My Opinion On World Of Warcraft’s New Talent System

I can’t say I agree with such an opinion. The article states roughly that rewriting a major chunk of your gameplay is a bad thing, but doesn’t touch on the facts that led to. I know a lot of game design is about gut feeling, but going out with a statements based on “I have a bad feeling about this” isn’t very helpful in this particular case, unless you already agree that Blizzard are wrong and you are primed to bash them. Sorry Lum but I think you should chime in with something more thoughtful on the subject.

Back to WoW”s talent system: I think that compared to the current state of affairs Talents 2.0 are a step in the right direction. I don’t want to argue what amount of flexibility the new system will have, but I’m sure it will bring more choices than we have now. The whole reason for meddling with the talents in the first place is that trees didn’t scale well. They got bloated immensely and had to be slashed in some way. Saying that Blizzard shouldn’t have done changes is a clear failing to understand the complexities of the design. The old is better argument doesn’t hold water here. And yes – if you redo something you will make mistakes – sometimes big mistakes, but I can’t approve of people pretending they are anywhere near Blizzard’s shoes (game designers – don’t be arrogant –  as competent as you may be, unless you have actual dev time on the project and are aware of the constraints don’t pretend to know better). If you’ve seen BlizzCon you know about the cons/pros slides – among the good things were the spec choice at level 10 and fewer trivial talents (+% spell dmg, etc). The cons – minimum talent choice, off-spec talents didn’t matter (Blizzard’s own words). So why people didn’t get their torches back then? Because on the surface things didn’t look different to most – there were still talent trees (awful talent trees by the way). Now things do look very different and Blizzard have a though time convincing you that change isn’t scary and bad – but the worst of it is over – they’ve already made their design turning point with Cataclysm and they didn’t fail. Then why should they fail now when they’re simply extending the implications of what they did many months ago?

It’s odd.  I don’t seem to care as much as a lot of people.  I think that making sure that there are no ‘wrong’ choices and allowing people to make slight tweaks to their character is better than potentially rolling with a broken toon.  Looking at some of the slides, they removed the cruft and distractors and flat out said *these* are the talents you should be using, they all bring something to the table.  

I think part of it is that I am busy as shit most days ad the last thing I want to worry about is slogging through elitist jerks for an hour and having to relearn my toon after a patch drops with a talent change.

Almost every year Blizzard present arguments for their design changes. The guy who wrote the article linked here didn’t. He just said he didn’t like the changes  - and that is worthless to anyone who isn’t seeking to affirm his own dislike for Blizzard.

I would say “new” choice as we’ve seen would be perfectly represented by about 6 new glyphs changing existing abilities, as well as making some current “spec choice” talents baseline – things they’ve done in previous expansions… In fact, streamlining glyph system this way would make a lot more sense then talent system – both of them “isn’t exciting”, but glyphs can provide clear and immediate changes to playstyle by using “same buttons”, while “switching abilities” creates extra ui problems with hotkeys and ability bars.

ANd this is why i dropped WoW like a hot potatoe…and am not even regretting it once.

“Both Eric and myself have more experience in the game industry then 99%
of the people working on WoW. I think we’ve both earned the right to an
opinion on game design and production, thanks.”

Oh snap! See, this is what I come here for.

Cheers. I wouldn’t be asking you to write something on the topic if I didn’t think you had a right to an opinion. However I’ll be looking for one of those somewhere else, thanks.

WoW is not really about discovery and experimentation, so the metagame should not offer you choice when there really is none.

It’s like an auto dealer offering you three choices of tires on your new car: high-performance traction-control radials, ice, or cheese. Taking away ice and cheese will A) improve customer satisfaction, and B) reduce the amount of work keeping those other two stocked.

This is possibly the best metaphor I have ever devised.

Both Eric and myself have more experience in the game industry then 99% of the people working on WoW. I think we’ve both earned the right to an opinion on game design and production, thanks.

Really?

I hate those kinds of arguments – I have more experience doing my X therefore I know as well or better how to do your X. Experience in the gaming industry doesn’t mean experience with WoW – of course they are related but they are not equivalent. Even though I’ve read your blog for years (and never thought of you as a sell out by the way), I don’t know the breadth of your design experience. Having said that (and I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong), I don’t think it’s nearly on the scale of a game this size, with a fan base this big with large pockets of people with such disparate interests.

Nobody needs to “earn” the right to have an opinion on anything. People are free to spout off on whatever they want. The VALUE of that opinion is something else and I think what you’re saying is your opinion is more valuable the 99% of the people working on WoW. I think that’s bullshit. Do you really think the designers driving the ship are not AT LEAST as qualified to make these decisions as you if not more so? Do you really think the “peons” are making this call?

Sure, I have an opinion on it too. I’m just going to state it. I’m not going to try and qualify why it’s so much better, more valuable or anything else than the people who are actually responsible for it, and invest many MANY more hours thinking on it, considering the ramifications of it, and probably try it and other things out and we’re not a party to any of that process.

That doesn’t mean what you have to say doesn’t count, obviously. But your comment above was disappointing in the spirit in which it was delivered.

Having said that – new systems will always have naysayers, and doom and gloom and how this is the worst thing ever. Always. 

Sure, let’s have a discussion, but drawing such damning conclusions without experiencing it or trying it and so forth just seems like a bunch of noisy, pointless ranting to me.

They felt the talent system gave no MEANINGFUL choices. Their goal was to have a system that gave meaningful choices and they tried and tried with the current construct and couldn’t achieve that goal. So they felt they had to take a different approach. And so what if I no longer get a talent every (other?) level – if that talent isn’t even vaguely interesting who gives a shit?

At least these choices are actually those – meaningful choices that provide some kind of fun/interesting/compelling ability. They don’t come often enough? Well, you get class and spec abilities as well. But I don’t think any NEW player is going to /ragequit because they didn’t get their reduce X cast by Y 1 seconds talent at level 12.

Now I know people will be saying all kinds of crap like – oh yeah this is why WoW sucks, and oh yeah here’s me documenting deleting my characters on youtube (seriously? I mean… seriously?!). I’ve experienced a lot of shit games in my time and I disagree with a number of things in WoW but I’m not going to troll some sites crying – “yeah  WoW sucks and you couldn’t force me to play that awful game” because that’s pointless and juvenile. When/if I get to that point I’ll quietly cancel my account and move on to the next thing. I think a lot of folks posting on these types of boards need to do the same.

What I said was in response to “I can’t approve of people pretending they are anywhere near Blizzard’s shoes”. I was pointing out that in fact I am fairly close to their shoe style if perhaps not their shoe size.

Fair enough – and in the interest of being fair the comment you were responding to was lame and unnecessary (lame all around!) and I can see how it would get your hackles up. For one, why would you care about his approval (I’m certain you don’t, nor should you, and he should know what so why even mention it), and two he’s implying that people who aren’t Blizzard can’t have an opinion or they can but it’s not valid which is the lamest comment of all.

So… as you were

I really don’t want a return to ludicrously difficult.

But I don’t enjoy the alternative.

SWG?  Entertainer to level cap solo in 13 hours.  Engineer in 10 hours /played even with mining your own mat’s.

Game too old and broken?

DCUO level cap 20 hours /played solo with no power leveling not a problem.

STO had its first VA on the first day of the early start and it is even easier now.

RMT’s advertise in game for level cap power leveling in COH with a 10 hour turnaround.  That was broadcast just this week and no sweat for any player that can fill a group and can pee in a Code Red bottle.  Matter of fact I would say about 10%+ of group leaders in the game are gold farmers these days.  Who could be more motivated to get 8 folks in a group and make sure it works smoothly and maxes XP?

I would embrace harder for sure.  Current games are 100% face-roll.  No player skill involved in the MMORPG market.  Just varying amounts of chair time to level cap then a grind that makes Chinese F2P grind-fest games look pleasant to get geared up.

Face-roll means no challenge.  No challenge, to me, means I hop games like hobos hop trains.  I see what there is to see for a week or two then off to the next one.

End game programmed encounters, that you just sunk a ton of time into to get geared for, aren’t a challenge either.  Don’t stand in the fire.  Do what DeadlyBoss tells you to do.  There’s no skill in that.

There is no one game that can hold the interest of seasoned gamers these days unless that interest is purely a social one.

WoW still exists _despite_ GC efforts; I don’t know how someone with a proven track record of failure and mis-managed priorities gets to keep such high-profile position for so long. He must be sleeping with all the right people, constantly, all the time in one unending orgy, and has no time to do any design. This is the only explanation I can come up with.

Actually I’m a bit inclined to disagree that there has to be no ‘wrong’ choices. Reality is if you’re designing around if a build gets kicked from raids or not then you’ll never have any difference between the base characters. They must be the same down to a cookie cutter. How dull.

Two million lost subscriptions imply strongly that Blizzard =did= fail with Cataclysm.

As I’ve written elsewhere, one of basic principles of marketing is that it’s cheaper to keep existing customers happy than it is to acquire new customers. The MMO industry is =not= the exception to that rule.