6
edits
Changes
m
no edit summary
<blue>The skill system has been totally revamped, and we’ve added an all-new traits system. The skill system we showed last year was fairly Diablo II-like. We knew at the time that the basic mechanics were sound, but we felt it was intimidating, and that it overly encouraged spreading your points around into as many different skills as possible instead of focusing on the skills that fit your play style. If you’ve spread your points into 30 different skills, then you’ve broken your character. The system wasn’t facilitating playing the game well.
We also moved passive skills into their own UI, and renamed then them traits—because no matter how good a passive skill is, it’s hard to pass up picking an active skill instead. The traits tree allows us to expand the number of passives and focus on core character customization ideas like, “I want more health,” or “I want more damage.” It replaces attribute-point spending, which we didn’t consider to be a very good customization system because there was always a *correct* way to spend points. With traits, players will find there are a lot more choices to make that will be better balanced against one another, and will include flavorful or role-playing choices to cater to a broader group of players.</blue>
As of October 2010, trait points are awarded every other level (1, 3, 5, etc). There are about 30 traits per character, though this number may be reduced/condensed in further development. Traits can have 1, 3, or 5 points placed in them, with the number varying between traits.