Better than the old (and obsolete) talent tree would be to take inspiration from the actually truly interesting talents (and artifact traits) and return them in some form. I’ve said it in past that I believe worse than pruning active abilities was pruning the many passive abilities/procs.
Additionally, the passives classes have now, can be split into 2-3 ranks and those spread across the leveling experience. Result: players will have these passives, even if weeker, sooner - and get to play with those aspects of their spec. As they level, they’ll improve in power.
To use an example from the Enhancement shaman I am currently leveling:
Current state: Windfury (l28), Maelstrom weapon (L40), Stormbringer (L48)
Windfury could be split to start at 5% chance for one extra attacks, then upgrade to 15% for one attack, then 15% for two attacks and finally to the “full” version at 25% for two attacks. Those could be spread from L20-ish to L80-ish. Same with Maelstrom weapon - three ranks giving 1/3/5 maelstrom.
Stormbringer could, at the first rank, only reset the CD and make it free, gaining the damage boost at second rank at a higher level.
As for the passives/talents of the past, it’s hard to remember them considering the heavy reworks over time but I believe there was a proc for short 10% haste or something.
No, I didn’t. They specifically states, and I quote Ion directly “I would love actually to hear general thoughts there. One of our big concerns with that is that even if the time investment isn’t changing meaningfully and the power level isn’t changing like if you log in and okay suddenly you’re lv60 instead of 120 – but you have the same Health, the same Item Level and the same Damage and you’re doing the same content that you did – does that still somehow feel really jarring, does it feel like we have taken something precious away from you if that number next to your character name has changed. that is one of our biggest reservations about this system – Even if we can make the experience of each level feel better along the way, are we still losing something almost priceless just by lowering that number?”
He only mentioned speeding up the process once and it is not in the context of a level squishspecifically doing that.
Most of his answer was about pacing and what it means to level up and what you get every time that you do.
A Level squish is not even remotely close to the way that you achieve the result that I believe them to be looking for or the result that I know that players are looking for.
Lol are you joking mentioning the Artifact traits now? Those things were exactly the same as talents in the old talent tree with the exception that you would actually get them all at the same time which took away the aspect of having a choice when it comes to making your own build. You also couldn’t spec in to another specialization’s tree after you got what you wanted from your main specialization.
If anything the very existence of a system with minor talents and major talents in the Artifact “Tree” (It’s not a tree, it’s a progression path) that are the same or similar as the ones in the vanilla-tbc-wrath-style talent trees which nobody complained about having in Legion (aside for the absence of actually having a choice) proves that these minor and major talents work.
I partly agree. The talent system that we currently have is pretty much a collection of major talents and what should be baseline abilities acting as major talents that you can freely switch out whenever you’d like. They essentially just removed all of the minor talents that were passives (Either stat-increasing or otherwise) and procs.
Giving them back would essentially mean just giving back the old talent trees. At that point they might as well.
Again I partly agree because it highly depends which specific passives you’re talking about. I also think splitting them in 2 is plenty. 3 would be going too far.
I Actually wish they’d just return the original Windfury from back in the day. Y’know, the one with the big crits? This version is dead-boring. But regardless of the Windfury example, yes I agree. You could design certain passives like that.
This would actually allow for abilities that are currently not available at lower levels despite certain classes actually really needing them to be put on lower levels without it being too broken.
Spell Reflection and Bladestorm come to mind.
You could make a Rank-1 Spell Reflection that you get at lv38 that only reflects spells for 1 second and make a Rank-2 Spell Reflection that increases the up-time of Spell Reflection to reflect all spells for 3 seconds, which it currently is.
The same can easily done for many other abilities.
There’s a lot of old Talent Trees online that you can access, even WoWhead has the vanilla ones up.
You should check them out, you’ll see that they’re actually a lot of fun to tinker with.
You severely mis-understand what a “Level Squish” would really do.
I actually believe that this is the main problem in these threads. People seem to think that squishing levels makes everything great again all of a sudden --As if it’s some miracle cure that heals and fixes all past mistakes and everything that’s wrong with the world-- when that’s not even remotely close to what would actually change… which is nothing.
Ion even specifically stated that.
…And to any Blizzard employees reading this: No. This doesn’t mean that we do want the level squish even if all it does is make leveling faster and makes us receive the talents that we currently have faster.
A level squish is a band-aid fix for a game that needs a liver transplant.
A different Talent System.
A buffing of the out-door mobs’ Damage and Health.
A return of Elites in the Outdoor World.
A return of 3-5 Player Quests.
…etc, all the things i’ve mentioned in previous posts.
They should av stopped the levels at 100 and then put in a global XP bar that works on all characters for cool paragon rewards nothing game changing just cool to have things, then blizz can keep its RNG or as i prefer for those XP points you would be able to buy your rewards yourself then all veteran players would finally feel that they have accomplished it by themselves. no need for levels to make new worlds contents and such. leveling has already been taken too far in this game.
Speaking if they made it exactly like the stat squish, as expected, nothing except the number of your level would change. If anything was brought down with it it would be in proportion so nothing would change.
It takes 50 hours to level to 120? It would take 50 hours to level to 60 if they squished that to be the max.
If stats would change only the rating would, not the % it gives.
All level requirements would change proportionally so nothing in practice would change.
Nothing would change, unless blizz decided to change something.
Yeah something like the PvP Prestige system but one you unlock after hitting max level on a character. Every max level character would automatically get access to it.
That would probably work but then there’s still the issue of a power increase or rather gameplay differences of new expansions.
“Why” would a player want to go do the new content when all items in the game give the same stats?"
This is why you need to have the vanilla-tbc-Wrath-style Itemization back.
They “designed themselves in to a dead-end”, so to speak. There’s no way to go but backwards now because all the things that would actually solve their issue of “We can’t keep increasing the level cap forever” are systems and designs that were used in Classic-tbc-Wrath and have already proven themselves to work succesfully.
I am now going to bring up the biggest, most ironic thing ever: The solution to the biggest problems that WoW faces today lies in Classic WoW and in Classic/Tbc/Wrath WoW’s itemization.
Hear me out on that before you laugh me out of the room.
Remember, Ghostcrawler, At the time the Lead System Designer for World of Warcraft stated "One of the important philosophies of game design is that interesting choices are fun. The word ‘interesting’ is key."
Back in the day a player would design a character specifically to do what they wanted the character to do.
Rogues are an incredible example of this.
Back when set effects still worked at low-level you would see Rogues with a lot of interesting builds.
Tier 1 would reduce the cooldown of Vanish, healed you on-vanish and increased baseline Energy.
Tier 2 would increase poison application chance and damage.
Tier 2.5 increased the damage of Eviscerate (Yes, that ability only) and reduced the cd of Evasion.
Tier 3 increased your energy regen and had a chance to give 100% Crit Chance for your next Backstab, Sinister Strike or Hemorrhage.
What rogues would do back then was pick a specific set effect that they liked and then proceeded to use the old Talent System and other items to specifically tailor their character to do a specific thing that they enjoyed doing.
Tier 2.5 for example worked incredibly well with the talents that increased the Crit chance / Damage of your finishing moves and increased your combo point generation and Eviscerate damage.
With this build your point builders would be weaker in damage but your burst would lie in your finishing move: Eviscerate.
So where am I going with this?
Rather than implementing something that is purely a power increase (Level cap increase, Item level increase, etc…) … They could make level 120 the permanent level cap from here on out but still introduce new content that brings us new Gear sets and other items.
This would mean that with every new content patch and expansion they implement a “new playstyle” for each class that people could choose to play, rather than a level cap increase that would only increase your power.
You could experiment around with these Set Effects, too. You could make them thematic for example! Make a gearset with effects relating to the Void, or Old Gods or Dragons.
As long as their effects are interesting, cool and changes up a playstyle then they can work.
It would still give people a reason to do the content and It would still give people a reason to use that gear if they want to go with those set bonuses.
This is currently the only way in where I can see a world where there are no new level cap increases work.
Will every single build and set effect be high-endgame competitive worthy? No. Probably not. But that’s okay!
There is an old comment that I found on the thread that Hepius linked me.
Just make sure to mentally include the term “Viability” with the term “Balanced” used in this comment.
Maranza - Jun 19, 2012 - lv72 Human Warrior - RavenFlight - MOONRUNNER. “In all honesty, I feel that the game should be unbalanced, and that the races and classes should all have intrinsic strengths and exploitable weaknesses.”
"Unbalance.It’s natural. It’s fun. It’s what WoW has lost. Until you guys realize that and unbalance the game again, you’ll never “fix” it.
But then again…“fix” denotes balance. We don’t want balance. We also don’t want superfulous unnecessary talents. We want the ability to choose a spec, but not be shoehorned into it."
Pom Pyro specced Arcane/Fire mages.
Sword Specialization Arms Warriors.
2-Handed Windfury Enhancement Shamans.
Stunlocking Rogues.
They were not always fully balanced and/or even remotely viable in high-endgame gameplay, but they were Iconic, Fun, Interesting and Immersive.
…Interesting Choices – One of the important philosophies of Game Development.
Exactly this. Thank you so much for understanding, it’s frustrating to converse with people that just won’t get it.
level squish will happen,regardless you liking it or not.
Telling people that they “dont understand” just because they dont agree with you is inmature,get over it and stop telling people what to think xD
Hey Razien, I stumbled over here from your link on the other thread. Looks like you got it covered here, but I figure backup is never a bad thing…
You don’t seem to know much about the old talent system, the choice given through the options available was huge, much more expansive than what we currently have, that is a fact. Blizz changed it with the intention to improve it, but the problem they were trying to correct only got worse.
They wanted to simplify the choice and make it easier to make, varying between all of the abilities being good and all of them being equally bad, or one being the obvious choice… this makes players feel like they don’t have a choice, they are merely picking what’s best for the situation.
The current talent system was designed as an initial prune to abilities as in MoP specs were already becoming oversaturated. Core abilities were put in tiers to be decided against eachother. Blizz straight up went and admitted is that it was to simplify it. Less choices that did have an impact but not a huge one, against 1/10th of the choices where the impact was huge. Players mostly hated it raiding MSV, HoF or ToES…
6 years down the line, we’ve had a few more prunes and those core abilities are still choices!! Another reason talents need redoing is because so many rotations that have been fun, are just plain stale and not great to play.
The original trees made progression feel linear and progressive. Currently it feels like I’m a lackey levelling for food in the form of a talent or ability whenever I’m levelling an alt. The progression doesn’t feel like progression. It’s mundane and spikey. I don’t want to feel like a pet getting a treat every 15 levels.
Just because a choice may seem insignificant, doesn’t make it uninteresting. Player agency is something people are fighting for on other forum threads in the form of vendors, less RNG and specs like outlaw rogue players complaining about bad bones rolling. More choice would translate into more ownership of your character. It would simplify the process aswell, rather than changing almost every numerical piece of programming in the game, to strip out a system, replace it with an old one slightly revamped with retuned numbers and implement the abilities that everyone picks anyway into the class, either via level unlocking or as part of the talent tree.
Part of the progressiveness came from how they linked it and really built your character up to it, Razien mentioned the LK/cata sub talents:
My favourite part of this, was part of the Sub tree… you’d choose the 3 points in tier 2 for increased bleed damage from garrote/rupture (4/8/12 I’m pretty sure it was) then 2 tiers later that would lead directly into being able to add Hemorrhage to your spellbook. That’s progressive, your character develops their understanding of bleeds, then learns how to do a new one.
Take DKs aswell, increased attack speed on the unholy tree leading into Unholy Frenzy.
It just adds to the feel of your character learning and progressing in a way that gives merit to the fantasy of it all.
The unfortunate thing is, however, that Blizz have proved time and time again recently that they are lazy. If WoW was a house, all of the leaks that have been appearing recently would have been covered in duct tape in a way to try to temporarily fix it. They don’t replace, renew or rediscover. They don’t admit mistakes. They add in quick fixes, cover ups and justifications. I won’t get into it too much in this thread.
An overhaul of the talent system would be a rediscovery to try to fix the problem. Obviously it wouldn’t be flawless, and it wouldn’t be the only part of the solution. A level squish would be a quick fix that would cause a bigger problem in 6 months time.
Other solutions:
I don’t see the need to say something again myself when someone else has already said it more than adequately.
I almost completely agree with Razien on everything he has said, on most of the threads on this topic.
To those who are retail-loving BfA kids, good for you we might be the cringey old people who will sod off to classic when it opens, but there is a reason that will be the case.
It doesn’t help that Bliz practically ignored forums feedback for so many expansions now (started with WoD?) we all became volatile, their fault. Not ours, BfA was warned about on the beta by Preach since the start it would be badly designed. Heck almost everybody did, people who watched saw it and who played it. What did we get? 0 fixes, 0 changes, feedback deleted, Preach has to mend his relationship purely due to negative feedback and more CMs fired! Oh joy! It’s almost like the devs can’t take criticisme at all. The players since WoD gave so many good ideas for good additions or changes to the game, all of it was ignored.
Yet we still have the devs call the few remaining frustrated playerbase the reason why they don’t. YOU CREATED US! Btw GJ firing all the CMs who actually did their job but keeping the ones who hardly or never respond (except in post a picture of your cat or transmog thread)! If this was customer service I got at a restaurant I would go to anathor restaurant.
Look at reddit, it’s now either memes, fanart or negative feedback. Bar 1 WoW youtuber have either quit WoW, are negative about and or neutral (tryign to stay positive but failing). People were cheering for the ban they got getting the old XP pot back back (MoP and Winter Veil WoD, 300% for 1 hour) saying they didn’t plan to play anyhow and saved alot of tons grinding through old mundane content. The people literally say they rather exploit chars to 120 than to play the game even at the risk of a 1 month ban. Heck if I had the will to level through eleven year old zones I would have done it. People rather skip all content till endgame than to play it, something is wrong. It’s the game not the players. But all the devs can do is point to paid 110 boost to skip it instead of fixing it.
Sorry for the rant but yeah many people are this way nowadays including me. All I can hope they will actually open an open Q&A and answer the the questions that matters:
-Why was the pot bug ingame for 5 months (includes PTR)?
-Why did you allow the alchemist tool to complety wreck the flaks economy?
-Why can people still abuse sap-vanish bug on rogue to kill/cheese mythic Jaina easier?
-Why do you only act if it threathens a store boost?! People were doing this exact trick to 1-shot mage tower bosses and you never stepped in.
-How come classes that are beyond bad on beta get into live and still not get fixed untill 6 months later (Legion)?
-Why keep introducing more RNG whenever players quit when the old systems retained more players since instead of TF, you also worked towards powerfull rep or crafted items? Every boss you killed got a step closer and you almost knew exactly or exactly when you would have that sweet trinket or crafted plate legs.
There is alot to fix now with BfA alone let’s not take leveling into it aswell or the dead old world. But atleast having a honest and open discussion would be nice for a change instead of cherry picking the questions. If I see something negative or buggy I’m not gonna sweet it up, I point to it and say why it’s bad and even how to improve/fix it.
Cant take you serious its like a Cata revamp with stat and item lvl change again baked into one and adding less levels you have no idea what you are talking about as usual .
Both times they have done stats squish they have messed up raids and dungeons (legacey) so i do not trust them to do a level “squish” which you say is easy but then again you are well know for troll and bait threads.
It’s fine if that’s your opinion, I’m not asking for the exact same tbc-vanilla-wotlk talent trees. I’m just saying… use that format. That system. That style of talent tree.
or as i prefer for those XP points you would be able to buy your rewards yourself then all veteran players would finally feel that they have accomplished it by themselves. no need for levels to make new worlds contents and such. leveling has already been taken too far in this game.![:slight_smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
we might be the cringey old people who will sod off to classic when it opens, but there is a reason that will be the case.![:v:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/v.png?v=6" ":v:")
![:smile:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smile.png?v=6" ":smile:")
Jump in anytime you’d like! I enjoy the conversation.