The most difficult balance in developing a skill system for Legion is finding the balance between making it easy for new players to figure out, while making it complex and flexible enough to keep veteran players interested.

Some of the criticism with CCP Z's plan comes from people thinking that it leans too far toward the new player, and that it will not be as fun for veteran players as a result.

While thinking about this I also thought about the certificate system in EVE, as well as what CCP did when they changed the UI for the skill system in DUST. If you know where to look, you can still open the old skill system in DUST which uses a list interface rather than a node interface. The key that I took from this was knowing where to look.

My proposal is that the skill system that is prominently displayed when you start the game would be CCP Z's Role based Item Progression system, and if you purchase your skills through that progression you will get a skill plan that works for the role you choose. The prerequisites for the skills in that interface would be set by the interface, rather than being the actual prerequisites for the skill.

Then there should be a second skill system interface designed for the veteran player which is much more free form. This second system should be buried a bit so that you have to discover it, or be told about it. This interface would include the same skills as CCP Z's interface (possible more skills), but they would be based on their actual prerequisites, rather than role based prerequisites.

So lets say you want to use the Tactical Assault Rifle:
- New Player Interface: You need to skill up through the Assault suit tree, get Assault Rifle, and then you can get the Tactical Assault Rifle skill.
- Veteran Player Interface: You simply go to the weapons tree, get the Assault Rifle skill, and then you can get the Tactical Assault Rifle skill.


Key premises:

1) You can't go wrong with the New Player Interface, but you can be more creative with the Veteran Player Interface. On the flip side, the Veteran Player Interface will give you the freedom to make mistakes, while the New Player Interface imposes restrictions that protect you from yourself.

2) The New Player Interface is the default which new players will find easily when they start the game. They will only discover the Veteran Player Interface if they are exploring the UI, or doing research. In either case they are taking actions which indicate that they are ready to discover greater complexity in the game.

Greetings CPM members:

I am the CEO of the second largest training Corporation in DUST 514, a cofounder of the Learning Coalition, and a sponsor of the Spanish Rookie help channel (Novatos Espa+¦ol).

I see CCP ZGÇÖs proposed Item Progression Tree as a vastly superior way to unlock items, but I believe that completely abandoning the 5 level skill system, specifically the 5 level skills that provide bonuses, is a huge mistake!

I have spent hours talking players who were completely new to the New Eden universe through how skills and fittings interact to allow them to build a suit that works for what they want to do. I completely agree with Dennie Fleetfoot that CCP ZGÇÖs proposed system will make getting started a lot easier for new players.

But I have also talked to those same players two or three weeks later and had them tell me that DUST 514 is so much better than CoD, Battlefield, or any other FPS they have played because of the depth and complexity of the character/fit customization.

The fitting optimisation skills are a mini game within the game. I remember how satisfied I felt when I realized that I could make my fit work for less than half the skill point cost by training Heavy Weapon Optimization to 4 rather than training Electronics to 5. I had solved the puzzle! That is depth through complexity. That is fun!

Other item optimization skills are important as well. It is one thing to have access to a weapon or a piece of equipment, but it is another thing to put the skill points into specialising in it. Skills that reduce PG or CPU usage; reduce sway, kick, or dispersion; or otherwise make the item easier to fit or more effective, help to make you feel like a specialist. They arenGÇÖt mandatary, but they give you a slight advantage with that item over someone who does not specialise.

If we are going to use the Item Progression tree to unlock items, it should also unlock 5 level bonus skills associated with each of those items. If Item Progression is the tree, the Item Optimization skills should be the leaves on that tree.

Personal Enhancement skills are important too:

I want my character to be more than the sum of his modules!

I want to be Tonny Stark, not one of those dam suits! I want to train skills that make my character better regardless of what fit he wares. I want to train Electronics and Engineering so I can make unconventional fits that no one else has considered. That is sand in the sandbox. DonGÇÖt take my sand away! When no one in the squad has hacking mods equipped, I want to be the guy who can hack a little faster because I put skill points into a skill that others considered merely a quality of life skill. Or I might want to be the Logi who can see other medium frame suits on my radar closing in on me when I am hacking, because I put some points into Scan Precession. These are skills that give the character individuality beyond what suit he wares. This helps with immersion, and with forming an emotional tie to your character. He is not a robot! Under the armour he is flesh and blood.

If Item Progression is the tree, then Personal Enhancement skills would be the roots that make the entire tree stronger.

The 5 Level Skill system is what has allowed EVE Online to work for 11 years. The 5 Level Skill system is one of the best things that DUST 514 has going for it. It is a large part of why DUST 514 is better than Call of Duty or Battlefield. It is a diminishing returns system which allows new players to get more than half of the potential benefit by skilling to level 3, for a very reasonable expenditure of skill points, while also letting veteran players go back and gain small advantages over their opponents by spending large amounts of skill points to nudge a skill up to level 5.

Abandoning this fundamental aspect of the game just because skills donGÇÖt work well for unlocking equipment is like throwing the baby out with the bath water. The Item Progression tree is a good replacement for skills such as Dropsuit Command which served only to unlock items, but getting rid of the bonus skills at the same time is like an American remake of a French movie, it completely misses the point!

Fox Gaden / Crash Gaden / Renier Gaden

I understand peoples concerns but I've felt for the longest time that Dust's skill tree is as it is to satisfy Eve players rather than become its own thing.

While aesthetically and lore wise the game should be very close to New Eden, I'm concerned that being too much a slave as to what has come before can handicap and stifle the games identity. Dust/Legion should be its own thing in the New Eden Universe. Simply doing something one way because Eve does it like that is the wrong way to think about it.

I hate to break this to you, but the reason that Dust hasn't gained the player base that was hoped isn't just because a lot of feature haven't made it or lack of quality in the game, it's because it's so bloody hard to understand for those that are used to the Halo's and COD's of the FPS world. We keep the tree 'as is' and the player base will never grow beyond 5K. Ever.

We need a system more welcoming, more forgiving and less prone to wasting SP like the current system is. None of the other FTP games use a 5 level system quite like ours, and they have A: larger player bases than Dust and B: Make more money.

Continuing to use a subscription based model in a FTP game is financial suicide for CCP. Changes will have to be made if the game is to compete with The World of Tanks and Planetside 2's of the PC based FTP genre.

On your last point, Kevall, I especially agree. The Dust system of progression may have been an improvement in Uprising compared to previous builds but it's still lacking in understanding.

Again, the ISIS system in Eve helped players better understand what each ship is best used for and what skills best support the roles that each ship is suited for. That same principle should apply to Legion. Maybe not with the exact same tree setup as seen in ISIS due to the problem you pointed out earlier, but it's a step in the right direction in helping new players understand the progression without needing any tutorial to explain it to them.

To be honest, CCP Z need to come to the forums and talk with us soon. Its not fun to communicate with a wall.

So... Your goal is to make the skill tree more accessible. I definately agree with this! But you probably should not waste time on revamping it from scratch, since that will take a lot of manhours, and we do not want the game to be delayed!!! I will describe how to save development time in the following section.

There is a way to make both the hardcore theorycrafters from EVE and the instant gratification crowd pleased. And this concept already exists in the game (in a crude sense):
The graphical skill tree/Skill tree list.

In Diablo 3, there is a game option to enable advanced customization (check box in the game menu, which is off by default on new accounts), I.E. remove the conditional dependence between certain modules and slots. This kind of supportive game option could be great support wheels for the new players, while at the same time offering the option to remove the support wheels and offer a interesting and complex skill tree for the hardcore theorycrafters.

So how would this be implemented?

1. Add an option in the game menu related to advanced skill progession OFF/ON (OFF by default for new players).
2. The option should enable/disable a skill tree overlay UI that makes it more accessible and add 'conditioned' paths through the skill tree.
3. If the option of advanced skill progession is enabled, there should be no dependence between dropsuits, modules and weapons, other than what we have today.

I do not support your wild card idea, it gives me and many others the picture that you did not design the system well enough from the beginning.

Harden The F*ck Up and back to the drawing board CCP Z! ;) Like you say yourself, killing (your idea in this case) is only a means of communication.

Yes, he's off sick at the moment. I've just fired him an email with some forum thread links and he does want to chat. He's a friendly dude. Just make sure to keep him well fed and groomed.