Preventing over the top skill point juggling

[supermini]

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.

The virtual skill point system is creating something that's less easy to understand for new players to solve a problem that didn't exist in the first place - except in the heads of the people who can't control themselves when it comes to point juggling, it seems.

1) just takes out combat juggling but doesn't do anything to fix the problems that will arise from its absence. We're yet to see how this plays out on the new insane. It might be unnecessary, who knows.

In any case, I'm pretty sure there's an addon that disables it already.

[grayswandir]

Hm, now I'm liking the world map idea less. Say you become convinced that you need to respec your talents on dreadfell 7 - you'll have to warp out, clear your talents, and then travel through 7 floors, taking forever. How about you can do it at any time but you get a massive debuff, like a 50 turn uncurable stun instead?

For stuff like manathrust, a simple solution would be to allow you to freely move points up a tree. That way you're not afraid to invest in a tree early on if you know you're going to use the t3/t4 talents a lot later.

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.

I don't think anybody's arguing that it's not an early/mid game tradeoff. We all get that. (Well, I do at least.) It's not that it doesn't exist, it's that it shouldn't.

[Plak]

No matter what the restriction is, if full respec is allowed with no cost other than time it *will* become yet another tedious crutch for higher difficulties, no doubt about it.

Another issue with unlimited full respec is that I don't think an archmage trained in pyromancy should be able to suddenly forget everything he knows about fire spells, and instead start casting lightning just because he realized Daikara was erupting and he'd have to fight a bunch of fire drakes. It doesn't make sense flavor-wise, and it all but completely negates the uniqueness of each individual character gameplay-wise (save for race, escorts and cat points).

What do you think of adding one in-universe way of respecing your character, one time only per playthrough? In addition to putting talents on cooldown when invested in, it really does seem like the best option to me. We would get all the benefits of allowing niche late-game builds and negating early/late game tradeoff nonsense, but without introducing more tediousness, affecting the overall balance of the game or negating the uniqueness of individual builds. Saving Melinda could grant players a Potion of Amnesia or Whatever (causing the PC to unlearn every unlearnable class and generic talent), finally giving that quest an appropriately unique and valuable reward.

[Doctornull]

Hm, now I'm liking the world map idea less. Say you become convinced that you need to respec your talents on dreadfell 7 - you'll have to warp out, clear your talents, and then travel through 7 floors, taking forever. How about you can do it at any time but you get a massive debuff, like a 50 turn uncurable stun instead?

Or maybe allow it on any cleared floor (anywhere that there is no timer and there are no enemy units, so any friendly town or any cleared dungeon level). Basically, when you have the freedom to rest for an unlimited number of turns, then you can re-spec because you could take two years of game time to train rigorously or unlearn your bad habits or whatever.

This "cleared level" rather than world map might also work better in the ID, since that has no world map.

Your 50-turn stun is sort of the same idea, because it's a punishment which translates into "don't use this unless you are SURE you have 50 turns to spare"; my idea takes away the ability for a human to screw up that judgement, in that it allows you to re-spec only when the GAME is sure you have 50+ turns to spare.

No matter what the restriction is, if full respec is allowed with no cost other than time it *will* become yet another tedious crutch for higher difficulties, no doubt about it.

Current limited re-spec, by which I mean the very common practice of "floating talent points", is more tedious, because you have to remember to do it every single level.

My proposed full re-spec removes that specific tedium, and removes the tedium of unlimited in-combat re-spec, while allowing the player to experiment and correct mistakes.

Sure, you can spend some time on a re-spec before you enter a new level ... just like you can do right now, already. That's not new.

[Suslik]

oh god my opinion about the community was so much better before i started the thread. some people claim that since you can abuse drowning townsfolk anyway, skill point reallocation abuse should be ignored altogether. instead of solving the root problem that forces people to use abusing strategies AND fix abusing strategies themselves, people prefer do nothing because fixing only one of those 2 is apparently not going to do any good. some people do not understand that locked categories with similar functionality should be more powerful than those initially unlocked. some people propose extremely narrow-minded solutions that will clearly add way more options of tedious abusal than they solve(namely free full respecs in any way).

i'm just happy that none of those proposals are gonna make it into the game until dg approves them and apparently he won't approve most of these.

[Suslik]

What do you think of adding one in-universe way of respecing your character, one time only per playthrough?

It comes to personal preferences whether people take build planning seriously and making it properly a challenge. With options that are unlocked gradually being the part of it(unlocked trees, higher skill tiers). Apparently even one-time respec will ruin the challenge for these players.

Others do not care about strategical planning and gradual building challenges. They want to be able to correct any mistakes in their builds or try more than 1 build in 1 playthrough.

Apparently those two groups will never come to a consensus regarding any full-respec option.

I like how the problem is solved in path of exile for example. You can buy respec points for in-game currency that's affordable but you're very unlikely to have enough of currency to respec all skills. If you did a minor mistake, pay and correct it. If you really want it badly, pay everything you have and rebuild your character but ffs, why should be making mistakes free?

[darkgod]

Ohh I should sell full respecs for 1 voratun coin ! :>

[edge2054]

In my opinion full respecs should only exist with an ingame reason. An artifact potion Zemmykis gives you after There and Back that lets you forget your talents would be an example of this.

As someone else mentioned (I apologize I haven't been keeping track of who said what), full respecs in other games break down game immersion.

*edit* I was writing this when Darkgod made his post, it wasn't in response to it

[Suslik]

it looks like there's only one point everyone agrees - earlygame is extremely difficult for some classes(generally melee ones) on higher difficulties and that forces to use abuses like drowning townsfolk and over-the-top skill point juggling and it forces immense grinding for good start items/rares. but instead removing skill point juggling and drowning abuse maybe fix BOTH these abuses and the root problem? maybe make all townsfolk waterbreath, prevent skill point abuse(add cooldown after investing points), AND make earlygame a little easier for melees? like give +50 hp on lvl1 or some not-so-shitty equipment?

[supermini]

people prefer do nothing because fixing only one of those 2 is apparently not going to do any good

A lot of effort went into solving the root problem (high difficulty balance) for 1.2 and testing it, long before you even started the thread. Shibari has been at it for quite some time. So it's not that nothing is done, it's just not being solved from the tail end.

I don't think from testing that it's quite at the point where you can scrap all the crutches, or that there's any significant rush in doing so. Some of it (drowning Myssil) was taken out.

[supermini]

it looks like there's only one point everyone agrees - earlygame is extremely difficult for some classes(generally melee ones) on higher difficulties and that forces to use abuses like drowning townsfolk and over-the-top skill point juggling and it forces immense grinding for good start items/rares. but instead removing skill point juggling and drowning abuse maybe fix BOTH these abuses and the root problem? maybe make all townsfolk waterbreath, prevent skill point abuse(add cooldown after investing points), AND make earlygame a little easier for melees? like give +50 hp on lvl1 or some not-so-shitty equipment?

If you think this is something that can be solved with just a few simple tweaks, you are very much mistaken.

[Suslik]

don't act like you're talking to a person who never played the game. i may be not most skilled person in the universe but during the last few years i did create about 400 or so characters with half of them on nightmare/roguelike and half of them went well past level 20. and i did notice melee starting buff in 1.2.0 i just still think we need to buff it more. and i do think that adding +50 hp at level 1 to rogue/berserker, use actually all 3 infusion slots(movement, shielding or healing should do) and maybe fixed egoes on starting gear that are actually better than nothing will fix the problem of extreme start altogether without affecting anything even midgame and so that we can finally forbid these tedious clutches like gear grinding, skill point abuse and drowning.

[Plak]

Part of why I suggested making the one-time full respec a reward for saving Melinda is that it *is* a challenge in itself. Full respec has uses beyond simply fixing mistakes, it allows people to use niche builds while trading a tedious early-game grind and lots of cheesy point floating for a single optional challenge, with the tangible in-universe reward of allowing your character to unlearn every talent.

As for the issue of early game in higher difficulties, there is a pretty simple fix: as it is in 1.2, zone level in Insane is 150% + 6. The flat bonus only has a significant impact on the early game (and I'm fairly certain that's its purpose), so if said early game is too difficult, why not just lower it to a more sane bonus? It won't solve everything and there will still remain the same imbalance between melee and caster starts, but it should already go a long way in making early game more manageable.

[supermini]

don't act like you're talking to a person who never played the game. i may be not most skilled person in the universe but i did create about 400 or so characters with half of them on nightmare/roguelike and half of them went well past level 20. and i did notice melee starting buff in 1.2.0 i just still think we need to buff it more. and i do think that adding +50 hp at level 1 to rogue/berserker, use actually all 3 infusion slots(movement or shielding infusion should do) and maybe fixed egoes on starting gear that are actually better than nothing will fix the problem of extreme start without affecting anything even midgame.

Don't throw tantrums for no reason.

You want to add 50 hp to just rogue and berserker? That's called an ugly and inelegant solution. Plus, it doesn't actually solve anything. If you don't believe me, make a level 1 rogue on insane in the test version, don't drown anything, don't use a wand of conjuration/mindblast torque as a crutch, give yourself a +hp item, movement and shielding infusions via console and see how many runs it will take you to get through the t1s.

I don't claim to be on the level of players who clear insane, but those types of exercises (don't drown anything, don't buy a torque/wand) ended up in frustration.

[Suslik]

Part of why I suggested making the one-time full respec a reward for saving Melinda is that it *is* a challenge in itself. Full respec has uses beyond simply fixing mistakes, it allows people to use niche builds while trading a tedious early-game grind and lots of cheesy point floating for a single optional challenge, with the tangible in-universe reward of allowing your character to unlearn every talent.

As for the issue of early game in higher difficulties, there is a pretty simple fix: as it is in 1.2, zone level in Insane is 150% + 6. The flat bonus only has a significant impact on the early game (and I'm fairly certain that's its purpose), so if said early game is too difficult, why not just lower it to a more sane bonus? It won't solve everything and there will still remain the same imbalance between melee and caster starts, but it should already go a long way in making early game more manageable.

while your desire to allow 1-time full respecs is understandable i don't think i'm a huge fan of it because reasons that were told earlier: abusing opposite builds(tri beam archmage->arcane+wildfire, caster arcane blade->melee), breaking immersion and being completely useless for those who planned everything from the beginning and built their characters right from the first try. but that would be great if you can get EITHER full respec or something else if you don't need it. artifact or some tree mastery to actually reward strategy building.

as for 150%+6 nerfing that won't do. some classes are already feeling great with this scaling. problem is some classes don't and apparently they're what has to be fixed, not overall difficulty which will make stronger classes boring.