The Issue of the 10%-20% Power Differentiation

[MasterChief096]

Originally Posted by kaffis

The only time there is no tradeoff, and it's only "the order in which you acquire them," is when you're able to acquire them all.

With time-based unlocks, and the intention to expand skill trees out as the game progresses, this is a silly assumption.

Here, let me work this out for you.

The 3-year plan says "major updates every 12 months."

The initial release includes 12 root skill tree branches. Each branch, let's say, corresponds loosely to a role, for simplicity's sake. The developer intent is to make it possible to "max out" a role before they add stuff. The developer intent is also to allow you to max out more than one role, but not all of them, before they add stuff.

Thus, the design choice dictates that each role takes 5 months to max out.

"But wait, Kaffis!" you say, "That means I can max out my character in 60 months, and so there's no tradeoffs involved. The only choice I make is in what order I take these always on bonuses!"

"Ah," I respond. "Except, when you've maxxed out two root branches and worked 2 months into a third, the first update comes out, adding 2 more root branches, and adding an additional 3 months of skills onto each of the others, so now each branch takes 8 months to max out. The 3 months of skills are a very small relative power increase over the first 5, since each skill takes longer and longer to accumulate as you go deeper into the skill tree. Now, 12 months in, we've extended the time to max to 112 months! Now, the "order" you got them in matters, because the first 12 months are still all you have, and you're even further from maxxing out your character than you started, because there are even more options."

I'm not sure this is the type of system I'd like to see in an MMOFPS. Its an MMOFPS, not a grind. I shouldn't have to wait 112 months to be able to max out my character. The game should not be about maxing characters out, and honestly if their idea of additional content is adding more skills that take even longer to unlock then thats just a really bad design. The focus should be on gameplay, freshness of the battles, and the overall way the mechanics of the game work, not on time-grinding indefinitely without ever having a hope of maxing out, for small power advantages that mean next to nothing.