Hey everyone hope all is well,
What is the problem?
I think this game has a big problem with skill diversity. I want to say that the patch where they buffed all the perks and made them even stronger on weapons was a great change and this is the best balance has felt in the game.
However, the system is very convoluted and promotes a heavy gear based playstyle. We are still in RNG gear hell with like a multitude of bad weapon drops and a few key best in slow pieces (BiS) that you can farm from x dungeon or y mob which I think is great don’t get me wrong.
Matteria currency was a great addition and if I farm this dungeon reliably I will get that piece I want and the PvP track has great gear too to get the pieces you want as well so kudos to the team.
I just cannot help but feel how stale the games combat is for certain classes that don’t really have skill shots. Like your whole progression is reliant on gear and not character level. The only thing you really get from character level are tent upgrades I think?
A big complaint many of my friends had was that there is nothing to look forward to in end game. You use these same abilities and skills throughout the whole game and it gets pretty stale pretty fast. For a 3 button game diversity - which is a key problem this game faces as a whole, not just with abilities but world variety and copy pasta - is very important and cannot be forgotten.
Possible solutions, and how to implement it.
I want to suggest a system like Lost Ark that is tied to abilities rather than a class such as WoW’s talent tree system.
However you get these points through LEVELING.
You would maybe start getting them after level 10? So you would have 50 points for a total of 25 points per weapon you wanted to put them into? Idk there is a way to cut the math properly so it could work even if you don’t start earning them until level 30 or whatever. But at least you would have something else to look forward to.
This video has a great representation of how it could function.
I’m not expecting this to be incredibly in depth, this is NW we are talking about, but I have hope the dev team should strive to achieve something complex yet simple.
I think for simplicity sake, keep the same skill system and ultimate abilities. Already there is a lot of work tied to them and changing the main weapon skill tree is pointless and would be incredible work to redo.
What could be done are different morphs of the six abilities that still utilize the passives the same way but add another layer of perks.
For example shield bash could then morph into shield throw. It still has all the same perks such as threat generation and a stun increasing to 3 seconds, but now you have the option to throw it instead of being close to you. Then further down this alternate tree you go down, you can make it so that it chain hits to nearest enemies and now becomes an AoE shield boomerang.
Or you could go another path and make it so that shield bash becomes a combo within itself and becomes multi shield bash. You shield bash once and then press the key again and do a downwards bash for a 2 hit combo so that it would do more damage than shield throw because you would have to use it in melee range, and make shield throw do less damage because it now is ranged ability - therefore trading utility for damage.
I know we have all seen movies where people shield bash the fuck out of people so I thought it would be cool to turn the shield bash into it’s own combo.
(The shield throw is shamelessly stolen from Paladins in WoW btw, shield bash and multi shield bash is my own idea also stolen from movies.)
Possible problems?
So the big question? What happens to all the gear that people have spent up all this time farming with all these perks etc etc etc. Would be a massive disaster.
Ultimately, for the greater good and complexity of the game I think they would have to be rendered useless. Maybe do an expansion or something? Maybe a refund system where you get a portion of gold back because of all the time you spent farming gear?
I think gear in this game is a different can of worms, but removing weapon/armor perks from gear and weapons and instead just moving them to an actual talent tree or weapon system would do the game so much good in the long term.
You would actually go for those good weapon perks like rogue, trenchant strikes and leeching etc and actual weapon and armor perks than a half baked class system tied with gear.
It would make getting new weapons so much easier and fun to play, and do away with a lot of unnecessary gear management and grind/paywall to get them. You would realistically just have to farm a BiS weapon to try out a new thing because once you had a general BiS set for armor you are good to go for most content. I’m cool with resistances etc for ward armor.
Long story short, this system solves more problems, gives players more choice and build diversity, and makes the game more fun. Would it be harder to balance, yes hence why starting with 2 morphs per ability is a great starting point, and gives players something to look forward to at endgame.
