Skill trees as a method of player advancement

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Comments

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm leaning towards a smaller number of skills, 13 is too many. 4-8 is a better number. (And require less coding/play balancing).

    Locking behind Recursion is also probably too high a bar for many agents.

    Level 8 is already a milestone for reasons we are all familiar with. Level 10-12 seems sensible.

    Maybe let Recursion add a bonus only? (Choose Archetype then?)

    @XQlusioN has some good ideas.

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    I keep thinking the archetypes could work as a means into the game - regardless if it's recursion-based or level-based.

  • 1valdis1valdis ✭✭✭✭✭

    This is the best summary so far. If I'm to see specializations coming to the game eventually, I would have no problems with them working like this.

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    Don't update them at midnight, make it the Septicycle end.

  • edited February 2021

    @Zenn

    Every time this topic comes up I like that people generally gravitate to archetypes... It feels like that's where they were originally going to go but then got sidetracked with the development of the app and whatever they were going to originally do with the back end that they had to shelve.

    Just as a point of reference, AFAIK the "13 Archetypes" didn't exist until the lead up to Navarro and the story shift. The original 13Magnus referred to Jarvis' 13 shards, like Memory and Immortality.

    We have the concept now, and if that's the way they want to go, so be it (though I think that's too many), but I very much doubt it's what they had in mind, in 2012.

  • MonkeyPeltMonkeyPelt ✭✭✭✭

    I agree with a few posts in here that 13 is probably too many to start with. As and end goal, totally! But initially 4-6 would be great. Maybe down the road, additional archetypes could be unlocked in conjunction with the outcomes of anomalies or other events.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    skill trees sounds fun, even if just 4 different to chose from.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    We already have the 4:


  • GreenVamGreenVam ✭✭✭✭✭

    Agent. This concept is universal. Archetypes are what can awaken in a sentient agent. A certain set of key characteristics that will determine its starting data. Imagine that we will also have agents for mass protection of portals (attack +2 defense +6), agents for mass clearing of fields (defense + 2 attack +6), agents who will have the speed to produce resources in capsules (defense and attack + 4), you can even divide the magnus into several subclasses, into defenders, attackers and specialists. and attach a specificity to each archetype. For example, let the alchemist receive not 1 but two objects from the kinetic capsule, and the dreamer can simultaneously launch several drones, and the patron can install, in addition to the standard 4 modifiers, 1 more shield, and someone else will have the ability to place 3 resonators of level 8 each. Something like this. And each class has its own tree of unlockable skills. Then it will make sense to pump up to 16 and even 32 levels. 

  • ToxoplasmollyToxoplasmolly ✭✭✭✭✭

    Ayup. I started with 13 archetypes/skill trees because that's a bit of story I've managed to keep in my head that seems reasonable as a source of flavor and motivation for a new mechanic. I'm sure a creative writer can find a way to whittle that 13 down to something less daunting, or find an altogether new source of motivation.

  • At worst, 8 would provide the "different aspects of Ingress". I always thought it was a bad idea that they were trying to jam a 'ring of entities' into the 13 in 13Magnus. It would have been far more "in story" to use a figure of 8, representing the aspects of Ingress around a portal, one per resonator slot.

    • North: Creation - Building improvements.
    • South: Destruction - Bursters and damage improvements.
    • East: Control - Something to do with MU and fielding.
    • West: Gathering - Something to do with hacking.
    • North East: Connecting (Between Creation and Control) something to do with linking.
    • North West: Interpretation (Between Creation and Gathering) something to do with glyphing.
    • South East: Defending (Between Control and Destruction) something to do with mods and shielding.
    • South West: <something between Gathering and Destruction> I got nothing.

    But again, that's picking a story and trying to fill in with game details.

    The plan should start with "What should the trees be focused on" and then create a story around them. I struggle to find 8, let alone 13 that would be separate enough to justify their own tree.

  • grendelwulfgrendelwulf ✭✭✭✭✭

    Builder: Can Deploy 2x r8 and r7


    Destroyer: +10% bonus to damage


    Tinker: ability to deploy 3 mods


    Collector: +200 inventory slots


    Healer: x2 recharge amount

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    We could still simplify the archetypes. Realistically 12 archetypes would work as ADA can serve as the omniscient.

    From there, we can simplify it to 4 active branches for skills. The scanner was never truly literal with the story. Just remember that the story narrative is not 100% - that's not to say you can try to mask the plot holes. You can be meta about the plot holes which does drive a more natural plot device.

  • Neku69Neku69 ✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2021

    After reading all your comments I'd love to share some thoughts about this because this idea has been around my mind for a while.

    First of all: KEEP IT SIMPLE, no matter how stylish you want to make it, KEEP IT SIMPLE. Many classes and attributes may dampen and mislead the game. Next, about the time to get the class I want to highlight what @Khatre said on IUENG that class or class skills could be related with the badges you have unlocked in your profile. That would promote players to invest in other medals.

    Anyways, in this case I think this should be looked as an mmorpg problem: same as a mage has low defense, a warrior has higher susceptibility for spells. In this case, going through builder path would be at cost of doing damage, while destroyers fields or portals are very susceptible to be destroyed.

    So which skills we would have in the builder tree: More MUs, abbility to add more than additional mods or even swap them (with an extremely high cooldown), higher recharge efficiency, mods efficiency (turrets for instance, would deal higher damage and with longer range, linked portals would extend the portal attack range). Each time you decide to upgrade an skill, you lose firepower, because the portal will do it for you instead.

    Which skills we would find in the destroyer tree: Longer links (as they are used to shield and prevent ops), higher damage XMP and Ultrastrikes, higher range, XM bar increased size, mod sabotager (remove 1 mod, with an extremely high cooldown) or even change its stickiness to the portal, XM force shield (it would work the same way as the hypercube, but in this case it would drain your XM from your bar to suffer less damage from portals, needless to say this skill would not be activated with a hypercube on). Each time you upgrade an skill from this tree, your portals will likely suffer more damage since your are focused.

    What would this promote? A degree of specialization within teams and more teamwork.

    This idea is not very elaborated but yours seems very polished.

  • grendelwulfgrendelwulf ✭✭✭✭✭
  • There's definitely a significant difference in goal between 'Benefit from levelling' and 'Specialization that is offset by penalty in another area'.

    The second model wouldn't require levelling. You'd be able to choose that from the outset.

  • Neku69Neku69 ✭✭✭✭

    Well, if players get power, and more power, they'll get invincible. We need to think about balance or not taking any path at all

  • grendelwulfgrendelwulf ✭✭✭✭✭

    Why penalize ayers for going after power? Let a player pick a new skill at the start of each recursion and have it come to fruition after a set out of AP/badges are met after that recusrsion.

    Then recurse again to select a new skill to add.

  • Neku69Neku69 ✭✭✭✭

    You have to bear in mind that there are more players than before which have a higher number of recursions already and will have the whole set already. They would be overpowered compared with a player who took a long time to reach lvl 16 for the first time. I don't see that as a penalization, they are exchanging power for something else, so it's not a penalty at all.

  • PangarbanPangarban ✭✭✭✭✭

    All quite true, which is why in my suggestion I said two key things:

    1. Only one specialization should be active at a time.

    2. The benefits would need to be relatively minor increments of power, carefully chosen to prevent players from being too powerful.


    A system that follows those principles should avoid creating imbalance and should be fair to casual players while giving fanatical players something to work on.

  • Neku69Neku69 ✭✭✭✭

    Yes, I agree with you, you can be only a "class" at a time, even if you can change it later with CMU.

  • The percentage of players who have done more than 2 recursions is... slight.

    Yes more will do it if you incentivize extra Recursions with power imbalance, but based on current stats, even people going for high AP scores didn't bother recursing again and again, because it's not worth it. The XM bar loss isn't worth the gear packs.

  • Neku69Neku69 ✭✭✭✭

    But my point is not to ligate it exclusively to recursion state but to the badges on your profile unlocked as well.

  • AskJarvisAskJarvis ✭✭✭
    edited March 2021

    If there were skill trees, I wonder if there would be a way to almost reach some sort of "Guru" status- where you can pick and choose different benefits based off of the # of recursions you do. Some of these traits could synergize, but may work against one another. For example, being a better fielder + builder could amplify link mitigation effects; however, this can only be capped to a certain ceiling value dependent on if a destroying trait is taken (so that, for example, if you took a trait that gave you slightly more destroying power, you could only have link mitigation that was 1.1x, whereas if you hadn't taken a destroying trait, you'd be able to get link mitigation of 1.3x). Multi recursed agents could pick more traits, but with the some of the interactions between traits you'd be able to address some of the power scaling issues that could happen. After having done X amount of tasks with a bonus present, finding a way to make a bonus "permanent" for Y amount of time could also continue to drive player interactions, as well over a longer period of time.

    Post edited by AskJarvis on
  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    I like this, simple and easy, and u can have only 1 active at time, would add some extra depth to this game.

  • I really like the idea of this, especially if you could specialise in a particular area (builder, destroyer, gylpher etc)

  • 1valdis1valdis ✭✭✭✭✭

    I don't like that I'd need to do some specific action which I don't necessary like to get the bonuses I want. Also some Onyxes are far more difficult than others, so I think it's wrong to specifically add benefits upon Onyx. I like level/recursion gates better.

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