Originally Posted by Malorn
There is no tradeoff with always-on bonuses; there is only the order in which you acquire them. Choosing the order is not a tradeoff. Increasing the time to train only makes a larger gap for new players to acquire the same power.
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The only time there is no tradeoff, and it's only "the order in which you acquire them," is when you're able to acquire them all.
With time-based unlocks, and the intention to expand skill trees out as the game progresses, this is a silly assumption.
Here, let me work this out for you.
The 3-year plan says "major updates every 12 months."
The initial release includes 12 root skill tree branches. Each branch, let's say, corresponds loosely to a role, for simplicity's sake. The developer intent is to make it possible to "max out" a role before they add stuff. The developer intent is also to allow you to max out more than one role, but not all of them, before they add stuff.
Thus, the design choice dictates that each role takes 5 months to max out.
"But wait, Kaffis!" you say, "That means I can max out my character in 60 months, and so there's no tradeoffs involved. The only choice I make is in what order I take these always on bonuses!"
"Ah," I respond. "Except, when you've maxxed out two root branches and worked 2 months into a third, the first update comes out, adding 2 more root branches, and adding an additional 3 months of skills onto each of the others, so now each branch takes 8 months to max out. The 3 months of skills are a very small relative power increase over the first 5, since each skill takes longer and longer to accumulate as you go deeper into the skill tree. Now, 12 months in, we've extended the time to max to 112 months! Now, the "order" you got them in matters, because the first 12 months are still all you have, and you're even further from maxxing out your character than you started, because there are even more options."
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