Home
Artists
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register
Partychan Telegram Find&Fuck Waifus ThePornDude
Home Artists Posts Import Register

Building Better Skill Trees | Game Maker's Toolkit (Patreon)

Published:
2018-11-26 16:09:27
Imported:
2020-03

Content

Skill trees, upgrade systems, ability trees - call them what you will, they've become an integral part of AAA game design, showing up in Spider-Man, Doom, Watch Dogs, God of War, and more. 

And with that in mind, I wanted to look at some common pitfalls of these things, and suggest some smarter ways to handle them.

Lemme know what you think!

Mark

Files

Building Better Skill Trees | Game Maker's Toolkit

Comments

Anonymous

The Sphere Grid is no joke, that system allowed for some cool customization options for what are typical JRPG classes.

Anonymous

Well, I think customization is good, but in Diablo2 I managed to develop my skills in a very crappy way so that at one point I couldn't finish the game. It kinda sucks if you can practically make the game unplayable by bad skill management. I think a good solution is the positibility to remove the skill points spent again, which a couple of games offer.

Anonymous

I think you should check out the rune system in league of legends : there's a keystone that defines your playstyle (defense, burst offense,dps offense etc...) and minor runes that can be very interesting : some offer vision of the enemy territory so intel, some push you to kill every one on the enemy team at least once to get the full effect (they call it bounty hunting). They really exist as a powerful theory crafting tool to create the best combination between your character of choice, your preferred role in the game and the build you're taking to roleplay your fantasy fighting style as much as possible and I really enjoy it.

Anonymous

Also, unless the skill tree offers really cool moves like in dishonored, I prefer having a classic rpg level-up system rather than a forest of skills. Take dark souls for example, at first you have a rough idea of what stats you wanna level up but then your ideas get clearer as you collect weapons or spells, you go : " this is a really cool lightning spell, or this is a really cool katana but I need to level up this stat this much before using it" so you are more excited to go through the game, get stronger and be able to use your really cool weapon you found. I prefer that than looking at the end of a path in a forest of skills, because you can see the end from the beginning of the game, getting a weapon and wanting to use it is more immediate and less in a distant future than forests of skills.

Anonymous

I was wondering if you'd make a video about this because it seems like a common issue. I liked AC Odyssey's skill tree, but at the same time there are some skills available that just seem very, very useless compared to some obviously awesome skills. That's my biggest gripe with skill trees - having some skills that are just obviously ones you should skip until (if) you get to a point where you have excessive points to spend. Or if you're forced to spend points on minimally useful skills in order to unlock the next tier of skills.

Anonymous

I liked how Shadow of War had a main set of skills to obtain and then each main skill had two or three side skills. You could only equip one of the side skills at a time for each main skill so this created true decisions for the player without sacrificing main skills.

Anonymous

Really nice ! You could have mentioned Hollow Knight for "Just a handful of habilities at the time" . Excellent videos as always, thanks for the good work !

Anonymous

Though the Functions in Transistor weren't presented as a skill tree, I think they did a great job of making you choose what skills to take and allow you to customize the gameplay to your play style. Each Function felt useful, but I found certain ones to be just more fun, and having the permutations of the Upgrade Slots created huge possibilities with a small handful of Functions. Definitely one of my favorite Skill Trees from any game.

Anonymous

The Skill trees are one of the places the recent Deus Ex games really fell short compared to the original. The original had separate trees for Augs and skills. Augs required exploration to find the upgrades, and locked you into one path. The skill tree was XP based, but was structured so you could choose to improve more skills a little or specialize. They synergized somewhat, so you could skip some augs but upgrade a complementary skill. And there were never enough upgrades or XP to do everything. In contrast, the recent Deus Ex games made everything one skill tree, and gave out too many points, so choices to upgrade skills them never had long term consequences. I think there are a lot of factors that drive the trend towards less interesting skill trees, and I'd love to see it examined it in more depth.

Anonymous

FFX's sphere grid is what Path of Exile's upgrade system is based on - FFX's is more linear, where enough XP lets them move a cursor one step along a path which occasionally branches, so you can rush for abilities early, and leave stat upgrades on side paths behind. FFXIII refined the system by having you cash in AP directly. I disagreed with a lot of this video! For me, skill trees usually create some form of fear of missing out, where a signature ability that makes the game come alive is locked at the end of a skill branch I may never explore. Skill trees in the classic form (and especially in the Diablo II/classic WoW style, where you can buy abilities multiple times to improve them) always have a correct answer and a myriad of wrong choices. Balancing abilities against their cost, your investment into the branch they're in, and your investment into the other branches, means abilities are always both underpriced and overpriced. A simple this-or-that choice (like Downwell), or a linear track, is almost always a better design. I occasionally see skill trees where to unlock an ability to buy, you have to achieve some goal - this is interesting because a) more medium-term goals, b) it lets designers address that under/overpricing problem, and c) it forces choices where you either spend your skill points now on abilities, or you stay underpowered until you can unlock the ability you want. I think this is interesting; I know many players disagree, seeing it as an arbitrary barrier to getting the build they want, especially a second time through. AAA games give out skill points randomly for a deliberate reason, to exploit player psychology with irregular rewards. I'd prefer getting upgrades from actions in the world too! I also dislike the Far Cry 3-style crafting design you approved of - it feels like busywork to me, keeping a shopping list usually doesn't fit in with the other mechanics, and it tacitly encourages you to kill everything you see just in case some of it becomes a useful resource later that's a pain to track down all at once.

Anonymous

I personally like the less tree-like customization paths – the NaviCust from the Megaman Battle Network series (especially the versions in 3 and 6), or Charms in Hollow Knight. No direct prerequisites, every selection can be undone, there's ways to break the rules a little (for a cost), and there's enough variance in point cost (program size, notch count) to allow small-but-cheap and ridiculous-but-large things at once. And Hollow Knight has multi-Charm interactions on top of that, as a way to get even more of the "you're paying a lot so here's something crazy" effects.

Anonymous

My entire first playthrough of Dishonored I was dying of curiosity about the paths that weren't open to me.... Then when I beat the game I instantly re-played it with different skills unlocked and the second playthrough was even more fun.

sk8bit

I also love a tightly trimmed bush! Great stuff, Mark.

Anonymous

Tron 2.0 Not only does the game not have enough resources for you to fully unlock and upgrade every skill, there is a system for equipping the skills that is even more restrictive and something I've not seen in any other game. In each "level" or "world" you are given a different pattern with which to equip your skills. These patterns not only limit the number of skill you can equip, but based on the shape you may not be able to equip certain skills without upgrading them or you may not be able to equip them at all.

Parachuting Turtle

I found the background music a bit annoying at times in this one.

Science Is Art 101

If you like art please become my patreon. Or just share

Anonymous

The best free dating site: gepclub.com

Anonymous

Nice :-)