Equipped Skills: The Growing Trend in RPG Game Development

What do Magic: The Gathering and Diablo 3 have in common? A year ago I predicted about RPG game development moving away from traditional level-up systems. Now it looks like the plot grows thicker.. Here I discuss the growing trend of "equipped skills".

I told you people. I told you! Now it's happening.

Developers marketing people are touting their game's innovative class system! Players are up in arms about removing the traditional trinity (i.e. tank/DPS/support)! Classless systems! Ogre wizards wearing plate and shooting bows!

"Woah there, sperglord", you say. "What are you yammering about?"

I'll tell you what. I'll be straight to the point: Developers are shifting away from the traditional skill system and putting in a flexible one that I call, for a lack of better term, "equipped skills".

Let me explain further. When I say traditional system, it's when players are given skill points upon leveling-up to let them purchase which new skills he wants for his character.

(When I say skills, this is a pretty broad term, but if you play RPGs, you'll know what I mean. Some systems call them perks (i.e. Fallout) , feats (i.e. D&D), abilities, et al. They're basically some sort of intangible item that unlocks some attack you can now use, or modifies the rules of the game for your character.)

Like I said before, the problem with such a system is that purchasing skills are a life-altering event for the character, that usually can't be reverted. So players need proper deliberation before choosing what skills to purchase.

And how would players know beforehand which skills are worth purchasing? Generally, they can't. They need to devote time, doing trial-and-error, experimenting with every character build they think is worth pursuing.

(Either that, or they have to do some researching and asking around. Not necessarily a fun process, if you just really want to play the damn game already.)

When they figure out what they want, only then, finally, they can proceed to play the game in earnest.

And they need lots of time. Generally, it's not very easy to quickly start again with a blank slate for your character, ready for another round of experimentation.

And some people say, the labor you do with experimenting is part of the fun. For some people, they see it as a problem.

This is why respec became a hot issue one time. Devs wanted to introduce respec to help lessen the time needed to do character build experiments.

But that was only the band-aid solution to an old system. What developers next considered, is creating a new system that addresses the (what they consider to be a) problem from the start.

Basically, they want a way to streamline that experimentation process. To make it easier for players to rapidly create character builds.

And this new trend of a more flexible skill system, which I refer to as "equipped skills" is one solution that people came up with. And it seems it's the one that resounded a lot in the developer community (whether intentionally or not). And why is that? So many new games are doing it now.

But let me explain first how this other system works.

Here are the quick points:

Contrast this with games that have more traditional skill systems, like Dragon Age.

In games like that, skills that you purchase are always available and usable. Equipping skills in a hotbar then, in those games, is only for convenience, not a requirement.

The holy grail that devs want here is how Magic: The Gathering does it. That game has so much possibilities and permutations, that players occasionally find combo cards, even when such cards were not originally meant to complement each other.

As with any fairly workable idea, the idea itself won't necessarily spell doom or success for the game, but how the devs do their specific implementation of it.

And, indeed, each game has their own implementation on the idea.

Now here come the examples:

Call of Duty BLOPS 2: pick-10 system, create-a-class system
 

http://www.ign.com/wikis/call-of-duty-black-ops-2/Create_A_Class

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/8683/article/black-ops-2-wildcard-system-guide-described-in-detail/

http://www.nowgamer.com/features/1537717/how_the_black_ops_2_pick_10_create_a_class_system_works.html

The Secret World: skill system
 

http://www.ea.com/news/secret-world-reveals-deck-based-skill-system

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/75871/just-how-experimentation-friendly-is-the-skill-system-in-the-secret-world

Diablo 3: Skill system
 

http://www.diablowiki.net/Diablo_3_Basics

http://www.diablowiki.net/Skill_tree

Additionally, see David Sirlin's article which also describes the system.

Guild Wars 2: Skill System

http://gw2101.gtm.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/combat/part-one/

Now you might think this is all new, but look at this:

Final Fantasy Tactics: Job System
In FFT, each character equips certain skills, categorized as Command Abilities (actions that the character can perform: e.g. attack, steal, perform magic), Reaction Abilities (performed automatically when you are attacked), Support Abilities (passive bonus), and Movement Abilities (skills that modify movement e.g. jump higher, move farther, etc.).
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Job_System

http://kotaku.com/5974665/man-final-fantasy-tactics-sure-had-a-steep-learning-curve

You could say FFT does it differently, but the basic idea is the same. Perhaps you could say FFT was ahead of its time, eh?

So the idea isn't really new, but that it's becoming a trend, I think is new.

EverQuest Next
  We know little from what was recently presented by the developers. And so many speculations are brewing, but I can easily see this is another take on the "equipped skills" idea.
http://news.mmosite.com/content/2013-08-09/ten_things_you_need_to_know_about_everquest_next_classes.shtml

http://chaotikgaming.com/everquest-next-class-system/

http://www.geek.com/games/why-im-skeptical-about-everquest-next-1564398/  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToQwqIY3nwc&t=83

And so on.. I'm sure you can cite a few more examples.

Note how they describe it. Mixing and matching. Swapping out. Using slots. Easy customization. Even the developers go so far as to describe it as a collectible card system, a deck.

I don't find it surprising. That's really what's at the core of an "equipped skills" system.

As you can tell, each game has their own take on the idea. Some games add more layers of complexity (e.g. skills that are dependent on weapon equipped, Diablo 3's rune system, etc.) to make things more interesting.

Custom classes

They also like to describe it as something that easily suits the player's play style. Basically, you can think of respec being a built-in feature in this type of system. And being able to easily accomodate different play styles quickly, is one of its strong points.

This can undermine the whole point of having classes.

On one end we have BLOPS 2, which uses it for their Create-A-Class system. Or Secret World, where there are, indeed, no classes to speak of.

Instead the player creates his own custom class. The idea is the player cherry-picks which skills he want to use from the ones provided by each skill group. Classes, when looked at this regard, are simply categories to group related skills together (e.g. fighter skills, thief skills, sorcerer skills, etc.). Think of them as the colors in Magic The Gathering.

The player then, can choose to specialize in one group only (e.g. choose only fighter skills for his build), be a jack of all trades but master of none, or sit somewhere between the two extremes (e.g. do the equivalent of a dual-class).

On the other hand, some implementations decide to keep things tight and still have classes (i.e. Diablo 3).

So an "equipped skills" system doesn't necessarily need to turn the game into a classless system, (as some people call it) but you can also design it that way.

We still like to buy stuff though

If you go through some of them, you'll notice in some games, the skills are unlocked automatically for you at some point (leveling-up in Diablo 3). But some games still require you to purchase the skill before it's available for equipping.

I guess devs can't help but still add that. The idea of earning for your skills, slowly growing your collection, like some sort of hobby collector, is a good motivator for players, understandably.
We should note though, that there's no need to disallow the player from collecting every skill in the whole game, since we already have the restriction of being able to equip/use only a few at a time. I.e. Go ahead, unlock everything! You can equip only 8 at a time anyway.

So it's common that these systems allow players to eventually unlock/purchase every skill. That's in contrast to a traditional level-up system, where you're not allowed to unlock every skill.
Another take on it can be that you also purchase upgrades on each skill, so it's not like we need to remove the idea of purchasing altogether.

Easing up new players to the system

So, it's understandable that developers would be worried that some players may find this system too complicated. How would they know which skills to pick for their "deck"?

Each game has something up their sleeve for this.

BLOPS 2, with it being a multiplayer affair, addressed this by providing pre-made classes. They are essentially preset builds whose selection of skills are chosen for you. This is so that you can start playing immediately and get a feel for each skill's usefulness and how they work well with each other. Think of them as preset decks in Magic: The Gathering.

The Secret World does something similar with their decks, although I do believe you still need to unlock those skills dictated by the deck templates. Essentially, they are more of a guide, than a preset.

Diablo 3 had to do it with a lot of hand-holding, in what combinations the player could do (e.g. Wizard can have only one signature spell). As they explained, this was done to prevent players from mistakenly making poor character builds that would frustrate them.

Understandably, the hardcore players who love to experiment found this limiting. The not so hardcore audience did not have any problems with it. So it was wise to allow the player to turn those restrictions on or off (i.e. Elective Mode). The only problem it seemed, was that it was not apparent that you could turn it off in the first place.

Most others, you had to purchase/unlock skills first before they can be equipped, as mentioned above. Pragmatically speaking, this is done so that you won't be overwhelmed with too many options at the start; you're forced to have only a few skills at the beginning and slowly unlock new ones.

This gives you time to slowly learn and get comfortable with each new unlocked skill, before you move on to the next. At the end, once you've tested all of them, you could then decide to stick with the ones you're happy with.

EQ Next, from what I can understand, took some cues from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: it seems which weapon you equip determines your first four skills (weapon skills), and the last four (character skills) are gained by purchasing.

This means presumably you don't have to worry about what combination of weapon skills to get; you can't mix and match weapon skills since they come as a preset in the weapon. But you'll still have some wiggle room for experimentation with the character skills, and which weapon to get.

Each developer has a different variation to address this issue. Certainly there's room for creativity here.

Banned cards

But wait!, you say. Isn't Magic: The Gathering infamous for having cards so powerful, they had to ban them?

What causes banned cards anyway? What happens is developers initially had no idea that the cards they made, when used with certain others, were too powerful (in that the cards bordered on cheating).

That is indeed a danger with a mix-and-match system. You obviously want many cards in your game. But you can't possibly anticipate every card combination that might break the game. At least, probably not enough for your game's deadline.

(Here's a good article showing one point of view of what makes a card too powerful.)

But look at it this way. For all its faults, Magic still manages to have a player base in this day and age. Whatever Wizards of the Coast is doing, they're doing it well enough.

It's certainly not a perfect system, but it can still work and arguably be successful for a product.

Ultimately, just because you choose to employ an "equipped skills" system for your game, that doesn't automatically make it better over a traditional skill system.

You'd have to tweak and fine-tune it, as you should, regardless of what style of system you use.

Resistance to change is expected of course. Understandably, a lot of players are averse to the general idea of equipped skills (instant respecs take the fun away!, there's no excitement in leveling-up anymore! etc.), but its not like the idea of a traditional skill system is perfect either.

On the other hand, it's not necessarily bad to be wary of it.
In the end, (good) devs love to experiment, creating new systems all the time, that's what makes them developers.
My guess: It'll take a few iterations of games employing this system to finally come up with a "best practice" document on designing such a thing.
Side note: I'm using the same idea for my game. Hopefully it'll work out!

So, how do you think this trend will pan out?