A player should always have to think carefully about his choices and make sacrifices when these choices are made if the game is to be fun. I think we should stop comparing this game so much to mmorpg, and more to RTS. If you can just pick Hammer Smash, and then unpick it whenever you like, then did the player even have to think about his choice of picking hammer smash? or just midlessely pick it, knowing that he would not have to sacrfice anything when he did pick it up and could simply unpick it whenver he wanted.

And there lots of RPG's with skill lockouts....lots. Basically every RPG infact. When you play WoW and you choose a Dwarf (or whatever the characters are..i never really played it), then you have just locked out all the skills from the other classes. In Guild Wars if you pick a Warrior/Necro, you now have all the skills from an elementalist, ranger, paragon etc. locked out. in POKEMON (yes im using pokemon as an example), when you level your little guys up and they learn new moves, you are forced to lockout one of your other moves for the new one....and who can honestly say they never enjoyed pokemon ?

To the opnening poster: YES 4 abillitys to "choose" from are too little.

Especially for Assasins.

For Generals 4 active skills could be enough.

I hope character deepness/variousity will be in the focus after Beta 2 release

Simple, clear, useful =>

Agreed aswell

Your examples are not changes, they're additions - you can't change your side in SupCom, you can only add another one, through play. Ditto for multiclassing.

You are still wrong - you cannot place your talent wherever you want regardless of what your other talents are - you don't have enough points for every possibility. I italized the important part of your statement.

So first you want an example, and when provided it's not enough? How many do you want? Here's another one: the Sacred RPG series has your character gaining the option to get new skills as you rise in levels - there are more skills than skill slots. How about the majority of Korean MMORPGs (played by millions)? Almost all of them use a branching class system - choosing one sub-class, locks you out of the abilities and everything else that goes with the other sub-class.

Then I'm gonna add Deus Ex 2 to the games that do lock out skills - by providing several options per biomod limb, where you can only choose one. Also, all the other Jedi Knight games except JK2 - you lock out light side/dark side by spending points in the other respectively. We can play this game forever.

innociv,

I think you bring up a valid point and I really like your suggestions.

Admittedly, having to think carefully about character design and making decisions is - for me - one of the things that makes a lot of games fun. Particularly strategy and RPG games. However, clearly, what makes a game fun varies greatly from person to person.

It goes without saying that the developer would be wise to both cater to the majority of their target customer base (fans of realtime strategy and multiplayer RPGs) and aim to please as many gamers as possible within given budget and time constraints. One way to do this is to offer the players choices as to how they want to play the game. Hence the Generals / Assassins choice. Perhaps the Assassin type players should be given additional ability choices (like innociv suggests), while the Generals can keep their extremely limited choices as it is?

Personally, having very few options to choose from feels incredibly restraining to me. With some games it can feel like there's almost no real choices to make, (particularly if the game is unbalanced and there are only a few choices that offer distict advantages over all others).

Myself, I prefer more options and choices. If it's up to me, I choose this... every time.

What's wrong with being like a MMORPG or even an RPG? I thought that was the whole point of having the General vs the Assassin types? If you prefer to play Demigods as a strategy game, then play as a General. For those of us who like the idea of playing like an RPG, there's the Assassin type. Actually, I like both genres and I would probably try Demigods both ways. But when push comes to shove I prefer the RPG style as it seems more 'realistic' to me.

First of all, that's not entirely true. That's a pretty broad generalization. I've played a LOT of RPGs over the years, but not all of them have skill lockouts. (I'm an "old skool" RPG gamer.) And most RPGs I've played have significantly more choices to choose from than merely 4 abilities! Nearly every one I've played, actually.

Have the Dev's said anything about expanding the current skill trees furthur?  4 Active skills would have been fine if there were many demigods, but since there are a few (which isn't a problem) it'd be great to see huge skill trees that have a ton of different options and builds, currently the 2-3 cookie cutter builds per demigod (some which play similiarly) is fun for now, but will not keep people entertained for long once they've tried them out.  It'd be great to incorperate a few ideas that are in this forum.  Would be great if the devs could keep us up to date on what still needs to happen in the overall game.

I think it should be most compared to guildwars, magic: the gathering, and dota.  Those are the 3 closest relevancies.

  I edited my main post with how I should think it should work.
  I do not think you should be able to simply change what skills you're using mid-game.  Once you pick your 4 when the game starts, you should get locked ot them.  I basically do agree with Dalzk's points.  While I think this game needs a few more actives to pick from, so you can more build your Demigod, I don't think you should be able to flip-flop around. =]

I think there are enough items.  It's just that 30% of the items need to be completely redone, and 30% are too bad.  Only like 40% of them are useful.

You do realise this thread and things posted here are over 3 months old ?

2 Reasons why not:

1. You could throw balancing into the toilet. Compare a MMORPG to Dota or DG right now. It's nearly impossible to get all builds of 16 Demigods on the same level. Some builds will always dominate other on a DG. The versatilty will improve far less then the complexity of the balancing issues. But with 4 it should be np. Think about it, 4 Active doesnt mean you have alot less builds. Passives are also full fletched skills and very important. Often some Auras and passives are far better than some actives.

Dota has only mere 4 skills - passives and actives - and still has enough replay value for alot players, which play the game since 4-5 years. As a mere mod. Since DG's got 8-9 skills to choose from there is alot more depth to builds, but it needs more tweaking. The fun thing of these games - right now only dota - are also the change of metagame after updates, and how to adapt to changes and/or to new DG's.

2. As i said already. There is always "The build" for a DG. Most likely because random Pro will use random DG with build X and 99% will follow this build. Or random Pro writes a guide about Demigod X - 99% will follow it.

Its nearly impossible to bring more than 2 builds on a same level. This is because you can't just do the maths of your own skills. You always have to bring them into the context of the most used builds on other DG's. Since you mostly try to counter already effective builds which are in use. This means, having more skills doesn't mean a proportional increase in fun, but definitly in more work for the designers.

Hehehehe GW +1K skills are some of the most balanced I have ever seen. Those are updated almost constantly as people report.

I also do not think that 4 Active ability is enough because it always seem like you need a whole team to take down 1 Demigod. Altough there is variety in the builds it is just not enough. Each Demigod has like 4 ways to play them and not more. But Guild Wars for example has like +20 ways to play one type of class with the secondary one ofcourse.

Personally I like it as is. Id rather them keep the focus tighter and more balanced adn instead of expanding too many abilities to the DG's just release new DG's. Then you get different builds to mess with on a different character altogether. 

As it is when I play some of the characters I do vary my builds enough as it is. I dont really care to have that many more choices. Of course thats just me and you have your opinion as well for sure.