Unpopular opinion, Passive skill is objectively worst than PoE, by landslide

[Kiadaw]

After the novelty of Spinning skill tree passed, which was like 5 sec, I am battling hard to see how the skill tree is remotely comparable to PoE, let alone better.

I am pretty sure Wolcen is not trying to replicate PoE skill tree 1 to 1, I am sure it wants to be comparable (in depth), & should I say inspired to be better.

I have my complains on PoE passive skill system (too much boring stats adder e.g 5% attack speed, 2% element damage), very few are gameplay defining, even most so called key nodes.

Wolcen manages to make the passive skill tree even more boring. I never play alpha so I do not know how that stack up, but the beta skill tree is super underwhelming, & even the big nodes are not exciting at all.

The ONLY positive thing I can say about the passive tree is main stats are separated, instead of acting like bridge nodes like in PoE,& thats the ONLY positve thing about the passive tree in Wolcen.

The passive tree is completely deprive of any creativity.

If Wolcen wanted to be a serious competition to games like PoE & upcoming games like last epoch & God forbid, Diablo 4, it needs to be better than being a better looking PoE.

I want this game to be a success (otherwise I wouldn't buy it), but base off what see in Beta, I am not seeing it so far.

[Ezekiel]

You never played the Alpha? well according to your past posts you did and you then know what it will look like don't you...tss tss

[Sanex]

If i understand the plan correctly, the "gameplay defining" passive nodes will be in the outer-most section of the ring, which has not yet been implemented into the beta. Plus i think there are also plans to at least partially rework what is already in the inner and middle rings.

[Kiadaw]

Ezekiel の投稿を引用：

You never played the Alpha? well according to your past posts you did and you then know what it will look like don't you...tss tss

What? I might has post some comments on this game before I bought the game, but I certainly did not play the alpha.

[Mae]

1. its a popular opinion
2. expected to be addressed in patch1 by end of may.

[Xrystus]

The passives in the Alpha were an astounding example of what the Dev's were aiming for. Although they tried to simplify it, they simplified it too much, and hopefully they will give it more depth than just "+ main stat". The turning still shows how you can change the build to how you wish it to be, which shows in the current "meta". Although everyone wants the retaliator node, there is no dedicated way to get there, which is the whole point. I could go to the outermost part of the second ring and follow the outskirts of it until I got to the node points permitting, just go straight for it from the center, or any variant in between. THAT is the spirit of this game, which is why I am so excited for it!

Also, I tell everyone this: stop judging this GAMEPLAY beta in comparison to fully completed games. It's like comparing ground beef to a fully decked burger.

[Kiadaw]

Xrystus の投稿を引用：

The passives in the Alpha were an astounding example of what the Dev's were aiming for. Although they tried to simplify it, they simplified it too much, and hopefully they will give it more depth than just "+ main stat". The turning still shows how you can change the build to how you wish it to be, which shows in the current "meta". Although everyone wants the retaliator node, there is no dedicated way to get there, which is the whole point. I could go to the outermost part of the second ring and follow the outskirts of it until I got to the node points permitting, just go straight for it from the center, or any variant in between. THAT is the spirit of this game, which is why I am so excited for it!

Also, I tell everyone this: stop judging this GAMEPLAY beta in comparison to fully completed games. It's like comparing ground beef to a fully decked burger.

I played PoE Beta, & it hada complete passive tree not far from the release form, also Epoch is in Alpha, & has a deep active skill tree, plus a Grim dawn like passive tree.

Also, isn't the whole idea of the beta to provide feedback?

I am harsh to Wolcen as I want it to succeed as GGG has gone of of touch with regular gamers, treating players like big whales & design the game around streamers, & insulting casuals by saying if you can't beat the content, you can watch streamers do that.

[Sanex]

I understand what Kiadaw is saying. Honestly i feel like Wolcen's beta is really a redesigned alpha in disguise.
Some developers hold off on a beta until their game is very close to what they envision for the live release, while others release a beta much earlier while stuff is still open to a lot of change. WStudio have gone the route of the latter, due to funding issues. Their beta is not really a test platform for something that is close to release, rather it is a test platform for something still in early development (relative to some other betas).
Honestly i prefer it when developers have an almost finished game as a beta so that i know i am just testing for bugs and glitches and i have a good understanding of what i might be purchasing. Wstudio's method makes me worried about things like "what if they rush the live release while there is still so much that needs to be improved?" and "i hope X changes latter in the development otherwise i will be disappointed." This is especially true with Wolcen since there is no open-beta, only a paid-access one.
With this beta, you need to keep in mind what Xrystus said, that this is a gameplay beta not a content beta. This beta is not yet representative of what will be the vanilla release, the content beta will be closer to it and will arrive later.

[The Masked Frogue]

POE PST is a complet fraud. 95% of it is made of unmeaningful nodes. I ve always been sad to notice how credulous people are regarding it. They see a huge number of nodes and it's as if their brain stopped working. It's huge so it's good.

So even if Wolcen PST has been reduced compared to its alpha version all in all if nodes in it are more meaningful gameplay-wise than stupid stat increase ones i ll be more than happy.

Oh and BTW, OP, by definition an opinion CAN'T be objective...

[Kiadaw]

The Masked Frogue の投稿を引用：

Oh and BTW, OP, by definition an opinion CAN'T be objective...

Fair point.

Anyway, in fairness, I will give some examples of what I think are examples of better nodes, but feel free to critic:

Blood Explosion-> Bleeding enemies killed has 30% chance to explode, dealing 15% of their max life in 2m radius
You could up this % or damage via gear or further skill points

Chain reaction-> Explosion have 30% chance to chain one extra time dealing 40% of original explosive damage
You can have gear or additional skill point to add number of chain. See also how this node synergise with the "Blood Explosion"

Ice crusher-> Chill enemies take 15% more Physical damage from Mace & Hammer. Frozen enemies Takes 25% more Physical damage from Mace & Hammer.
This encourge gameplay where player build a skill that enhance freezing & chilling, & use a physical skill to apply massive blows after sucessful chill & freeze.

Blood Fenzy-> You gain 1 stack of blood Frenzy per normal bleeding enemies within 2m. You gain 5 stacks for champions & rare enemies, & 10 stacks for bosses. Stack up to 20x, Each stack of blood frenzy increase your attack speed by 2% & last 5 sec.

Guardian shield-> You and your allies gain 5% of your max life on a successful block.
This node encourage you to make a life tank build with high block chance to help your weaker DPS allies.

Juts some examples. I do not think what I suggest is ground breaking, some may be too OP, but IMO they are far more interesting better than +5% attack speed, +10 to maximum life

[The Masked Frogue]

Sure it could be better. But i have very little doubt regarding the fact that they ll keep impoving Wolcen PST until release. This is still a very early PST at this point so it's bound to getting better the closer ll be from release.

[ShadowSplit]

The worst thing about a lot of the modern ARPG's is passive skill trees are actually your attributes. I'm not sure why all these newer games did away with attributes selection. They were a good and easy way to balance melee vs range vs caster. They controlled your resource pool, health, ability to use certain weapons, ability to use defense moves, run, field of view, amount of weight you can carry, gear that could be worn ex... Passive skill trees now have nothing to do with skills and really are just a bad way of implementing attributes. So the days of old when I would find a badass lets say two handed melee sword I could rush all my points into strength to allow me to use it at a very low level even with the weapon being end game weapon but at the expense of only being able to swing one time ex... Now games slap level requirements on every thing cause they did away with the avenue of attributes that gave balance as well as depth.

Skill tree's should be just that skills. A means of creating synergies. I don't understand why games shun from this when it adds so much more replayability. A good attribute system mixed with a good passive SKILL tree is far superior than a passive skill attribute system.

Something else that annoys me about modern ARPG's is the feature of different damage types. IE poison, fire, void, arcane, frost, chaos, bleed ex.. Normally fire is just a DOT that is red, poison is DOT that is green, void purple ex.. can you please create better inter active mechanics for damage types instead of every thing but maybe frost damage being damage over time but a different color.

[Littleknife]

The Wolcen team admitted to oversimplifying the Wheel this time around, and I expect the next version of it will be closer to what we experienced during the alpha. There is no defending the current one -- it's ridiculously one-dimensional, and I think they made a huge misstep allowing it into the first real 'beta'. The alpha had some really silly nodes, for sure, but a beta should take what works in an alpha and refine it, not gut it completely.

What baffles me is they wanted this phase of the beta to be a test for replayability, explicitly. Why you'd then go and turn off the biggest ARPG replayability factor (character diversity) is beyond me. Sure, the game itself feels a lot better to play now than it did in the alpha, especially the melee, but I see little to no replay value to that alone.

Between the oversimplification of the wheel, the removal of anything even vaguely resembling actual attack skills and the fact that spells just keep crashing the game for me, I'm holding off even loading Wolcen until the next major iteration. We have the imminent Last Epoch beta as more than a sufficient stop-gap (if not outright alternative, although I feel LE occupies a conscious 'post-PoE' space while Wolcen can still be the sweet spot between PoE's customisation and D3's engaging gameplay).

[LupisVolk]

Big doesn't mean better.

[Littleknife]

I feel that sentiment applies to the Skilldrasil more aptly than anything to do with Wolcen.

[Irrelevant]

The Wolcen skillwheel is equaly complicated then the PoE one. You put your points where the make sence for the build you want to play and go for it. The PoE skilltree is the most generic artificialy bloated thing I ever saw. Then you have builds that perform well and adjustments to it for a totaly different approach where 5 skillpoints are changed without even touching a big keynode different to the first build. All that PoE we need more reeee stuff was already adressed by the devs and they said they will fill the tress with more (useless for sure) nodes. Wolcen is not different to PoE just another approach. There will be best ways to skill for X and everyone who likes to play X will go for it. There is no reason to have 5000 possibly skillable nodes or 10 if the outcome is the same it's all for the good feeling of the people who play the game because the illusion of more is appeling to most people.