As I said to Krunk earlier, why would you show someone the very start of the game to get them interested, when you are showing game journalists Act 2/3 with characters wearing the latest bells and whistles?
As I said to Krunk earlier, why would you show someone the very start of the game to get them interested, when you are showing game journalists Act 2/3 with characters wearing the latest bells and whistles?
Why would you make the start of the game suck so bad? They should be trying to hook me from the beginning. If they can't make the intro compelling then how good can the later acts be? It isn't very often where people say, "man the first half of that game sucked, but the last half is awesome." Usually it's the other way around because games are rushed towards the end.
Why would you make the start of the game suck so bad? They should be trying to hook me from the beginning. If they can't make the intro compelling then how good can the later acts be? It isn't very often where people say, "man the first half of that game sucked, but the last half is awesome." Usually it's the other way around because games are rushed towards the end.
Because you don't have immediate access to all the skills, weapons, etc. If you start off super awesome, then you might as well be playing an FPS because there's no where to go up.
Why would you make the start of the game suck so bad? They should be trying to hook me from the beginning. If they can't make the intro compelling then how good can the later acts be? It isn't very often where people say, "man the first half of that game sucked, but the last half is awesome." Usually it's the other way around because games are rushed towards the end.
Because you don't have immediate access to all the skills, weapons, etc. If you start off super awesome, then you might as well be playing an FPS because there's no where to go up.
It's not really the lack of abilities that makes the beginning boring.
Aside from the fact that we've already established that the demo is a stripped out shell of how even the beta plays, what is so crap about the start of the game?
honestly the areas in the demo take about 20 minutes to clear and then you move on, you can run around there and max your level but it's pointless to do so, thats why the demo sucks, the full game keeps you moving allong at a breakneck pace, where the demo just leaves you to sandbox mode in an area that is essentially there to let you get your feet wet without making you take on a horde of 20 or so demons trying to gangbang you when you aren't remotely ready to face that.
In essence, the demo doesn't let you see the full intensity, because its a tutorial, not really a good demonstration of later gameplay.
So I played around as a Marksman last night, and I'm heading toward developing him with Rapid Fire. You have to love a power that sets off an alarm when you use it.
Sniping is fun, but why use one bullet when 35 will do? Plus, I just got a new gun that causes Exploding Spikes and Toxic Novas, so it's like the 4th of July.
So a friend and I were going through as a Summoner/Engineer pair... and holy shit it was like nonstop action for 3 hours straight. This game BEGS for you to have a friend to play with, I'm serious. The monsters were doubled, and harder... so it always felt like an epic fight.
If you get a chance to play with someone else... Do. It. It's amazing.
I'm a lvl 9 summoner named Serjanus. If you are looking for someone to party with and I'm online, I may not be your man...but my pets will certainly do the job. I'll be on tonight after 8:30 or 9, and looking for someone to tear through some demons with.
Hey I was wondering how thorough the London mapping is in the game. I currently live in London and go to school at the London School of Economics so I was wondering if I could kill demons around my classroom or near my flat in Pimlico. :P
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I doubt it Vapid You go to the British Museum and that's about all I know of so far. Some of the streets are probably copied through to the game, but there's a very, very high chance you'll never see anything you recognize.
Plus it's post-apocalypse so everything's all busted and stuff.
Everything's instance based. Some of the subway systems could be like London, but I've not actually been to London yet; So I'm not quite sure. If any UK people have played Hellgate, and could tell us if it's pretty close or not... That would be awesome.
I heard land marks are noticeable, but the game is based upon randomly created dungeons isn't it? so wouldn't that automatically eliminate the ability to recognize any of the streets?
But I'm normally on the beta playing under Kuldras (my sword/shield man). Hit me up for a group, I wanna see how crazy this gets with more than one player.
Please tell me that the skill calculators aren't complete, because some skills show no improvement when leveling them up even though they'll have like a 7 point max. If they are complete and or showing all the info I swear they need to do something better with skills asap.
I've not looked at the skill calculator yet (I hate doing that kind of stuff) but I'm fairly certain it's not nearly complete. But only because the beta maxes out at level 22, so they are probably just guessing what the skill does on each point.
I've not looked at the skill calculator yet (I hate doing that kind of stuff) but I'm fairly certain it's not nearly complete. But only because the beta maxes out at level 22, so they are probably just guessing what the skill does on each point.
Considering that you can get level 25 and 30 skills on items and skill progression is always by a fixed figure, they quite possibly could be.
EDIT: That said, it's likely due to their idiotic scaling system. Most skills will never get more powerful than they are at one point, in terms of killing things. Instead, you get effects like Demonspine's, where the secondary effects are enhanced with additional points.
Yeah, don't expect to see much of real London in the actual game.
It's really more Hellgate: Generic City and Sewers with a couple of known monuments.
I think someone said it in the last iteration of the thread, but a 'sandbox' style game with a static real map of London would have been so much awesome, and way more compelling story-wise.
Yeah you're right. I think many of the skills lower their recharge time when you put points into them. I know the Charge ability for the Blademaster just reduces the recharge time. Which makes that ability more awesome.
EDIT: That said, it's likely due to their idiotic scaling system. Most skills will never get more powerful than they are at one point, in terms of killing things. Instead, you get effects like Demonspine's, where the secondary effects are enhanced with additional points.
Can't speak for non-cabalists, but Evoker spells deal damage based on the focus you have equipped. Better focus = higher damage.
Instead, more points in spells increases the attack strength of that spell's elemental type. So Spectral Bolts will get higher spectral attack strength, resulting in a better chance to phase enemies (-50% damage done, +50% damage taken). Also, their elemental resistances scale up with level, so more points = good investment.
EDIT: That said, it's likely due to their idiotic scaling system. Most skills will never get more powerful than they are at one point, in terms of killing things. Instead, you get effects like Demonspine's, where the secondary effects are enhanced with additional points.
Can't speak for non-cabalists, but Evoker spells deal damage based on the focus you have equipped. Better focus = higher damage.
Instead, more points in spells increases the attack strength of that spell's elemental type. So Spectral Bolts will get higher spectral attack strength, resulting in a better chance to phase enemies (-50% damage done, +50% damage taken). Also, their elemental resistances scale up with level, so more points = good investment.
Same for most other evoker direct attack spells.
Yeah, I know - the only classes I haven't played to 22 are the guardian and blademaster.
But there are a lot of one-point-wonder skills. Take the hunters' cloaking ability. It starts at what, 6-8 seconds? Additional points give you a couple more seconds. The only really useful aspect of that skill is the aggro dump. Or take the Haste bot... it starts at 13% haste, and scales up 3% per level. Not exactly blowing anyone away, is it? Not to sneeze at a 31% attack speed increase, but we're not talking about exciting and noticeable per-point increases.
It's not that scaling skills are bad, or that I think FSS is going in the wrong direction with that mindset, it's just that they've made per-point scaling do so in the most boring and unimpressive method imaginable.
EDIT:
In fact, I've done a fairly extensive write-up on my thoughts about the skill system. It stuck around the front page for about a week, but when the NDA dropped and the forums were flooded, it got knocked down. Here it is, spoilered 'cause it's teh hueg:
Disclaimer
First, before I even get started, I want to point out that I'm not intending this post to be particularly bearing on skill balance. I will use specific examples, but they're just that: examples.
Also, this post is going to be really long. I'll summarize each section. But, obviously, I can't fit everything in the summary.
That out of the way, on to the purpose of this thread.
Actually, one more thing...
I'm going to say some fairly harsh things about Hellgate: London's skill system in this thread. And because it's virtually the law of the internet that the first person to respond to this is going to be some quasi-illiterate d00d who says I hate the game, I want to point out that I'm only picking on Hellgate: London's skill system because it seems to stand in such shard contrast to the rest of the game. That is to say, Hellgate: London feels like a game that's been in development for a good, long time by a skilled bunch of artists and programmers... who got to the beta release and said "Oh crap, we forgot to put a skill system in! Quick! We need one in 20 minutes before we push the test client out!"
Goal
The goal of this thread is to put forth an idea for a skill system remodel that will assuade community concerns over the current skill system, while at the same time attempting to be realistic about the sorts of changes that Flagship is willing to make this late in development.
The skill remodel I'm proposing will:
Address player concerns over HGL's current skill system be overly simplistic
Add a greater degree of depth, complexity, and customizability to the skill system
Allow the skill system to more easily benefit from additions later on (either through subscriber content or expansions).
Improve descriptions of what the skill actually does.
I am proposing this remodel because the current skill system has the following weaknesses:
Skills seem arranged almost at random, with particular branches of the trees making little to no sense at all. For example why is the engineer's Haste Bot an upgrade of the Inhibitor Bots? More specifically, why is it an upgrade of the Inhibitor Bots' Concussive Crash?
The current skills tend to be, well, really boring. I mean, really, guys crouching and looking through a scope are skills that take energy? Drones that spend half their time looking, frankly, retarded (have to love the number of Shortbus 3.0 and "that thing should have a slot for a crash helmet" comments that come over Ventrilo every time my engineer gets his out) and the other half shooting walls? You can do better than that.
Lack of extensibility. That is to say, because skills are frequently in the same tree as other, seperate skills, there isn't a lot of space to upgrade the skills. I mean, say, somewhere down the line, they want to add skills to allow players to enhance Spectral Bolt. There's nowhere to go but sideways, and while it may seem pedantic, it'd quickly turn those trees into quite a mess.
Mr. Roper's comments about the different ways of playing each class conceded, there isn't a whole lot of diversity that we can see. Take a Marksman for instance. You basically have two options: someone who crouches every 10 meters, or someone who does the run-and-gun bit. That's about it. One might have a few extra points in Smackdown than the other, but with most classes, you're looking at a whole lot of shallow point investment, because skills scale rather poorly and many just aren't worth much more than it takes to get to the next skill in the tree.
The current skill descriptions are, frankly, awful. They say very little about how the skill actually functions. They need more detailed data. Range, power cost, reactivation, shared cooldowns, chance to inflict a status effect, accuracy, method of delivery and the like are all salient details. And if we're not going to get respecs, we need to know this stuff before we put points into it.
tl;dr: Hellgate: London's skill system is the obvious weak point of the game right now.
Okay, that's out of the way. Ready for my great, big, grandiose suggestion?
...really?
...you sure?
Okay, here it is:
RIP OFF TITAN QUEST!
Of course, it's not actually that simple, but let's be honest: Hellgate: London's developers are the same people who brought us the Diablo 2 skill system nearly a decade ago. The bar's been raised over the past 8 years by the likes of the Diablo 2 1.1 patch that brought us skill synergies, and games like Titan Quest and SilverFall (which was an admittedly awful game, but had some nice skill ideas). And as far as the skill system goes, Hellgate: London hasn't so much failed in its attempt to get over the bar as it has stumbled into the bar, knocked it down, and then tripped over it and fell flat on its face.
Why Titan Quest?
First off, for anyone unfamiliar with Titan Quest's skill system, take a look here. Basically, in Titan Quest, you don't pick a class. Instead, you pick one or two of nine elemental skill trees, and can mix and match all manner of abilities to create your character. Want a full-blown, lightning-calling, fireball-throwing, blowing-up-the-world spellcaster? You can do that. Want an army of pets that tear your enemies limb from limb? You can do that. Want to have a really powerful soldier with a big ol' sword that smacks monsters stupid with his shield? You can do that. Want that afore-mentioned shield-heavy character to have a few ranged magical attacks, too? Well, you can also do that.
The point is, what's so great about Titan Quest's skill system is the amount of flexibility and personalization it affords. Not only does any one of the nine skill trees in Titan Quest have more individual skills than an entire Hellgate: London class does, but the trees are designed in such a way that you get the basic abilities quickly, and upgrade them with later skills. Here's an example:
You can get a skill called Volcanic Orb practically as soon as the game starts. It lets your character lob a grenade-like fireball over long distances that detonates on impact. As you sink points into the Volcanic Orb skill itself, the orb becomes visually larger, and has a larger, more powerful explosion. That's a lot like Hellgate: London.
Where Titan Quest differs, though, is that subsequent skills in the Volcanic Orb tree allow you to upgrade it, whereas Hellgate: London's trees usually give you entirely different skills that are only vaguely related and in some cases, intended to completely replace the skills you took before it. So sticking with the Volcanic Orb example, the players have the option of investing in skills that cause the Volcanic Orb to toss out flaming fragments on impact or set enemies on fire. So, the player's presented with a choice: does he want a really awesome, maxed-out Volcanic Orb? Does he just want parts of it? Does he want to forego it entirely in favor of other (also upgradeable) offensive skills?
tl;dr: Titan Quest's skill system is better because it has upgradeable skills and provides players with more customization and flexibility.
So How Do You Make Hellgate: London's Skill System Better?
Well, you start by acknowledging that this game's going to be on store shelves in, oh, about 16 days, and at this point, scrapping the skill tree and starting over just isn't going to happen. What might still be possible at this point is a small change, maybe some re-arranging, and a lot of setting up for the future.
Here's what I think is the step-by-step method:
Step 1: De-couple every skill that isn't a direct upgrade of another. That is to say, having Concussive Crash dependant on Inhibitor Bots makes fine sense. Having Spectral Lash as an upgrade of Spectral Bolt, however, doesn't.
Step 2: Leave all the skills where they are. Just because you're de-coupling skills, you don't need to shuffle them around. Go ahead and leave the level requirements alone.
Step 3: Divide the skills into tabs on the skill page, similar to Diablo 2. That is to say, for evokers, have a fire tab, spectral tab, poison tab, bone tab, etc.
Step 4: Start thinking of skills to upgrade. Here's a sample progression:
Spectral Lash
(as is) |
v Improved Spectral Lash
(as if, but rename it to something like Spectral Detonation) |
v Spectral Link
(makes spectral lash behave like chain lightning or a Zeus Rifle)
Here's another...
Inhibitor Bots
(as is) |
v Concussive Crash
(as is) |
v Stun Ray
The Inhibitor Bots temporarily freeze, and their inhibitor beams, instead of slowing enemies' movement, stun them.
Step 5: Better skill descriptions. Sticking a player in place while it animates, animation duration, shared cooldowns, recharge time, power cost, damage, chance to inflict a status effect and the like are all salient stats. Tell players about them before they invest points.
Conclusion
We can't expect miracles at this point; Hellgate: London's about to ship. What we can hope for, though, is some future promise of a skill system that downplays the everyone's-the-same nature of the current system, so that, maybe, just maybe, the skills our players use start feeling as important as our guns and swords.
It's not that scaling skills are bad, or that I think FSS is going in the wrong direction with that mindset, it's just that they've made per-point scaling do so in the most boring and unimpressive method imaginable.
Which makes you wonder why the HGL skill guys can't go across the hall and learn from the Mythos skill guys.
But there are a lot of one-point-wonder skills. Take the hunters' cloaking ability. It starts at what, 6-8 seconds? Additional points give you a couple more seconds. The only really useful aspect of that skill is the aggro dump. Or take the Haste bot... it starts at 13% haste, and scales up 3% per level. Not exactly blowing anyone away, is it? Not to sneeze at a 31% attack speed increase, but we're not talking about exciting and noticeable per-point increases.
To be honest, you can say the same about most WoW talents - they're 1-3% per point, up to 5-15% at five points.
But there are a lot of one-point-wonder skills. Take the hunters' cloaking ability. It starts at what, 6-8 seconds? Additional points give you a couple more seconds. The only really useful aspect of that skill is the aggro dump. Or take the Haste bot... it starts at 13% haste, and scales up 3% per level. Not exactly blowing anyone away, is it? Not to sneeze at a 31% attack speed increase, but we're not talking about exciting and noticeable per-point increases.
To be honest, you can say the same about most WoW talents - they're 1-3% per point, up to 5-15% at five points.
Yeah, and those are bloody boring, too.
HAY GUYZ I CAN CRIT 1% MOER NOW!11
*facepalm*
EDIT: I think the WoW comparison shows one of the most problematic things about HGL, though: it's trying too much to be a MMO.
It has a lot to do with a character's perceived power vs. those things the character fights. In Diablo, you were a god and could lay waste to screenfulls of enemies at a time; one Frozen Orb would obliterate every trash mob you could see. In Hellgate, you spend all your time backpedaling, taking pot shots at tougher enemies. The only screen-clearing ability in the game is Air Strike (or whatever the fire one is called), and that's if you can get mobs to stand in it, and only once every 30 or 40 seconds. And it's still not really screen-clearing in size and power.
I'll be logging onto hellgate the second this mythos install is done, my character name is Coutts and he's a lvl 11 or 12, if anyone wants to party up send me a /w or just a straight up invite
coutts on
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But there are a lot of one-point-wonder skills. Take the hunters' cloaking ability. It starts at what, 6-8 seconds? Additional points give you a couple more seconds. The only really useful aspect of that skill is the aggro dump. Or take the Haste bot... it starts at 13% haste, and scales up 3% per level. Not exactly blowing anyone away, is it? Not to sneeze at a 31% attack speed increase, but we're not talking about exciting and noticeable per-point increases.
To be honest, you can say the same about most WoW talents - they're 1-3% per point, up to 5-15% at five points.
But the first point is just as valuable as the fifth point, that's important, whereas further points are far less attractive when they're one fourth of what you get with the first point.
But there are a lot of one-point-wonder skills. Take the hunters' cloaking ability. It starts at what, 6-8 seconds? Additional points give you a couple more seconds. The only really useful aspect of that skill is the aggro dump. Or take the Haste bot... it starts at 13% haste, and scales up 3% per level. Not exactly blowing anyone away, is it? Not to sneeze at a 31% attack speed increase, but we're not talking about exciting and noticeable per-point increases.
To be honest, you can say the same about most WoW talents - they're 1-3% per point, up to 5-15% at five points.
Yeah, and those are bloody boring, too.
HAY GUYZ I CAN CRIT 1% MOER NOW!11
*facepalm*
EDIT: I think the WoW comparison shows one of the most problematic things about HGL, though: it's trying too much to be a MMO.
It has a lot to do with a character's perceived power vs. those things the character fights. In Diablo, you were a god and could lay waste to screenfulls of enemies at a time; one Frozen Orb would obliterate every trash mob you could see. In Hellgate, you spend all your time backpedaling, taking pot shots at tougher enemies. The only screen-clearing ability in the game is Air Strike (or whatever the fire one is called), and that's if you can get mobs to stand in it, and only once every 30 or 40 seconds. And it's still not really screen-clearing in size and power.
we're not seeing all of the abilities though, the marksman gets his area clearing uber strike early, but templar have the flamewaves and prayers as well as BM's having whirlwind which should allow them to just plow through hordes of enemies like a thresher.
I've pretty much ignored the game until now, given I'm not a huge fan of Diablo 2, but after listening to 1up Yours today, I downloaded the May GFW Radio podcast that had Bill Roper on it, and he totally sold me on the game.
But after playing the demo and reading up on it, it just seems like it's lacking anything really interesting in a character development sense. As has been said, the skills are just really boring, and after having played a lot of Titan Quest not long ago, it's kinda depressing. I hope this is not the case in the full game, but I'm not terribly optimistic. They really should start by cutting down the number of increments in any one skill. That's one of the things that annoyed me about Diablo 2.
Cherrn on
All creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai.
Can someone make me smart about the skill points themselves?
What i'm trying to get a handle on, is how many skill points an average person will have to work with at level 50.
I know you get 1 per level, but can you get others through quests?
I'm not counting items that provide skills, since that isn't something you can truly *count* on when making a theoretical build.
I know that characters are supposed to be specialized, but when I see how many points are needed to advance skillsets (rank 10 skills, for instance), it seems like 50 points is woefully inadequate on the skill menu screen.
At this point, in release i'll be scared to death to spend any skill points.
The splash screen tips and tutorial itself almost encourages you to spend a skill point per level, rather than saving them for the future.
If you spend a few in level 1-5 skills, you might find out a month later that you completely gimped yourself out of maxing a level 20+ or 30+ skill group... I fear the boards will be littered with people begging for skill resets to fix something they did during the first week of play.
That was half the fun of Diablo 2 (to me) zhen. The fact that you have to be very cautious about the future when you're putting your points into it. Plus you can always just restart a character if you screw up. It's not too hard to level in the game, especially when comparing it to other games as of late.
Well, in Diablo, you could easily get a character to 20 in what, 3 hours, and 40 in another 6 maybe? It was acceptable to be locked into skills because characters levelled really, really quickly. Is Hellgate truly on that pace?
I'd say half the leveling speed, since the max is level 50. As long as you group often enough you'll be flying through the levels.
Though, to be fair, to level quickly in D2 all you had to do was join nightmare/hell cows and kill them with a bunch of people and gain exp for doing almost nothing. Hellgate requires you to actually do something :P
Posts
Why would you make the start of the game suck so bad? They should be trying to hook me from the beginning. If they can't make the intro compelling then how good can the later acts be? It isn't very often where people say, "man the first half of that game sucked, but the last half is awesome." Usually it's the other way around because games are rushed towards the end.
Because you don't have immediate access to all the skills, weapons, etc. If you start off super awesome, then you might as well be playing an FPS because there's no where to go up.
It's not really the lack of abilities that makes the beginning boring.
In essence, the demo doesn't let you see the full intensity, because its a tutorial, not really a good demonstration of later gameplay.
Sniping is fun, but why use one bullet when 35 will do? Plus, I just got a new gun that causes Exploding Spikes and Toxic Novas, so it's like the 4th of July.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
If you get a chance to play with someone else... Do. It. It's amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW7NFEqdvn4
I hope he's not taken out or rewritten in the full game.
And the one that hits on everyone (no matter the gender) rocks too.
Mario Strikers: 266395 286788
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Plus it's post-apocalypse so everything's all busted and stuff.
But I'm normally on the beta playing under Kuldras (my sword/shield man). Hit me up for a group, I wanna see how crazy this gets with more than one player.
True. Some of the buildings might be modeled after London, but yeah... The randomization is going to prevent you from walking to street to street.
EDIT: That said, it's likely due to their idiotic scaling system. Most skills will never get more powerful than they are at one point, in terms of killing things. Instead, you get effects like Demonspine's, where the secondary effects are enhanced with additional points.
It's really more Hellgate: Generic City and Sewers with a couple of known monuments.
I think someone said it in the last iteration of the thread, but a 'sandbox' style game with a static real map of London would have been so much awesome, and way more compelling story-wise.
Can't speak for non-cabalists, but Evoker spells deal damage based on the focus you have equipped. Better focus = higher damage.
Instead, more points in spells increases the attack strength of that spell's elemental type. So Spectral Bolts will get higher spectral attack strength, resulting in a better chance to phase enemies (-50% damage done, +50% damage taken). Also, their elemental resistances scale up with level, so more points = good investment.
Same for most other evoker direct attack spells.
Right, but I thought the single-player game wouldn't be randomized, at least not a long time ago when I think they said it would be mapped to London.
But there are a lot of one-point-wonder skills. Take the hunters' cloaking ability. It starts at what, 6-8 seconds? Additional points give you a couple more seconds. The only really useful aspect of that skill is the aggro dump. Or take the Haste bot... it starts at 13% haste, and scales up 3% per level. Not exactly blowing anyone away, is it? Not to sneeze at a 31% attack speed increase, but we're not talking about exciting and noticeable per-point increases.
It's not that scaling skills are bad, or that I think FSS is going in the wrong direction with that mindset, it's just that they've made per-point scaling do so in the most boring and unimpressive method imaginable.
EDIT:
In fact, I've done a fairly extensive write-up on my thoughts about the skill system. It stuck around the front page for about a week, but when the NDA dropped and the forums were flooded, it got knocked down. Here it is, spoilered 'cause it's teh hueg:
First, before I even get started, I want to point out that I'm not intending this post to be particularly bearing on skill balance. I will use specific examples, but they're just that: examples.
Also, this post is going to be really long. I'll summarize each section. But, obviously, I can't fit everything in the summary.
That out of the way, on to the purpose of this thread.
Actually, one more thing...
I'm going to say some fairly harsh things about Hellgate: London's skill system in this thread. And because it's virtually the law of the internet that the first person to respond to this is going to be some quasi-illiterate d00d who says I hate the game, I want to point out that I'm only picking on Hellgate: London's skill system because it seems to stand in such shard contrast to the rest of the game. That is to say, Hellgate: London feels like a game that's been in development for a good, long time by a skilled bunch of artists and programmers... who got to the beta release and said "Oh crap, we forgot to put a skill system in! Quick! We need one in 20 minutes before we push the test client out!"
Goal
The goal of this thread is to put forth an idea for a skill system remodel that will assuade community concerns over the current skill system, while at the same time attempting to be realistic about the sorts of changes that Flagship is willing to make this late in development.
The skill remodel I'm proposing will:
I am proposing this remodel because the current skill system has the following weaknesses:
tl;dr: Hellgate: London's skill system is the obvious weak point of the game right now.
Okay, that's out of the way. Ready for my great, big, grandiose suggestion?
...really?
...you sure?
Okay, here it is:
RIP OFF TITAN QUEST!
Of course, it's not actually that simple, but let's be honest: Hellgate: London's developers are the same people who brought us the Diablo 2 skill system nearly a decade ago. The bar's been raised over the past 8 years by the likes of the Diablo 2 1.1 patch that brought us skill synergies, and games like Titan Quest and SilverFall (which was an admittedly awful game, but had some nice skill ideas). And as far as the skill system goes, Hellgate: London hasn't so much failed in its attempt to get over the bar as it has stumbled into the bar, knocked it down, and then tripped over it and fell flat on its face.
Why Titan Quest?
First off, for anyone unfamiliar with Titan Quest's skill system, take a look here. Basically, in Titan Quest, you don't pick a class. Instead, you pick one or two of nine elemental skill trees, and can mix and match all manner of abilities to create your character. Want a full-blown, lightning-calling, fireball-throwing, blowing-up-the-world spellcaster? You can do that. Want an army of pets that tear your enemies limb from limb? You can do that. Want to have a really powerful soldier with a big ol' sword that smacks monsters stupid with his shield? You can do that. Want that afore-mentioned shield-heavy character to have a few ranged magical attacks, too? Well, you can also do that.
The point is, what's so great about Titan Quest's skill system is the amount of flexibility and personalization it affords. Not only does any one of the nine skill trees in Titan Quest have more individual skills than an entire Hellgate: London class does, but the trees are designed in such a way that you get the basic abilities quickly, and upgrade them with later skills. Here's an example:
You can get a skill called Volcanic Orb practically as soon as the game starts. It lets your character lob a grenade-like fireball over long distances that detonates on impact. As you sink points into the Volcanic Orb skill itself, the orb becomes visually larger, and has a larger, more powerful explosion. That's a lot like Hellgate: London.
Where Titan Quest differs, though, is that subsequent skills in the Volcanic Orb tree allow you to upgrade it, whereas Hellgate: London's trees usually give you entirely different skills that are only vaguely related and in some cases, intended to completely replace the skills you took before it. So sticking with the Volcanic Orb example, the players have the option of investing in skills that cause the Volcanic Orb to toss out flaming fragments on impact or set enemies on fire. So, the player's presented with a choice: does he want a really awesome, maxed-out Volcanic Orb? Does he just want parts of it? Does he want to forego it entirely in favor of other (also upgradeable) offensive skills?
tl;dr: Titan Quest's skill system is better because it has upgradeable skills and provides players with more customization and flexibility.
So How Do You Make Hellgate: London's Skill System Better?
Well, you start by acknowledging that this game's going to be on store shelves in, oh, about 16 days, and at this point, scrapping the skill tree and starting over just isn't going to happen. What might still be possible at this point is a small change, maybe some re-arranging, and a lot of setting up for the future.
Here's what I think is the step-by-step method:
Step 1: De-couple every skill that isn't a direct upgrade of another. That is to say, having Concussive Crash dependant on Inhibitor Bots makes fine sense. Having Spectral Lash as an upgrade of Spectral Bolt, however, doesn't.
Step 2: Leave all the skills where they are. Just because you're de-coupling skills, you don't need to shuffle them around. Go ahead and leave the level requirements alone.
Step 3: Divide the skills into tabs on the skill page, similar to Diablo 2. That is to say, for evokers, have a fire tab, spectral tab, poison tab, bone tab, etc.
Step 4: Start thinking of skills to upgrade. Here's a sample progression:
Spectral Lash
(as is)
|
v
Improved Spectral Lash
(as if, but rename it to something like Spectral Detonation)
|
v
Spectral Link
(makes spectral lash behave like chain lightning or a Zeus Rifle)
Here's another...
Inhibitor Bots
(as is)
|
v
Concussive Crash
(as is)
|
v
Stun Ray
The Inhibitor Bots temporarily freeze, and their inhibitor beams, instead of slowing enemies' movement, stun them.
Step 5: Better skill descriptions. Sticking a player in place while it animates, animation duration, shared cooldowns, recharge time, power cost, damage, chance to inflict a status effect and the like are all salient stats. Tell players about them before they invest points.
Conclusion
We can't expect miracles at this point; Hellgate: London's about to ship. What we can hope for, though, is some future promise of a skill system that downplays the everyone's-the-same nature of the current system, so that, maybe, just maybe, the skills our players use start feeling as important as our guns and swords.
Which makes you wonder why the HGL skill guys can't go across the hall and learn from the Mythos skill guys.
To be honest, you can say the same about most WoW talents - they're 1-3% per point, up to 5-15% at five points.
HAY GUYZ I CAN CRIT 1% MOER NOW!11
*facepalm*
EDIT: I think the WoW comparison shows one of the most problematic things about HGL, though: it's trying too much to be a MMO.
It has a lot to do with a character's perceived power vs. those things the character fights. In Diablo, you were a god and could lay waste to screenfulls of enemies at a time; one Frozen Orb would obliterate every trash mob you could see. In Hellgate, you spend all your time backpedaling, taking pot shots at tougher enemies. The only screen-clearing ability in the game is Air Strike (or whatever the fire one is called), and that's if you can get mobs to stand in it, and only once every 30 or 40 seconds. And it's still not really screen-clearing in size and power.
But the first point is just as valuable as the fifth point, that's important, whereas further points are far less attractive when they're one fourth of what you get with the first point.
But after playing the demo and reading up on it, it just seems like it's lacking anything really interesting in a character development sense. As has been said, the skills are just really boring, and after having played a lot of Titan Quest not long ago, it's kinda depressing. I hope this is not the case in the full game, but I'm not terribly optimistic. They really should start by cutting down the number of increments in any one skill. That's one of the things that annoyed me about Diablo 2.
I too am in this corner. I pre-ordered on the 4th and have not seen a key. I even emailed BBs support and never got an answer.
What i'm trying to get a handle on, is how many skill points an average person will have to work with at level 50.
I know you get 1 per level, but can you get others through quests?
I'm not counting items that provide skills, since that isn't something you can truly *count* on when making a theoretical build.
I know that characters are supposed to be specialized, but when I see how many points are needed to advance skillsets (rank 10 skills, for instance), it seems like 50 points is woefully inadequate on the skill menu screen.
At this point, in release i'll be scared to death to spend any skill points.
The splash screen tips and tutorial itself almost encourages you to spend a skill point per level, rather than saving them for the future.
If you spend a few in level 1-5 skills, you might find out a month later that you completely gimped yourself out of maxing a level 20+ or 30+ skill group... I fear the boards will be littered with people begging for skill resets to fix something they did during the first week of play.
Though, to be fair, to level quickly in D2 all you had to do was join nightmare/hell cows and kill them with a bunch of people and gain exp for doing almost nothing. Hellgate requires you to actually do something :P