Passive tree change to increase variability of builds

Hello!
Here're a few things that flew around my mind for some time. I'll explain this with an example of marauder but other classes have the same problem. I'm sorry for such a long post and my English.
1) Right now 6 playable characters differ from each other only by starting position on the passive tree.
2) Starting nodes are usually a little better then common nodes in the middle of the tree (for example, Troll's blood, Heart of gladiator or Diamond skin for marauder) and people are trying to reach them. This leads to current situation where templar, duelist and ranger take marauder's starting nodes. Well, it's almost a standard for all melee builds.
3) So in the endgame passive tree for melee marauder and duelist looks quite similar (or even exactly the same). And endgame marauder usually differs from duelist/templar/ranger only by image, not by passive points.
I've played this game more than 2 years already and I know that devs are wanting freedom in building character. But what's the point of having such huge passive skill tree and choosing the same set of nodes for different classes?
To change this at first I thought that starting nodes of given class should be disabled for other classes but no, it's not fair. It's not good because why you should forbid specific nodes?


So my idea for variability of skill tree is just to make it more difficult to get valuable starting nodes of other classes. The simplest way includes implementation of so-called "one way threads between nodes". Right now you could jump from node A to node B or from B to A while I suggest that several threads should be available only one way, from A to B, for example. It's hard to explain, just look at the picture below. Blue arrows show in which direction you could go and crossed yellow arrows - what directions should be forbidden in my opinion.


For example if templar wants to have Diamond skin he has to go all the way to marauder and then to Diamond skin, getting all intermediate passives as was shown by long green arrows (same for damage nodes at the bottom). Without this (I mean with current tree) templar could get very valuable passive Diamond skin and Heart of gladiator almost for free (1 or 2 passives). After this people will think whether or not it's worth spending ~10 intermediate skill points to get it. It's true not only for marauder but for all classes, marauder is just an example as I said before.
The point of these one-way threads is that there is no changes for passive skill tree of specific class in his starting area while other 5 classes could have difficulties to reach it. The main objective of our passive tree - accessibility of all passives for all classes - still persists.

To make decision harder, to force people think before spending points and increase variability I think it's better to increase the number of intermediate "+10 strength" passives, like on the picture, and also increase bonuses from starting nodes. It will lead to deeper specialization - you still can make CI-caster marauder going by the green arrow backward but it's harder.

i do agree that the game is a bit short when it comes to diversity but i think you are overcomplicating.

it would be much easier to just change how stats affects each char, for instance current str gives +0.5 life and +0.2% melee physical damage but lets say we change it to:


+0.5 life +0.2% melee physical damage per point to marauder
+0.01 max ress +0.2% melee physical damage per point to templar
+0.1% reduce critical strike chance per point to duelist
+0.25% increase critical strike multiplier per point to shadow
reduce mana cost of skill by 0.02% per point to witch

this are mere examples but you get the idea, if each character where to get diferent bonus from stats then this chars will be totaly diferent even if they happend to have the same nodes.

making the game less based on raw ES/HP would be a good way to add diversity too, all the choice of the world worth nothing if every build has to have over "x" HP or ES or be 1 shooted each time something hit it.

You should change the title to "Passive tree change to reduce variability of builds". Because that is what you are doing - limiting the options of players so they all have to make the same generic builds.

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caboom wrote:

+0.5 life +0.2% melee physical damage per point to marauder
+0.01 max ress +0.2% melee physical damage per point to templar
+0.1% reduce critical strike chance per point to duelist
+0.25% increase critical strike multiplier per point to shadow
reduce mana cost of skill by 0.02% per point to witch

I thought about something like this but as far as I remember GGG specifically said that they don't like idea of different effects for different classes. That's why I suggest changing the passive tree.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

Because that is what you are doing - limiting the options of players so they all have to make the same generic builds.

Yeah-yeah, really.
Because these duelist and marauder differ from each other drastically, completely, absolutely. They don't have anything in common, no, nada.

Those two are exactly the same. What's your point? Why do you want to force marauders not to get duelist starting nodes? How does that increase build variability?

It sounds like you just want marauders being marauders, and not to have much variation between different marauder builds. That is bad IMO.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

Those two are exactly the same. What's your point? Why do you want to force marauders not to get duelist starting nodes? How does that increase build variability?

Yes, they are exactly the same, that's the point.
All melee duelist are getting mara's starting nodes and almost all melee maras are getting duelist starting nodes. These points so easy to take and provide such big advantages that every similar classes chooses almost exact set of passive nodes.
I want to complicate obtaining of these starting nodes because in that case people would choose another nodes, another way like nodes in the center of the tree.
And this will increase variability because right now there are a lot of... well, not useless, but not so useful nodes. How much people actually took marked nodes - 10, 100? And try to compare them with the number of people who took starting area nodes.

Those mace clusters you circled are amazing.

The crit nodes are decent as well if you are a crit build.

The other nodes are pants, agreed.

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But in general, your approach is flawed. Lots of people visit both starting areas because they are really good nodes. If you prevented players from getting both, they would still all have 'the same build', it's just that they would get the next best nodes instead.

There are always going to be cookie-cutter builds and people who just follow others and don't make their own builds. For example, 'everyone' gets those crit-dmg-reduction nodes, even though they are almost the worst nodes on the tree for the normal non-map content.
Your suggestion won't increase the variability of builds. All it will do is change the type of builds you think everyone will have.

It also goes against GGG's design philosophy of not wanting the individual characters to define your build too much.

PS: The fact that you think every duelist and marauder gets the Blood Magic Keystone (or even Resolute Technique) shows you probably aren't the best judge of 'what everyone gets', btw.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

Lots of people visit both starting areas because they are really good nodes. If you prevented players from getting both, they would still all have 'the same build', it's just that they would get the next best nodes instead.

I think you missed my phrase that the main point of my suggestion is exactly opposite - not preventing from getting these nodes but only complicating it. This will lead to increasing the value of "puny" nodes and some people will take them instead of trying to reach starting area nodes while other people will still prefer to spend several intermediary "+10 stats" passive and to have starting area bonuses.
And with this change you still can make CI-mara, why not? After all, CI isn't located in the starting area. You could only have difficulties reaching ES nodes marked with red. But you still could have green nodes and there are a lot of other ES nodes. Moreover, why you should take ES nodes near witch when you're making CI-mara, you could get more damage nodes or more armor/eva/stun/etc nodes, what's more appropriate for your choice. While right now if you want to make CI-mara (or CI-templar, CI-shadow) you almost certainly get ES nodes near witch, so much for variability.

And about your PS - don't pick on words. Actually, I've played this game even when there weren't such passives as BM/RT.

Ah - so basically you're saying that it should be harder to get in to the starting clusters, but not impossible? Yes, I did miss that part, apologies.