[Talent trees] Dynamic player choice

[Deleted]

Hello mmo-champion community, I rarely post on your forum, but I think you might like my idea,

This is a quote of the OP from official EU Suggestion forum topic:

I would like to suggest that maybe the time has come to allow players to dynamically adjust SOME MINOR talents.
In this I mean that under certain, rather common conditions players would be able to adjust their talent points, or some of them. For example - out of combat and talents-changed/time limit.

We've seen dual talent spec starting off with "you can only change it in the capital" and being changed and I think the general talent choice (NOT the tree choice) should undergo the same change.


What does the talent lock promote?
+ You feel like you are specced. You ARE a prot warrior. You ARE a fire mage.
+ You can't freely adjust to any situation.

Now I understand both or these are important. You need to have this spec-feel. You can't have full freedom to adjust to situation with just your talents but perhaps compensate with your skill instead. -"Quick! boss is gonna cast a big aoe. Everybody go to your talent tree and spec into defensive talents!"

However look at this:
What does the talent unlock retain?
+ You do choose your primary tree so the spec-feel remains
+ You can't adjust your talents in-combat, so you won't come to the situation where you swiftly adjust your talents because you happen to match up agains a certain class-spec in an arena or whatever.

What does the talent unlock promote?
+ Player judgement and decision based on knowledge of the encounter (both PvE and PvP [battle size/atack/defense]) comes much more into play rewarding you for being a good player
+ You are no longer penilised for not spending gold, and wasting other f.ex. raiders time to achieve your best at the fight.

It's often that I feel
"Hm, I could realy do better at this fight if I just changed 2 points around, but I need them for the rest of the isntance". Why do I need to know that I could make myself play better, but constrained - I'm down for the sake of generalisation?.

I think the important question is:
How do we find the sweet spot in limiting the freedom
And I think obviously blizzard would have the best ideas here, but maybe some some suggestions:
+ Probably very reasonable - only out of combat.
+ You could make talents themselfes shiftable or not. For example - if you put a point into Pain Suppression - it's locked. If you put a point into Reflective Shields - you can unlearn it on your own and put it elsewhere.

Player decision aspect will distinguish good players from bad players and that as a goal in game design is prime for me.

Tell me what you think, even if you just agree. It will bring attention to this issue and perhaps give some good ideas to use.

You can find the oryginal topic on EU Suggestion forums by the same title, made by "Hugsy" from Jaedenar. The mmo-champ prevents me from posting links because of my small post count.

[Deralte]

I can't see this happening. Blizzard wants you to think about your spec, so if you have some suboptimal talents for some fights, i think thats fine.
Also, pvp: The line between a pvp and a pve spec is sometimes really small, just a few talent points. Beeing able to switch between a dedicated pve or pvp spec without a cost defeats the purpose of dual spec.

[Grocalis]

The reason this won't work is for the reasons you want it, they don't want to promote people changing specs based on encounters because then they will have to balance every encounter around the idea that people will spec specifically into certain talents for it.

[Deleted]

can you imagine balancing that?

they will have to balance every encounter around the idea that people will spec specifically into certain talents for it.

I don't think it would be a big issue.
After all they aready have to design encounters etc with the possibility that players will spec in the optimum way specifically for it (like for example all mages were speccing aoe frostfire at the Anub HM launch). This doesn't bring anything new into the balance design since all the talent combinations are already there.

Blizzard wants you to think about your spec

Right now you can only think about your spec to get the most generalised universal version. With the unlock - you could rethink your talent choices with every encounter.

[Soulseizeer]

I hope something like this will NEVER happen. I already feel like the talent trees are really limited and with a change like this we might as well just skip the whole talentpoint thingie and go directly to one class, three specs and some glyphs. I'd rather we in the direct opposite direction and make even more situational talents and spells so your choices REALLY make a difference in your characters mechanic/playstyle.

I must say i have no real high end insight in other classes than my priest, but atm i don't feel like i'm missing out on any talents when speccing. I'd love to have to choose between eg. 'body and soul' vs 'leap of faith'. Both are awesome spells but to have to choose between them would really make me feel like i'm customizing my character beyond the three specs.

Maybe it's just me but thats how i feel.

[Grocalis]

I don't think it would be a big issue.
After all they aready have to design encounters etc with the possibility that players will spec in the optimum way specifically for it (like for example all mages were speccing aoe frostfire at the Anub HM launch). This doesn't bring anything new into the balance design since all the talent combinations are already there.

Just because the top guilds often take the time to do it, does not mean they balance for it, because they know most players won't care. By adding a quick and easy way to change talents during the raids, you make it become more of a consideration outside of the 5% at the top, thus it becomes "part of the system" and they would be forced to balance around that much like they do with buffs and such.

I would rather that not happen. I like keeping my build generalized based on what I prefer rather then feeling I have to "switch it up" every new boss.

[Deleted]

I would rather that not happen. I like keeping my build generalized based on what I prefer rather then feeling I have to "switch it up" every new boss.

Well right now you can go to the capital, respec and get back for the boss but you don't have to.
In that case you could switch the 2 points around, but you wouldn't have to.
Same deal, only more convenient for the player.

I still don't think it would be an issue to balance encounters. I don't see any case where this would cause blizz to think "oh shizzle, but maybe certain players will take this talent, and it will trivialise the encounter". I don't think they allow themselves to make such mechanics anyway. Now or then, just because a player could have the talent in their current perm build anyway.

Anyway I was thinking rather smaller adjustments
Like for example choice between interrupt=haste and blink=speedup for mages. A simple thinking ahead instead of going headon into the encounter and playing a speac you looked up on EJ.

I don't expect any talents to be changable in the way that blizz would make encounters:
"Ok so this boss will at some point deal 1mln to mages and so they will have to spec Cauterize!"

Like I said in the main post - they could make most talents locked and unlock some of them - the less important ones.

[Guesswho69]

The easiest solution to what your proposing is for blizzard to just cut down the number of talent points that can be spent in a tree to 31 points. That way you can pick everything in the tree.

[Deleted]

Not realy

My main point is that player does some decisions based on the understanding of the encounter and class more frequently than currently.

With getting all the talents there isn't any decision making at all.

[Deleted]

I find it funny that I proposed something similar to this in the topic about triple spec maybe an hour ago.
Anyway, I like the idea, but I also think that dualspeccing (triple?) needs to be reconsidered somehow to go along with this.