Preventing over the top skill point juggling

[grobblewobble]

I am against allowing full respec. If you allow that, there will no longer be any real difference between any two characters with the same race and class. They can all do exactly the same things. There are a few reasons I don't like this. It reduces replay value. It makes the choices you make in developing your character meaningless. And it feels very unrealistic and makes it harder for me to identify with the character. I've seen it in Diablo and I very strongly disliked it, for all those reasons.

In response to the OP..

Imo the most direct and natural solution would be to put talents on cooldown when you raise them (as someone suggested earlier in this thread). This would be consistent with the way equipping items with a talent is handled. If you equip an item that grants you a talent, it is on cooldown the moment you equip it, for exactly the same reason (to prevent people from re-equipping endlessly).

Alternatively, don't allow any respec at all. That would actually be what I prefer, to be honest.

[Suslik]

Not everyone wants to run a spoiler-driven pre-planned build, nor write a spreadsheet to calculate payouts. Some of us would prefer to, you know, play the game, and not have to run cost-benefit analysis on our options in order to play.

then... don't play higher difficulties! ding!

(Also, if you feel that Stone is too strong, then petition to get the class changed. Or just suggest a replacement tree.)

stone is a locked category and it must be stroger than those unlocked and it IS a trade-off of early-game vs mid-game viability regardless of you understand it or not.

[Mankeli]

If you think this is too tedious, simply don't do it. That's why this is not a problem.

Incredible. In my opinion, these kind of sentiments, which are not unique to this thread, unfortunately, truly show just how little value is given on smooth play-ability, discouraging grinding/tediousness and streamlining the TOME 4 gaming experience in these forums and in TOME 4 overall. What you are basically claiming is that tediousness doesn't matter at all if it's not mandatory. However, you seem to fail to realize that in a game that ends when your character dies, a player that wants to win the game will often times tries to get every little piece of advantage he/she cans. Tediousness is bad because it has a real cost in real life, time and effort, but zero cost in the game.

For the sake of argument, let's take one step further with this logic you laid out in your post. We could replace the expressions "too tedious" with some other word that has negative connotations in game design. Heck, instead of replacing it as an example of a problematic game design, let's replace it with the expression "problematic game design" itself. So now we have a sentence that goes like this "If you think this is problematic game design, simply don't do it". "It" could be any number of things, it could a whole branch like Norgos' Lair, it could be a weapon category, it could be anything that isn't completely mandatory for winning the game. With this modified sentence of yours, one could basically just dismiss any and all critique regarding the game as long as it's about content that is "optional" in way that it isn't needed to win the game. "If you think Norgos' Lair has problematic game design, simply don't do it" or "If you think the way melee weapons are implemented is problematic game design, simply don't use them". Yeah, doesn't sound too convincing.

Also, the majority of people who try TOME will never ever play insane/madness because they probably won't win the game on normal in the first place. It's nice if insane/madness are playable and all but what people should worry about the most is normal. Leaving tediousness inducing mechanics in normal because insane is hard to balance is a pretty strange argument and certainly doesn't help balancing neither normal nor insane.

Disable skill point juggling on insane / madness. 2) No one bothers to do it on normal, so it is not a problem for most players

Leaving a bad mechanic in simply because it's so bad that many people don't even want to use is pretty horrible reasoning. Also, you provide no actual evidence of "no one bothers to do it on normal".

I have few suggestions that might or not might not help with resolving this issue. However, I don't have the time write them down right now. Besides, this thread is very entertaining as is, it's shame we don't have popcorn at work.

[grobblewobble]

Also note that allowing full and unlimited respec will make the problem under discussion far worse.

The optimal way to play would then be to completely rebuild your character for every fight. (Not true for every class, but with an archmage it would certainly be like that - scout enemies with arcane eye, then get the type of damage it's most vulnerable to).

[Mankeli]

Also note that allowing full and unlimited respec will make the problem under discussion far worse.

The optimal way to play would then be to completely rebuild your character for every fight. (Not true for every class, but with an archmage it would certainly be like that - scout enemies with arcane eye, then get the type of damage it's most vulnerable to).

My proposed solution (in an earlier thread) was to allow full re-spec, full re-allocation of talent points, but only on the world map. Gives you all the strategic benefit of being able to test out talents which might or might not be useful, but takes away the tactical cheese of use X -> swap X to Y -> use Y.

However, it might be possible to actually go to world map to reskill after scouring the enemy on some (obviously not all) occasions.

Alternatively, you could make it so that it takes some amount of experience points to allow reskilling again, if the complete reskilling is the direction people would want to go (I'm not advocating for this yet, I have to put more thought into this). Experience points would pose their own problems, however (patrol harvesting etc.)

[Plak]

Putting just one point in Dreamscape so you can float 4 more in when you need it is common practice, and I can't be the only one who occasionally float point in Ghoulish Leap, Disengage, Dreamwalk, Mental Shielding, or other escape/healing talents when I find myself in big trouble.

Skills go on cooldown when you first learn them, and there's an obvious balance reason for that. Them not going on cooldown when leveled up is pretty clearly an oversight, and being tedious is certainly not a good reason to keep an easily fixable exploit in the game. Just have active skills go on full cooldown when invested in, just as when they are first learned.

I think full respec might be desirable if a way can be found to prevent abusing the mechanics, but I can definitely see arguments for keeping respec limited. On the other hand, having active skills go on cooldown is pretty straightforwardly fixing bad design and an oversight.


Preview edit: full respec on the world map would just make respecing for specific fights more tedious, but still optimal. I don't think there is legitimate need for a character to completely change their build several times during the game, and allowing it would make each character much less unique.

Giving every character a one-time-only opportunity to "clear their mind" and unlearn every class and generic skill would allow players to use niche builds without tedious grinding and point-floating during the early game, without having much impact on anything else. It could take the form of a Psionic character in the East or coming back from the East in exchange for gold, the Yeek Wayist you save from Subject Z, or perhaps a potion you could get as an additional reward for saving Melinda? The reward for completing the Dark Crypt isn't nearly good enough compared to the difficulty of that quest, especially compared to unlocking Urthol for doing the much, much easier Unknown Tunnels.

[supermini]

If you think this is too tedious, simply don't do it. That's why this is not a problem.

Incredible. In my opinion, these kind of sentiments, which are not unique to this thread, unfortunately, truly show just how little value is given on smooth play-ability, discouraging grinding/tediousness and streamlining the TOME 4 gaming experience in these forums and in TOME 4 overall. What you are basically claiming is that tediousness doesn't matter at all if it's not mandatory. However, you seem to fail to realize that in a game that ends when your character dies, a player that wants to win the game will often times tries to get every little piece of advantage he/she cans. Tediousness is bad because it has a real cost in real life, time and effort, but zero cost in the game.

There's a lot of value placed in reducing grinding in ToME. These kind of long winded generalizations do nothing to advance the discussion.

For the sake of argument, let's take one step further with this logic you laid out in your post. We could replace the expressions "too tedious" with some other word that has negative connotations in game design. Heck, instead of replacing it as an example of a problematic game design, let's replace it with the expression "problematic game design" itself. So now we have a sentence that goes like this "If you think this is problematic game design, simply don't do it". "It" could be any number of things, it could a whole branch like Norgos' Lair, it could be a weapon category, it could be anything that isn't completely mandatory for winning the game. With this modified sentence of yours, one could basically just dismiss any and all critique regarding the game as long as it's about content that is "optional" in way that it isn't needed to win the game. "If you think Norgos' Lair has problematic game design, simply don't do it" or "If you think the way melee weapons are implemented is problematic game design, simply don't use them". Yeah, doesn't sound too convincing.

Man, you take your time to get to the point. Solving this isn't a trivial problem.

It's easy to just take it out but you then have to make another system that lets you do the same thing that the current system is intended for: try out talents before you commit to them, without causing the same issues.

And you still haven't solved the underlying problem of classes that need these crutches on higher difficulties.

Also, the majority of people who try TOME will never ever play insane/madness because they probably won't win the game on normal in the first place. It's nice if insane/madness are playable and all but what people should worry about the most is normal. Leaving tediousness inducing mechanics in normal because insane is hard to balance is a pretty strange argument and certainly doesn't help balancing neither normal nor insane.

Posts filled with misplaced self-righteousness are not helping anyone. Working on actual balancing NM and insane and providing feedback is what's going to help. Ability to reshuffle isn't going to affect it either way, it's not assumed as default behavior.

I have few suggestions that might or not might not help with resolving this issue. However, I don't have the time write them down right now. Besides, this thread is very entertaining as is, it's shame we don't have popcorn at work.

You certainly seem to have time to pontificate.

This a minor issue in the game blown way out of proportion. Insane/madness starts are done by going through towns and drowning all rare townspeople for xp and items. That's the definition of tedious, and a way bigger problem than a bit of reshuffling. If you think you can take all these crutches out and still make it playable for anything other than <1% of the players playing 5% of the classes, give it a try and let me know how it works out. Anyone can mod the game files and see the results of their work.

So until you actually do something constructive, stop wasting my time with rhetoric.

[Mankeli]

Working on actual balancing NM and insane and providing feedback is what's going to help. Ability to reshuffle isn't going to affect it either way, it's not assumed as default behavior.

Whether or not it is "assumed", if it's available it will affect the game balance and player decisions and you have to take it into account if you are trying to balance the game.

Insane/madness starts are done by going through towns and drowning all rare townspeople for xp and items.

I'm sorry but two wrongs don't make a right. If drowning townspeople is tedious, and it is, it doesn't make floating points less tedious. This and you explicitly claiming that tedious things that aren't mandatory are not problematic are the very reasons I wrote my first post.

See, one of the points I was trying to make is that I believe the whole thought process is backwards. You have higher difficulties which make the game harder. Fine. However, to balance out these higher difficulties, you have some extremely grindy ways of negating that added difficulty (hello activable scouting mechanics) -mechanics that people seem unwilling to let go off. So you have difficulty reducing grindy crutches for people who want more difficulty. How does this make sense? Why couldn't we remove those grindy mechanics that make the game less pleasant and certainly less elegant design-wise and balance the game around that? Surely, it would mean that insane etc. would be more difficulty in the short term. However, after removing the tedious mechanics, you could try to balance the game with mechanics that are less grindy and tedious and actually require the player making meaningful decisions.

So until you actually do something constructive, stop wasting my time with rhetoric.

I actually did already give one concrete suggestion. The post that you fail to quote is the post is right above Plak's excellent post which in turn is right above this very negative meta rambling of yours. Also I think debunking the myth that tediousness is okay as long as it's not always mandatory is a pretty important point in itself.

[supermini]

I'm sorry but two wrongs don't make a right. If drowning townspeople is tedious, and it is, it doesn't make floating points less tedious. This and you explicitly claiming that tedious things that aren't mandatory are not problematic are the very reasons I wrote my first post.

You seem to be up in arms about it for philosophical reasons. I doubt you ever actually reshuffled points. Which is why this discussion is a complete waste of time.

See, one of the points I was trying to make is that I believe the whole thought process is backwards. You have higher difficulties which make the game harder. Fine. However, to balance out these higher difficulties, you have some extremely grindy ways of negating that added difficulty (hello activable scouting mechanics) -mechanics that people seem unwilling to let go off.

...Wait, what? Scouting ahead allows you to plan how to deal with tough encounters. It adds to strategic depth of the game. That's not negating difficulty, it's giving you access to information that allows you to overcome the difficulty if you apply your skills in an intelligent way. It's a way better mechanic than the one I've seen in most roguelikes (which is spoiling yourself by reading the wiki).

If you want to play lazy, not scout, use autoexplore, that's an option that's available to you. People have certainly had success with it in the past.

I don't see how taking away the tools that let other people play the game in a methodical way improves anyone's game.

So you have difficulty reducing grindy crutches for people who want more difficulty. How does this make sense? Why couldn't we remove those grindy mechanics that make the game less pleasant and certainly less elegant design-wise and balance the game around that?

Like I said, stop pontificating and get on it.

Balancing the game for higher difficulties is a completely different issue than point reshuffling, however, which was kinda my original point: it's not reshuffling that's *the problem*.

[ZyZ]

..Wait, what? Scouting ahead allows you to plan how to deal with tough encounters. It adds to strategic depth of the game. That's not negating difficulty, it's giving you access to information that allows you to overcome the difficulty if you apply your skills in an intelligent way. It's a way better mechanic than the one I've seen in most roguelikes (which is spoiling yourself by reading the wiki).

If you want to play lazy, not scout, use autoexplore, that's an option that's available to you. People have certainly had success with it in the past.

I don't see how taking away the tools that let other people play the game in a methodical way improves anyone's game.

Wait, what ? Autoexplore is not an option Old insane / madness pretty much REQUIRES
1) skill point juggling
2) swift hands (same as skill point juggling but even more tedious ... and powerful)
3) drowning rares for exp and items. One does not simply start to clear T1 dungeons full of lv14-16 rares, uniques and rand bosses with level 1 character with basic gear
4) abusing ULTIMATE class-skill combos
5) no autoexplore. You have to move slowly and scout often (track, delving ego or anything that works like that)

and even with all those techniques there is less than 20 people that beat insane and only 2 that won @ madness. If you don't reshuffle points you simply make extremely hard modes even harder and i can safe assume you wont get anywhere if you don't want to "waste time" on these tedious tasks.

ps. Fix points 1-4 and then start to slowly reduce difficulty level till someone wins. At the moment fair play is not an option

[supermini]

Difficulty is significantly reduced for 1.2 already, for both NM and insane. Early game was also improved significantly. Hopefully there will be more people playing (and clearing) them as a result.

[Doctornull]

If you think this is too tedious, simply don't do it. That's why this is not a problem.

Yep. Making the full re-spec easy to use but very tedious to abuse is a good solution IMHO because it's easy to use right and difficult (tedious) to use wrong.

It's not impossible to use wrong, but that's fine. People who try to abuse it are only hurting themselves.

I am against allowing full respec. If you allow that, there will no longer be any real difference between any two characters with the same race and class. They can all do exactly the same things.

Not true, because of gear, and because of all the decisions which are not talents (like going Antimagic, you will NOT be able to re-spec that), and because of talents which you're not allowed to modify ever (Escorts, Stone Alchemy, Solipsism, etc.).

Alternatively, don't allow any respec at all. That would actually be what I prefer, to be honest.

Note that my proposal is to prohibit any respec in dungeons -- so effectively you'll get what you want. It's just that if you screw up, which being a human you are prone to do, just like everyone else, you'll have a way to fix it (after you leave the dungeon).

[Mankeli]

You seem to be up in arms about it for philosophical reasons. I doubt you ever actually reshuffled points. Which is why this discussion is a complete waste of time.

I reshuffle points in pretty much every game I play. I believe these kind of "do you even" arguments have their own meme series too which speak volumes about the quality of your argument. This discussion is certainly a waste of time if you continue to make some bogus claims about player habits you have no clue of and which are clearly not based on any evidence.

This is not a thread about scouting talents, but I'll feel obligated to response.

...Wait, what? Scouting ahead allows you to plan how to deal with tough encoun-ters. It adds to strategic depth of the game. That's not grinding.

There is no downside in using arcane eye. You can use it pretty much whenever it's not on cooldown. It takes no turn to cast and needs only little mana which regenerates. Hence, the optimal way to play when not in combat is to cast arcane eye, take one step, restore your mana, cast it again, take one step, rinse and repeat. Nobody probably plays it this way but this is how the game encourages you to play. The problem is, you really don't know if that potentially one-shotting rare/random purple is right around the corner without scouting. If you don't see how this is can be tedious then I really don't know what to say.

We can also think of a less extreme example that actually has happened to me many times: trying to find out where Vor is in Vor:3. It can easily take dozen or more Arcane eye castings if you are unlucky (in terms of time spend scouting) to find him if he is hiding in a room. This means that the scouting, rather than actually fighting can take up most of my time in Vor:3. It also means that in these unlucky encounters I spend most of my time in Vor:3 doing something that has 0 % challenge/tactics and 0 % danger for my character. But you do want to find out where he is so you can prepare for his potentially one-shotting meteor strike infused initial attack. I don't call mashing rest button while waiting for arcane eye come out of cooldown tactis, I call it boring.

Please note, that scouting talents aren't not mandatory in difficulties like normal at all. However, my characters have been one-shotted by rares even in dreadfell and high peak in normal difficulty and with decent to very good HP characters. So eventhough abusing them is mainly for higher difficulties, the problem of gaining advantage, however marginal it may be, via tedious methods exists in lower difficulties as well.

If you can't see how this can be pretty tedious then I urge you to think about it for a while before dismissing this. You can also check out the reasoning why activable scouting talents where removed in some other games, like DCSS. To make it even easier: In a nutshell: talents, skills, abilities etc, that are mostly used while not in combat and/or which doesn't have any real cost in-game but offer some kind of a benefit usually tend to encourage scummy or tedious behaviour and/or grinding. This is especially true for roguelikes because in them the game ends when you lose your character and you really try to prevent that from happening. [/off topic discussion]

[Mankeli]

Back to the topic: I think Plak has some very interesting ideas. The way I see it, there are at least three different purposes for point floating: 1) You want to keep your options open/use the points in the talents you are going to use next or sometime in the near future, 2) you want to experiment what different talents actually do and 3) you want to float points in inferior talents before you can open up/ meet the requirements of a new talent which is better and then stop using those inferior talents permanently

I think point number one is a really bad thing because you basically can do this all the time and hence it's tedious. I like Plak's suggestion about the cooldowns on talents you improve very much although you could still point juggle constantly in-between fights which is not good.

Point number two is more complicated. Doctornull's idea of complete shuffling has potential, but as I pointed out, escaping to world map is also a possibility. My own modification about gaining experience to be able to reskill has the same problem although maybe it would be possible to not get exp from patrols etc. for this. Still, you could always go get some experience in other branch so my solution brings its own problems and I'm not convinced that it's the best way to go. However, this kind of approach would players actually see, what each skill does at different skill levels.

In another thread, I have already proposed a system where you could assign "virtual skill points" to see what each skill would do if it was unlocked at each skill level without being able to actually use the talent. I think this would be a better solution to the second problem. I would like to see this kind of system implemented and I feel it would reduce the need for spoilers to to know how talents actually scale with points. "Is that last talent in a locked tree good at 5/5? I don't know, better go read some spoilers."

Point number three: Arcane archmages don't get manathrust until level 4, arcane blades may be better played as casters in the very early game floating points in different ranged talents etc.. If you couldn't point juggle at all, you would be forced to take that lighting beam for the rest of the game on an aether archmage which I don't like. So juggling in some form should probably stay. Alternatively, the requirements for talents like manathrust could be made less strict: make it available at level 1, lesser mana costs. This would require a pretty big effort however, because there are many early game talents that you wan't to get rid of later on specific builds and there would be obvious balance concerns too if you'd be able to get some good talents earlier.

However, point juggling after every level up is tedious. So I propose that other than being able to remove the last four points you have invested in, you could "mark" four/three skill/generic points in any skills which you could take out later. That way, you wouldn't have to juggle points after every level up. You probably shouldn't be able to invest in next talents in the tree that you have "marked" talents on, for obvious reasons.

Tl;dr my proposal is:

1) Force cooldowns to talents you invest more points in like Plak suggested. This will help solving the in-combat talent point juggling but not the juggling in-between fights.

2) Introduce a virtual skillpoint system to help players actually know what talents will do if they were to invest in them. Lessens the need for spoilers, lessens the need for enabling the reskilling of all points.

3) Make it so that you can “mark” which 4/3 skill/generic talent points you want for removal. Lessens the need to juggle after level ups.


This solution is far from perfect but it would help address the concerns presented in this thread. I’m not closing the door on complete respeccing of all talent points either but it has its own issues with tediousness.

[supermini]

You seem to be up in arms about it for philosophical reasons. I doubt you ever actually reshuffled points. Which is why this discussion is a complete waste of time.

I reshuffle points in pretty much every game I play. I believe these kind of "do you even" arguments have their own meme series too which speak volumes about the quality of your argument. This discussion is certainly a waste of time if you continue to make some bogus claims about player habits you have no clue of and which are clearly not based on any evidence.

I wouldn't think anyone in their right mind would even do that on normal, because it's tedious and completely unnecessary.

There is no downside in using arcane eye. You can use it pretty much whenever it's not on cooldown. It takes no turn to cast and needs only little mana which regenerates. Hence, the optimal way to play when not in combat is to cast arcane eye, take one step, restore your mana, cast it again, take one step, rinse and repeat. Nobody probably plays it this way but this is how the game encourages you to play. The problem is, you really don't know if that potentially one-shotting rare/random purple is right around the corner without scouting. If you don't see how this is can be tedious then I really don't know what to say.

I don't understand why you would want to arcane eye every step. I'm pretty sure checking corners if you're worried of walking into them is good enough. I mean, if you want to do this every step, sure...But it's not the problem with the game or the scouting talents.

We can also think of a less extreme example that actually has happened to me many times: trying to find out where Vor is in Vor:3. It can easily take dozen or more Arcane eye castings if you are unlucky (in terms of time spend scouting) to find him if he is hiding in a room. This means that the scouting, rather than actually fighting can take up most of my time in Vor:3. It also means that in these unlucky encounters I spend most of my time in Vor:3 doing something that has 0 % challenge/tactics and 0 % danger for my character. But you do want to find out where he is so you can prepare for his potentially one-shotting meteor strike infused initial attack. I don't call mashing rest button while waiting for arcane eye come out of cooldown tactis, I call it boring.

By the time you get to Vor you should have found at least one piece of equipment that lets you use track, either in shop or from a drop. It's way less tedious to use than arcane eye. There will also be wands of clairvoyance which perform the same function in 1.2.

If you can't see how this can be pretty tedious then I urge you to think about it for a while before dismissing this. You can also check out the reasoning why activable scouting talents where removed in some other games, like DCSS. To make it even easier: In a nutshell: talents, skills, abilities etc, that are mostly used while not in combat and/or which doesn't have any real cost in-game but offer some kind of a benefit usually tend to encourage scummy or tedious behaviour and/or grinding. This is especially true for roguelikes because in them the game ends when you lose your character and you really try to prevent that from happening. [/off topic discussion]

DCSS doing it that way isn't an endorsement.