Skill trees I used to enjoy
I used to enjoy a lot Diablo 2 at the time, but now a find myself incapable of the same joy.
Well, I had this same feeling also at the time, but it was somehow mitigated by the amount of time at my disposition.
Actually I feel very punished by RPGs that let you choose your upgrade path in a skill tree.
Sooner or later you understand that the path chosen makes your character suck or it’s not as efficient as it could be.
This becomes a painful issue when you can upgrade each level, but you can’t take back and correct your previous decisions. Usually I end stacking up points after points until I decide a meaningful path. This is utterly bad, because most games scale encounters and challenges to your level, so I mostly play under-powered.
The natural attitude to maximize is trapped in those skill tree that let the player choose a “bad” ability. The apparent variety of option lets you image that you could create an equally variety of builds, but it’s more like a series of right and wrongs choices.
RPGs works in such a way: you try a path and then you understand what’s could be bettered the next time, so you restart the game from scratch. This isn’t replayability, it’s annoying trial and error, because I have to lose my progress to enjoy the character I would.
With Mass Effect I finished the game with 11 points to arrange yet. It’s a shame, even if there wouldn’t been sensible changes in the gameplay.
Now, World of Warcraft and others give you the possibility to rearrange all your points, and it’s good, but it’s more an issue with games that in general does not let you work to gain points.
If the new level simply unlocked a new set of skills and the player had to do something (kill stuff, etc.) to buy them, levelling would be only a matter of time.
This soften the concept of error, because the player does not take back from a misstep, but he has to spend more time to develop another path.
This appears to me a rather fairer solution, and also states that now I really prefer to experience the character than perfecting its build.
