I mean I played long enough to get any skill I want from the tree, but they were mostly either passive improvements or passive improvements for the one active skill I kept using, along with a couple active skills that were crap and not my style.

EDIT: I've a level 26 hunter with two of the highest tier hunter skills maxed out. One of them is passive, the other is pretty useful but "too little too late" and from a tactical perspective doesn't really bring anything to your basic attack except some splash damage for crowd control. The third max. tier hunter skill is a debuff and I'm not too excited by debuffs so I tend to save these for last.

So yeah, having spent however long it took to get those 26 levels and get some maxed out high tier skills I'm still not feeling it, which is pretty bad :( And that's how I got bored with it. (It doesn't help that I read about unfixed, possible risk of savegame corruption)

for everybody who want to have a Diablo feeling, i really can recommend Grim Dawn.
Just fuark Diablo 3, good thing Blizzard lost me long time ago, when they announced
D3 without LAN Mode and BN 2.0 requirement for PC (hurrr durr online connection needed)
till today... yeah thats why the Console Versions work completely Standalone Blizzard yes?

As i said give Grim Dawn a try, good ARPG and a lot of Diablo vibe to it.

Hopefully last bit of offtopic(i'd reply to this via PM but I don't want to send yoju/opthers too many unsolicited/unwanted PMs) - Again, it was the words/ideas I felt were being "attacked"...not the user you replied to. I also said/say again that I often reply to certain posts I feel are interesting and/or in which an idea is being unfairly put down/etc, as well as random posts that I like in threads I follow. It's mainly an OCD-symptom of mine(with good and bad aspects).

Clarification: Perhaps attacked wasn't the best choice of words/terms when describing it.



Doesn't that also apply to many ARPGs?

Dark Alliance is awesome....did you play part 2 yet, by any chance?

(I would, but the prices wanted for secnondhand discs on eBay is like 30 bucks or more...so it's on my wishlist for now)

There we go - you have switched from "defending endangered fellow goger", to "defending goger's idea". That is not what you have originally said. By now you must have realized how silly it was to write such ludicrous stuff in the first place. :-) Have your parents tought you not to lie? :-)

After this last reply i'm putting you on mental ignore, as you seem to be keen on character attacks and shaming rather than serious debate.

Next time, in order to avoid embarrassment, it's best to keep hero complex in check and speak the truth. Look for logos in life, it will be so much easier for you. :-)

Yeah Ive played through it a couple of times, each time hoping it would be better than I remembered. Its done by a different studio but with the same engine. The Heros are well done, but the game is way too easy and the levels are not as memorable.
I would say try Champions of Norrath, Snow Blind studios, the studio behind the first Baldurs Gate DA took their co owned engine and created CoN with it. Very good.

Well it IS easy...i'll give you that much. I also liked what I played of CON, though.....it is also very good.

Thank you for such detailed answer!
I noticed the "rate wars", that was my biggest complaint with the game, I just didn't know how to name it ;)

This is actually the problem I have with skill point systems in general: You basically *have* to overspecialize to be effective, at least until you reach a cap or encounter diminishing returns on skill points spent. (An example of the latter is in the Avernum series, but not their more recent remakes; as you raise a skill or attribute, it takes more points to increase it, but other attributes or skills are still cheap to increase, so it doesn't make sense to build up a skill too high unless it's to get powerful magic or is the Luck statistic (which is borderline gamebreaking if you raise it high enough, but fairly tame at reasonable levels).)

I note that Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition (and 3.5e) has this issue with mutilclassing, particularly when it comes to spellcasting classes; multiclassing with multiple spellcasting classes just isn't viable (to the point where they added feats and prestige classes to try to patch that issue), and multiclassing ends up only being good for cherry-picking abilities that happen to be both useful and learned at lower levels.

One of the reasons I prefer SaGa style growth (or even something like Tangledeep: Legend of Shara's approach) is that it makes it easier to have characters with more diverse capabilities without having to overspecialize to be effective; a character with high Strength won't be able to get more Strength that easily, but could boost Intelligence to the point of making spellcasting viable for that character. Essentially, by making it so that stat growth is no longer coupled with the advancement of a single level, and that raising one stat or skill doesn't make it harder to raise others, builds that are not overspecialized become viable throughout the game (rather than just at higher levels, like in your Titan Quest example). Dungeon Master is also a good example here, where reaching a high level in one class doesn't impede your leveling in other classes.

I could also mention the approach taken in many Square games, starting in Final Fantasy 5, where the learning of skills and abilities uses a stat that is separate from normal level advancement; hence, you don't have to overspecialize to become decent at other things. (Plus, in FF5, many skills (including all forms of magic) can be "sampled" in a way; switching to a certain job gives you an ability from the job as long as you are in the job, and you only need to learn it if you want to use it in a different job.)

Of course, then you have an example like Dungeon Siege, which at first glance seems to be SaGa-like in its growth (but without the randomness), but then you discover the uber level mechanic, which makes it harder to raise a low stat when your character is already strong in other areas. In other words, the developers took a system that doesn't have the inherent problem of overfavoring overspecialization, and they then introduce the problem deliberately.

(Incidentally, Secret of Mana is one game that handles this well; being good with one weapon or spell type doesn't make it harder to become good with others (though there is the issue that reaching a higher level than the enemies will slow down the growth, but never to the point of being impractical to level skills), and the cap is low enough (and scales with progress in the game) that it encourages leveling multiple skills rather than just focusing on one and only one the whole time. (Also, with spells there are elemental weaknesses and resistances, so you can't just level water and expect to be able to kill everything with ice.))

On the flip side, I see systems as you describe as causing a problem where all the characters become flat and same-ish.

The D&D issue you brought up was an issue only in groups where one player goes maximizer. In groups, like mine, where people play for fun and I GM according to the group, it's not as much a problem. And there has to be a *downside* to multi-classing, otherwise, one may as well just get rid rid of classes and go to a [to me, rather comparatively unfun] open-selection, classless system. If there is no downside, everyone just gets the max of everything. (The big upside to multi-classing is versatility and great saving throws.)

Games done as Grim Dawn is have huge build diversity, which is why I enjoy it so much. I have dozens of characters that all feel and play VERY differently and are each enjoyable in their own way. There's also craft in selecting a path you'd like to go and good creativity in making an unusual "build" work. (And, with GD, it's pretty hard to make a character that can't reasonably make it pretty far through the game, though some are more challenging than others.)

One thing: Characters won't become too similar in these systems unless the player plays for a while, far longer than needed to casually beat the game. While you can make everyone good at everything, there's still the issue of the time it takes to reach that point. (See, for example, Final Fantasy X, where characters don't become similar until what I consider to be the post-game content. (The game is flawed, and it suffers serious balance issues that make the post-game unfun (from what I can tell from videos), but it is still an example of this sort of system.))

Furthermore, in some of the examples, there are equipment limitations that limit what you can have a character do. For example, in SaGa Frontier 2, each character can only equip 2 weapons and 4 non/weapons, and there's still the factor of needing anima from equipment to cast spells (you can give someone all 6 types of anima, but you will likely have to sacrifice defense to do so, and there's the fact that you might not have enough dual-anima tools and quells to equip the entire party that way). In Final Fantasy 5, you can only equip one ability from outside your current job, so while you can learn every ability, you can't have them all available at the same time. (Plus, FF5 has some interesting synergies between abilities that you might not expect.)

Another thing is that there are sometimes innate differences between characters. For example, in SaGa games, while most characters can do most things, some are better than others. In SF2, for example, some characters get more WP regen, only certain characters can use martial arts for some reason, and there's one character who can't use magic at all (which is a major plot point, though not a spoiler; rather it is this fact that drives much of the game's plot). In Secret of Mana, the two characters who can cast spells use different spells, so they are still very different characters even if they have the same spell levels. (Only the girl gets a healing spell, for example, while only the Sprite gets the spell that steals MP from enemies.) (I could also mention that, in SaGa Frontier 1, as well as in the first two SaGa games, dfferent character races differ fundamentally in the very rules for character growth; there are, in fact, 3 or 4 separate growth systems in these games, and they may favor different set-ups and play styles.)

Actually, the D&D issue, particularly the case of spellcaster multi-classing, is more serious than what you describe. If we ignore the "patches" that I mentioned, what we have is a situation where a level 10/10 Cleric/Mage is basically useless compared to a level 20 Cleric or Mage; the character has no decent healing (Heal isn't available until level 11, and every lower level healing spell is way too weak (another problem with D&D in general, though more severe in 2e and earlier)), and attack spells aren't going to work because of how common enemy spell resistance is, and the fact that our multi-class character is 10 points behind (on a 20 point scale) on hitting the enemy; if the single class character can hit half the time, the multi class character can't hit at all! 2e handles this situation batter; the character would get access to 7th level spells rather than only 5th level, and enemy spell resistance doesn't depend on the caster's level, so attack spells aren't completely useless. (The character would lack access to spells such as Wish and (if we gave Clerics their 3e spell lists and higher level spells) would presumably not get the likes of Mass Heal, but that's OK for there to be some sacrifice.)

Basically, the D&D issue means that, if I want to make a character who is devoted to learning all types of magic, the character becomes useless later on.

Yes the hacking was the biggest drag though!

I liked it, myself.....I also liked the "hacking" in neuromancer, which was alot of typing/etc. I feel such adds a bit of authenticity to said games.