Welcome to another blog post about the Avala Spirits of the Mindscapes MMO I have been planning for the last while. For those of you new to my blog, the Avala: Spirits of the Mindscapes MMO is a idea for an MMO based off of my Avala: Spirits of the Mindscapes Books (Which you can find links to here). I do not currently have the means to make this MMO and am hoping that within the next decade I can find a AAA company willing to make it for me.
You can find past episodes of this branch of my blogs here:
Now today I'm going to talk about skills, skill trees, and skill branches.
Skills
Combat in this game revolves around skills. Skills come in a variety of types: Active Skills, Passive Skills, Ultimate Skills, Basic Skills, and Linked Passive Skills. Active skills can be used intentionally by the player (if slotted) whenever its off cooldown. Passive Skills affect the character and their other abilities. Ultimate Skills are like active skills but are far more powerful, and have much longer cooldowns. Basic skills are like active skills, only they are the most basic of things, like a simple shooting of a beam pistol. Linked Passive skills are passive skills that can't be slotted but take effect when their linked skill is.
Each character can have 10 active skills, 4 Passive skills, 1 Ultimate skill, and a Basic Skill for each weapon equipped slotted at one time*. These skills can be changed out of combat to any learned skills allowing a character to switch roles with the circumstances. Over the first 30 levels these skill slots open up to the player slowly.
Every level** the player character gets a few new skill points. These skill points can be used to strengthen already learned skills (with most having no maximum). Or can be used to obtain new skills.
Skill Trees and Skill Branches
Skills are collected together by theme into skill branches, which are then collected by an overarching theme into skill branches. Certain starting class, advanced classes, and races only have access to certain skill trees and skill branches. Each skill branch contains 12 skills*. Where as each skill tree can contain anywhere from two to eighteen skill branches*.
An example of Skill Trees and Skill branches are as follows:
Combat Skill Tree: The combat skill tree is focused on regular combat with weapons and armor.
- 1 Handed Melee Skill Branch - Skills involving 1 handed melee weapons.
- 2 Handed Melee Skill Branch - Skills involving 2 handed melee weapons.
- Duel Wielding Combat Skill Branch - Skills involving duel wielding 1 handed melee weapons or 1 handed ranged weapons.
- Light Ranged Weapons Skill Branch - Skills involving light ranged weaponry, both 1 handed and 2 handed.
- Heavy Ranged Weapons Skill Branch - Skills involving heavy 2 handed ranged weaponry
- Defensive Combat Skill Branch - Skills involving defense in combat
- Offensive Combat Skill Branch - Skills boosting offense in combat
- Utility Combat Skill Branch - Skill giving utility in combat
Wrap-up
That's all for today. As I've mentioned in a previous blog post, I will be switching to doing blog posts bi-Weekly (every 2 weeks) since I am very busy lately. So join me in 2 weeks where I will be posting a post about either this game, or one that I am making myself. Also be sure to check out my books if you haven't already.
Until next time.
* Numbers are subject to change.
** There is currently no planned hard cap for levels in the game. The only cap is how much time a player can put into leveling, since each higher level will take longer and longer, until the point where it may take months worth of non stop play time just to level further. This means it has as soft cap. As new content is released the soft cap will be increased by changing the experience needed formula to speed things up at higher levels. My idea for a soft level cap at the start of the game would be around level 100, at which point it will take a week's worth of playing non-stop to level.