Swapping equipment to invest in talents - fun? intended?

[bricks]

I can't say I like this mechanic, though stat requirement on items get pretty damn high. I just really don't like the idea of holding on to every piece of +a-lot-of-one-stat equipment so I can invest points in, say, wild gift/harmony. Some of the crazier builds are made even more difficult to get running because of the stat requirements. I'd rather there be no hard limits on equipment or talents, and just make stat-based scaling more important across the board. But that is a rather large change, something that I'm not altogether comfortable with suggesting. What do yall think?

[Grey]

I think equipment shouldn't count for talent investments, as it encourages an insidious sort of meta-gaming. Having it links to the "base" stat is unfair though, since that doesn't include things like the undead racial trees or escort rewards which *should* count.

There is perhaps something to be said for not having any stat requirements and only going off level (perhaps with the level requirements increased to every 5 levels). However it's not good for the passives, which generally only scale with talent level.

[bricks]

Ah, I forgot about the problem with passives.

If stat requirements were switched respect only base values, perhaps all item and talent stat requirements could be reduced by one-half or one-third (not thinking too heavily about these numbers).

[eronarn]

The problem isn't really swapping equipment to raise talents - it's being able to still use talents after you take your equipment off. A similar problem exists with equipping items to let you equip other items.

[snoop]

There's already code for turning off talents if the right equipment is not in use, couldn't similar code work in connection with stats, so that if your stat goes down the talent gets greyed out?

[Postman]

I've always assumed it's an intended behavior. It is de facto MMORPG standard and make interesting strategic minigame.
Also it make all the weight-reducing equipment like lightweight amulet to be somehow useful(It's usefulness was severely reduced with transmogrification chest)

[edge2054]

I kinda like Grey's idea of removing stat requirements.

To go a step further I wouldn't mind if advanced trees didn't kick in until level 20. This would open up top tier talents at level 15 for base trees and 35 for advanced trees which would give the game a much more staggered sense of progression rather then the current method which generally leaves me feeling like my character is just filling in the holes by level 20 rather then still unlocking cool new stuff to play with.

I'm going to post this in ideas and bug Darkgod about it if I see him tomorrow.

[marvalis]

The problem isn't really swapping equipment to raise talents - it's being able to still use talents after you take your equipment off. A similar problem exists with equipping items to let you equip other items.

If we are going to fix this, then equiping any items should take into account the stats on that item:

Sword +5 STR, require 26 STR
Player has 23 STR
=> should be able to equip the sword since it will raise his STR above 26 to 28.

On my bow archer I had to put two points in cunning to get infravision, and I thought that was rather good balance. But this is only one rare example, in most other cases I couldn't care less about stat requirements.

While we want to preserve the sense of progression past level 20, we should also make sure that in the first ~10 minutes of gameplay the player has all the tools typically available for his class. This is a general design principle, and there is no reason why we can't have both when talents are designed with this in mind.

[Aquillion]

I kinda like Grey's idea of removing stat requirements.

To go a step further I wouldn't mind if advanced trees didn't kick in until level 20. This would open up top tier talents at level 15 for base trees and 35 for advanced trees which would give the game a much more staggered sense of progression rather then the current method which generally leaves me feeling like my character is just filling in the holes by level 20 rather then still unlocking cool new stuff to play with.

Maybe. But here's the other side of that issue:

Giving players all their talents relatively early on ensures that they have enough time to play with them... and that you don't have to be an incredible, dedicated player to get to the late game where you can use all your stuff -- let's be honest, relatively few players manage to spend much time in the Far East. If you make talents that you're only likely to unlock by level 35, that means that many people are not going to get much time, if any, to play around with them.

I dislike that. To me, the game becomes a lot more fun once I have all my talents. I would especially hate to have Supercharge Golem moved any later in the Alchemist progression, since it drastically changes how the class plays (in a way that makes it more fun, IMHO -- if anything, it should maybe be a bit earlier.) But every class has high-tier talents that I'd like to have a chance to learn and play around with by the time I'm doing Dreadfall -- I don't want to have to dedicate the time to an extended game just to use all my stuff.

I don't think it's a good thing to have talents that are only available to players who can beat or nearly-beat the game. Casual players should get a lot to play around with, too.

Also, I think that it's good that the nature of your progression changes at higher levels. It keeps the game from growing repetitive and encourages players to change the way they think about their character as they go up in level. I would hate to have a constant progression, really, because that would encourage players to just steadily buy new talents as they unlock in one relatively-obvious line -- having them go back to full in gaps or advance talents they've found they were using a lot a bit further feels more interesting to me.

Basically, I see the fact that most classes put together their basic build by Dreadfall and then refine it for the rest of the game rather than adding dramatic new capabilities as a feature, rather than as a bug. It's important that most players get a chance to have that basic build, and that they then get the chance to actually use it, rather than only completing it late in the game.

[shooth]

Preserve the eq swapping, it makes it fun to collect eq. The extra reach that it gives you is pretty small, and diminishes to almost nothing as you gain stats.

[jotwebe]

I'm in the "no equipment bonuses for leveling" camp. It's a lot of micro for a not very deep strategic minigame (basically: "keep +con items in a stack somewhere").

Preserve the eq swapping, it makes it fun to collect eq. The extra reach that it gives you is pretty small, and diminishes to almost nothing as you gain stats.

I find the extra reach can be pretty big when you use it for stats you're not going to raise all that high. And I have to fight my inner packrat hard enough without the extra encouragement from +stat items. YMMV of course, but that's my take on the issue...

[Avianpilot]

I like the equipment swapping for talent investment, but I don't have any good logical reasons why it should stay or go. It's just something that I find fun and would miss if it no longer applied.

[Dekar]

Im not a fan of gathering otherweise useless items and switching 5 pieces of equipment twice everytime I want to spend a skillpoint.

I would rather want to see more balanced requirements, like antimagic needing less than the usual amount of will, so characters with 2 primary stats that are not con/will have a fair chance to pick it up.

[kazak 2]

Could just split the difference on Grey and Edge's idea and remove the stat requirements for generic trees only. Stat requirements generally shouldn't be a problem on class trees, but can be a huge impediment on generics and that is probably where most of the equipment swapping comes in.

[Sirrocco]

Part of the thing here, though, is that stat requirements for generics aren't just a balancing thing for generics. They're a balancing thing for stat points. One of the reasons that Con is cool is that it unlocks a major survivability skill. Having said that, I don't think it would be unreasonable to reduce the stat requirements for certain generics, especially if it coincided with making the requirements gear-independent. On the one side, you wouldn't be able to accumulate gear to just cheese the stat requirement. On the other side, the stat requirement itself would be more manageable, so you wouldn't really have to.

Alternately, at least with Thick Skin, just get rid of it altogether, and fold the effects into the benefits of raising con. Burning a category point to unlock an otherwise useless tree because you have one skill that you'd like to access just feels wrong.