The idea of "illusion of choice" is insane

Community General Discussion
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Iv’e seen some people throw this word around with little to no thought, but ask yourself when we already have specs that have more than one talent setup viable where is your point about “illusion of choice” actually vindicated?

Ill tell you what the real problem is:

I want every talent selection possible in game to deal relatively the same damage, or have around the same performance in general.

If the difference between a meta talent selection and a non meta but good talent selection is even 5% then it’s “illusion of choice”.

Ill tell you what, you don’t know what you are talking about, these points are literally insane and what you want is NEVER going to happen.

There is no way in hell you’re gonna be able to select talents at random and your build will perform as well as a spec with talents that were carefully selected.

Impossible, not gonna happen unless the talent choices are incredibly simplistic. Like 1% more versatility, and the talent adjacent is 1% more crit, and every single talent is like that.

Even then there’s still gonna be a difference.

In short, we already have specs that have more than one build that is viable, the garbage you throw just doesn’t stick.

It’s low level thinking, trash tier “feedback”.

I guess this is why they shouldn’t focus on improving talents and gameplay according to these people…

Insane take.

Please think a little more.

And anyway this is all irrelevant over the fact that the talent system as a whole was great for gameplay. You might disagree, but i mean, if you say stuff like “illusion of choice” or “ability bloat” or other stupid stuff without context, you really don’t know wtf you are talking about anyway.

It’s kinda like people who “have an opinion” But their opinion is “i don’t like pizza”, not all opinions are equal, sorry i have to tell you that. Some are well thought out, others are low tier, poorly thought out garbage. Just because it’s “subjective” it doesn’t make your opinion is impervious to criticism or actually being stacked up against reality.

Some “opinions” are just you talking about things you don’t understand and thinking that “just an opinion bro” is a valid form of argumentation that magically makes every criticism to your poorly thought out garbage disappear.

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Talents just feel overrated. Least for a game where balance is so important.

Like great, i got the “freedom” to build how i want, except that, that build might be in conflict with the mandatory set bonus or straight up trash compared to the devs intended talent loadout.

And for too many specs the talent selects boils down to the choice between single target, aoe or pvp. Yet for some other specs they get all at once.

Also doesn’t help that the current talent system is just the inscription talents we had in cataclysm but made fancier. We got minor, medium and major “talents” with each having a few choices you got to pick between where any other talent is a mandatory.

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Gameplay is more important than balance.

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And players don’t get to experience gameplay due to lack of balance…

But hey, you are a DH which is currently at the peak and not suffering from the issue that plagues plenty of spec trees.

While fury is in a well rounded position it still doesn’t deny the fact that we are currently forced into one particular talent load-out due to our set. And the devs even nerfed one of our talents to force the latest set to be better than the prior one.

Aka there is a clear illusion of choice in furys talents atm. As well as any other specs that need a particular build to play into their set bonus.

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Nobody is playing games because balance.

Games live and die by their gameplay.

Ill also let you in a little brutal secret.

The reason why you cannot complete content or get invited etc, is not because you’re not playing “havoc” or another “meta spec”

This isn’t even my main. You just suck.

Sorry not sorry that i have to be so brutally honest.

You can complete content with every spec in the game as long as you’re a good player, and the meta only matters at the top of the top. Not even cutting edge, more like raid to world first, and m+ 30.

Also, on fury you can still run ravager and do relatively close damage to the “meta build” even with the tier set. You just lack imagination, haven’t tried stuff, or whatever reason.

Also, they specifically said that they want some tier sets to steer players into playing some underutilized talent selections, so this is by design.

I would personally prefer if the fury set cdr was only on the empowered bloodthirsts with significantly more cdr, but let’s not pretend that you either play havoc or another meta spec or nothing else, because you’re literally wrong.

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https://mythicstats.com/meta?expansion=df

The meta always has a trickle down effect. And as seen in this graph, almost everyone save for Aug and Havoc (with a lesser degree Outlaw, Demo and BM) are screwed for dps.

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Yea, so? People will gravitate towards the meta specs, what does that have to do with YOU being unable to complete content?

We’re not talking about a 100% difference in performance here dude.

If you can’t do a 15 or a 20 on fury, or arms, or any other non meta spec, is not because you’re “not playing havoc”.

You people are unironically so focused on meta despite being so against it. It’s almost laughable.

I care far less and still get purple and orange parses reliably on any spec i play… Kinda makes you think.

Never in my mind did the idea of “oh man if only i was playing this meta spec i would totally be able to complete this key”.

Because despite what people on these forum say the difference between the worst and the best is not as big as they want to believe, and while those differences lead to some pretty wide gaps at the top of the top, there is an AWFUL lot of overlap in the content you’re most likely to do.

And this is what EVERY single player who knows what they are talking about will tell you. Play whatever the f you want. As long as it’s not nonsense like taking completely antagonistic talents.

Look at all these forum posts complaining about meta specs being extremely overrepresented in like 27, while they are doing 15 to 20, probably even lower, like come on. Seriously?

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Also, what those people fail to see is that not every selection of talents is meant to perform well.

Like, let us say we have a barbarian as player class. Player A wants to have his barbarian throw rocks at the opponent instead of using weapons. That means Player A will have advantage on short range with high damage but lacks the range. But Player B wants his barbarian to use throwing spears instead. Player B will have advantage on range but with lower damage.

Neither of those 2 options is meant to be good at everything. Every option has its own downside.

You all better remember the definition of the word Choice itself:

“An act of choosing between two or more possibilities.”

It is never mentioned that both options are both good in the very same way. People saying “It’s illusion of choice” don’t seem to understand the principle of choice itself.

Option A might be good for Raids and large group content. Option B might be good for Solo Play and small Group Content like M+. They are not meant to be good in every situation.

Wanting every choice to be exactly as good as the other not only makes choice itself irrelevant. It makes also the reason to have them obsolete in the first place.

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Aka there is no actual choice. Because the real intention for certain talents is for one particular kind of game mode and not your preferred class gameplay.

For some specs, but not all specs have to deal with that “option”.

We understand the principle. We also know that whenever players figure out their fun way to play a spec it will inevitably become nerfed because it was not the devs intended way.

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Oh really?

Not playing momentum is a dps loss, yet i still do it, and get excellent results. In fact, i’m even playing shattered destiny, which is not what’s meta currently.

I guess i’m just “playing wrong though” apparently. According to you.

Again, you people are very focused on meta despite being so against it. If you can’t even take a 5 to 10% dps loss for your preferred gameplay. Completely unviable. You do 100k instead of 105/110? I guess you’re just not gonna complete content ever again.

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Sorry, but this is absolute garbage. One of my guildies was playing holy pala in M+ last season. He’s a good healer, but kind of unconventional, and he enjoys telling us about his unique builds that he’s created and performs very well on. When holy pala was nerfed at some point and people started to tease him about not being meta any more, he just shrugged and said, “Yeah, they’re nerfing the standard build, not any of the talents I use.”

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Aka that build sucked relative to whatever the devs wanted people to play which were at the moment overturned.

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Except it didn’t. And it probably didn’t for him either.

No momentum for me is like a 10% dps loss at most.

Hardly terrible.

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I think this all boils down to the fact that WoW players think the best build is the one that shows the biggest number on Details (and for the most part that’s true). But this is more the result of core game design, not the talent system.

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Yea, or just undertuned/badly made talents.

Also some abilities may do the same damage on paper but are better suited for certain things, so even if on paper they do the exact same damage, in reality one may be better than the other in certain situations.

This is not something to “solve” It’s just reality.

Also, the point was that people tend to exaggerate just how big the difference is between a meta and non meta talent choice selection. Probably to justify the line of reasoning that they “shouldn’t focus on making new talents/better gameplay choices” And put that time saved into something else. Whatever that something else is, i don’t think even they know what they actually want.

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here is NO ilusion, for people that cba to learn how to play they can pick some passives that will make them deal more dps than picking stuff they dont even know they have in their bars.
everyone should just do their builds and they still would make better dps with that build than with build they have no idea about cuz they copied it from first site they found

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I find that quite refreshing. I’d agree gameplay is far more important than balance, but balance has been requested ever since vanilla. So I don’t know if everyone feels that way. In a vacuum they probably would, but when a spec performs more poorly than the average at least, people usually don’t seem too happy.

That may be an ego thing but I also think it’s from a concern they might be a burden to others. I think this quest for maximum performance is not necessarily the most enjoyable one tho, in that sense I appreciate you emphasising people should have fun with their spec and class first and foremost.

I find the talent trees quite open to tweaking and experimenting, I’ve enjoyed that in DF on several classes.

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If the devs ‘wanted people to play’ those specific talents, why would they nerf them? That doesn’t make any sense.

And there are few actual builds (as opposed to random selections of talents) that suck. There are just the builds the top players play because they give a tiny (often as little as 0.5%) performance gain, which everyone else copies, and then there are all the rest.

This is one thing I AM unhappy about with the current tier sets. The feral druid tier set revolves entirely around a single capstone talent. If you don’t take that talent, your tier set does nothing, and the knock on effect of having to path to that capstone locks you out of other talents that might be more fun to play.

It’s possibly an outlier - I haven’t seen people talking about having that exact situation with any other spec - but it’s bad design either way. Encouraging players to play particular talents is one thing; forcing them to is something else entirely.

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There have been a lot of people who said things like “good gameplay but undertuned”.

Now, if it’s EXTREMELY undertuned it is a problem, but if it’s within 5 to 10% it’s fine, and you can realistically play your preferred spec in any content aside the absolute top.

Also tys, i am kinda ambivalent on the tier set steering towards certain builds, because ultimately i may like it, for example, i think the enhancement set is great, but realistically people already liked primordial wave a lot, so i guess that’s the difference between something like annihilator and primordial.

I am not a fan of the havoc tier set for example.

Just never liked throw glaive. Undeniably strong though.

If i were in charge of the fury tier set i would have simply made the cdr on odyn far more powerful but only work on the empowered bloodthirsts, this way ravager would still probably the best choice overall, which is more fun personally speaking.

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end of the world, you have to press one skill that is nothing too complicated so you no longer can sleep on your keyboard while doing m+… you say like dh has anything to press anyway, its like 3 button spec…