Skill Decisions that have permanent gameplay impact are an integral part of RPGs. The fact that leveling up and spending your points is an irreversible, and trade-off heavy, decision is the very thing that makes leveling fun - more active skills than there's slots is perfect.

Especially since games only last a few dozen minutes at the most in Demigod anyway. There's no prolonged punishment for mistakes - you'll have a harder time for the game you made the mistake in. You'll learn more by doing that than if there was no way to make mistakes because there's too few skills to have a meaningful tradeoff.

Because to be fair, all ability points are locked when you spend em. Why would you make your 4 choices any different? How would you plan on changing them? Have a skill bumped off and have a useless point/s? PFFT!

I agree but I think it should be just each time u level up u get a point and u can spend it but if u make it evened out u wont get ults which are alot better. That way u can pick your demigod and your demigods style in skills.

Well, if you look at the Regulus tree, he has 31 skills. With lvl 25 being the top, you would obviously be missing 6 skills. I'd really prefer more of a difference between two lvl 25 regu....lie? to be more different then just 6 points.

But hey, we don't even know how many games will reach that point or how big a deal it is, with the custimization gear gives you

Yeah, I couldnt figure out a good way to word that

I seem to suck at that tonight.

Yah I dodn't know how they would make it work but I was just saying It'd be nice if u actually had to chose which skills u want or how much u want each skill because than some personalaztion will begin. Another question does anyone know how leveling up and skills will work in campaign. Will it just be each match u start at level 1 with whatever items u got forever. Cause I like it when u bring your hero in this case demigod more powerful and higher level throughout the game. Like maybe u need alot more expierence to level up in campaign.

Yah we need variety in each demigod more than we have now.

lol they are putting alot of money in and their listening to are ideas. We havn't really gotten to see the game. when we closer to the release date we will talk more about this. Well just after beta 2 we can have actual thoughts. Is what they have enough and other stuff.

The game lasts 30minutes and then the progress is wiped.  The feel of beta 1b wasn't bad, wait for beta 2 and you willl be pleasantly suprised.  The pacing of the game is very good.  25 out of 200 would not only be too complicated for a 30 min game, it would ruin the pacing and compromise quality.  Play beta 2, my hopes are you will be pleasantly suprised.

I know that already I'm not saying anywhere near 200 but just like If your demigod could have some extra moves that you would have to from and in the end game you wouldn't be able to get maybe 2 or 3 skills. Orr u could have all the skills almost upped. I know it shouldn't take forever to pick a skill I just want it so u can't get all the skills in a game.

Hey guys, it doesn't matter if the game is shit to play, it only lasts for one game!

You pick skills, but if you want to change, you still get your new skills just fine. If I'm the Rook and I get Hammer Smash rank 1, then decide I didn't really want it, I've still got it and I can still pick other skills. There's absolutely no reason to FORCE me into a particular path, it's not fun, it's repetitive, and it detracts from the skill of the game. It's just like picking a Demigod, except for you never pick the wrong one by mistake (or almost). Unlike choosing skill points.

I can't think of a single RPG that actually locks you out of new skills just because you chose old ones that operates in this fashion. Look at World of Warcraft. You can pick talents, and just because you part-did one tree doesn't mean you can't specialize in other trees, some of the most effective builds are hybrids. Even in WC3 (and DoTA), if you pick a skill, it doesn't hinder your ability to buy other skills later (as a general rule). In AD&D, you can dual-class.

There is absolutely no reason ever to remove choice from the player, it's a fundamentally BATSHIT INSANE idea. I mean, we want the player to play the game, and that means he should be able to do with his Demigod whatever the hell he wants, unless there's a real reason why not. Not some crappy artificial skill slot limitation bullshit, but a real actual reason, like, it would ruin the game if they could fly, or had infinite health. We can all see that these break the game. Not doing this won't break the game, and therefore, the player should be able to play the game however the hell he wants, because it's his game.

DatonKallandor, great explanation.  You really explained a lot of peoples veiw on that in a non-jerk way.  I second all of DK points exactly in this reply.  Excellent post.  We'll talk later about the whole EPIC FAIL Fiasco further up.   

Like I've said for a while, give beta 2 a chance and realize that a dev that cleaned up on the awards this year (game of the year, strategy game of the year expansion of the year, and more) wants to put out a good game.  They may differ from your thoughts, but they will try and I hope they will suceed again.

It is not like picking a Demigod, because the error required to pick the wrong Demigod is an order of magnitude more, and moreover, it's much easier to suck up the loss (ranked) or restart the game (custom). Picking the wrong skill is easy. Moreover, it's easy to see that 8 Demigods can be balanced overall, and not all 100 possible skills.

It only decreases variety and choice. Once I pick Hammer Smash, I MUST HAVE HAMMER SMASH. How the hell does that increase choice, because now, I can't have half Hammer Smash and half Boulder Throw. Seriously, tell me how the hell this possibly increases choice and variety? You can't choose to spec multiple abilities, which MASSIVELY reduces the number of possible combinations. Either you pick once, or you pick repeatedly. Are you aware of what the formulas are for how many combinations there are? Try throwing a dice and thinking about how many combinations, compared to throwing it repeatedly. I could choose to spec one point in every ability, or in your system, I can't. Can you give me an example of how a new spec is created, by locking out abilities?

I didn't even think about or mention respecs and they weren't relevant. The point was that your talents can be spent in anywhere you like if you satisfy the pre-reqs. You don't just pick a tree. You can have any combination you like, and I've had some weird and wonderful ones. Demigod in the current incarnation works this way too. It's like, Supreme Commander. Turtling is not a choice. That's shit. But equally, FA, where expanding is not a choice, that's shit too. The game is developed for me to play it and have fun, and that means doing with it what you like. Why the hell should you give me any choices at all? Let's just play random Demigod, movement and attack like creeps, random skills managed by an AI. Oh wait, because playing the game is defined by the player interacting with the game. The more possible interactions there are, the more variety there is in the game.

Rules exist only to enforce fair play, and create options, which means basic rules to establish how the game is played in as many different ways as possible. Any rules you make that detract from this, automatically fail. There is no reason to limit it. There is no reason to enforce rules that serve no purpose.

I still challenge you to find an RPG that forces skill lockouts in this way. I can give so many counter-examples. World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3 (inasof it's RPG elements), System Shock 2, even the failure that was BioShock, Diablo II, Dungeons and Dragons. In Diablo II, if you put a gem in a socketed item, that was it. Guess what? In WoW, they changed it so that it's not permanent. I might just take a hint.