WoW: The RPG Without Customization

[A dot Ham]

Ah the illusion of choice is strong.

I wish armories had really detailed information so we could go back and see just how "unique" these pro-choice/pro-customization advocates really are/were.

The whole issue, is that even with choice/options the vast majority of players are choosing the same talents/allocating points the same anyway. So if all you did is wait for someone to publish a guide and then copied said guide... what difference does it make?

Even today with a few choices for talents that ARE meant to be changed according to the mechanics of the encounter, the majority of players are opting not to.


The one thing these threads always lack, is they fail to deliver a coherent argument and supporting data that either

(a) the game was better with choice

(b) that your choice to deviate from the norm was measurably better

[MoanaLisa]

The one thing these threads always lack, is they fail to deliver a coherent argument and supporting data that either

(a) the game was better with choice

(b) that your choice to deviate from the norm was measurably better

There is no supporting data worth looking at when the options are subjective. What's better? What's measurable about better? You can't answer the second question without answering the first and the first is personal to each player.

[kary]

There is no supporting data worth looking at when the options are subjective. What's better? What's measurable about better? You can't answer the second question without answering the first and the first is personal to each player.

Participation numbers are quantifiable and trackable.
Those are highly indicative of the success of a system.

[Deleted]

Ah the illusion of choice is strong.

I wish armories had really detailed information so we could go back and see just how "unique" these pro-choice/pro-customization advocates really are/were.

You want proof? We would have to go one by one and explore the internetz for each individual spec. That's too much work but i guess i can try for a few specs.
But didn't you play in WotlK? When the hybrid specs started to appear?

Shockadin - Arena Master Shockadin Video
Deathknights - Thread of Deathknights discussing the endless possibilities in talents
At one point someone said "wtf DK is the most hybrid-friendly class there is in Wotlk" - page 2
HARP Rogue - S3 Gladiator 2338 rating Video (no sound)
Boomkin Tank - Thread with the builds and opinions and Video
Tank Warlock - Only possible with a Glyph (customization) later was patched by Blizzard
Mage - Video of a famous mage playing 3 different hybrid mage specs (watch description)

The one thing these threads always lack, is they fail to deliver a coherent argument and supporting data that either

(a) the game was better with choice

(b) that your choice to deviate from the norm was measurably better

How can choice be worse? Choice is good most of the times. And in some videogames all the fun comes from experimenting different playstyles.
Choice is only bad for the "clueless gamer" who have no idea what to do...but they can always check the internet for the optimal single target DPS.

[huth]

Participation numbers are quantifiable and trackable.
Those are highly indicative of the success of a system.

Only if participation is optional, which it wasn't really with the systems in question. There's other ways of quantifying subjective opinions, though.

How can choice be worse? Choice is good most of the times. And in some videogames all the fun comes from experimenting different playstyles.
Choice is only bad for the "clueless gamer" who have no idea what to do...but they can always check the internet for the optimal single target DPS.

To much choice can easily overwhelm even prepared players, never mind the balancing team. Check up on "combinatorial explosion".

[A dot Ham]

There is no supporting data worth looking at when the options are subjective. What's better? What's measurable about better? You can't answer the second question without answering the first and the first is personal to each player.

Which is partially my point.

If you can't define or measure why something is better with customization, then how do you make the assertion that it is worse without it?

Blizzard may not have published their internal research or data, but they definitely did the work to determine the use and success of that "choice" based system. To maintain a useless system (and by that I mean the majority wasn't using it) for posterity's sake or the novelty is a fool's errand.

Now granted I realize I am talking to the one person who has professed to "playing with talents" and occasionally doing it "wrong" for the sake of getting the right "feel" or whatever you did it for. You have to admit that you are/were an exception. Very rarely is the (exception) taken into account when we talk about changing anything be it WoW, all games, laws, policies, medicine, life, death, etc.

In regards to (b) you can measure if something performed "better" was it developer intent for "x class" to have slightly more survivability, or more dps? Which talent improves or fits that design intent? That makes it the right answer. Your desire to be more tanky at the expense of dps... may be understandable... but it also may be unintended. If design intent is better served by removing those choices, then so be it. You also have to account for the fact that SOME people may not have chosen the opposite of optimum for any other reason than they simply did not know any better and it SEEMED like the right thing at the time. Add wrong choice to the set it and forget it practice of the majority and you have a player who might have wanted to be playing at their optimum and simply didn't know any better and wouldn't recognize the issue unless someone pointed it out.

Lastly the "balance excuse" is actually a somewhat valid excuse.

Lets say you're sitting face to face with a class developer to discuss specific imbalances within your class.

The first question that is going to be asked is: What build are you using?

Blizzard has determined that (x build) is the optimum build?

But the player has been using (y build), so the player asks... well why didn't you just tell me this was the optimum build?

We gave you choice. Come back to us in a week or 2 when you mastered (x build).

So we can prolong the entire balance discussion or ignore concerns simply because you aren't choosing what is optimum for high level play.

So now you come back and you have issues. But we determine that while your talent build is now "correct" you are still playing according to your (y build).

So then we come back a week or so later to revisit it, and sure enough you're still a bit low in dps, "x ability" isn't critting nearly enough... so we decide to fix your % to crit talent.

So what you end up with are an entire group of players who are unhappy with their performance because they aren't choosing the optimum build.

It makes then far more sense to make 1 build according to designer/developer intent and make those that follow that happy. At least then someone is happy. Someone is relatively balanced.

- - - Updated - - -

You want proof? We would have to go one by one and explore the internetz for each individual spec. That's too much work but i guess i can try for a few specs.
But didn't you play in WotlK? When the hybrid specs started to appear?

Shockadin - Arena Master Shockadin Video
Deathknights - Thread of Deathknights discussing the endless possibilities in talents
At one point someone said "wtf DK is the most hybrid-friendly class there is in Wotlk" - page 2
HARP Rogue - S3 Gladiator 2338 rating Video (no sound)
Boomkin Tank - Thread with the builds and opinions and Video
Tank Warlock - Only possible with a Glyph (customization) later was patched by Blizzard
Mage - Video of a famous mage playing 3 different hybrid mage specs (watch description)

I've played since vanilla. Happy to "prove" it if that makes my opinion any more "valid". Though that's a very childish position to take if you ask me.

I'm also 31, and college educated just to take care of any more logical fallacies that are bound to be presented.

You have presented here a list of very broken spec options that were not only completely unbalanced but deviated immensely from the design direction of the class/spec. Which really only gives credence to the issue of Balancing PvP and World Content... an issue that you have surreptitiously deemed "bullcrap".

[Jorah]

Yeah i agree. Even AW traits don't gives choice - all can be learned with grind. Talent tree is joke with "choose one OP talent among three in each line". Hell even gear attributes have bad customization - one main (str/agi/int) one common (stamina) plus 4 anothers with versatility being flat attack/armor %.

[A dot Ham]

How can choice be worse? Choice is good most of the times. And in some videogames all the fun comes from experimenting different playstyles.

Are you serious?

First, you are operating from the opinion that more choice CANNOT be bad. You are quite obviously pretty hard nosed on that opinion. That is demonstrably false, be it games, politics, child raising, animal training, religion, life... the list goes on and on. Choice can be great for the individual and have dire consequences for the collective.
In either case choice can usually be put on a good, better, best spectrum -OR- a spectrum of Wrong <===> Right

Choice is good most of the time. Care to back that up with some relevant data to support? What do you base that "most" on? I hesitate to provide you an anecdotal tale from my WoW and MMO beginnings as it will most assuredly be used against me in another long list of logical fallacies, but suffice to say options can be confusing... regardless of whether or not it "works".

As far as "experimenting" that is 100% your opinion. I have ZERO desire now or ever to test out anything... that is NOT fun for me. Mainly because I know there are better people at it than I. Unlike most I don't have delusions of grandeur, and I have realistic expectation of where I rank in the game... life etc. I strive to be "better" than the majority. If I can win more than I lose, kill more than I die... then I can only move up.

Now granted the "experimentation" you are referring to leads to the creation of specs like the ones you cited... but when those deviate from design intent... those discoveries don't last long... do they? So then why bother? Save yourself the heartache and frustration of having something like that taken away. The real issue is (and I'm going to keep this cordial) that you think you are clever, or MORE clever than those that DIDN'T figure it out. But even still... those that will soon mimic said discovery... are still doing the same thing we have been accusing them of... they wait for better players to tell them what to do and they do it. The majority DON'T play around with talents.

Choice is only bad for the "clueless gamer" who have no idea what to do...but they can always check the internet for the optimal single target DPS.

This essentially embodies the entire reason for taking away choice. Just design to intent.

[Deleted]

Are you serious?

First, you are operating from the opinion that more choice CANNOT be bad. You are quite obviously pretty hard nosed on that opinion. That is demonstrably false, be it games, politics, child raising, animal training, religion, life... the list goes on and on. Choice can be great for the individual and have dire consequences for the collective.
In either case choice can usually be put on a good, better, best spectrum -OR- a spectrum of Wrong <===> Right

Choice is good most of the time. Care to back that up with some relevant data to support? What do you base that "most" on? I hesitate to provide you an anecdotal tale from my WoW and MMO beginnings as it will most assuredly be used against me in another long list of logical fallacies, but suffice to say options can be confusing... regardless of whether or not it "works".

As far as "experimenting" that is 100% your opinion. I have ZERO desire now or ever to test out anything... that is NOT fun for me. Mainly because I know there are better people at it than I. Unlike most I don't have delusions of grandeur, and I have realistic expectation of where I rank in the game... life etc. I strive to be "better" than the majority. If I can win more than I lose, kill more than I die... then I can only move up.

How is "lack of choice" better for games, politics, child raising, animal training, religion and life in general? That's dictatorship :S
Choice is bad in politics? It's literally dictatorship
Religion? No choice is better?

Self-expression is such a beautiful thing, even in videogames. If the game allows me freedom to be myself, that's good. It's choice and freedom.
How can freedom be bad?

Only for game balance "lack of choice" is good...

[A dot Ham]

How is "lack of choice" better for games, politics, child raising, animal training, religion and life in general? That's dictatorship :S
Choice is bad in politics? It's literally dictatorship
Religion? No choice is better?

Self-expression is such a beautiful thing, even in videogames. If the game allows me freedom to be myself, that's good. It's choice and freedom.
How can freedom be bad?

Pretty sure I've established why its bad.

Freedom of choice adds a level of uncertainty, unpredictability, those choices have an impact on others. It may benefit you, and disadvantage someone else. It may not be the best for everyone.

I have the choice to not pee in the pool. If I do choose to pee in the pool (1) its gross. (2) there is a cost. Either someone has to pay more to keep the water clean, or the pee I deposit, and the peed others deposit, become so overwhelming that more than 50% is piss. Freedom of choice means people can make the WRONG choice or a BAD choice.

Here's another example. There are a group of us. 1 loaf of bread. You can CHOOSE to take the entire loaf. Great for you right? Not so great for the group. Someone can remove that choice and divide the loaf evenly... and then everyone is on a level playing field.

That is of course ignoring the fact that you have committed another logical fallacy in that the burden of proof lies with to disprove YOUR claim that choice cannot be bad, rather than you having to support your claim.

Also you have far too much admiration for "self" than is healthy, because you're clearly blind to that fact that some people are TERRIBLE and the expression of their inner self is both terrifying and harmful.

[Aliven]

"illusion of choice"...people love to say that about old talent trees. Probably Blizzard said it at one point, im sure of it.

That is bull. From the top of my head there was tank boomkin, tank warlock, HARP Rogue, PoM Mage, Frost/Fire Mage, Shockadin, Cold Blood Preparation Rogue.
Deathknights were all over the place with their new talents in Wotlk and this is proof that if Blizzard wanted to work on talents to allow customization they could do it. And they did it extremely well with Deathknights. They picked talents all over the different trees and made crazy hybrids because of how well the Trees were made from scratch.

If the trees grew bigger and without the restrictions of Cataclysm...today we would have huge variety.
Ofcourse that in single target damage there is always ONE best build, everyone knows that but for some situations you could bring different crazy specs and be optimal. (Dungeons, PvP, World Content)

Educate yourself if you dont know what illusion of choice is.

You only lose choice to gimp yourself and your party because you wanted to be special snowflake. Now you have choices to gimp yourself too. Just less devastating.

BTW there is impossible to have choices if any numerical variations is present. It is impossible. You have decisions, wrong or right. Dont confuse those two.

[huth]

Here's another example. There are a group of us. 1 loaf of bread. You can CHOOSE to take the entire loaf. Great for you right? Not so great for the group. Someone can remove that choice and divide the loaf evenly... and then everyone is on a level playing field.

Depending on the reaction of the group, it may even be bad for everybody involved. Which also brings us back to "illusion of choice" and why having multiple options doesn't automatically mean you have a choice.

[Armakus]

Yeah, not really no. Every single system you talked about didn't really have "customization". They had ONE way you would talent if you wanted to be mildly useful in a raiding environment (and maybe a separate one for a PVP environment) and that was it. The rest was just there to make you feel like you had a choice.

[MoanaLisa]

Participation numbers are quantifiable and trackable.
Those are highly indicative of the success of a system.

That's not the same as better. By those lights Raid Finder is a huge design success. Mythic raiding a dismal failure.

-----------------------------------

And once again, for everyone: balance issues are geometrically complex given the number of options available. Balancing a class with 5 spells is much easier than balancing a class with 12 or 20 simply because there are fewer variable to take into account. So as a designer you get a choice: 1) if balance is a huge concern that you're hearing about via forums or whatever your communication channels are the simplest way to get there is to remove abilities, or 2) provide plenty of abilities of varying kids and intensity and not worry about balance. It's impossible to do both but what Blizzard attempts is to push the line between a feasible number of manageable abilities in a raiding environment (because that's just what they do) and achieving a balance range that varies by a few percent.

[Armakus]

How is "lack of choice" better for games, politics, child raising, animal training, religion and life in general? That's dictatorship :S
Choice is bad in politics? It's literally dictatorship
Religion? No choice is better?

Self-expression is such a beautiful thing, even in videogames. If the game allows me freedom to be myself, that's good. It's choice and freedom.
How can freedom be bad?

Only for game balance "lack of choice" is good...

You're comparing apples to oranges. Let's compare this to something more similar in medium: television or books.

Do your favorite TV shows have "choice"? In the middle of each episode, does the television pause and say "Would you like Frank to die? Live? Text us now and vote!"

What about books? Other than the odd choose-your-own-adventure books that children read, does your favorite book give you options?

No. Because these mediums are made to tell a story, or give a certain emotion, or make you think/play in a way that the creators/developers intended.

[A dot Ham]

That's not the same as better. By those lights Raid Finder is a huge design success. Mythic raiding a dismal failure.

Are they not?

Raid Finder became a design imperative because of the creation of Mythic Raiding and catering to and making a game for only the top 5%.

I will gladly hang up my subscription and allow Blizzard to ONLY make games for those elitist pricks just to watch the game crumble under its own weight, if for no other reason than to say, "I told you so!"

[Deleted]

Literally none of those things weigh heavy or at all on RP elements

[MasterHamster]

There will always be a mathematically optimal build or set, but why the hell do you need to dumb everything down considering that this is inescapable? Nah, gear has to be Stam/mainstat + 2 secondary, talents has to have "all the useless fluff" trimmed away and baked into baseline.

Can't have plateaus, hit rating, armor piercing, resistance, or anything else. Dumb it down, streamline it.

Do you as a tank or healer feel like your gear reflects your role, other than trinkets? Nope, as a tank you're a dps with a Stamina/block Passive slapped on top. As a healer your only difference from a caster is that you dps friendly targets. Removal of Spirit was the final goddamn nail in the coffin for making gearing a healer anything but changing stat weights.

WoW character customization feels more like a long-term MOBA than actual choices. And it's true, players pretty much always copypaste the cookiecutter but actually removing all the "less than optimal" choices is one of many factors that finally killed the RPG elements of WoW and turned the game into some sort of hybrid between MMO and a MOBA.Jump in, follow a guide or addon that tells you exactly what to choose in every area of the game, win.


If it's all about being optimal, you might as well argue that talents, enchants, relics or anything else that has choice/random component to it be removed. Make all gear into Stamina/Main stat and 1 preferred secondary. Make itemlevel the absolute and only indicator of item strength.

[Deleted]

Pretty sure I've established why its bad.

Freedom of choice adds a level of uncertainty, unpredictability, those choices have an impact on others. It may benefit you, and disadvantage someone else. It may not be the best for everyone.

I have the choice to not pee in the pool. If I do choose to pee in the pool (1) its gross. (2) there is a cost. Either someone has to pay more to keep the water clean, or the pee I deposit, and the peed others deposit, become so overwhelming that more than 50% is piss. Freedom of choice means people can make the WRONG choice or a BAD choice.

Here's another example. There are a group of us. 1 loaf of bread. You can CHOOSE to take the entire loaf. Great for you right? Not so great for the group. Someone can remove that choice and divide the loaf evenly... and then everyone is on a level playing field.

That is of course ignoring the fact that you have committed another logical fallacy in that the burden of proof lies with to disprove YOUR claim that choice cannot be bad, rather than you having to support your claim.

Also you have far too much admiration for "self" than is healthy, because you're clearly blind to that fact that some people are TERRIBLE and the expression of their inner self is both terrifying and harmful.

At best you could say that i'm hurting my group for not bringing the optimal spec but that happens even today.
There will always be the "clueless gamer" no matter if there is Talent Trees or not. Even with todays Talents there are clueless gamers. That can never be fixed.

If you can make a talent tree that fits your own playstyle then it's better than having the "best build" and having no idea how to use it.

What if the optimal build has 20 buttons to press and i don't have the mechanical skill for that?
I could create a build that fits my playstyle and make one with 8 buttons.
What if the optimal build has to manage a lot of debuffs and buffs and i dont have the mechanical skill for that? Same thing, with customization i could create one without that.
Too many cooldowns to manage? Let me pick one with less cooldowns.

Choice is usually good.
I can only understand your hate for "freedom of choice" if i'm trully hurting other people. I can see your problem now.
But that is only true for people who are (like you said) terrible.

And you want me to prove "choice is never bad"?
I never said choice is never bad but i say choice is "most of the times" better than "no choice"
Whats the first thing that comes to your mind when you think "no choice"? Dictatorship, suppression, racism, discrimination, human rights, lack of freedom.

[Khallid]

-Removal of Hybrid Talents
-Removal of Talent Trees
-Removal of Gems in every piece of gear and Meta gem
-Removal of Glyphs
-Removal of Reforging
-PvP Templates
-Artifact Weapon (same skills for everyone)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyone else feels sad about the fact that "Customization" is frowned upon by Blizzard?
Imagination, experimentation and testing are pretty much forbidden and replaced by a standard gameplay everyone must play.

The excuse of Blizzard is "there is always a cookie cutter build"
I agree that in PvE-single target damage there is always a "cookie cutter" build of "stand still and do the most DPS"
But for PvP and World Content...there are always a million different choices you can take to be optimal. (Utility, Survival, Burst, Hybrid etc)
I call bullcrap on this excuse and i say they removed customization because is just easier to balance the game from day one.

• Was it really necessary to remove all types of customization from the game just because "there is always a cookie cutter build for single target PvE"?
  
• What about coming up with crazy new stuff that, if not optimal, it could be the gameplay you enjoy the most?
  
• Isn't "Customization" essential for a good RPG experience?

Anyway, i know we are way past that point and customization is never coming back strong (Netherlight Crucible, just a little taste) I just wanted to know if anyone else feels as sad as me on this topic.

My impression is simply that they change things every expansion to avoid it being completely stale. That the changes have been reducing customization is probably unintentional. Devs try to fix flaws in previous systems, and systems with fewer degrees of uncertainty are easier to control and balance. It makes a lot of sense if you actually try to think what the job of a developer is like.