I don't think 4 active abilities is enough. Also, actives and passives need different icons.

By innociv on October 7, 2008 11:09:35 AM from

At first I thought it could maybe work. But more and more I'm thinking.. it's not.

I think 4 active abilities is GOOD. I think 4 to CHOOSE from is bad. There should be something where you have like say, 8-10 to pick from in the skill trees, but you can only choose 4 of them and after you pick the 4 you can't unpick them and can't pick any new active skills. They just go on your bar.
Even only having a choice of 6 would be good. But I don't like the choice of only 4 actives.

I imgine it could work something like this:

You click the level 1 skill to put the first point in it.
A kinda tool-tip box comes up from it where you select which of your 4 active skill spots to assign the skill to.
After you've picked 4 actives, all other actives on your skill screen are disabled, you can't click to gain a level 1 of any of them.

I thought MAYBE the active skills could have trees that drastically change how they work.. but eh no not really, still too limiting.

Also, Active skills should have a circle icon like they currently do. The other skills should have a box or hexagon or something so you can differentiate them at a glance.

+34 Karma | 74 Replies

Differentiating icon shape or color for active and passives is a good call. Alternatively, just make clearly seperated sections for actives and passives.

I like this idea as well

Aye having an active section up top with passives below, and a scroll bar on the skill list to scroll down and see all the skills would work too.

Agree, more active abilities would pretty much upgrade the game from good to exellent.

But for much as I want it, I think its too late in development to creat new animations or programing for new skills.

If it is too late then uh...

Do it like Titan Quest: Square for actives and Circles for passives. Or the other way around if you want

That's what i was saying pretty much.

But the UI at the bottom for your 4 actives already has the actives as circles, so i say actives should stay circles, but passives become squares or hexagons.

I agree given that the active skills we use below are circle, they should be circles in the skill tree. Passive skills should be squares or pentagons. (p for passive and pentgon? )

More active would increase the replay value drasticaly and really push the gameplay to the pantheon of strategy(if the balance is good).

I easyly imagine different ways to play a Regulus as a shadow sniper(combo of smoke bomb + sniper upgrades), a commando (multi-target long and short range weapons), a trap specialist(remote bombs, large variety of mines) or all the mix you can imagine with 6-8 active skills to choose from (and few passive ones).

I hope that with each after-release update we will also see updates of skills for the already released demigods.

Plus items seem very uninspired, do we really need an item that gives armor and another that gives armor and a bit of life regen, hows about more interesting items that it really makes a difference what item we choose and we notice the difference. Anyways, hopefully something gets done other wise this game while fun at first will have little replayability.

Quoting DarkZakurazz,

reply 11

I agree with the post. In many of the interviews isn't it stated that theres going to be a few demigods but we'll going to really be able to customize them and form strategys around building them up with skill choices. How do we do that with only 4 skills that pretty much every game we end up getting them all anyways?

Plus items seem very uninspired, do we really need an item that gives armor and another that gives armor and a bit of life regen, hows about more interesting items that it really makes a difference what item we choose and we notice the difference. Anyways, hopefully something gets done other wise this game while fun at first will have little replayability.

First off, I rarely if ever get all the abilities. I level up my character base stats rather they get junk I don't use.

Second, do you have the new beta? If you do you should be very pleased with the new items. They are great and add to strategy.

quoting post

At first I thought it could maybe work. But more and more I'm thinking.. it's not.

I think 4 active abilities is GOOD. I think 4 to CHOOSE from is bad. There should be something where you have like say, 8-10 to pick from in the skill trees, but you can only choose 4 of them and after you pick the 4 you can't unpick them and can't pick any new active skills. They just go on your bar.

I thought MAYBE the active skills could have trees that drastically change how they work.. but eh no not really, still too limiting.

Also, Active skills should have a circle icon like they currently do. The other skills should have a box or hexagon or something so you can differentiate them at a glance.

Epic fail. Permanently locking out an active skill slot is a stupid idea. You can permanently spend a skill point now, but if you decide for something else, it doesn't change your ability to buy other skills. Hey, wait, let's make it so you can't sell any item, so that consumables use up slots even after they've been consumed and can't be lost, and every flag capture permanent, and every demigod death permanent too, oh and no respawning creeps.

F A I L

I think we do need more skills to pick from so you can have vastly different ways to play as the same demigod. Like what was previosly said. A regulus that specializes in Mines or in being a sniper unit by upgrading sniping abilities an multiple hit shots. I think 8 activable abilities would be great but being only able to use 4 to diversify playing styles for each demigod.

Totally agree with each demigod needs more skills. I think that if they really want to make the demigods deep and feel different by end game they need to add way more active and passive skills to each demigod. Right now it seems that each demigod has in the range of 6-8 active and passive skills what if this was 12-16? I think that their would be an incredible amount of depth to each demigod but would it be too much?

I dont think it would be to much, take World of warcraft, it is a pretty noob friendly game and by end game each character has in the range of 50+ spells (I havent played in over 2 years but remembering the 4 or 5 skills bars with 12 slots full is what I remember). I only mention wow because it does a good job of having alot of spells for each class but it eases the player into it so they dont feel overwhelmed. Demigod could do the same thing making it easy to pickup, difficult to master.

Maybe a way they could introduce more skills into the game could be something like the achievement items they have planned. That way it would be something fun to unlock for each demigod adding depth but dont make the added skills any more powerful than the current ones. Everything needs to keep balance for the people that have 100+ hours and unlocked everything and someone with <10 hours. Its hard to please everyone when you know there will be people just looking to jump into a game and not have over complex amount of stuff going on, but at the same time wanting alot of variety and depth to the game as a competitive multiplayer game.

really just 8 would be enough(with a maximum of choosing 4 of them) but 16 wouldn't be bad, so long as it's just not a few more thrown in there that suck..

Also most of WoWs spells are rehashes of each other and just... it's like a spreadsheet game.

I love some of the skills in guild wars like Bull's Strike.

It's a warrior skill with a 10 second recharge(about medium for a warrior attack skill. They range from 3-15 seconds usually), and 5 energy cost.(warrior gains 6.6 every 10 seconds, but a lot of their skills don't cost any energy). It deals nice +damage and knocks the target down if they're moving when they're hit, and it's melee only. It's on every nearly every Warriors bar.

Knockdowns are powerful(like stuns on DotA) but the skill isn't overpowered because it takes skill to use. The condition on it means it sucks if you suck. If you don't land it on someone moving then it doesn't do anything. You just wasted your energy. And you can't simply spam it every time it's recharged, you have to use it at the right time.

It isn't so simple as using a speed boost and queuing the skill, so once you reach someone you use it. All the good players will stop when they know your bulls charge is recharged so you will use it on you when you're standing still and waste it, then it's recharging and they can run again while you're stuck in place from the attack animation, getting a lead on you again. So you have to position yourself to the side of someone so you can hit it at any time, or catch someone running by you, or have really fast reactions to hit someone right when they start running before they get out of range. There is a lot of positioning to keep yourself close to someone, instead of attacking right at the edge of the max melee range.

But none of that positioning is present in Demigod.. it doesn't matter. And the skills are simple do x damage to target or in x area and stun or don't stun, or do some DoT.

Uh, necro ftl, none of this is important with Beta 2 coming up with massively expanded skill trees anyway. You also didn't answer my reply of permanently locking things out being a wtfbad idea.

In the ign blog posted today it looks like Regulus is going to have 11 skills. If you look at the screenshot carefully you see that some of the level 15 ones and a level 10 one have a different icon so its a skill that has a prereq to obtain. If you look at just the trees you have 7 skill trees for him. I cant wait to see how the other demigods will fare as well in beta 2. If they all expanded like this it looks like a step in the right direction.

The new ign dev diary is all about regulus. Take a look at it here. Check out the mines, a total of 1800 damage and a 30% slow on the max level, i might actually use them now.

Wth how many levels there aree to everything, i think there will actually be some choices and we will see drastically different characters forming. This is definately a step in the right direction. In fact, with this many levels, they may have found what we were looking for. (Not to say I wouldn't turn down a new ability or two for him.)

I feel the same way. I'll be MORE then thrilled if we got more abilities, but I'm very happy with what I see so far.

I really look forward to Beta 2 to confirm my faith

yah me too

I agree that we need more skills as well. I think if you had to choose the 4 you wanted out of 8 or whatever this would help make each build unique and much more customizable which helps the longevity of the game.

maybe but I think it would be better if u just had a total of like x skilll choices. So u can pick if u want alll your abilities but only upped halfway or try to concentrate on just a couple.

From what I see, we get 4 activatable abilities. In his Interview, Mike Marr mentioned that he wouldnt be able to make sweeping changed. I think this qualifies. Would have to change the 4 buttons to be able to be populated by skills as you go and grey out the extras when all 4 are full.

From what I can tell, the Demigod skill system doesnt have anything like that alreay in place. If I'm wrong, yay! If no, we get 4 abilities

But I still don't think 4 abilities hinders the game...just customization. I'd love for more, but 4 is plenty in my book.

Having to pick your abilities though would increase customatrion because then in each game differnt demigods are gonna have differnt moves. That way each is unique and you will have to choose your skills wisely.

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I don't think 4 active abilities is enough. Also, actives and passives need different icons.