well after talking with some coworkers the other day i wanted to explain my thoughts on why i disliked talents so much in world of warcraft or other games. it's not that they are a bad idea to have but i haven't personally seen improvement on those in a long time. the good part about talents in games is that it's a slight adjustment to your character so that two of the same character can play differently. shitty part is that you then play like 1 of 3 types of your character. it gives the illusion of choice which is great and the default look and workings of a talent system also work great however it's getting a little outdated. all i had to do was google talent system and i get a plethora of images of all the same thing but with different art. stats and everything don't really matter at this point since what i'm looking at improving is it's overall way you get talents.
first problem with talents is there is usually 2-3 different choices and there are always 2-3 different choices to go and adding more talent choices isn't necessarily the answer if you want to the player to have more options.
second problem is they are all linear. not moving in some sort of way that allows the character to make their own choices and make that avatar unique to them and their play style.
third problem is that if you go one way you can't really go back if you decide you don't want a talent in one area, as well as if you have the option to mix and match you frequently miss out on the final talents in all areas.
ok so google has this to show us from the ever so popular games of world of warcraft and borderlands with their talent systems.
the same similar problems show up in each one. it's a branch of 3 paths with a couple of choices that all lead to single and powerful talent specs. if you start one path you immediately have made your choice and then mix and matching isn't as fun because you basically have to downgrade to try weaker talents meant for lower levels not knowing if it's all that worth it anymore. this is one way to keep players from being over powered when in fact players like to feel overpowered and like to feel as if they have beat the system you've laid down. my goals in design are to let the player make their own decisions and mix and match how they want. give them the freedom they deserve to make their play style their own and not punish them for spending a talent point in something when after trying it realizing they didn't like it.
so how i determine that we solve this is to think more like a web rather than a box of possiblities.
ok so instead of making it so 1 talent now unlocks access to 2 more talents of that type and so on, i believe it should be more of a unlocking level 1 circle of talents gives access to all of circle 2's of talents. circle 2 then unlocks all of circle 3 and so on. this provides the player with a way to customize a character to their liking and giving them a much larger range of possibilities but also a simple path if they feel like just sticking with one type. it also makes it so that the player doesn't ever miss out on that final talent point in the other areas while still supporting multi talented system. i also believe that the player should be allowed to take away a talent in one area and put it into another at any point in time. trial and error is a fun part of design and i believe that talents is a player designing their character, that and it sucks not to have the chance to play with all aspects of the game without their being some sort of negative consequence for it. so if a player wants to spend 2 or 20 hours perfecting the perfect system or mix in match in the midst of the field, then i say let them, if that's what they have fun figuring out, then i think it's great.
i believe systems in games should offer a realm of possibilities rather than just giving the player a single guided experience.
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