question about distribution of skillpoints.

(Mustang) #21

Cankor’s description is how I understood it to be also
No dev comments able to back this up one way or another though

(Ajax's Spear) #22

[QUOTE=Cankor;268102]The way I took it is there are 3 active ability slots per class. So you select your load out, per class, and when you switch classes your active abilities switch to the other load out.
.[/QUOTE]

This would make total sense. Life Buff would be no good to you if you were needed to be an Engineer most of the match.

(crazyfoolish) #23

[QUOTE=Cankor;268102]The way I took it is there are 3 active ability slots per class. So you select your load out, per class, and when you switch classes your active abilities switch to the other load out.

[/QUOTE]

This would make the most sense.

However, if this was the case what would be the point of taking non class specific abilities?
Maybe they are just as useful as class specific perks but they wouldn’t fit well with any specific class. E.g. faster reloads.

(Cankor) #24

[QUOTE=crazyfoolish;268238]This would make the most sense.

However, if this was the case what would be the point of taking non class specific abilities?
Maybe they are just as useful as class specific perks but they wouldn’t fit well with any specific class. E.g. faster reloads.[/QUOTE]

well, maybe a lot of the non-class specific abilities are passive abilities so they don’t take up those 3 active ability slots. They could be common to all class load outs, but I think it’s more likley you fill out a load out for each class so you can combine your non class specifc abilities along with your class specific abilities so they complement each other.

You’d be able to put something like faster reload into all four of your class load outs too, it’s not like you could just put it in one (at least thats how I envision it).

The class load out is just the abilities that you use while you are a particular class. There’s probably weapon load outs as well for each class.

This way when you switch class, you don’t have to spend a lot of time choosing which weapons and abilities you want and so forth, it’s already set up and ready to go as soon as you switch.

(Weapuh) #25

I also thought there would be passive perk to make your character seem more personalized to your play-style rather than optimized 3 perks = winner. What would be the point of leveling different characters if its just a game of mix and match perks.

(Djean) #26

I agree it would. What I don’t understand however is this:

With the ability to drop in and out any time during a game, wouldn’t that encourage players to do so, just to change their character?
I would find this remarkable, especially when abilities are indeed associated with a specific character.

(Mustkunstn1k) #27

If you can’t change characters in-game then this is kind of bs.
If our team needs a soldier… then I will go soldier. But, I also want my character that is made for being a soldier. :expressionless:

(Schwarzeis) #28

[QUOTE=Mustkunstn1k;273347]If you can’t change characters in-game then this is kind of bs.
If our team needs a soldier… then I will go soldier. But, I also want my character that is made for being a soldier. :expressionless:[/QUOTE]

Guess we’ll have to hybrid-specc?

(Mustkunstn1k) #29

I’m not a fan of this… not a fan of this all.
Overall I could live with the fact that you get a direct upgrade with each level (even though a lot of people probably aren’t gonna like this a lot, there is a reason most games have somewhat balanced optional decisions).

But the fact that I can’t change to what I (or the team) need(s) in the middle of the game seems very bad. What is the point of creating 1+ characters if I need to make sure that all of them are balanced so I can change my class easily.

Maybe for consoles where it’s just matchmaking. But this definetly isn’t gonna fly with PC and dedicated servers where you need to be able to change teams when the teams are unbalanced. And ofcourse I need to change classes too. Heavier characters are much more important when it comes to defense.

(JeP) #30

We don’t have any info on the number of perks available at the same time, if choosing medic skills will means less slots for soldier ones, etc. Stop crying before being hurt, please. That’s seem pretty essential for the game, I can’t see them missing that, and if ever they’ve chosen to stick you to a specific character, I’m sure there is a reason.
I know every one can’t share this blind faith, but please, stop calling bs every choice you don’t have the tools/game exeprience to understand.

(Maawdawg) #31

From what I saw in my time with the skill section at PAX you can select skills from multiple classes but you do not get to pick 3 soldier skills, 3 medic skills, 3 engineer skills, etc and have them all available for when you switch classes. There just aren’t enough points to do so. You get a point (or points) to spend on skills every time you level up, like in an RPG. You put those skills where you want, to specialize towards a specific class, stick with general skills, or spread them out. Specializing in one class will not make it impossible to play the others, far from it actually, from my time with the game. I didn’t feel weak with any of the other classes even though all my points were in Engineer in one playthrough (and I only played about a minute of that class).

If you spec for mostly soldier when you swap to other classes you will have a minor disadvantage (if any) of using a “base model” of that class since you put all your points in Soldier on that character. If you feel you will be swapping classes a lot it would be much more beneficial to spend most of your available points in general skills or spread them out and pick your favorites in a couple/few classes. It gives the choices more weight.

There are 16 character slots and you can change characters before every match. With 16 slots you could do the following if you played enough, a Light, Medium, and Heavy of every class, and also have L/M/H general build characters, plus a spare slot. The point of all the slots and limitations is that you won’t be able to make one character that is good at everything all the time. That is the point, I think.

It wouldn’t make sense to let everyone have “their most powerful” character version of every class with three skills available on each all the time, imo. The system as I saw it lends it self more to the question “is it worth me giving up my spec’d out super-soldier that I chose to go to a vanilla medic since the team needs one right now”. That is a much better level of decision making than “I’ll just change from super-medic to my super-operative” because builds allow me to specialize in all 4 classes at once. At that point there is actually no choice cost and no weight to spec at all since everyone will be able to do everything in every match with no thought as to downside. You wouldn’t even need character slots at that point, really.

It all comes down to opinion at that point but I am definitely a fan of weighted decision making and decisions having values and effects in games. I am almost positive you won’t be having 3 skills of every class to choose from, not even close to that actually. It is a setup like an MMO if you want to specialize in one tree (class in this case) then you can’t go all the way down the other trees too. If you want to spread out into all the trees then you can’t make any one tree (class) all the way to the end.

(Bridger) #32

This is all a lot of speculation I hope.

If I cannot change my skills/bodytype/class/weapons in the middle of a game that’s a HUGE fail. I trust SD enough to be fairly certain we’ll be able to do all that.

(Schwarzeis) #33

Dawg, Exedore just said it’s only 10 character slots :l

(JeP) #34

That’s a number, you don’t know its implications.

Bridger : it has been showed repeatidely, at a Command Post you can only choose classes and weapons, that’s all.

For my understanding, they want player to make choices and live with it.

(Wraith) #35

[QUOTE=Mustkunstn1k;273347]If you can’t change characters in-game then this is kind of bs.
If our team needs a soldier… then I will go soldier. But, I also want my character that is made for being a soldier. :expressionless:[/QUOTE]

No matter what class you switch to you will have the basic abilities of the class. For soldier handout ammo and HE charge. You just can’t choose all the nifty grenades etc when you switch midmatch.

(Maawdawg) #36

Thanks, I hadn’t seen that today. Sucks a bit, but 10 is still a bunch and I couldn’t have seen myself leveling all 4 body types for each class. I am more disappointed in the loss of XP sharing, personally. Having full respec ability (even at the loss of an XP level) makes the loss of both easier to accept though, for me.

Here is the link to the official statement on that for any interested.
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showpost.php?p=273265&postcount=121

(Wraith) #37

[QUOTE=Maawdawg;273416]Thanks, I hadn’t seen that today. Sucks a bit, but 10 is still a bunch and I couldn’t have seen myself leveling all 4 body types for each class. I am more disappointed in the loss of XP sharing, personally. Having full respec ability (even at the loss of an XP level) makes the loss of both easier to accept though, for me.

Here is the link to the official statement on that for any interested.
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showpost.php?p=273265&postcount=121[/QUOTE]

That is disappointing.

(Ajax's Spear) #38

Wow, that is a bummer. At least 12 would have been fine if the respec penalty is so “radical.” :frowning:

In fact I think this needs its own thread.