World of Warcraft: Dragonflight - Talent System Design Philosophy

[Usernameforforums]

Does anyone else think the "new talent trees" look a lot like the RIFT talent trees when they see them?

If I remember right, just played one month in 2011, there was a traditional talent system(specs) and a max level paragon-like talent system. Not sure about any changes.

[rrayy]

At this point, I'm going to assume you missed the DK and Druid previews they put out today with this blog post. We know those things for at least two classes now, at least as they are currently working.

(they've also indicated elsewhere some of the current baseline abilities that will be moving to talents for most classes, interrupts being one of those)

BUt you missed two important parts too.

1. Where it says "Mockup" and "Work in Progress"

2.ALpha hasn't even started yet

That means there are still going to be a tone of changes now and the point in Beta where it is largely locked in. We don't know what hte final look is going to be. ALso, Giving you want you want will result in massive talent bloat due to having to create all new abilities. Putting some existing talents on the tree keep that in check.

[Zarathos]

Super excited about having to micromanage my entire raid's talents now also because I can't just assume that people have things like interrupts or survival cooldowns when we need them at a particular time.

I know the community has been waiting more in-depth talent trees for a long time but I'm really really unhappy with things that are currently baseline moving to talents, especially since presumably we aren't going to necessarily be able to get all of them back. It's going to feel terrible losing abilities I have to have now and then worry about buying a few of them back with a rationed currency that may compete with througput abilities, and that's not even worrying about the people I'm playing it. Am I going to have to inspect talents in PuG keystones now also in addition to my raids? What a fucking headache.

I really wish they had limited the active abilities in these trees expac-unique actives like things we saw in azerite armor, neck essences, artifact weapons, covenant abilities, and existing talents. None of the talented actives should be things that are baseline for classes now, unless it is making spec-specific baselines available to all specs via talents. Yes, even if it is something (like a buff) that only one person in the raid needs to be able to provide.

In general, I'm pretty easy going about WoW changes with the "well, we'll see how it ends up" but these previews have confirmed a lot of my biggest concerns about the new talent trees, and it is the first time in a long time I am actually dreading an update.

I made a change.org petition, like the fire Amber from Aquaman 2, so please share and sing to fix this before it's too late!!!!!
ps: i can't share the url because im new but its chng.it /hmmPwMBdfK (erase the spaces)

[Thrashix]

Does anyone else think the "new talent trees" look a lot like the RIFT talent trees when they see them?

I thought they looked slightly familiar.

[Nadiru]

So you can swap out of interrupt (a dead key in some circumstances) into something - anything - that gives you a nominal boost to utility or throughput, and the high-end community's response is to...be mad about this. Are you guys sure you understand the term "optimization"?

[Celement]

I made a change.org petition, like the fire Amber from Aquaman 2, so please share and sing to fix this before it's too late!!!!!
ps: i can't share the url because im new but its chng.it /hmmPwMBdfK (erase the spaces)

Not to be rude but in 15 years beyond ripping out a system last minute has there ever been a major change to design once its announced?

[ONCHEhap]

So you can swap out of interrupt (a dead key in some circumstances) into something - anything - that gives you a nominal boost to utility or throughput, and the high-end community's response is to...be mad about this. Are you guys sure you understand the term "optimization"?

It's less the "high-end" community and more the "people who think they're high-end" community.

I'm sure you're familiar with parsebrained idiots who just pick what they're told is best DPS regardless of utility. Those are the people who'll never even consider talenting into interrupts and then whine about not having an interrupt.

Personally, I like being able to either use the interrupt talent points somewhere else, or pick the talents that increase the value of interrupt, depending on what my role in an encounter will be, and pretty much everyone I know who's actually good at the game appreciates these options as well

[kamuimac]

It's less the "high-end" community and more the "people who think they're high-end" community.

I'm sure you're familiar with parsebrained idiots who just pick what they're told is best DPS regardless of utility. Those are the people who'll never even consider talenting into interrupts and then whine about not having an interrupt.

Personally, I like being able to either use the interrupt talent points somewhere else, or pick the talents that increase the value of interrupt, depending on what my role in an encounter will be, and pretty much everyone I know who's actually good at the game appreciates these options as well

i mean . everyone has interupt baseline atm and till 90% of players never use them . and out of those 10 % who do use them maybe half at best use them correcly

tbh maybe blizzard shoudl admit peopel dont interupt and dont put milions dangerous spells on trash .

vierwers of m+ dont see interupts anyway and if playerbase dont want to use them - maybe indeed its time to go away from aweful m+ trash design ?

i mean have you been lately to keys liek 10-14 ? its literaly hell on earth atm with everyone looking for boost whhile doing 0 mechanics correcly.

and +15 is playable only because its full of 275 + people famring GV who barely geths through in some places because gear is carrying them .

[Zarathos]

Not to be rude but in 15 years beyond ripping out a system last minute has there ever been a major change to design once its announced?

change an option on the talent tree doesn't mean to scrap it all XD...An idea will be to decrease the cooldown of it? what do u think?

[relaxok]

It’s funny for people to just say it doesn’t matter because the BiS build will be used by everyone once it’s figured out..

That hasn’t been true for a long time.. constantly in both PvP and PvE, there have been flavor of the month builds that change regularly depending on what the best players are running.. but the reality is the best players were still the best no matter which fotm build they were running, the build isn’t what makes them good.

There have been meaningful choices in gear and talents for years now and this will increase that even more..

[SinR]

It is possible that Blizzard will decide to make Interrupts baseline with some kind of talent choice to buff it.

I doubt it... but one can hope

[Tyris Flare]

There have been meaningful choices in gear and talents for years now and this will increase that even more..

Not sure the evidence bears this out. You can look at Subcreation and see that for most specs and classes, everyone plays the same setup for m+. Not really any different than raid.

Choices are only interesting when there's no mathematically best option, which is usually only the case for survivability or utility, not throughput.

And even that hinges on them performing constant balance tweaks, which has never and will never happen.

[ONCHEhap]

i mean . everyone has interupt baseline atm and till 90% of players never use them . and out of those 10 % who do use them maybe half at best use them correcly

tbh maybe blizzard shoudl admit peopel dont interupt and dont put milions dangerous spells on trash .

vierwers of m+ dont see interupts anyway and if playerbase dont want to use them - maybe indeed its time to go away from aweful m+ trash design ?

i mean have you been lately to keys liek 10-14 ? its literaly hell on earth atm with everyone looking for boost whhile doing 0 mechanics correcly.

and +15 is playable only because its full of 275 + people famring GV who barely geths through in some places because gear is carrying them .

First of all, please proofread your messages.

Secondly, the fact that random pugs aren't capable of playing the game to save their life shouldn't be an excuse to just dumb down everything. If the amount of fun a game could provide had to be dampened because some players are hopelessly incompetent, gaming as a whole would be exceptionally dull

[Tziva]

BUt you missed two important parts too.

1. Where it says "Mockup" and "Work in Progress"

2.ALpha hasn't even started yet

That means there are still going to be a tone of changes now and the point in Beta where it is largely locked in. We don't know what hte final look is going to be.

No, I didn't miss that fact. It's that it doesn't matter. This is literally the time for people to give opinions. If you wait until it's no longer a work in progress, it's too late for any feedback to be taken into account.

Besides that, they've stated their design philosophy. They've shown their general approach. That some talents will probably end up slightly different and/or in different places because it's still a WIP isn't really relevant. The objection to pushing baseline utility into optional talents is a response to their overall philosophy that they are using while they design these mockups, and something that isn't likely to change unless the community response convinces them to.

ALso, Giving you want you want will result in massive talent bloat due to having to create all new abilities. Putting some existing talents on the tree keep that in check.

All I want is to keep core baseline abilities that classes/specs already have and not move them into talents. I never said anything about creating all new abilities. I never objected to existing talents continuing to be talents.

Yeah, if they made the talent trees entirely active abilities and entirely new stuff, that would be insane, but there's no reason to do that. Plenty of stuff could be passives that interact with gameplay, the same way that conduits and legendary effects do now, and azerite armor and artifact traits have in the past. Active abilities, for people who want more buttons, could continue to be allowing people to choose abilities currently only available to specific specs, just as they are doing, or to keep active abilities they might have already experienced through covenants, artifacts, neck essences, etc. Maybe a holy paladin could now pick an interrupt, maybe a mage wants to keep Deathbourne, whatever.

They could easily do this same kind of thing they are already trying to do with these previews, except without putting stuff like interrupts, dispels, etc, into the trees. They could instead make those spots talents ones to improve those things instead. Zero extra bloat there.

If you put really important shit in talents, there will be two results:

(1) either everyone takes these because they absolutely have to, in which case what the point of making it a talent if there isn't any real choice?
(2) Some people don't take these things and you end up having to make sure the people you play with aren't doing stupid things like heading into a raging week without a tranq or healing without the ability to dispel, etc.

Both of those situations are stupid, and all it requires to "fix" is taking the handful of super important utility or core spells like interrupts out of the trees and keeping them baseline for specs that already have them, and replacing those spots in the trees with things that buff or modify that utility instead. It would not cause any extra bloat, and it addresses a very valid and serious risk that is caused by making those things optional.

[Biomega]

BUt you missed two important parts too.

1. Where it says "Mockup" and "Work in Progress"

2.ALpha hasn't even started yet

I mean yeah, you're not wrong. I also will not cast my final judgement until it's at least release-ready.

BUUUUUUT

We've been burned by this before. There's a reason it's a meme:

Guys, don't worry it's all pre-Alpha.

Guys, don't worry, it's still Alpha.

Guys, don't worry, it's only Beta.

Guys, don't worry, it's only just come out.

Guys, don't worry, it's just the first patch.

There's definitely warning signs flashing and red flags going up if their first attempt - however preliminary it may be - displays such a blatant ignorance of what the problems with old talents and the hopes for new talents were. That doesn't mean they can't fix it, but people are right to be concerned that the designers seem to be missing a rather fundamental part of the problem here. If they don't understand that or are deliberately ignoring it, things do not bode well for design. That's cause for concern even when it's an unfinished product.

[Doombringer]

If you're a raid lead and you're losing your shit over the fact that some of your players may pick a Non Optimal Talent...

1) If you're in any raid group that's so worried about perfect progression, your players should be prepared to discuss optimal builds and implement them without hand-holding or constant checking.

2) If you're not #1 then stop worrying about it.

Honestly, people like you ruin this game. There's no One Way to Play that should be forced on anyone. Talenting is voluntary and shouldn't be developer-mandated. If they opt in to play in your raid then that's them being open to being told how to talent. Otherwise, go away.

[Rendark]

Lets hope they make interrupts baseline. If they don't then every group i make will be NO interrupt NO invite.

[kamuimac]

It’s funny for people to just say it doesn’t matter because the BiS build will be used by everyone once it’s figured out..

That hasn’t been true for a long time.. constantly in both PvP and PvE, there have been flavor of the month builds that change regularly depending on what the best players are running.. but the reality is the best players were still the best no matter which fotm build they were running, the build isn’t what makes them good.

There have been meaningful choices in gear and talents for years now and this will increase that even more..

well wow is not exackly rocket science. i mean most of us play it for 15 + years. so regardless of how blizzard chnges things it takes liek 15 minutes of reading then 3-4 hours of practise already in dungeons and you are done regardless of build changes.

problem is - most of players simply dont care. and blizzard needs to stop overtuning game and just let people have fun . even if top 1 % will be whinign how dumbed down game is.

they tried elitest raiders expansion with SL and it completly failed. time to go back to basics and make game as easy as classic and tbc is.

- - - Updated - - -

Not sure the evidence bears this out. You can look at Subcreation and see that for most specs and classes, everyone plays the same setup for m+. Not really any different than raid.

Choices are only interesting when there's no mathematically best option, which is usually only the case for survivability or utility, not throughput.

And even that hinges on them performing constant balance tweaks, which has never and will never happen.

choices are interesting only if they are mathematicly close. but in case of covenants some are literlay miles ahead and after 1.5 year of expansion they stil lare because blizzard literaly dont care enough to do even some basic balancing. like look at destro locks / survival hunt - where are the nerfs ? where are bufs to shadow priests / retri paladin which have been pariah of m+ this whole expansion ? who they massively buffed ? WWmonk which was so prevelant in mdi anyway . its insane how incompetent wow devs are.

if they played they won game they woudl know it. but they dont

[Orby]

Its just so good to see progression that matters with classes being more unique instead of being forced to have everything. Shame I stopped playing the game over a year ago otherwise I would be way more excited :P

[Biomega]

they tried elitest raiders expansion with SL and it completly failed.

I see this a lot and it baffles me. How is SL an "elitist raiders expansion"? There's never been more chores to keep people out of raiding. SoD was a trash-tier raid. Sepulcher made world-level guilds disband and a world-first-race contender collapse under the stress. At the same time, SL had more catchup mechanics and "casual" content than pretty much any expansion before it.

To claim SL failed BECAUSE of raids is also a bold statement, considering the absolute dumpster fire that the lore has become, the almost non-existent changes to classes or mechanics, the almost unequivocal failure of expansion-themed systems like Covenants or Torghast, and so on. There's a whole catalog of reasons why SL failed, but I'm not sure "it's too much focused on hardcore raiding" is even on the first page of that. Or the second.