Passive Tree - Kind of Boring

I know a lot of the complaints about the passive skill tree is that it's needlessly complicated, and that's certainly true, but my biggest complaint is that it's mostly just boring.

It gets compared to FFX's tree a lot, but the difference there was that FFX had variety, and the splits in their tree were less common, at least until late in the game.

In PoE, I picked up Strength (+10 to strength) for six levels in a row to get the skill I wanted. And now the next skill I want is twenty-six points away and on the most convoluted path you could imagine. And so, each time I level, I have to trace it back to the beginning. Plus it's seven more Strength points in. And I had no interest in raising my strength at any point in this process.

That's not fun. That's all sorts of tedious. I want to customize my character, but this isn't the solution. People are just going to end up copying the popular builds anyway, because the average player isn't going to take the time to analyze this map for an hour. They'll either wing it every level and get frustrated, or immediately give up and cheat off someone else. Because it's boring.

I agree with a lot of the points here. For me though, the skill tree's biggest problem is that feels irrelevant while you play. Each point allocated is a long while from the next one and each one seems to have little to no noticeable effect on your character's growth or gameplay, making it very uninteresting. Worse off, it punishes experimental play styles and forces players into conforming to their own build. For example, I just started the beta yesterday, made a Duelist and began putting points into duel-wielding and one handed melee skills. Didn't take long before I then found my first unique, a two handed sword. It sits in my stash.

This is probably out of the question, since it'd likely require re-balancing just about everything, but I feel like the best thing to do would be to combine all of those groups of duplicate skills into single, big boosts. It would condense the tree considerably, making it less overwhelming to new players, while at the same time making the effects of these upgrades actually feel like upgrades.

FFX gave you the equivalent of new skills via the tree and it was really just linear paths blocked off by required boss kills (until the crazy lategame with arena farming). It looks similar, but that's where its similarities end.

I'm sorry that you don't get explosions and massive multipliers on every level up, but (both of) you are coming across as impatient.

The passive skill tree is only one facet of your character optimization, and you can get through all the stat-highways for most characters in the first 20-30 levels anyway where the levels are really easy to obtain.

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Worse off, it punishes experimental play styles and forces players into conforming to their own build.

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People are just going to end up copying the popular builds anyway, because the average player isn't going to take the time to analyze this map for an hour.

I'd say that the passive tree allows for more experimental play and fun builds than any other ARPG out there. No class is locked into their "standard role". The only build that I've felt gimped on was a caster Duelist, and even he could grab loads of life and blood magic to put his own unique flavor on it.

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This is probably out of the question, since it'd likely require re-balancing just about everything, but I feel like the best thing to do would be to combine all of those groups of duplicate skills into single, big boosts. It would condense the tree considerably, making it less overwhelming to new players, while at the same time making the effects of these upgrades actually feel like upgrades.

The only suggestion in the thread so far, and it's shooting for the moon. They've made a lot of changes to the passives already, adding a ton of keystones and mini-keystones, and are continuing to work on it. Characters are still going to get 80ish hops on the tree, so if you condense it and ramp the numbers up, you're going to get a MASSIVE disparity on the high end between optimized and non-optimized builds, and force people to cookie-cutter to attempt high level areas (which I thought you were trying to avoid...?).

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I'd say that the passive tree allows for more experimental play and fun builds than any other ARPG out there. No class is locked into their "standard role". The only build that I've felt gimped on was a caster Duelist, and even he could grab loads of life and blood magic to put his own unique flavor on it.

That would be true, IF the choices weren't semi permanent. Due to the sheer number of nodes, it's impossible to experiment and do something entirely different to see if it works, with just 8 respecs and regret orbs being as expensive as they are. Hell, it can easily cost more than an exalted to respec just half your tree.

If you have to "waste" so many points for your build, then your build is wrong. Nobody forces to make wrong builds, you can't blame the game for that.

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pneuma a écrit :

The only suggestion in the thread so far, and it's shooting for the moon. They've made a lot of changes to the passives already, adding a ton of keystones and mini-keystones, and are continuing to work on it. Characters are still going to get 80ish hops on the tree, so if you condense it and ramp the numbers up, you're going to get a MASSIVE disparity on the high end between optimized and non-optimized builds, and force people to cookie-cutter to attempt high level areas (which I thought you were trying to avoid...?).

Cookie cutter builds are going to exist either way. And GOOD builds are going to be massively better than mediocre builds regardless.

It's the nature of skill systems in general.

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cavemandiary2 a écrit :

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I'd say that the passive tree allows for more experimental play and fun builds than any other ARPG out there. No class is locked into their "standard role". The only build that I've felt gimped on was a caster Duelist, and even he could grab loads of life and blood magic to put his own unique flavor on it.

That would be true, IF the choices weren't semi permanent. Due to the sheer number of nodes, it's impossible to experiment and do something entirely different to see if it works, with just 8 respecs and regret orbs being as expensive as they are. Hell, it can easily cost more than an exalted to respec just half your tree.

Bullshit; make new characters. You're encouraged in many, many ways to make new characters, this is one of those ways. In addition, you should be rewarded for planning out more ahead of time (such as by being able to sell your orbs of regret). Your character is ephemeral. This should hopefully be more obvious as HC PvP is unveiled.

If your character is more than 8+a few regrets that you pick up while playing the character "off" in a game where you only get 80 skill points, then what you really want is to play a completely different character. Respec half your skill tree? Really?

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Autocthon a écrit :

Cookie cutter builds are going to exist either way. And GOOD builds are going to be massively better than mediocre builds regardless.

You're missing out on the orders of magnitude involved here. Let's say the mediocre build is 5 points suboptimal (from something that you could gear instead, etc). 5 points in the current system is less than 5 points in a condensed system, and since these are multipliers, the gulf between tightly optimized and not gets larger.

Also, these are the passives we're talking about here. The alternative is what? D2 style 5 stat points per level? Your skills are different than your passives.

It is in the nature of skill systems (or balance in general) that some things are just better than others, but the devs have a duty to not make that gap exceedingly large.

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pneuma a écrit :

Bullshit; make new characters. You're encouraged in many, many ways to make new characters, this is one of those ways. In addition, you should be rewarded for planning out more ahead of time (such as by being able to sell your orbs of regret). Your character is ephemeral. This should hopefully be more obvious as HC PvP is unveiled.

If your character is more than 8+a few regrets that you pick up while playing the character "off" in a game where you only get 80 skill points, then what you really want is to play a completely different character. Respec half your skill tree? Really?

Some of us aren't all that enamored with the leveling process. I know I HATE low levels in every RPG ever made because I have no OPTIONS. Hardly a dealbreaker, but I would personally rather grind out 111 orbs of regret with a character I dislike than start a brand new character of the same class.

Now if I had any interest in hardcore (I don't have the time to be rerolling because the server decided it wanted me to play something new) starting over again would be less onerous. But since ARPGs are REALLY loot games I'd rather use a character I dislike while saving up gear and respec it from the ground up than start from scratch. I'm sure there are more than a few players who would agree with me.

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Also, these are the passives we're talking about here. The alternative is what? D2 style 5 stat points per level? Your skills are different than your passives.

It is in the nature of skill systems (or balance in general) that some things are just better than others, but the devs have a duty to not make that gap exceedingly large.

I'm not in favor of condensing the skill trees anyway. But in my experience regardless of what the developers do to try to "balance" their skillpoint system players are going to find the absolute best and use that. With the occasional player using something sub-optimal for flavor reasons.

Best case scenario there are like 2-3 "best" build with stat parity close enough that they all get used.

Your mentality fits perfectly with the crowd for other games. I love the skill tree, and I love planning various builds and having that variety. Sure there is particular best specs that you could do to min max everything. But there are lots of others that are effective and fun. If you really are too lazy to plan out a build you should play a different game that takes thinking out of it. If people want to be cookie cutters than let them, in beta there aren't tons of them, usually have variation, sure on release they will be more common etc. but who cares, custom building your class is what makes it fun imo. I would argue for even more of it.

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Bissrok a écrit :

I know a lot of the complaints about the passive skill tree is that it's needlessly complicated, and that's certainly true, but my biggest complaint is that it's mostly just boring.

It gets compared to FFX's tree a lot, but the difference there was that FFX had variety, and the splits in their tree were less common, at least until late in the game.

In PoE, I picked up Strength (+10 to strength) for six levels in a row to get the skill I wanted. And now the next skill I want is twenty-six points away and on the most convoluted path you could imagine. And so, each time I level, I have to trace it back to the beginning. Plus it's seven more Strength points in. And I had no interest in raising my strength at any point in this process.

That's not fun. That's all sorts of tedious. I want to customize my character, but this isn't the solution. People are just going to end up copying the popular builds anyway, because the average player isn't going to take the time to analyze this map for an hour. They'll either wing it every level and get frustrated, or immediately give up and cheat off someone else. Because it's boring.

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SEOINAGE a écrit :

Your mentality fits perfectly with the crowd for other games. I love the skill tree, and I love planning various builds and having that variety. Sure there is particular best specs that you could do to min max everything. But there are lots of others that are effective and fun. If you really are too lazy to plan out a build you should play a different game that takes thinking out of it. If people want to be cookie cutters than let them, in beta there aren't tons of them, usually have variation, sure on release they will be more common etc. but who cares, custom building your class is what makes it fun imo. I would argue for even more of it.

Ah, the infamous "go play something else" retort. Mixed with the "obviously you don't want to think" condescension that is oh-so-common in gamers.

I actually am playing a lightning/melee witch at the moment. Never said I played straight cookie cutter builds.

When the game is totally open cookie cutters are pretty much guaranteed to be the norm. Hell AoF popularity is because it has 10 or more times the DPS of other builds. Skill systems were *barely* passable technology in the first place that is being phased out primarily because the larger portion of the gaming population (and we're not even talking softcore vs hardcore) doesn't find them all that engaging. The only good skill point systems are all in tabletop RPGs.

I love me some DnD (regardless of edition). I love spreadsheeting and figuring out the best ways to play. I don't like starting from scratch after I put untold hours into something just because I want to try a new skillset. I happen to have an actual life, which so many people around here seem to discount.