Hello everyone. I've been away for a while, I put so much time into the beta that it burned me out on the game for a couple months. Even now I'm only just halfway (or maybe almost done?) Hiberheim. But there are some things that I don't need to have finished the game to be certain of, and it's that some of the Talents in Original Sin are crap.
The first problem is that there aren't enough Talents. When I gain a new Talent point, I rarely get excited think "yes, now I can get that one I've had my eye on...", I instead think "hmmm... I guess that one will do." In part it's because of the mix of positive-only and positive-and-negative talents that makes the tradeoff unappealing.
A lot of Talents are locked off behind achieving Rank 5 in an ability, but there are much fewer available at lower ranks.
Demon and Ice King
These are crap because they are the ONLY Rank-5-required Talents to have a negative consequence (except Elemental Ranger), and it's one that outweighs the positive one.
Demon is bad because of the water resistance penalty. Ice King is bad because of the Fire Resistance penalty. You invest that many points into a specific ability AND need to spend one of the five talent points you get ever, it should not have such a dangerous downside. Burning is damage over time, and often, it's not that threatening to an enemies health pool, whereas you usually take damage in spikes, and an extra 25% damage will be a lot more lethal to you than the burning will be to an enemy.
For Ice King, since you have to be in melee range for the attack to go off, an enemy who is Chilled is not going to suffer from the movement penalty in a noticeable way. So you're trading off a bigger vulnerability to fire damage spikes in exchange for being able to do 10% more water damage to an enemy in melee range. What kind of tradeoff is that? A pretty poor one.
And again, these are the ONLY Rank 5 skills which have a penalty associated with them (other than Expert Marksman, and there the penalty is accidental). That's crap design.
Suggested Improvement
Demon would be okay if you removed the penalty. I've got a better idea for Ice King though: Water in this game is associated with healing, so what if Ice King gives you a 25% chance to completely neuter a water-elemental attack, and then heal for 50% of the damage it would have dealt. That fits the theme.
Elemental Ranger
Elemental Ranger is a good idea ruined by crappy implementation. It's a chance to inflict a damage type on an enemy standing in a surface, but the big problem is that you have no control whether it goes off or not.
If it's a fire-healing enemy standing in fire, you are helping the enemy. Because you have no control over when this talent goes off, it is just as often going to be unhelpful as it is helpful.
Suggested Improvement
The idea is fine, but the implementation needs to be completely changed.
It should grant you a new skill in the Expert Marksman category (or Special - in case Expert Marksman is boosted by +items):
Elemental Hit - This is a Stance, which you can toggle on or off. It (maybe) increases the AP cost per shot by 1, and inflicts a damage type on an enemy standing in a surface (it does the same thing the talent does). This is much better because it gives the player control over when to use it or not, because there are LOTS of times when you do NOT want to use it.
Five Star Diner
As pointed out in the recent twitch stream, food is of questionable use mid-battle, and doubling basically nothing is still basically nothing.
Suggested Improvement
Something that improves food. I liked the idea of food being a percentage heal instead of a flat number. The "Tales of ..." series uses percentage-based healing items very successfully.
Walk it Off
Interesting, but the duration penalty to helpful status effects (to me at least), outweighs the benefit of the negative status effects, since helpful status effects already tend to have shorter durations than negative ones.
Suggested Improvement
I'd lose the penalty. If that makes it too good, than perhaps it could also require Bodybuilding 2-3 or Willpower 2-3 (can you do either/or conditions for Talents?)
But really though, with only seven Talents you can take all game long, if just removing the penalty makes that one too good... I think the solution is to provide the player with a larger variety of Talents. More Tempting talents makes choosing harder without needing to pile on downsides.
