Do you think talent trees will be cookie cutter?

[glowpipe]

aslong as there are dps meters and sims available, there will be 100% cut and dry cookie cutter specs. And these will often sacrifice a lot of important shit like interrupts.

Its time for dps meters to go from this game

[cuafpr]

yes of course because if one set of talents has .00001% higher dps/hps that spec will be used and not using will get you called out. Makes me wish they never allowed us to see dps/hps really.

[craigw]

in the MMO rift you had enough point to fill 2 talent trees then a half of the third. you dumped 30-40 points into each tree. they still had cookie cutter builds. websites with min/max builds and what moves to use in rotation. it doenst matter what you use for power progression everyone will still use the cookie cutter build. outside maybe 2-3% of total class players.

[Raetary]

Of course they will be cookier cutter.
There's no system that they could implement that won't be cookie cutter.

Besides, preventing cookier cutter builds was never Blizzards intention.
The whole loadout thing exists so we can min-max every piece of content.

[Niwes]

if i were Blizzard, i had started a way another route years ago.

i would FIRST (before rolling out a talent tree with talents to balance) define 2-3 fixed „playstyles“ for a class/spec.

meaning: i would first think about a spells+talents „package“ that plays like this or that. also by defining strengths and weaknesses of each „package“. then i would balance these 2-3 packages. and THEN i would cut that possible „packages“ into all their used parts/talents and strew them over the talent tree.

theory crafter will find the „best“ combinations anyway. so they find exactly the 2-3 packages/combinations you designed to be „best“ in the first place. this way imo it offers more variance and a better balance by design, than the „oh that cookie cutter build with that combination is a huge outliner, how we fix that, without breaking other things?“ repetitive workflow.

[NineSpine]

in the MMO rift you had enough point to fill 2 talent trees then a half of the third. you dumped 30-40 points into each tree. they still had cookie cutter builds. websites with min/max builds and what moves to use in rotation. it doenst matter what you use for power progression everyone will still use the cookie cutter build. outside maybe 2-3% of total class players.

Half of players don't even touch content like rated pvp, M+, or normal+ raids. You are wildly overestimating how many players give a shit about min maxing.

[Niwes]

Of course they will be cookier cutter.
There's no system that they could implement that won't be cookie cutter.

Besides, preventing cookier cutter builds was never Blizzards intention.
The whole loadout thing exists so we can min-max every piece of content.

pure power wise there is nearly no way to prevent that one and only winner spec. even with what a said above (but which makes it way easier to bring the winning team and the loosing team very close to each other).

the only way to not end in a single defined winner spec, is to use tradeoffs or niches. gain 1% power but loose 2 different comfort benefits, like faster movement and damage avoid. this would be the tradeoff version.

the niche version is: design talents (or complete spells+talent combined playstyles, i called them „packages“ above) to target niches. like AoE vs ST. dependent on outer factors (boss encounters, m+, etc), so there is a specific cookie cutter build for a specific niche.

everything else is off the table and it will always end like that.

[Biomega]

if i were Blizzard, i had started a way another route years ago.

i would FIRST (before rolling out a talent tree with talents to balance) define 2-3 fixed „playstyles“ for a class/spec.

While that makes sense (somewhat), Blizzard isn't doing this not by accident, but by intention.

Their goal ISN'T to create the most balanced game. Their goal is to attract the maximum amount of people who pay the maximum amount of money. Sometimes having a reasonably balanced game is in line with that goal; but often it's not needed.

People going "this looks/seems/sounds so cool!" is often much more important to them than it actually being something that leads to more balance. Which, again, might also lead to balance down the road, but may also not - and that's entirely fine with them.

This is especially true during an expansion launch, where they want to create the maximum of initial hype to sell massive numbers of box copies. That's more important to them than long-term retention at that point, because the number of people who buy an expansion, sub for 2-3 months, and then quit is probably quite large - and a very high percentage of those people would quit almost no matter what because they grow bored with new things very quickly and there's no way to produce enough content to keep them on and still make money. So they don't even bother. And of the rest that do stay on, a large amount of people aren't interested in competitive balance and bleeeding-edge optimization - they're the average durdlers who just want cool shit to play around with.

The people who ACTUALLY care enough about balance and mechanics that it makes the difference for them between buying/not buying an expansion are probably few enough at this point that it's simply not worth investing the massive resources that would be needed to placate them.

I'm with you, 100% - don't get me wrong. I think the new trees are wishy-washy-PR-flashy and will not lead to much substantial change at all. But I'm part of a tiny minority of players who care about quality and attention to detail in design and design goals over throwaway "fun factors". The game just isn't for those people anymore.

[Super Kami Dende]

Of course. The fact People can't even understand the fact the new trees offer even less choice than the current ones is just straight up hilarious.

But because it "looks" like the old Trees, People are lapping that shit up like the dumbasses the WoW Community is.

[loras]

Been looking over the talent trees for Dragonflight. They sure look like they are going to be cookie-cutter/Spec-This-Way-Or-Denied-To-Group like it was back when they had talent trees before.

What do you think from what you've seen (and what you know about the playerbase)?

Are the new talent trees going to usher in a new era of flexibility? Or is it going to be a one-spec disaster in the making?

Well, there are probably going to be a few best specs, but as any good player can tell you: It depends on the goal you intend to reach with them, as well as your own preferences (barring overly egregious balancing failures of course).

Mathematic "perfection" has a tendency to be irrelevant to reality, keep that in mind.

[NineSpine]

Of course. The fact People can't even understand the fact the new trees offer even less choice than the current ones is just straight up hilarious.

But because it "looks" like the old Trees, People are lapping that shit up like the dumbasses the WoW Community is.

It objectively offers more choices. That's just a mathematical fact.

[Ielenia]

Not your fault if you don't understand nuances in languauge

I understand it quite well. Well enough to see how you decided to play cute and avoid the context of the conversation to give a "gotcha" that doesn't really work in the context of the conversation.

Again: the topic of the conversation was the talent trees. You knew that, but still decided to give an answer that doesn't pertain to the topic of the conversation.

[Garymorilix]

It objectively offers more choices. That's just a mathematical fact.

That mathematical fact is just the illusion of choice.

Look at how WoW worked every time they gave you choices:
You get like 15-20 legendaries for a spec. You know how many you can actually use? 2 or 3 tops, most specs use the same legendary they had since 9.0 (maybe in a different slot).
Same with Legiondaries, or Azerite powers or essences.

It doesn't matter if mathematically you increase the number of wrong choices, at the end of the day people will make their optimal routes and change that 1-2-3 things between them (like AoE vs Single) once in a while.

So yea, a mathematical fact =/= more actual choices you can (or should) make.

If I tell you that you can eat a pizza or a bowl of sht, is that really a choice?

[Krekal]

Been looking over the talent trees for Dragonflight. They sure look like they are going to be cookie-cutter/Spec-This-Way-Or-Denied-To-Group like it was back when they had talent trees before.

What do you think from what you've seen (and what you know about the playerbase)?

Are the new talent trees going to usher in a new era of flexibility? Or is it going to be a one-spec disaster in the making?

>Do you think talent trees will be cookie cutter?
Lol yes, you could change the talent trees however much you want, or even make it how it was back "in the old days" of wow pre- cata when people supposedly didn't obsess so much over everybody having the minmaxx talent build, and it would still turn into this
Why? Because it's got to do with the era of gaming, it's not 2006 any more, we've now got the possibility to figure out and look up the strongest possible combinations of basically everything within less than a minute of using google - talents, stats, rotations, classes, compositions - and it's not going to change because you change these things

With that said, new talent system looks more fun than the "new" one introduced in cata, imo

[Triceron]

I understand it quite well. Well enough to see how you decided to play cute and avoid the context of the conversation to give a "gotcha" that doesn't really work in the context of the conversation.

Again: the topic of the conversation was the talent trees. You knew that, but still decided to give an answer that doesn't pertain to the topic of the conversation.

Of course I knew.

Just like you know this very conversation we're having has nothing to do with the topic either and you willingly chose to engage in it. You're not even trying to steer it back on topic, you're just trying to argue over my comments.

The conversation is about Talent Trees, and you're arguing with someone who made a simple off topic comment which you could have easily ignored and left it be. Instead you continue to argue and point out how off topic it is even though you're openly doing the same by bringing attention to it. Don't pretend you aren't doing anything different than I am here. You've now spent more time yourself making off-topic posts here than you have made on-topic ones. In the end, does it fucking matter?

The more we argue the more off topic it gets. If you really wanted things to stay on topic, you wouldn't engage in this at all and know better to just let it go away. You already know how people on this forum react, I don't think you're that ignorant even if you pretend to be in order to be right.


At the end of the day, Talents are illusion of choice, just like the way many other systems in WoW have been designed. Yet an illusion of choice does not have to immediately equate to a 'cookie cutter' build, because Professions and Race choices are examples of illusion of choice that isn't cookie cutter. Race choice is driven by cosmetics more than performance. Profession choices are driven by economic and utility reasons more than statistic performance for raids.

If we want Talents that aren't cookie cutter while still providing plenty of choice, the way to go about it is cap the total amount of power gain that talents could ever contribute, and balance every option accordingly to meet that power standard. This could be done either by lowering the bar and taking power out completely (ie, how Professions are now), or they could spend more time balancing the systems so the power difference between choices becomes much more trivial (ie, how Racials are now). Or, an even more ideal situation, make top tier content exclusive to an optimal Talent system. Think PVP talents for PVP and how you wouldn't access them for any other content. You'd have a 'Raid Talents' Tree for raiding that scales up in power as you progress. Your regular talent choices would merely provide utility and cosmetic-level choices; basically customize how you want to play without affecting how much overall damage output you're doing.

[NineSpine]

That mathematical fact is just the illusion of choice.

Look at how WoW worked every time they gave you choices:
You get like 15-20 legendaries for a spec. You know how many you can actually use? 2 or 3 tops, most specs use the same legendary they had since 9.0 (maybe in a different slot).
Same with Legiondaries, or Azerite powers or essences.

It doesn't matter if mathematically you increase the number of wrong choices, at the end of the day people will make their optimal routes and change that 1-2-3 things between them (like AoE vs Single) once in a while.

So yea, a mathematical fact =/= more actual choices you can (or should) make.

If I tell you that you can eat a pizza or a bowl of sht, is that really a choice?

This is more like "If I tell you that you can eat a pizza or soup, is that really a choice? Because I will pick pizza every time and that means the choice doesn't exist!"

Yes, people like YOU will make the same choice. I'll do exactly what I've done since day one: Spec however seems fun to me and laugh at people like you.

[Super Kami Dende]

It objectively offers more choices. That's just a mathematical fact.

lol no. Congratulations for proving my point.

*lap lap lap*

[NineSpine]

lol no. Congratulations for proving my point.

*lap lap lap*

It's an objective fact that the new talent trees have more potential layouts than the current talents. This isn't debatable.

[Lighthope]

yes of course because if one set of talents has .00001% higher dps/hps that spec will be used and not using will get you called out. Makes me wish they never allowed us to see dps/hps really.

I think you are absolutely right.

[Rawrajishxc]

If you give choice one will be the best, period. Perfect balance is impossible if the choice aren’t the exact same spells.

No matter how flexible a system is, majority will tend toward the best option.

Exactly and this will never change. There will always be an optimal build and It will always be used as a template.