I just want to express my frustration with the talent structure being introduced in Midnight. Here’s the excerpt from the blog post:
Here’s how the talent points will be distributed:
3 points for the class tree, although no new talents will be added there.
3 points for Hero talents, which will introduce a brand-new talent line.
4 points for the specialization tree, where the new “apex” talents will appear. Of these:
2 will enhance existing abilities
1 will modify an ability entirely
A few issues here:
-
There are no new class talents, simply more talent points. This is in no way interesting nor is it going to expand gameplay in most cases.
-
The new “Apex” talents for the spec trees just… sit off to the side? Not part of the tree itself? And they just buff or alter existing abilities. It feels very much like an afterthought, very uninspiring and low skilled design.
-
And the Hero talents new row is… okay. It’s feels odd that they located them as another vertical column to the side instead of building down. This makes it feel like it’s not really adding anything to make the spec stronger (otherwise the talents would be located at the bottom), just adding some more stuff to make it more unique. Again, not really exciting.
They are treating each tree differently, there’s no cohesion. It’s like they’ve lost their design philosophy with the trees.
Another peeve of mine since they released Hero specs is that Hero specs don’t all have everything to make them work self contained within the Hero tree. Several rely on the player selecting a specific talent in the class or spec tree. They stated previously that they wanted to design the talent trees such that, though players could make a build that was less than ideal, they couldn’t create any “broken” builds. With these Hero trees in their current iteration, they’re absolutely creating the opportunity to create broken builds.
Personally, I would like to see the trees go away in favor of a “trait line” type system. Have several trait lines to choose to specialize in. All associated talents are located within their respective trait line (no ambiguity about it). Have one trait line dedicated to Hero specs.
Then with each expansion, they could add a new Hero spec, or a new trait line, or additional talents to each to talent into.