Character building needs significant improvement

unclejoey777

like this game, plan on playing it, and have spent $60 on it so far, but my biggest gripe by far is - I don’t know if anyone has noticed or not, but this game has extremely weak character customization. The heroic and prestige “feat” choices are almost all absolutely garbage, with some must-haves thrown in, and a sprinkle of “okay” ones. The whole system seems lackluster at best.

It feels extremely similar to the skill trees in SWTOR (which wear awful). To me, and I would say a significant portion of the D&D crpg players (and DDO players as well), D&D is about character building and important and significant choices on leveling up. This game has the setting, it is fun to play, the foundry is great, the mechanics are fun and different for a lot of people, but it gets a big red “F” in character building from me.

In my opinion why Diablo 2 lasted for over a decade and why Diablo 3 is forgettable, why WoW has took such a decline after Cataclysm, why RIFT is still a subscription game and SWTOR isn’t doing so hot, why Anarchy Online and DDO are still bringing in cash and Warhammer Online isn’t, why the Secret World couldn’t keep its initial players, is character building, or lack of it.

In the games that last, characters of the same class play and are significantly different due to the sum total of character building and other customization mechanics. In the games that don’t seem to do so well, all characters of the same class play the slightly different regardless of the superficial choices the player makes.

Some people like D&D for its settings, some people like it because of the social aspect, but players like me like it for character building. We are a significant portion of the MMO player base too. No game without significant character customization is going to hold our attentions for long. We make lower teir games like Path of Exile known and far more successful even without PTW options, and we ensure a steady and loyal income stream from even old and outdated games.

It’s probably too late to fix this before release, but if any aspect of this game needs an overhaul it is definitely the extremely weak character building mechanics.

This is just my opinion and I’m sure I’ll get flamed for expressing it, but this forum is for discussion and I'd ;ike to see what people say.

charlatanprime

I'm new to the game this weekend, and while initially I was intrigued/excited about the prospect for character customzation, over the course of the weekend I'm coming around to the same opinion as you. People will argue that having multiple choices is useless since everyone will min-max their skills after a while, but I see no reason why multiple good paths through the skill/feat tree can't exist.

I'll be playing at launch, and I've spent the $60 also, and I'm sure I'll enjoy my time here, but I agree that the lack of meaningful choices is disappointing.

ranncore

The largest way that you can customize your character in this game isn't in passive selections made while leveling up, but in your selection of powers you choose to bring into combat. Many of the later feats in the Paragon trees really emphasis this, focusing on adding utility to a sub-set of powers. For the sake of argument, even IF someone managed to pick the exact same stats and feat selections as me, our characters would play completely differently depending on which skills we choose to take into battle. Not to mention our gear selection, where I can quickly change from life-steal gear for soloing to recharge gear for making sure my powers are readily available in a fast moving group.

Do you want an agile Guardian Fighter? This isn't achieved by making passive decisions in the character creation screen - instead, choose skills like Lunging Strike and Threatening Rush, to make sure your character can quickly move across the battlefield. Do you want your wizard to be telekinetic? It's not about taking a feat to open up his power selection - just choose skills like Strangling Grasp and Repel.

Some of the classes can alter their roles in subtle ways, like I outlined above, while others are more obvious. Rogues don't need to be stealthy. The Cleric can easily forego healing spells to turn himself into a divine smiting powerhouse.

It's very different than the pen and paper game, but I think the element of skill selection adds a lot to the game, and it's wise to alter your power selection according to the environment and enemy. There is no one best setup - you will want to alter your skills according to both your enemies, terrain, and the selection your companion adventurers have chosen.

Because power selection IS the biggest way we can customize our characters, the lack of choices at the beginning of the game makes every character feel quite the same, and I'm always disappointed when instead of being granted a new power at level up, an old power is boosted instead. I guess what I'm saying is that I hope Cryptic continues to add powers to all of the classes, and makes our older powers automatically level up with us, so that we always have a wide variety to choose from. In a game with so few classes available, and so few powers within them, having older powers become useless at later levels significantly detracts from our ability to distinguish ourselves.

unclejoey777

ranncore wrote: »

The largest way that you can customize your character in this game isn't in passive selections made while leveling up, but in your selection of powers you choose to bring into combat. Many of the later feats in the Paragon trees really emphasis this, focusing on adding utility to a sub-set of powers. For the sake of argument, even IF someone managed to pick the exact same stats and feat selections as me, our characters would play completely differently depending on which skills we choose to take into battle. Not to mention our gear selection, where I can quickly change from life-steal gear for soloing to recharge gear for making sure my powers are readily available in a fast moving group.

Do you want an agile Guardian Fighter? This isn't achieved by making passive decisions in the character creation screen - instead, choose skills like Lunging Strike and Threatening Rush, to make sure your character can quickly move across the battlefield. Do you want your wizard to be telekinetic? It's not about taking a feat to open up his power selection - just choose skills like Strangling Grasp and Repel.

Some of the classes can alter their roles in subtle ways, like I outlined above, while others are more obvious. Rogues don't need to be stealthy. The Cleric can easily forego healing spells to turn himself into a divine smiting powerhouse.

It's very different than the pen and paper game, but I think the element of skill selection adds a lot to the game, and it's wise to alter your power selection according to the environment and enemy. There is no one best setup - you will want to alter your skills according to both your enemies, terrain, and the selection your companion adventurers have chosen.

Because power selection IS the biggest way we can customize our characters, the lack of choices at the beginning of the game makes every character feel quite the same, and I'm always disappointed when instead of being granted a new power at level up, an old power is boosted instead. I guess what I'm saying is that I hope Cryptic continues to add powers to all of the classes, and makes our older powers automatically level up with us, so that we always have a wide variety to choose from. In a game with so few classes available, and so few classes within them, having older powers become useless at later levels significantly detracts from our ability to distinguish ourselves.

There aren’t a lot of powers to choose from, and what is left is geared towards certain gameplay (solo versus grouped, single target versus AoE). Depending on role, the current system doesn’t leave much choice of power selections, nor feat selections. Since you mention the Cleric, please let me know what powers you would take and how you would allocate your heroic and prestige feats to make him or her a “divine smiting powerhouse?”

The fact is how things stand there is extremely little choice. All clerics will take moon touched because it actually does something, and because moon touched does something and they need it they have to take hallowed ground. Spending 5 points on focused poise to make your lance of faith do 5% more damage leaves you with the opportunity cost of those five points being put in something that could have done something, anything, that could have given you the edge, had some synergy, helped you in your role better. And although I cannot test it and say for certain, I have an idea for a maxed level cleric with a solo/pvp “spec” and I am almost certain I will do more dps, definitely have more survivability, without our “dps” at-will, lance of faith, slotted.

ranncore

Edit - Okay I went back to my character, so here's 1 of the builds in detail that I think you will like.
Choose Human for the extra feat points. Your stats should look something like 14str 18wis 14cha. You'll be trying to get as many crits and as much recovery as possible. The extra stamina from strength helps for dodging.
For heroic feats - 33pts -
Healing Action (for increased recovery) 5pts
Toughness (for survivability) 3pts
Domain Synergy (for increased recovery) 5pts
Weapon mastery (for crits) 3pts
Repurpose Soul (crit AOE heal splash) 3pts
Initiate of the Fiath (for crits) 5pts
Bountiful Fortune (for Divine Power buildup) 5pts
Cleanse (because for 1 pt this has the highest payoff at 10%) 1pt

Paragon Path
Bottom tree
Rightous Rage (for increased Divine Power) 5pt
Ethereal Boon (awesome tree, Divine Power based on skill recharge, which for this toon is very fast) 5pt
Oppressive Something (for debuff with Astral Seal) 5pt
Restoration Mastery (adds defense on Crits, which you should be getting lots of ) 5pt
Sovreign Justice (for survivability) 1pt

Top Tree
Rising Hope (adds to skill recharge) 5pt
Second Sight (adds Heal to Prophecy of Doom) 5pt

For Powers I suggest Divine Shield and Hallowed Ground for daily, Prophecy of Doom, Break the Spirit and Astral Shield for Encounter, and Fury of the Sun and Astral Seal for At-wills.

The idea is that you are constantly debuffing/dotting your opponents to mitigate damage, your daily and encounter powers recharge extremely fast (Prophecy of Doom and your feats help here) and you ALWAYS have Divine Power because you are always critting. Crits help your Dots a lot, and the Divine Empowered Astral Shield + the AOE crit heal splash will be all the healing you need. Not that you should be taking much damage with this build - because you should always be shielded and your opponents will always be debuffed.

Take a look through these skills and you should see A LOT of synergy. The overall goal is fast recharge on dailies, encounters, and divine power, constant debuffs and dots, and lots of survivability thru damage mitigation and defensive abilities rather than reactive healing.

You can change this build quite a bit by readjusting your gear selection and powers on-the-fly. For soloing I recommend switching your recovery gear over to lifesteal, and dropping Break the Spirit for the AOEdmg spell (glowing light or something like that?) or maybe even Sunburst or Chains just for crowd control. For bosses you might switch Break the Spirit for Forgemaster's Flame. You might also find that re-arranging a few of the Paragon Feats to add Stun to Flamestrike increases your crowd control and damage quite a bit. Some players will prefer to forego Charisma for more Strength to get their crit stat, HP and stamina higher and may alter feats accordingly.

I've done similar number-crunching and theory-crafting for Guardian Fighter and Control Wizard builds, and I'm having a lot of fun finding out which works best for me. I'm sure I'm not the only person who is going to have a lot of fun specializing my character in this game. I have no shame in saying that min-maxing has always been a great part of DnD games for me, and that applies here as well. It's just a matter of familiarizing yourself with a new system. It's not anything like the DnD you're used to, and for some that will be a disappointment, but for me, I'm happy to have a new system to learn the ins-and-outs of.

cementi

Really liking this game as well but I do think that fell a little short on the character customization a bit. I do not think it would have been that much work to put in an extra power option at each tier ie three at wills to choose from at the begining so on and so forth.

Also I felt it was a bit silly that they went with a second fighter option (even if the GWF and the guardian do play totally different) instead of adding in a different class. The lack of a primal class at launch of open beta and the addition of a second fighter seemed silly to me.

For me I am waiting for the warlord and shaman myself though sadly I expect them to be a very late additions if ever but I do hope down the road they plan to improve upon the options within the current classes so I can make a mage who is at least at low levels is not an ice mage.

Splitting the classes up into the builds (ie guardian and great weapon) is a money making decision they made which I am fine with and once they add those other classes the customization will start with your class selection. Do I go bow ranger or dual wielding ranger or beast master so on and so forth. However till they add in a multitude of classes and the class variants it is going to feel like they fell short on class customization. Thats my impression anyway.