Feedback Auto-leveling skills is a missed opportunity

[RazorBrains]

The problem - With only 6 spell slots, if you gain a level where a new skill opens up and that skill is not better than your current 6 spells its a real disappointment and makes leveling feel boring, no excitement really. Then I look at all these skills that are auto-leveling behind the scenes and think what a missed opportunity here. I think there needs to be some system that allows the player to feel invested in their character by changing the auto level skill process.

I am not locked into any specific way to do this, and if others have suggestions on this, I would like to hear that. There are alot of ways to make the player feel invested in their character as it levels, in the next post I will lay out 1 method I think could work, but believe others could come up with alternate ways to achieve the same thing. I believe something should be done, because currently with only 6 spells getting another level doesn't really feel impactful because a lot of the stuff is happening behind the scenes.

 

[RazorBrains]

Here is an idea of what I think could change, instead of these skills auto-leveling, allow the user to put points into the skills as they level instead. Maybe have it where the player only have 50% of the points available points to level everything max, so the user will have to choose which skill to make stronger and which to make weaker.

This will lead to a diversity of builds even with people that have the same subclass, some people will put more points into DPS skills, where others will put more points in debuffs, support, defense or CC. Yes you will have to rework some skills to allow points but I think the upsides are huge, that makes achieving that next level not so boring.

Things that have to be considered with this system, is obviously you will likely have hard-caps for skills, so at level 20 only X number of points will be able to put into a specific skill. Let the player make the choices, let them have some control over their characters progression.

An advantage is it will allow you to track what skills people are putting their points into, this is good for balancing.

 

[Randy Magnum]

Skills used to level with use, 1hnd sword, hatchet, bow etc, but they changed the system to what it is currently. I think more character customization/development would help. It is hard to differentiate your character from another of the same class.
The Reagents are suppose to be a character customization option, but I don't think people like farming mats so a lot of skills had the reagents removed. A skill system where you would get points at certain levels (like 10, 20, 30, etc...) that you could put into skills to make them different or stronger (like reagents) but every skill has an altered option to choose from (difficult or costly to change after initial choice). Could make the skill tree out of same skills tab with check marks like reagent bar using points.
Probably can't change whole systems at this point, so it would have to work with current systems. More character development would be a plus. Maybe even choices through lore for environmental skills (like jump higher, swim faster, or night vision - blue screen like the rez area for dungeons).

 

[Undone]

I had always meant to have some sort of unlock system as opposed to auto leveling - and I may swing back around to that after I knock out some other higher priority tasks.

The auto leveling was just a way to make it work “for now”