D4 "Ascendancy" Tree Idea

PC General Discussion
1

I am curious why Diablo 4 doesn’t have an Ascendancy tree like PoE. Something separate from the Skill Tree and Paragon Tree that doesn’t have to be made to be a “set and forget” system.

Here are some ideas on what could be on the D4 Ascendancy Tree:

General Improvements:
Movement Speed increase: 5%, 10%, 15%
Chance to Ignore Crowd Control Effects: 10%, 15%, 20%
Chance for Random Elixer’s to Drop: 10%, 15%, 20%
Chance for Random Incense to Drop: 4%, 8%, 12%

Dungeon Improvements:
Can only pick up to 6 Special Affliction nodes:
Stormbane’s Wrath won’t appear on sigil’s
Blood Blister won’t appear on sigil’s
Drifting Shade won’t appear on sigil’s
Lightning Storm won’t appear on sigil’s
Volcanic won’t appear on sigil’s
Death Pulse won’t appear on sigil’s
Avenger won’t appear on sigil’s
Nightmare Portal won’t appear on sigil’s
Empowered Elites won’t appear on sigil’s

Can only pick up to 4 Player Debuff nodes:
Backstabbers won’t appear on sigil’s
Potion Breakers won’t appear on sigil’s
Slowing Projectiles won’t appear on sigil’s
Barrier Breakers won’t appear on sigil’s
Armor Breakers won’t appear on sigil’s
Resistance Breakers won’t appear on sigil’s
Dodge Breakers won’t appear on sigil’s
Sigil Dust from Salvaging Sigils increase: 100%, 150%, 200%

Event Improvements:
Helltide Cinders Drop increase: 100%, 150%, 200%
Fiend Rose Drop Rate increase: 100%, 150%, 200%
Forgotten Soul Drop Rate increase: 100%, 150%, 200%
Murmuring Obols Drop Rate increase: 100%, 150%, 200%
Scattered Prism Drop Rate increase: 100%, 150%, 200%
Double the Chance for Butcher to appear in Dungeons (must be party leader if in a party)
Butcher does not appear in Dungeons anymore (must be party leader if in a party)
Increase Dungeon Event Difficulty and Rewards: 10%, 20%, 30%
Cellars reset after exiting.
Cellars have a chance to drop Fiend Roses: 5%, 10%, 15%
Cellars have a chance to drop Forgotten Souls: 5%, 10%, 15%
Cellars have a chance to drop Scattered Prisms: 5%, 10%, 15%
Cellars have a chance to spawn “Butcher Class” elite/elites that has a 10% drop chance for random Uber Boss Summoning Materials to drop: 10%, 20%, 30%

Reward Improvements:
Cosmetic Drop Rate increase: 4%, 6%, 10%
Gold Drop Rate increase: 25%, 50%, 75%
Magic Find: 20%, 30%, 40%
Uber Boss Summoning Material Drop increase: 100%, 150%, 200%

This “Ascendancy” Tree can be a way to tailor your D4 experience. Limit the amount of points you can assign to the tree so a player just can’t grab them all and put desirable nodes on the ends of the trees.

As for how early a tree like this should be accessible, I think there are two options, right away at level 1 or after the main story campaign. Personally, I would like to see some of these unlock around level 30 and the rest of them unlock in World Tier 3. There is probably more nodes that can be added to alter certain aspects of the game, but this is what I could think of atm.

Note: the % numbers are just me “spit balling” to make those nodes seem desirable.

3

Huh? What are you talking about? I haven’t posted in like a week or two. You ok man?

4

So it’s more like a set of QoLs?

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Pretty much, but the idea is that you use the tree to spec into the content you are doing or want to do. Some people like the game how it is and some would like to have an increased challenge. Some like myself are tired of seeing certain things on sigils. This tree can help cater to the player experience on an individual level.

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This is a list of things whose only purpose is to make acquiring things easier.

Completely for the purpose of making getting stuff easier.

You are suggesting that we give players a system that they can change every time they want to change activities to get the rewards from that activity easier?

You aren’t suggesting to make character progression better or make characters better, nope. You are literally designing an addon system to GIMME STUFF. Wow.

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7

can poe stuff stay in poe please?

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cellars are in a bad state in the game so far, i have only ever done the ones for quests, and they seamed super pointless then. the downfall of “load screens” going in and out isnt worth the time to click and run down a long path to a small room to fight a super shortened event (compared to openworld) for weaker rewards. theres no achievements or completion factors for them. the purpose i think is for “monster parts” for crafting potions in areas but again open world feeds you them faster then taking the time to load screen into them. the fact that cellars dont work with helltides to drop cinders, or other events when in the area is pointless of them even further. xp is very minor for leveling also. not sure if at this point they should be reworked. or removed.

as for the rest of the post i like it and agree. the seasonal buffs thing from battlepass is mostly the same thing, but if it had more options like this it would be better

as for the “turn off effect” on sigil stuff, yeah i think thats what this game is missing, harder content for those who want it. in POE we craft a map and make it stronger for our desires and lets us customize our gaming time. would be a nice feature to add in D4

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Name a tree that doesn’t have “give me stuff” in it? Skill Tree? You get Skills and player power. Paragon Tree? Thats more power. Aside from the minor stuff in the general tree of this, this tree is more of incentivizing available content. Its center focus isn’t on player power.

If you dislike the idea, please make a better tree with examples. I would like to see what you can come up with.

11

A skill tree is the exact opposite of gimme stuff. Skill tree, as it appears in D4, gives you tools to participate in things that reward you with stuff.

Your system is literally “I want double shards” and “poison is hard to do in NMD so remove it to gimme glyph xp faster”.

The skill tree gives you tools. Participation.

You want to give stuff with no trying at all. No participation.

Participation = 100 things.
No participation = 100 more things.

See what I mean? This system gives stuff as a reward with zero effort. You’ll say ‘but you’re doing that thing already’ and I’ll point out that you aren’t doing anything for the extra part. You don’t even have any negative for it at all. No decision points, no setbacks. Everything is just a straight handout. Even the sigil ones are just making it easier to get glyph xp.

If you dislike so much about the game that you want to design a system for the sole purpose of not playing the game anymore, why haven’t you found a better game yet. This isn’t even a ‘I want to to get better for everyone’ or ‘I’ll come back when it’s better because I care’, the thing is designed for the sole purpose of not playing anymore.

Adding this because I deleted it so I wasn’t back to back posting.

Is removing the hard stuff in any way making stuff harder or stronger.

Nope.

12

They could fix cellars with a super simple fix. Just have them be rare and when they do appear some of the best mob density in the game and guaranteed goblin.

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its same genre. if you ignore what other games can do you might aswell go play solitare. the entire world of captilizum is competition. you cant ignore what other games do better and think everything is doing well for D4 if you ignore POE.

there is this thing called a Industry Standard for Genres that ALL games in these genres have.

FPS = ranked matches
MMO = Guild Content
ARPG = high action input requirement
ect…

and some features in those types of games that D4 failed to and still fails to do since launch. like Group Finder, D3 even had it, currently we have to use DISCORD a 3rd party program to find a group for NMDs… this is a Triple A company, im shocked they even want us to use 3rd party programs.

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14

So what would you make the negative for the skill tree?

This is all under your assumption that you get all the points of this tree instantly with no work involved. It is supposed to work like a Skill Tree in that, when unlocked, it gives you a point per level to spend. Meaning it does take some time and effort to get certain things on this tree.

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i can for sure ignore things other games do, cause fun fact, if i liked those things, id play poe.

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im saying the remove aspect in REVERSE, sorry for not clarifiying this.

so like say we want MORE blood blisters to spawn in a NMD but they enable a +5 % magic drop increase… so we can customize what kind of challenges to overcome every map

to enforce repeatability with the whole RISK VS REWARD that ARPGs need to have

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if they added them to D4… you could… GET THIS… not do them ??? lol, why not let the game grow and change to encompass a more varity of options for there playerbase. your saying you want this game to indie tier popularity ?

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no i want diablo 4 to diablo 4.
indie tier popularity? lol.

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a game that doesn’t grow and change, wont have a growing player base… it will dwindle with time once you beat all the content and become dust on the shelve.

D4 still struggles with “vision” on what it even is. its all over the board on what kind of product they are even making.

i like diablo franchise and i only voice a ideas that might make the game better because i want the game to change, to be better then it currently is…

and yes indie tier for sure, zero of my friends play this, they would rather play POE for FREE then pay 100 dollars for the current state of the game

20

So you want Diablo 4 to be unique and not copy what other ARPGs are doing? That is nice and all, but look at what doing their own thing has brought? Great art and campaign. After campaign, the game is pretty shallow. Blizzard is at its best when it can take systems from other games, make it better, and put their own spin on it. They did that with WoW and every game they made. I can’t think of one game Blizzard made that was an original idea.

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21

i dont consider the game as shallow as you make it out to be. infact, im still playing season 2.

S1 was a pretty short thing to play for me personally, after 3 weeks i felt pretty much done with the season. Right now im still trying to see how far i can get with AoZ.

so yea, literally everything in OPs post is leading to make d4 easier than it already is (except for aoz) and with that, i can only disagree.

i dont really agree with you there.

In fact d2 is after all the grandfather of arpgs, which poe was born from.
Not exactly sure what wow took from other mmorpgs to be fair tho, yet, as far as i know, its still pretty much the most played mmo? (also not 100% sure there, i quit wow a few years ago)

of course, you can correct me there.

22

I agree Season 2 was an improvement and yeah I played it a lot. After the season, all the fun stuff will be going away mostly.

That was Blizzard North that made the original Diablo and Diablo 2. While it was under the umbrella of Blizzard at the time, that team has left and made PoE under GGG. I haven’t played PoE myself, but I have seen gameplay and systems of theirs that could improve gameplay in Diablo 4. Blizzard seems uncertain as to how to proceed with the endgame of Diablo 4. Why shouldn’t they try to implement some successful systems into Diablo 4 endgame?

The basis of this post isn’t really to demand that this system be implemented as written. It is a rough draft of an endgame system designed solely for improving the endgame and its grind. People like trees with rewards they can work towards. That is the basic concept of this idea.

The post of this is merely to start a dialog on how this system could be improved or tweaked so that it gives better feedback to the devs on how to proceed with a system like this.

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