Seeing the Forest for the Talent Trees

[garion55]

Compare the amount of balance patches per expansion to each other.
Compare the degree of those changes per expansion.

Looking at each like this, it is clear that blizzard has completely lost touch with how to balance their game. I have not played Cata, but lurked this site for the entirety. Every week I read about X ability being completely changed or Y ability's coefficient being massively adjusted.

And this is after supposedly "fixing" the stat system...which was broke 1 tier into content.

They haven't a clue what they are doing. They have taken the easy route and just decided to continually change the "rules" of each class constantly, in hopes it'll keep people quite.

Core issues are either ignored (Paladin mechanics) or removed from the game (Druid shapeshifting bonuses).

I won't even bother lurking during MoP, there's no point.

I would love to have seen how the game would be right now if the 'A' team never left and this failure of a lead dev was never put in charge. I know that I and my guild would probably still be playing.


And simply for P.R. reasons if nothing else, if i were in charge right now watching my game crash and burn, i would immediately fire GC and put someone else in charge. And do it publicly with lots of noise so the player base understands that blizz knows they screwed up and they are working to fix things. Honestly that should have been one of the first things they did once it was confirmed that hundreds of thousands of people were quitting the game the beginning of this year. There seems to be no one in charge out there with any kind of business sense, leaving this guy in charge and letting him put out posts like this is the absolute worst thing this company could be doing.

I just dont get it.

[ghostprotocol]

Classic GC. I'm right because I say I'm right.

[Shilien]

It is really too bad Blizzard has kind of lost sight of their own game. Talent choices might not have been all that meaningful or noticeable but it gave you something to do when you hit a level, and a feeling of power gained (change being made). At this point with their push to endgame it makes the entire revamp of all the old world content in Cataclysm irrelevent. They don't want people to roll and enjoy alts, they want people to just blast through content and get to endgame where apparently the game begins (which many players have felt, and apparently now Blizzard is making 'real').

The real side effect of this is they will continue to lose more people (because the game is stale at this point and all the major lore characters killed or friendly) and new people will not stick around because the game doesn't reward them enough for playing.

[Bodakane]

Ok, what would you rather have a choice between:

1. Given $100 free and clear
2. Kick to the nuts
3. Poke in the eye
4. Punch in the face
5. A minor concussion
6. A toe stomp

Or

1. $75 right now
2. $25 a week for a month
3. $100 bucks right now, but if you spend it within a week you owe $15


The second set technically has less options than the first set. The first set however only really has one choice people are gonna take, so 2-6 are irrelevant because no one is going to use those instead of #1.

[Gilian]

Ok, what would you rather have a choice between:

1. Given $100 free and clear
2. Kick to the nuts
3. Poke in the eye
4. Punch in the face
5. A minor concussion
6. A toe stomp

Or

1. $75 right now
2. $25 a week for a month
3. $100 bucks right now, but if you spend it within a week you owe $15


The second set technically has less options than the first set. The first set however only really has one choice people are gonna take, so 2-6 are irrelevant because no one is going to use those instead of #1.

Oke... kinda hard to discuss this with people when they comment with this kind of nonsense. I really hope you don't really believe this is a good methaphore for the talent trees..

[Bodakane]

Oke... kinda hard to discuss this with people when they comment with this kind of nonsense. I really hope you don't really believe this is a good methaphore for the talent trees..

Its actually spot on. Your irrational hatred or anger doesn't qualify as fact nor does it disqualify my analogy. Your lack of understanding of the current trees and the future ones is also not my responsibility.

We have no choice now if we want to compete at a reasonable level. That means there's no real options now. Saying there is, is well, a lie. Come MoP we will have some actual choices to make. Just like my analogy, those choices will be dependent on what we want to accomplish.

[Simplevintagex]

People still play WoW? It's lost, what, 800,000 subscribers in the past month, and 2 million within this year alone? People are finally realizing that this game has run it's course, and that the devs have fucked this game up beyond belief with their stance that PvP should be the centerpoint, and balancing factor in a game that is primarily meant for PvE.

Here's hoping they lose 3 million next year! But maybe not, the new expansion IS adding Pandas after all....ROFL.

[Rexxr]

Classic GC. I'm right because I say I'm right.

So true. Lets look at what they have told us every 15 levels you get 3 choices. That is it no more no less. If they want it to be interesting, when I turn 30 you let me choose those 3 options or the previous 2 from 15 than I have 5 choices.

Also I love the section about how you will be unable to theory craft. LOL! I am pretty sure elitist jerk will have a max dps spec up by the end of day 1 of MoP.

[Dawn Falcon]

Bullshit Blizz, there are CLEAR choices for most spec's. The ones which are not clear choices simply don't MATTER that much.

[Ragedaug]

So true. Lets look at what they have told us every 15 levels you get 3 choices. That is it no more no less. If they want it to be interesting, when I turn 30 you let me choose those 3 options or the previous 2 from 15 than I have 5 choices.

Also I love the section about how you will be unable to theory craft. LOL! I am pretty sure elitist jerk will have a max dps spec up by the end of day 1 of MoP.

There are no more then 1-4 choices now. That averages a choice every 30 levels. With every new character I start leveling, the first thing I do is read the Elitist Jerks page on the class/spec I'm playing, then I google search the spec to verify the consensus on what is available on EJ. Your choice are pick your own sub-optional talents that will cause you to under perform or choose to follow the cookie cutter.

I'll try to make a little better analogy to one posted earlier. In Cataclysm the choices are:

1) $100
2) $75
3) $25 a period for 3 period
4) $50
5) $15 a period for 3 period

Seems like a lot of choices, but I personally see only 1 correct answer there.

Also I love the section about how you will be unable to theory craft. LOL! I am pretty sure elitist jerk will have a max dps spec up by the end of day 1 of MoP.

There are very few talents in MoP that can be theorycrafted for optimal DPS in all roles & encounters. The abilities that have been theorycrafted are already baked into the build and we still get them. There are a few talents that will be theorycrafted as must take for certain specs, but those are the minority. The majority of the talents are for utility and the value of the utility depends on what you are doing, so there can't be 1 right answer for those.

---------- Post added 2011-12-09 at 03:31 PM ----------

Bullshit Blizz, there are CLEAR choices for most spec's. The ones which are not clear choices simply don't MATTER that much.

Can you provide an example?

For my example, I'm looking at the Hunter tree, and only the level 15 and 75 options have clear DPS increase abilities. The remaining tiers are for CC, damage reduction, and escape.

[Aspenarious]

I've had some more time to think about these new talents and I think this articulates my position a bit better.I am playing a Hunter. My class is a DPS class. What is exciting and interesting to me is a talent that makes me deal more damage. Or at least deal damage in a way that I couldn't before. However, because any talent that deals damage will be mathed out so that the one that deals the most is always selected, then from Blizzard's perspective that choice becomes no longer interesting. They are right. It's now no longer a choice, you take it or you short change yourself.So given that, no talents can deal damage. Which means, by my first statement, no talent CAN be exciting or interesting to me.I think that's the problem I have.

[Deleted]

I don't really care about the talents because they will change.

What is worrying is that Idiotcrawler is serving us the same speech that he served before cataclysm, promising us "more fun because he knows best". After a full year of cataclysm plagued with hotfixes, delayed patches (4.1 - 4.2), cancelled raids and dungeons (abyssal maw), unbalanced pvp (ring of frostlol, lolbarad), the guy has not given us any proof he knows his job.

Quite the contrary, over one year he has:
- cancelled his new tanking model by bumping the threat modifier and making vengeance irrelevant to the point of unbalancing pvp (blood dks say hi)
- stating dungeons are hard then serving us the hour of twilight roflstomp dungeons
- stating aoefest is over in dungeons then bringing it back to wotlk level in 4.1
- proving he does not play the game by stating that people will still go back to t11 after 4.2 to get chest pieces from Nefarian.

The only thing he does well is writing witty piece of texts to his own glory ("my blog has had many reads all hail myself")

[Kumashy]

I find totally amusing the people who take this game so seriously. You come into these forums and every day you see the same thing.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, blizzard is not ruining WoW, the ever so arrogant and entitled community is.

it's an MMO, they try things, they change, they make some people happy, they piss off another side of the player base, it's the nature of the game, it happened before, it is happening now, and it will always happen. If you seriously have not yet gotten used to it during the past 7 years, then I have no words of hope for you my friend.

I'm personally...how to label it...mmm...intrigued by the talent system change. I'll wait for beta, try it, and make my mind about it. No matter what happens, I'm good. WoW for me goes back to the very basic concept of "first-kill". That feeling you get every single time you kill a new boss in a raid instance for the very first time. Everything else in the game just represent means to get there, that includes the talent system. I've been playing for 7 years for that very same goal, and I personally have to say, it's been quite a trip so far.

But then again, I don't concern myself with pretending to know what's better for the game, or voicing the concerns of "massive amounts" of people like some of you do. I for one am glad Blizzard is finally taking the silk gloves off and slapping some comebacks around, maybe with an attitude. (Current bans about the LFR exploit, this post explaining the reasoning behind the changes, etc)

One major flaw of a Capitalistic or Consumerism-centric countries is that they spawn this brood of people who think that just because they pay for something, they are without a question entitled. In this case, entitled to make changes to the game, entitled to complain when things don't go their way. When in reality, if you strip it down, you're paying for access to the game servers, period. You don't like what you get when you log into them? Stop paying and find something else.

It really is that simple people.

[Kourvith]

No, no, no, people, please don't post your opinion on this. Because you know, Ghostcrawler knows better than you what "does really matters" to us.....Pretty sure there will be another blue post in a week presenting apologies and explaining that "it wasn't really what he meant", as a reaction to further Blizzard stock drops.

[Carighan]

No, no, no, people, please don't post your opinion on this. Because you know, Ghostcrawler knows better than you what "does really matters" to us.....Pretty sure there will be another blue post in a week presenting apologies and explaining that "it wasn't really what he meant", as a reaction to further Blizzard stock drops.

"Further"?
Shows their stock as quite stable, really.

[Kazlehoff]

i played a drinking game with this article where i took a shot every time blizzard told there paying customers they were wrong.im going to go throw up now and lay down. dont feel well

[undead44]

I just dont get it.

So GC says they want feedback and then the proceeds on refuting all the feedback that they've gotten.

What he meant was "we want feedback that agrees with what we're going to do anyway".


Sad and pathetic.

[palladiamors]

But... they ARE wrong, and if they don't tell them they're wrong, they'll just keep on complaining about it (some people will anyway though).
Also, people need to stop getting their panties in a twist when someone tells them they're wrong (with proper argumentation). People are wrong all the time, fucking deal with it

Except guess what? THEY AREN'T WRONG! *Gasp!* My god! People can have different opinions, or find different things fun then you! And when some self-important person, such as yourself or Ghostcrawler, has the gall to say "You're wrong!" to some ones OPINION, then that's crossing a line. With you it's just some pissant on a forum beating your gums, but with Ghostcrawler it's PR for Blizzard, and even JOKING, it looks and comes off badly. There is no way for it to NOT come off as poorly done. Simply put, YOU DO NOT DO THAT. It has nothing to do with political correctness or politeness, and EVERYTHING to do with BUISNESS SENSE. When your boat is bringing on water, even if the flow isn't to bad, you do NOT poke the hole to make it bigger.

Just in case you didn't get that, if you already have customers leaving by the truckload and a LARGE NUMBER of your remaining customers complain about a proposed feature, YOU DO NOT TELL THEM THAT THEY ARE WRONG IN DISLIKING IT. Even jokingly. I am sorry that some of you fanboys think they need to 'shut up the whiners', but that is a BAD attitude to have in a buisness enviroment. Should he have addressed the issue? Absolutely, but NOT like this. That ENTIRE POST was just a long list of "You're wrong, we're right, and here is our flimsy and hole filled reasoning."

[Palemoon]

i played a drinking game with this article where i took a shot every time blizzard told there paying customers they were wrong.im going to go throw up now and lay down. dont feel well

Because...paying makes you automatically right on every topic and opinion?

[underdogba]

We immediately know we can't take anything they have to say in this blue post seriously, because they actually believe that Avatar is not going to be mandatory for all dps warriors!This reminds me of a post where GC suggested that some pally tanks would take Judgments of the Pure. I'm not sure what universe of suboptimal play the dev team lives in.