but people who like to trade/craft but are not interested to do that all the time to get the amount points in that specific profession would also get frustrated so xp from everything you do can spent to every skill/ability fixes that so balancing the amount xp you get from things you do and time/effort it takes is way to eliminate the issue for getting more/faster xp from specific things. when it comes to grinding people always try to find a way to make things the easiest or fastest and usually finds a way that most people do not know so that as well would not be competitive.
yes, i think i am with you here. even though you should use a bit more often “.” and “,”… hard to read your statement. But of course it’s about to balance.
But maybe you did not get what i said at first:
Of course is about balancing… but things quoted before seem to make it impossible to just trade to make your way. Fighting / collecting will always be necessary to be efficient. What for me is a pity… I’d like to have the free choise of what I do and have no deficit against the ones who chose another way.
Simple example:
If someone knows settlers 7, what actually had quite a nice concept. you had 3 options to win a game.
- build an army and destroy everything
- be a trader and gather ressources super fast to gain victory points to win
- choose the religious way (improve the defense of you kingdom, while researching for advanced technologies and gain victory points that way
If the game was balanced, the concept was amazing and unique. But it wasn’t… imo just the one who build a big army (when equally skilled players) had a chance to win, because he could do permanent pressure and disturb enemies economy so hard, that they could not achieve their pacifist ways to victory.
That is what I mean, you did not really have a choice about the way you want to play the game, because it was imbalanced (even when the game was created to be played in different ways).
Till now i think they still didn’t bring enough updates, to make the game balanced.
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completely agree,i was hoping to go with a combo of miner/crafter/trader depending on trait points etc where as my bro was gonna go fighter,he collects the mats needed i craft him any thing he needs,spare mats get made into items to be sold.
huge settlers fan myself so know exactly what you mean (though i always played against multiple ai players on hardest difficulty if i wanted to go research/trader route)
I have an opinion on the skill trees that I see potentially being a problem. It has already been mentioned that they are “flat” without any real branching and kind of look boring. I agree with this, but I want to explain why I see it as a problem compared with other ways of doing it: If we have these flat trees, the ultimate amounts of combinations of players is really low. If we make them branch more, then the different combinations of skill sets increase dramatically. I see this as a HUGE need, not a want.
Why? Imagine being in a guild, or starting up and joining a guild that’s been around for a bit. There will already be somebody in the guild with each skill set, and no real motivation to choose one skill set over another. However, if we had branches, we could modify the skill sets slightly with relative easy. e.g., We have a miner that is an expert at getting gems, I’ll be a miner who is an expert at getting metals. Or fossils. Or ancient tech. Those last two seem kind of narrow right now, but hopefully it gets the point across. More branching with longer trees (we can keep pretty similar categories) means more variability and specialization.
To me, this would add a whole other level to which guild you should join. Or which guild/city/castle you travel to to buy stuff. “These guys have everything, so they’re my go-to peeps”.
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Are you referring the “Endless” games series ? I experienced the same 
I hope the devs will better with the balance than the current system which forces players to be crafters.
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no,he was referring to settlers 7.
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“Pass” is the technical term for the first iteration of a project in software development. It’s been used frequently by the devs on these forums.
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Yea almost. Maybe it’s just me but I always interpreted it as “It’s the first iteration (of many internal iterations) that passed through to the public (or if it’s only internal, to a larger group) to be judged.”
Is that how it came about?^^
Absolutely agree. @luke-turbulenz, please, make this tree more interesting and more like a tree. You have all ways to that:
So, here is not all of points must exist in this tree.
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i think you should get access to all basic weapons after weapon proficiency1 (Bomb,slingbow,lance,axe,hammer,etc) after that you can increase the proficiency you like from that section. same goes for tools. after material proficiency1 you should get access to natural1 and metal1 and crafting proficiency1 you get access to tool1 and props1.
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In the spirit of @Okkelinor 's post I’m hijacking this thread as well to show how I think the Skill-mechanic should look, as I think that it might be helpful to not only point out what we don’t like about it but also give examples of what we think would make a decent mechanic, and since I’ve got some spare time on my hands and am watching the Blizzcon VODs (so envious of @Havok40k ) I bothered to give the proposed system a small overhaul in the hope that these suggestions, and the feedback they get, might be helpful when the devs decide to overhaul the Skill Trees.
So without further ado, here it is,
#Vastar’s Skilltree overhaul
Sounds like something you’d download from Nexusmods, I know
#1. Founder
There’s not much to be changed here. I really like the idea of guiding the players through a small “tutorial tree” before exposing them to the more advanced mechanics. So the only thing I changed is to move [Revive] and [Weapon Charge] into the Founder Tree:
I did this because I had the impression that Revive and Weapon charge both sound like quite substantial gameplay elements that would be skilled by any player anyway, so why not put them into the Founder Tree right away?
(Creep and Health Regen should either be placed here as well, or be variable right away)
#2. Proficiency
Like almost everyone wrote: This tree only featuring plain percentages was quite boring.Thus I tried to make it a bit more interesting, while also trying to somewhat maintaining its original structure and keeping everything within a (hopefully) realistic scope. What I ended up with is a tree that is a lot more compact but hopefully also more interesting:
What I tried to achieve here is to concentrate the essential parts of the original proposal while also keeping the spirit of it in mind (you might notice that I mostly used perks that were already included in the initial proposal). I did this by narrowing it down to four skilltrees for the four core-proficiencies.
Note on Tool Proficiency
I don’t know how this whole ‘proficiency’ thing will work out but I imagined that it should look somewhat like this to make a collector profession viable:
Advanced materials should have a chance to break – not dropping anything – when they are mined. Tool proficiency should be a mechanism to counter this.
As it stands now a skilled ‘Fighter’ can just nuke down any creature and gather/mine everything just like everyone else could. Making something like a dedicated ‘Collector’ obsolete. This is where my suggested mechanic would intervene.
A ‘Fighter’ could still venture out on his own, however, since he’s not a skilled miner he only obtains a fraction of the ores he found. Making player collaboration not necessary but highly rewarding.
Note on Warp Proficiency
Warp Proficiency is how I’d try to make another highly requested role viable…the Trader.
Being a Trader can only be a thing if two things are given
- Things can only be produced/found at A but are needed at B
- The process of transporting isn’t trivial
The latter could be quite difficult since we’ve got Portals and Warps.
This Problem could be tackled by not simply charging a fixed toll for Portals and Warps but calculating it based on the stuff in your inventory (+0.1 coin for each piece of common stuff, +1 coin for each piece of rare stuff, etc.). With Warp Proficiency reducing the amount one has to pay. This way it would become viable to be a (interplanetary-) traveling merchant as you’d have substantial more margin as a simple Crafter that tries to sell his stuff on a different planet.
The former problem is a bit more tricky to tackle as I assume that most dangerous worlds will feature a pretty similar set of materials.
Maybe reducing the amount of common materials (coal, wood, etc.) that can be found on high-tiered planets would help? This way you’d also keep the starting worlds populated.
Or changing the ore distribution based to the solar system? (Plenty of iron in solar-system A but almost no ancient Tech and the exact opposite in solar-system B)
Note on 'Will it Blend'
First and foremost: Sorry for the pun.
I thought that the crafting tree needs a really awesome conclusion that specializes the player without forcing him into one niche.
I think the ability to blend two elemental modifications could do that.
‘Will it Blend’ would allow you to choose an element of your choice. The effect of this element would be applied to any weapon you modify with an elemental variation.
You are a crafty character that picked the fire element. Now you can craft a “Shock Slingbow” that applies 90% shock effect and 10% fire effect.
With my Notes in mind I think that the proficiency (and ultimately the single professions resulting from it) could work out fairly well.
3. Abilities
Oh boy. This was probably the biggest let-down of the proposed system. When I first heard about abilities I was excited, to say the least. When I heard that we’ll get an entire Abilities tree I could barely contain myself.
But what we got was not as impressive as I hoped for…no fireballs, chain-lightnings or other spells…just jumping, charging, reviving and the crafting tree.
Don’t get me wrong, I can understand why you went that way. Implementing spells like the ones I mentioned is probably far from trivial and requires a 
-load of VFX, models and things I probably can’t even think of.
But what if there was a way to implement awesome abilities that are designed for the world of Boundless, already put in code and visualized, just waiting to be put into our hands?
What I’m talking about is completely revamping the Abilities tree – embedding the various abilities of the Boundless-Fauna.
(The conversion from creature-ability to player-ability is probably not as trivial as I try to make it sound but it just sounds too promising for not being suggested)
Changing the appearance of the Tree to something like this:
Huh? Not much going on here one might think but that’s because the Skilltree would only appear if you slot a creature-essence into the ‘Essence-Slot’.
- Creature Essences would have a small chance to drop whenever you kill a creature (Duh).
- They retain the progression-tier & the elemental variation from the creature they dropped from.
- Slotting such an Essence into the appropriate slot unlocks a basic ability similar to the one of the creature and portions of the skilltree, up to the appropriate tier. Which have to be unlocked with skillpoints like any other perks.
I imagine this looking somewhat like this:
These (kinda minimalistic) skilltrees would feature basic upgrades that improve the skill in the spirit of the creatures design.
To give you an idea:
Wildstock Essence:
The Wildstock essence unlocks the ability to charge:
Press “y” to start charging.
Charging drastically increases your movement speed but greatly reduces the maneuverability.
(basically like any charge ability in any game)
The rest of the perks would be simple boni that fit the style of the creature:
- Increase maneuverability.
- Reduces the cooldown of the ability.
- Increased HP for every nearby player.
- Further increase maneuverability.
- Soft materials don’t stop the charge and are destroyed instead.
- Increased stamina-regen for every nearby player.
…
and so on.
The passives would be the perks that are influenced by the elemental variation of the creature/essence and feature basic boni like
- charge also inflicts elemental damage
- more elemental damage
- elemental resistance
- leave an elemental trail
#4. Traits
This one was the most fun to rework. The idea of passive traits allows so many creative gimmicks. Sadly we didn’t see many of them in the proposed tree.
My idea was to utilize the fact that the UI allows 3-dimensional elements. So I thought that a kinda 3D skilltree for perks would be awesome. What I came up with looks like this:
Yeah I know, it’s just six 2D trees with a 3D visualization, but doesn’t it look awesome?
And here’s how it would work:
Each of these skilltrees has a few Perks that feature positive effects that come along with some penalties.
Additionally they have a limit on how many points you can spend into each tree, preventing players from unlocking everything within a single tree. So yes – @KuroKuma – you are able to skill into every tree, but no, this doesn’t mean you get to have every Perk 
To give you an idea of how such Perks might look I worked out some exemplary Perks for the three trees I showed in the GIF above:
Adventurous Tree
This tree is all about venturing out into the world and interacting with it.
-
(Staring Point )
– Sprinting doesn’t drain Stamina anymore
– Receiving damage while sprinting stuns you for 5 seconds.
– Stun duration decreased to 4 seconds (instead of 5)
– Infinite breath while diving
– Mining underwater takes twice as long
– Stun duration decreased to 3 seconds (instead of 4)
– Allows you to create a ‘Random Location Token’ that adds a random (safe) location to your “saved locations list” (basically allows you to create a spawn point token)
– Costs coin
– Stun duration decreased to 2 seconds (instead of 3)
– Gives you the option to spawn right where you died
– 400% more death penalty if you decide to do so
– 50% reduced aggro range from creatures
– 10% more damage received
– Visiting a beacon fully restores your health
– 5% more trading tax when buying
– 300% more death penalty if you choose to spawn where you died (instead of 400%)
– 500% more explorer experience
– 20% explorer experience is transferred to the other professions
– 90% less XP gain in other professions the ‘normal’ way
– 200% more death penalty if you choose to spawn where you died (instead of 300%)
Shady Tree
This tree is all about bypassing.
– Attacking a creature that is not in combat deals 200% more damage
– Attacking a creature that is in combat deals 10% less damage
– Attacking a creature that is not in combat deals 250% more damage
– Sneaking reduces the aggro range by 90%
– Sneaking drains stamina
– 5% (instead of 10%) less damage when attacking a creature that is in combat
– Sneaking & not moving for a few seconds causes some creatures to disengage
– 20% more damage while sneaking
– 10% less price for all toll locks
– 10% more price for warping
– 15% less price for all toll locks
– 5% more price for warping (instead of 10%)
– The compass shows nearby creatures
– The compass doesn’t display any other information
Turbulent Tree
This tree is all about making your gameplay a bit more unpredictable and crazy.
– 30% chance to dodge attacks, negating all potential damage
– 30% smaller health-pool
– Deal 20% more damage when below 30% health
– Deal 20% less damage when above 80% health
– Stamina regeneration applies to health
– No in-fight stamina regeneration
– Ability to use health instead of stamina (at an increased rate) once the stamina bar is depleted.
– 1% less damage received for each %HP below 50%
– 1% more damage received for each %HP above 50%
– 50% chance to craft an elemental mod with above-average stats.
– 50% chance to craft an elemental mod with below-average stats.
– Doubles your crit-chance (maximum 90%)
– Decreases the damage of non-critical hits by the same percentage
– Critical hits with elemental weapons lower the elemental resistance of the target by 10% (All elements but those of the weapon)
– Critical hits with elemental weapons increases the elemental resistance of the target by 10% (Element of the weapon)
– 100% more critical damage
– Critical hits have a 10% chance to backfire, dealing 50% of the dealt damage to yourself
– Critical-hit chance also applies to tools (mining etc.)
– Critical tool-hits drain twice the durability
The intention I had with these was to create a Traits Tree with perks that significantly change how a character “feels” without necessarily being an improvement,
#5. Attributes
I agree with some other players here: There are way too many stats for a game like Boundless. The amount of stats proposed would be awesome if there were things like armors that allow us to mess around with our stat configuration. But without such mechanics I don’t see any necessity for such a plethora of stats.
So I thought that ‘neutral attribute’ points that are awarded by wearables but can be freely spent across all attributes might be a solution that prevents hordes of naked players but also allows the “wear what you like” mentality the devs seem to like.
(I also suggest this because I think that making 4 trees that all drain from the same skillpoint-pool is not a good idea)
#And that’s it
I hope I was able to make some reasonable suggestions that might even spark some ideas for the reworked Skill Trees that are (hopefully) about to come
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@Vastar: It’s true, you have by far too much free time to write this 
(Just kidding).
While I like “most” of your ideas, I will need some time to write a detailed answer on this.
Good work never the less
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Raw numbers can always be changed for balance at a later date. It is much more important that the numbers show the concept of how the improvement should work than they are actually balanced at this point.
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i think at the skill tree proficiency2 in the utility section you should be able to build freely the way you like your character to be and not forced to take certain (useless to you) things to get what you want. example in your tree i have to get increased grapple first to get jump or other things so now i have spent points on things that might not be any good for me (i know grapple proficiency is something that most people would take anyways but you get the idea). you should prevent things like this when making skill trees.
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man you been busy 
but love your ideas (especially the essence idea,very unique and fits boundless perfectly) would also give non crafters a way to make a bit of coin if the essences will be tradable.
Think @Miige has a valid point on the prof 2 tree but nothing a few tweaks cant fit (like a few extra links to allow you to go round say grapple,or connecting compass to half revive)
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To be honest, I think I haven’t seen a single thing in that post I don’t like^^
It’s also a perfect middle ground between people who want a cap and people wo want to be able to unlock everything. You might not be able to unlock everything but there won’t be a thing you can’t do in the end. Some things might be harder to do or need to be done differently.
But you can still do them and that’s what I wanted from the beginning^^
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@Thorbjorn42gbf
You are absolutely right, the percentages (I`d even say the perks themselves) are just exemplary to show the intended structure of the tree.
But @Heureka is talking about a typo I made, so he’s right too 
@Miige
Yeah I know, being able to avoid the things you mentioned would be awesome, but you need to have at least some parent- & children-nodes in order to form a decent tree shaped structure.(as that’s pretty much the definition of tree).
So just like you rightly assumed: I tried to pick the most ‘neutral’ node I could think of and ended up using “Grappling Proficiency”.
Bombs? I will become the stealthy Bombadier!
WOW! There is a ton on this thread as well! I read through a lot of it but it is hard to remember every detail of the posts so I will say what I have to say 
Personally, I feel like there does not need to be a spot in any skill tree for performing basic functions such as: crafting basic tools or weapons, trading, use of a compass, etc. A proficiency tree should be used for increasing how well you perform those basic actions. You can get benefits of increased functionality, hitting harder, crafting better, but only through use of that action whatever it may be. I am going to work on some charts and some more detailed information and post it at a later time.
@james P.S. If a dev could at least respond and give more detail on what main concept they want for skills and attributes and abilities, that could help aim my thoughts. There are so many ways to go about this and I am not sure randomly sharing my thoughts will help on this topic.
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