In most computer RPGs, including Diablo and Diablo 2, low level spells/skills (ones your character can use starting at level 1, or 5, etc) are generally less powerful than high level skills (ones you have to wait until level 20, or 30, or 50, etc) to start using. I’d never thought of this as a particularly contentious issue, and in fact it seemed fairly justified to me. If I’ve got to play hours and hours before I can start using a skill, I expect that skill to do more than does a skill Ic could use the moment I first wandered out of the Rogue Encampment.
Though I’d never really thought about it, I figured almost everyone agreed on this, an assumption I had to rethink after reading the comments to this news post, in which first Bashiok, then me, defended the Witch Doctor’s Plague of Toads skill. I said that not every player would like every skill, and that perhaps Plague of Toads (PoT?) wasn’t meant to be the one you took down act bosses with, but that it was very viable early on, and a lot of fun to use. That wasn’t good enough for some fans, who disagreed with the entire design concept. They wanted every skill to be useful throughout the entire game, and thought it was a mark of poor design and balance if a skill became non-viable in the late game.
Spurred by that earlier debate, this installment of On the Drawing Board examines the issue of skill design and long term viability. Click through to see a list of the key issues to consider, then hop to the comments to join in the discussion.
For instance, here’s Red Beard Neo:
I don’t have a problem with respeccing per se. My problem lies in using it as an excuse not to balance the skills. A level 50 skill should do more than a level 1, true, but forcing players to cannibalize their lower-level skills is just sloppy. It reeks of Firebolt and Spirit Wolves and Bash (oh my!).”
The D2 team’s reply to this would be something like:
But the skills are balanced. Firebolt and Spirit Wolves and Bash are exactly as powerful as they’re meant to be. They are supposed to be much less powerful than higher level skills. Their long term weakness is a feature, not a bug.
Those are two sides of the coin, but this question is more like a dice roll, with more than two possible answers. Here are some of the issues to consider.
D2’s Skill Balance
The importance of skills in D2 has evolved over time, largely because most players now focus entirely on the end game, rather than on the leveling up process. During development and then into the early days of D2C, rushing was rare, twinks were nonesistent, the exp-boost from playing in large parties was not as great, and players didn’t think so far ahead. A Clvl 12 or 18 skill that improved on a Clvl 6 skill was cause for celebration, and saving all your points for level 24 or 30 skills seemed crazy.
Since then the overall focus of players has changed quite a bit, as have the skills. Lower level skills have been upgraded in patches, making them more viable long term. Synergies made a huge difference as well, turning some formerly useless low level skills into point sinks that must be utilized to make the higher level skills properly functional. As a result there are now more “useful” skills than ever before, even if the use of quite a few is simply for their synergistic function. Or did you think all of those Hammerdins were just big fans of Blessed Aim and Vigor?
Character Build Time
Another issue that’s changed greatly over the course of Diablo 2’s lifespan. The importance and utility of low level skills becomes much more important if it takes a week to get to level 20. If you can reach it in an hour, then those early skills become almost irrelevant, if they don’t remain viable long term. We don’t know much about D3’s level up curve at this point, so it’s impossible to say. I can say that chracters leveled up from 6 to 9 or 10 over the course of the Blizzcon demo, which took somewhere between 15-40 minutes to complete, depending on if you went for a full dungeon clear, played multiplayer, etc. (Play sessions were 20 minutes long on the main show floor, and the D3 Team were surprised how many players made it through the demo-ending Skeleton King in that much time.)
Respecs and “Wasted” Skills
D3 will have skill respecs, of some kind. Details TBD, but the team has committed to allowing some method of reusing spent skill points. In one way, this supports the concept of low level skills being temporary. Make them fun, make them useful, but don’t scale up their power, since players are only going to use them while they can, then recycle those skill points elsewhere. On the other hand, it’s wasted effort for the team to design cool skills if they’re only going to be used for a few levels, early on. And what if players really enjoy a low level skill, but can’t find a way to use it long term since it’s just too weak to be viable?
The importance and necessity of respecs also depends on character build time, and difficulty. Respecs aren’t much needed in D2 these days (though some way to fix accidental misclicks should really have been included), since it’s so quick/easy to level up a character, especially when playing online. This wasn’t always the case, though.
For example, in the early days of D2C, when bows were still bugged on +%ED, leveling up a bowazon was slow, tedious, and hazardous for HC players. Low damage bows, no decent twinks, no charms, leech hard to come by (and underappreciated), etc. At the same time, Jab was grossly overpowered, since weapon speed wasn’t checked, and the moment an amazon got an sort of pike she became an absolute killing machine. It took dedication (in those pre-rushing days) to level up with a bow, when you could put a single point into jab and kill virtually any monster with one hit.
Playing with a bow was faster and safer past level 40 or 50, when your character could use better bows, had more dexterity, had enough mana to keep the skills going, etc. From that end game perspective, the point in Jab was wasted, since you never used it again. But for players who struggled through the leveing up process, that point in Jab, which otherwise would have gone into something like Penetrate, where it would raise your to/hit by an indetectible 1%, was very well spent.
Skill Ranks and Power Equality
Where should additional skill points (ranks) be factored in? (When I refer to high/low skill “level” in this article, I’m referring to the character level a skill can first be used at, not the number of points in a skill. D3 appears to be calling multiple points in a skill, “ranks,” which should help avoid some confusion.)
Should a Clvl 10 skill with 10 points (ranks) in it be more/less/equal in power to a Clvl 30 skill with 2 points (ranks)? Should a Clvl 30 skill at 15th rank be vastly more powerful than a Clvl 10 skill at 15th rank? This comes down to the design goals, and also depends on function vs. flash.
Function vs. Flash
This relates to how a skill looks, vs. how it functions. Low level skills should have a look that’s equivalent to their function. These can upgrade; think of how high level Charged Bolt looks compared to those pitiful little level 1 sparks, but there should be some correlation. An easy example from Diablo 2 is the Sorceress’ Frozen Orb spell. It looks great, like a Clvl 30 spell should. But imagine if it were a Clvl 1 skill? Even if the damage were nerfed to make it reasonable at that level, it would be ridiculous. The effect of a skill should have some relation to its apparent might.
This brings us back to the original question, about Plague of Toads. It’s a fun spell, but as some commenters pointed out, it’s just a bunch of frogs hopping along. How damaging should it be, with those graphics? There will be more toads at higher ranks, or with the help of Skill Runes, but still… it’s a bunch of toads. Wouldn’t it seem silly if something like Siegebreaker stepped on the amphibian parade, and dropped dead?
Also, what if the Witch Doctor has higher level summoning skills? Say he’s got something like, Conjure Leviathon, a spell that opens a portal through which flops some some soul-sucking, Cthulhu tentacled monstrosity. Shouldn’t that skill do much more than Plague of Toads?
Skill Growth
Another issue with low level skills improving to match higher level skills; isn’t it boring to use the same skill forever? This isn’t such an issue late in the day, when rushing and twinking and such has taken over, but early on, it’s fun to build up a character and learn new skills as you increase your power. It’s fun to try out new things; different things, and that temptation is hard to resist. This is why most people end up cheating on their GF/BF, after all.
Skill Utility
How many skills should a high level character have to use to succeed? D2 was not well-balanced on this front, since a number of skills were so powerful they were the best option in almost any situation. If D3 is balanced to require more variety, then no skills will be far and away the most powerful, since there will be many situations they aren’t suitable for.
To return once again to the Plague of Toads example; if each toad deals a decent amount of poison damage, but the damage doesn’t stack very well to a single target, the skill will be useless against huge enemies. But if higher ranks add many more toads, and there are situations like this one fairly often in the game, a low-damage skill that hits lots of things at once would be extremely useful.
In my perfect game, different skills do very different things, and successful play requires a character to utilize them all in appropriate situations. The one-skill wonder style of so much of D2X’s PvM is, I think, very poor game design. It rewards time spent hunting (or duping) items and following build guides, and almost entirely eliminates player skill as a meaningful factor.
Synergies and Related Skills
This is a feature in D3 that seems pretty clever. Some of the higher level skills are connect to or are boosted by lower level ones. One easy example is Improved Magic Missile, and skill that does nothing but increase the number of projectiles fired by Magic Missile. MM is a fairly low level Wizard spell, so players who intend to use MM long term can stick in multiple points early on, and then really boost the spell’s power when they start adding points to IMM later on. This synergy-like skill relationship is found in most of Diablo 3’s skill trees, where one (usually passive) skill boosts one or more active skills.
The way this is designed seems wiser than D2X’s synergies, where multiple skills are tied together, greatly reducing build variety and essentially forcing players to max out all the synergistic skills to avoid leaving their primary attack underpowered.
Ultimate Skill Design
While these other issues have to be considered, and how skills are used during the leveling up process is going to be far more important than we jaded D2 experts now realize, the ultimate question for D3’s skill design is determining how they’ll work in the end game. There aren’t just two options, but to simplify the issue, consider whether you want rock/paper/scissors, or something more like pistol/machine gun/rocket launcher. Should the D3 Team’s goal be to make all (or most) skills exactly even? Or should some skills be the strongest, while others remain useful, in some circumstances?
It’s pretty easy to see that there’s no way every skill can be perfectly even; not with so much variety in equipment, monsters, and levels. Plus there’s the difficulty of comparing skills between different characters, and the impossibility of trying to balance for PvP and PvM at the same time. That said, the goal should be to make most skills useful, if not essential, and to give players a wide variety of skills to use long term, so D3 doesn’t end up entirely filled by cookie cutter, one-skill specialist builds, the way some would argue D2X is now.
How do you want to see skills balanced in D3? How much balance is really desired? And which of the various issues discussed in this article are the most important, in your judgment?
On the Drawing Board is written by Flux. These articles examine crucial game design issues and decisions in Diablo 3 by explaining the issue and presenting arguments for and against. On the Drawing Board aims to spur debate and further the conversation, rather than converting readers to one side or the other. Conversation and disagreement is encouraged. Have your say in the comments, or contact the author directly. Suggestions for future column topics are welcomed.
