Level Caps Are Not Welcome & Here's Why

Feedback/Feature Requests
276

Uh… “Specialization” type skill anyone?

I admit that I ended up to classic Vanguard. Because I more single-player player and it does make me JoaT. Why? Mostly because other builds ain’t that practical and my playstyle in general (not only GZ) is about overpowering through upfront skirmishes, but that isn’t solid. Hence Vanguard, health and to fuel inner pack rat - carry capacity. Other skills are either of no use to me, due to being solo most of the time (flanking, marking, revival speed, Last Man, Commander) or I learned how use stuff/behave without other skills, since they are not that rewarding or build deemed too impractical to bother (marksman, salvage and bino skills right off the bat). Oh, and I’d really like to skip some mandatory +dmg skills for Vanguard.

I’ll repeat myself again: we need to tweak and shuffle a bit current skills and branches, unhook from “rigid 8 branches” to about “a bit more flexible 4 branches” since half skills aren’t worth to even bother (not rewarding or can be compensated with player’s finese) to pick in the first place or worth to own, but must dump precious SP into trash/redundant/unwanted skills (that means you, Tech). No need to reinvent bicycle from scratch.
Game moved too far from what current skill tree offers.

Those “mandatory” survival skills actually do their part in balancing builds. I’d say there’s no “compensation” for not picking them.
Let’s look at Deus Ex (the first one, 2000 release date). There’s up to four “layers” of means to progress: skills, augments, inventory and environment (collective term for pathes taken, dialogue choices, money spent). This system is very complicated, but arrange for you a wide variety of choices how to progress. Lacking in skills and augmentation - get critical item and prepare some bribes. For example - no lockpicks and corresponding skills for certain door? Ask for password. Or buy password. Or circumvent the door. Or just f’ng blast the door. There’s always “compensation” or way to circumvent.
It’s not always as described, but thought should get across - system is not balanced, but organized and have counterweights.

In current GZ it’s simplicity isn’t properly organized and doesn’t have “balance” across the board. It’s “center of mass” or most stable point ended up around these “mandatory survival skills” and Vanguard being meta-build. It’s may not be trivial matter for balancing game’s system with currently implemented skills and items, but at least I don’t see it as unsolvable equation.
Again, game doesn’t offer much to “compensate” for not to pick most meta skills.

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277

Then i’d have this:

Aesyle_char1
Aesyle_char11820×1080 817 KB

No Vanguard, no extra HP or even Stamina amount, no Steady Feet. But loads of Tech skills (with many useless skills as said by many), Enemy Marking (said by some to be useless in solo play) and Marksman. I’d say that she is Jack of all Trades, having skills from all 4 main categories.

She is my 1st char. And while i have 3 other max lvl chars, she is always the one, to whom i prefer when playing GZ.

Well, isn’t faster Running Speed literally one of the survival elements? Since i don’t see how it could be considered part of the Combat, Support or Tech.

There are no predefined classes in GZ. What there are, are skill groupings: these skills are combat oriented, these skills are tech oriented etc.

Besides having basic survival skills (run speed, carry capacity, health amount), there are also basic tech skills (e.g lockpicking), basic support skills (e.g flanking) and basic combat skills (e.g aim speed). Which by your account, should all be considered as Basic skills, and available for all “classes”.

I’m pretty sure that many players end up picking lockpicking skill as well. And players who prefer playing GZ in MP, flanking skill is the 1st one to pick due to it’s ability.

So, is it really any better if 1/3 of all skills are taken out from their current groupings and classified as Basic skills? :thinking:

Great game. :+1: One of the best, if not The Best, game ever made. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Speaking of Deus Ex:
There are 11 skills in Deus Ex, which you can further upgrade 3 times. All skills (except Pistol), start out as Untrained. You then can improve them to Trained, Advanced and Master, to max it out.

Thing is, it takes 86.925 skill points to upgrade all skills to Master but in the entire game, there are only 34.275 skill points available. And not all skills require same amount of skill points to upgrade.
E.g to Master the Environment Training, you’ll need 4.275 skill points but to Master the Lockpicking skill, you’ll need 11.600 skill points.

This above system is great and it’s similar to GZ, where you have to plan ahead and decide which skills you want to improve. There was no mentality of: “remove the cap and get all skills at max level”, like we currently have here in this topic.

On top of the skills, you also have Augmentations in Deus Ex. Each time your get Augmentation Cannister, you had to choose between 2 augmentations. There were no take backs or skill respecs. If you picked e.g Run Silent over Jump Higher, you were stuck with it up to the end of the game. Of course, you could also upgrade each of your augmentations, if you got the rare Augmentation Upgrade Cannister. But once you upgraded it, you were stuck with it.

Like said by DeadWanderer above, there were many different ways to solve a situation. E.g if your Lockpicking skill wasn’t high enough to pick a lock with the lockpicks you had, you could: go find a key, buy more lockpicks, find more lockpicks, buy a key, destroy the door or find another way past the door.

In that sense, there are similarities in GZ as well. There are no required skills in GZ, that you absolutely must have, to finish all missions in GZ. Skills make your life easier but there are other ways to make your life easier. E.g lower in-game difficulty, use Field Radios more, don’t shoot everything on sight etc.

278

This has better wording than I did and I agree on that. I’d like to ephasis that I didn’t mean that GZ been lacking ways to circumvent, but the ways to circumvent are too disbalanced, so there’s a noticeable bias in people’s choices.

279

It would at least be nice if we were notified at some point along the way that there is a level cap so we don’t waste points on, you guessed it - the tick specialization.

But anyway, beyond that, why use precious skill points, to simply run faster? Or be able to run slightly longer? Obviously the specializations…or, some of them that is…should be bought with skill points, because they do things that are slightly unrealistic, such as eliminating weapon sway entirely.

Realistically, stamina would increase simply because you are moving more. So, it makes sense that you wouldn’t have to upgrade it.

280

I agree. Though, i found out about level cap before starting to play GZ (watched some gameplay vids beforehand). :slight_smile:

When taken realistically, many skills would be increasing over time, the more you do that activity. This kind of skill progression is in use e.g in GTA series. Though, this skill progression system takes far longer, to max skills out, than the current skill point system. And that could be another source of complaints.

Also, i don’t think devs would make drastic changes to the game, to implement completely different skill system. But you’ll never know. We already got a huge change in inventory system.

281

No, that is my first character. It might have something small different, but it is basically my first character. I think that says something. The freedom we have with the skill system is an illusion. I only have one other character, which is mainly Combat. Of course, the Survivor tree looks the same. If you were to somehow compile all the player characters of Generation Zero into a set, then remove any that haven’t had much play time, I bet you would end up with 4 general characters, with the Vanguard build being the most seen. They might vary by a point here and there, but they are basically the same. The lack of true classes is an illusion because what is accomplished here is not much different than just giving us 4 characters to choose from.

282

And that what I meant by “no compensation for not to pick said skills”.

283

It’s true that it might be frustrating to some people to just have to wait for your stamina, running speed, and whatever else would be a gradual upgrade, to monotonously improve. But I think they wouldn’t mind as much if that made it so that they didn’t have to waste skill points on those types of improvements.

The devs also are about to make a drastic change to the game, coming ( I believe) on April 27. So, your not wrong, they might surprise us.

284

Am i sensing, that you don’t think i’m credible and perhaps i took that image from the net and i’m claiming it to be mine? :thinking:
If so, then in this bug report topic, there is gameplay video, which i recorded and which proves that i do have that char, who’s screenshot i posted: Sprinting Distance since June Update - #2 by Aesyle

Your picked skills may be similar and there’s a slim chance that they are exactly the ones as my 1st char has them.

As far as that telling something goes, well, to me, it tells that there are players out there, other than me, who at 1st playthrough, don’t consider the 25% damage reduction (Vanguard specialization) critical to be picked.

Only devs can tell what kind of skill sets are the most popular ones since they have the telemetry data. We, players, can only guess.
And my guess, out of all players who have 4 chars, have only one Vanguard specialized char, making the Vanguard build 25% of all builds.

There is a huge difference between:

  • customizing your own char, with free skill picks between 4 skill categories
  • forced to use pre-defined char, who’s core skills (or any skills in that matter), you can’t change

The issue with gradual progression is always the amount of time it takes to advance or max out the skill. For some, it may take way too long of a time than they expected; for others, it finishes too quickly and there are also those who feel it being just right.

Here, i think that people mind more about spending loads of time to advance a skill slowly, rather than gaining a level from XP and then unlocking a skill at an instant.

Another issue with this is that it’s hard to tell if the skill even improves. Since the improvement is so slow, most people can’t tell a difference, even when you have a counter showing the progression.

285

Well, that is definitely true. But, because GZ is kind of a “ grind game” where people tend to play a lot of it, for different reasons, some of which have to do with the fact that people are frequently looking for weapons, achievements, and so on…it would even out. Essentially what I’m saying is, yes it would take a while, but it might not take as long as you think because for instance, players are always running, so stamina would increase rather quickly. And because reloading is a necessity, reload speed would increase rather quickly as well.

Also, we’re assuming that the devs would make it that it takes forever to Improve your skills, but they might make it not take quite as long as we’re thinking.

286

Yes, we are assuming the probable length of time it would take to max out progressive skill. But when to look how long it takes to, e.g:

  • collect every 5* weapon, including U.S weapons
  • collect every 6* weapon
  • collect every apparel schematic

Then i’d say that progressive skills would also take forever and more, to max out. :thinking:

In mid- to late-game, once players have unlocked sufficient amount of safehouses, players opt to Fast Travel a lot more than run everywhere. That convenient zapping around reduces the gain of stamina related skills considerably.
And using the bike would also have reduced gain in stamina related skills since sitting on a bike and pedaling is less severe of an exercise than running or sprinting.

287

I wouldn’t say huge. It would be huge if you could just freely pick and choose. The number of possible variations that someone would logically pick and still have characters that are distinctly different is minimal. Add in that most characters are going to be tapping into that Survival tree and you have even less variation. For a solo player, unless they are pro and feel like playing a weak character, variance is even less because going medic is a waste and avoiding lockpicking would be aggravating. It’s like saying you can paint your house a wide variety of colors! Choose from light green, yellow green, blue green, forest green, moss green, neon green, chartreuse, lime, or green.

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288

I’d say that 8-16 options is pretty huge. If it would only be 2-3 options, then yes, it would be limited.

Off the bat, you have 8, completely different skills to choose from. Not 8 different shades of green.

And if you’ve unlocked: Hip Shot Accuracy, Reload Speed, Throw Accuracy, Throw Distance, Stamina Amount, Stamina Recharge, Spotting Intel and Salvage; it raises your options up to 16. Either you can go and pick between 8 new skills or you can upgrade the 8 current skills you have.

Current skill tree placement isn’t the best and it would be nice if:

  • devs rearrange skills in more logical way
    or
  • remove prerequisite skill requirement, where players can freely pick any skill they like.
    Of course, you’d still need to unlock 5 skills in category before you can unlock Specialization (for balancing purposes).

There is value in Medic specialization, especially for non-pro solo players. Since it revives you back with 100 HP, where you don’t have to spend time and first aid kits to heal yourself back up.

As far as lockpicking goes, only thing that you miss out, when you don’t pick it, is the bigger, ammo storages (with two double doors). Smaller ammo storages (with one single door) are also locked but there is a key in game, that once collected, gives you access to all small ammo storages.

As far as skills, level cap and the like go, lets not forget that GZ was designed to be a co-op game. With co-op, and with up to 4 players, your entire team can have all the skills in the game + several overlapping skills.

289

On paper, yeah. In practice, nope. Unless you enjoy punishment, most are avoided.

No doubt about that.

Not worth the points to get there, plus I don’t know about you, but my goal is to not die in the first place.

Which happens to be a big advantage for a solo player starting out.

Yeah, but not exactly how it’s being played. I just search it on YouTube and Twitch, sorted by most recent. Something like a ratio of 1 out of 10 might have a second player, even less for more players. Who are the most watched YouTubers playing this game? I’m subscribed to two of them… and both of them mainly play solo unless they are streaming with the devs.

1 Like
290

I don’t understand how not being able to find all of the good weapons right off the bat means it’s going to take forever to run fast.

In that case, it would be an incentive to ride bikes instead of fast travel, which means bike riding could improve as time goes on.

291

For solo player starting out, there are only 2 bigger ammo storages in entire Archipelago region and one of them has always been empty of all loot containers (ontop of Vesslan), while other has few ammo boxes with peanuts of ammo.

Overall, there aren’t that many bigger ammo storages in the game either. But there are plenty of smaller ones, which player can get access to, without Lockpicking skill.

So, i don’t call that a “big advantage”.

If devs have coded the game in a way, where it is going to take forever to gain something, it would be reasonable to assume that it also takes forever to max progressive skill out, if it comes.

292

I think you might forget what it’s like to play as a fresh player, not knowing where everything is and needing every bullet and medkit you can come across. Even what you find in the locked houses in Saltham can be a great find.
By the time someone finds that key without any assistance, you don’t need that either anymore.

Let’s not forget that the devs recognize the lockpicking flaw. For that reason, the number of locations that require it is limited. The devs recognize it so much, that they even added in this key.
If everybody could lockpick albeit poorly at first such as in the system I propose, and if everybody had the ability to improve lockpicking over time such as in the system I propose, and if the skill still existed to boost lockpicking some more such as in the system I propose, then the devs could do more with lockpicking in general and therefore would no longer be the waste of code that you believe it is now.

293

So you proposing something like “Morrowind Lockpicking”?
Like skill gives you 100% and consistent door opening, but let’s say 5% without skill and you still can open that door, even if it cost you a ton of picks. That’ll slowly rise up with progression?..

294

That i forgot, since way back when i started with GZ, there were no locked houses and great loot in them in Salthamn.

When thinking about it, :thinking: you made me realize that i looked things from the pro player perspective, who knows where things are, how game works and who doesn’t see much value in Lockpicking skill.

Here, i agree with you, that for a new player, not knowing where things are or how game works, Lockpicking is a valuable skill. Since you’ll never know what lies behind the locked door. :slight_smile:

295

Funny thing, that at some point of time I’ve made another character that is carbon copy of my usual build, except I dithched Tech View for Lockpick. Since there sometimes lobby with new players and they were sort of let down without ability to open locks. And I quite often see locked door in other people’s realms.