Why did Blizzard let glyphs essentially die out?

**Triceron** · 2023-11-24, 01:10 PM

Originally Posted by Nathanyel

Choice nodes are horizontal, although I'm never quite sure what people mean by "horizontal progression", progression means getting stronger. The red ability being blue is not progression, but customization.

Power progression means getting stronger, progression simply means obtaining more for your character, more to do. Collecting is a form of progression, for example. Getting alternative drops of the same ilvl that you already have is horizontal progression. Generally, it does refer to cosmetics, since we're talking about shifting power around and generally keeping it at the same level, as opposed to getting a direct 'ilvl upgrade'.

Ok yeah, so you are talking mostly about customization - which would be better implemented as part of the Barbershop, letting you choose between several visual variations of a spell, be it base color/tint, or changing a lightning-based Thunder Clap into an earthen or voidy appearance.

It wouldn't only be visual, as glyphs originally were able to change the function of abilities completely. They are basically like choice nodes for all your existing core class abilities.

The talent system is more prone to cookie cutter because it is limited by choice options, and all talents are progressed vertically. Power is applied by branching down new nodes that are more powerful than anything that comes before it. But the branching doesn't give you much options and everyone ends up going down generally the same path because that'a how vertical progession ends up being designed; tou often get shoehorned because everyone is incentivized to put points further down the tree rather than 'hybrid' picks in a different branch up top. This limits the overall possible combos, because no one would sacrifice power for hybrid utility.

Horizontal progression if your talent tree spread out and grew sideways, giving you more options per existing choice node without affecting your overall power.

So an example is if the old pick-out-of-3 talent system was expanded horizontally, you would gain more options over time by making it pick-out-of-4 or pick-out-of-5 and grow it sideways. And to add on this, you aren't just limited to one talent pick, you could mix and match and apply multiple glyphs to the same ability, so you could get a blue colored fireball that slows and AOE's while trading off a lower crit rate or increase cast time or whatever works to keep it all relatively balanced. Each glyph could carry its own set of checks and balances.

Of course, I'm purely theorycrafting here, so I don't have the design experience to back up this working at all. Maybe the devs did try this, and it was just too much hassle for the sake of customization. We won't know for sure since so little was shown with the original Glyphs.

The glyph system in Wrath-Cata were not very choice driven and the limited options again forced most players onto the same set of 3 Major Glyphs. If you're a tank, you picked the 3 best tank Major Glyphs and that's it. You aren't given room to pick the others because it competes for a Major Glyph slot. An ideal Glyph system would work more like Transmogs, where you apply it per item, not all competing for the same 3 slots.

**hulkgor** · 2023-11-24, 01:18 PM

The original glyph system was baked into talents, and the cosmetic version into the barber-shop.

Features evolve.

**Z3ROR** · 2023-11-24, 01:19 PM

I am glad that Glyphs are gone. The idea of Glyph was that you can change abilities the way you want, but in the end people only choose the glyph what was best for their class to min-max their character. Freedom of glyph choice was gone with that.

The same will probably happen with Hero talents in the War Within as well. Personally I wasn't too happy about that.

I am in team "the game needs to be simplified a bit" instead of making the game and classes even more complex. That is basicly why Classic is doing so good. Classic is a simpler, but still challenging WoW. People like that more if i read different comments on the web.

**Eurhetemec** · 2023-11-24, 05:03 PM

Originally Posted by Snufflupagus

This is the correct answer. Why add hundreds of cosmetic skins for players to get for free just by playing the game they’ve already paid for in a world that’s realised people will pay through the nose for cosmetic skins?

It's not the correct answer, though. It could be. It could become the correct answer IF Blizzard released glyph-like functionality via purchasable cosmetics.

But they haven't, have they?

Nothing you can pay for modifies what you spells and abilities look like, does it? So you can say "Oh well I'm a cynical edgelord and Bli$$ard are just trying to rob us", but like, not here. They're not even! They could do! But they aren't. So that's a very wrong answer that makes both of you look pretty silly. Call me back when they do actually start doing what you're predicting, rather than selling endless mounts, pets, and the odd outfit.

**Lodidop** · 2023-11-29, 07:15 AM

Originally Posted by Nathanyel

I could actually see the Hero Talents bring some of that flavor back, unless people still just pick "BiS" choices, but that's not really something you can blame on the system.

True, but people just picking "BiS" choices isn't also the players' fault. I think the best fix for this is to provide choices that vary in style yet tied close in numbers.

**Caerrona** · 2023-11-29, 08:04 AM

Originally Posted by Eurhetemec

When glyphs came in, they seemed like a conceptually great way to customize your abilities, and make your character look much cooler when you see them doing stuff day in and day out. The initial list of glyphs seemed like it was basically just the beginning.

But it's now been what, 7 years? And glyphs basically haven't been updated. Sure we've seen a Druid form or two, and glyphs for Demon Hunters, but Evokers still don't even have glyphs at all!

It's truly bizarre, because Blizzard seem to be aware that players want more customization options, and it's easy to come up with ideas for glyphs that would be relatively popular for virtually every class. It seems like the upcoming Heroic Talents may include visual customizations, and maybe that's part of what's going on, but frankly it doesn't explain 7 years of neglect. Have Blizzard ever made a statement on this, at all? If not, what's going on? I'm honestly a bit weirded out when I come back to WoW after a year away or whatever and there still aren't any new glyphs except maybe for Druid.

The answer is very simple and has been stated by blizzard a couple of times in the past for wow and their other games.

They feel they have to cater to literal retards.

A more recent example is the "we are removing the observer because retards can't tell what pet it is". Even though they are back tracking this one after people freaked out.

I just imagine your average wow human dumpster freaking out about a fire themed r shaman or r druid because the circle they put down is red and fire themed and they lack the iq to tell it apart from other mechanics. Blizzard is too scared to upset the downies.