Preventing over the top skill point juggling

[Davion Fuxa]

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

@darkgod - I'm not sure if this is actually premise behind marketing respecs is a terrible idea or a good idea.

@thread - In regards to managing skill point juggling, it might just be a better thought to revisit the idea I had about splitting the game into parts (or chapters, or acts, or whatever) and just applying Doctornull's idea with a full respecs into an alternate form of just full character creation at a later part of the game. This completing kills any need to grind the character to the point of the game where your character would start, and can let players play the character builds they desire.

[Suslik]

This completing kills any

replayability

[Doctornull]

@thread - In regards to managing skill point juggling, it might just be a better thought to revisit the idea I had about splitting the game into parts (or chapters, or acts, or whatever) and just applying Doctornull's idea with a full respecs into an alternate form of just full character creation at a later part of the game. This completing kills any need to grind the character to the point of the game where your character would start, and can let players play the character builds they desire.

That's a really interesting idea.

As someone who is very interested in balancing my new classes and talents and such, I'm currently using Infinite Farportal to jump levels and test "harder" stuff, but Farportal realms are ... shall we say, they can vary.

Being able to jump to act 2 or 3 or even 4 in the main campaign would be great for testing new content, and for testing concept builds (another thing I enjoy).

Putting a free re-spec at those isolated points sounds like a fine compromise, and allows reasonably easy experimentation.

[Davion Fuxa]

@Susliks - While it is true my idea kills some replayability, it doesn't kill the type of replayability that really matters - starting a new and distinctly different character from previous experience to play the game with. It just kills the need to suffer through the game with a difficult build that gets stronger later - by being able to skip part or all of the game where that character would suffer.

@Doctornull - I'm not specifically sure how the game would be broken down. The discussion in my thread had many ideas revolving around the concept:

-From what I originally posted to the opening of the thread of just portioning the current game into two distinct parts - Up to the Master and Pursuit of the Staff.

-The topic continued with evouga's redesign the game into specific Acts - sort of like Diablo; or Housepet's distinct sections idea. The purpose here would be to rebalance of the game for completion of the current quest objective your character was pursuing; potentially this could include a bit more focus on the broad in game lore taking shape earlier in the game and some areas in the game (or perhaps all areas not associated with the current part of the game you are on) wouldn't even be accessible until reach the next act, chapter, or section of the game if you hadn't completed the objective for the current part of the game you were on.

In regards to respec or starting of a character outside of what is normally done:

Originally I was suggesting that at the start of each part of the game you could have the option of being able to make a character (potentially of the same race and class of a previous character that had made or just an entirely new character) with the disadvantage of losing out on potential rewards players might have got up to that point in the game with that past character since they are distinctly making a new character to play with starting at the point further in the game then rather at the beginning.

Additionally, the start of each part of the game could just be a checkpoint for a character that made it that far into the game - which wouldn't really help you in having to keep replaying over and over to get your hard to build character through the early part of the game, but would prevent you from having to replay from the beginning if you made it through the first part or second part or whatever with that character.

In any case, what I was going for was to keeping with the theme of an adventurer that slowly accrues experience from the point of where his adventure starts and makes choices depending on what experience he will learn (or not learn) as he progresses in his journey; the difference would be that the player had a choice in where the character would start in the adventurer and wouldn't necessarily be the main actor all the way through it.

[RaginCajun]

Not sure if I want to jump in on this extremely heated debate. But I might have a solution that slightly pleases both sides. Without crushing replayability. There IS a training room in the game. I propose that you can take as many skill points as you've saved. Go into the training room and allocate those points and see what your damage is like. Then when you leave it resets those points you allocated back to what they were before. You won't be able to cheat in the game by using multiple different level 5 skills with only 4 skill points. You also as a more casual player won't be cheated out of trying multiple skills variable to your level.

I'm a level 10mage. I have 1 cat point. 3skill points. and 2 generics.
Go into training room.
Get Wildfire and try out the first skill.
Decide I like wildfire.
Leave training room and points get reset
Then i permanently allocate to wildfire and the first skill.

Later in the game I'm now level 25 with 5extra skill points.
I try out multiple tier 4 spells in training room.
Decide I like the synergy of one of them with my current build.
Exit and allocate them them permanently.

Hope this helps your discussion a bit.

Edit: As a side note. This isn't a fix for harder difficulty balancing. I propose to stop that discussion entirely as that has nothing to do with this thread honestly. Make a new thread about difficulty balancing. This fixes this issue so that we can get back to game balancing.

Go here for game balancing:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=41325

[HousePet]

How about just starting the player at level 10?

[Sooty]

I just want to say I love Tome4, but when I discovered skill point juggling I was so compelled to use it that the game started becoming very tedious and unfun. It took a conscious effort to NOT use it after realizing it was there. Even when I promised myself I'd only use it for more difficult encounters it just kind of ate away at my experience of the game.

I had more fun before I discovered this 'feature'.

[supermini]

I just want to say I love Tome4, but when I discovered skill point juggling I was so compelled to use it that the game started becoming very tedious and unfun. It took a conscious effort to NOT use it after realizing it was there. Even when I promised myself I'd only use it for more difficult encounters it just kind of ate away at my experience of the game.

I had more fun before I discovered this 'feature'.

After cooling down, reading through the thread once again - and especially Sooty's post - I'll concede that I was only looking at this from my own perspective and didn't really see how much this can spoil your enjoyment of the game. So yeah, I was wrong.

In any case, I apologize for the parts of the discussion where I was being a jerk.

[darkgod]

How would that work: only allow respecs of the last points (as now) when in town and for a gold cost (100ish ? )

[Suslik]

Sure but only when the overall nm+ difficulty is tweaked enough. I mean NPC rare summoners, doomed's, trollmire melee starts and so on. After that 100g for last 5 points seems fine.

[edge2054]

Sure but only when the overall nm+ difficulty is tweaked enough. I mean NPC rare summoners, doomed's, trollmire melee starts and so on. After that 100g for last 5 points seems fine.

I read in another thread that NM and Insane have been retuned for 1.2. Not saying it's at it's final polished state by any means. But removing obvious crutches may make it easier to balance.

Either way I don't see darkgod's idea making it in until 1.3.

[Sooty]

Thanks for the understanding supermini! I'm glad to have helped with my perspective.

I check back to the website ever so often hoping for a new version because I love the game so much (even though I don't play it due to the above-mentioned feeling of tedium). It feels like magic that 1.2 releases the moment I leave a comment on the forums

Maybe I shall finally have a victor this version *purses lips*

[Suslik]

Sure but only when the overall nm+ difficulty is tweaked enough. I mean NPC rare summoners, doomed's, trollmire melee starts and so on. After that 100g for last 5 points seems fine.

I read in another thread that NM and Insane have been retuned for 1.2. Not saying it's at it's final polished state by any means. But removing obvious crutches may make it easier to balance.

Either way I don't see darkgod's idea making it in until 1.3.

I'm talking only about 1.2.0rc in this thread. While nm+ start did become more doable in this version, it's still way too unfair for some classes(while ok for most others).

[Davion Fuxa]

How would that work: only allow respecs of the last points (as now) when in town and for a gold cost (100ish ? )

I won't comment on the exact gold cost should probably be as I don't know how much of it might be considered a feasible amount - however on Normal I seem to earn at least 9k gold before entering High Peak, which would mean with a respec of 100 gold cost that I could feasibly at least respec safely 10 times while still failing repeatedly a few times in the Ring of Blood, grabbing items from stores, getting category training, etc; and I'll still probably have enough gold to acquire 2 randarts at the end of the game from the Last Hope Merchant (less if a Dwarf, or none if siding with the Assassin Lord - in which case the player will have oodles of money).

Whether you get the respec in town or in a dungeon (doesn't really matter, players will go the distance for it), the question is if 100 gold is high enough to discourage respecs. The only sure thing I can note is that it will help discourage Arcane Blade players from juggling points in Flame.

One other thing to throw in is how many points back are we talking about as well - players get a lot of talent points to throw around, maybe the last points should be increased to a value of 7 or 8 or higher?

********

To throw it out there, I also had some passing thoughts on some replacements to the talent refund system. One idea involved giving characters an active respec of an entire category of their choosing as a reward for completing a quest later in the game. This could be a useful way of letting Arcane Blades have their Flame points later in the game or just letting player fully test out a category be able to reclaim spent talent points within that category to redistribute talents points out of talents he felt he didn't desire on his character.

This could be limited to a one time thing, maybe a popup quest like 'The Sect of Kryl-Feijan' or 'Trapped' that could appear; it could be something you could always have access too - say talk to the Elder for the first time and he gives you it as a reward.

[grobblewobble]

How would that work: only allow respecs of the last points (as now) when in town and for a gold cost (100ish ? )

This would work very well, imho. Nice to have another gold sink, too.