The core problem is the skilltree

PC General Discussion
1

first off, this is probably the 100th time a topic like this is created, idk. I just want to put into words on why it’s the most glaring issue with D4, in my opinion, hopefully for some Dev to read (that is, if they frequent the forums for advice. No normal human being uses twitter/X)

  • The D4 experience is defined by the character we play and level and how we progress our char.
  • Character progression is defined by finding better gear (with more fitting affixes), by progressing in the skill tree and later by progressing in the paragon board. I got a feeling that gear/affix wise the devs are on the right track with S4, with the exception that the game needs like double the amount of aspects it has atm, to have a real choice. 1-2 (gimmicky) aspects every season feels like nothing and will always incite disappointmend. the paragon tree was, in my opinion, good from the beginning. big, time sink with definitive end in sight, feels like freedom. maybe needs more meaningfull nodes. but the bread and butter of character progression is the skilltree.
  • the tree makes or breakes the fun in playing D4, because it’s the heart of char progression. In this case it breakes the experience.
  • The defining characteristic of a skilltree are the branches. a branch is not supposed to be one or two nodes. it should be “branching” off into multiple different destinations resulting in different playstyles. Not just one different number somewhere in the code. It should play different, LOOK different. a branch should be a build defining choice.
  • Why is it lacking? It basically falls short in every core aspect:

– The tree is missing the defining characteristic of a skilltree. making meaning full choices.

– if the tree is a twig and there is only one path, you can’t make meaningfull choices. As a result the character doesn’t feel like “my” character, but generic and swappable, no matter what level i am or what gear is equipped. I want to ponder and later have the feeling, that i found something.

– I don’t FEEL progression, when i choose a node in the skilltree. It’s always just a different number in some function in the code. Whatever happened, i don’t SEE IT. my skills don’t look different, they don’t have more oomph, they don’t fan out in a larger area. lvl 1-100 i’m killing mostly the same enemies with the same looking and feeling skill doing the same for 50 hours. That feels like standing still.

– No matter what node i choose, my playstyle is always the same. Maybe i see different numbers on the screen, maybe i don’t have to wait so long until i can use my skill again and see numbers on the screen. It feels like i always do the same with varying degrees of wating time. No choice to use my lifepoints instead of mana. No choice to do less damage but in a wider area. No choice to do more damage in a smaller area or by spending more mana. No choice to trigger skill B by using skill A. My whole playstyle would change with need for different affixes on gear and aspects. And these examples were the most basic ones.

– I don’t care that i’m able to clear the same content on level 100 that i was clearing at level 10. It doesn’t feel nice that at lvl 70+ i’m finally able to play generic Skill X build but without feeling crippled. My character at lvl 70+ should feel like a whole different build than at lvl 10, even using the same skill.

Honestly the skilltree feels like an afterthought or like it never made it out of the backlog during development and was scrambled together in the last sprint to have SOMETHING at release. For a game like D4 and for an arpg in general it’s astounding. But what’s more astounding is that it never changed and we’re nearing season 4. The argument about complexity flies out the window looking at how EVERYTHING else in D4 is designed to be a huge timesink and to drag out playing time. Oh you want to do a simple thing like reroll an affix on your gear? up until lvl 20 you could have used common monster drop A, but now you need rare monster drops B, C, D and E. Oh and E only drops on this event that only occurs every 2 hours, but only during a full moon. Oh you rolled crap? No problemo, just grind that **** for 10 hours, so you can reroll all you like (until you can’t afford it anymore after 3 tries). And there is no other way of changing an item, so in the trash it goes. Now go grind for another and do the same. And someone in some focus group was afraid of too much complexity for casual joe playing on his PS5 on his couch with his 3 kids and 9-5 job?

28 Likes
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Ppl seem happy with the skill system since they asking only the item rework. Item rework shud go hand in hand with skilltree rework. Give back the power to the skilltrees from items , thats the first thing they should do. Also remove item power if they are at it.

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whistles in dynamic skill tree

Ironically, “X” is where you would find “some Dev” as opposed to on here. Confirmed by an MVP.

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The criticisms of PoE skill tree are pretty well known, so Blizz went too far the other direction.

Skill variety was supposed to come via gear, but they’re asking limited gear slots to do too much. Players don’t want uniques worse than legendary aspects, so now generic uniques are becoming ubiquitous in every build, which is at odds with ‘build changing’.

So yea, I wish they’d think a little more highly of super casual that they can find their way through some options in a skill tree of how they want to play.

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CM’s (Community Managers) frequent the forums, glance over the forum posts, find ones that actually have constructive feedback, compile an email breaking it down even further, and send it off to the developers. That’s their whole job. So while your feedback may eventually get to the developers it’s just one of a hundred different suggestions being thrown at them.

Devs are more inclined to actually answer simple questions on Twitter, or give a hint about an upcoming update, that’s about it though. You won’t find lengthy conversations with them over there, just as you won’t find any lengthy conversations with CM’s over here. There’d also be no benefit to having a developer come talk to us on the forum, they’d be bombarded with questions, hatred, cows, who knows. You might as well work in customer service at that point.

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I kind of like the skill tree as it is. The one thing that I do wish we could do is pick a primary and secondary class and get access to two skill trees on each character.

I think that would really diversify builds and give us the option of creating hybrid builds such as the Battlemage. I realize that is just a pie in the sky wish.

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I don’t think that’s how it actually works. They neglect specific ideas, let alone breaking them down into detail. They mostly aggregate feedback, meaning what they pick on mostly is what most posters are complaining about. The product is generic and is apparently discussed at some sort of weekly meetings with who the hell knows who. Community Managers are hardly incisive, and they are tasked accordingly. One of the HotS CMs was basically a kid.

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Does grim dawn run good on the series X at 60fps?

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I don’t think the skill tree is a core problem, but after experiencing the skill tree on LE, I can definitely see that it is a limitation.

To me the core problem is too many possible variations of items. Why do we need critical hit damage, critical hit damage my healthy, critical hit damage with x, critical hit while y. There is just no need for so many different critical hit damage choices.

Just give me critical hit damage!

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Hopefully that will be fixed April 16th.

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Both yes and no

The game isn’t just what you do, but what it does to challenge you as well

That second part is found rarely and too long of a grind before that becomes a thing

Itemization can fix way more if done right, and frankly wish they once experimented at introducing new types/classes of monsters (not new family, make existing monsters fight differently somewhat here and there)

IMO would certainly make the game better. What people do will continue doing, the game has to feel less self-inducing on challenge (i.e. less “masochistic” and a bit more “baseline unfair” in nature) and less repetitive. THAT is key. Yes HC will be a problem for a while but this is important to figure

Throw in some more depth of combat and more surprises more often (not just post 100 but as leveling up as well)

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Too complex ideas I have no doubt they ignore completely, even if they did send it in an email to the developers, word for word, you think a developer would read through all of that for a very specific way to alter a core system?

You have hundreds of these posts flying around where everyone has their own take on how the systems should work, and yet they’re somehow supposed to sift through them all and pick the best one? Based on what criteria? Because some random on the forum says so?

I mean good luck and all, but you’d be better off making your own game. Listening to feedback does not mean implementing every idea that community has about making it better.

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The skill tree could use some more options, most definitely. But the build variety you are looking for isn’t built into the skill tree like other ARPGs. Blizzard built the build variety into the legendary aspects, the uniques, and the paragon boards.

At leaat that’s been my experience. Built multiple Druids, and they all play wildly differently. My Nature’s Fury Druid plays very differently than the Pulverize Bear Druid and my Poisonous Werewolf Pack Druid. The differences come from the uniques and aspects mainly.

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İ dont have any tangible info but i think the reason we got a very shallow skill tree with 50-60 points is that

They are saving it for the expansion(s)

Although it is horrible practice but nowadays make something then cut it into pieces and take them out to sell as dlcs or xpacs unfortunately

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LE has 20 skill points to customize each skill and I am seeing some people are overwhelmed on their forums. So maybe going from 3 choices to 7 (2 more branches) would be good.

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So in other words they serve a basic function to [clearly] basic effect. As for what they can and can’t do, that’s a different topic. Depends on the people in these positions and the company culture.

This.

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This. We want devs to have Q&As with us on the forums but inevitably, they will miss something and then have to deal with the verbal abuse of people claiming they don’t care or even go as far as insulting them personally. They are people too and have jobs to do. That job is easier on them to have the info filtered to them so they can just put their head down and do what they can.

People can pretend that’s not going to happen but it will.

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It’s not the skills, or “cosmetics” of the skills, it’s about variety of impact

While it’s not D4 thing to have Meteor disband into a fiery vapor or turn into lava, or create a fire elemental on impact, it’s certainly important to have it impact differently in terms of efficiency (one could be a lucky hit, the other could be another LH, the 3rd one could be a on-overpower effect)

D4 has lots of assets in that regard baked into mechanics alone, they’re just (sadly) not using them

In other words - the impact can’t be “invested” into by gear (not uniques but baseline gear) by investing in mechanics that skills use, or could use (more types of affixes than just damage % rate for Overpower that affect Overpower, more types of affixes that affect LH other than LH% proc. chance) e.t.c.

P.S. - the way the game functions currently right now - all those 3 options or skill augmentations I mentioned would be on a Unique or an Aspect, and that’s where that “story” ends

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Blizzard company culture is very stubborn. If a core system works, it’s not causing any issues, and there’s not a flood of complaints about it, they typically won’t change it. Even when people do complain about it, they take their sweet time changing it, WoW is a perfect example of this.

I’d say in the history of Blizzard, the game that received the most love with the fastest updates was probably D3 if we’re being honest. After a brand new team was put into place mind you, it obviously didn’t start out that way. They actually listened to feedback, made various changes, and continued to update and innovate within the game. Mind you Seasons lasted on average around 120 days (4 months), roughly, since they started to implement Themed Seasons.

D2 didn’t even have as much love from the devs as D3 did, and some people claim it’s the superior game by far. Not to say D2 didn’t receive updates, but looking at the patch history, and what was actually changed, it was few and far between for that game. They also didn’t add any content to the game with these patches, it was mostly bug fixes or balance changes. Adding Ubers was the last piece of additional playable content the game ever saw.

I do agree with you though that Blizzard does tend to play on the defensive and put out fires more so then anything else based on feedback by the player base. Their innovation, when we actually do get some new content, is typically limited to in-house, and rarely ever influenced by forums, reddit, etc. Oh sure there’s been some instances where some one may have said something and they come close to that idea, but it’s never quite exact.

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People think poe skill tree is more difficult then it really is at the end of the day you still only have a few branches that go off a specific point all you have to do is read a little bit ahead lol… if your using a build guide for D4 then yea its probably difficult for ya… im not dissing on anybody but it comes down to people being to lazy to do a little math and read a little bit before they dump points into a line