Are Passive Skills Boring?

[donkatsu]

Combat Styles could be so much more interesting. You could have stuff like:

Warden Style: +Daggers, +Longswords and +Bows (it ignores the existence of axes and maces). It gives you higher Accuracy, Defense and Armor Hardiness against foes with a higher global speed.

Thug Style: +Daggers and +Unarmed, bonus Accuracy, Physpower and APR vs. confused or stunned foes.

Gladiatorial Style: +Axes, Maces, Swords, Tridents and Unarmed. When you score a crit, showboat and demoralize nearby enemies (a Fear effect).

Those could even sit alongside a couple of more boring options (like my relatively boring "Agile Mastery").

This sounds awesome. +1.

[Red]

*cough cough there's a different thread specifically about Combat Training and Combat Veteran, of which you are currently talking about and should probably be put there cough*

That aside, I'd be interested in seeing a bit more with the bonus accuracy bits of weapons. The way that each kind of weapon gains bonuses against your foe depnding on your accuracy defense difference seems like a great place to start to make different weapons feel, well, different.

Though as I mentioned at the start, there's another thread specifically for that tree (and Combat Veteran), so I'd really appreciate it if anyone had any other skills to bring up. If not, might as well close the thread down and set up shop over in that thread.

[Knaight]

Personally, I like passive skills. They provide an interesting way to differentiate characters, particularly before the end game. I've seen strategies that went really heavy on them - my brother made a defensive bulwark where the entire point was passive skills (largely combat veteran), lots of shield defense, and being basically unkillable. Sure, I'd have found it incredibly boring (there was an 800 round slogfest against Belfast and the fight with the clone featured neither being able to knock the other below 85% health), but it was a viable strategy that was enjoyed. I've also seen and used glass cannon builds with minimal passives. Then there's the matter of stat splitting for when passives are reached.

[Atarlost]

but not having played even close to all the classes yet, I'm not aware what many of the skills might be.

Ah, I see.

Well, how about you go play the game, and then we can talk when you've got an educated opinion?

You are demanding that Red lose his valuable perspective as a new player before you listen to him. That is short sighted and counterproductive.

Game design based solely on the input of grognards will kill the game. New players are life. Do not belittle them. The experience of someone who has not yet unlocked, say, marauder, is just as relevant to bulwarks as someone who has unlocked everything and if he actually plays bulwarks is more relevant than the experience of someone who has unlocked everything, but never plays melee builds.

[Doctornull]

You are demanding that Red lose his valuable perspective as a new player before you listen to him. That is short sighted and counterproductive.

Well, I'm asking that he actually experience all of it before making sweeping generalizations about all of it, yeah.

If he wants to discuss something smaller in scope -- like the bits that he's actually seen -- then I'm going to accord his opinions a bit more weight.

New players are life. Do not belittle them.

Well, any mockery on my part isn't because he's a new player.

It's more because I said, "Combat Veteran and Thick Skin are boring", and he decided that that meant "passive skills are boring", and he made this thread to try to show me how wrong I was.

The idea that that one tree plus one talent == "passive skills" is mock-worthy.

[Red]

Simple, non-complicated can be interesting.

Passive talent-taxes though? Those are boring.

The examples so far in this thread have been: Combat Veteran (the first three), and Thick Skin. Does that help you understand?

Then please better define a boring skill. What I saw was you considered completely passive stat buffs boring-which is exactly what basically all of the Combat Training tree is.

Then please better define a boring skill.

If you're responding to me, then the talents under discussion are the Combat Veteran tree and Thick Skin.

Is that clear enough?

This is why I started the thread. You refused to talk about any other passive skills, which is reasonable. The quotes are from the Combat Veteran and Thick Skin thread, so conversation should stay about CV and TS. However, you implied that you, at least, thought there were other passive skills that fall under the list. While I personally enjoy passive skills, I wanted to know who else shared your opinion, whether or not change is needed, etc. etc.

In essence, I started this thread because I want all the ideas we the players have to be down in text. Anything on here is something Darkgod can see and possibly use to make the game better. Anything someone thinks and doesn't put down here won't be used, since he'll never even know it existed.

I want this game to be even better than it already is. So whether I'm right or wrong, in the majority or in the minority, I want people talking about this game and how to make it better.

[anathema]

personally i find passives like + to saves, resistances, armor, damage and so on a bit dull, and often a matter of talent point taxes, as doctornull put it. That said, there are plenty of techinally passive skills, that are perfectly interesting to me, and even some that fall into the "simple/boring" category, that are still fun to me.
One example would be indiscernible anatomy for oozemancer, it has passive crit reduction, and status resistances, pretty lame, but still interesting from a rp perspective.

I dont like the thick skin and combat masteries, id rather see something along the lines of what armor training does, with each talent level giving access to a new type of item or something, like, at 1 point you can use the weapon type, 3 points you can dual wield, 5 points you ignore certain penalties, etc..

[Red]

The main trick is removing them without breaking the game as it stands now. Most weapon using classes rely heavily on those skills, so removing them without compensation would be crippling, and compensating without cost would give them a ridiculous amount of extra generics. However, there is a thread that is entirely about those specific skills, so you should probably post your thoughts about them there.

[PurpleXVI]

Passive skills can be interesting and can put a twist on your strategies by altering your attacks and offenses, it's not that they're bad or boring in themselves, it's simply that they need to be weighed evenly with active skills(most sustains do not count as active skills, I'd note). Without enough varied, and somewhat specialized, active skills, you're just spamming the same two or three things over and over and all that's left is positioning and gear choices.

[Candesce]

Without enough varied, and somewhat specialized, active skills, you're just spamming the same two or three things over and over and all that's left is positioning and gear choices.

Let me emphasize this: Active skills can be just as boring - or more boring - than passive ones.

What's the difference between cycling between the same three beams every turn and just firing arrows beefed up by passives?

The question is how the skills alter how you approach tactical situations, and how they make you think to get the most out of them.

Passive or active is irrelevant compared to that.

[Delmuir]

I like passive skills when they have active effects like the Cursed Gloom effects. When said effect triggers, it's like winning a mini-lottery.

Sometimes, the effect is triggered by an enemy action and it's akin to a warning or update in the middle of a fight.

Admittedly, there are some bad passive effects but I like passives as a general rule. I especially like them when they trigger or combo with an active or sustain. I like layered effects.

[PurpleXVI]

Without enough varied, and somewhat specialized, active skills, you're just spamming the same two or three things over and over and all that's left is positioning and gear choices.

Let me emphasize this: Active skills can be just as boring - or more boring - than passive ones.

What's the difference between cycling between the same three beams every turn and just firing arrows beefed up by passives?

The question is how the skills alter how you approach tactical situations, and how they make you think to get the most out of them.

Passive or active is irrelevant compared to that.

Right, but I find this is often because a class is either set up for one specific combo/order of attacks, because a couple of skills are generalized enough and have low enough cooldowns to handle everything, or because you really only have those three or so active skills. Without wanting to make all classes too similar...

The first thing is attack skills with different patterns and effects, there should be at least a couple of skills that are AoE or multi-target, simply to make them more appealing, if expensive, in big fight situations, and there should be at least a couple of skills that focus more on status effects than raw damage.

Second thing is support skills, either sustains that you actually don't run all the time(I feel like a lot of sustains suffer from the fact that either they're cheap enough to run all the time, or their boosts are minor enough that since they're not instant-activates, but actually take a turn, it never feels worth it to flick on in the heat of the fight, and not all classes have the scouting skills necessary to know whether they should flick them on before the fight...), which you get benefits from flicking off, or just general healing/shielding skills. The choice between using something defensive and something offensive can be all it takes to add some tension to a fight, sometimes.

And thirdly, some mobility skills, for when you need to run or reposition.

Some classes really lack the second and third of those, which means all they've got is attacks, and for a lot of classes, all their attacks are single-target melee attacks half of which have a chance to stun/bleed, and nothing else. At least, that's how it feels to me.

[Red]

For mobility, you can look to equipment. Torques of pyschoportation, runes of teleportation, movement infusions, items that let you use disengage... If you can't manuever around enough, you either aren't trying hard enough to or have had truly, truly horrendous luck with your drops and shop items.

For defense... Yeah, some classes lack.

[Atarlost]

I very much prefer defenses to be passive or at least sustained. Having to continually juggle shields to not die is more stressful than fun.

Having a few genuinely useful actives and most skills as passives is also easier on the UI. Especially when any sustain that has a good reason to not be a passive also takes up interface space.

[PurpleXVI]

For mobility, you can look to equipment. Torques of pyschoportation, runes of teleportation, movement infusions, items that let you use disengage... If you can't manuever around enough, you either aren't trying hard enough to or have had truly, truly horrendous luck with your drops and shop items.

For defense... Yeah, some classes lack.

Thing is, "you can look to equipment" really does not work, because it's so incredibly easy to get nothing good of a given type. For instance, I've got a game currently, as a Corruptor, where I've literally not found a single rune that provides a shield over 150 points, aside from the Rune of Reflection because I got lucky and met the Troll Hedge Wizard. Runes and Infusions are currently a huge gap in the game's otherwise good balance because finding a good healing, shielding or regeneration rune can determine a lot about what you can survive.

As for not clogging up the skill bar... yeah, obviously what actives you have should be useful. There are quite a few actives I only ever invest in if I want or need a skill on the other side of the tree from them, but have literally never bothered to use because as far as I can tell they just never seem worth the investment in skill points and/or resources. And it's actually possible to have a small selection of low-cooldown actives that can be fun and interesting to use, but it would take a lot of design work to make it not just a matter of spamming the same skill over and over with no thought(and then dying when you get stunned and your only actual abilities are locked), since they'd need to be skills which took positioning into account(AoE or cone skills, probably) and possibly affected your positioning themselves(like, say, Rush, or the Doombringer/Demonologist fearscape portal skill that lets them emerge in a blast of fire).