class, so in reality, you had cookie cutter gear sets instead of skill sets)
How about keep the skill system just as Bashiok has described it's current form, but add this: every point you have in a skill tree reduces the mana cost (and for those with fury, maybe increase the damage) of all the skills in the tree slightly. So you could potentially see a teleporting sorc with hydras and cold orb... but if the sorc decided to go all fire, she'd be able to do more impressive fireworks, albeit less varied. And by more fireworks I don't mean it's a better build, just higher rate of spells per minute, at the cost of lack of variety (which tend sto be useful).
So it's more efficient to go into one or two trees only... but there'd be no clumsy synergy system cutting down on variety.
They had to go and change it sooooo much. They are already taking away + skills? No more SOJ? Thats insane... I dont know how well this will work.
I think we should let them do their work though, its Blizzard I have confidence they will work something out.