Same talent system with changes to when you get each tier; and some changes as to which talent is available at each tier.
Considering all the talk about ability bloat, I could use more tiers and thus more abilities being restricted by talent choices, resulting in more customization, but less abilities available at a given time.
Only truth I know is: some people will rejoice, some people will whine. Those who rejoice will be called fanboys, those who whine will be called nostalgia-lovers.
My prediction:
-- current talent system remains. No talents at 95 (or 100, if that's the case)
-- Blizzard announces at Blizzcon instead a new feature for max level, similar to Path of the Titans idea.
-- Said idea is removed later in development and not replaced with anything.
-- We get nothing except one new skill learned at level 93 or maybe 95, and the otherwise expected tunes to existing talents like any other patch.
Dont necessarily think either of these options are what's going to happen but my design:
OPTION 1
100 level cap
New talent every 10 levels, with tiers 1-6 collapsed to 10-60 as is.
Not exact but around very other talent level would be utility vs main role
(may be nice to standardize it over all classes to "T1 movement; T2 ability tier; T3 self-heal tier; T4 major cooldown; T5 silence/control/cc; etc.")
OPTION 2
99 level cap (à la diablo et all)
No change in existing talents/tiers
Release path of the titans, epic levels, or similar at cap
Most likely... 5 levels no talents 1 new ability at 95. Boring.
Actually this tier Chillblains, Death's Advance and Asphyxiate all get good use. What should be changed is the healing tier - No good raiding DK would ever choose anything except Death Pact because the other two choices cost resources.
But I far prefer the system of talents now because I can actively change talents and glyphs to ones that are better based on the fight. This is good, and it separates the good players from the average players. I change a glyph almost every fight because I can help the raid more by doing so. This is good design. I remember back in wrath... The only time I changed talents was when I respecced to unholy to pvp.
Today's talent system is superior to the old one. Get over it. In the old trees you went to a website to see what everybody else was putting their talent points into and you did exactly what they did. So don't come here telling everybody that there was room for specialization or niche-specs because that is a total load of crap. You might have 1 or 2 points left over after following a cookie cutter build to put into what you want but those 2 points ended up being put into something that was about useless.
OT: They'll either modify the levels at which you get to choose a talent at or they'll just add one more for max level.
Because design is an ongoing thing and not set in stone for ever ?
Why make small cell phones when big ones worked just fine ? Because they tried it and people liked it.
Talents trees are so 1990, Blizz made WoW around what they had at that time and it worked for years but does that mean they shouldn't try to improve it ? No it does not. Some talents are still better than others but by such a small margin (most of the time) that it's usually down to players preferences.
My biggest grippe with the new system is PVP (or PVE) only talents which are 99,9% useless in the other type of gameplay.
I have a feeling they will try to implement a D3 paragon style levelpoint dump.
They have said repeatedly that people don't find leveling rewarding enough with the new talents.
that's my guess tho.
Blizzard didn't redo the talent trees because they "couldn't balance" them. They redid the talent trees because they said that they were pointless in the end since everyone followed a cookie-cutter spec and took no-brainer talents. There was a big dev discussion about it before MoP even launched.
I don't think the current talent system is sufficiently dissimilar to the glyph system for it to be safely said that talents have been maintained. There sure is a talent page for your character, but everything on there is a completely isolated ability like glyphs rather than a series of interconnected choices.
The old talent tree system could have been adjusted to deal with all sorts of problems people come across regarding stat caps. Instead, Blizzard introduced reforging; since they can't seem to make that work they are getting rid of reforging and the stats people most often had to forge out of. This illustrates fairly clearly the tendency to break things, get frustrated, give up and start over rather than examining their problems and synthesizing solutions that accommodate the games short comings.
Regarding that last bit; I was pretty sure Blizzard would switch back to wrath style talents that didn't force you to the end of the tree after Cataclysm's changes wrecked it. Instead they went full speed ahead on their current path. I wouldn't hold my breath expecting them to expand player choice.
Not for every tier but I do like the idea of a few of the talent tiers being spec specific.
I'd like to see the trees expanded again a little bit. It's not going to make them any more/less cookie cutter (there are still "standard" builds now, and there were cookie cutter builds then), but I still think it feels better to manually put a point into a talent tree when you level up. It's fun. It literally doesn't even matter if you have a choice where to put it, as far as I'm concerned, I just like being able to get a tangible reward when I level up that I have to do something with. /shrug
The other two MMOs that I've played recently, RIFT and GW2, both retain larger "talent" systems that makes leveling feel a lot better.
I think this is also a good point about the current talent system. It feels disjointed, and it doesn't feel like a talent build.
Last edited by Daetur; 2013-10-04 at 05:43 PM.
We'll be stuck with the current system (with minor overhauls, at least half of which will be detrimental or pointless) at least through the next expac. Then they'll have had enough time that saying the current talent "system" sucks won't feel like an admission of guilt and they'll change it completely, again. Flip a coin on whether it'll be better or worse.
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I think the players are missing to unlock a new talent to spend at every level and I partially agree. Even if I prefer the current system, to pick one each 15 levels feels a bit long and I like the idea you get something every new level. They did a nice job of mentioning new available dungeons to fill the room but it is not enough. Could it be another progression system, replacing the glyphs? Not sure because it would compromise inscription.
i know why they removed the old talents (cookie cutters etc)
but i still sort of miss the bloated old things. It was fun figuring out differnet specs and putting all those points in as you leveled up.
Hi
Death knights don't follow the every 15 levels formula, so obviously it doesn't have to be that way at all times. There'll be one new talent at max.