mod request: skill tree "reseter"

[joca_bt]

Hi, it would be cool to reset the skill tree, so you can change, to test strategies for example? Does anyone already made something like this?

[Keneth]

Certainly! It's called "New Game". :mrgreen:

[Dabrinko]

He probably means respec.

Get all the runes spent back, and no (but starting skills) skills chosen.

[Csimbi]

Keneth's response seems appropriate - start a new game, use the official cheats to level up, save, and assign the runes are you like, load the save and assign the runes again. This procedure seems fairly quick procedure to do the tests you want.

[Keneth]

He probably means respec. lol, I know what he meant, I was just mocking his ridiculous idea. Trying out new skill combinations is part of replayability. :mrgreen:

[Csimbi]

lol, I know what he meant, I was just mocking his ridiculous idea. Trying out new skill combinations is part of replayability. :mrgreen:
So, he wants the shortcut (not having to start a new game).
I took a look at the scripts. It seems that it would be a tedious job to make things happen - IMHO, not worth the price. Once you get to the elves, you should find plenty of runes laying around to pick all the skills you want...

[Keneth]

I'm actually not sure that it's even possible to downgrade a skill, I don't recall seeing the skill upgrade function anywhere. And a reset button would mean having to calculate all the existing levels and their required rune costs of every skill which would be annoying to write. :grin:

[Johannes]

Weird that this wasn't the first mod written. Should be simple to code and it's a big design misstake even if it's intentional.

[Csimbi]

Johannes,
did you ever manage to "un-learn" something?
Try mathematics for example or, eating with forks and knives. Once earn some skill, it's really hard to get rid of it. Sure, it degrades over time (takes 10-15 years) if you don't use it, but it would be still there anyway.

[Keneth]

It's not a design flaw, I fully support their decision, and if you think it's that easy to code, maybe you should give it a shot. :mrgreen:

[Csimbi]

It's not a design flaw, I fully support their decision, and if you think it's that easy to code, maybe you should give it a shot. :mrgreen:+1

[Johannes]

Johannes,
did you ever manage to "un-learn" something?
Try mathematics for example or, eating with forks and knives. Once earn some skill, it's really hard to get rid of it. Sure, it degrades over time (takes 10-15 years) if you don't use it, but it would be still there anyway.

That's a moot point, it's not a simulator, there's exceptions but usally once people put realism infront of gameplay they get problems. Also, the posters above where talking about something quite different than you.

It's not a design flaw, I fully support their decision, and if you think it's that easy to code, maybe you should give it a shot. :mrgreen:

My wording was: "It's a design misstake even if it's intentional" acknowledging that's it's ofcourse subjective and Then picking a side while you indicated it was a right/wrong situation and they picked right.

I get the pro's and con's, for me it Did add a bit of replayability I'm just saying that I'm almost completly convinced that for most of their player base the added frustration over it far outweighed the small gain in replayability. This I can't be sure of ofcourse, if it was actually my decision I would investiage further with betatesters etc but as far as my gut feeling goes I'm pretty sure.

As far as the whole "If it's so easy make it yourself" point that was silly, your first argument was basicly that it would be terribly hard to fill in a list runes for 3xnr of abilities. That's something you could give as a homework assignment to a 15 year old, it might take a bit of time but should be easy. It's still time spent with no return for me so not gonna do that to prove a point, was just a bit suprised that it wasn't allready done by someone with more time.

Hope that wasn't too offensive, just really don't like silly arguments.

[Csimbi]

As far as the whole "If it's so easy make it yourself" point that was silly, your first argument was basicly that it would be terribly hard to fill in a list runes for 3xnr of abilities. That's something you could give as a homework assignment to a 15 year old, it might take a bit of time but should be easy. It's still time spent with no return for me so not gonna do that to prove a point, was just a bit suprised that it wasn't allready done by someone with more time.

Hope that wasn't too offensive, just really don't like silly arguments.
I wish it was as easy as subtracting skill points and giving back runes.
But. You would need to remove the granted kills and deduct the granted bonuses somehow. There is no support in the scripts for doing such thing in the game, so you would need to do some serious hacking (if not impossible).
I would go for requesting this for the expansion and if it gets in, see if it can be ported back (still doubt it).

I did not find your message offensive. Expressing your opinion honesty is often a good thing because it's a shortcut for misunderstandings.

[Johannes]

You would need to remove the granted kills and deduct the granted bonuses somehow. There is no support in the scripts for doing such thing in the game

Ok fair enough, if there's no hooks for it then that's something else. I guess I kindof asumed that there was from my brief look at other mods and the game files that seemed pretty open. From the earlier discussion it seemed to me like the problem was making a simple table of runes/skills.

As a bonus for clearing it up, alchemy, the paladin "get more runes" ability and all xp gain abilities complicates my claim that it's bad design :)

[Keneth]

I get the pro's and con's, for me it Did add a bit of replayability I'm just saying that I'm almost completly convinced that for most of their player base the added frustration over it far outweighed the small gain in replayability. This I can't be sure of ofcourse, if it was actually my decision I would investiage further with betatesters etc but as far as my gut feeling goes I'm pretty sure. What frustration? I mean seriously, even if you completely and utterly screw up your skill selection you will still be able to complete the game without any serious trouble. Not to mention you can easily test each and every skill out with the super secret features called "save game" and "load game" with the added ability of being able to try it all at once via console. I find the whole idea simply laughable because the the effort required to make this mod far outweighs its actual usefulness.

As far as the whole "If it's so easy make it yourself" point that was silly, your first argument was basicly that it would be terribly hard to fill in a list runes for 3xnr of abilities. That's something you could give as a homework assignment to a 15 year old, it might take a bit of time but should be easy. It's still time spent with no return for me so not gonna do that to prove a point, was just a bit suprised that it wasn't allready done by someone with more time. I wish it were as simple as filling out a table of skills, assuming the downgrading of skills was immediately possible with code (which it's not but I suppose it could be written for whatever reason), you would have to dynamically check what skills your character has, of what level, and what their costs are (and you can't just skip this last one because mods can change their cost and that would mean you would get back the wrong ammount or in worst case could gain an infinite ammount of runes if it was reduced). And you would have to do this for each skill induvidually because you can't make a loop for it (skills are called by function name, not reference number), plus you would have to account for all the bonuses/features granted by each skill. And yes, a 15-year old could do it, I was coding far more advanced stuff when I was 15, but that doesn't actually mean there are any 15-year olds around willing to do it. :P

[Johannes]

We sorted the mod issue earlier, there's no hooks for it (can't be scripted) which I thought there was. You still focus on the fact that there's alot of different skills which wouldn't really be the problem. We atleast seem to agree that possible and will be done is different things :)

I still can't make you see there's other opinions than yours on the whole design thing but that's ok.

Think that's about it.

[Keneth]

You still focus on the fact that there's alot of different skills which wouldn't really be the problem. It's not the fact that there's a lot of skills it's the fact that there's no easy way to process all of them but when it comes right down to it, there's nothing in the spectrum of scripting possibilities that poses a problem if you put enough effort into it. Point is, the value/effort quotient doesn't ammount to much of anything in this case, so it's doubtful someone would be arsed to do this.

I still can't make you see there's other opinions than yours on the whole design thing but that's ok. Yeah but I have a lifetime of experience in game development and an ego huge enough to stomp on and ignore those silly opinions, so it doesn't really bother me. :P

[Johannes]

Yeah but I have a lifetime of experience in game development and an ego huge enough to stomp on and ignore those silly opinions, so it doesn't really bother me. :P

Ah, I've allways wondered how people manage to never learn but that would explain it ;p

Still I got curious, what have you worked on?

[Keneth]

Well, I guess that's for me to know and you to find out. I hope you like watching game credits. :P

[Ryastar]

I'm sorry, Johannes, but there are so many things that make this idea completely impractical purely from a gameplay standpoint.

1. Runic stone. This ability costs ten mind runes and gives you ten might and magic runes, which you can then go spend on other things. What if, when you go to "unlearn" runic stone, you no longer have those runes (less specifically, you no longer have 10 might and magic runes)- you've spent them - so what happens? Do you go to negative runes? Does the game force you to unlearn other skills until you have enough runes to be deducted?

2. Reserve. What happens when you have a bunch of troops in your reserve slot(s) and you "unlearn" the skill? Do they disappear? Die? Stay there?

3. Order, Distortion, and Chaos magic skills. Say you "unlearn" one of those skills, maybe not even all the levels of it. You will still have spells in your spell book of higher level that you are allowed to cast. Ie. you used to have order lvl 3 and ressurection level 3, but you unlearned the skill to level 1. Does the spell stay the same, completely breaking the game because those runes can now be used somewhere else meaning you have the high level spell without the skill investment, or does it reduce in level too, meaning the game has to figure out how many crystals you spent to upgrade, also having to check if you have (or had) alchemy before?

4. A question of prerequisites. Say you really, really want the inquisitor skill, but you don't really care for any of the skill that you have to get to get that skill, and want to spend those runes elsewhere. An abuse of the "unlearner" would allow you to then unlearn those skills. So the question is, if you completely unlearn a prerequisite, do you also unlearn the things that had it as a prerequisite?

Now, I don't think you've been clear as to whether you want an unlearner, or something that will instantly unlearn all the skills you know. If the former, all my points hold. If the latter, the first changes to the fact that the game then has to figure out how many levels of runic stone you had and subtract might and magic runes accordingly, but the second two points hold as serious problems, though the fourth is moot.

[Johannes]

Hi ya Ryastar, some answers for your points, I was suggesting a global reset so will ignore 1 & 4,
2: A small problem, both die and disappear would be ok aslong as you state it on the button.
3: The reasonable thing would be to downgrade that spell if you didn't meet the prerequisate and refund the chrystals. In theme with the rest of the thread you focus on that it would be the toughest thing ever to keep track of something so simple as nr of chrystals/runes spent.

I allready mentioned some problems with the idea in a previous reply but I don't think the things you added posed any additional problems.