I was thinking about skills trees and the like because of the other thread about them and specifically thinking about how I like to play RPGs and rework builds. I generally don't go looking for a "perfect" build online though I often look up the skills to find out exactly what they do, how they work, and what sort of gains come with increased levels, but I then figure out my own builds. I did this extensively in Diablo 2 and have made near a dozen characters in Oblivion for the same reason and tried nearly all the classes in WOW as well, all so I could play around with builds. Thinking about that it seems for me at least, and I don't doubt others too, that a large part of the fun gameplay is thinking up these builds and trying them out. The problem has always been for me though that in single player RPGs, you have to restart the game to restart the character, I cant reallocate points midway through. I could in WOW for a price which is why I only restarted to play different classes. ANYWAY, I am wondering what a good system for allowing this sort of gameplay would be in a single player RPG. It would need to allow the complete rebuilding of builds, but have a price that keeps the player from doing this every time there is a challenge in the game, yet not be so frustrating and potentially boring as having to restart the game. If the player can do this too often, they might feel compelled to respec for every hard fight (they might anyway, what do you guys think?) and if its too hard then its little better than starting a new game to try a new build. [Edited by - JasRonq on April 14, 2008 10:43:03 AM]

I think one common solution to this is having special trainers that allow you to reset the build that are only available in peaceful towns for example. However, in a game like Diablo where you can just teleport back to town, that might not work very well.

In these cases you could have a system where the skills require you to gather a certain amount of points before you can use them that can only be aquired by fighting. I think player will think twice about resetting their skills if it means they have to grind in order to regain new ones. Perhabs basic skills should not require this so that they can still manage somewhat when grinding.

I have never been sure why it is necessary to limit your selection of skills to a specific 'build', especially if the game requires that you change builds in order to kill different bosses.

Would it really detract from the game to allow a player to gain all the skills? There wouldn't be 'perfect' builds or flavor of the month builds on the forums. You wouldn't spend hours planning exactly what to sacrifice in order to get +1% additional chance of crit.

You just play the game.

If you have access to every skill and are equally good with it as any other player, then there is no personalization to the character. This is suppose to be your avatar, your personal representation in the world, yet it has all the same abilities as everyone else's? No, not good. You need to allow players to personalize their characters. Also, it is not good to 'respec' for every boss, and you don't want players to do that, you want them to take the boss as the challenge it was meant to be.

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ANYWAY, I am wondering what a good system for allowing this sort of gameplay would be in a single player RPG. It would need to allow the complete rebuilding of builds, but have a price that keeps the player from doing this every time there is a challenge in the game, yet not be so frustrating and potentially boring as having to restart the game. If the player can do this too often, they might feel compelled to respec for every hard fight (they might anyway, what do you guys think?) and if its too hard then its little better than starting a new game to try a new build.

Why exactly do you need a "price" on respec? It's not necessarily a game-breaking feature. Consider that if your gameplay can be broken by certain character set ups, then what you have is a game designed on optimizing character setup to achieve maximal brokenness at maximal frequency. You haven't solved the underlying issue that having Climbing skill at Rank 5 in The Caves of Death, Level II allows you to bypass the entire hard part of the level -- you've simply passed the buck; instead of fixing that imbalance yourself, you let probability handle it by assuming few players will specialize exclusively in climbing and/or will waste their "respec" points to spec out in climbing to skip the level.

A better solution would be to fix the fact that the level is broken, rather than try to penalize players, in my opinion. You do need to allow the respec only at appropriate points, of course -- "in town," for example -- otherwise even having number associated with skills becomes a pointless thing, since all skills will effectively be maximized at the point of their utility.

Having played games like Guild Wars, which (now) allows unlimited character respec other than primary profession, and similar, I can tell you I now find games that limit my respec -- seemingly arbitrarily (*cough*Mythos*cough*) to be exceedingly tedious. Especially if they are poorly balanced or designed. Unlimited respec gives me a more satisfying feeling of accomplishment when I'm able to approach a problem by intelligently adjusting my skills and gear, et cetera. I don't believe it's a particularly hard or different balancing challenge either.

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You need to allow players to personalize their characters.

Skills aren't the only means of personalization. In fact, they tend to be particularly poor means of personalization, since over time only a certain subset of skills prove themselves to be particularly useful in a gameplay sense, meaning players limit their selection to those skills unless they doom their character. This is especially true when you can't change skills without paying for it, or at all.

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Also, it is not good to 'respec' for every boss, and you don't want players to do that, you want them to take the boss as the challenge it was meant to be.

I firmly believe this is "lazy designer" syndrome. Hubris, on the part of the designer -- a good game is one that people want to play, not one that the designer wants to play. With a few exceptions (heavily plot based encounters, for example), trying to a force a player to play the game your way is almost always a recipe for disaster. Playing games is about choices; the more choices you take away from players, especially when done artificially, the more issues people will have with your game.

Assassin's Creed is a good example, here: the designers make conscious decisions to make only certain types of objects "count" as "hiding spots." It was a forced mechanic designed to usher the player into playing the game the way the designers decided it was to be played, rather than the way a player might think they want to play it.

The case of your boss fight is similar: if your boss is trivial to beat with a certain build, then you've failed to balance him, period. Making respecing to that build cost the player is punishing the player for your inability to balance the boss in the context of the game world you've created.

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Original post by therin I think player will think twice about resetting their skills if it means they have to grind in order to regain new ones.

I think more likely players will reset tehn gripe that they have to grind. Its kind of like in Oblivion, players don't level normally because its annoying to cast Heal Minor Wounds while they walk from town to town. They gripe that the system encourages them to do that in order to level restoration.

Hi,

Perhaps are you looking for the job system introduced by Square in Final Fantasy ?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_character_classes)
This system does not harm the "suspension of disbelief" effect (see FF3 for example). When changing jobs, there is a cost for adjusting your character to its new job which depends on the character experience in that job (the more experienced it is in one job, the longer it takes).

FF7 went as far as providing no classes. The base character has stats which you could evolve by adding gems to your equipement (these either modified stats or provided magical capabilities). There was no cost for the change as it was only stat and capabilities modifiers.

Ghostly yours,
Red.

So you are suggesting that instead of trying to stop a player from respecing purely to circumvent a challenge, I should balance the challenge differently and make the true challenge figuring out a good build to handle it? I like that.

Of course that changes challenges from figuring out how to overcome inherent weaknesses to more of a logic puzzle as challenge via a weakness would simply be respeced to compensate for. IE, the fire mage facing a fire dragon is simply going to respect to be more effective, something I was avoiding. How do you create a challenge then where such respecing isnt as obvious or useful?

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Original post by jpetrie Having played games like Guild Wars, which (now) allows unlimited character respec other than primary profession, and similar, I can tell you I now find games that limit my respec -- seemingly arbitrarily (*cough*Mythos*cough*) to be exceedingly tedious. Especially if they are poorly balanced or designed. Unlimited respec gives me a more satisfying feeling of accomplishment when I'm able to approach a problem by intelligently adjusting my skills and gear, et cetera. I don't believe it's a particularly hard or different balancing challenge either.

Although the guild wars skill mechanics were quite neat, I have to say I found the concept of 'equipping' a skill to be rather immersion breaking and frankly, weird. It completely destroyed all semblance of identity my character might have had.

I'm only posting this because I forgot to swap out my 'wasting time on the internet' skill with my 'programming C++' skill this morning, and so I'm completely incapable of doing any work today. [grin]

I gave up with Titan Quest for this reason. I wanted to bump my char up a few levels and then try some of the different classes, but it wouldnt let me, as it autosaves without asking.

The character building and item aquisition are the only mildly enjoyable things in the game. I'm not playing a boring game where you decide at the beginning what you want to be then fill in the blanks as you go along.

I'd love to see a game where you could have a decent master of none character, where he knows a little bit of everything, instead of a lot of one thing. A character like that would be more liable to survive in general as he has more possibilities open when things go awry.