Seeing the Forest for the Talent Trees

[Vallius]

I've never mentioned being mad. I think it's a waste of effort to argue with the never pleased crowd.

I suppose it's how you look at what is a 'waste of effort' and what isn't. I think, from Blizzard's perspective, the more feedback they get regardless of source can never hurt. I would agree with you that since WotLK the "vocal minority" have become more and more jaded over the years, but I think there is an unaccounted for group that does read these things and never posts replys about them. Maybe a friend does read up on them and passes that info along to those they know that don't? Either way, it's never a bad thing on their end to do it.

[Deleted]

why cant blizz implement a pvp spec.

Because most people like to pvp and pve as the same spec (minor talent changes not withstanding). I personally always pvp'd as an unholy DK, because that's the spec I liked playing. When unholy became utterly useless in pvp I simply stopped pvp'ing. Same problem with having a whole new 'spec' for pvp, what if you don't like that spec?

[k1037]

The vocal minority are regarded by most as a total pain in the arse, so I'm not sure why Blizzard would even want to engage with them. I've seen many game forums which much more agressive mods/devs than Blizzard.

Simple fact is, Blizzard make the game how they want to make it. If you don't like it, quit and stop moaning. No-one (including Blizz) cares.

Of course not. Blizz are only interested in pleasing their most devoted, "Blizz can do no wrong" fans. Money? What's that?! They don't want to make money. Losing millions of subs, which translates into hundreds of millions of dollars. PSH! They don't care about that.

When the game is in such dramatic decline, I don't understand how anyone can still think we're talking about a "vocal minority" of "haters."

[Deleted]

The hybrid trees look far from "choicy". In fact, you barely get any choices at all.
Take druids for example. Then pick balance and tell me where you see choices.
Some talents are very specific to either bear or cat, I reckon priests, paladins, and warriors have a similar issue.

The only ones getting real "choices" are the warlocks, pages and rogues.

I would have kind of hoped that the talen trees at least "change" if you take a different specialization, but they don't

#

as a druid I do not see any talent being a clear cut choice for Balance. The fact that some of the abilities change you to another form are no indication that they are for a "feral spec". Bear hug is a nice CC ability that transform you in a bear simply cause it make sense

I would like you to consider the fact that you do not see the choices because the one you see and the one you choose from what you see are already the ones that you identified good for your playstyle and so you do not really see the "other choices".

You play in a way that makes you already know what you want, but I'm confident that once in the game and once you try out first hand some abilities you may understand that nothing is as clear cut as you think they are now

[burghands]

I suppose it's how you look at what is a 'waste of effort' and what isn't. I think, from Blizzard's perspective, the more feedback they get regardless of source can never hurt. I would agree with you that since WotLK the "vocal minority" have become more and more jaded over the years, but I think there is an unaccounted for group that does read these things and never posts replys about them. Maybe a friend does read up on them and passes that info along to those they know that don't? Either way, it's never a bad thing on their end to do it.

I think posts like this are a staple of the decaying community. When the developer feels like they have to defend their design choices against a community that is holding a mutiny against them, there's certainly an issue. I believe this whole battle the naysayers started with GC's little table flip comment and has gone into a full bore gloves off slugfest. They come up with a design, the community tells them to leave things alone or negatively responds, and then Blizzard fires back with a jab at the community while attempting to justify the design decision. To me it just seems unnecessary.

[johnnyo032003]

"Leveling is fairly fast and rewarding and you get to see all the content".Who the FUCK ever said that "seeing all the content" or "leveling faster" is what we all want in this game to make it feel rewarding. No one I know. No one on the forums. No one anywhere.

Well from what I've seen Noobs complain about seeing all the content (and they can STFU now that they have raids dumbed down to glorified heroics in raid finder difficulty) and the players that have been playing the game for ages complain about having to trudge through another 1-level cap grind.

[Aspenarious]

choosing the talent you want from among the talents that don’t interest you isn’t an interesting decision

That's actually my thought on the current talents for Hunters that I see. There are lots of choices there that really seem inconsequential to me. Other hunters feel differently, but this is how I feel.

[burghands]

Of course not. Blizz are only interested in pleasing their most devoted, "Blizz can do no wrong" fans. Money? What's that?! They don't want to make money. Losing millions of subs, which translates into hundreds of millions of dollars. PSH! They don't care about that.

When the game is in such dramatic decline, I don't understand how anyone can still think we're talking about a "vocal minority" of "haters."

Do you really think the tl;dr posts on MMO-Champ and Official Forums are a large representation of the players quitting? You have got to be out of your mind. People who don't even know MMO-Champ exists or have ever logged onto the forums are the people who are quitting. Those people are simply getting tired of the game. Those are the people who don't click any of the links on the launcher, they just play the game to have fun. What makes you think the theorycrafters and the "this game is too hard!"/"this game is too easy" are the throngs that are leaving WoW? They're just the ones who think the whole community cares about it.

No amount of tug-of-war with the community is going to convince people to keep playing. The game has risen in its popularity and has reached the pinnacle people are going to leave. It will happen with Warcraft, then SWTOR, then Diablo, and to every game from now until eternity. That's how media works, it is created, marketed, consumed, and 10 years later someone will do it again and it will be "fresh" to the new generations and come back.

[Deleted]

I think posts like this are a staple of the decaying community. When the developer feels like they have to defend their design choices against a community that is holding a mutiny against them, there's certainly an issue. I believe this whole battle the naysayers started with GC's little table flip comment and has gone into a full bore gloves off slugfest. They come up with a design, the community tells them to leave things alone or negatively responds, and then Blizzard fires back with a jab at the community while attempting to justify the design decision. To me it just seems unnecessary.

I do not see it like that to be honest. They're simply being transparent, to me the post of GC does not seems of the arguing type. Pardon me it is possible that being non english native makes me blind to some detail in the writing style but the only thing I see from my point of view is transparency on design decision and on how they handle feedback and some feedback on the feedback itself they often receive in that cauldron of hate that is the official forums (yo, dawg!)

As far as I can see is the community that first say "booh hoo there're no communication from the devs ever" then when they decide to share a design philosophy is "booh hoo blizzard is only giving us excuses"

The reality is that the only communication the community would like to hear is: "*bow* to you my lords here we are doing as you please does not matter what we think or would like to do, here's all the change as you requested" and being trated like a game designer.
Unfortunately it does not, and never will work this way, not only with Blizzard but for every company, gaming one or not

[johnnyo032003]

All in All I'm excited for MoP. Then all the bads will leave and only people who are truly hardcore about playing wow will remain and Blizz can bring back 40 mans and rebuff every boss they have ever nerfed and make the game fun again.

[k1037]

Does GC really not remember how his "Gee, heroics are hard" post was received by the community? This sort of talk might get the most devoted fans riled up and happy, but does not go down well with paying customers in general.

The reasoning behind the whole "customer is always right" mindset is that for every person who complains, there are dozens more who have the same issue but instead of bringing it up, just take their business elsewhere. That's customer service 101. Yes, customers might be idiots, but there are a lot of idiots, and being rude or patronizing to them loses you business 100% of the time.

Remember the "I'm quitting" threads early on in Cata? Remember the fan response to those? "You're a vocal minority, no one cares, Cata is doing great, blah blah blah." Same response as now. Yet nearly 2 MILLION subscribers were lost. There weren't 2 million "I quit" threads or posts, but each one represented thousands of people. Now think about how many "these talents suck" and "I'm quitting over MoP" threads are popping up. For each and every one of those, several thousand people are quitting with them. Vocal minority, my ass.

[Vallius]

I think posts like this are a staple of the decaying community. When the developer feels like they have to defend their design choices against a community that is holding a mutiny against them, there's certainly an issue. I believe this whole battle the naysayers started with GC's little table flip comment and has gone into a full bore gloves off slugfest. They come up with a design, the community tells them to leave things alone or negatively responds, and then Blizzard fires back with a jab at the community while attempting to justify the design decision. To me it just seems unnecessary.

But it does make for great internet! ;D To your point, I agree and I don't. I agree with your take on the forum crowd to some degree. You have little camps that pop up that can be categorized as either 'with blizzard' or 'not with blizzard', but I think that's the case for any discussion where more than two people are involved. They'll never be able to please the latter camp, but I don't think that's their goal. I think their goal is to make a great game the best way they can and any feedback, even if it is from the unruly rabble, will help.

So, It seems to me that Blizz knows how ... passionate ... some of their player-base is. But I think they know what I know and that's that these people, however Jaded and unruly they are acting are only acting that way because they -do- care. I think the perception from people that GC has a "confrontational tone" is all about perspective. I think he sounds honest and to the point. He doesn't use airy metaphors and amorphous terminology to placate his audience. He knows we're a group of walking meme impersonators and internet junkies. I wouldn't confuse "casual personality" with "confrontational", though, to another posters comment.

[Deleted]

Of course not. Blizz are only interested in pleasing their most devoted, "Blizz can do no wrong" fans. Money? What's that?! They don't want to make money. Losing millions of subs, which translates into hundreds of millions of dollars. PSH! They don't care about that.

When the game is in such dramatic decline, I don't understand how anyone can still think we're talking about a "vocal minority" of "haters."

We are still talking about a vocal minority, they're just even more vocal and annoying these days.

[Agrias2x]

“You’ve got your minds made up and don’t care about what we think.” You're wrong, Next! How is that wrong, whole this post looks like they defend what they think and that they are right. aka they dont really care what we think.

[Capers]

The vocal minority are regarded by most as a total pain in the arse, so I'm not sure why Blizzard would even want to engage with them. I've seen many game forums which much more agressive mods/devs than Blizzard.

Simple fact is, Blizzard make the game how they want to make it. If you don't like it, quit and stop moaning. No-one (including Blizz) cares.

I agree with most of that, except the last part. Blizzard actually doesn't make it how they want. They make it the way that can attract the most customers, because they aren't making this game for fun, it is their job, to make money. They do care when people unsubscribe, because they lose profits.

[jayremy]

BLIZZARD IS SO LATE, to recognizing this in game, they should've done most of this at release or short after Cata and not wait till a new x-pac that wont be out till like an absolute minimum of 4 months from now (after some of the biggest hitting MMO and RPG competing games being release). This game had me bored and limited when I had no other decent MMO or RPG to go to, they are going to wait till competition starts threatening them to make some real innovative changes to the game to actually do them. This in some sense only pisses me off more its like the whole scenario "where were you when I needed you" but they claim to be riding in with all my cures as the hero in this with all the great stuff to offer. I am sick of tab targeting gameplay I like more mouse oriented gameplay -- mouse to turn by default, crosshair-style, only two mouse buttons for side movement freeing space, backstepping actually is meaningful, not having to target enemies with tab or clicking on them, but just by looking at them or automatically hitting those who can be hit by melee first... for the RP side of players or just for fun being able to do a single target attack animation whenever. I know this game will likely never have projectile dodging and never expect it, but it would be nice if they ever considered this for their game. But the overlaying point is if they are going to rock up the gameplay changes like I have listed, then all this stuff they are finally doing with MoP should've came way earlier (BTW monks are playing more like what other games are doing/going to do, not sure why they didn't do this for other classes).

[k1037]

Do you really think the tl;dr posts on MMO-Champ and Official Forums are a large representation of the players quitting? You have got to be out of your mind. People who don't even know MMO-Champ exists or have ever logged onto the forums are the people who are quitting. Those people are simply getting tired of the game. Those are the people who don't click any of the links on the launcher, they just play the game to have fun. What makes you think the theorycrafters and the "this game is too hard!"/"this game is too easy" are the throngs that are leaving WoW? They're just the ones who think the whole community cares about it.

No amount of tug-of-war with the community is going to convince people to keep playing. The game has risen in its popularity and has reached the pinnacle people are going to leave. It will happen with Warcraft, then SWTOR, then Diablo, and to every game from now until eternity. That's how media works, it is created, marketed, consumed, and 10 years later someone will do it again and it will be "fresh" to the new generations and come back.

The "too hard" / "too easy" folks are hardly the only people who are unhappy with the announced talents. I wish fans would stop using the "tired of the game" line. No, people are absolutely NOT leaving just because they're tired of the game. They're leaving because the quality has gone down the toilet. The drop was immediate and dramatic with the release of Cata in the US and Europe, while WotLK kept subs growing in China. Cata was released in China half a year later and met with the exact same dramatic drop in subs. The sub loss is clearly, identifiably, objectively (as in, it's not "opinion") due to Blizzard's own design choices.

I participated in the Cata beta. Hundreds of us voiced opinions which were contrary to their design decisions. We said healing wasn't nearly as fun, that Holy Power wasn't well-thought or well-implemented, that leveling was far too quick, that dungeons were far too slow, that Tol Barad was a disaster... basically every complaint that was voiced on live. GC responded that we "weren't being helpful" and STOPPED POSTING on the Beta forums. Now we're seeing the exact same thing with MoP design choices, even before beta. They are coming up with a talent system that a lot of people are unhappy with. Instead of dealing with this vocal not-a-minority, he's doing the same "you're wrong - la la la, I can't hear you" thing he did during the Cata beta. It'll have the same result: another few million subs lost.

[probert]

I can't help but contrast Trion's approach to game balance -- which seems more like Blizzard pre-2009 -- with the modern Blizzard interpretation.Trion: We have 50 point deep talent trees, you can mix any 3 choice of 8 together per class, and we'll let the community police itself in terms of balance. Only the most egregious imbalanced synergies will be actively fix. You can also have any 5 builds available at any given time!Blizzard: We keep narrowing the talent trees down, but we still can't keep them balanced. So we're removing talent trees, and we'll give you a handful of ability choices and that will be your class. We grudingly let you swap between two roles, but only because we had to address the deficiency of tanks. Ever since Morhaime praised the Call of Duty unlock system, did I realize that Activision's ethos is corrupting the design culture in Blizzard. One of the great things about MMOs was the flexibility and diversity of choices available, and it encouraged the community to actively balance and research and test different combinations. The dialogue made the community better! The game is rapidly descending in a 2012 version of Gauntlet. Pick you class, here's your abilites, go play. The turning point was when they gave up on the new DeathKnight talent schools... being able to tank and dps as blood, unholy, and frost allowed for some true choice and flavor. That should ahve been the future of talent design, not this console design logic.

[Vutar]

These comments are why the world is a wonderful place. It is so easy to fool the naive.

[Facepalmer3]

On the comment of having lots of Abilities and limited space, for people that don't have a lot of fancy equipment, I put two spells in one button in a macro, example/use [button:1] Spell A ( which is the left mouse button)/use [button:2] Spell B (the right mouse)Also macro'ing spells that have no global cd works great. For example on my pally I have consecration in a macro with my Damage reduction abilities - I forget the name- that is also on a 30cd. Frees up space and takes worry out of using up a lot of space.Btw. I'm really glad blizzard wrote this, it shows how much they care and appreciate us! ^_^