Diablo 3 - Announcement - Simplified Skill Tooltips

Seeing the Forest for the Talent Trees
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We’ve gotten a lot of feedback on our crazy, exciting, and scary talent overhaul, for which we are enormously appreciative. For real and for true. We *want* your feedback on the new talents. That is why we are presenting so much detail so early. While we will continue to iterate on talent specifics, your feedback is an important part of that process. Don’t abstain because you’re convinced that things will change without you. Your input is one of our most important tools for improving the game.

We have seen a few consistent responses from players concerned or dismissive about the model, so we thought we’d take the opportunity to explain the philosophy behind some of our decisions, to provide a better framework upon which you can continue giving us feedback.

1. "I have fewer choices."
This is the big one, and the truth is it is ultimately correct. You will have fewer choices. But you will have more choices that *matter*. One of the important philosophies of game design is that interesting choices are fun. The word ‘interesting’ is key. Choosing between a talent that grants 10% damage and one that grants 5% damage, all else being equal, isn't interesting (unless perhaps you’re a superstar role-player). Choosing between a talent that grants you 5% haste or 5% crit might be interesting, but more than likely there is still a right answer (and like most of us, you'll probably just ask someone else what the answer is.) Choosing between a talent that grants you a root or a snare can be interesting. Which does more damage? Hard to say. Which is better? It depends on the situation.

This is why we don't have a clear damage, tanking, and healing talent choice every tier. In the case of the old trees, choosing the talent you want from among the talents that don’t interest you isn’t an interesting decision -- it's a multiple choice test, and an easy one at that. Are you Ret? You probably want the damage option. But what if the Ret player had to choose from three healing talents and couldn't sacrifice healing for damage? Now it gets interesting. Worst case scenario is the player just picks one at random because he refuses to heal. However, he has the ability. Maybe he'll use it in some situation. Meanwhile, other players will be happy that they can benefit more from the hybrid nature of the paladin class without having to give up damage to do so.

2. "There weren't cookie cutter builds."
You're wrong. Next!

To be fair, we did manage to engineer most of the Cataclysm talent trees to include a few legitimate choices. These typically occur when you need to spend enough points to get to the next tier of a tree to get the good stuff. Many specs had 1-4 points to spend wherever they want. That's a huge victory compared to pre-Cataclysm talent trees, but ultimately nothing to really brag about.

It is possible of course to strike a blow for individuality and use a non-cookie cutter build. Ninety-nine percent of the time, these builds are just going to be less effective. The remaining percent of the time, they will eventually become the new cookie-cutter. When players talk about their love of options, I think what they are really saying is they are in love with the idea of having dozens of interesting talents. We just don't think that will ever happen.

Look, we tried the talent tree model for seven years. We think it’s fundamentally flawed and unfixable. We know some of you have faith in us that someday we’ll eventually replace all of the boring +5% crit talents with interesting talents and give you 80 talent points that you can spend wherever, and that the game will still remain relatively balanced and fun. We greatly appreciate your faith, but we fear it is misplaced. It’s not a matter of coming up with enough fun mechanics, which is challenging but ultimately doable. The problem is the extreme number of combinations. When you have such a gigantic matrix, the chances of having unbeatable synergies, or combinations of talents that just don’t work together is really high. That’s not lazy design. That is recognizing how math works.

So given that we don’t think it’s humanly possible to have 40-50 fun, interesting and balanced talents in a tree, the alternative is to continue on with bloated trees that have a ton of inconsequential talents that you have to slog through to get to the fun stuff. A lot of you guys have stuck with us for years, continue to play regularly, and still love World of Warcraft. You are the reason we’re still making this game. We think you deserve better, and we think we can do better.

3. "We'll still have cookie-cutter builds with the new design."
I am slightly amused by the number of comments that say "The theorycrafters will just math out which is the right talent and we'll all just pick that one." But the theorycrafters aren’t agreeing with those comments, because they know they won’t be able to.

Just to make sure, I chose several specs at random and researched their builds. Sure enough, even with the Cataclysm builds today, you see quotes like “spend the last two points wherever you want” or “choose X or Y at your discretion.” It is “easy” (which I put in quotes because theorycrafters devote a lot of time and neurons to it) to determine the value of a DPS talent like Incite or Ignite. It is hard to determine the DPS value of Improved Sprint or Lichborne. Most of the Mists talents are things like the latter. Now there are still some pure throughput (damage, healing, or tanking) talents in the trees. We expect there will sometimes be a right answer as to which talent to take for those roles. On a fight like Baelroc (one boss, no adds), Bladestorm and Shockwave probably aren't competitive with Avatar. We're okay with that, because on Beth'tilac (lots of adds) they definitely can be and it will depend a lot on your play style and the role you have in the fight. However, given that we know a player can only have one of those three talents and that the synergistic effects from those talents with other talents are limited, it is much easier for us to balance say the healing value of Archangel and Divine Star. Despite what you read on the forums, we actually have gotten better at balancing World of Warcraft over the years.

4. "No rewards for leveling."
Once upon a time, you got a new talent point every level. That worked okay for a game with 60 levels. It works less well for a game with 90 levels. It probably is totally incomprehensible for a game with 150 levels, should we ever get there. We keep bumping the level cap because frankly it’s fun and we haven’t yet come up with a progression mechanism that will feel quite as good.

Leveling is pretty fast these days and fairly rewarding, in that you see lots of new content and get gear quickly, which is something we have trouble replicating at max level (though stay tuned for Mists of Pandaria). On top of that, you’ll still get lots of abilities as you level up. Instead of having to click Raging Blow, we’ll just give it to you, because frankly if you skip it, you’re making a mistake (or you’re RPing a Fury warrior who has taken too many blows to the head). There are gaps in getting new abilities, especially at high level, because we don’t want players to have to have four rows of action bars to play their character. Again, that is just the blessing and curse of having a game with so many levels.

Third, I’ll challenge the notion of just how interesting it is to get that second point in Pain and Suffering or Rule of Law while leveling. Do you really notice that you now kill a creature in 2.9 GCDs instead of 3 GCDs? (But see below for a bit more on this.) There are some game-challenging talents of course, like Shadowform, but as we just discussed, you'll still get those.

Finally, the reality is that for many players, WoW has become a game focused on max level. Back in the day, leveling a fleet of alts was really compelling gameplay, but for many of the old-timers, there just isn’t a ton of interest in making a second mage or whatever. Hopefully account-level achievements will help with that somewhat, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect all of our long-term players to have thirty or more characters at some point in the future. It’s a fair concern that the new talent system is geared more towards making max level exciting, but that’s also where players tend to spend most of their WoW-playing hours these days. We don’t know yet what we are going to do for players who want to play a monk but just can’t stomach the idea of hitting Hellfire Peninsula one more time, and how we solve the problem when you get a friend to try WoW, only to discover that your pal will need to spend several weeks or months getting up to max level before he or she is ready to join your Arena team or raid group. But these feel like problems we are going to have to solve at some point.

5. "I like being better than noobs."
It was surprising and a bit disappointing at how frequently we saw this argument. The players in question fully admit that they don't experiment to find the best build. They accept the cookie cutter spec that is offered from a website, but then they use the fact that they knew the cookie cutter to mock players who don't. Intimate knowledge of game mechanics certainly is and should be a component of skill. But knowing how to Google "4.3 Shadow spec" doesn't automatically make you a better player. Sorry, but I’m just going to dismiss this one as an illegitimate concern.

6. "The talents are all PvP choices."
We see this response from players who say “I don’t care about PvP,” or “raid bosses can’t be snared,” or even “I am a solo player, so I don’t need a defensive cooldown.”

First, a lot of players do care about PvP, and almost every choice in the new talent model will be interesting for them. We are also taking some steps with Mists to encourage more crossover between PvP and PvE as the game once had, so even if you don’t care for PvP now, maybe we can get you interested in the future.

Second, a lot of raid bosses can’t be snared, but their adds and trash sure can be. We don’t do a lot of Patchwerk fights these days. Crowd control, movement increases, and defensive cooldowns are all an important part of raid encounters these days. They are even a part of dungeon encounters until you overgear the content.

Now if you're a solo player or a fairly casual raider and you don't often find the need to use crowd control or hit a defensive cooldown, then maybe the choice isn't compelling. But we think that's a problem with the game. I think it’s a fair complaint that our outdoor world creatures have become a little monotonous over the years. Once upon a time, you could choose to take on that camp of gnolls, or you could try and handle the elite ogres, or you might get a patrolling kobold. While we don’t want outdoor leveling to be brutally difficult, that doesn’t mean that every situation needs to be solved with 3 Sinister Strikes. Imagine a cave full of weak spiders. You can choose to AE them all down, use a movement cooldown to get through the cave quickly, use a defensive cooldown to survive the damage, or use your heals to keep you up. When players use their full toolbox of abilities intelligently, they tend to feel good about their character and the game. But it is our responsibility to engineer more of those situations into the world.

7. "Spec doesn’t matter."
This is a concern especially for warriors, priests, DKs and the pure classes (those characters who have multiple specs of the same role). What we have concluded is that many players want to choose their spec based on flavor (“I want to be the mage who uses Frost magic”) or rotation (“I like the fast gameplay of the Frost DK”). While the raid buff / debuff matrix and spec utility helps to encourage diversity among groups and discourage raid stacking, it’s also a little lame when the Affliction lock is asked to spec Demonology (against the player’s desire) in order to bring a specific buff. In Mists, we want players to have even more flexibility about which character they want to play. Asking a player to swap from damage to tanking for a couple of fights is acceptable to us. Asking someone to respec from Unholy to Frost just for the debuff is not.

There will still be some utility in the various specs, but less than we have today. You should pick a spec because you like the rotation or the kit. Fire is about crit, Hot Streak, and Ignite. Frost is about Shatter combos and the Water Elemental. Arcane is about mana management and clearing Arcane Blast stacks.

8. “It must be new to be good.”
This is a tricky one. Specifically, the warlock and druid trees include a lot of new talent ideas simply because we felt like those classes needed them. While we want to make an effort to add some new mechanics every expansion just to keep things fresh, we don’t want to arbitrarily replace fun talents that have stood the test of time just in the name of change for change’s sake. Bladestorm is fun. Body and Soul is fun. Shadowstep is fun.

From a designer’s perspective, the half-life of a new spell or talent idea is fleetingly short. You know how when you buy a new car and drive it off the lot it immediately loses a huge chunk of its value? New game ideas are like that. Seeing something brand new is super exhilarating, but that thrill just doesn’t last. I suspect even by the time Mists launches, we will see a lot of comments along the lines of “When are druids going to get something new? We haven’t seen any new ideas since November!”

It isn’t our goal to come up with 18 new talents for every class. We want to come up with 18 fun talents, and that’s going to mean a mix of old and new. Try not to confuse “shiny” with “good,” and we’ll try on our end not to fall into that trap as well.

9. “You overhaul talents every expansion. Please leave well enough alone.”
This is another tricky issue, because neither extreme (stagnation versus constant design churn) is appealing, and every individual player (and designer!) has a different definition of where those extremes lie. We changed talent trees in Cataclysm to try and fix some of the underlying problems the talent design had since its inception. We actually considered going to the Mists model for Cataclysm, but we were worried that the change would be too shocking to players, so we went with a more restrained design first. As often happens with compromises, it didn’t fix the underlying problems. Our hope is that this new design solves them once and for all. That isn’t a promise to not change talents for 6.0, 7.0, and beyond. But we hope that an overhaul this drastic isn’t necessary again for a long time to come.
MMOs are inherently living designs that are going to change over time. This is particularly true of subscription models, where players rightly expect to see something for their monthly payment. We don’t think it’s fair to cling to designs that aren’t working just because that’s the design we shipped with. As we have discussed a great deal lately, we will try to limit our big design changes to new expansions, but it’s just not in our DNA to leave something at a B- level if we think we can make it A+.

10. “You’ve got your minds made up and don’t care about what we think.”
You’re wrong. Next!

As I have said a million times, good games (maybe good anything) can’t be designed by popular vote. Our design feedback process is about making informed decisions. The developers will make the decisions we feel are right for the game, but we’ll do that armed with the feedback from players about what is fun and not fun for them. If you want to provide the best feedback possible, try to be succinct (we get a lot of feedback), try to be specific (why don’t you like something), and don’t assume you speak for everyone (game design, like art, is often subjective). Don’t get upset if we don’t implement your idea -- that’s just not a realistic expectation. Don’t confuse the echo chamber phenomenon that can occur in forum discussions for consensus. Most importantly, try to remember what will be fun for everyone, and not just your character.

One more thing to keep in mind: Playing with the new talent system in-game is really different from choosing talents on “paper.” Some of the decisions we made didn’t come about until we could get into the game and see how leveling and playing actually felt. Once we’re in alpha, many of you guys will be able to give us some more concrete feedback. We understand that, and we’re pushing for doing that just as soon as we can. In the meantime, enjoy the Hour of Twilight.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Seeing the Forest for the Talent Trees started by chaud View original post
Comments 285 Comments
  1. mmoc89084f456c's Avatar
    It's funny how people take the "you're wrong!" statement so bad when the "you're right" looked at the questino would have got much more bad reactions

    2. "There weren't cookie cutter builds."
    You're wrong. Next!

    What if they told you "yes you're right on this!"
    "oh my god what are they saying? everybody knows that there's a Cookie Cutter build! (just let's look at this very comment section where almost everyoneis saying "oh but there will always be a "right" choice")

    Let's see the other You're wrong question/answer.


    10. “You’ve got your minds made up and don’t care about what we think.”
    You’re wrong. Next!

    Mmmm interesting, half the people here would have preferred "yes you're right, please give us feedback that we will ignore"
    So GC just say to you that you're wrong in thinking that they do not care about your feedback, and explained what the purpose of feedback is, and people got offended. Seems legit.

    Let alone that probably You're wrong! Next! is just there just for humour purpose. It could have been avoided? oh well yes. Do we need to take 4 words so seriously in a long post full of explanation? ah ah no, really.

    Most of the people that are taking this "You’re wrong. Next!" also taking it completely out of context, so not even connecting it to the meaning of the questions really need to calm down, close their eyes taking a very deep breath and "stop being so seriuos" and telling us that they want to reveal how they got those scars on their face.
  1. Wildmoon's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Brazorf View Post
    It's funny how people take the "you're wrong!" statement so bad when the "you're right" looked at the questino would have got much more bad reactions

    2. "There weren't cookie cutter builds."
    You're wrong. Next!

    What if they told you "yes you're right on this!"
    "oh my god what are they saying? everybody knows that there's a Cookie Cutter build! (just let's look at this very comment section where almost everyoneis saying "oh but there will always be a "right" choice")

    Let's see the other You're wrong question/answer.


    10. “You’ve got your minds made up and don’t care about what we think.”
    You’re wrong. Next!

    Mmmm interesting, half the people here would have preferred "yes you're right, please give us feedback that we will ignore"
    So GC just say to you that you're wrong in thinking that they do not care about your feedback, and explained what the purpose of feedback is, and people got offended. Seems legit.

    Let alone that probably You're wrong! Next! is just there just for humour purpose. It could have been avoided? oh well yes. Do we need to take 4 words so seriously in a long post full of explanation? ah ah no, really.

    Most of the people that are taking this "You’re wrong. Next!" also taking it completely out of context, so not even connecting it to the meaning of the questions really need to calm down, close their eyes taking a very deep breath and "stop being so seriuos" and telling us that they want to reveal how they got those scars on their face.
    You know wow player are so sensitive lol.
  1. Fulcan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Deadanon View Post
    You just talked about 1 tier out of 6 there. So 1 in 6 is not bad ? 1 meainingful choise... 5 pointless ones. Thats not great. Thats crap design.

    Lets look at Paladins shall we

    1 tier is about speeding up. 3 diffrent ways of speeding up. Matter much ? not really since its all just about speeding so why not give the class 1 speeding up ability.

    2. 1 CC ablity. Paladins loose CC abilitie they have had from Vanilla. They get a chooise to pick it. Thats called nerf

    3. Defenive ability. Tanking abilites have been thown across the tree and you pick 1 of 3. Yes - Thats how childish that tier is. Tanking abilites that all roles are forced to make a "meaningfull" choise.

    This is bad. There is no way around it.
    3 different ways of speeding up. Matter much? Yes! Yes, it matters much. Hagara HC. Ice-phase. You can't judge her, and you gotta run. The faster, the better. So the long arm is pretty much a no-go. Speed of Light: 1 min CD, probably not the best. Pursuit of Justice: Seems like a good solution. Just make sure you have holy power at the time, you really have to run, or atleast generate it.
    Matters? Yes, because if you don't give a shit, the risk that the ice-wall behind you is gonna crush you is bigger. So I say, yes this matters.

    I don't know about you, but I played Holy Paladin and I wouldn't mind having the ability to CC an add once in a while. Are the targets you're dealing with stunable? Well, what about Alysrazor. You can stun the adds. the longer they're stunned, the fewer casts. So you can choose between CCing shit (Keep in mind, a lot of mobs aren't CCable) or a 6 second stun. Sure, they're both really situational, but they're nice to have, and they give you some extra utility. How's that not interesting? It may not have a serious effect on every encounter, but it would have on some. Matters, yes! Of course it does.

    You think the 3rd tier is childish? I really have to get this out of my head now: what the fuck? I can see this being VERY useful on progress nights. Are we going to die? Hell yes! Do I want more survivability? Hell yes! Matters? Go figure.

    "This is bad. There is no way around it."
    I'm always open to solid arguments, but this just isn't a good argument. Frankly, ANY choice that has an effekt on your style of play is more useful that a cookie-cutter build. Right? Or is that where we go apart?

    Side note: I've seen all the talent trees through time, and I must say, I've never been this intrigued by a talent tree. This concept actually involves thinking of ways to use your talents, not just go "OH! 30% more healing with Divine Light! MUST HAVE!". What does that matter anyway? These talents involves a lot of utility and movement perfection, which also is vital to some roles like for instance stationary healers or melee DPS.


    EDIT:

    "You just talked about 1 tier out of 6 there. So 1 in 6 is not bad ? 1 meainingful choise... 5 pointless ones. Thats not great. Thats crap design."

    Excuse me, where did you reach the conclusion that I think the other 5 where crap? Leaving it out doesn't mean, they're crap. it COULD suggest it, sure, but unless you're a mind-reader, I would like to see a quote from me on that.
    Point is, I don't think they're crap, so don't put words in my mouth. Thank you.
  1. Aerts's Avatar
    Haha. 6 different talents to choose from, real.I was going to give Pandaria a shot, but they're dumbing this down too much. Alpha or not, I don't care.
  1. Oldbugga's Avatar
    Admirable goals and sentiments expressed by GC. We have heard similar in the past but we have been let down on occasions with reality falling well short of the rhetoric.

    I am still at a loss as to why there are no new talents for any class between 85 and 90. Even a modest reshuffling of those already published to give some "joy" in the intermediate levels and would at least give the impression of developing the character which is what it should be about (my opinion).

    Provided Blizz devs can match the rhetoric then we will see how much better it can be...otherwise it will end up in another disappointment.....and I am not hammering past performance...just the implementation needs to match the promises.
  1. Tarien's Avatar
    I think this new system sucks. While the choices are more interesting than simply selecting an extra 10% damage or 5% crit you are only making six choices. Even if the choices you make are obvious ones I think that the illusion of choice gives a great deal of satisfaction to gamers.

    And who cares if we google our specs? Do they think that people won't still google which six choices are the best for raids, battlegrounds, arena? Sometimes when you haven't played in a while or you are new to end game it's nice to know that at least you are on the right path while you learn about your class and it's abilities. No one really gets to max level and instantly knows how to play or what the best choices are. There is no fun for many people in trialling one spec after another against a dummy with a meter finding the highest output spec. Decisions like this that dumb the game down and take things away from players make me glad I unsubbed earlier this year. I want more choices, more depth, not less. I don't want to be treated like a five year old with a mental deficiency.

    Also, way to go Ghost Crawler with that whole post, could your tone with your paying customers be any worse?
  1. ihyln's Avatar
    world of warcraft: easy to learn, easy to unsubscribe
  1. quras's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by k1037 View Post
    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.
    I'm not sure enough people that were in the Beta are on these forums anymore for your post to come across like it should.

    You're so dead on it's scary.

    So much was brought up on the beta forums and for a while there was discussion. Then GC did exactly what you said. He spouted off about how everyone not helping to which most assumed cause we we're actually beta testing and giving feedback which GC and blizzard didn't seem to like. Then all talk discussion ended from the beta testers point of view cause we got little to no more blue post responses.

    Little to nothing went into blizzard ears and now nearly 2 million subs lost later blizzard wants to make a post a crappy post on talent trees and why they disagree.
  1. Juffowup's Avatar
    Most people dont know this fact but, the talent trees are what lost over a million subs and must BE PURGED!
  1. Zmike's Avatar
    I have been reading mmo-champions for awhile now, and I've never actually made an account with the site until today.
    so even if you don’t care for PvP now, maybe we can get you interested in the future.
    This is the worst comment I have ever read. Are they dumb enough to assume that people who have been playing for over 5 years will just have a sudden change of faith and want to pick up PvP because it's forced upon us, no. Most likely if this game became PvP heavy I'd quit because in the end I do not enjoy it, period.
  1. Oldbugga's Avatar
    In most of my working life as a systems/business analyst and an auditor/systems auditor, IT professionals have exhibited a common line of traits. These include, among others, a barely disguised contempt for their user base, overstating the attractiveness of facilities and capabilities, the failure to deliver what is promised and the attitude (almost religious) that the users do NOT know better than they do. I hope this time MOP will prove these wrong.......time will tell.
  1. Explosion_Rex's Avatar
    Why are ay of you still playing this game? It's not even WoW anymore and I have no interest in The Adventures of Kung Fu Panda.
  1. Caiada's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Explosion_Rex View Post
    Why are ay of you still playing this game? It's not even WoW anymore and I have no interest in The Adventures of Kung Fu Panda.
    Baffling. I feel as though I've just seen Bigfoot or Nessie. People who think the whole world revolves around them and wants everyone to do what they do actually exist and aren't just a gross exaggeration. My forum existence is validated.
  1. Kankipappa's Avatar
    "Many specs had 1-4 points to spend wherever they want. That's a huge victory compared to pre-Cataclysm talent trees, but ultimately nothing to really brag about."

    Too bad you had the same choice before cataclysm too, can't see that being a victory, as it was a throwback actually. I remeber I had slightly different spec for my fury warrior instead of the "default cookie cutter build" some players blindly used, since I understood those talents and what worked for me most for raiding. I actually had a choice there what didn't really affect dps. Most players actually started using that build on ICC later...

    Also I can't see any difference from cata one instead of having less to spend on leveling and making the leveling progress more boring. I really can't see how the fewer choices of the MoP will fix low level gameplay at all on RPG standpoint. I've already seen many players on LFD to ask why blizzard doesn't just hand us out with 80 lvl characters, since the leveling progress doesn't feel like leveling one, just annoying dungeon/guest grind what is not a challenge either... it's just boring, you can't even learn to use your weapons (yes it was annoying, but so is grinding).

    Even the glyphs just start out rolling on later levels and you only have few choices, so the first 50 lvl's should be just skipped on how the blizzard has turned it to be. Oh well, at least you still get abilities from the trainer when you level up, sometimes. But shame some of those are more fitting spending as a talent point imho!
  1. Korrawi's Avatar
    I'll make a list with things that made me quit wow:I don't like that they made 5 man heroics easier after some time.I don't like the LFG tool (many of you will say don't use it. Right, outside of guildies I doubt I would have gotten a lot of dungeoning with that one standing).Especially the teleport part. I liked to travel to the dungeon. In cata, I didn't know where the hell the entrance was, cause I always got ported there.I don't like that they increased SR cd to 25 sec from 10.I don't like that they made bladestorm disarmable. I agree with Valinara, bladestorm and shockwave at level 90 wtf?I don't like that they looked at arms threat and removed the extra threat on some abilities waaaaaay later than they were supposed to. I don't know if it's still an issue or not, I'm guessing with 500% increased threat on all tanks, it's not. I remember in BOT/ICC I constantly had to ask for salvation, thanks paladins .I don't like how they normalized rage and then still conjure up the nerf bat, which they said that rage normalization would take care of. I liked the old rage system. Additionally, less rage when taking damage. I'm a warrior, I get angry when you hit me. Now, not anymore. now it's pretty much runic power, more or less.I don't like that they removed the possibility to tank with a dk as frost. I loved tanking with a frost DK, was fun for me. Add to that the most stupid glyph I have ever seen, the one where you had aoe horror/fear on death and decay. I still cannot understand how that glyph made it live.I don't like that I killed Onyxia 2 times already (would have been 3 times if I were max level in Vanilla).I don't like the fact that there's no world pvp (I blame flying mounts for that), everyone stands in the cities waiting for lfg queue/bg queue/arena queue.I don't like the constant reskinning on weapons/armor/mobs. Also the design for some weapons, armor and shields was awful, in my opinion. Best shield, Bullwark of azzinnoth, can we have more of those? oh ye, easier with transmogrification.Right.I did not like gearscore addon (or epeen-score), now it's practically in the game.I don't like the LFR, I think it will slowly destroy guilds. Remains to be seen .I did not like vehicle combat whatsoever.I don't like that there's no war in world of WARcraft.I don't that MoP is based around pandaren (note, I don't care if they add the pandaren, basing a whole expansion around them, that's not cool).I don't like the new talent tree system.I don't like charge and intercept sharing a cd.I don't like MS beeing spread around to each and everyone.Last but not least, making things easier does not educate people, in any role whatsoever.List of things that I liked while playing wow:I liked to kill dragons (just not the same one, mind you).I liked that they made taunt ranged. I liked the blood and thunder talent. I liked Bladestorm. I liked spell reflect.I liked some of the dungeon/raid encounter designs, they were very nice. For example, Kharazhan/Zul'Aman. Perhaps the other TBC raids were cool too, I did not get to see BT at the right time, or Kael'thas.Heard Kael'thas was a fun fight, unfortunately did not get to see it in TBC. I liked ICC, was fun. TOC, not so much.I loved the wrathgate trailer, that was epic. When young Saurfang yelled "For the Horde" and the Kor'kron also yelled that, gave me goosebumps. I liked the battle for Undercity quest, that was very nice.I liked windfury totem (tbc version). I also liked sword spec (arms mastery now, only nerfed).I think I forgot some things on each side (likes/dislikes). Still, dislike list longer. Have fun people, that's the most important thing .prolly OT... bored
  1. Ajaxthegreat's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by quras View Post
    I'm not sure enough people that were in the Beta are on these forums anymore for your post to come across like it should.

    You're so dead on it's scary.

    So much was brought up on the beta forums and for a while there was discussion. Then GC did exactly what you said. He spouted off about how everyone not helping to which most assumed cause we we're actually beta testing and giving feedback which GC and blizzard didn't seem to like. Then all talk discussion ended from the beta testers point of view cause we got little to no more blue post responses.

    Little to nothing went into blizzard ears and now nearly 2 million subs lost later blizzard wants to make a post a crappy post on talent trees and why they disagree.
    He basically took his ball and went home. I understand why; he works hard on designing the game and people told them about many problems with his design. It's part hubris and part frustration. With that said, it was far more frustrating for those of us in the beta. Differences of opinion on design are one thing; "this is broken, actually broken and not working as you even intend" is something different.

    As to the talent trees (ignoring the semantic arguments), if you can truly respec at will between boss fights with a few clicks of a button then they are pointless. It's another of those quirks in design logic that leave people baffled. You either have to balance around people having the talents/abilities, in which case they are mandatory, or you balance around people NOT having them in which case they are overpowered for the boss fight/content. Alternatively, you make them so godawful terrible that the whole question is moot and you piss people off even more. A few easy examples below (25man to make the thought process easier) but I can go through the entire talent system making the same arguments:

    1) (non-talent argument) feral druids and shred/mangle. If they can't shred, they have to mangle. If you balance them around using mangle, their dps will be fine when they can and too high when they shred. Conversely, if you balance around being able to shred then when they cannot the dps is too low. If you make the damage the same, nobody would ever use shred.
    2) Shaman T4 talents: Damage reduction cooldowns are better than healing abilities the vast majority of the time. Either you assume a shaman brings this talent to the raid for fights with heavy, raid-wide magic damage and balance accordingly or it can be overpowered.
    3) Druid T2 talents: Either you balance the raid around DPS/tank druids maintaining Cenarion Ward on the Tank on cooldown (which would be macroed, obviously) or the ability is overpowered.
    4) Warrior T6 talents: Every boss fight without adds makes Avatar mandatory for Warriors unless they buff Bladestorm to the point of being ridiculous.
    5) Mage T5 talents: Can anyone name a boss fight where you polymorph anymore? It is now a 5-man and pvp ability by and large. Moot talent choice.
    Either talents will become cookie-cutter, again, or the choices will be insignificant. In the former case, we are no better off than we were. In the latter, everyone is frustrated and more people quit.
  1. Suikoden's Avatar
    These new talent trees make me really hesitant in terms of hopefully staying interested in playing as a druid. Resto doesn't seem to be very interesting in MoP. :/
  1. Sforza's Avatar
    This new "talent" system sucks, looks like some perk crap leaving no room for any diversity at all, its no longer a role playing game. In addition, dps specs are pretty much all the same now because they are able to choose the same talents. Every beginnings have an end, its been a constant and wow will not be the exception, it is just a real shame that its reaching its end much quicker because of plain developers incompetence, trying to simplify this game more and more in order to make it able for retarded people who cant handle it, people who shouldnt even be playing it. Ladies and Gentlemen... Behold....

    "THE DOWNFALL OF WORLD OF WARCRAFT"
  1. Disastor's Avatar
    This would go over so much better if they weren't so condescending.

    I hated the loss of talets from WotlK to Cata, and I hate the loss of talents from Cata to MoP. I wish they could understand that players like complexity and lots of choices.

    That whole blue post just made me cringe. Whoever wrote it sounds like a total jackass who is completely out of touch.
  1. Falkenburg's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by burghands View Post
    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'm not familiar with this, what was the "table flip" comment?

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