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#1 2010-07-07 19:56:34

Apox
Founding Member
From: Norway
Registered: 2005-02-11
Posts: 5353
Website

HUGE talent changes

When we first announced our design goals for class talent trees back at BlizzCon 2009, one of our major stated focuses was to remove some of the boring and "mandatory" passive talents. We mentioned that we wanted talent choices to feel more flavorful and fun, yet more meaningful at the same time. Recently, we had our fansites release information on work-in-progress talent tree previews for druids, priests, shaman, and rogues. From those previews and via alpha test feedback, a primary response we heard was that these trees didn’t incorporate the original design goals discussed at BlizzCon. This response echoes something we have been feeling internally for some time, namely that the talent tree system has not aged well since we first increased the level cap beyond level 60. In an upcoming beta build, we will unveil bold overhauls of all 30 talent trees.

Talent Tree Vision

One of the basic tenets of Blizzard game design is that of “concentrated coolness.” We’d rather have a simpler design with a lot of depth, than a complicated but shallow design. The goal for Cataclysm remains to remove a lot of the passive (or lame) talents, but we don’t think that’s possible with the current tree size. To resolve this, we're reducing each tree to 31-point talents. With this reduction in tree size we need to make sure they're being purchased along a similar leveling curve, and therefore will also be reducing the number of total talent points and the speed at which they're awarded during the leveling process.

As a result, we can keep the unique talents in each tree, particularly those which provide new spells, abilities or mechanics. We’ll still have room for extra flavorful talents and room for player customization, but we can trim a great deal of fat from each tree. The idea isn’t to give players fewer choices, but to make those choices feel more meaningful. Your rotations won’t change and you won’t lose any cool talents. What will change are all of the filler talents you had to pick up to get to the next fun talent, as well as most talents that required 5 of your hard-earned points.

We are also taking a hard look at many of the mandatory PvP talents, such as spell pushback or mechanic duration reductions. While there will always be PvP vs. PvE builds, we’d like for the difference to be less extreme, so that players don’t feel like they necessarily need to spend their second talent specialization on a PvP build.

The Rise of Specialization

We want to focus the talent trees towards your chosen style of gameplay right away. That first point you spend in a tree should be very meaningful. If you choose Enhancement, we want you to feel like an Enhancement shaman right away, not thirty talent points later. When talent trees are unlocked at level 10, you will be asked to choose your specialization (e.g. whether you want to be an Arms, Fury or Protection warrior) before spending that first point. Making this choice comes with certain benefits, including whatever passive bonuses you need to be effective in that role, and a signature ability that used to be buried deeper in the talent trees. These abilities and bonuses are only available by specializing in a specific tree. Each tree awards its own unique active ability and passives when chosen. The passive bonuses range from flat percentage increases, like a 20% increase to Fire damage for Fire mages or spell range increases for casters, to more interesting passives such as the passive rage regeneration of the former Anger Management talent for Arms warriors, Dual-Wield Specialization for Fury warriors and Combat rogues, or the ability to dual-wield itself for Enhancement shaman.

The initial talent tree selection unlocks active abilities that are core to the chosen role. Our goal is to choose abilities that let the specializations come into their own much earlier than was possible when a specialization-defining talent had to be buried deep enough that other talent trees couldn’t access them. For example, having Lava Lash and Dual-Wield right away lets an Enhancement shaman feel like an Enhancement shaman. Other role-defining examples of abilities players can now get for free at level 10 include Mortal Strike, Bloodthirst, Shield Slam, Mutilate, Shadow Step, Thunderstorm, Earth Shield, Water Elemental, and Penance.

Getting Down to the Grit

Talent trees will have around 20 unique talents instead of today's (roughly) 30 talents, and aesthetically will look a bit more like the original World of Warcraft talent trees. The 31-point talents will generally be the same as the 51-point talents we already had planned for Cataclysm. A lot of the boring or extremely specialized talents have been removed, but we don't want to remove anything that’s going to affect spell/ability rotations. We want to keep overall damage, healing, and survivability roughly the same while providing a lot of the passive bonuses for free based on your specialization choice.

While leveling, you will get 1 talent point about every 2 levels (41 points total at level 85). Our goal is to alternate between gaining a new class spell or ability and gaining a talent point with each level. As another significant change, you will not be able to put points into a different talent tree until you have dedicated 31 talent points to your primary specialization. While leveling, this will be possible at 70. Picking a talent specialization should feel important. To that end, we want to make sure new players understand the significance of reaching the bottom of their specialization tree before gaining the option of spending points in the other trees. We intend to make sure dual-specialization and re-talenting function exactly as they do today so players do not feel locked into their specialization choice.

A True Mastery

The original passive Mastery bonuses players were to receive according to how they spent points in each tree are being replaced by the automatic passive bonuses earned when a tree specialization is chosen. These passives are flat percentages and we no longer intend for them to scale with the number of talent points spent. The Mastery bonus that was unique to each tree will now be derived from the Mastery stat, found on high-level items, and Mastery will be a passive skill learned from class trainers around level 75. In most cases, the Mastery stats will be the same as the tree-unique bonuses we announced earlier this year. These stats can be improved by stacking Mastery Rating found on high-level items.

To Recap

When players reach level 10, they are presented with basic information on the three specializations within their class and are asked to choose one. Then they spend their talent point. The other trees darken and are unavailable until 31 points are spent in the chosen tree. The character is awarded an active ability, and one or more passive bonuses unique to the tree they've chosen. As they gain levels, they'll alternate between receiving a talent point and gaining new skills. They'll have a 31-point tree to work down, with each talent being more integral and exciting than they have been in the past. Once they spend their 31'st point in the final talent (at level 70), the other trees open up and become available to allocate points into from then on. As characters move into the level 78+ areas in Cataclysm, they'll begin seeing items with a new stat, Mastery. Once they learn the Mastery skill from their class trainer they'll receive bonuses from the stat based on the tree they've specialized in.

We understand that these are significant changes and we still have details to solidify. We feel, however, that these changes better fulfill our original class design goals for Cataclysm, and we're confident that they will make for a better gameplay experience. Your constructive feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Jeez, dunno if I like it or not. Is this more dumbing down of the game, or actually a good thing?
No matter what, it's a huge change.


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#2 2010-07-07 20:09:41

Skeletto
Guild Member
Registered: 2008-06-12
Posts: 125

Re: HUGE talent changes

Wall of text!!


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#3 2010-07-07 20:43:52

Insured
Guild Member
From: Jkl, Finland
Registered: 2009-03-28
Posts: 305

Re: HUGE talent changes

Apox wrote:

Jeez, dunno if I like it or not. Is this more dumbing down of the game, or actually a good thing?
No matter what, it's a huge change.

I don't think they ever really dumbed the gameplay itself down :> To me, it just seems like there's been more fun stuff to do every expansion? More buttons to press, more complicated boss fights? Reducing grinds needed to access fun content is a ridiculous thing to call "dumbing down", what exactly does it matter if random person x can see the same things you did?

But the thing is, when leveling you hardly ever care for getting yet another +1% crit talent point (you only really rejoice on hitting 31, 41, 51 talents?), and if they manage to make every talent interesting AND really add skills to every second level, I could see dinging feeling more important than before, and adding another layer of fun almost every time.

As for max level stuff, it remains to be seen if there really is room for different playstyles on similar specs and "whatever feels best to me" actually being viable. But I do like the sound of this.

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#4 2010-07-07 20:51:38

Draken
Guild Member
From: Denmark
Registered: 2005-08-17
Posts: 1912

Re: HUGE talent changes

This is probably the easiest way to reduce the number of sucky/boring talents in the trees. Sounds good on paper, but we'll have to see how it works out in game.

Last edited by Draken (2010-07-07 20:51:52)


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#5 2010-07-08 03:43:41

Mox
Officer
From: Norway - Oslo
Registered: 2007-09-03
Posts: 1493

Re: HUGE talent changes

Insured wrote:

I don't think they ever really dumbed the gameplay itself down :> To me, it just seems like there's been more fun stuff to do every expansion? More buttons to press, more complicated boss fights? Reducing grinds needed to access fun content is a ridiculous thing to call "dumbing down", what exactly does it matter if random person x can see the same things you did?

But the thing is, when leveling you hardly ever care for getting yet another +1% crit talent point (you only really rejoice on hitting 31, 41, 51 talents?), and if they manage to make every talent interesting AND really add skills to every second level, I could see dinging feeling more important than before, and adding another layer of fun almost every time.

As for max level stuff, it remains to be seen if there really is room for different playstyles on similar specs and "whatever feels best to me" actually being viable. But I do like the sound of this.

That's my thought as well. I never understood what anyone ment by "dumbing down" as I haven't seen any sign for that myself.

I love were they are going with this. It has great potential to be a huge improvement. Let's hope they manage to get it right.

Last edited by Mox (2010-07-08 03:46:24)


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#6 2010-07-09 14:23:03

Fairmont
Guild Member
From: The Netherlands
Registered: 2009-09-07
Posts: 560
Website

Re: HUGE talent changes

Insured wrote:

As for max level stuff, it remains to be seen if there really is room for different playstyles on similar specs and "whatever feels best to me" actually being viable. But I do like the sound of this.

"whatever feels best to me" was never not_viable, but was also never the most viable. Just because something works, doesn't mean it is the best way to do things. And it will always be like that, I think that's pretty obvious. Just look at all the spreadsheets, min-maxing, etc. Some specs and their playstyle are the most viable for certain situations and this can not change. However, the differences might turn out to be much smaller, we'll have to wait and see.

Mox wrote:

I never understood what anyone ment by "dumbing down" as I haven't seen any sign for that myself.

Well, compare the "learning curve" of WotLK compared to TBC. I think that says it all. And no, players becoming better is not a valid excuse because the amount of people who just plain suck has increased by alot.

To clarify, I'm NOT saying that these changes have anything to do with dumbing down the game. They actually stated that they were not going to change anything related to spells/abilities and the "rotations". I think it's good to get rid of the boring crap talents.

I love were they are going with this. It has great potential to be a huge improvement. Let's hope they manage to get it right.

Fully agree :>

Last edited by Fairmont (2010-07-09 14:23:44)

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#7 2010-07-09 15:22:38

Mox
Officer
From: Norway - Oslo
Registered: 2007-09-03
Posts: 1493

Re: HUGE talent changes

Learning curve for what part of the game?

There are parts of this game that has gotten easier. A young caster is now able to cast more spells and no longer need to wand everything to death. Quests are automatically accepted when you talk to a quest giver and so on. Is this the learning curve you are talking about?

Last edited by Mox (2010-07-09 15:23:16)


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#8 2010-07-09 16:53:14

Fairmont
Guild Member
From: The Netherlands
Registered: 2009-09-07
Posts: 560
Website

Re: HUGE talent changes

I was more referring to the (non-existing) difficulty of starter raids and the normal and Heroic 5-mans compared to TBC, aswell as the complete removal of the need for CC.

Bad players are not punished for being bad and there is no learning curve for such players at all in WotlK. They actually get rewarded by doing so and the content aimed at the majority of the playerbase is very forgiving overall. You can't really deny this as it is a fact.

Edit: but let's not go off-topic too much, because I already said that the quoted plans for the new talents/etc. design have nothing to do with dumbing down the game at all. It was also stated in the part of text.

As a result, we can keep the unique talents in each tree, particularly those which provide new spells, abilities or mechanics. We’ll still have room for extra flavorful talents and room for player customization, but we can trim a great deal of fat from each tree. The idea isn’t to give players fewer choices, but to make those choices feel more meaningful. Your rotations won’t change and you won’t lose any cool talents. What will change are all of the filler talents you had to pick up to get to the next fun talent, as well as most talents that required 5 of your hard-earned points.

[...]

A lot of the boring or extremely specialized talents have been removed, but we don't want to remove anything that’s going to affect spell/ability rotations. We want to keep overall damage, healing, and survivability roughly the same while providing a lot of the passive bonuses for free based on your specialization choice.

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#9 2010-07-09 17:41:47

Apox
Founding Member
From: Norway
Registered: 2005-02-11
Posts: 5353
Website

Re: HUGE talent changes

By dumbing down I meant the changes that include less unique buffs, faster leveling, easier access to gold, dungeons and loot, easier 5mans etc. (Raids are still challenging so I'm not going to start yapping about that)
All ain't necessarily bad changes, and I like them (except the less unique buffs, easy 5mans, and sea of easy epics), since I'm very casual, but it's arguably dumbing down the game a bit.
After reading up some on the talent changes though, I kinda like it.


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#10 2010-07-09 17:58:30

Lamme
Guildmaster
Registered: 2005-08-21
Posts: 8597

Re: HUGE talent changes

I could list just as many argument supporting the point of view that the game has grew more and more complex ("complex" for the lack of better word contrary to dumbed down) in different aspects.

As far as coockie-cutter - or in general "maxed" - specs go, I woudln't exagerate their role too much. I've played with many specs, gemming, priorities etc. I choose to believe that at certain knowledge of your class, the impact of the "right" spec is so marginal that rng outweights is by lots. At the same time - it would be fun to be able to pick up some utility talents and not to feel penalized for it in form of lowered dps. So that might turn out the good way.

Myself, I try to look at it from the perspective of - unavoidable - change, rather than dumbing down.

One thing I dislike about Cataclysm at this stage, is the decrease of the number of statistics. I like to toy with my gear in order to blance a few relevant statistics. Not too big of a concer though.

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