re you curious to find out what we have on our drawing board right now, Tibians? Today, we want to give you a glimpse behind the curtains.We are currently working on a new feature that will allow you to further specialise your character based on your needs and playstyle, the skill wheel. In this system your character gains points, one each level, that can be spent to unlock several benefits. These range from small perks like increasing your total hit points, to improving existing spells, all the way up to powerful and unique effects, like gaining access to a completely new spell. The skill wheel will have a use for at least 4000 points, thus allowing even the highest characters in the game to have something to look forward to.
A character would have to spent 575 points in a branch to reach one of the largest boons. This design was chosen to allow a much wider range of characters to theoretically gain access to all benefits. While characters with a high level can invest into more bonuses at the same time, benefits are not exclusive to their level range.
In essence, you can shape your own path in the skill wheel. We want players to experiment with the skill wheel and with different paths. Therefore, we will make sure that you can go back on the decisions you have made for your character and respend your points on different perks and benefits without any significant investment.
Due to having a lot of points to spent, as the amount is based on your level, many of the upgrades are of a smaller, incremental nature so that you can always spend your newly gained points when levelling. Each vocation will have its own skill wheel with its own effects and spells.
These core aspects of the skill wheel hopefully allow us to meet the following goals:
- Players can use the skill wheel without having to worry about making a permanent mistake. This is important to us as players dedicate significant amounts of time, ressources and effort to level their characters.
- Players can freely try out which of the benefits suit their playstyle best or are most useful to them in a specific scenario, be that hunting, bossing or PvP.
- Vocations can gain a more distinct role.
- We can balance every single aspect of the skill wheel at any time, as nobody has to spent a lot of gold or time to respend points in the skill wheel. This works for both buffs and nerfs.
This leaves characters of that level or higher with one core progression: Getting another level to increase hit points, mana, capacity and every five levels their damage which allows them to go to more dangerous and profitable hunting grounds and to also step up their game when fighting bosses. Of course, there are a lot of other features and contents which provide players with plenty to do. Yet, they are not directly related to level or impacted by it in the same way.
One of the core challenges with the design of this system is that it inherently provides additional power to characters and adds another layer of complexity. However, on the flipside it is also a great opportunity to allow more character individualisation. Moreover, it offers a way to add things that are both unique to a vocation and to the game itself.
We understand that you are probably interested in further details about the skill wheel or would like to ask all kinds of questions about it. At this point of time, though, it is too early to dive deeper since we are still in the internal design process during which a lot of things are still subject to considerable change.
Nonetheless, we wanted to give you an idea of what we are currently excited about and working on. If you want to share your first impression and valuable feedback with us, you are welcome use the designated feedback form if you have a character of at least level 100 on your account. The feedback form is available till August 08, 2022.
Journey Onward!
Your Product Managers