Is GWs the only RPG not to use a skill tree?

I'm just curious about something. Is Guild Wars the only RPG/MMO on the market or to have existed which hasn't used a skill tree?

Ive played a few other MMO's or RPGs and they all require you use the typical "skill tree" system of restricting skills to levels and entering points at certain levels to unlock further levels, which ultimately sets your build in stone and doesnt allow for real variation (or it costs to change).

Where as GWs on the other hand just lets you buy or unlock any skill you wish, at any level and use when ever you want.

I'm playing hellgate at the minute and it uses this typical system and my build is now set in stone as you cant currently change it at alll. I messed up a few builds on previous attempts and had to delete the char and start again.

The same goes for WoW to an extent, although you can reset your skills but it costs you!

If im right in thinking Anet's game is the only one which doesnt use a skill-tree system, I think they hit the nail on the head by scrapping that. It's much more fun and offers a lot more variety.

Lets just hope the same system moves over into GWs 2!

Sorry, random post!

probably not.

Lots of RPGs dont use skill tree thingie. Its usually more tactical ones (which also offer a lot more character development freedom).

Skill tree in RPG is usually poor excuse for ballancing (they have IMBA skill at end of tree and tree makes sure that you cant get more of IMBA skills.) or for character "integrity" (water mage cannot use fire, ffs!)

Pleaase, GW is no RPG.

I dunno about WoW. Its much more forgiving than GW. Like when I go disarmed by a bigger than usual baddie and I had 0 in Unarmed. I just went to the noob area and punched wolves and bandits for like 20 mins and my Unarmed became 50. I was also able to put my weapon classes in the 70's(Dagger, Sword, and Crossbow) in a day. This was on the 10 day trial just so you know. In GW, if you're not an experienced player you often buy the wrong skills early and are forced to play through the game with them until you have $$ to buy new, better skills. When I got to the Crystal Desert my bar was [skill=text]Rotting Flesh[/skill], [skill=text]Shadow of Fear[/skill], [skill=text]Suffering[/skill], [skill=text]Faintheartedness[/skill], [skill=text]Parasitic Bond[/skill], [skill=text]Empathy[/skill], [skill=text]Chaos Storm[/skill], and [skill=text]Resurrection Signet[/skill] due to the fact that I'd spent alot of money on horrible skills and was too poor to afford any more. 1k was serious bank back then. In WoW, you just have to stand around and do something repeatedly(aka grind) and your skill increases. I remember spending 5 mins making Heavy Linen Bandages so I could qualify for Journeyman First Aid. Sadly I didn't have enough money to buy it and my trial ended the next day.

Flyff has a skill tree, but it do not limit what you can learn, It only makes harder to learn the next thing, you can get anything.

In Ultima Online you can max anything, but you will lose skill if you stop doing something, so it's more or less the same.

GW it's the best. Anyone can learn anything. No re-rolling.
I hate re-rolling.

Even if you have a tree, once you reach certain point, getting new skills or increasing an attribute should cost the same and be infinite until maxing them all.

I hove they make GW2 so you can max all attributes, (get up to 200 to use in PvP, but being able to put all skills to 12 in PvE, like some monsters can already)

Most games in the RPG genre aren't RPGs. Your point?

GW isn't what you can call a real rpg
it's not even a MMORPG
anyways
GW just lets you buy skills and then use them in all variations you want
a skill tree such as the one in Dark messiah was quite uhm hatefull

You had not found out that you actually get most of the Prophecy skills as quest rewards?
Anyway, most people do not have very efficient skill bars in the beginning, at least not if starting from scratch and learning by trial and error.

However, in the early history of GW you had to earn points during leveling, that was charged every time you changed build. Removing that changed the whole concept of skills in GW, imho.

Regards,
Cloudbunny

Well, it is actually less forgiving in long run because change of build costs money so build improvement always costs something.

In gw you just buy skills and they are yours forever, so while entrance barrier might be high-ish, in long run it is grindless.

Btw: your "desert bar" looks like actually decent one if one takes into account prohecies only skills and how early it is in game. Not good example how gw style debilitates you.

In gw you can make make bad chocies early on but it is so easy to undo them ... Coprate it to "set to stone" style games where you have to reroll character because of misclick.

imo the Skill Tree System is much better, because its ordered and and brings the player on planning, how you develop best your character.

and then it should be resetable, either without any cost, so just for free, or for a very small fee, nothing ridiculous insane high priced what raises more and more, so farer you are, until it becomes unpayable ...


I love it also, and i hope so, that this will be part in GW2's new Skill System, that players don't raise the strength of their skills by just increasing attribute points ..

no, players should use the skills which they want to become stronger, to receive experience with them and then leveling their skills up ...
By leveling skills up, then the character will also learn new skills for example.

Guild Wars used to have "attribute refund points" which basically limited the amount of levels you could swap around at any given time. Refund Points were regained by gaining experience.

They deleted that pretty fast though, and i still consider it one of the best updates ever made.

GW is probably not the only rpg without a skill-tree, and GW doesn't need a skill-tree either.

I remember doing that on D2 once, got my necro to level 80ish until i found out i wasted 20 points on skills that were never used and useless.

I see a bunch of nerds bringing up a semantical argument over what an RPG is, when they keep forgetting it's literally just a roleplaying game; which in turn is pretty much any game where you are pretending to be someone.

Also, might I add, most GW skills aren't bad at all. Bad skills are generally only bad when they aren't given good synergy with others. Or when it's a really underpowered elite.

Not wanting to detract from my own post, but I would love to know how you can argue that Guild wars does not involve "role playing" a character!

You do realise RPG stands for "ROLE PLAYING GAME"... so if pve isnt role playing then what is it?

Are you not required to role a character from lvl1 to lvl20 and play them through a storyline to do it?

It may not a traditional MMO, but it is an RPG!

Anyway, back to my thread....

There is one prime example:

1. Ultima Online,
even older than EverQuest, probably the first "MMORPG" ever.

It had a point system and no classes. It still exists today, but is quite dated despite a recent graphics update. But I wonder why the system is not more popular than that of EverQuest. You could really craft things, chop trees, build your own house and things like that.

About the system:
You have 700 points, and can train a skill to 100 points. You can wield any weapon that you want, but if you do serious damage depends on your training. No char levels are present in this system.

So you can have:
100 Swordsmanship
100 Parry
100 Magery
100 Anatomy (boosts damage)
100 Healing (to use bandages)
and 200 pts split between fishing, cooking and other things.

Or you had a crafter: 100 Tailoring, 100 Blacksmithing, 100 Mining...


Later on an addition was made: You got a 50%+ failure chance for attack spells if you wore heavy armor like plate mail, to stop the so called "tank mages", heavily armored wizards with an halberd. :>

You trained your skills from 0 to 100 by: Fighting ever more difficult opponents with your sword for example. After a while you could not learn anyting from killing chipmunks, then you fought Skeleton Knights, and later on a Cyclops or Troll.

The beauty of the system was that your char could untrain skills - you locked your favorite skills at 100, and released others that you want to unlearn. Then you could start training Axe Mastery and Lumberjacking instead of Swordsmanship.


The older D&D adventures used a class system with levels, but you could set attribute points for strength and things like that manually. WoW took that away, they are distributed automatically to prevent people from investing into the "wrong" attribute.

2. EVE ONLINE
Then there is also EVE online, where skills are trained in real time, even when you are offline. You can always learn one skill at a time. At first it takes minutes, then hours, then days, then almost a month.

You can learn basic things very quickly, but then you have to specialize, which takes a lot of time.

So you can already be a better pilot or gunner than someone who started two years ago, but have no clue about asteroid mining.

EVE has become very popular nowadays. It is a also a Scifi MMORPG, rather than a typical fantasy one.



Interestingly, level based and grind heavy EverQuest derivates have become almost synonymous with the term MMORPG. People are just too fascinated by bigger numbers, higher levels and rare uber items. The problem of the level system is manifold, high level characters can usually totally forget about 90% of the world that is lower level so that it is no longer interesting and so on. It also requires constant expansions and higher levels, causing a lot of power creep and balancing for PvP is extremely difficult.

WoW PvP is a lot gear based and some classes have definite advantages one versus one. But at its core it is a PvE game based on the "Raid" philosophy, some of the lead designers are former Everquest cracks, so it does not matter so much as in GW (Where actually most are PvE players as well, and PvP gets a lot of love regarding balancing, but all content goes to PvE. I always wondered how GW managed to survive this discrepancy and do well).

Hacking monsters in a blah storyline before moving on to PvP or farming.

If GW was an RPG I would have killed polo joker, defeated the charr, livia would not be one of my heroes, and neither would what's his face charrboy.

Hmm. Guild Wars does have skill trees, however. They're just not laid out as trees in a graphical interface. There's no bridging needed between trees. I mean, look at it - each primary class has 3 "trees" and a class-specific tree. Tell me how that's not identical to anything else?

Because a skill tree demands you unlock one skill before you can access another..usually!.

In guild wars, you can....

1)buy the core skills pack and instantly buy ANY normal skill you wish from any trainer the minute you create your character.

2) Or be run to high end areas and buy more powerfull skills in later zones, provided you can get there!

...I dont quite understand how you think the skill system in GWs is skill tree-ish! Yes you have different branches for skills on each profession, like earth, fire, water and air but one isnt dependant on the other or how points you have in certain places.

You can use any normal skill at any level and at point.

So you dont consider it an RPG simply because you cant take the story as far as YOU lke?

And not everyone moves onto pvp after pve! I didnt until I just got really bored, but others dont.

See thats all far too complicated for me. I like a nice simple game I can pick up, play, get into and put down. I dont like spending hours or days or months getting a skill or spell sorted out.

QTF

GW isn't really an RPG, its more like a very simple card game (at its core)

Deck of skills, bring 8, etc etc. Rock paper scissor it out.

Many RPG's lack skill trees, but GW is the only one I've ever played where attribute points and skill selection are completely fluid and changeable.

As to GW "not being an RPG," in the gaming industry "RPG" is not defined the same way it is in pen and paper. Someone coming to the PvE game with no preconceptions would likely define GW as an action RPG, based on the game play.

There are currently no truly free-form CRPGs, (computer role playing games), and as such you can't actually do whatever you want. Since this is also a multiplayer game, and assuming it was free-form, any decent GM would shut down your ability to alter the plot in such overarching ways. If it was a solo game, then I'd say sure, go ahead and completely rewrite the story...

Either way, the current implementation of GW is very friendly to someone who wants to experiment w/ different builds, and is especially forgiving to someone who may take a skill thinking it's very useful at 1 part of the game, but near useless later on. I much prefer GW's system over more level-restricted ones like old school D&D.

No it isn't.

Guild Wars is kinda like the card game Magic:The Gathering except some differences.

You simply need to find a skill trainer and he'll have a collection of 'cards' you can buy to add to your deck. His cards don't require being a certain level or having a certain stat to buy them.
When you want to go out to an instance you put a 'hand' together out of the deck of cards you have created so far.
You are never arbitrarily told you can only use a certain skill by being a certain level, main profession, or having certain stats. Some skills are even more advantageous in certain builds by purposely using them at 0 attribute points.

I honestly know of no other online rpg game that does that, but I haven't played that many games. I haven't even played the M:TG online game. In every online rpg I've played you don't have the freedom I've seen in Guild Wars in how you make your character. I'd never be able to take a crowd control style profession, such as mesmer or ranger in GW, in another game and function as any type of healer, but in GW I could.

GW is like a dolphin, it's not a fish, but lives on water. Or a bat, which is not a bird, but can fly.

I hope that confuses more what GW is or not is.

Anyway, I like the concept that GW does not use a skill tree structure. It greatly lessens the skill grinding than actually using the skills, and the grind of re-creating characters.

My take.

Why are there people insistent on telling us GW is not a RPG? How does saying its a RPG put things wrong for those naysayers? Do you realize that the term RPG is a vague and all encompassing description of game-play.

GW isn't the first game to be untraditional in its genre, One can say Everquest isn't a RPG compared to Ultima Online. Just as World of Warcraft isn't the same as those that came before it.

The RPG genre will continue to evolve to broader style and methods, but basic tenet of RPG is to have a character, story, and challenge.

I assume you mean that EVE does not have a tree system, but in a limited sense it does. For example, you can't learn how to fly a Titan of a particular race until you max the capital ships skill, max the battleship skill of that race AND max the leadership skill, with Capital Ships and [Race] Battleship having their own skill requirements to learn. Hardly a non-tree based game.

One game that combines character customization comparable to GW (ie. no skill trees) is an old game called Asheron's Call. Unfortunately, it suffers from grind-based problems that Longasc described, last I checked. (ie. trying to get the big numbers representing your skills even bigger via grind)

Indeed, the thing with skill trees is: you have to plan your character completely. Choose which skill line to take, attribute spread, take into account any attribute boosts from gear etc. As a newbie, you wouldn't know any of this, which means you have to remake your char with a proper plan 2+ times

Reminds me of a friend who said Doom is just like Packman with some fancy graphics.

"You run around in a labyrinth picking up stuff and hiding from ghosts, occasionally you pick up nice things that make you you able to kill them."


Regards,
Cloudbunny

Exactly. RPG is a broad definition, and is the closest thing you can use for GW.

Is GW a first person shooter? No.
Is GW a puzzle game? No.
Is GW a real time strategy game? No.

Is GW a RPG? Yes. Well, it's more of an RPG then it is any of those other classifications.

short and sweet k

skill trees suck

attribute points are teh awesomes

the end

Why are you running away from them? In Doom you have no excuse. You have a shotgun, use it or you're a pansy.

The better PvE-game is that where you can get everything maxed, until just you gaze can kill enemies, XD.

If you think about it, the closest game to GW when it comes to rules it's Pokemon:

- It's an RPG.
- But you are not RPGing much...
- Most of the time you save the day by wacking someone.
- You can finish it without reading a single text line.
- You have finish certain missions to gain access to other areas.
- Some skills have additional effects that affect the environment (well, actually... only Ligh of deldrimor, XD)
- And some other times you have to wack something.
- You can 'get all skills'.
- You only have a limited set of skills at the same time.
- You can change the skills you bring only in certain places.
- From Yak's Bend to Augury Rock, parties of 6, XDD.

RPG in computer games became an abstraction for DnD-like games, mechanics for MMOs evolved from MUDs, most notably DikuMUD, individual elements were mostly defined by Everquest.

Core concepts that define computer RPGs
1) Character progression through levels and experience points
2) Various allocatable pools (attributes, skill points, talents)
3) Combat (determined primarily by dice roll)
4) Avatar customization

2 and 3 are by far the most defining factors of computer RPG. Even if you have only 5 pools with 10 points to spend them between, that's enough.

Reasoning for this is that unlike Doom, where you *are* the character, RPGs allow you to pretend to be the character. In Doom, if you suck at shooting, you die. In RPG, you pretend to be good at shooting by "training" your shooting skill, and become a sniper.

Ironically, almost all balance problems, as well as abuse of grind, come from the very nature of RPG, and how original DnD design is completely unsuitable for player-vs-player situations.

Evey single game ever made is a RPG.
/thread

For me it is closer to a FPS! There are just too little choices to make it close to a RPG.
But for most people levels, attributes and skills defines a RPG.

From the Wizardry Archives manual: "Role playing is just as it sounds. You play the role of something someone other than yourself. Just like professional actors and actress, you pretend to be a character acting and reacting to situations as he or she would."

The only situations you face in GW and in FPS are fights.
The situations you face in an RPG are more complex. Diplomacy, stealing, solving puzzles etc. In order to play a character you have to be able to make choices, that show who that character is: What are his believes? His intentions and so on. You have absolutely no choice in GW. After prophecies you can´t even choose where you want to go.
And what Antheus said: "Reasoning for this is that unlike Doom, where you *are* the character, RPGs allow you to pretend to be the character. In Doom, if you suck at shooting, you die. In RPG, you pretend to be good at shooting by "training" your shooting skill, and become a sniper."

On the subject of whether or not GW is an RPG (yeah, it probably is, technically)...

I realized the other day that GW is the only game I know of where you get to pick who you are, but the game forces you to say a certain thing in every plot-related cutscene.

Usually, there are two types of games:

Games where you don't get any real roleplaying choices, but it's okay because you're playing a certain pre-determined character. (Like Cloud in FFVII.)

Games where you pick who you are (your name and what you look like), and during conversations you pick from at least two options for what to say and how to react. (Like Neverwinter Nights.)

GW seems unique, however, in letting you pick exactly who you are, but whether you're a shy young monk from Cantha, or a scarred, hardnosed old veteran from the ruins of Ascalon, you're still going to hero-worship Togo and try unnecessarily to comfort the Norn, no matter what you want to do.

I think this is where the "RPG" element of GW really fails.

Your opinion!

This mine....

Lets compare Halo, to Hellgate London to Guild Wars very quickly!

Halo is a blatent FPS because all you do is change weapons and kill things in a linia (cant spell as you all know) fashion throughout the entire game. There is no moving away from the set path. You are given one character, who you has a name and cant be changed and you just control them.

Hellgate: London uses a FPS (notice shooter) perspective or a 3rd person perspective but in a FPS style. But it also incorporates armor changing, skills, spell, a points system and levels and PUGing. You also have the choice to move to any area you want to at any point and kill what ever you wish (provided you have unlocked that area). Hellgate London is a cross-breed between FPS and RPG... and it works well. You also build your own character instead of using a pre-made person you control.

Guild Wars has no FPS perspective in the true sense, but your still kiling stuff in some way. If you zoom in you don't see your weapon in hand as you would Halo or Hellgate. You do have the 3rd person perspective, but that is standard perspective in all games when not using first person perspective. Guild Wars has even more flexibility compared to hellgate london where you do as you want, kill what you want, farm and buy what you want (again provided you have unlocked those areas) and customise all aspects of your character.

You could argue any game where you kill someone is an FPS because you are killing stuff using a weapon or spell or skill to do it. Oblivion has a FPS perspective if you zoom in, WoW you can zoom in for that perspective. You could use the FPS arguement for most games of any type.

Its what distinguises the game beyond that "killing aspect" which matters, and GuildWars goes much further then just "kill kill kill". We have character leveling, skill and spell learning and buying, attribute points to spend to build a good build. Armor with varied stats to benefit those builds if need be.

We can customise our characters in most aspects when creating them, and then later when buying armor and weapons and dye. You have 3 large islands to explore with full freedom to do so (provided you find those areas first).

This is what distinguises GWs from being more then just a FPS in the kill, kill, kill sense!

If Guild Wars was just a FPS we would just be given a set character at the start and be told to follow a set path, no variation, do these things one after another and dont go back and once your finished thats is.

But we're not! You build the character you want and do as you want. Yes there is a storyline to follow, but you can do as you want while you follow that.

But you cant say to other people "This is catergorically not an RPG because I cant cross that mountain over there, or because I cant kill that really annoying character on that wall". Games have to have some limits, otherwise it looses its train of thought and people wander off and loose themselves.

Its good to have a storyline and some edges to the game, which force you in a set direction. But to still have enough freedom to feel its a real world, which you can do as you wish in. And GWs offers that and is an RPG because of it IMO!

For GWs to be what you define as an RPG, the game would have to be the size of an entire planet and allow you to kill every and any creature and NPC you come in contact with. It would need to have the sun rise in the morning and the moon rise at night, and have storms which ripped trees up and sun which dried the ground out. You would need to train your character up from being a sperm until they died as an old man.

Im sure that would be an interesting game, but it would be HUGE!!!

Limits are needed on RPGs or they just get a bit insain.

An FPS is largely about how well you play and your personal skill in the game. In an RPG, it has more to do with how well you build your character. That's why I definantly think GW falls into the latter.