Have adding a category point raise caps for that cat by 1.

[jotwebe]

C: Is it worthwhile and necessary?

Worthwhile? Maybe. Necessary? Nope.

I'd prefer to keep things within the current system for simplicity's sake. Upping the amount of mastery a cat point gives I'd like to see, to balance it better versus inscriptions/unlocking. Adding nice stuff to talents at talent level seven (so it needs five points at mastery 1.2 or 1.3) would also be interesting.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Especially for lichform! It needs a level 7 bonus for people who cat point it. What could be a better sacrifice then a cat point?

(Well, there's firstborn children, but they're in scarce supply most of the time. A cat point is a close second choice)

[Strongpoint]

C: Is it worthwhile and necessary?

Worthwhile? Maybe. Necessary? Nope.

I'd prefer to keep things within the current system for simplicity's sake. Upping the amount of mastery a cat point gives I'd like to see, to balance it better versus inscriptions/unlocking. Adding nice stuff to talents at talent level seven (so it needs five points at mastery 1.2 or 1.3) would also be interesting.

Adding nice stuff to talent level 7 = large buff to mastery increasing equipment, too. Not sure if that's good thing.... Besides it's work intensive thing to do

Just upping bonus to 0.3 mastery will not change situation much, majority of skilltrees will be as not worthy of a cat point as they are now. 0.5... That's same 9 as in OP, and the only difference that it will stay useless for talents that use raw talent level to scale

[Umbrall]

0.5 seems a bit strong, though it does work for things which are tlevel/3. Also raw level is there for a reason!

[SageAcrin]

Worthwhile? Maybe. Necessary? Nope.

I'd prefer to keep things within the current system for simplicity's sake. Upping the amount of mastery a cat point gives I'd like to see, to balance it better versus inscriptions/unlocking. Adding nice stuff to talents at talent level seven (so it needs five points at mastery 1.2 or 1.3) would also be interesting.

So your idea of the necessary changes involves much more work, and your reason for this is "keeps things within the current system for simplicity's sake", even though it actually ups the complexity of the system.

I don't get it.

[Umbrall]

Add a few level seven things to some talents

Completely change the mastery system and potentially unbalance a vast number of talents.

One of these is closer to the current system and simpler

[SageAcrin]

"a few"?

How many do you think is minimal?

(Keep in mind that IIRC the amount of talent categories is well over a hundred.)

Meanwhile, you have level 7 talents in a system where the level 6 talents have prompted innumerable questions from players already.

Oh, and every rare ever would get these added benefits(at high levels. Oh, and most everything on Nightmare that could get them would.), so they'd have to be carefully balanced to prevent the enemy side from smashing players.

Or you can just, you know, look out for talents that would be overpowered at higher talent levels, and give them caps.

Which should be done anyways, and is in fact being done in the depository, a fact that I was aware of when posting this topic, and which was part of the reason I thought it was a neat idea when suggested to me; A common, playerside use for these new rebalances.

One of these is a lot simpler than the other.

[jotwebe]

So your idea of the necessary changes involves much more work, and your reason for this is "keeps things within the current system for simplicity's sake", even though it actually ups the complexity of the system.

Simpler for players to understand, not simpler for developers.

I'm not hugely opposed to your proposal, I just don't see the need for it, plus it's a bit unelegant. We've got this system of how talent trees and points work; do we really need to add exceptions?

[HousePet]

Not keen on increasing the caps.
Makes it very fuzzy about where peak player talent power is.
And then it also adds in a potential new capstone level.

I think I prefer just making at least one talent per category have some sort of benefit from effective talent level > 7.

Another little idea that just popped up: Each category could grant a small additional effect when a category point is used to enhance it.
Simple example:
Spells/Fire grants +5% resistance and resist cap to fire damage.
Spells/Wildfire grants +5% damage and resistance penetration for fire.

This would grant an additional benefit from enhancing a categories mastery via category point, but only requiring 1 tweak to each category, instead of 4.

[Strongpoint]

Thinking about simplicity....

Maybe give no mastery bonus, but increase talent cap by 2?

It gives a nice progression
1.3*7=9.1
1.2*7=8.4
1.1*7=7.7
1.0*7=7
0.9*7=6.3
0.8*7=5.6

What I like that in this case category point gives no benefit by itself, you still need to spend talent points to get benefits as if you unlocked a locked tree.
That's very consistent with spending a point to unlock a tree... In both cases you spend a point to put talent points in it.

[SageAcrin]

Simpler for players to understand, not simpler for developers.

I'm not hugely opposed to your proposal, I just don't see the need for it, plus it's a bit unelegant. We've got this system of how talent trees and points work; do we really need to add exceptions?

I'm of the opinion that the few L6 talents we have are already intensely confusing for the average player, given how many times I've had to explain them to people.

And there's only about half a dozen of those.

Still, you guys go ahead and theorycraft a system.

If one of you actually wants to make this idea, instead of simply suggesting, in a vague and general sense, well over a hundred changes (Either in the form of single unique category bonuses on catpoint, or in the form of an L7 skill effect on at least one talent in every category.) in order to balance a fairly minor element of gameplay (Changes that, in order to do properly, you really need to know how every single class in the game works, well, lest you produce large imbalances.), I'll give feedback on it then.

I sure don't want to. Nor do I think it's worth it.

Or even especially interesting, to be honest-it produces linear, easily judged single-bonus choices instead of actually having to look at your skills and see if the category point impact is worth it, and seems very prone to someone finding ways to game and abuse the system(Because someone screwed up and made too good of a talent) or not caring(because someone didn't). That's just my opinion based on the theory, though.

(The linearity can, in fairness, be avoided by adding a TL7 effect to every single talent, at the cost of greatly increasing the chance of something overly powerful slipping through.)

Maybe give no mastery bonus, but increase talent cap by 2?

Hmmm...I don't know. I think it mostly magnifies the possible risk of raw talent skills, while not really adding much.

I mean, I see where you're coming from; You get more impact out of the intrinsic category rating you have already, which is pretty neat. But between the higher raw talent risk and the fact that you're making the category a much larger Class point sink, I'm not sure it's an improvement, per se.

[Umbrall]

Then just have breakpoints at 7 that aren't specifically enumerated.

[SageAcrin]

Care to elaborate on what you mean by that?

Because I'm seeing multiple ways to read that, and no matter how I read that, there seems to be a lot of skills that function as exceptions to being able to do that.

(Or, for some ways to read that, reasons that it would mess with various parts of the game's structure or the game's clarity to the player. I'm genuinely not sure what you mean by that.)

[HousePet]

A specific bonus just for spending the category point, without doing breakpoints, would be much easier.

[Umbrall]

What I mean by breakpoints is for instance if a spell uses the talentLevel to decide radius or something, they'll hit the next integer at 7.5 or 8 modified level.

Also breakpoints are much much easier to do than having specific bonuses.