Kung fu pandas, talent tree I could have my 2yr old pick without any real impact on playability, pokemen pet battles. WoW certainly fix the hardcore / casual problem. They're solidly on casual now. No hardcore raider is going to see this as an improvement.
I think the market is going more casual...with good reason...there's so many more of them.
A lot of you are missing the point here. Blizzard is basically trying to force the players whether they PvP, Raid or both to pick their build based on how they play not what they are playing for. And I for one hope they succeed. Too many times developers make mmos with a diverse set of classes and give those classes great potential to shine with their players just to have min/maxers come in and dictate what is acceptable for raids, PvP, leveling, soloing, grouping and anything else associated with the game. And too often you need a build for each one.
I mean how often do you hear others asking:
Hey, what's the best class for soloing?
What class is needed more for endgame?
Which class is best for PvP?
What is the class and build to get the most groups?
I hear it all the time. I mean is it not more important to pick a class you seem to like and be helpful when you solo, in a group, during a PvP encounter AND during a raid? More importantly isn't it better to be all these things without having to be told you have the wrong class to do any of those things based on your build?
If you think about it, if Blizzard can reprogram the masses to think about the player/class more than the class/build, I think a lot of these attitudes about min/maxing, endgame, PvP and solo vs. grouping can be changed. I mean we all want more players playing right? At least I think we do, because that golden age group of gamers you grew up with in UO, DAoC, AC or EQ ain't gettin any younger. And since a lot of the older players are always finding ways to avoid younger gamers rather than teach them, it's now up to developers to teach the younger gen how to 'role' play.
That is pick a cool class, don't pick a class to fit in.
AMEN!!!
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
You have class abilities, you have subclass (spec) abilities and talents every 15 levels (or a choice of stigmas every x levels).
I like this in WoW because of being able to change specs (you can't switch between sorc and spiritmaster in Aion) and the glyph system (screw you, manastone system) adding a little bit of spice to make it pop.
This totally beats having to play the spreadsheet-min-maxing game.
From what I understood in one of the Blizzcon videos "this may not be the final form of the new system" so I'll leave it to the brilliant minds at Blizzard to weed out the spreadsheet minigame this game has become.
Ultimately it was fun for only a handful and was abused by the majority creating a rotten community (am I wrong?).
there's nothing wrong with cookie cutter builds. Most of the time, these cookie cutters aren't the best characters. They might output the most dps, get into raids easiest, etc, but that's the problem, not the talent system.
Raids and needing to be accepted by others in order to get what you want is the problem in WoW and other MMOs. You should be able to do what you want without it coming down to an oversimplified choice between 3 talents every 15 levels. That system is lame and takes even more of the customization out of the game.
The original level 60 vanilla WoW talent trees were the best. In the early days before raid or die, people had all sorts of different builds. Some of them were better than others, but no one was breaking out spreadsheets and doing quantum mechanical reverse engineering on the system because there was no need to. Now.... now it's just sad. Goodbye fun experimentation and quirkyness, hello MMO accounting.
I'm absolutely amazed at how many people are already bashing this new talent system and making unfounded accusations of how it's going to ruin the game.
How is giving players more choices instead of forcing them to play a certain spec a certain way more "casual"? If you actually enjoy being pidgeon-holed into playing the game a certain way because of the class/spec you chose then fine I guess you wouldn't enjoy these changes but I for one am happy that Blizzard is finally giving us some real customization with the talent system.
With the way things are now, choosing talents is about choice vs. sacrifice. You choose certain talnts/specs at the cost of getting completely locked out of others. With this new system it will be completely about choice; you'll be free to choose any power you want and if you don't like your choice you can change it as easily as you change your glyphs now (which is really easy).
This definitely makes it easier for developers to balance pvp and make more intricate dungeons and raids. Simply because they don't have so many variables to account for. If they would've gone with 9 tiers and let you choose every 10 levels instead of 15, it would look a whole lot better imo. As it looks now, it just feels limited. I could imagine leveling from 76-90, only getting one unique ability and feeling underwhelmed.
To those defending this as an easier way to be accepted into raids or perform in PvP, for shame. It's not worth having a boring spoonfed overtweaked endgame just to get shiney new gear at the expense of one of the few RPG elements of the game, customization.
I'm not saying an overhaul wasn't needed, but this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it's cutting off the nose to spite the face, it's... you get the point.
I love how the Bliz devs appear to really think this is going to lead to more unique specs. No matter what if there's a selection of options generally speaking one is going to outperform the rest given the right scenario and it's not going to take min/maxers long to figure out what the most ideal options are. Therefore, everyone is simply going to continue having the same exact cookie cutter builds they have now. Ex: To PvP it's better to take Frost ammo than poison or arcane for Hunter.
I don't like it, they just made the system too watered down, seems to be nothing more then a glorified glyph system, O well glad I don't have to deal with it.
While sounding interesting, this changes nothing. You won't have hybrid builds because in order them to work they need to redesign whole combat system and dungeons. So while you may have this choice it's superficial, because in order to raid you need certain talents and so on. WoWs problem is design flaws in higher raiding that basic drives much of it hardness from huge dmg and spam healing to counter it. And whole balance will be screwed by monk class that uses totally different combat mechanics, ffs they should move everyone to non-autoattack but they are too lazy. Prepare for even worse balance issues than there was with Death Knight. Prepare to face buggy content like it was during Catalysm. Blizzard haven't put money in WoW for last two years, it's milking it till end and we are the suckers who take it like candy. Prepare to face same crap in different wrapper, I lasted 3 months on Catalysm which ended almost constant playing from start. Wake up and smell the air, it's not roses!
WOW Bliz stealing another idea from a game, Alganon has almost the same system and they did it first LOL. All bliz can do is steal ideas from everyone else sense most of there creative talent left a long time ago.
One of the great things about having a choice is in dodging the bad ones, and knowing the unskilled by the choices they've made. In Magic: The Gathering they have some terrible cards in their deck releases, ones that are terribly inefficient and would be a poor choice in any build. When asked about these cards, Wizards responded that if they didn't put bad cards into the game it would just be good cards, and the bad cards actually increase the value of the good ones.
The same, in my opinion, applies to talents. You need to have the choice to make a bad decision in order to make the good decision worthwhile. Otherwise why not just take all choice away? I realize in this case you're still choosing for the 'flavor' of the talent... but it's one step closer to just doing away with any talent choices whatsoever.
I don't like how each spec is losing its identity for further homgenenization. Basically, all rogue specs will have a mobility, DPS, energy talents, etc with little or no variance.
All this does is make every other healer almost the exact same build. One of the worst decisions I have ever seen made in a MMO, my account can now stay dead far as I am concerned, I will not play such a dumbed down game.
It was bad enough we will soon have Kung fu pandas and pokemon pets, but this puts the icing on the cake. Basically all I can say is that Wow is now pathetic!
As opposed to now, where every other healer is...wait for it...the exact same build.
It's not "dumbing it down". They are just addressing something stupid that happens constantly.
When given the choice of 30 skills, you think you have options and are going to "customize" your character. Now, you have a bunch of skills that are completely useless or deemed "crap" and you can't really use them as they are useless skills. Just think of a DK placing 100% of points in unholy right after DKs were released and no points into anything else. Stupid looking, no? You get made fun of because you chose a skill that you thought would be good or "fit your character" and was, instead, a horribly crappy idea. In the end, you only really had one-two real choices. You could make the choice to heal properly with one specific build, or be a crappy healer with most other builds. You could be a good tank, or die over and over. You could get 20k dps or 10k dps. All because you didn't choose the best way. The options became completely meaningless and fell into the category of "illusion of choice".
In a video game, if you get two options and one option ends in a game over, or even has a 70% chance of ending in a game over, while the other option has a 0% chance of a game over, which one will you pick? In Gears of War 2, when they give you the option of turning a handle and make you waste 1 minute turning a handle when no one can interrupt you and you HAVE to do it anyway, boring or not, don't you just wish they would have just done it automatically? I'd prefer grouping with a bunch of skilled players and if the tank messes up people knew it was his fault, than thinking "oh, he just specced wrong". I value skill over the illusion of choice any day.
If your choices don't matter, why get pissed off when a person takes your choices away in an effort of giving you REAL options. Even if they give us NO options, it'd be better than having no options and the game trying to fool you into thinking you do.
"Do you want chocolate or vanilla ice cream?"
"Vanilla!"
"We're out of vanilla."
"Why'd you ask me if I wanted vanilla then?"
The inability to lighten up doesn't make you hardcore.
Anyone else realize that it's the pathetic cry-baby paladins that are focal points for nerfs to the game? This time, being the fact that our talents are getting dumbed down so pallys can be healers, tanks and their retardins.
Member of Talon | www.lakexeno.com RIFT: Redcameo, Warrior, Faemist Server RIFT: Bluecameo, Mage, Faemist Server
Basically they're removing talents all together. Now it's just based on how you play. If you want to tank you chose this column every 15 levels. If you want to heal you pick this column, if you want to DPS you pick the last column. It's not much different than the other talent systems, but there's no real customization. You pick the talent and it gives you bonuses to tanking/healing/dps'ing.
My only question is I hope you don't have to have a prerequisite in the "tree". So at 15 you go with the tanking talent, but at 30 you can go with the second row dps talent...that would be fine with me.
Comments
I think the market is going more casual...with good reason...there's so many more of them.
AMEN!!!
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
To me the system sounds a lot like Aion's.
You have class abilities, you have subclass (spec) abilities and talents every 15 levels (or a choice of stigmas every x levels).
I like this in WoW because of being able to change specs (you can't switch between sorc and spiritmaster in Aion) and the glyph system (screw you, manastone system) adding a little bit of spice to make it pop.
This totally beats having to play the spreadsheet-min-maxing game.
From what I understood in one of the Blizzcon videos "this may not be the final form of the new system" so I'll leave it to the brilliant minds at Blizzard to weed out the spreadsheet minigame this game has become.
Ultimately it was fun for only a handful and was abused by the majority creating a rotten community (am I wrong?).
It's still 'less'...
Blizzard has a funny way of making us think we're getting something 'amazing' when we're actually just making whatever they give us 'work', somehow.
This is a slap in the face.
There are 'spec's' of classes that are actually left out of this process.
I'm not impressed.
At all.
I think the dev staff that they have left on WoW is scrambling.
The torch of focus within Blizz has been passed from WoW to Titan.
I for one, AS A PALADIN, find this new talent system to be a joke. Not as a HAHAHA joke, as an, oh my dear god.... What have you done blizzard, joke.
At the end, everyone are gonna pick the best hybrid build of the month. This is the worst idea ever.
C:\Users\FF\Desktop\spin move.gif
it's WoW... does anyone seriously give a damn?
there's nothing wrong with cookie cutter builds. Most of the time, these cookie cutters aren't the best characters. They might output the most dps, get into raids easiest, etc, but that's the problem, not the talent system.
Raids and needing to be accepted by others in order to get what you want is the problem in WoW and other MMOs. You should be able to do what you want without it coming down to an oversimplified choice between 3 talents every 15 levels. That system is lame and takes even more of the customization out of the game.
The original level 60 vanilla WoW talent trees were the best. In the early days before raid or die, people had all sorts of different builds. Some of them were better than others, but no one was breaking out spreadsheets and doing quantum mechanical reverse engineering on the system because there was no need to. Now.... now it's just sad. Goodbye fun experimentation and quirkyness, hello MMO accounting.
from the screenshot- I like the looks of that.
I'm absolutely amazed at how many people are already bashing this new talent system and making unfounded accusations of how it's going to ruin the game.
How is giving players more choices instead of forcing them to play a certain spec a certain way more "casual"? If you actually enjoy being pidgeon-holed into playing the game a certain way because of the class/spec you chose then fine I guess you wouldn't enjoy these changes but I for one am happy that Blizzard is finally giving us some real customization with the talent system.
With the way things are now, choosing talents is about choice vs. sacrifice. You choose certain talnts/specs at the cost of getting completely locked out of others. With this new system it will be completely about choice; you'll be free to choose any power you want and if you don't like your choice you can change it as easily as you change your glyphs now (which is really easy).
This definitely makes it easier for developers to balance pvp and make more intricate dungeons and raids. Simply because they don't have so many variables to account for. If they would've gone with 9 tiers and let you choose every 10 levels instead of 15, it would look a whole lot better imo. As it looks now, it just feels limited. I could imagine leveling from 76-90, only getting one unique ability and feeling underwhelmed.
To those defending this as an easier way to be accepted into raids or perform in PvP, for shame. It's not worth having a boring spoonfed overtweaked endgame just to get shiney new gear at the expense of one of the few RPG elements of the game, customization.
I'm not saying an overhaul wasn't needed, but this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it's cutting off the nose to spite the face, it's... you get the point.
I love how the Bliz devs appear to really think this is going to lead to more unique specs. No matter what if there's a selection of options generally speaking one is going to outperform the rest given the right scenario and it's not going to take min/maxers long to figure out what the most ideal options are. Therefore, everyone is simply going to continue having the same exact cookie cutter builds they have now. Ex: To PvP it's better to take Frost ammo than poison or arcane for Hunter.
Steam: Neph
I don't like it, they just made the system too watered down, seems to be nothing more then a glorified glyph system, O well glad I don't have to deal with it.
While sounding interesting, this changes nothing. You won't have hybrid builds because in order them to work they need to redesign whole combat system and dungeons. So while you may have this choice it's superficial, because in order to raid you need certain talents and so on. WoWs problem is design flaws in higher raiding that basic drives much of it hardness from huge dmg and spam healing to counter it. And whole balance will be screwed by monk class that uses totally different combat mechanics, ffs they should move everyone to non-autoattack but they are too lazy. Prepare for even worse balance issues than there was with Death Knight. Prepare to face buggy content like it was during Catalysm. Blizzard haven't put money in WoW for last two years, it's milking it till end and we are the suckers who take it like candy. Prepare to face same crap in different wrapper, I lasted 3 months on Catalysm which ended almost constant playing from start. Wake up and smell the air, it's not roses!
WOW Bliz stealing another idea from a game, Alganon has almost the same system and they did it first LOL. All bliz can do is steal ideas from everyone else sense most of there creative talent left a long time ago.
This makes sense.
One of the great things about having a choice is in dodging the bad ones, and knowing the unskilled by the choices they've made. In Magic: The Gathering they have some terrible cards in their deck releases, ones that are terribly inefficient and would be a poor choice in any build. When asked about these cards, Wizards responded that if they didn't put bad cards into the game it would just be good cards, and the bad cards actually increase the value of the good ones.
The same, in my opinion, applies to talents. You need to have the choice to make a bad decision in order to make the good decision worthwhile. Otherwise why not just take all choice away? I realize in this case you're still choosing for the 'flavor' of the talent... but it's one step closer to just doing away with any talent choices whatsoever.
I don't like how each spec is losing its identity for further homgenenization. Basically, all rogue specs will have a mobility, DPS, energy talents, etc with little or no variance.
So bland.
As opposed to now, where every other healer is...wait for it...the exact same build.
Question: So there no Dual spec anymore? Like I cant Have a Pally spec in Ret & Prot?
It's not "dumbing it down". They are just addressing something stupid that happens constantly.
When given the choice of 30 skills, you think you have options and are going to "customize" your character. Now, you have a bunch of skills that are completely useless or deemed "crap" and you can't really use them as they are useless skills. Just think of a DK placing 100% of points in unholy right after DKs were released and no points into anything else. Stupid looking, no? You get made fun of because you chose a skill that you thought would be good or "fit your character" and was, instead, a horribly crappy idea. In the end, you only really had one-two real choices. You could make the choice to heal properly with one specific build, or be a crappy healer with most other builds. You could be a good tank, or die over and over. You could get 20k dps or 10k dps. All because you didn't choose the best way. The options became completely meaningless and fell into the category of "illusion of choice".
In a video game, if you get two options and one option ends in a game over, or even has a 70% chance of ending in a game over, while the other option has a 0% chance of a game over, which one will you pick? In Gears of War 2, when they give you the option of turning a handle and make you waste 1 minute turning a handle when no one can interrupt you and you HAVE to do it anyway, boring or not, don't you just wish they would have just done it automatically? I'd prefer grouping with a bunch of skilled players and if the tank messes up people knew it was his fault, than thinking "oh, he just specced wrong". I value skill over the illusion of choice any day.
If your choices don't matter, why get pissed off when a person takes your choices away in an effort of giving you REAL options. Even if they give us NO options, it'd be better than having no options and the game trying to fool you into thinking you do.
"Do you want chocolate or vanilla ice cream?"
"Vanilla!"
"We're out of vanilla."
"Why'd you ask me if I wanted vanilla then?"
The inability to lighten up doesn't make you hardcore.
Anyone else realize that it's the pathetic cry-baby paladins that are focal points for nerfs to the game? This time, being the fact that our talents are getting dumbed down so pallys can be healers, tanks and their retardins.
Member of Talon | www.lakexeno.com
RIFT: Redcameo, Warrior, Faemist Server
RIFT: Bluecameo, Mage, Faemist Server
Imo this change just show negative impact of raiding endgame on mmos, min-maxing your builds for best dps, hps etc. is all that matters ...
Basically they're removing talents all together. Now it's just based on how you play. If you want to tank you chose this column every 15 levels. If you want to heal you pick this column, if you want to DPS you pick the last column. It's not much different than the other talent systems, but there's no real customization. You pick the talent and it gives you bonuses to tanking/healing/dps'ing.
My only question is I hope you don't have to have a prerequisite in the "tree". So at 15 you go with the tanking talent, but at 30 you can go with the second row dps talent...that would be fine with me.