Are the talent trees really just an illusion of choice?

Community General Discussion
81

RPG’s can be online too.

They tend to compromise on some parts in order to make the world playable for more then one player. It doesn’t make it any less of any RPG. Infact, WoW has pretty much went this long without it pretty much and the only form of permanence up until Wrath/Cata was cosmetics. And people still then and even now with Vanilla to Wrath, debatably Cata, considers it an RPG still.

That’s kind of the nature of going online. What works in SP, wouldn’t typically work in Online like permanent choices.

I didn’t include or exclude anything. All i simply told you is WoW is an online RPG and it can’t really carry over one of the common elements of single-player RPG’s.

I think you’re confusing yourself here.

WoW is an RPG. And RPG’s tend to have talent trees.

You bought in a completely different argument with making permanent choices when that’s not what were talking about here. Talent Trees are often temporary.

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you touched on something that I really dislike about TWW: The Hero Trees. Despite being decent sized and small they do favor or “push” you to have or build an existing tree to support it. So it’s not quite like adding another layer “independent” on your spec, as it is you have to “incorporate” into your existing spec choices.

( the concept of “hero” talents was a cool idea, just how they were implemented i think was wrong. but again i think it’s because the Hero trees were not built as stand-alone talents as a layer to add to your spec)

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83

Someone understands the truth behind trees, when people asked for talent trees to come back, most thought they would be like classic trees to where you could multi build into diffrent specs and so forth. When the reality of what we got is a series of passive buffs that would more than likely be baseline abilites, such as expurgation, or art of war, or blade of justice, or divine storm, or even avenging wrath. In which pre existence of trees were already baseline passives and abilities you had. Yet post tree you have to buy them back using talent points, with some niche abilities that allow you to specialize into either single target or AoE that pretty much existed in talent rows.

All in all, all these trees accomplished was looking more impressive than they really are a the end of the day. Their primarily expanded upon versions of the talent rows, in that you have to follow specific pathing in the first place to get key talents. With the bulk of talents being broken down abilities that existed before DF came out.

I do think some abilities should be made baseline, like wake of ashes, but as others have pointed out doing so leaves a void in the tree that has to be filled. Which can create a balancing nightmare depending upon the direction they choose to go. Meaning that if they do make some things baseline, they would more than likely have to shrink the trees and number of talent points we get to compensate, which again makes for a pathing nightmare all over again. I truthfully preferred rows over these trees, I feel like at the end of the day these trees are just expanded upon rows that just resulted in a net zero sum situation for the bulk of classes. With niche interactions with other classes and specs as the other component is some abilities are not shared equally between the spec trees.

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84

Honestly, i would like to see that again. :slight_smile:

Along with some combo etse talents that if you mix 2 specs at certain level, like if you have a bit of fire and frost, you can get the frostfire bolt. So i can RP as a proper frostfire mage. :sunglasses:

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85

I wish we just had everything unlocked that is good for our class. Tbh I don’t care for “meaningful choices” because it’s not. It’s more like a chore to switch talents for different situations.

AoE or single target?

Give up survivability for a dispel? Or extra stuns.

Like I rather just have all of this stuff and use it when I need it instead of spec in into it.

My feral druid literally feels like it lost the ability to have a couple of utility spells that are good for mythic plus because I have to spec into stuff I don’t want for something I need.

I have less utility now. Why?

Meaningful choices? lol :joy:

It’s the class side that always sucks.

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86

WoW isn’t an RPG anymore at this point than Call of Duty is.

Some version of Call of Duty and other FPS games have talent trees or similar talent unlock systems. Does that make them RPG’s? You’re playing a game, as well as a role, although you’re holding a gun instead of a wand.

A game like Skyrim, while being a heavily high-fantasy themed game, is more akin to a sandbox action game than a traditional RPG. Having an online mode that would allow a friend to join you within Skyrim would not change that classification in the least.

One could even argue that any game that does not have turn-based combat cannot qualify as an RPG, since the core gameplay is too far removed from the original core gameplay of Dungeons and Dragons, of which all RPG’s owe their lineage to.

Also saying that “most RPG’s have talent trees” could not be further from the truth and you should not base any argument on that. Very few RPG’s or RPG-adjacent game I have ever played has had talent trees, and I’ve played dozens.

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I remember, somewhat vaguely, the classic talent tree setup.

I hated it. It seemed largely redundant to me once I became a bit familiar with it and would mostly ignore it as I died a lot anyway.

When they updated that talent system, BfA I think, maybe it was before Idk, I thought that was such an improvement but a lot of people felt the opposite.
Oh well.

I don’t mind the talent trees we have now though. I think it’s a good compromise between old and new.
But that’s me.

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Don’t know how someone will drastically nerf themselves. You look at guardians of the grove tree, it buffs trents and works off that, now use the search bar and easily plug talents based on it. Doesn’t seems complex to me.

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But DF is getting it back on track with Talent trees.

I’m not really sure why you’re equating the two here since nobody here but you called CoD an RPG here. Esp considering were using WoW’s DF talent tree as a reference for comparison here, and how you didn’t elaborate on what you meant here anyways.

Though you could agrue that simply having some or little RPG elements does not make it a full blown RPG.

…Okay? It still has a talent tree? :man_shrugging:

…Cept i’m not talking drop in/out coop. I’m talking about MMO where it has to take account to thousands of players. Or at least, a lobby of players.

…But were not talking about Games not being turn-based or not tho.

Were talking about WoW’s Talent trees. This seems rather werid you have to go back and pretty much go “But what about D&D here?!” to try to disagree with me here, thinking when i said all of RPG’s are like it.

I’ve said “Typical”. Meaning i know there’s exceptions to the rule here. Why do you think i didn’t disagree with you calling Secret of Mana of FF7 RPG’s? I’m well aware you can have an RPG without a talent tree or anything that isn’t exactly like WoW or Skyrim.

If you want to talk about Turn based, BG3 has talent trees.

I’m simply telling you since the beginning of this conveo here, that RPG’s are often more or less about the complexity, the incremental upgrading, and hence, Talent trees are one of them. And just because somebody can min-max them, doesn’t make it bad. People min-max things all the time.

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You underestimate the casual player who still wants invited to group content whenever they can be bothered to log in.

The original Vanilla through Cata talent tree was scrapped because the devs felt it was too complex for the casual player, yet the current tree design that we have is far more impactful.

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You’re vaguely leaving your definition of an “RPG” wide open so that you can make any argument you want without having to have a grounded reason as to why you feel how you do, while simultaneously using that undefined label as a standard for others to only guess at.

Either define what you consider true RPG standards to be or gtfo with arguing in circles just for the sake of arguing.

A “talent tree” does not include or exclude any game from falling into any genre of game, and your extremely vague standards otherwise seem to only include the last few years of gaming as reference. Are you some young 20-something with no actual reference to gaming history and traditionalism?

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I think it helps with balancing between builds, hero talents probably wouldn’t be as diverse without them. Hero talents will basically limit you to 2-3 major builds with very minor variation, per hero talent, so 4-6 per spec. With the old talent system hero talents would either not have to relate to talent choices or only really have 1-2 variable talents.

I do think they could streamline the system a bit and let you choose capstone talents and then just have the system autofill / suggest paths. That’s more of a total noob aid but really I guess an addon could do the same thing, break down and convert talent trees into 5-6 choices and then autofill based on what the prompts the player chooses.

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Devs also said if you don’t like droughts then to leave, they also said the old camera zoom range was making players feel insignificant. Arguing what the dev said the reason was is not structural to the discussion.

Also if a player who picks the trent hero tree and doesn’t take trents, I have a feeling were the same one calling vanilla hard and complex and Baron Geddon was actually a challenge in boss design

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…How’s using WoW DF and Skyrim as a reference here “vaguely leaving your definition”?

That’s defining it…

I mean i could say more, but i would like to keep the example rather simple and to the point here instead of bogging it down. Simply because of the subject matter were talking about: Talent Points.

Esp since your stance on the matter seem to stem pro-simplicity here for WoW.

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Everything ingame is an illusion of choice ,since every pixel , path and choice is dictated by Blizzard . Your real choice only exists at the beginning before you login - to play or not to play

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So two games?

Again, being incredibly dishonest in your own argument, or does it really only boil down to “talent trees” for you?

If so, just google any top all-time list of RPG’s and count how many have talent tree systems and how many don’t.

I’ll save you the time if you can’t be bothered.

Although some of them do have talent trees, the far majority have either base attribute power ups based solely on level, some have attribute points that you can assign freely that are given with either skill use or level, and some only have new acquired skills based on level. Some even give you skills or abilities based completely on the equipment or weapon you are wielding at any given time.

See how large and varied the general RPG/MMO core systems actually are instead of this extremely narrow lens you want to look through?

I’m convinced your stance of only citing games like Skyrim or Vanilla WoW comes from a very limited experience and understanding of the actual genre itself.

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They mostly are unless you couldn’t care less about playing the game efficiently and effectively.

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98

Hostility kind of unnecessary here mate. Anybody having a reference you’re not fond of here doesn’t make them dishonest. I wouldn’t also talk about “dishonesty” when your comment opens up with dismissing anybody who disagrees with you as an “apologist”.

I mean, i just told you what i’ve used as reference for RPGs multiple times here. I would’ve figured you would know by now.

Simply telling me without linking or citing to back up a claim, isn’t proving me on this claim.

Either way, this isn’t what were talking about anyways. It just seems like you trying to go somewhere else to try to disprove my statement instead of debating it for it’s own merits here over something i’ve said it’s not 100%.

And over something that will happen inevitabiltiy regardless of what solution we propose here.

I feel like you’re not understanding this bit: Min-maxing happens either way MoP talents or not. I’m not sure if you’re around Shadowlands the very least, but there’s icy vein articles for that. So given the agruments you made here, does that mean the game need to be simplifed further in order to prevent Min-maxing?

My point is you’re trying to agrue for nerfing the RPG nature of this game because of the minmaxxers… when that was one of the factors of why WoW was pretty bad for awhile. WoD to Shadowlands mind you. I would rather we NOT go back to that. Unless were suggesting ideas for WoW to die, which it almost did. Twice. :v:

Let’s also keep in mind, i don’t want the game to become Path of Exile. There’s a happy middle ground to meet with Talents where it’s not too overly complex and big, and not too simplified and small.

You’re acting like i’ve disagreed with you on this, when i’ve never did disagree with you on that.

And you siting your subjective experience doesn’t give way to wisdom here on this topic. As the old saying goes, age don’t come with wisdom.

I have to seriously ask why you’re on the game if you dislike the talent tree, given it’s pretty integral part of the game in almost every aspect.

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Yea I think talent trees have problem. I wish it took what’s best from both.

I like the 3 impactful choices that MoP tree gave us. But I also like the smaller choices that the old tree gave us, like +1% strength or -15sec cd on an ability.

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100

I honestly would love some other options to affect talents, too. I really enjoyed my old glyph that allowed my consecration to follow me!

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