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  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by Flaks View Post
    You don't need to. That is irrelevant to the vast VAST majority of players and for those it is, if all of you talents are incorporated into the current talent system we have, they can be made into choices so that it still remains well balanced.
    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    Why you need counter that honestly? High End raiding and especially 3v3 PvP is competitive part of the game, cookie cutter builds existed before as they exists now. Let have these builds.

    But one of these system is removing these "gimmick" builds, "fun builds" or "completely unusable in most cases but still..play what you want" builds. Why? Why it needs to be this way?
    Are you guys talking about bringing old talent tress?
    Blizzards argument was this:

    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    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.
    Its just "math", its not lazy design too many options
    And ofcourse they took pride in the game Balance with quotes like this:

    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Despite what you read on the forums, we actually have gotten better at balancing World of Warcraft over the years.
    Last edited by Roanda; 2019-05-26 at 12:59 PM.

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Togabito View Post
    Are you guys talking about bringing old talent tress?
    Blizzards argument was this:

    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    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.
    "Its just "math" lol, its not lazy design too many options

    And ofcourse they took pride in the game Balance with quotes like this:

    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Despite what you read on the forums, we actually have gotten better at balancing World of Warcraft over the years.
    I guess I just believe their argument is flawed. They just said they want everyone to have perfect build and not making these build, which are interesting but not that powerful.
    First, they did not achieved this with new talents anyway but also made classes less interesting (my opinion). Second, why you want people have perfect builds anyway? If people want have these perfect builds, they will follow the guides. Others just want have fun and try to make some builds work. Let them.

    My counter for this is "I see what you are saying, you tried your solution for problem, you outlined, I played for years with your solution..but it didn't work. I believe, you were just wrong because you were trying to fix problem, which doesn't exists in a first place".

    Also you said that matrix of talents created unbeatable combinations. There were few and far between, they managed to fix. I honestly can't remember, when there was this problem, that some build was so broken, it wasn't possible to fix it.

  3. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    I guess I just believe their argument is flawed. They just said they want everyone to have perfect build and not making these build, which are interesting but not that powerful.
    First, they did not achieved this with new talents anyway but also made classes less interesting (my opinion). Second, why you want people have perfect builds anyway? If people want have these perfect builds, they will follow the guides. Others just want have fun and try to make some builds work. Let them.

    My counter for this is "I see what you are saying, you tried your solution for problem, you outlined, I played for years with your solution..but it didn't work. I believe, you were just wrong because you were trying to fix problem, which doesn't exists in a first place".

    Also you said that matrix of talents created unbeatable combinations. There were few and far between, they managed to fix. I honestly can't remember, when there was this problem, that some build was so broken, it wasn't possible to fix it.
    Oh, im with you on this.
    After reading Blizzards replies and watching their actions over the years...i choose to NOT believe what they said.

    In my opinion this were all excuses to save money and relieve the workload on the class balancing team.

    Its as simple as that for me! IMO

  4. #24
    Scarab Lord Boricha's Avatar
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    I didn't mind the MoP version of talents too much. They weren't spec specific, so they mostly provided more utility to the class and the specs could be fleshed out at their core instead of relying on talents to make rotations work. I'd still prefer the old talent tree though.

  5. #25
    Don't care. Everyone used the cookie cutter builds anywas. You actually have more choice now and I'm more than happy with the current talents trees. Thoes do not ruin my expereice with game. Now, class design could need a bump to MoP levels but talent trees are fine-
    I'll add cookie cutter a few more times - cookie cutter, cookie cutter, cookie cutter.

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by Aggrophobic View Post
    Don't care. Everyone used the cookie cutter builds anywas. You actually have more choice now and I'm more than happy with the current talents trees. Thoes do not ruin my expereice with game. Now, class design could need a bump to MoP levels but talent trees are fine-
    I'll add cookie cutter a few more times - cookie cutter, cookie cutter, cookie cutter.
    Please, we all know the cookie cutter argument is true...for Raids and 3x3...basically for what Blizzard deems "important".
    Its the pillar argument of Blizzard.

    So in your opinion there is no space in this game for "player created fun" in world content at least?
    Outside what Blizzard wants to balance so much and remove all the fun from?

  7. #27
    I wish they could come up with a way to "blend" specs....for example "blending" fire mage spec with frost...and become a frost fire mage utilizing spells of each. each spec having a few spells to use.....a player could just stay pure fire mage utilizing the spells he has or "blend" fire with frost to create a unique spec utilizing perhaps blended spells......each spec "blended" or not wouldnt be anymore powerful than the other......just a way to create uniqueness in a class. Another example might be Paladin......"blending" Ret with Holy to create a ranged Paladin....or "blending" Ret with Protection to create a sword and board dps style.

    Just a thought...

  8. #28
    Here is my honest opinion about the old talent trees:

    Unless the three specs of your class had some basic synergy, the talent had no customization at all.
    This is why most people that want the talent system back come from the following classes:

    Rogue
    Warlock
    Death Knight
    Mage

    Because the three specs were doing a similiar thing and used a similiar toolkit, a lot of talents that were in the combat tree were still beneficial to Assa / sub rogues, but that doesn't apply to every class.

    Especially for Hybrid classes, this system was just not a good longterm system, because there no choice possible, if you are a Balance Druid, there was no "good" talent for you buried deep within Feral / Resto that was somehow attractive to you, because those talent trees were doing something different altogether.
    All the good talents were obviously in the tree of your primary role, because why shouldn't they be there?

    The same goes for a Healer spec, unless you were a Priest, you dumped most of your talents into the Healing tree, because beyond the infamous 11 points into another tree, there was rarely anything of value to be found there.

    I'm playing Shaman since Vanilla and i can say with great certainty: Hybrid Specializations or talent customization was never a big thing here.
    And the same will be most likely true for any other Hybrid Dps, such as Ret, Shadow, Balance or Feral.

    Second, if you looked at how big the talent tree has grown by the time of Wotlk, you just realized that this wouldn't go on for much longer, especially because Blizzard just straight up dumped power increasing talents into trees in order to combat possible hybrid builds that happened in TBC with their one button rotation.

  9. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Togabito View Post
    Here are some funny quotes from the devs at the time:


    First in Cataclysm
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Some players miss true hybrid builds. (Hybrid in this context means spending near evenly in two trees -- I’m not talking about the more common use of “hybrid” as a tank or healing class.) To be fair, these builds were either not very competitive or were just cherry picking a few powerful talents in order to create something that was likely overpowered, especially in PvP. In other words, the reality of the hybrid build never lived up to the myth. But it’s fair to say that it’s impossible now to have a hybrid build, and we understand some players want them back.

    Then the ultimate "surrender" in MOP

    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    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.
    You know, it's really terrible when the Devs admit they aren't capable of balancing something in a game they created. A lot of games do the same kind of talent system quite well.

    As someone who played a hybrid build and had a lot of fun while doing so, it's annoying that the devs took away 90% of my choices and left me with what they believe I should pick. It's boring and feels awful in an RPG a game that is supposed to be about choice and customization of character.

    The new system is garbage and just as cookie cutter as the old one. Except you get less choices and cannot choose your talents / abilities out of progressive content. And it's dumb.

    The "boring 5% crit talents" weren't boring in themselves, it's just the implementation. Rift does it correctly. They have a talent tree much like post-Cata and the more points you put into a tree, the more abilities you unlock at the bottom of the tree. So not only do you get abilities for putting points into a tree, inside the tree itself, but you also unlock additional abilities for investment. That's a good system. Blizzard could have done something similar.

    But as someone who likes customization, I didn't find "filler talents" boring at all. If I'm a Mage and I put points into Elemental Precision (+6% hit with Frost / Fire Spells), and Permafrost (+10% speed reduction with my chill effects + 3 second additional duration) I'd more than likely do better against a Warrior than another Mage who didn't take those talents would. Or if I was a Shaman who took Enhancing Totems (+15% Strength of Earth and Grace of Air) I could buff my melee party members better than a Shaman who didn't take those talents.

    It's about choices. And how we used to have them.


    Quote Originally Posted by enigma77 View Post
    There was nothing wrong with 'boring +5% crit' talents.

    There is something massively wrong with the idea of being only a 'Fire Mage' or a 'Frost Mage' instead of a Mage.

    Cataclysm, the height of developer failure and misconceptions, may you rot in hell.
    Agree 100%


    Cata was probably the worst time for the talent trees.

  10. #30
    @Role Unknown Get out of here! With your Roleplaying ideas in a RPG game. You are out of place (im just kidding)

    @Kralljin There is a lot of truth in your post. Im one of the specs you mentioned had customization (rogue) so my opinion is bias.
    But i recently checked talent trees for VANILLA Shamans...and there were some variations, even in Vanilla! which surprised me.
    https://classic.wowhead.com/guides/c...an-pve-healing

    @FanaticDreamer Its good seeing a "customization brother". Hold strong brother RIP customization

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Togabito View Post
    [MENTION=723204]
    But i recently checked talent trees for VANILLA Shamans...and there were some variations, even in Vanilla! which surprised me.
    https://classic.wowhead.com/guides/c...an-pve-healing
    Three fucking options.
    One of them is even disclaimed as entirely farm focused rather than progression and another of them relies on Nightfall, a weapon that remained unique to Vanilla.

    I think i'll stick with the MoP talent system.

  12. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by Clozer View Post
    Nowadays i just play whatever talent i enjoy. It's so good.
    I agree pet battles don't care about your character talents.

  13. #33
    Legendary! MasterHamster's Avatar
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    The more the game changed focus to just being about the endgame and everyone has to be perfect according to Blizzards templates (with a good push from the community who calls anything even slightly subpar to be unusable), the less choices we actually get. Leveling up, your choices are race/class/spec and 7 talents. That is it. Godawful.

    I mean, leveling up has become a complete joke and the game actively wants you to fly through it as quickly as possible (and since there's very little gameplay in obliterating everything and never risking death, it's not that surprising).

    On a private realm, I am leveling a hunter (among other classes) and no matter how "boring" it is, or how it could be streamlined, I enjoy for example putting that talent for another +4% pet damage. It doesn't need to be baked into the pets base damage. It feels satisfying putting that talent for those 5 levels and noticing my pets damage ever so slightly increasing. You know, back when "character progression" felt impactful.

    But this is because 1) in Classic leveling is a major part of the game and 2) you really feel the difference each level and you even notice how the numbers go up, you *know* how much damage you, your pet and spells/abilities do, because you have time to really get to know your character. On live I never get that feeling with my alts because I two-shot almost anything and I level up so quickly I never get to learn those things. If we had a classic-style talent tree on live it still wouldn't work too well because leveling is still a rushy mess.

    That said, I will choose old-style talents over this ARPG bullshit of 7 tiers any day of the week. People like to pretend the new system has more choices and yet it's just the same shit, but instead you may change one or two talents for each boss in a raid. As if that's somehow more exciting in the end.

    You can't beat math, there will always be a 100% optimal way to do things, but if you remove all possibilities of making suboptimal choices you may as well not have talents at all. In BFA you're essentially just playing a perfect template anyway.
    Last edited by MasterHamster; 2019-05-26 at 02:14 PM.
    Active WoW player Jan 2006 - Aug 2020
    Occasional WoW Classic Andy since.
    Nothing lasts forever, as they say.
    But at least I can casually play Classic and remember when MMORPGs were good.

  14. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by ManiaCCC View Post
    Why you need counter that honestly? High End raiding and especially 3v3 PvP is competitive part of the game, cookie cutter builds existed before as they exists now. Let have these builds.

    But one of these system is removing these "gimmick" builds, "fun builds" or "completely unusable in most cases but still..play what you want" builds. Why? Why it needs to be this way?
    With the current syastem, you can play with what you want more. While there is a optimal builod, you can still choose whatever you want whenever you want.

  15. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Kralljin View Post
    Three fucking options.
    One of them is even disclaimed as entirely farm focused rather than progression and another of them relies on Nightfall, a weapon that remained unique to Vanilla.

    I think i'll stick with the MoP talent system.
    Three options for progression and healing*

    There's also multiple options for builds outside of that.

  16. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by rrayy View Post
    With the current syastem, you can play with what you want more. While there is a optimal builod, you can still choose whatever you want whenever you want.
    As someone, who loved these mixed builds, I disagree. Today, you have Fire mage, frost mage and arcane mage instead of just mage. All three specs are just some separate classes with some shared abilities and gimmick but I can't make these arcane-frost mages anymore not even talking how they butchered hybrid classes altogether. Also, current talent system is very uninteresting during leveling so.. I was altholic but after talent tree changes, leveling just become quite boring to me.

  17. #37
    Just off topic note;
    God I miss having someone like Greg Street working among the developers, he at least had the guts (Before Blizz told devs, that they can't communicate) to give insight why they are doing certain things, now we have this mystical shroud of mystery, we just get handed stuff and... oh right, let me correct myself;

    I meant to say, now we just get stuff removed and nobody bothers to tell us the reasoning behind it, nice going Blizz ^_^

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by FanaticDreamer View Post
    Three options for progression and healing*
    "Healing"
    You have essentially the same heal spell(s), the only difference is that in one build your Melee support totems are slightly stronger.

    The Nightfall build also pretty pointless the second any in the Raid equips a Nightfall, like the Tank who is currently not tanking or another Shaman running that build.
    If two Shaman run this build, one of them fucked itself, which is quite likely in a 40man raid.

    Quote Originally Posted by FanaticDreamer View Post
    There's also multiple options for builds outside of that.
    And all of them are only marginally different.

    I don't have the patience to argue with people that have clearly made up their mind regarding this whether putting a handful of points into another passive talent that barely changes anything is really "another build" in anything but its name.
    Last edited by Kralljin; 2019-05-26 at 04:00 PM.

  19. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by Togabito View Post
    Please, we all know the cookie cutter argument is true...for Raids and 3x3...basically for what Blizzard deems "important".
    Its the pillar argument of Blizzard.

    So in your opinion there is no space in this game for "player created fun" in world content at least?
    Outside what Blizzard wants to balance so much and remove all the fun from?
    I'm sure there is and I do think that the current talent trees are fun enough. The old system added nothing of value for me but it did add quite a bit of annoyance. Not only was it clunky to work with but it was also built to pretty much confuse anyone that did not use external sources in order to know what builds where good. The extra + damage talents were just there for show I guess as you always picked them and so on.

    It was a bad system, simple as that. The mandatory talents were made part of each class and the important ones are the ones we have today. Your "fun" was not removed in any way.

  20. #40
    Given that most people use the same cookie cutter builds now, I'd trade the modern talents for the older talents any day of the week. Choice is an illusion either way. Right now you've got your best talents in every row, and then talents you sacrifice damage or healing in order to take. No difference from before and the modern system just leaves the class barebones.
    Last edited by Niroshi; 2019-05-26 at 04:01 PM.

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