GMTK Newsletter (July 2017)

Definitely the job system across Final Fantasy games should be mentioned. I haven't played Final Fantasy X at all, but I've heard the sphere grid is a rather ingenious/confusing ordeal, too. Also, is item-based learning included in this topic? Because I remember both FFIX and Disgaea feature systems where equipping items give you temporary new abilities that you can make permanent with use/AP gain. That's something. And, of course, there's the lovely GF leveling system in FFVIII. Obviously Final Fantasy is a full plate of these. :P There's also an obvious point to be made about having option in tech trees. Right off the top of my head I think how Diablo II allowed you to choose your skills on each level, and how Diablo III completely scrapped that and made tech trees fixed, with only a choice of what modifier to use on each spell(and even they were acquired at fixed levels, not chosen). I personally hated that, but that's just MHO.

Whenever I think about skill trees, I think of this post that's apart of a sequence of articles about what a real utopia would look like. <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/xo/justified_expectation_of_pleasant_surprises/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://lesswrong.com/lw/xo/justified_expectation_of_pleasant_surprises/</a> "Imagine living in two possible worlds. Both worlds are otherwise rich in challenge, novelty, and other aspects of Fun. In both worlds, you get smarter with age and acquire more abilities over time, so that your life is always getting better. But in one world, the abilities that come with seniority are openly discussed, hence widely known; you know what you have to look forward to. In the other world, anyone older than you will refuse to talk about certain aspects of growing up; you'll just have to wait and find out. I ask you to contemplate—not just which world you might prefer to live in—but how much you might want to live in the second world, rather than the first. I would even say that the second world seems more alive; when I imagine living there, my imagined will to live feels stronger. I've got to stay alive to find out what happens next, right?"

boop

I like Pyre's small (8 powers, 2 branches) skill tree. Some of the details are revealed as part of the story. I like that you don't lose your plan of progression between levels (small enough to fit in your head), you max out at filling in half of it, but the game also has tension between building up powerful characters and losing them. Could be frustrating if you want to collect them all, but it changes how you view the skill trees.

It'd recommend taking a look at Path of Exile's skill tree, as it's more of a skill web. Every class has access to the entire web, but starts at a completely different part of it. A great idea!

Ari Biantes

Right, so... where was I? Ah yes, Borderlands. Borderlands is a great example of a skill tree done correctly, which is as a way for players to express themselves and their playstyle. in a simple, intuitive way. There are a few factors that facilitate that heavily. First, every single skill tree in Borderlands has patterns. Every character has a skill that changes their melee, every side of the skill tree is reflective of a focus (Example, Zer0 has a Melee Focus on the right, Sniper focus on the left, and a General/ActionSkill focus on the middle), every part of the skill tree has a cornerstone that changes your gameplay HEAVILY, and every one of them also has a middle-of-the-way gamechanger (Gamechanger, in BL lingo, are the 1-skill-point skills that heavily alter an aspect of a player, say, like giving Axton the ability to have almost infinite range with his turrets), they are mostly percentage-based, with maxing them leaving it just below 50%... I could go on and on, they all have these patterns and it helps to quickly discern your line of thought between builds, characters and even games! Secondly... synergy, and I CANNOT stress that enough. If Breath of the Wild proved us anything, it's that there's a very tangible magic in letting disparate mechanics interact with each other. Borderlands, unfortunately, puts this on the backburner, but even not being their priority (I mean, sure, there's synnergy within parts of one skill tree, but rarely intentional synnergy between parts or even between skills / characters), just the fact that, for instance, if you pick both the kunai skill on Zer0's middle skill tree and the death mark skill in the zer0 skill tree, the kunai WILL apply the death mark, potencializing your damage and focusing even more your build around these skills! That's great! That's true playstyle expression! Last, but certainly not least, is the ability to completely reset your skill tree at a minimum cost. Borderlands tells you one thing loud and clear: "It's very much encouraged to experiment!". Heck, I can make an ENTIRELY MELEE BUILD for, I unno, CLAPTRAP ( It also helps I can access tools to make my own skill tree in mere 10 minutes: <a href="http://thepresequel.com/Claptrap/055112115005151010155011310141500050)," rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://thepresequel.com/Claptrap/055112115005151010155011310141500050),</a> a character who was basically NOT MADE to be melee, in a way that synergizes with itself, feels great and, the best part? Is entirely modular. Maybe some people might disagree with the way I spread my skills for a pure-focused melee claptrap, and that's GREAT! That's the fun part! They're not perfect, most skills are even a bit useless and it ends up creating a meta-game where some skills are extremely overpowered or extremely synergetic in ways unintended by developers - and not the fun kind of unintended. But it's still, in my opinion, one of the most thoughtful applications of the idea of what means to have a skill tree in your game - to express yourself. ...wouldn't hurt if they put some skills to be unlocked by doing mini-achivements like Wolfenstein or Doom but that's a whole other can of worms and you can argue against or in favour of that and my post has gone for way too long.

Cyber Twilight

I feel that most of the time skill trees are linear level up systems disguised as the player building their own avatar. Even though the order of abilities unlocked may be slightly different, in the end each player will unlock the same abilities resulting in same overpower superhero every play through. That being said I pretty much always enjoy using a tree.

Though I have played only about a half hour of Dragon Age II, the skill trees in that game look great. They might be a bit complex, but I like it that each tree is different (while in Dragon Age: Origins the skill trees were straight lines, more like skill sticks). Not only they look cool, but it is nice that each different field of knowledge or technique has its own flow. Skyrim does the same with perks.

Really like Skyrim's skill advancement as it rewards the way you play, similarly in Final Fantasy VII you level up whatever materia you have equipped, so the more you use an ability, the better you get at it. Wolfenstein: The New Order was interesting because perks unlocked when you completed challenges which made me change up the way I approached combat depending on what perks I wanted (there's a similar thing in DOOM to unlock the last upgrade on any weapon but this feels underused and there aren't many of them).

Almost made a new comment before I noticed this one. It might just be because I've been playing the FFXII remake, but I've found the FFX and FFXII skill systems to be interesting, if a bit overwhelming. FFX is famous for having a complex sphere grid which (at least the non-expert grid) funnels you in one direction but gives you options to break into the grids of other characters. The FFXII remake is a bit different because your "job" which determines which skills you can get... but because they made it possible to get two jobs per character, it makes for some interesting combinations.

Kaleb Elwert

Skill trees are... Tricky. Without even getting into the inherent dillema that they bring about "choosing your path" without knowing what it entails, the inherent extra balance issues, the possibly iffy or just "meh" ways of following it, even outside of game design, they became a whipping boy thanks to the overreliance of devs around it, with most skills in it being uninspired, uninteresting or outright broken - OP or UP. On the other hand, well... One single series has taught me to love them and almost fully convinced me I need them to convey the feeling I want in my game of altering a single class of characters, as a sort of "dynamic sub-class". That series is Borderlands. (I'll argue about it soon enough though, sorta busy day I'm having today)

Cyber Twilight

Without thinking too much on it, my favorite skill trees are World of Warcraft and Skyrim, mainly because they have a more natural and organic feel as you play along, specially if you don't "cheat" (as in alway crouching walking to improve your sneaking). Another one that has a special place for me is Transistor, I really liked how story details are unlocked by using the components differently.

Anom

Not a huge fan of skill trees personally, either you can eventually buy everything and be hugely over-powered or you can't and I feel short-changed :p. That said my favourite is inFamous 2's, in which you can't buy a new skill unless you've achieved some prerequisite in-game (e.g. 20 headshots, shoot 10 airborne enemies, 5 enemies with one grenade etc). Encourages you to play around with all your abilities which is always good!

Neil

I will say what separates you from someone like Folding Ideas is your dynamic storytelling through graphics/visuals. While I think Folding Ideas has some really great techniques, I feel like I get bored visually. Luckily his theses are compelling enough for me to keep watching. Just a thought. Oh and obviously the sphere grid from Final Fantasy X needs to be mentioned. As well as the slightly different approach with Final Fantasy XII and the job board.

Skill tree is a subject that makes me angry. For me they kill a lot of games because they are used the wrong way: instead of opening new ways to play they make the game easier. At the end of the game I feel like I have mastered the game not because I'm skillful but because I'm stuffed with god-like skills.

Sandro Dall'Aglio

I don't remember ever really liking a skill tree system. And more often than not it just seems tacked on. But even if it isn't, it feels like it's an arbitrary way of pulling me back from what my character could do in the game. It's necessary game balance stuff, but right in your face, kinda like a minigame of balancing your character's abilities, but I'd rather play the actual game than spend time weighing bonuses. Perhaps skill trees make the most sense in MMOs from what I can tell - your success in PvP will depend somewhat on your character's talent build. (Is that a good thing though?) I guess I simply have too much dislike for stat-based gameplay altogether.

Parachuting Turtle

Re: upgrade trees, I just fired up Blood Dragon again this past weekend and was reminded of the anti-skill tree that game has — basically, you play, and predetermined, tiered upgrades install themselves. That's obviously the exact opposite of Far Cry's elaborate chain of self-determined enhancements, and fits Blood Dragon's contrarian attitude entirely.

I find the best upgrade trees are the ones that change the way you can approach situations. Infamous 2 I remember (though haven't gone back in a long time) the upgrades feeling like they did quite alter how i could go about fighting enemies. Especially once you make the choice between Evil/Light power alterations later in the game.

kyle disanjh

You might consider doing a video on the impact of crowdfunding on design for your 2k patreons video, would seem to be thematically appropriate.

Daniel Haas

Seconded, I haven't played PoE myself but the skill tree (trees?) is worth a look. Someone mentioned Ubisoft style trees not allowing for much player expression; after hearing my friend try to explain his character's skill tree to me, it sounds like the PoE tree is very... expressive.

Might be worth checking out Path of Exile's skill tree. That thing is... sizeable.

Mathew Dyason

I feel like skills trees could do more to make the player make decisions. In games like Far Cry you can farm easily to a point where you unlock a decent set of abilities, knowing full well that you'll unlock them all by the end but perhaps have little use for them come game end. If unlocking certain abilities locked out other abilities it'd force the character in a particular direction and encourage replay value.

Matt Hauke

Mmm, that's a very good point. The ones in games like Deus Ex and Dishonored are all about letting you pick what sort of character you're going to be, at the expense of other abilities and powers.

Game Maker's Toolkit

Great videos as always, particularly loved the deconstruction of the level from Ori. With regards to Ubisoft style skill trees I often feel they act more as a mechanism for gating content for slow release so as not to overwhelm a player, rather than as a tool for player expression. Its hard to imagine two different players near the end game of Horizon Zero Dawn for example, having characters that played significantly differently in any meaningful sense.

but it's expensiiiiive. However, if I do a video on VR games I can justify it to myself as a business expense! A cunning plan!

Game Maker's Toolkit

You have a Rift? PLAY LONE ECHO RIGHT NOW.

skullthug