Why are base stats part of the passive tree

Attributes appear on the skill tree to provide distance between clusters of nodes, which is part of balancing the power of nodes, notables, and keystones. A keystone that is far removed from most classes can be more powerful than ones more centrally located to a given class's starting orientation; this is an important principle of the design of the skill tree--those more powerful keystones have a greater opportunity cost to balance their effect.

The reason attributes are used to provide this distance, is because they are universally beneficial to all classes and builds, as opposed to lining the tree pathways of ias, life, defenses, etc.. which are not. It allows builds to travel across the tree and still gain benefit, to seek unique combinations of clusters and keystones without having to path through nodes entirely irrelevant to their build.

Skyrim's skill system would not work. Builds are defined by how they make choices to handle opportunity costs. Skyrim's tree offers little to no opportunity cost by comparison to PoE's. There would be nothing stopping any one build from looking exactly like any other build. Everybody would universally have access to all GG keystones.

Why the hell are you all saying that Skyrim has 'builds' when you can have almost every useful passive? All Skyrim characters are bound to be equal in the end, the only difference being how each one prefers to play.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Startkabels wrote:

the goal is to make the tree more compact and less overwhelming

I think you just need to stick to more simple games made for simple people, D3 and Skyrim seem to be your level, I suggest going and playing those games rather than hanging around these forums endlessly suggesting GGG ruin this game by adopting kiddy game features for people who don't like to use their brains.

And I suggest you drop your aggressive attitude and respond in a proper and decent way even if you don't agree.

Was I aggressive to you? No, you seem to be incapable of discussing something as simple as this topic in a normal way.

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CanHasPants wrote:

Attributes appear on the skill tree to provide distance between clusters of nodes, which is part of balancing the power of nodes, notables, and keystones. A keystone that is far removed from most classes can be more powerful than ones more centrally located to a given class's starting orientation; this is an important principle of the design of the skill tree--those more powerful keystones have a greater opportunity cost to balance their effect.

The reason attributes are used to provide this distance, is because they are universally beneficial to all classes and builds, as opposed to lining the tree pathways of ias, life, defenses, etc.. which are not. It allows builds to travel across the tree and still gain benefit, to seek unique combinations of clusters and keystones without having to path through nodes entirely irrelevant to their build.

Skyrim's skill system would not work. Builds are defined by how they make choices to handle opportunity costs. Skyrim's tree offers little to no opportunity cost by comparison to PoE's. There would be nothing stopping any one build from looking exactly like any other build. Everybody would universally have access to all GG keystones.

The distance was already there as the dev already explained, but having connecting nodes with no stats on it was disliked by the players so they put base stats on them.

Removing those small connecting nodes does not necessarily mean that the distance between the bigger nodes and keystones will be removed as well. There are still notable passives closer by and keystones at the sides, the whole tree would just be a lot smaller and compact.

Also I don't see why classes wouldn't be able to travel across the tree if it was designed that way. They could still get those base stats too because they would simply be on the character screen.

I do understand that it would be very complex to redesign the tree properly to avoid that classed need to pick passives that are useless to them in order to reach the passives they want but I think this would be more a matter of building it carefully. This is not different from the way the current tree was designed I think.

It's hilarious to see a thread, where there are people that have actually convinced themselves that +8% Mana>>+8% Mana>>+8% Mana etc. takes..............intelligence and is 'complex'.

How much skill and intelligence does it take to sit in the fishmarket-like trade chat and buy the gear that makes all those repetitive passives worth a damn ?

How much skill and intelligence is required to grind instances for alts>jewelers>fusings ?

seriously.

^You appear to be are angry at the game, because you think it requires no intelligence to play, and the reason you aren't succeeding at it is because of bad luck, or not enough time to play. (This is just how it appears from your post, I have no knowledge of whether that is actually how you feel though.)

If the above is true, then have you considered the possiblity that the game actually does require skill to plan out builds well, and that the reason your builds aren't successful is because you haven't put any skill or intelligence in to designing them?

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

ya and its an awful suggestion that everyone but you can see is so fail that you have absolutely zero credibility not only in this thread but in everything moving forward, your ideas are so bad and so completely miss the mark that I don't think I can take anything you ever say seriously again. Either you are trolling or you are someone whos ideas should never leave your head.

That seems a rather OTT response. The OP's suggestion is not great, but it is understandable and could work in a game.

One way to make it so you still need to get stat nodes is to have notables require different stat levels to unlock. You could also balance it so you get stats points to spend each level, and skill points to spend only every second level or something.

This would be bad (not as much variation in builds, not as much ability to customise your build exactly as you like), and I agree the OP misunderstands what PoE is about, and why the skill tree is cool and much better than in other games. But the suggestion is certainly workable and didn't warrant such a dismissive response.

That was exactly my suggestion, you would give the player a skill point and a passive point for each level or something.

Do you really think it would reduce variety? Take a cookie cutter Marauder for example (my favorite example). Take a look at the popular builds in the Marauder forum section.

Almost every single one of them is taking the same route, Marauder starting area, Templar starting area and Duelist starting area. Their base stats are all similar, it is very simple: They take as much life as possible on their way to those areas and towards RT en IR.

I think it doesn't matter if they would put in 1 point into Life almost every level instead of taking all those small STR and Life nodes. In my opinion it would even be better to distribute stat points because Life would be better to manage balance wise.

i think you are dismissing Qarls post too easily.


the majority of their feedback on the early tree (which i played in a lot as well) was to redo it like they have now.

so while you may think your idea is better...it was proven the majority wanted it the way it is now.

The big sprawling passive tree (i used to call it a star map lol) looks daunting to some...and a delightful challenge to others.

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scorpitron wrote:

i think you are dismissing Qarls post too easily.


the majority of their feedback on the early tree (which i played in a lot as well) was to redo it like they have now.

so while you may think your idea is better...it was proven the majority wanted it the way it is now.

The big sprawling passive tree (i used to call it a star map lol) looks daunting to some...and a delightful challenge to others.

It looked like a nice challenge for me too initially, but I happen to play only melee and what I found out is that because you need so much life (life is unbalanced btw), practically the best way to go is Marauder/Templar/Duelist starting are and taking all the life nodes near those areas.

I think that sucks and that it would be a lot more balanced if you could just put 1 point each level in STR/LIFE. That way GGG could maybe balance life more easily. And still there would be a few notable passives that increase life significantly.
It would actually INCREASE variety because we wouldn't have to look for the best route to get the keystones we want and all life nodes as well (this is what is resulting in all those similar Marauder builds). Instead we wouldn't have to worry about getting enough life because we would put 1 point in that stat when leveling up whenever we can on the character screen and thus we could focus on the nodes that we really want and that are really build changing!
The tree would also be smaller leaving room for more build changing notable passives and keystones...

It is not really more challenging to have small connecting nodes or something once you understand the tree, it just comes down to more micromanagement.

I like the D2 character stat points so much better.

And also, what the dev said was that initially they had connecting nodes that had no values. Yes I understand players do not like that but that is not my suggestion. My suggestion does not involve small connecting nodes.
See it as clusters of notable passives connected to each other without smaller nodes in between.

The challenge in a tree like that is however that to get to one cluster you first have to go through another and the clusters need to be carefully considered.

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Startkabels wrote:

It looked like a nice challenge for me too initially, but I happen to play only melee and what I found out is that because you need so much life (life is unbalanced btw), practically the best way to go is Marauder/Templar/Duelist starting are and taking all the life nodes near those areas.

In general, you are right. However, you are totally missing the point. The point of having a large, sprawling star map isn't so you can choose a few notables and keystones and get them, like in most games. You still do that in PoE, but in PoE you also get to choose the path.

For example - you want to go to the duelist and templar area. Should you go through the centre (to get those need 6/6/10 life clusters), or around the bottom? (save a few nodes, and get blood drinker and that 10/10 life node, as well as some other fun things.) Vaal pact probably isn't worth it, but maybe it would be if you are nearby anyway. Should you go up the left side (above RT) to get to templar, or past those 30% dex/int nodes, or through the 2-dex path to make the centre nodes closer? Which life nodes should you take? How will you get enough dex and int - will you take a detour to get a 30 node, or just choose your path so it incorporates a couple of +10 nodes. Should you go around the top of armour mastery instead of going through those 15% crit nodes, to save a node (but lose some high-level map survivability)? Should you come around the bottom from the left toward US, then go up to duelist area through golem's blood? Or should you get in through the armour nodes, and by those mana reservation nodes? Is it worth getting that stupid aura radius node to get the two reduced mana reservation nodes? Is it worth trying to get the 3 4% AoE nodes in the centre, if you're nearby anyway? Do you need skill effect/buff duration for your build, and if so, is it worth trying to get them? Is it worth getting that awesome mana node in the duelist area if you mostly use BM gems?

I wrote all of that without even looking at the passive node tree. Because I really enjoy making those sorts of decisions. The passive tree you are describing has a lot less of those path-choice nuances. That is why it is worse for players like me who enjoy those sort of character-design choices.