Okay, my initial impression of the character building was pretty bad, but after getting to unlock my Druid mastery it opened my eyes to many possibilities.
As I jumped in not knowing the passive trees would open up in a Borderlands type fashion, I selected Druid as the UI made me think I could only get the skills and passive tree if I picked it.
But as I can still get Beastmaster and Shaman passives with Druid, it made me rethink minmaxing my build and I wanted to go to get Beastmaster for the passive.
And now I know that I cannot change my mastery, meaning I have a frustratingly unoptimal character if I played it to completion, so itās easier for me to restart.
Before getting my mastery I thought building is very linear and railroad~y
Now I think itās quite freeform and fun.
But as the game is extremely illogical about the layout of the UI and doesnāt give popups or warnings of permanence even though other aspects are very casually re-doable, it makes it into a massive noob-trap and kills later game re-speccing completely.
The system to re-level skills on specialization has a nice flow of having progression for a new build even if you decide to switch, but as you cannot change your mastery thereās not much of a point changing from a cold, packmaster or swarmblade build for letās say a full on shock shaman.
Man, just as I was going to have my opinion of the game change vastly to a positive one.
So close.
Huh, well thatās on me then, doesnāt really help my problem as the system unlock really doesnāt play out like one would expect from the Specialization, Character Selection and Passives windows.
Having previewable mastery trees and no indication that all would be open at once is a huge problem for one, and thereās not much of a point to lock just a passive and a single ability, especially as that locks out build changing for the future.
The more I think about it the weirder it is, such a grandiose display and an important decision, yet itās just a passive where youād be best to either pick the build enabler or the best passive for that character.
Reminds me of Inquisitor Martyr where your initial character is either a minmax for one passive or the skin of your choice, itās whack.
Iām a new player, but what Iāve seen of the previous UI elements, some of them wouldāve been better to be expanded rather than going for a very silmilar look to direct competition.
My understanding is the devs really wanted there to be at least 1 very meaningful choice that you need to make and canāt just instantly take back or flip flop as then the choice wouldnāt really matter.
Typically the skill and passive locked beyond the mastery line are more powerful and much more themed towards that specific mastery. Of course some of the older not updated yet classes are a bit more plain. Especially when it comes to the mastery bonus itself which I personally have always felt should be a much more powerful attribute than they currently are.
All in all there is no replacement for actual experience and now you have some and know what to do going forward
While meaningful in the furthest sense, itās only meaningful if you think like I did at the start or if you know how to use it to minmax.
But choosing between obviously unbalanced passives or a skill thatās filler on your bar if you choose a specific build type itās not that meaningful at all.
Choices you look back at are things like faction choices, story changes, visual differences, later on options.
Like in Grim Dawn your choice of Clerics or Necromancers gives you either the option to reputation grind for fitting rewards, or it means you need to grind mobs for fitting rewards.
In Fallout New Vegas you choose a faction to represent, changing the ways you can or need to approach different areas.
In Dark Souls 3 your choice of covenant wildly changes your objective or matchmaking area in multiplayer and rewards you thematically.
Those are what Iād call meaningful decisions, not something that with a very small change can completely screw me out of trying different things.
In an ARPG Iād expect a meaningful choice let me encounter an exclusive type of enemy for targeted bases for loot, or a dungeon that I can enter and invite others to play with me and with me needing others to experience their content without re-rolling, or how Grim Dawn did it.
And Iād rather be playing the game on the near lvl30 character that isnāt bricked, rather restarting completely and teaching my friends to avoid the same trap with the experience I now have.
I think thereās something meta that needs to be said about the flaw in your process here.
Youāve written a number of things indicating that min/maxing and having a potentially āoptimalā character are very important to you. But on the other hand, you donāt appear to have done research ahead of time to inform and direct your choices, or paid enough attention to what you were choosing. For example, you apparently missed the very prominent pop-up that Mastery choice is permanent, and seem to be under the impression that you get access to all of every tree no matter which Mastery you choose.
In other words, your approach to decision-making was not compatible with your goals. Winging it and min/maxing are both perfectly fine ways to play, but youāve got to commit to one or the other. Pursuing āoptimalā necessitates prior research and great attention to detail.
In other-other words, the source of the frustration youāre feeling right now is not the game but yourself.
Youāre in luck then, because your character isnāt bricked.
I was under the impression I would be locked out of the other choices, the other way around of what youāve understood here.
And of course optimal building would be important to me in a genre where itās usually demanded, and with the information the game gives me Iāve done choices according to it, even if Iād have read that it was permanent it would not have affected my choice of Druid at all.
And of course I wouldnāt spoil myself of the game before a first run, but in the case of most current ARPG players that might not be the norm.
My frustration is part my own and part of the design of an early access game.
If the popup included the information of it unlocking the other mastery trees as well, and not just the passive and the skill then I would be well informed, currently not.
The decision was hardly āwingedā but done with the information the game gave me alone, which mostly boils down to the game showing a number of skills under different masteries on 3 different screens, yet only unlocking one of them while then giving you access to the other ānon-mastered core mastery skillsā which sounds very logical.
And sure I can continue with the character, thereās propably many Druid mastered builds I could go for, but as it stands the one permutation of it I want to play and try to build is now unoptimal, the presentation of the game is nowhere near good enough for me to want to experience the story as a build I donāt want to play.
I was referring to your impression after making the choice, not before. Your description of the impact of Mastery choice suggests that you thought you have full access to every tree until @Boardman21 pointed out that you do not.
Your frustration is entirely your own. Because:
That is absolutely winging it. Letās not forget that the large pop-up saying āMastery is permanentā - which could only have been more obvious if it had flashing neon arrows pointing to it - is something you clicked through without reading. If you skipped past something that prominent and important, how can any reader of your feedback believe that you actually made a good faith effort to use the totality of information the game offered you?
Bottom line is - Using only what the game tells you to do min/maxing and make āoptimal outcomeā focused build decisions was not the correct choice, because itās never been the correct choice, and by how you describe yourself you should know that. But you made that choice anyway, and now you have buyerās remorse that your pride will only allow to be the gameās fault. Thatās the reason weāre here now, not because you have an actual design flaw to report.
You dont unlock the other masteries. You unlock the complete mastery tree of the mastery of your choice and only half of the trees of the other masteries. Passives and skills that are unlocked by progressing those trees are locked. Thereās a vertical chain displayed on your trees that you not specialised in, indicating from what point on the mastery tree is locked.
Also with the choice there are mastery specific perks/mechanics unlocked that are unique to your mastery.
The thread gave me the impression this might not be clear to your.
It is, I think, probably fair to say that I donāt think the game tells you you get the left half of the un-mastered passive trees when you select a mastery. It does say that the choice is permanent, which the OP missed, but heās not the first person to be surprised that the have some access to the un-mastered trees.
While the user does need to read what theyāre clicking through (and itās not like anyone IRL actually reads any of the license agreements that the āagreeā too, so letās not think that we have more moral high ground than we actually do, you know who you are), I think the game could do a better job of explaining what they get when they pick a mastery.
Yeah, agreed. I just wanted to point out that access to the other trees is restricted. It looked to me like op thought he has access to the complete 2 other trees.
