I have a dream about Skills

Yvel

As an avid player of MMOs, I'm always seeking to express my individuality and creativity through the skills I use. I find it tedious to use skills that every other player has, and I often daydream about ways to make my skills unique. I wonder if others feel the same way.

Just imagine reaching the necessary level to unlock your second class, and having the ability to combine those skills with your current or future skills. For example, if you have the "Rush" ability from the Fighter class and you chose the Rogue class as your secondary class, you could combine "Stealth" with "Rush" to create a new, unique ability called "Shadow Rush." This ability would allow you to rush towards your target and then teleport behind them, dealing bonus damage for backstabbing and then going invisible for a short period. I also feel that there should be a base skill that takes priority when combining, so a "rush" combined with "Stealth" would give you "Shadow Rush" but a "Stealth" combined with "Rush" would give you a completely different effect. The possibilities are endless, and it would allow each player to have a unique skill set, even if they're playing the same class combination.

I know it's just my imagination, but the thought of having such a customizable skill system in an MMO excites me. It would allow players to showcase their creativity and individuality, particularly for those who enjoy roleplaying. Of course, there's always the risk of minmaxers taking advantage of this system, but at least those of us who play for fun would have a sense of awe, excitement and discovery.

What are your guy's thoughts on this?

Kilion

You are in luck it seems, I think you just described what Intrepid is exactly aiming at with their augmentation system. The Wiki and a couple of interviews explained that when you choose your second archetype you will receive 4 schools augmentation, with which you can modify your archetypes base skills.

So if you are a Ranger might and take the Mage you might get these 4 augmentation options: Fire, Thunder, Earth, Teleportation. These augmentation options will be the same with every of the other archetypes. But the base skill you are modifying will depend on your primary Archetype. Since the base skills are unique to the individual Archetypes these combos only work one way, the other way around result in different combos.

So while you do not combine skills of two archetypes directly, you can combine a base skill of one archetype with a key feature of another Archetype. Which in the case of Fighter "rush" plus the Rouges "Stealth" school of augmentation could result in a skill like you described it.

Yvel

In retrospect, this seems like an ungodly amount of work, and probably also poses a lot of balancing issues, lets say that each class has a maximum of 10 skills, there are 8 classes, therefore the total amount of abilities and/or skills would be 80 different skills altogether. Ultimately, the amount of unique skills created would be about 12,800 different skills. haha. That is if the primary archetype holds priority, therefore skills can't be duplicated with a similar class combination

Yvel

Kilion wrote: »

You are in luck it seems, I think you just described what Intrepid is exactly aiming at with their augmentation system. The Wiki and a couple of interviews explained that when you choose your second archetype you will receive 4 schools augmentation, with which you can modify your archetypes base skills.

So if you are a Ranger might and take the Mage you might get these 4 augmentation options: Fire, Thunder, Earth, Teleportation. These augmentation options will be the same with every of the other archetypes. But the base skill you are modifying will depend on your primary Archetype. Since the base skills are unique to the individual Archetypes these combos only work one way, the other way around result in different combos.

So while you do not combine skills of two archetypes directly, you can combine a base skill of one archetype with a key feature of another Archetype. Which in the case of Fighter "rush" plus the Rouges "Stealth" school of augmentation could result in a skill like you described it.

likes I just commented: If they were doing exactly the same thing, or somewhat close to what I was describing, then there would have to be 12,800 unique skills. this is an estimate btw

Yvel

Oh I get it, they basically lowered the workload by simplifying the idea down a bit, meaning that they won't have to make 12,800 unique skills, instead they opted to make it so that a skill has 4 possible outcome, resulting in each class having a possibility of creating 40 different skills with augmentations (assuming a class has about 10 skills). Therefore the number of skills would total out to about 320 different skill combination with augmentation instead.

Kilion

Well, as far as I am aware the whole skill system is designed in a modular way. Meaning that different developers could work on the sound, the graphics and the mechanics at the same time. I mention this detail because it is also a fantastic foundation to do more than "just" the class based augmentation. For example special items or talents could allow us to further individualize the skills.

daveywavey

You're a few days late for April Fools Day!

Kilion

I might add this since you made a calculation yourself:

With around 35 active skills per archetype, 4 additional versions of that skill per other(?) archetype and 8 archetypes in total. That means at max there will be:
- 140 possible augmented skills per class

times the number of classes with the same primary archetype (8)
- 1120 augmented skills per primary archetype

times the total number of archetypes that can augment their skills (8)
- 8'960 total skills for players to choose from based on the class system

These numbers apply under the assumption that every skill actually can be augmented in 4 ways.

Even though that is not impossible, I suspect that this will be mitigated by the fact that we will not have crazy mechanical differences with every augmentation so that the workload, while still gigantic, will be much more manageable. Either that, or the skills will also be used by various NPCs so that this vast array of skills actually will also contribute significantly to the progress of the mob design even the non-humanoid. If I had to guess, we will see a combination of both, some skills with only minor effects through augments and we will see mobs through the same stuff we do at us.

Yvel

had no clue that there were about 35 active skills, nice knowing tho, the numbers from my calculation wasn't based off of the game but the idea that skills from one class can combine with the skills of another class (assuming each class has 10 skills) and also the base skills from the main class: (((10*10)*2)*8)*8
but I understand what you mean, it's definitely more manageable if it doesn't create a completely unique and different skill.