Panel
Paul Stephanouk - Design Director of Candy Crush. Previously EA, Zynga, Bossfight, Schell Games, Big Huge Games. 20 years experience building and running creative teams.
Kelly Tran - Co-founder and Game Designer at Evolved Play. Previously, Game Design Professor researching games and players at High Point University. PhD in learning and tech. Solo Twitch - Group Twitch - Website
Xelnath - Game Designer World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Snackpass Tochi. Founder Game Design Skill.
Ian Schreiber - Senior Game Designer Oxide Games, previously Assistant Professor Rochester Institute of Technology.
Dan Felder - Lead Game Designer Riot Games. Previously Abrakam, Blizzard, EA.
Brandon Dolinski - Level Designer Eidos Montreal. Previously Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age.
Mohamed Abdel Khalik - Co-Founder and Game Director on Tut at Karnak Studios. Consultant on Nightscape at Mezan Studios.
Notes
Skill trees are a way of adding meaningful decision moments to games.
They create exclusivity - pick something and can’t pick something else.
If implemented well, making that decision is a satisfying player action.
Skill trees give players agency.
They can build meaning to certain attributes/spells by having players take one skill as a prerequisite for another.
After players travel for a certain amount of time in one skill path, some games allow them to continue in another. (FF10, PoE)
Skill trees serve as an engine for exclusive choice.
Skyrim is practically at the minimum viable end of the feature.
Point allocation is not the issue - the issue is branching trees.
Plug them together to create exclusive and interdependent decisions.
Visual representation of pre-requisites needs to be very clear.
Utility in two major aspects
Some abilities don’t make sense until you have other abilities as they augment the power of existing ability.
Needs dependency for communication (don’t give summon booster until players have a summon spell).
It’s a good balancing mechanism, if you want this powerful ability, you can go through pre-requisites to get it.
Skill trees create pressure and loss aversion mentality if respec cost is too high. It becomes anxiety inducing.
If respeccing is low cost it doesn’t feel very personal.
How will the player maximize progression of time? Will they take a shortcut for a spike of power but pay for it later?
Most skill trees are not dynamic or respond to the player overtime.
Dynamic skill trees are modern (Hades, Slay The Spire, Clank in Space).
One way to make low respec cost work is it makes it exciting as a designer to create NEW problems where players HAVE to respec to win and sends you back to the well to make interesting decisions - turning loss aversion into a strength.
One place to start designing skill threes is through a player fantasy expression such as I want to be a fire mage.
If I have two paths I could take - which path am I pulled towards?
No tension on the wire for 5% chance to hit vs. 5% damage - more or less the same result disguised.
Am I choosing between siege tanks or long distance bombardments = meaningful on strategy, upgrades and growth modification = tension on the wire.
Meaningful isn’t just a tactical difference if they play similar. Consider emotional/fantasy/role and how is that changing gameplay.
But unlimited respecing makes it less impactful.
Skyrim does something interesting. There are no classes, play however you want, and as designers we’ll help you get better at it.
It’s best for designers to create dynamic context where a single build path is not optimum for the different contexts of the game.
Skill tree options that are valuable in different contexts and can’t have the best options in every situation.