Category Archives: WoW
Character Customization Through Talents
I was really going to leave the talent discussion alone, it being “old news” by now and my having already presented my case. But I keep coming across what seems historical revisionism of sorts when it came to early WoW talents and the number of actually legitimate customization options available. Take, for instance, this passage over at The Babbling Gamer:
[…] When I first played WoW back in 2005, it’s biggest selling point for me was the talent system. It allowed far more character customization than most MMOs out at the time. I tried all sorts of things. I tinkered. I had fun. The Burning Crusade felt like a solid improvement on it. I played with lots of sub-optimal specs, trying to find the one that was the most fun. I don’t min/max for effectivity, I min/max for enjoyability. I don’t care if spec A does 10% more damage while spamming one spell over and over than my spec B complex rotation of silly abilities and half-working synergies. I don’t care that I hardly ever use that heal I spent talent points to get and could be doing more damage without. […]
After some digging around Google, I actually found a website that has functioning TBC v2.01 talent calculators. Booting up the Retribution tree and seeing Crusader Strike as the 41-point talent really takes me back… to a time where I apparently enjoyed auto-attacking my balls with a hammer. And 61 talent points to spend! Those will sure come handy… in filling out all these 5-point talent sinks. You see, leveling up and getting a new talent point is fun. Putting said talent point into Rank 3 Conviction (+1% crit rate, 5 ranks) is at no point whatsoever fun.
So with that in mind, I decided to look at the various class trees and basically remove every talent that did NOT change your gameplay in any possible way. Here are some of the results:
TBC paladin talent tree.
How about the mage?
TBC mage talent trees.
The rubric I used to determine whether a talent changed your gameplay was pretty simple:
- The talent added a button to your hotbar; or
- The talent changed the way you used a button already on your hotbar.
The paladin case was fairly straight-forward: cooldowns, buffs, and abilities only. Then again, paladins have a lot of bleed-over utility that eventually resulted in the “one-man army” effect of Retribution in early Wrath.
The mage tree was a little less straight-forward. For example, I left Improved Counterspell up because it changed Counterspell from a button you only should push at a certain moment (when the target is casting), to a button that could be cast strategically (to deny spellcasting at certain moments). I left Improved Scorch open because the talent makes you actually include Scorch in your rotation to keep up a vital (raid) debuff, changing your gameplay. Likewise, I left Frostbite open even though it simply gives some of your spells a 15% chance to Freeze (root) your target, because that interrupts your normal spell rotation; instead of just chain-casting Frostbolt, when Frostbite procs you’re encouraged to do a Shatter combo of firing an Ice Lance with a Frostbolt in the air. You may or may not have noticed, but Shatter itself I left covered as a talent sink – even if Shatter did not exist, the damage/time limit of a Frostbite proc would still encourage the Frostbolt/Ice Lance combo. Shatter simply increases the potential damage, just like the overwhelming majority of all the talents in TBC trees.
A question arises though: is choosing between damage talents not a choice? Well… yes and no. The easy answer is the one from the Extra Credits video, which is to say that a choice between +10% Frostbolt damage vs +10% Ice Lance damage is NOT a choice, but a calculation. A problem arose, however, when I considered these two talents from Fallout: New Vegas:
Cowboy + Shotgun Surgeon
Granted, Fallout: New Vegas does not have a talent tree per se; it has a perk system. Every two levels you must choose a perk from an ever-expanding list however, so I consider that roughly analogous. So… is the Cowboy perk a choice or is it a calculation? I just agreed that choosing between +10% damage to two different spells is a calculation, and the Cowboy perk essentially gives me +25% damage to a small number of weapons. And yet I am inclined to say it is a legitimate choice. Why? I consider these sort of talents to be stylistic and/or identity choices. In a game with no formal classes, picking the Cowboy perk is the closest thing you can come to differing “specs” in Fallout. A Gatling laser handles a lot differently than a sniper rifle that handles a lot differently than a revolver. Likewise, an Arcane mage plays differently than a Fire mage that plays differently than a Frost mage.
So, going back to the Babbling Gamer quote, we can zero in on this part:
I don’t care if spec A does 10% more damage while spamming one spell over and over than my spec B complex rotation of silly abilities and half-working synergies.
What Warsyde has done is essentially used the old talent system to create an entirely new spec. Maybe create an Arcane mage that takes Ignite and casts Fireball instead of Arcane Blast with a little PoM-Pyro action in the wings? Warsyde did not actually mention any specific spec, but a Google searched turned up this gem of a EJ mage theorycraft thread started 10/16/06, talking about an Arcane/Frost hybrid mage grabbing both Spell Power (+50% crit damage) and Ice Shards (+100% crit damage with Frost spells). That sort of thing definitely would have got my juices flowing at the possibilities. So, yes, choices!
And yet… and yet… maybe not.
See, there was never any question that picking a specialization was a choice. And while the number of talents points available in TBC and the various positions in the trees allowed for the creation of “new” specs like the hybrid Arc/Fire or Arc/Frost mage, what were those hybrid specs really? A fire mage with PoM and Arcane Power, and a Frost mage with absurdly large Frostbolt crits, respectively. You were still basically a Fire mage or Frost mage with different activated abilities. And guess what Fire mages?
ka-POW!
You can have your PoM-Pyro back.¹
In conclusion, the older WoW talent systems allowed space for unsupported hybrid specs to exist, but in actuality these hybrids were almost always simply normal specs using 1-2 different abilities; an outcome basically indistinguishable from the proposed plan in MoP. The rest of the talent choices, and arguably many of the hybridization ones, simply came down to calculations – Arc/Frost was created simply to abuse +crit damage talents, for example. The only real thing we are losing is the ability to gain a number every other level, and sink that number down into a hole.
And while Warsyde can choose between spamming one spell vs a complex rotation of silly abilities with vague (calculated!) synergy, so can a 0/0/0 mage. How complicated one’s rotation should be is definitely a choice, but not one you make with talents.
¹ Yes, I am aware of Hot Streak procs and their simulated PoM-Pyro-ness. It’s just not the same.
Interesting How That Works
As you may have noticed, I’m actually pretty fine with the direction of Mists of Pandaria, pandas in general, and sort of feeding off of the entirely ridiculous vocal reactions against the expansion. Kind of like the opposite of the following Nietzsche quote:
“In every party there is one who through his all too credulous avowal of the party’s principles incites the others to apostasy.”
-Nietzsche, Human, all too Human
In other words, when you come across people who are so vehemently opposed to something (for seemingly irrational reasons), I for one have a subconscious tendency to moderate the behavior by adopting the opposite reaction. For example, I consider myself fairly liberal, but occasionally when I read some of the absurdly reactionary bullshit of other liberals, I suddenly find myself on the other side of the aisle. There is a story about how a police officer shot a dog, and it was presented to me as “If you aren’t upset, you aren’t paying attention. I don’t want my tax dollars supporting this:” followed by a picture of the officer and the dog. Queue a /facepalm.
That being said, after watching the latest episode of Legendary on Tankspot/Gamebreaker.tv, I finally got to see how Mists of Pandaria was actually introduced at BlizzCon. The following Youtube of the actual event is perhaps the most painful thing I have ever seen:
Instead of watching the whole thing, you can skip to 2:30 when it really gets painfully overdone.
Guys, it’s just possible that the curious race we’re going to meet in this mystic land, may just teach us a thing or two about who we are, and why we fight.
I think I hurt the muscles in my neck from having cringed so goddamn hard at the above quote. If anyone’s reaction against Mist of Pandaria is based on having watched that video, you have my full blessings to have gone (and continuing to go) ape-shit over the internet.
I am still fine with the expansion, for the record, but it was clear from the video and overall presentation on how cognizant Blizzard was that people would be upset about a “direction shift.” And in being cognizant of possible negative reactions, Blizzard legitimized them. I believe the expansion would have gone over a lot better if they did not draw so much of a contrast between what came before and what was on the horizon. Don’t remind people of all the outlandish sequel escalation that they have experienced over the last 5-6 years, especially when said escalation had definitive bad guys on the box.
And more importantly, if the Horde/Alliance war is going to heat up, put that in the goddamn teaser trailer. As in, Theramore in flames, Alliance soldiers on the march, something, anything. We know Pandaria will be turned into a fantasy Vietnam, with two superpowers parachuting in to bring a little heat to the otherwise Cold War. The whole Horde and Alliance war is amazingly keyed up, and gets the blood pumping in a way fairly unique in the history of opposing faction gameplay – that linked thread is 177 pages long with ~4000 posts. Put that front and center, and you’d likely find people more amicable to the idea of pandas being srs bsns.
Conquest from World PvP?
So the Blizzard LiveBlogging Q&A thing happened. Check out the transcript if you like. There was a lot of filler, but there was also some (panda) meat:
Comment From Eldacar
At Blizzcon Tom Chilton mentioned possible incentives for raiding enemy towns to encourage world PVP in mists, can Greg or Cory elaborate on this at all?Mumper:
In regards to extra rewards for world pvp, we are contemplating the idea of increasing players conquest point caps by an extra 10-15%.
I am assuming they mean contemplating about the Conquest Cap being increased by 10-15% for just killing players in the world – and by extension, that world PvP kills will award Conquest points. If it is going to be possible to hit the Conquest Cap for just killing players in the world, sweet chocolate Christ you may want to evacuate PvP servers before the server transfer queue hits 14 days.
I am one of those players who chose PvP servers because I enjoyed the tension while leveling, and how it created meaningful cross-faction interaction. That is to say, if I saw a Horde out while in the world, there was something of a ritual taking place. We both would stop immediately, look towards each other, try to gauge intentions. Then I would do /wave. He would do /wave. We had exchanged something there, something tangible; an admission of mutual respect. “Even though I am trained to kill your kind, I am choosing not to. I cede to your sovereignty, if you cede to mine.” Those same actions might have occurred on a PvE server, but they wouldn’t mean anything.
Of course, those interactions were pretty rare. Auchindoun-US had a 3:1 Horde ratio for the longest time, so 95% of the encounters were attempted ganks (“attempted” because I quest as Ret in PvP gear, yo). Or outright griefing during holiday events, expansion releases, or in new patch content. When the Molten Front dailies and the Thrall quest came out, Alliance couldn’t reliably complete them for the first three days. I don’t have much taste for PvP servers anymore, so if I ever came back it would be rerolling/transfering to a PvE one.
Anyway, it is not confirmed or anything, but Conquest points from world PvP kills would solve world PvP pretty much overnight.
Comment From Guest
Hey there. Will Pandaria have a new Dalaran like city or will we be using the ones already existing ingame?Mumper:
We will have separate player hubs for both the Horde and Alliance on Pandaria. Separate hubs means we do not have to make them sanctuary and will encourage world PVP. These hubs will have access to an AH, Bank and general vendors. Valor, conquest, profession and faction vendors will be scattered around the world to encourage travel.
Comment From Kubus
One of the current issues discouraging World pvp is the presence of highly overpowered guards around cities and hubs, 1-shotting anyone who engages in pvp. How will this be in MoP?Mumper:
We know this is an issue in the current game and we plan to address it in Mists. We want to encourage world PVP, not make it a one-shot game for npc guards. This is one of the main reasons we decided to make two separate player hubs instead of a shared sanctuary.
And one more…
Comment From MattWedra
At Blizzcon it was mentioned that PvE Scenarios will be something that we will queue for…Will we be required to be in the area that the PvE Scenario will take place in order to queue, or will we be able to queue for them from the cities like we do for the Dungeon Finder. If they are instanced events how will this “get the players out into the world” other than standing around a specific area waiting for the queue to pop, or am I missing the idea?Mumper:
We are planning to only let players queue for scenarios from specific spots in the world (where the scenario is located), not in the cities. We want players out in the world, not spamming the queue button in cities.
This should be some welcome news to the “you kids better go play outside” proponents. Not only will the separated Alliance/Horde hubs increase the frequency of faction raids (assuming these hubs are set up correctly), you also have mass groups of players hanging out at various points in the world to queue up for Scenarios (and likely group with who they find there instead of LFD). And, of course, groups of people hanging around being mostly distracted will be juicy PvP targets. One of the best places for free kills back in TBC was near those PvP gear/charter NPCs out in Nagrand, or near the tier 6.5 vendor on QD, for example.
Honestly, how well any of this works will come down to whether Conquest is awarded for world PvP kills or not. If it’s just plain honor for kills like normal, I dunno how effective any of this will really be. Probably about as effective as Molten Front PvP… which is to say not very much at all.
Looking Back at Blizzcon 2010
Just for funsies, I took a trip down memory lane to see what kind of things were talked about in Blizzcon 2010. I planned to add in Blizzcon 2009 stuff as well, but apparently LiveBlogging was very popular that year and it turns out to be a pretty terrible format for coherent archives.
Blizzcon 2010 Open Q&A (source)
Q: Are there any plans to add a legendary dps dagger?
A: Not really. We don’t make legendaries often, so we try to make them useful for a lot more people. We decided on a staff yesterday by the way.
Q: Basically, I originally liked the idea you had about lowering the talents, but now I really hate the fact there is no uniqueness anymore, everyone is the same number/combo of talents atm are you ever going to extend it again for more options?
A: Do you think the specs in the deeper trees were very different from each other? They weren’t. It’s a new design, the last 10 points are the most exciting ones to spend, we’ll see what specs develop. hopefully we can tweak things. There were cookie cutter specs before this change, and there probably will be some for this as well.
Q: With the existance of Pandarens being hinted at, are Pandarens still being excluded away?
A: I don’t see them flying out of the cracks.. we’ll see. They’re a super cool race and an awesome concept, maybe we’ll see them in the future. We’ll see.
Q: Any better plans to integrate the TBC races into the lore?
A: We’ve kinda failed at bringing Draenei into the wow culture, we tried to do it more in Cataclysm. We’re not there yet but it’s better.
Q: About the balance between horde and alliance characters, now I have to level up all my chars, it’s gonna be 20 vs 100 horde fighting.
A: We just need a better battlecry for the alliance, its definitely something we are keeping an eye on, it’s just the psychology of the coolness of the horde that makes them more popular, making the allies be proud of them being allies is a thing to solve in the long run.
Blizzcon 2010 Quest & Lore Panel (source)
Q: Will we ever see a redemption or resurrection of Illidan as a Character?
A: BOY DO I WANT TO DO THAT. That’d be badass. I don’t think anyone at all has ever talked about that. But I love that shit. I’m a sucker for a good redemption story. Except Arthas. Not Arthas. He’s dead.
[Note: From Blizzcon 2011:
Q: What happened to Arthas’s body? What happened to Illidan’s body? What about Kael’thas?
A: It is likely we will bring Illidan back, not so much for Kael’thas, he already had his come back. Arthas’s body is somewhere but we don’t really know where.]
Pandas As iPads, and Target Audiences
Simply put, I see the sort of backlash against Pandaren the same as the backlash against the iPad, when that was first announced. A tablet computer? Called an iPad? The jokes write themselves. Steve Jobs was clearly out of his mind.
A year later, making fun of the iPad’s name was like making a Your Mom joke.
To be clear, I do not expect Mists of Pandaria and pandas in general to take off and sell 15+ million copies like the iPad; this is not a full analogy. Part of that is because WoW has already peaked subscriber-wise, and it’s tough/impossible to break out of a decline when each lost sub severs social threads that kept people logging in long after the novelty of the game experience has ran out.
That being said, the absolute histrionics going on in the blog world regarding pandas has taken on a surreal, manic intensity. Look at this post over on Wolfshead Online:
If I wanted to kill a serious MMO, I don’t think I could find a better way than introducing a playable race of goofy looking walking bears. Any credibility that Blizzard had in the MMO realm has vanished with this horrible decision. What we are witnessing is the unprecedented transformation of an adult MMO into a children’s MMO right before our very eyes. (emphasis added)
I’m sorry, but if you can write something like that or agree with it without being a tad bit embarrassed later, I have a paper bag you can breath into. Credibility? Here is the credibility Blizzard has in the MMO realm:
That's called expanding the base.
According to MMOData.net, the entire MMO field basically only grew by 4 million subs in the seven years WoW has existed. If even a tenth of ex-WoW players move on to try other MMOs, WoW will have done more for the genre than any MMO, ever. Credibility? Christ, how many times have you described something as an EVE-clone, or a Warhammer-clone? I guarantee you there are some very serious men in some very serious suits over at MMO boardrooms that will be seriously considering iconic animals in the future, simply because WoW is doing it. “Dammit Jim, they usurped pandas! How about… elephants? No, no: hippos! Make it so.”
I get it. Pandas happened. I was utterly convinced Mists of Pandaria was going to be an iOS game, perhaps a combo Fishing slash Archeology slash Sudoku premium app that would interface with the Mobile Armory so that what you caught/found/solved could be redeemed for in-game WoW items. Then follow that up with an announcement of The Emerald Nightmare expansion, which could be tone-appropiate sequel escalation to Burning Legion summoning –> Undead Scourge unleashing –> Corrupted dragon world-breaking pattern of WoW expansions.
Hell, considering the established lore of the Emerald Dream as a mystical pre-Sundering continent, complete with fantastical and extinct species mobs, that expansion practically writes itself. And they could even work in the (leaked) Horde vs Alliance war heating up as fueling the Emerald Nightmare’s destructiveness by the power of unhappy thoughts.
If you think about it conceptually, Mists of Pandaria is doing just that. You have the Sha, which are the physical manifestation of bad things, having hitherto been kept in check by the Taoist Pandaren before the two superpowers came and turned the island into a fantasy Vietnam. They also have the mystical continent with fantastical and extinct species mobs. Having mined the pseudo Gothic/Norse mythology to death, going East was simply a matter of time – even the “generally fantasy” Magic: the Gathering went to Kamigawa (aka Japan) eventually.
And now? They still have Emerald Dream as a follow-up option.
Target Audiences
Before I wrap this up, I wanted to touch on some bloggers’ mistaken notions that Blizzard somehow changed their intended target audience with this new expansion. I am not quite sure how else to put it than this: the target audience of WoW has never changed; you changed.
There is no actual indication that Pandaren are going to be a joke race in the expansion; they existed in Warcraft 3, and would have replaced draenei in TBC had the dice fell the other way. If you want an example of an actual joke race, roll a gnome. No, seriously, sign up for a free trial and play a gnome 1-20. There is no bigger joke race than gnomes, and they have been a joke since Day 1. I would argue that Tauren are also a joke race, but that is at least a case of a joke race with /seriousface lore. Gnomes never had serious lore – even the flooding of their capital with radioactive poison, killing off 80% (!!) of their entire race, cannot be presented without a wink from atop a smoke-belching Mechanostrider.
Don’t get me started on goblins, who deviate from being walking euphemisms for capitalistic greed long enough to establish they got their intelligence from mining rocks and turning it into Coca Cola on a volcanic island (that exploded). Or how about the Taunka, Tuskarr, or Tol’vir, all of whom are so cliche as NPC animal races that it would have been jarring if they did not exist in their respective cliche habitats. Remember the Wolvar and Oracles in Sholazar Basin? 90% of that entire zone was a total joke in a Serious™ expansion.
What I will not say is whether WoW was ever objectively serious or not, because that misses the point. WoW was, is, and always will be taken as seriously as you want it to be. MMO-Champion will be posting world-first T14 hardmode kills and hundreds of thousands of people will care, pandas or no pandas. There will be 6+ year veteran players who declare a Pandaria raid boss as their favorite encounter. Tankspot will likely be posting Challenge-mode dungeon guide videos. Petopia may completely transform into a Wowhead-esque database to handle the influx of traffic from the Pokeman battle system. Some of these features won’t be for you, just like new raids only appeal to less than 20% of subscribers. That doesn’t mean the target audience is changing any more than your mother giving a sibling candy first this time (or at all) means she stopped loving you.
If this is the way you normally act, though…
The ultimate bottom line is once you get past the echo-chamber sticker-shock of OMGPANDAS, a month after the expansion releases the game will be exactly as it is: fun, or not fun.
If fun, would pandas actually stop you from playing?
If not fun, did the pandas actually matter?
If you honestly would not play an otherwise fun game because of its tone or tenor, then ironically, maybe it is you who needs to grow up. Or at least breathe into this paper bag until you stop losing your shit, and remember why you play videogames to begin with.
Pandas Aside…
…here is what you may have missed concerning WoW’s next expansion:
Return of Wrath-era Heroics
Difficulty:
In Cataclysm, Heroic dungeons were intentionally designed as gear and difficulty checks on the progression to raiding. In Mists of Pandaria, the Raid Finder will be the appropriate transition from running dungeons to Normal raids. Heroic dungeons will largely be tuned to be about as difficult as they were in Wrath of the Lich King, allowing players to fairly quickly down bosses in PUGs and hit their Valor Point caps. Valor Points will follow a new philosophy with 4.3, as a parallel way to gear up alongside the Raid Finder, but not as a fill-in for boss drops.
Length:
Keep the experience short and focused. Dungeons should be short enough to let you run a couple of dungeons when you feel like it, not just one.
As I may have mentioned before, I am a player that absolutely believed it was a mistake to go towards longer, harder heroics in Cataclysm. Not only was that incongruent with the concept of LFD, harder/longer heroics actually removed content for me. Whereas I would routinely belt out 2-3 heroics on different characters as soon as I logged on in Wrath – before I even got started with whatever I planned on doing for the day – Cataclysm meant I had just the one heroic to “look forward to,” as it would likely take 2+ hours assuming we finished it at all. Yes, they were nerfed… three months later. And nothing quite washes out the taste of a spectacularly failed Stonecore run.
A side-benefit of going back to Wrath-era difficulty is I predict the number of tanks will increase as a result. I feel the same way today as I felt back in April when Blizzard started bribing tanks with BoA goody-bags. Hopefully Challenge runs will satisfy the people looking for non-faceroll content (or at least marginalize their complaints) in the same way Heroic raids (sorta) did.
Reduce “the Dance”
The goals for dungeons and raids in Mists of Pandaria are to create epic and challenging experiences, but Cataclysm also helped us learn where we can improve with the new expansion. The Raid Finder will help with taking that first step into endgame content, and it will be available for all Mists of Pandaria raids. Beyond that, we want to create more easily understandable encounters and move away from mechanics that simply set up groups to fail, while still keeping them challenging.
While I suppose that can be read multiple ways, what I like to imagine Blizzard means is not so much that “the Dance” is eliminated, but rather you can choose who does the dancing. The Lich King’s Defile ability sets groups up for failure, because if it targets your weakest player, you are likely to wipe immediately. I couldn’t tell you how many times I /facepalmed in Professor Putricide when someone who couldn’t kite worth crap got targeted by the orange ooze, or when the panic-under-pressure member dragged Omnotron’s Acquiring Target (or Lightning Conductor) through the raid. If you can imagine that the outcome would have been different if a boss ability targeted someone else instead, how can you really say the encounter was challenging at all?
Obviously that logic can be reduced to an absurd degree (if the quarterback threw to the other receiver they would have won, etc). I guess what I want to get across is that I miss epic boss kills like this one. “Epic” in the sense that despite everything falling apart, we were still able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. In Cataclysm’s raid environment, the guy dying to Mimiron’s landmines would have blown up the raid, or failing to interrupt a 1.5 second cast would be an insta-wipe.
And, hey, I’d also like to move away from bosses that take longer to explain on Vent than they do to fight, e.g. Omnotron, etc.
Harder Leveling?!
Probably not. However:
Q: Will you be making any changes to how stats work?
Yes. […] In practice, this means that upon the expansion’s release, the numbers for Strength, Health, Intellect, damage, and so on will be significantly lower than you’re used to seeing across the board, from level 1 to level 85. It’s all relative, of course — enemies’ and bosses’ stats will be reduced as well, and it should take a level-85 warrior roughly the same number of many sword-whacks and ability uses to kill a level-85 monster as it did before. However, this also means the difference between each level between 1 and 85 will be less significant, so you may find that an enemy 5 or 10 levels below your own will be a little tougher to deal with than it was before.
If grey enemies are “a little tougher to deal with than before,” that is actually a pretty big change. I was looking forward towards a tank with 750,000 HP, but I suppose this will be fine.
Instanced Group Content for ~3 Players
- PvE Scenarios are a way to give new interesting content that doesn’t make sense in a dungeon content.
- Scenarios are more about reusing parts of the world in interesting new ways, and introducing new types of PvE gameplay that we’ve never seen before like PvE battlegrounds.
- They are short instances for a few players, the amount of players can vary depending on the scenario, some of them can be for 3 players.
I am excited for Scenarios in a general sense for that first bullet point, because theoretically it means they could release Scenarios more often. Admittedly, this is Blizzard we are talking about, but I can see some devs whipping up a few extra for when such-and-such MMO gets released without having to bother with justifying it in a lore/progression-sense. I am excited about the 3 number specifically because that was how far my in-game group shrank towards the end of my subscription. We always struggled with things to do other than AFK chat in Stormwind, as LFD with two pugs did not quite excite us in any possible way.
In any case, I think that wraps up my thoughts/reactions to BlizzCon 2011. Now we just have to see how many of them get implemented.
Answering Nils’ Criticism
Nils made a comment in response to yesterday’s post, and I feel a rebuttal is important enough for its own post.
Ok, so in BGs where you can blow people off edges you take typoon. In the others you take Fearie Fire. Was that a hard choice?
Yes. Because I want Typhoon all of the time… but Faerie Swarm could be useful in Arena… but what if I get Dalaran Sewers where the shock value of a Feral druid knocking someone off the edge would be priceless… but endlessly kiting people DK-style would probably be fun too… and hey, would Typhoon be more or less powerful on Magmaw than the AoE root… etc.
The consequences of choosing Typhoon over Faerie Swarm is that you won’t have Faerie Swarm even when there may be a good situation for it. In a raid, there is probably a clear-cut answer of which is more useful, and if it is EotS weekend, then Typhoon would likely be the answer. But that’s not a problem between the Typhoon vs Faerie Swarm choice, it’s a problem with encounter design. And I would still take Typhoon in an encounter where Faerie Swarm is more optimal, as long as Typhoon wasn’t completely useless (i.e. the delta between their usefulness wasn’t too great).
I think everything has been said there. Choices have to have consequences, otherwise they are meaningless. Blizzard repeated attempts to get around this is ridiculous. The reason you have a few choices left in the current talent trees is because it doesn’t matter where you spend your last points!
And it didn’t matter because up until now they were treating the first ~31 talents as “choices” when they really were not. If you are a Ret paladin, you take 3/3 Crusade, period. You take 2/2 Long Arm of the Law, period. And so on. Now, they can give you choices that matter (in the sense I’m talking about), as evident by the druid talents you went over and all the other classes.
You say that there is an optimal, cookie-cutter EJ solution to these problems but I am saying that that is irrelevant. Yes, there will always be an objectively optimal choice assuming the choice has a measurable impact on anything. The only relevant thing though is the distance between the EJ solution and the 2nd best (or 3rd) solution. As long as they are close enough, I can choose which of the two is more fun for me (Typhoon) and still feel happy about that decision even if the “correct” answer is something else. My fun, enjoyment, familiarity, stylistic inclination, ease, etc, will make up the difference.
The only change of note with the new talent trees is that you can change them on the fly. This makes them a mandatory part of the preparation before you do anything of importance (boss fights, arena games, rated BGs …)
Other than every spec of each class having access to cool abilities that were hitherto restricted to individual specs, right? Hell, a Resto druid can have Typhoon and summon treants! Nevermind Assassination rogues with Shadowstep, Arcane mages with Cauterize and Ice Barrier, etc etc. And by removing the ~31 redundant talent “choices” that each spec takes regardless of PvE vs PvP vs leveling vs raiding, this should allow Blizzard to focus on keeping the six actual talent choices we have now interesting and difficult to choose between.
And just based on the rough draft we saw at BlizzCon, I would say they are off to a good start.
More Cookies, Less Cutter: MoP Talents
The Grumpy Elf is not convinced that MoP talents are less cookie-cutter. Neither is Nils. The Elder Game thinks fiddling with talents at all is a waste of time.
All miss the point, I believe.
Let me begin with a quote from Bashiok I posted a few months ago:
Diablo (1) did not have skill trees, it was a feature added to Diablo II, and then more or less copied by World of Warcraft. Some could say to World of Warcraft’s detriment as it’s been struggling with how to cope with a skill tree system, which has huge inherent issues with very little benefit, for years. Diablo III, like Diablo II, is an evolution of the series and game systems.
I agree with that characterization of talent trees, specifically that they have huge inherent issues with very little benefit. Talent trees, as the way they are set up in WoW currently, give the illusion of choice. There is a good Extra Credits video called Choice and Conflict which talks about this issue. Essentially, the “choice” being presented in WoW’s talent trees are really calculations, not actual choices.
If you look up the EJ builds for your spec, chances are you will actually see where the Blizzard designers tried to give you choice in Cataclysm’s revamp. Here is the EJ build for a PvE Retribution paladin:
If you’ll notice, you have 1 extra free point floating around (technically you have 3, but nevermind) – this means there is literally nothing else that will increase your DPS. Choice, amirite? Well… no. Your “choices” are:
- Guardian’s Favor = HoP’s cooldown reduced by 2 minutes, longer HoF.
- Selfless Healer = Stronger WoG’s for teammates.
- Acts of Sacrifice = Cleanse removes snares.
- Divinity = easier to heal you.
- Eternal Glory = sometimes a free WoG.
- Last Word = WoG more likely to crit on low-health targets.
You may not be familiar with Ret paladins, but hopefully that comes across as outrageously boring, because it is. But what about PvP? Here is Ret in PvP:
Know what changed? We got rid of Divine Storm (just AoE for trash), a talent that makes Crusader Strike scale with haste, and then just picked all the WoG-boosting talents and a faster HoJ cooldown. In other words, there is no differentiation there at all. There is technically another PvP build that sacrifices the faster HoJ cooldown for even more WoG healing, but that’s basically it. Ret’s Cataclysm choices are DPS vs HoJ vs WoG-boosting. Pick only one! Just like this new system, except only one choice instead of six.
For fun, I took the paladin tree and blacked out all the talents you either couldn’t get, or were identical whether you chose PvP or PvE. This is what it looks like:
Choices!
Ret paladins are actually a terrible example to use in the Mists of Pandaria talent scheme, since Blizzard essentially took 9 talents from the Ret tree and are asking Rets to “rebuild” the spec with only half as much as they had before. Hopefully that will change before things go Live, but I’m used to the idea of paladins being nerfed into the ground and/or Ret getting screwed, so whatever.
Point is, the talent tree system has always been bad. There was nothing exciting about leveling up and putting a talent point in something that just increased your damage by 10%. Under this new system, you get the 10% damage talent automatically and then get to decide something that is actually meaningful. Nils used the following example under druids:
Level 45
Feral PvP: Faerie Swarm, for more damage, a ranged snare and against cloakers.
Non-Feral PvP: Typhoon, because it is instant and keeps players at range no matter what damage they take.
Feral PvE: Faerie Swarm, because the rest is completely useless.
Non-Feral PvE: Typhoon, because it is instant. But you won’t use it much.
He thinks the obvious choice for Feral PvP is Faerie Swarm. Are you kidding? One of the funnest things in WoW is popping out of stealth and Typhooning people off of ledges, which has traditionally be reserved solely for Balance druids. I would always choose Typhoon, because Typhoon is fun for me. That singular instance of interesting choice is worth the entire overhaul to me. Nevermind my ability to give Ardent Defender the finger and not be too punished for it. And being able to take Shadowfury as an Affliction warlock. Or getting Cauterize and Ice Barrier as an Arcane mage. Or… you get the idea. Some classes have more interesting choices than others, but hopefully these were just rough drafts.
Overall, as an ex-WoW player I am more excited for the expansion than I was three days ago, almost entirely based on these changes alone.
Everything But the Dance Studio
Once you get that knee-jerk reaction out of your system, the design announcements currently going on at BlizzCon are pretty interesting.
Yeah, Pandas. They really did it. I owe someone $20. But what about the rest?
Monk Reactions
- Every race but goblin and worgen… interesting.
- Does this mean new animations for all those older races?
- GG tank balance, once again. Historically, Blizzard has never balanced tanks correctly, ever.
- “No auto attack! Devs want you to have this street fighter feel where you punch a lot.”
- /facepalm
- Seriously, that won’t work. Blizzard has spent years increasing the passive damage of every melee class because front-loading them in actual attacks leads to 3.0-era Ret paladins murdering everyone.
- Nevermind how Blizzard specifically changed Heroic Strike and other on-next-attack abilities to be more normal abilities specifically because warriors were getting carpal tunnel. Now they want Street Fighter?
Okay, fine:
Panda Reactions
- /facepalm
- Those racials suck. Nothing like how blown away I was at Goblin/Worgen racials.
- Wonder about what their racial mount will be…
- All that aside, I’m one of “those guys” whose overall opinion on the race will be determined by how the females look. My paladin is a draenei female despite it being the worst race in the game simply because I like the look, for example.
- After the disappointing direction of Worgen females, I fully expect to be similarly disappointed here.
Talent Tree Revamp Reaction
- Change is scary!
- Actually, this sounds fine.
- These choices are actually interesting. Some of them will be extremely difficult.
- Here are some examples of good ones:
Those are some interesting choices. The rogue spread boggles my mind with the possibilities, for example. Shadow Focus would presumably let you Sap, use Tricks of the Trade, and so on without any Energy cost. Meanwhile, Nightstalker would also be useful in a more general sense. Subterfuge seems bonkers to me. Can you imagine? You’re healing some dude from the bushes, and all of a sudden you get a Garrote, Eviscerate, and Mutilated before you even see where it came from. And I have to assume that Stealth breaks immediately if you start capping a flag or whatever, otherwise… very OP.
And look at the tanking spreads:
Those… are actually pretty crazy choices. The “obvious” paladin tank choice would be Ardent Defender, but I have never thought it was a compelling button to push every since it was redesigned from its (admittedly OP) passive ability – it was essentially Divine Protection v2, now with triple the cooldown. Now I have choices! Sacred Shield as a Prot tank looks really juicy even with the 60 second internal cooldown, for example. And if I were questing or facerolling through obsolete heroics, Blessed Life would let me unleash some burst DPS with all that extra guaranteed Holy Power.
Here is an example of what NOT to do though:
Yes, I noticed that Repentance technically has no cooldown and is essentially a paladin polymorph. Yes, I also noticed that “Fist of Justice” (lol) is a 6-second stun on a 30-second cooldown, ala early Wrath. Choosing between those two will be absurdly difficult… unless you are Ret paladin, in which case you are just fucked. Holy paladins never could get Repentance, so a “default” HoJ at half its normal cooldown is pure bonus, nevermind the strategic implications of trading it for a spammable CC on a different DR from normal CCs. Similarly, Prot paladins experience pure bonus. Ret paladins though? They lose either their stun or their incapacitate (e.g. their only “gap-closer”), and lose even the lame-ass snare capacity they had previously. More demoralizing is that the mere continued existence of Seal of Justice means there won’t be a snare for Ret paladins for yet another expansion.
There are probably other class examples of options actually being taken away in this revamp, but the Ret one jumped off the page and cock-slapped me. Anyway, back to talent impressions:
- Apparently Blizzard wants you to be able to change talents at any time, ala glyphs.
- Some of those talents are obviously dungeon talents, obviously PvP, etc. Not sure how that eliminates cookie-cutter builds.
- Perhaps a secondary effect of having more difficulty levels in dungeons/raids is that cookie-cutter builds would be less relevant.
- Actually, no, cookie-cutter builds will always be relevant. See: rise of GearScore in late Wrath despite high GearScore being 100% irrelevant to the actual difficulty.
Dungeon/Raid/Scenario Reactions
- “Heroic dungeons [in this expansion] will largely be tuned to be about as difficult as they were in Wrath of the Lich King, allowing players to fairly quickly down bosses in PUGs and hit their Valor Point caps.”
- Told you so.
- Okay, technically I predicted Firelands would be easier, which didn’t happen. Not my fault Blizzard is so damn slow.
- Told you so.
- Scenarios sound interesting. The lack of a trinity requirement is pretty novel, WoW-wise.
- Hopefully Scenarios will be a frequently-updated feature, since it doesn’t technically need lore or even bosses to support it.
- Dungeon Challenges, eh? Good luck.
- Christ, they put Challenges in the LFD feature?! Are they insane?
- Okay, it only matches you up with other people flagging themselves as Challenge. Not quite as crazy.
- Actually, completing a successful gold metal Challenge run entirely via LFD should be a tier higher than doing it in a premade group, don’t you think?
- I think Challenges are a pretty interesting feature, but what’s more interesting is how they “normalize” the gear. Seems pretty dangerous for a MMO to even tangentially introduce a feature that makes gear progression irrelevant.
- After all, if they can make gear irrelevant there, why not make it irrelevant everywhere?
- Other than the obvious “it removes replay value.”
- “We are currently not planning to have 90 normal dungeons in MoP.” Ballsy. Or lazy, depending.
- That seems like a clear signal to solo to cap, then group.
- Or continue soloing forever, by getting VP from questing.
Misc Reactions
- Pet Battling = Path of the Titans, Dance Studio. I predict vaporware.
- Then again… they did play the panda card so who knows anymore?
- “Oh my God. I’m back. I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it. [screaming] You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
- If Pet Battling is real, $10 says the store pets are more powerful than normal pets.
- “Pets will be account wide.” Really? Huh. Then I guess the BoE Disco Cub isn’t such a rip-off than it was before.
- You know there will be pissed-off people who bought more than one to have on multiple characters.
- “The plan is to get people back into the world, instead of having players roam around Stormwind and Orgrimmar all the time once they reach max level.”
- And yet no real concrete plans on how they expect to accomplish that.
- Hell, Scenarios and LFR and Challenges all push people back into instances.
- Maybe daily quests with VP will get people outdoors, but that certainly isn’t much of “out in the world.”
- Interesting how there was no mention of new Wintergrasp/Tol Barad-esque zone.
In any case, that about sums it up for now. While a lot of these things sound interesting, Path of the Titans sounded interest too. Time will only tell how many (if any) of these features actually make it to live servers.
In An Age 
Real Men Roll Pandas
Oct 26
Posted by Azuriel
Starting the one-man revolution now:
That's right, I said it.
You’re welcome.
Posted in Commentary, WoW
4 Comments
Tags: Real Men Roll Pandas, RMRP