Skill tree and new players.

To be fair, the option of hiding stuff temporarily would open up some additional possibilities for planning.

You see, the search function doesn't allow you to search for more than one aspect at any given time.

If you were able to hide some nodes, you could get an overview of where the remaining stuff is in the tree. This would allow you to search for several categories at once.

For example, if you intend to play a "sword and board" armour/eva hybrid physical damage character, you could hide everything that's NOT relevant for the core of your intended build (e.g. ES, bow, spell, elemental, chaos, projectile, two-handed, axe, mace, staff, wand) and only highlight nodes related to stuff you're primarily interested in (e.g., one-handed, shield, life, armour, evasion, physical, melee, crit).

Good point mentioning the risk that some players would accidentally hide stuff and forget it exists. This may be overcome by resetting the view whenever the skill tree window is closed.

If we had some kind of pre-planning feature, players could use the hide/search options to get an overview of the skill tree, pre-plan their nodes, close the tree, and then the next time they level up and open the skill tree, they'd see all the nodes again, plus the path they pre-planned with the help of the search and hide options.

Not explicitly advocating for or against this solution (I dunno if it would make more sense on sites like poeplanner or in PoB than in game), just musing about the pros and cons...

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SamothD wrote:

Good point mentioning the risk that some players would accidentally hide stuff and forget it exists. This may be overcome by resetting the view whenever the skill tree window is closed.

That would work indeed.
I think that highlighting several nodes/types of nodes would be easier though =)

I would say the shampoo remark is spot-on in my mind. When my children were small, I washed their hair (even though they could not read the manual - you see, what I did here?), made a good care not to rub it in their eyes and stuff. Then, I let them try it out with my supervision, and finally, they just do fine without me.

I think beginner players should either pick a prefabricated tree (~better yet, with some explanation what is picked and why), or when dead set on doing that alone, they should "read the manual".

And I think GGG could do more in this regard. They COULD supply some prefabricated characters with trees and even integrate as templates into the game. But they are small studio and tend to let everything expendable be done by the community, so no further improvement here to be had I think.

The skill tree is NOT that intimidating after a while, its just that large mistakes have a large cost associated (~respec)

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aldorus wrote:

I would say the shampoo remark is spot-on in my mind. When my children were small, I washed their hair (even though they could not read the manual - you see, what I did here?), made a good care not to rub it in their eyes and stuff. Then, I let them try it out with my supervision, and finally, they just do fine without me.

I think beginner players should either pick a prefabricated tree (~better yet, with some explanation what is picked and why), or when dead set on doing that alone, they should "read the manual".

And I think GGG could do more in this regard. They COULD supply some prefabricated characters with trees and even integrate as templates into the game. But they are small studio and tend to let everything expendable be done by the community, so no further improvement here to be had I think.

The skill tree is NOT that intimidating after a while, its just that large mistakes have a large cost associated (~respec)

I propose a 10 "lvls" tutorial in a completely different instance (like .. on the boat, in a way that you can't actually die and it brings you to the same state as when you end up on the shore only then you are not leveled and the tree is different).
You need to follow the path on that tutorial tree to progress, with different types of points, and each comes with some explanations.

Hiding nodes.. How would they know what nodes to hide? If they know to hide them, they know to avoid them. One would think.. :/

I put it poorly. The point was about ways in which to make it easier for new players to get into the game.