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Ability tree "choices" concerns


ralphieceaser

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I am assuming the ultimate goal with those would be to give players 3 good choices so they can decide based on what fits their playstyle.

If that is the end there's some very general and issues I would like to mention.

 

1) Major raid utility, things like ballistic shield or unlimited power.

Those mainly have a lot of value in raid, that can lead to the situation were someone could be forced to choose them even if they prefer some other choice because their raid FEELS those raid utilities are needed to clear the raid. It doesnt matter if the raid can be beaten without it, if the raid leader/raid group feels you need those utilities there's cases where some will be forced to change or kicked if they dont have the "bis" raid choices.

 

So highly against putting such raid utilities as choices since it could lead to such really bad experiences.

 

2) Utility with limited use and imbalanced choices based on content.

I feel like choices should be meaningful no matter the type of content you do, but if a choice is between a dps skill, a cc and a defensive or maybe a slow, well in that case most pvers would go for the dps skill since it provides more throughput and you cant cc bosses, pvpers likely would choose the CC if it is a strong one because it has huge value in pvp, defensive/slow would only rly be picked if it is really strong to somehow beat the value of the CC in pvp.

 

So in this case you end up with 1 choice being completely useless and dead in certain types of content, sometimes it could be two of the choices in the content you do so you really arent given a meaningful choice so in general I would avoid abilities that can be completely pointless in certain types of content

 

3) Unbalanced value of abilities

One example of that would be sorc lvl 70 option being between, extrication, volt rush and force barrier. As a dps sorcerer extrication is just not something i care about much, I could use it every now and then because it was baseline and would be helpful but I dont think many would ever choose such an ability since it doesnt really do anything in our playstyle outside of maybe trolling, volt rush is a rly weird skill that still doesnt seem to have worked well design wise so nobody is likely to be interested in, and then you have a literally immunity, one of the strongest defensives in the game, that isnt rly a choice, one option is so much better than others so there isnt really any choice. And it isnt even about being efficient and making "bis" choices, you have a great rly strong and beneficial skill against skills that dont really have much value and dont make anyone feel "omg this is rly cool and i want to pick it over a great immunity"

 

 

What I would suggest in general is to try make choices that give different play styles, for example you could have a burst single target damage type of dps ability/passive, a more sustained single targetdps type of ability/passive and as a third option you could have something that is either a generic dps increase such as free stats, something that allows for better cleave/aoe or maybe something that enhances the playstyle of the spec, for example a dot spec could get something that temporarily boosts the damage of dots, there's many possible ideas.

 

That way you have comparable abilities that are also on the same type, it isnt utility vs dps, its different types of dps gameplay.

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