2010-07-23, 11:45 PM
Dusk Wrote:This post made me think of something I'd like to see in MapleStory. More skills for Explorers. Like, 70-80 SP worth more per job. I hate how they're streamlining all the skillbooks so that you're only missing a couple points to max out an entire skillbook and the only decisions you're making are like "SHOULD I MAX PICKPOCKET OR LEAVE IT AT 19?" I want to see some variety in final builds, not just in getting there. Most of the skills I'd want to see added would be active skills. Some classes definitely need more attacks. Other classes could just use some more attack options. Provide an alternative to Hurricane for BMs for example, like an attack that is usable in midair and uses 4 arrows at the speed of a Gunslinger's Double Shot, but doesn't do as much damage. Flesh out skill trees a bit so that building your character is still an easy process and people don't accidentally max out two skills when they should have picked one or the other.
Part of this is a balancing issue, but another is development. It takes a considerable amount of time to design and implement multiple sets of skills for multiple characters, especially in a sense that they would be choices as opposed to options.
For example, the Gunslinger: in second job, they have 140 worth of skill points in their book. If we were to add more skills to flesh out the design, what would they be, and how would they compete with current skills? A new single target skill to compete with Double Shot? Would it be easily replaced by Burst Fire? Or a lower damage higher mob count attack to compete with Invisible Shot? Would that be easily replaceable in third? Would it be balanced enough that people would still want to choose Invisible Shot? How about compared to other jobs and their existing abilities? Would these new skills be able to compete against things like Lucky Sevens or Iron Arrow? Should they be able to compete, or are we overstepping boundaries and eliminating roles?
It's a great idea and obviously a wonderful thing to have but there's a lot of deeper complications involved. It's definitely one of the best things I liked about games like Diablo II, where there were multitudes of builds for each character class, each able to compete on the higher tier in PvM and PvP to a lesser extent.