Skills and Skill System

I haven't played yet (still waiting to go home since I haven't fully developed the power of time control), but I imagine from what I've seen that the strategy of Demigod builds will be less of what you can do at the end of the game and more of what order you pick up the skills in.  The order of skill choice strongy influences how you play and how well you do early in the game, which will ultimately determine whether you reach high level skills before your opponent (and likely whether you ultimately win as well).

I found that the characters leveled up quickly enough that the game went to late game everygame because its hard to push towers early on.  I also found that in say the rook, that the choice of skill was quite clear, his warhammer skill was superior to the other skill choices at low levels also that his skills were spread far enough apart that i had everyone of them maxed as I was able to pick them.

More skills would be nice.

This seems to be a common theme amongst most of the people I've talked to. Some close friends included. The progression appears far too linear. Especially on the regulus which is a straight up stat boost, and just about the only skill you use is Snipe. it's auto attacking for an entire match. it's pretty redundant in that respect

Yes, the developers said that you should only get (I believe) 83.33% of the skills in a match, which happens to be true, 25/30. However, seeing as 10 of the 30 skills are just stat boosters, you can easily get all of the 'unique' skills in a single match. I would like it if you had to actaully plan what your character is going to do. For example, my fav, the Torchbearer could spec to be a tower killer with deep freeze and fireball with some other damage, or spec to be a creep killer, using Fire Nova, Frost Nova, and the AoE element spells. As of now, you could do both with the lost of 600 health (less if you don't take the passive buffs) some energy and some damage which you don't use much of in the first place.

Yes but like brn4meplz pointed out the regulus has only one 'build' if you build him with mines... your screwed, mines do no damage compared to snipe and mines require people to run over them. Thats why we should have real skill trees, have more skills, or some other way to increase the matches. Perhaps having actual 'WoW' style talent trees for example.

I'm gonna touch on the towers thing briefly as it was mentioned. I think if the Tower functioned on a Tier system, Either through time in game or a purchasable upgrade using currency then it would solve part of the problem of i'm too weak early to make sizeable gains(something else the makes the gap between decent-good-great smaller)  I'm not proposing a system here, just sparking thought. Ideas may not be Engine related but getting ideas out there now is what changes the future

It needs more skills period, I know they wanted to be like DotA but only 4 skills is ridiculous. I mean seriously none of the heroes even have a set ultimate thats really devestating. Id love to have tier and skill trees.

Yes skill trees however they're implemented would be great (as oppsed to skill 'lines')

I have a lot of good examples at: HERE

I actually do like the idea of a passive skill tree which boosts aspects of your demigod.  Torch Bearer for instance has very little purpose going fire I feel.  I've tried fire, I found it quite weak.  Sure his fireball does a nice 850 damage at high levels, but his fire storm is 50 damage in three waves.  50 x 3!  Maybe if that was a programming typo and it's suppose to be 150 x 3 (since his burnination mode is a limited time frame) it'd be useful.  His attack speed boost aura doesn't seem to do much at all either.  As for his ring of fire and fire nova, ok, they're good for dealing with the creeps, but they're useless against another demigod.  He even seems to get weaker attacks!  His ice spells however are devastating.  Ice nova and his ice bolt are a considerable stun and a means of escaping from or paralyzing an enemy demigod while you hammer on it.  And his ice storm is 100 damage in 3 waves.  100 x 3.

For example, if there was a means of improving his elements in a separate passive skill tree, he'd be considerably better.  For instance ice element gains a small damage over time for freezing enemies (10/20/.../100 per second), all ice damage and attack damage out of burnination mode improved by 5% per skill level investment (up to 10).  Fire damage could likewise be improved 5% per level (since it's a time limited mode), with an improvement to his aura of 1% per level (up to 10).  This is compariable to Rook's godly strength, which honestly should be split up into finer granularity to balance him out.

As i am a huge fan of Fire anything. THIS is a skill list

Bright Wizard

Thats the skill list for Bright Wizard in the upcoming Warhammer Online. Now i understand thats alot of skills, but they are not stats boost 1-10 or rain fo fire 1-3 or rain of ice 1-3(seriously, did creativity take a holiday?)

Or a more familiar listing

Diablo 2 Sorc fire skills

Honestly the game feels like it has no depth, no replay value. I can't see anything when zoomed out and i can't see anything when zoomed in. the trailers made everything look big and clear, but when you start playing it looks like an orgy of NPC parts. the skills clean it up nicely for the most part but the skills in themselves don;t contribute anything to the depth of the rounds either.

BETA BETA BETA BETA BETA.

I REALIZE THAT YOU DUMB TWAT! HENCE THE REASON I COMMENTED ON IT. SO THAT IT MAY GET NOTICED AND SOME ACTION TAKEN! Isn't caps fun? Stupid people always manage to find me. Go back to where ever you crawled out from under. Things don't get changed unless you comment, complain, critique.

They've already said that this first phase is not meant to be fun or balanced or have all the features. It's just meant as a tech test. Skills not being balanced, gameplay not being in depth, that's to be expected. They aren't looking for any gameplay issues, as far as we know there may have been a lot of changes to skills since this build was made that we don't know about. I'm just saying wait until they ask for feedback regarding gameplay before you say it has no depth or replay value. Of COURSE there's no replay value when there's only 3 demigods and a few unbalanced items.

I mean, already there's several ways to play each demigod. Rook can go stun + hammer to go demi killing, or he can go hammer + eat building to become a great pusher, or he can go stun + increased damage to be another style of demi killing, or +damage and tower upgrades to become another kind of pusher. Each of these builds, if actually well balanced, would play significantly different from one another. There'll be even more choices when items are fully implemented, and there are different maps to choose from, and there's at least the apearance of balance.

Basically my point is that it's pointless to banter on about depth and replayability because these tie in to gameplay balance a lot, and we can't test balance with 3 heroes on a single map with some untuned items.

One final note, what would be the point of splitting the trees into passives and active abilities? The only way this would change current functionality would be if you got different skill points that could only be used in one of these trees, or multiple skill points per level or something. It would be a pointless change.

We are commenting on it now because we feel it needs addressing, if they already plan on changeing it then the devs can just ignore that and hopefully glean some ideas. Also we're not talking about balance we are talking about skill selection.

And no there isn't lots of ways to play demigods, theres about one way to play each. Building eating isn't viable when people come to screw with you. And with stun + increased damage thats basicaly hammer, stun, increased damage, your just reahasing them in diffrent orders. Sure theres some personal flavor, but the basic idea is still the same, the same bread and butter skill.

Not allowing people to keep picking the same skill isn't a solution to people not wanting to pick them.

No!  No limitations like that!

Edit.

And you say more choices but then to say to take htem away with having a wc3 like limit on speccing.

And a talent tree?  You want a whole nother tab when there is only 30 skills there?(10 of them being that line on the bottom for points boosting.)

When I heard 30 skill points.. i didn't think the point boosting thing counted.  So, we need 40 skills for one.

I disagree.. every one of the attacks is just slightly different mana cost, damage, and some with 20 foot splash radius.  That's not an example of a good skill list imo. :\  That's the problem we have now.  Everyone of Torchbearers skills is just different mana cost, aoe range, damage, and some freeze for a few seconds.  They have no depth.  I like the basics of some of them, but they need more to them.

We aren't complaining about skills balance.  We know they aren't balanced.

If Regulas mines did enough damage to where they where as useful as snipe, he still wouldn't be a fun character to play.

We're talking about the basics of how hte skills are designed and how the Demigods play because of them.

We KNOW they are going to work on changing the design of some skills, or possibly many skills, maybe them all.  The question is how.

I, personally, wish there was alot of depth and natural synergy between them, like Magic:The Gathering has.  And if you've ever played MTG with 2vs2, or 3vs3, you can have decks that work together with your teamates well, not just your cards in your deck work together well with each other.

Well I think he might be fun to play (I love techies) but I still want more depth, choices, synergy ect.

Well i'm not saying there shouldnt' be an option to play a traps techie guy. I'm just saying if mines did enough damge to where they where good, Regulas still wouldn't be fun for either the sniper guy or the mine laying guy.. IMO.

If there was an added talent tree seperate from a skill tree then they could impliement a techies style of playing Regulas by making his mines do more damage or have other effects like slow, as well as a skill tree where you could decide what sorts of spells you want to play your techies style.  Prehaps if the skill tree had say 5 tiers of spells and at certain levels (say 3,6,9,11) you could pick from the next tier down.  Each tier would have maybe 2-3 skills on it and you can only choose one per match. 

This basically means you could be picking trap based tech skills, but you find that you're lacking some survivability, so you decide for your tier 4 spell you're going to pick something that helps you escape or deal some instant direct damage.  This way theres numerous types of builds and play styles plus a passive tree to do things like increase range on attacks or add effects to mines.

Innociv there's a lot more to the warhammer skills than what's shown there due to the mechanics of the game. Unless you understand the mechanics you won't fully understand the skill differences.

Yeah the skills become alot more involved with tactics morale and the backlash systen on casters, I only listed abilities but the whole amalgation of avaible additions is quite involved. Maybe i should have stuck with Guild Wars comparisons, which is also a great list of skills(but ultimately again it too can be broken into Energy, damage AoE range Cooldown) anything involving numbers can be seperated mathematically, thats always a truth about games. it's when variables come into effect during matches that player skill is determined

Or they could just branch the upgrades after the mines instead of having another page.  IT's much more intuitive sicne there is branches.

There is NO reason for a talent tree.

Not with the Bright Wizard, no :p.

Otherwise, I agree with your general feeling, although vanilla or quasi-vanilla skills aren't always bad if there are a couple of them; they're build essentials.

Maybe not with bright wizard. However if you compare skill depth of the 2 warhammers is much much deeper. I'd expect it to be, being an MMO, but the difference is ridiculous.