Seeing the Forest for the Talent Trees

[russykh]

“You’ve got your minds made up and don’t care about what we think.” You're wrong, Next! How is that wrong, whole this post looks like they defend what they think and that they are right. aka they dont really care what we think.

This is one of the dumbest things I've read recently. Of course they think they are right. Thats why they are making these changes. They are trying to explain to us why they think that, and one of the reasons for them to do that is because they care what we think. You can defend your position and think you are right while still being concerned with the other persons point of view.

[Niyari]

"(or you’re RPing a Fury warrior who has taken too many blows to the head)". amazing lol

[The Ogdru Jahad]

All in All I'm excited for MoP. Then all the bads will leave and only people who are truly hardcore about playing wow will remain and Blizz can bring back 40 mans and rebuff every boss they have ever nerfed and make the game fun again.

I have never read a post more wrong than this...

40 mans will never be brought back
They will never buff previously nerfed content
People who stay are the opposite of hardcore with the changes being put forth

[Dariela]

The only ones getting real "choices" are the warlocks, pages and rogues.

I'm excited about the lock trees, but personally I'm not seeing a lot of real choice with them, either. I personally am considering only a handful of builds in PvE, 2 to be precise. And they are the same across the trees as well. I have one set that I plan to use "all the time," and another set that I plan to use in cases where my pet is a liability and I want to use Grimiore of Sacrifice. PvP has a lot more wiggle-room, but I'll leave that to a PvPer to talk about.

The difference between old and new, is my handful of builds is likely different then somebody else's handful of builds, and rather then one of us being emperically wrong or right, we just have a difference in opinion of how we like our extras. Our core abilities remain the same and balanced, and instead of putting the work of fine tuning our own numbers on our back, they are setting them where they want them, and letting us squabble about utility instead.

[Deleted]

All I see now it's endless marketing speeches... At the Blizzcon, they told : you will have more choices and now, they told us in fact you will have less... And frankly, those guys never played a tank or a healer for telling that we will have choices that matter... And how can he pretend they will make me like pvp???? I'm so bad at pvp, and get killed to no end every time I enter a BG... !!!!! And I don't want to be good : I don't like at all the grief I hear or read in pvp.... How those guys can pretend such a thing... Blizzard, you can continue to dive, there is apparently no bottom for you... ... regards, JPR

[The Last DJ]

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.

I was in the Cata beta, and the Wrath beta as well. They were night and day compared to one another. It seemed like the Wrath beta was much more slow to invite masses of players, instead sampling from a smaller group who were there to actually play test, and not treat it like a free preview. The blues were helpful and the players constructive, and the DK forums were simply awash with input, most of which was responded to in some way or tested out. (Believe it or not, my husband was one of the Unholy DKs who started suggesting that Unholy, as a master of ghouls, get a permanent ghoul for themselves.) Me, I spent half my time in the DK forums (where I laugh about just how broken beta Blood DKs were - you think their self-healing now was absurd? Unlimited number of bloodworms spawning on AUTO ATTACKS mwahahaha) and staring glumly at the shaman forums, where all the enhancement players were wringing their hair and screaming about how DKs were going to be benching enh shamans everywhere.

No matter what the goddamn expansion, the sky is always falling for shamans. Christ.

Anyway. The Wrath beta was fun, and enjoyable, and minus that little Ret with the GOD SWITCH flipped on snafu, an overall success. Then came Cata. Suddenly their subs had ballooned to 12 million, Wrath was a rousing success ... aaaaaaaaand it all went straight to their heads. The Cata beta was shit. Utter shit. They started mass-inviting before things were even ready for a beta release, and most of these people weren't interested in submitting bugs or offering critique. They were there to get a free preview. The blues, especially Ghostcrawler, were very condescending and smug in a very "my shit don't stink a'cause I got 12 million subscribers whaaaaaaaat?" fashion. If suggestions weren't worded with 95% ass-kissing and hand-holding, GC or another blue would flop out the big blue Blizzard e-peen and start threatening to revoke the poster's beta status for "trolling" and "being unhelpful". What happened when Cata was released? Subs took a nosedive. Not surprising, given that they didn't listen to any of the suggestions - and how could they, when they started inviting hundreds of players hand over fist when the game was a week out of beta from the alpha. Half of the posts on the forums were complaints about bugs - not bug reports, actual complaints, and the other half were WHAT SHOULD THE WORGEN DANCE BE?

Given that they're handing out MoP keys to everyone with one of those goddamn obnoxious Tyrael's Chargers, I suspect the MoP beta will be no different, unless they sorely learned their lesson about being arrogant pillocks when it comes to the testing phase of their game.

[TaurenNinja]

So here we have Blizzard doing a monstrous post explaining quite in detail and quite humbly the reasoning behind each change, and they do these changes because it truly seems to improve the game (objectively), and some people still don't get it or don't care and keep on flaming. I hope all those whiners would just unsubscribe. Then they could rant even more about WoW dying because of even more subscriber losses. Yay.

[TheSweetness]

I know it is still way early, MoP beta not even being available yet for us to try this stuff out, but they have asked for feedback on this. I feel the way about my shaman now as I did at the end of BC when my hunter was my main: Blizzard just doesn't seem to know what they want to do with the class. I know we haven't gotten any changes this go around and I will reserve my final judgment until beta is out and MoP is close to release, but I am worried. I really love the shaman class. Also about the "You're wrong. Next!" it was cute and funny the first time, but doing it repeatedly afterward seemed a little douchebag-ish to me.

[Deleted]

Once again Idiotcrawler writes a beautiful text, well worded wall of words with witty jokes and tongue-in-cheek remarks. But he's basically saying the same thing he said for Cataclysm, and two years after we're still waiting for the revamped, balanced talent trees. So he's trying the same trick for MoP. The guy can sure talk the talk but cannot walk the walk.

[Frozen Death Knight]

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 may not agree with everything Blizzard have said regarding their changes over the years, but I can certainly say that I prefer a game developer that sticks to their guns than catering to every concern that pops up from a game community, regardless of how many agree with those concerns or not. Player feedback is always great, but if the developers do not have a strong vision to drive this game forward, and let the players decide, it will in turn create a huge mess, especially when this gaming community is so diverse as it is.

You may not agree with me on this point, but Blizzard have listened a lot to the community, and probably a bit too much, sometimes. They try too much to please a huge chunk of the playerbase and I believe strongly that if players did not have the influence it has had over the development of this game, things would have been a bit different regarding certain parts of the game, right now.

[Deleted]

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.

While I have some reservations about going through yet another talent revamp (and where the hell is my Devouring Plague???) I'm willing to see how it all plays out. Blizzard, as a developer, have to take a hard stance on some changes, that despite player worries, they feel is the right thing to do with the game. The problem comes when they make those hard stances on the wrong issues, or underestimate the player's concerns. Making Heroic dungeons that are challenging and a effort(at least when first implemented) isn't compatible with the Insta-Queue culture. Tol Barad was a joke. Healing was unrewarding and frustating. Then, as if these weren't active design choices made by Blizzard themselves, they basically told us to "man up" before watching the millions flock from the game then changing their minds. A lot of the talent change debate, including myself, is that we are sick of change because Ghostcrawler has a problem with"cookie-cutter" builds, but Blizzard have to tread carefully because underestimating player concerns when they are changing the fundementals of our characters could backfire inanother drastic sub loss.

[tjb490]

In my opinion I think they should leave talents, me and it seems like a majority of players don't like the idea of only have six talents. 40+ is ok but don't cut it anymore. MoP is going to flop IMO if they dont change their mind. Maybe not flop but for blizzards standards, quite possibly.

[Beachcomber]

Regarding: "Look, we tried the talent tree model for seven years. We think it’s fundamentally flawed and unfixable."

The true failure of the current talent trees are the talents that provide only part of something. A perfect example is Balance of Power in the balance druid tree. Sure, I'd like 100% of my spirit to go to spell hit rating. What isn't useful is to have 50% of my spirit go to hit. So I basically have to always spend 2 points because almost on one will pick 1/2 of those talents. That reduces the number of points we can spend elsewhere.

Same type of deal with frost dk talent Nerves of Cold Steel, which grants hit for dual wield. If I am dual wield, I will always pick 3/3. I can't think of a scenario where you wouldn't have all 3. If they are mandatory, make it a baseline talent of 1/1 with full power when you select it.

It is these types of wasted talent points that are very disappointing.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I wish that blizz addressed the people saying "it's just another step. They scrapped big trees, then scrapped medium trees, now in 6.0 they will scrap talents entirely."

[Valinara]

I think they've missed one of the most basic and aggravating questions, which admittedly doesn't apply to everybody, but has been bothering me since they announced the changes at BlizzCon. Why are they selling me something I've already purchased? I play a prot warrior, and as many prot warriors do, I've taken shockwave as a talent. It's situationally useful in PVE, great in PVP, but more importantly it's been in the game for quite some time now. My understanding is that, under the new system, I will now lose shockwave until I purchase the expansion and level up to 90. So my primary incentive to buy MoP isn't to get new powers or experience new content, it's to get back something I feel I've already paid for. That's the major sticking point on the talent changes for me, and thankfully it doesn't apply to every class. It's my hope that shockwave and bladestorm are there as placemarkers until new powers are revealed, becase bumping existing powers up to level 90 as new "talents" is flat out idiotic. That's not a balancing issue. That's holding your character hostage.

[straazz]

my personal opinion about this blue post: about frikkin time. they're only trying to improve the game. they tried it with cataclysm, and it was at best a moderate success. at least there was LESS passives in talent trees, but nowhere near none. but my point, and my question to everyone who reads this: didn't it get better?i think, as objectively as the blue post train of thought was, that we, the players, should let the game developers do what they are in fact hired to do, and try to make the game better for everyone. i have not, and will not, question their dedication to this for even a second.but, lets be realistic. this talent calc is very much a work-in-progress deal. if in the end it turns out it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, then it's back to the old drawing board. i, however, have high hopes.as a final remark, what would be nice is some sort of combination of the current system, and the new system. that way we can please those who want to take advantage of hybrid classes, as well as those who take pride in their current talent specs, making the spec itself something that will separate the good players from the not so good, so to speak.anyway, back to farming mog weapons.tata

[wiIdi]

1. I have fewer choices.
Blizzard: 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.

Quantity (not quality) is more important than you think. Not the best example but 10 dungeons which take only 45 minutes to complete are more fun than 5 dungeons which take 1.5 hours. 10 dungeons offer simply more diversity than 5.

[Deleted]

It's my hope that shockwave and bladestorm are there as placemarkers until new powers are revealed, becase bumping existing powers up to level 90 as new "talents" is flat out idiotic.

I think, as a balancing, issue they took out any already existing abilities that meet their criteria for the new talents. It does look like, to some classes, that they are being short changed. Then there is Blizzard assuming that most of us will buy the xpac anyway, so the fuss from people who have something like Bladestorm taken off them will be minimal.

[Doombringer]

I like the overall plan for MoP talents. That said, the "design churn" remains in effect. I continually get the impression that many (not all) changes are being made more by designer hubris (or desire) than what is precisely "needed." In other words, "is it broken? should it be fixed?" Are the designers, at times, setting out by saying "we think Hunters need to play differently so we're going to change them" -- despite there being no call from the community for a change, or an uproar about the class being "boring" or otherwise disliked? Balance changes aside, is how the class plays really a target for drastic change?

Or tanking. Is tanking broken? Do tanks feel bored in their duty? I haven't seen a lot of talk about it. If Blizzard has, then good, they have data... but if not, then they are simply making a change to do what precisely? Add more arbitrary button-pushing and "challenge" to the game? Is it truly challenge? Should they leave well enough alone?

The healer-revamp in Cataclysm. Were healers clamoring and caterwauling because of the "Wrath design" and the designers swooped in to make a much-desired change? Or did the design team sit down and simply decide "we're going to change this" ...? That sort of design decision may work in a non-subscription game (where players pretty much buy the box once and then have to live with whatever decisions the designers made)... but in an MMO, you have to keep people happy and paying. What may seem like "good design" or a "good change" to a bunch of developers in a darkened room may not exactly be what the players are calling for. And yet, they continue doing this.

Again, some changes are great. But others... ehhhh. Did Paladins really need a combo-point system? Did Hunters need Focus? Does tanking need to be turned on its head? Was the difficulty ramp up at the beginning of Cata really needed? Evidently not, as much of it was nerfed/reverted shortly thereafter... yet it was another example of designers thinking they should fix what isn't precisely broken, and seeming to lose the pulse of the player community.

[Blur4stuff]

I also support the MoP talent changes. They are moving things in a good direction.