938 Accessible Skill Trees

Skill trees in games can be great, but they can also get exhausting, and add another reason for me to waste more time in the menu and less time in the game world.

This system design would create a skill tree outside of the standard menu, and keep the player immersed in the game world.

A semi-relevant example of this is from 2015’s Gearbox game Battleborn, where the player could press a button on the control to temporarily and quickly show a skills tree, and then quickly choose one of two options, and swiftly resume playing the game.

This worked in Battleborn because the game itself was fast-paced. But, I think many games (outside of something like Path of Exile) that have a simple enough skill tree could have a simplified and dynamic display of the skill tree at relevant times, and maybe additionally access to the “full” skill tree inside of the menu if the player needs to inspect it in further detail.

This would have to be designed carefully so that neither of the variations of the skill tree trivialized the other. In some gameplay examples, everything could probably be achieved in a single simple skill tree view. A good example of this is maybe the side bar menu display of the Diablo series, where I can quickly bring up the menu but don’t lose view or control of the game itself. Even if the player pauses playing anyway, this goes a long way to theoretically keep the player immersed in the world.

[ Today I Was Playing: nothing… ]

#game-mechanic-system