The Illusion of Choice

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thepmrc wrote:

I got a great idea. Lets just remove all player choice. We can just give characters arbitrary stats and skills when they level! This way everyone is exactly the same! No need for complicated skill trees and critical thinking. Since it is obviously not fun at all to mess around with character builds, lets just remove the builds entirely. You can still dress up your character in random gear though to make him feel unique, its kinda like a modified barbie game! Seems good.

That's the entire point these complaint threads are making . . .

They want the passive tree to be versatile, complex, deep and require critical thinking. But when one stat is so overwhelmingly powerful, it diminishes the value of everything else.

HP wouldn't be a problem if the rest of the game wasn't balanced around people being able to get so much of it. On top of that, there is no downside to picking up all the HP you can. If your choice was "you can take a ton of damage, but you will do very little damage" then we'd be a closer to balance and choice.

But because a tanky char can still deal good damage, then there is little reason to do anything when everyone who tries to is punished for wanting something a bit more complex and deeper.

TLDR; More complexity, more choice please! Less easy answers (HP is the easiest answer possible and requires little to no thought).

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Chancellor wrote:

They want the passive tree to be versatile, complex, deep and require critical thinking. But when one stat is so overwhelmingly powerful, it diminishes the value of everything else.

It's funny because that is unachievable. From a maths point of perspective there will always be one thing that is better than another thing.

Seriously, everyone thinks that hp nodes are better than all the other nodes has not really played this game in my opinion.

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deteego wrote:

Because people like experimenting and then they find out it was bad?

The tree was obviously designed for people to use, thats why its there and thats why PoE doesn't use a class based system.

Unfortunately it turns out a lot of choices happen to be crap, and thats an issue with the game

Or maybe because HP nodes aren't THAT good? If they were as ridiculously overpowered as people are making up in this thread everyone would use nothing but HP nodes. Reality is, while there might be people doing this it's a minority. Almost everyone uses lots of other nodes and they do absolutely fine. Doubt they would do better if they went pure health. Where's the proof that HP nodes are so damn good? People in this thread make lots of assumptions.

I agree that a lot of the choices people make turn out to be crap. And that is a good thing. Some builds that I tried out turned out to be bad. Is that an issue? No. I just made some mistakes while planning my build.

Could you please fix your quote? I never said that. That was someone else responding to me.

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thepmrc wrote:

Could you please fix your quote? I never said that. That was someone else responding to me.

Sorry. Wasn't intended. Fixed it.

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Reizoko wrote:

Most builds do not have more than 35 HP nodes, actually 30 is already a pretty high amount and probably only melee builds would use that many.

I will have to agree with this since my templar is extremely tanky and uses 15 HP nodes.

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deteego wrote:

I have a better idea, lets actually balance the tree so that something thats not a pure tank is actually properly playable in merciless

I cleared Merciless at level 58 on a summoner with 600 HP, no armour, no evasion, no energy shield.

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Reizoko wrote:

So why does almost everyone use armor/evasion/es and offensive nodes if they are so bad? Why not go full HP nodes until lvl100 since it is so awesome apparently? While there might be people who do this it's a minority. If you know how to balance your character it is NOT inferior to get offensive nodes and armor/evasion/es nodes.

Uh, because there is no PURE HP armor in the game?

Because people find out it's bad much later in the game (usually too late). When did it really matter what you're gear was at normal difficulty?

HP is good/better because it protects against EVERYTHING. Why spend effort improving something that only protects against specific forms of damage?
armor: physical only
eva: non spell only
es: non chaos only
This is even worse when there are easy access substitutes.
armor: flask, endurance charges, skill gem
eva: flask, skill gem
es: skill gem

A summoner surviving merciless because of "tanking pets" instead of using your own defenses, right. Totally in line with what we're talking about.

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c2games wrote:

A summoner surviving merciless because of "tanking pets" instead of using your own defenses, right. Totally in line with what we're talking about.

I assume you were referring to me on this one.

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Azidonis wrote:

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deteego wrote:

I have a better idea, lets actually balance the tree so that something thats not a pure tank is actually properly playable in merciless

I cleared Merciless at level 58 on a summoner with 600 HP, no armour, no evasion, no energy shield.

Did you see that? Good.

I suppose I could have told you about the level 60 GSlam Mar that I cleared Merci with, but he had 1700 HP at the time, and I wouldn't want to tempt you into thinking that is a "pure tank".

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I suppose I could have told you about the level 60 GSlam Mar that I cleared Merci with, but he had 1700 HP at the time, and I wouldn't want to tempt you into thinking that is a "pure tank".

It absolutely isn't tanky (my level 64 cold shadow has 2200 HP in comparison). I would guess, however, that in SP play he will become unviable, no? I can't manage: the health bubble is just too sensitive. My elemental resistances range 50-75%, chaos res -24%, HP 2200. MP play is quite easy, however.

You used a deceptive example of a summoner with no armor/eva/es and really low hp, without mentioning something else was tanking for the character.

If you include what he quoted

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I got a great idea. Lets just remove all player choice. We can just give characters arbitrary stats and skills when they level! This way everyone is exactly the same! No need for complicated skill trees and critical thinking. Since it is obviously not fun at all to mess around with character builds, lets just remove the builds entirely. You can still dress up your character in random gear though to make him feel unique, its kinda like a modified barbie game! Seems good.

this

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I have a better idea, lets actually balance the tree so that something thats not a pure tank is actually properly playable in merciless

is an extreme response to the extreme post above. Why do people ignore the meaning behind a post, and focus on the word for word used?