Class design has been discussed on this forum since day 1, alongside most other topics pertaining to design.
It may be in the eye of the beholder, but I think the discussions were more lively in the past. It was as if people saw WoW as a game that had great visionary opportunity. Anything could happen. All ideas were on the table. Have a good suggestion? Bring it up, and it may happen! How should the game be designed? Who knows, let’s talk about it!
That was sort of the vibe.
And to some degree it was reflected in the design. Blizzard were a bit more adventurous with the game design than they’ve been the last couple of expansions in particular.
These days it feels as if the playerbase has been distilled down to those who are happy with the way things are and who don’t want any disturbers of the peace.
And likewise on Blizzard’s end there seems to be less of an appetite to evolve and change WoW, instead favoring a traditional and recognizable design that has become somewhat formulaic, as well as pleasing.
So as far as coming in and suggesting radical changes goes, I think the moment of opportunity has passed for that.
There doesn’t appear to be much appetite for that these days.
I remember mop rotations, they were braindead, boss mechanics were easier too.
I don’t even need to prove it, google mop era guides and compare to what we have now
And how it relates to my statement regarding class design?
Yeah I remember so much hate towards legion enh shaman rework, honogenization that started in MoP and whine about cata-sl talent trees.
Blizzard addressed most of these things
Current talent trees are result of community demand
WoW’s complexity fills a niche that no other game offers.
Did I say niche? Nevermind - WoW is the biggest MMORPG of them all and always has been. Its complexity is clearly paying off.
Download GW2 if you want to play an easy game. Don’t destroy my enjoyment.
Boss mechanics notwithstanding, our rotations aren’t markedly more complex now than they were in MoP. Some, like holypriest for example, are arguably simpler without the chakra stancedance.
The ones who want sweeping radical changes and large overhauls, or the ones who want familiar, recognizable, and uncontroversial changes?
The latter, obviously.
Blizzard aren’t trying to rock the boat anymore – they’re trying to please those who are happy with the way things are.
Have you seen the Hero talents for The War Within? That’s got to be the most uncontroversial, inoffensive, status quo design that anyone could ever come up with.
That’s not a development team designing a game based on the feedback given by players who want major changes. It’s based on the feedback given by the players who like things the way they are and who don’t want too many changes.
So again, the time for major changes and overhauls seems to have passed. Blizzard are not so easily swayed in that regards anymore. Because players at large appear mostly happy with the way things are.
i dunno, every expac there were very popular threads about old talents being better because they gave you choice and sense of progression every level with no dead levels.
Asmongold whined about it, every streamer whined about it, large amount of community whined about it, i’ll even tell you that something that small foreign parts of community like russian-speaking servers whined about it in the same way too.
Will you say that current talent trees are small change and not a controversial overhaul? Because last time i checked every classic andy is controversial about it
good thing that they don’t add overly complicated systems, because last time they did it in legion and bfa some classes felt incomplete and disabled in some way until they got to current expac.
I mean it’s really crazy when half of your useful passives were hidden in the artifact
what actualy makes the rotations and button pushing complex, aint realy how many buttons you have to push, but when to push them, due to different passives boosting this and that, so to be able to actualy do the dps healing or even tanking you should, you have to constantly watch what buff is up or not, or did that thing proc etc…, miss out on something and you loose dps.
Gacha system for perks let’s goooo.
What exactly they can do with classic perk-style rpg progression?
Old talent trees are comparable only in a way that they are both trees and you can put talent points in both of them.
Implementation is different, customization is different, your choice is much more important, basically current talent trees are both main sources of spec progression AND optional choices.
Pre cata trees are just useful passives, and everything else you borrowed from class trainers
Just make them additional visually clear stylized resource bars like ffxiv does it. every ffxiv class has atleast 3 bars that you can put anywhere and cutomize however you like, and they function similiar to current procs.
Legal weakauras
No offense, but you come across mostly as a contrarian. You’re not really presenting a point in the given topic of discussion, so I’m a bit confused as to whether you agree or disagree with my point, or whether you’re just nit-picking my sentences to argue a disagreement.
My point in this thread is that the OP has some radical and controversial suggestions, and that those suggestions won’t gain much momentum in the community, and that they won’t gain much favor from Blizzard either. And the reason for that is that Blizzard are mostly just designing the game to be pleasing to the players who like it the way it is, which is most players.
My point is that each expac we have not so radical (in my mind radical is massive formula change or change of genre lol) but everytime controversial changes, and new talent trees are in no way a not controversial mild change, it’s a big overhauls, so big that many classes weren’t fit for them and because of that we have big reworks nowadays.
Tldr:
New talent trees are not a mild change, we don’t have as much class design discussions because most complaints were met by blizzard, posts about radical simplifications are the conservative ones that were motivated by SoD release.
Also some people in WoW community think that more people will play this game if we will simplify everything down to classic levels.
I do think they’ve over-complicated a few areas of the game, Professions and Inventory Management in particular.
DF has done a good job and de-systemising the game from the previous few expansions in some areas but there’s still scope to simplify it more.
The game doesn’t really benefit from crafting professions needing 8 materials of specific rank to craft something.
Nor does it need Knowledge systems and Talent Tree type mechanics.
Crafting is perfectly good with 1 type of leather, 1 type of metal ore and 1 type of cloth per patch, with maybe some rare exotic materials added in x.1 patch and some newer materials in a new zone in x.2 patch.
Inventory management this expansion has been a nightmare. I go clear out my bags and feel great about have 65 free slots and then 2 days later I’m getting “Inventory Ful” messages popping up. It’s just not fun.
