It should be , well, BOUNDLESS! … having lots of possibilities without the feel of boundaries.
PS: I DON’T mean to have all skills with one character, but thousands of ways to skill with hundreds of combinations which all give me the feeling of making sense.
TOO BAD. YOU WASTED YOUR QUESTION.
(anything, all)
It should be engaging.
(If something is engaging you’re more inclined to look over potential negative points.)
sneaking in
The skill trees should be offer specialization within the trees themself. so crafting is not just crafting but you can focus on weapon crafting, wearable crafting etc. Mining it not just mining. you can focus on mining ore or mining gems. you can spec up to either get more items or higher quality. Allowing for specialized miners. if you want to mine a massive cave out so you can build you can hire one type of miner, if you need some rare materials you need to hire a different type of miner.
A few thing bothers me about the proposed system but since you have given so little info i will have to wait until i start judging it. atm though all i can say is that im not particularly hyped for it.
Well, One little preyer here to you @Ben & Devs … Let there ALLWAYS be a way to unlern a profession track, even if it meens that you have to level the new one for days and weeks to get it on the same level again. Nothing is more frustrating to delete a character after over hundet houres of gameplay or to begin a new one because of a (in parts) bad decission made weeks ago. Let it be a hard “back to level 0”-Way which also costs a bunch of mats or ching-ching, but don’t let ANY decission in character progression be final (Japp, the same should be in for skills) !
And now that my question answer is out of the way I can ask about this^^
Does that mean that even if the plan for 1.0 is with the 3 skill-tree cap that if enough people want it to be changed after they tested it out, you’d consider it even after 1.0 and might change it?
Especially because I think that this particular cap goes more into the successful system than in the endgame part. Exactly because it’s not available only to high level players.
The progression should most of all allow you to differentiate yourself from other players.
Amor providing different kind of protection, being able to focus on different aspects within the singular trees like @Zouls said and maybe even leaning how to gather materials or craft tools and armor others cannot.
Meaning people should not only be identified by the fact that they are a crafter but also how they choose to specialize themself within the craft profession.
Reaching the end of a skill tree should feel like an accomplishment, not a given. Whether this be done by increasing the number of skill points required as you go or via some alternate method is up to you guys.
Allowing the ability to change/respec your skill trees even if its on a long cooldown or high cost because I feel that changing or adapting your skill set up to either what you learn from other players in game or from experience just playing is a form of progression in itself.
Friends and I also usually ignore games that don’t allow respec ability and the ones that can get away with it have fast leveling.
An infinite progression model would encourage me to play 1000s of hours.
Means:
Every profession / specialisation have a large spectrum of explorable things (useful goods to produce / improve, skills to learn and improve - all explored by myself and not teached or just a receipt or something or knowledge earned by a quest or red on the wall of a temple).
The progression i imagine is seperated in 3 phases:
In the first phase you find out how your profession works.
The second phase you try to gather all possible skills and partwise improve what you already know (will probably take 100s of hours)
In the third phase you try to master your progression by effort, while still finding a few new and rare receipts.
Third phase explains my idea of infinite progression model:
Each abilitly or good that you produce, can be improved theoretically endlessly.
The higher the level you reach, the more time absorbing it is, to gain higher bonusses.
Let me give you 2 examples:
A miner should be able to skill his mining speed.
One hit of a block takes 1.5 seconds. To get a stone block with a stone pick you need 4 hits (just to calculate with).
If you got 200 blocks, your movement speed will be speeded up by 0.1s.
Next 0.1 s by 500 more blocks.
Next 0.1 s by 1000 more
Next 0.1 s by 2000 more.
There should be an artificial, realistic limitations. means if 0.8 seconds of hitting speed seems balanced it should already be very hard to reach. But still (if someone wants to spend that effort) with a million blocks you are able to get a speed of 0.7 seconds. And with unrealistic other limitations even 0.6 (of course the steps can be smaller: 0.10, 0.11, 0.12 so on, so the leveling process has more benefits in between)
An Alchemist could improve the bonus a heal potion gives by the amount of times brewed this potion.
Like this it encourages him to intensivate his potion so that his potion is the best sellable on the market.
And hardcore gamers who fight the hardest titans would stand in lines to just get his specific potions because of the higher benefit. That encourages the alchemist to develope to even better alchemist.
With this kind of model (i’d call it infinite progression model or exponential progression model) every player has different skill levels or abilities. because everyone focusses on different things. Furthermore noone can master everything, rather just be “good” instead of “excellent” in several things. Furthermore the skill of every player can be overcome by another who puts in more effort.
If you combine this with activity (like if you stop playing your level falls in an appropriate way), you can keep players playing forever and new players always have the chance to somewhen overcome the best players of a server.
The system supports:
more effort = more benefit.
more individuality
more necessarity to decide what you really want
more long time seductivity
@ben I hope one answer did not mean one sentence. I could not give you my answer this shortly… hope you have time to read…
Not sure seductivity is what you mean here?
This idea sort of goes along with mine. Reaching the end of a tree (skill or profession) should take effort and not be given out.
However, Ben’s already said that the current system is being designed for 100s of hours and that long-term is something they’ll be thinking about. He also said not to worry about running out of content and the system you’re describing sounds a lot like Diablo’s paragon system. So I definitely support what you’re thinking about and it seems cool, I was just wondering if you have any additional ideas targeting 1.0 and progressing instead of post 1.0 or post-progression/end-game?
Every lvl up should be awesome
Just like in Fallout, where i crave for each & every lvl up because each new perk just adds so much awesomeness and/or new possibilities to my char.
Not like in (for example) WoW where think meh after each lvl up and occasionally visit a trainer for some new skills I don´t use.
Don´t focus too much on the names we are comparing B< to / we take examples from.
There are often also many small-scale indie games that do something similar, we just use the ‘big’ names because many people are familiar with the gameplay mechanics of them.
I (and I assume others) suggested something like paragon lvl because it is a relative simple way to keep players at bay while you work on all the awesome new “real” gameplay after 1.0. (An additional node at the end of the mining tree that gives you [log(1+“points already spent”)]% on mining speed and can be skilled indefinitely would already do the trick)
Maybe seductivity is not right. I mean the game seduces you again and again to play on for a lot of time 
Hmm additional I have enough, but Ben just wanted one most important thing 
I also like the progression possibilities in wow. the success system with certain benefits.
Discovering in general and collecting knowledge is a nice progression type too.
Collecting knowledge of the walls of ancient temples that should be implemented in the game for example. I guess you will fight monsters inside a temple, but you could also use temples (of course also other locations) as discover places for new crafting receipts or in oortian described treasure maps that lead you to further interesting places.
You must play hunter.
(Disclaimer: this is a joke).[quote=“Vastar, post:92, topic:4189”]
Don´t focus too much on the names we are comparing B< to / we take examples from.There are often also many small-scale indie games that do something similar, we just use the ‘big’ names because many people are familiar with the gameplay mechanics of them.
[/quote]
I think Ben is also using Blizzard’s titles become of they’re recognizable and because they help easily explain the difference in terms of budget and manpower between the two companies. I don’t think he’s saying to stop using examples from AAA titles because he regularly references relatable/recognizable AAA titles.
Having a variety of simple progression mechanisms.
I find that the games that hook me the most have a variety of simple progression mechanisms.
Those mechanisms might be accrual of points/levels/coin/blocks/etc, or achievements, or in game puzzles, or marking all areas of a map explored, or many other things.
If I can come up with a random list of “micro goals” to work toward each time I log in, and be able to accomplish at least one of them, I feel satisfied.
An especially good game also hooks you with “but I just want to do this one other thing”
Completionist; can you tell? 
Maybe the variety of skills or professions each combined with a unique set of tools or machines. Not leaving out the option for learning foreign skills, but maybe rather later on in the game. So of there actually was a gameplay loop, you could redefine your start with a different tool/skillset each time. Which leads to get to know other players and classtypes, every loop.
@nevir, it seems like doing almost anything in Boundless earns experience and that experience can be used however you want it. Different points are used to unlock different skills. So I think the mechanism is already being designed for.
I get the feeling that your post is maybe more asking for meaningful achievements tied to progression? Like achieving different milestones within a set profession gives a larger exp boost than just performing a mundane action associated with that profession (i.e. Mine 500 of X gives both the exp of mining that last X you needed AND gives an additional little boost in exp for hitting that milestone)? Is that sort of what you’re talking about?
It’s a lot more than just achievements. They may generate achievements (esp in WoW, because Blizz is achievement crazy), but not always (and that doesn’t matter as much). Using WoW as an example, here’s some of the things are all progression systems in my head:
The main thing is that there’s always a variety of things that you can work towards at any point in time.
Yes.
True the same goes for GW2 they always had something where you could go “I want to do that today” Just the exploration actually was enough to keep me intertained for hours, hunting down points of interest.