Upcoming talent change gutting

[Raiju]

He isn't saying you can't. Hes playing devils advocate and replying to furitrix because she said "switching talents undermines the talent system"

Hes saying that "not being able to switch would undermine it even more than being able to switch.

That's known as a strawman.

[Relapses]

Yep, there's a reason I'm not comparing with WoD, because it is the same issue, as it was in MoP; this is why I'm comparing with Wrath. I don't think MoP or WoD were the right models either.

Talents pre-MoP rework were very different than they are today. Most of it was shit like "5% more Frost damage" not literal gameplay impacting changes like AS vs CoP for SPriests. Cookie cutter talent trees were popular pre-MoP because there was so much useless shit in the talent tree. The rework was introduced to encourage players to change talent based on the situation at hand while baking some of the bloat from the previous talent trees into the basic specialization. This system literally does the exact opposite while still retaining a talent system which innately encourages situational adaptation.

[deadman1]

Yes i don't know it because you seem to be arguing instinctively against everyone

I'm not arguing "with everyone" I'm trying to express my point. I'm not insulting anyone I'm stating my opinion mixed with hard facts.

BUT a change might be needed because the nature of the talents also changed.
On live most talents usually have the same purpose, you have a row with defensive abilities, a row with movement, a row with damage, etc, very few exceptions and the intent being to choose whatever talent fits your playstyle, if you want a simple rotation with passives, if you want extra buttons to your rotation, if you want to manage buffs/debuffs, etc.

The issue is when ST and AoE spells find their way onto the same talent tier.

On beta the talents have completely different purposes, you have a talent clearly for single target and on the same row another one for AoE (check the prot pala tier 1 for a good example). In your average dungeon you have both of these talents in the same time, whenever you need them. You don't even have the confirmation window so that's one less click. You can argue if they should have gone this road or not but if this is the new talent philosophy the easily changeable talents make them pointless.

You could argue that hard to change talents make them pointless as well, why have multiple if it takes multiple steps to change them? To be clear, that's not what I want, just apply a cost or a more reasonably priced reagent, that would be the best for the current type of talent tree.

Otherwise we need a talent tree overhaul.

You're essentially doing this, congratulations but it's not something to be smug about.

I'm not smug about anything. Nor do I think I'm special for changing talents. I'm asking "if they aren't going to change the simple talent system, why add an extra step" I've made this clear many times in this thread.

[Jessicka]

Yes i don't know it because you seem to be arguing instinctively against everyone BUT a change might be needed because the nature of the talents also changed.
On live most talents usually have the same purpose, you have a row with defensive abilities, a row with movement, a row with damage, etc, very few exceptions and the intent being to choose whatever talent fits your playstyle, if you want a simple rotation with passives, if you want extra buttons to your rotation, if you want to manage buffs/debuffs, etc.

On beta the talents have completely different purposes, you have a talent clearly for single target and on the same row another one for AoE (check the prot pala tier 1 for a good example). In your average dungeon you have both of these talents in the same time, whenever you need them. You don't even have the confirmation window so that's one less click. You can argue if they should have gone this road or not but if this is the new talent philosophy the easily changeable talents make them pointless.
You're essentially doing this, congratulations but it's not something to be smug about.

I'm pretty sure talents can be changed by macro between pulls, which makes the idea of them being a 'choice' or somehow 'locked in' entirely moot.

[deadman1]

That's known as a strawman.

If that is a strawman so is what furitrix is saying.

By definition, neither are strawman arguments.

[Jessicka]

Talents pre-MoP rework were very different than they are today. Most of it was shit like "5% more Frost damage" not literal gameplay impacting changes like AS vs CoP for SPriests. Cookie cutter talent trees were popular pre-MoP because there was so much useless shit in the talent tree. The rework was introduced to encourage players to change talent based on the situation at hand while baking some of the bloat from the previous talent trees into the basic specialization. This system literally does the exact opposite while still retaining a talent system which innately encourages situational adaptation.

Again, it's hardly "adaptation" when you can swap talents by macro between pulls. It becomes more like a 'stance'.

[Relapses]

Again, it's hardly "adaptation" when you can swap talents by macro between pulls. It becomes more like a 'stance'.

I just don't understand why people consider this a bad thing. Why add systems to the game which prohibit players from choice when the very reason such a system was ever introduced was to encourage it? To me, it just seems like a very weird 180 from Blizzard since players are still going to change talents, just now they'll either be taxed or forced to wait for a summon back.

[Will]

This is 1 minor step forward with about 500 steps back...

500 steps back? You're overreacting like fuck. It's just an item scribes make that you can drop and use to respec freely. Why is this such a big deal? Inscription needs some love.

Let's wait and see what mats this item takes to make, and/if/or how high it stacks in our bags.

[deadman1]

500 steps back? You're overreacting like fuck. It's just an item scribes make that you can drop and use to respec freely. Why is this such a big deal? Inscription needs some love.

Let's wait and see what mats this item takes to make, and/if/or how high it stacks in our bags.

The issue isn't that "scribes are making money"

The issue is that it's going to be priced for large groups, it's not something that individuals are going to put down while questing.

[Jessicka]

I just don't understand why people consider this a bad thing. Why add systems to the game which prohibit players from choice when the very reason such a system was ever introduced was to encourage it? To me, it just seems like a very weird 180 from Blizzard since players are still going to change talents, just now they'll either be taxed or forced to wait for a summon back.

Because people aren't using the choice in the way it was intended.

[deadman1]

Because people aren't using the choice in the way it was intended.

The new talent system was implemented so that you could swap talents on the fly.

All they have to do is add some price or vendor reagent. So that it has some sort of impact, but not something that you have to travel for or use a raid reagent for.

[Deleted]

This is why people need to stop complaining about pointless shit, lol.

Being charged gold was perfectly fine, it was a gold sink for the rich and it encouraged poorer players to go and play the content to earn the gold, it was a win win really.

But now we have this... so well done whiners.

[Relapses]

Because people aren't using the choice in the way it was intended.

It's a choice. How can you possibly determine what people are choosing to talent (or not talent) is somehow against its original design?

Again, this unfairly impacts classes which may have more choices in their talent trees than others. Say you have a Rogue and Mage in a raid, the Mage uses the same spec for everything because there isn't any compelling reason for them to choose otherwise. Meanwhile, the Rogue is asking for the Inscription item every other boss because his talents are far less streamlined and certain encounters require certain talents. It's not the Rogue's fault the Mage has an easier time yet the whole raid is impacted because they have to either spend money on the Inscription item or spend time waiting for the Rogue to be summoned back.

Why put players through this? How is this somehow a better solution than just paying gold to respec?

[Saul Goodman]

This is going to be so dumb for raiding they do realize that if they make getting those tomes even slightly hard to obtain that any raider is just going to hearthstone to Dalaran switch talents and take a summon back?

I get your point. But who has there hearth set to dal? My main hearth has been set for the shrine since it has all the major portals unless ofcourse you're lvling out in northrend. :P

[deadman1]

My point is that the current talent tree was built around hot swapping, if they make it harder to hot swap, then then need to change the talent tree to reflect their new design philosophies.

Inb4 "but Mush how do you know that the talent trees were intended for hot swapping?
From multiple devs

Ghostcrawler - At absolute worst a given talent may be the right one only situationally, and at best, players will have a lot more customization to make their play-style stand out. Furthermore, the fact that you’ll have more flexibility to change your talents should help keep gameplay fresh, even with that character that you play most often

Source

Takralus - The choice comes, hopefully, from choosing talents that appeal to how you like to play or what you think would be particularly useful for a specific boss, fight, or encounter, and the ability to swap around points freely while out in the world help reinforce that.

Source

Lylirra - For Mists of Pandaria, we want to move toward something that feels more flexible, yet eliminates many of the flaws of the old system at the same time. More importantly, we want players to gain access to important class performance abilities easily while ensuring that the more engaging utility abilities, where all the choices a player makes are meaningful, are front and center. Getting there will take some major changes.

Source

[Jessicka]

The new talent system was implemented so that you could swap talents on the fly.

All they have to do is add some price or vendor reagent. So that it has some sort of impact, but not something that you have to travel for or use a raid reagent for.

It wasn't implemented to be used quite so 'on the fly' as it ended up being hence the reagent cost. Lot's of things in game have been changed because of unintended consequences of changes made with other intentions.

[Deleted]

I get your point. But who has there hearth set to dal? My main hearth has been set for the shrine since it has all the major portals unless ofcourse you're lvling out in northrend. :P

Dalaran will be the capital in Legion...

[deadman1]

It wasn't implemented to be used quite so 'on the fly' as it ended up being hence the reagent cost. Lot's of things in game have been changed because of unintended consequences of changes made with other intentions.

From multiple devs/blizzard spokespeople.

Takralus - The choice comes, hopefully, from choosing talents that appeal to how you like to play or what you think would be particularly useful for a specific boss, fight, or encounter, and the ability to swap around points freely while out in the world help reinforce that.

Source

Ghostcrawler - At absolute worst a given talent may be the right one only situationally, and at best, players will have a lot more customization to make their play-style stand out. Furthermore, the fact that you’ll have more flexibility to change your talents should help keep gameplay fresh, even with that character that you play most often

Source

Lylirra - For Mists of Pandaria, we want to move toward something that feels more flexible, yet eliminates many of the flaws of the old system at the same time. More importantly, we want players to gain access to important class performance abilities easily while ensuring that the more engaging utility abilities, where all the choices a player makes are meaningful, are front and center. Getting there will take some major changes.

Source

[rda]

My point is that the current talent tree was built around hot swapping, if they make it harder to hot swap, then then need to change the talent tree to reflect their new design philosophies.

Inb4 "but Mush how do you know that the talent trees were intended for hot swapping?
From multiple devs

Ghostcrawler - At absolute worst a given talent may be the right one only situationally, and at best, players will have a lot more customization to make their play-style stand out. Furthermore, the fact that you’ll have more flexibility to change your talents should help keep gameplay fresh, even with that character that you play most often

Source

Takralus - The choice comes, hopefully, from choosing talents that appeal to how you like to play or what you think would be particularly useful for a specific boss, fight, or encounter, and the ability to swap around points freely while out in the world help reinforce that.

Source

Lylirra - For Mists of Pandaria, we want to move toward something that feels more flexible, yet eliminates many of the flaws of the old system at the same time. More importantly, we want players to gain access to important class performance abilities easily while ensuring that the more engaging utility abilities, where all the choices a player makes are meaningful, are front and center. Getting there will take some major changes.

Source

That's a great display of quotes, thank you.

They really didn't think the change through. It is completely clear that Ion Hazzikostas makes his blue posts out of thin air on the spot. He thinks he is so smooth he can sell ice cream in winter, he'll just put whatever he thinks into words and players are going to see how wise it is. Well, that doesn't work, whatever he thinks should be wise in the first place, and in this case it isn't wise and goes against what they did before, what we accepted as a good idea and became accustomed to.

[Cebel]

Well blame the folks that didn't want to pay out for a spec change.. But if from another convo I had on here leads me to believe this change was going to happen anyway..

Ppl didnt want to pay because its fucking retarded. Its 2016. We're the head of our CLASS ORDER HALLS, wtf is some mage trainer supposed to teach us, where does the gold go? The twisting nether tax?

Blizzard has no clue what to add accessibility TOO, and what to take accessibility FROM.

They're clearly disconnected from their playerbase at the moment, and honestly I think a lot of it is celestalons fault, he's an arrogant person who always thinks he knows best.