Agree 100% that we need this an an option in the game.
I have misclicked talents in battle a few times, or have been too busy to click my talent and it would have been the difference between a kill or my death.
3 Likes
But I was simply pointing out the obvious truth. A good player would keep their calmn, evaluate the current situation and correctly pick their intended talent(s). Unlike the low skilled, who would panic and button smashing every ability they have off cool down. Eventually leading to them picking the wrong one.
Itâs the choice they made, the game simply respect and register that choice. Why canât the player do the same?
That is stretching it a bit. Everyone picks the wrong talent every now and then, and rarely because of button mashing. For example, I typically pick Crossfire at 7 on Blaze, so that has become muscle memory to some extent. However, there are maps and comps where Grill and Kill is better, but I mispick because I am so used to Crossfire.
But was that action governed by the game, or by your own free will?
I am a soft determinist, not a libertarian.
Picking talents is typically like making your workers mine in Starcraft 2.
They added auto-mine because everyone was going to have their workers mine.
normally you have an idea of what talent you want on at least the next talent tier.
So by âpre-selectingâ youâre just skipping micro that isnât related to how you play your hero, watch the map, et cetera.
It isnât skillful, itâs repetative.
Now, I donât want it to actually select the talents (showing yes, selecting, no) because sometimes things change, or you change your mind. Or forget to unlock the talent.
But the idea this takes away any meaningful skill from the game is a bad joke.
3 Likes
I also suggested it a while ago but apparently they did not see it. Hopefully and this time is taken into account, it would be a very useful feature.
It would be a waste of resources if the talents donât auto-learn. I mean, your build 90% depends on team compositions and map, so you pretty much know your build form the loading screen. If you arenât sure about some talent, you can just not pre-select it, as simple as that. Nobody is forcing you to pre-select them.
depends on the hero, and how the game is going.
The valuable part of this suggestion is the showing the talent to your teammates.
That showing is the important part.
Yes, and not showing a talent will tell your teammates that you will decide what to pick based on how the game is going, and there is no need for them to worry 
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Maybe on the fly talent picking reflects player skill. Does that mean it should be a game element? Is talent picking actually a fun aspect of the game that meaningfully contributes to the experience enough that it should be required, as opposed to an option? Itâs subjective to a large extent, but moving slightly out of range of aggression and pressing control and a number doesnât really seem to me to be a crucial aspect of the game experience that couldnât be automated. I certainly donât wake up and think, âBoy I sure canât wait to play Talent Selection in HotS.â
It should be an option, maybe even one that only activates on disconnect if people are super dead set on keeping the talent selection minigame as a core element. There is no reason an AI should have control over your build, no counter argument I can think of in this case.
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Sure its part of skill, but also a part of âi hate my mouseâ and âi destroyed the buildâ.
The problem to fix here isnt just for yourself, its also for your team. Your misclick can cause your team to lose. I think this would justify the QoL change.
I think this is the only downside compared to the upsides it can give.
- Because you realy do not want the AI to take your talents. Yes, it can give you a surprise talent, except this surprise talent might not synergize at all with the other talents.
- At the same time, if you are playing a hero which can take an alternative talent path to counter the enemy choises, you probably wouldnt preselect it anyway (or players will due to being clueless, but thats a diffirent problem anyway).
- It also doesnt realy matter for the winning side, it matters for the losing side. That hectic moment can be there because you are forced to defend.
That heat of the moment talent pick is something i would find kinda weird, yes, the enemy might have been taking a talent which you can hard counter. But either thats a heavily underused talent (which could explain your other choise), or you simply didnt pay attention to the enemy options to begin with. And in that last case i think its very unlikely that you would notice it in time anyway.
I would consider it quite rare. But most important: you are not required to use the planning tool! And i can imagine that at higher ranks people are less likely to use it, or only use it to plan 1 talent ahead to allow this sudden change in the original plan.
2 Likes
I was going to write up a big thing pointing out all of the holes in this while also urging you to behave, but then someone else did the first part for me:
Navigating a menu under duress is technically a skill, but so not much of a skill that it genuinely separates good players from bad and itâs certainly not a major aspect of HOTSâs gameplay.
Anyways.
I donât mind people who are into manual selection, but IMO that shouldnât be the norm anymore. The only reason itâs a ânecessaryâ part of the game right now is because itâs the only option we have. Half-measures really arenât worth it.
Iâm personally in agreement with you. Probably Blizzard should just poll the player base somehow to get some rough idea of how many others are in agreement.
I sense that a decent percentage of the âkeep it because it reflects skillâ camp donât actually care that much from a game design or QoL standpoint, but are more âskill signalingâ or trying to prove something about their own ability. I donât get it, honestly. As a relatively competent player, I donât have issues with the current setup apart from disconnect selections, but neither do I enjoy it, itâs just a minor annoyance that does not enrich my own game experience. I would have no problem if the HotS team provided a full-on toggleable option.
Except it doesnt reflect much, skill in particular.
In vast majority of cases you know which talents you gonna pick already in a draft. If you dont know, your (hero) pick probably wasnt optimal to begin with.
Level 7 for healers is an exception tho.
I pick Thrall to be tank buster, solo laner or mage. Period. I made the decision after last pick in draft, probably faster.
2 Likes
I agree with WereElf; talents should be auto-selected. The OPâs case is built upon the need to mitigate user error (misclicking a talent). Just showing your picks does not contribute to solving this issue, and introduces a new set of problems.
Example: Player 1 shows Talent X, but later chooses Talent Y. Player 2 sees player chose Talent X, and chooses Talent Z because they have synergy. If Player 2 chooses before Player 1, then Player 1 unintentionally deceived his ally. If Player 2 chooses after to confirm the talent choice, then the showing system contributed nothing to the interaction, as Player 2 could have done this without the intended talents being shown. The same thing applies if Player 1 tells Player 2 which talent he is choosing; the showing system contributes nothing.
In any case, at some point user error must be accepted. The OPâs auto/pre-selection proposal goes further to mitigate user error, but only showing intended picks does not.
If you have to put âtechnicallyâ in front of something to justify it, then the actual answer is the opposite. Is opening the browser on the computer a skill associated withing using a computer? Well, technicallyâŚ- NO! Thatâs just silly.
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Iâve played the game for some time. And I dare say that the talent selecting panel is a big one. What kind of Stormtrooperâs aim do you have that would miss such a huge, stationary target?
If itâs so easy, why do you keep insisting that itâs so important to retain the ability to make mistakes?
There is no such thing as âretain the ability to make mistakeâ. Only people that donât accept they did wrong. And prefer to shift the blame to something else.
There very much is, actually. If a system could be simplified to reduce the potential for misuse but is not, that is deliberately retaining the ability to misuse the system and, in essence, allowing the user the ability to make mistakes with said system. Ergo, what you preach is retaining the ability to make mistakes over convenience.
And Iâm still not sure why youâre fighting so hard against it, either - you act like the potential to more easily choose the Talents and Heroics that you want would have a massive negative impact, and you still havenât revealed what you think that impact might be.