Then hiring better community managers is my answer to that. It’s frankly part of their job to take community feedback, unbiased, to the developers.
Look, a CM job isn’t to cut-n-pate an entire thread of hundreds of posts to a designer. Their job is to aggregate the feedback. Their job is to actually engage the community, and ask questions if something isn’t clear so that when that aggregate feedback makes its way to the designers, they can make an informed decision.
Could a designer just ignore feedback, absolutely.
But that’s an entirely different debate than the fact that feedback got ignored because it was somehow deep within the depths of a poorly written thread or argument.
If that still happens, I’d argue the CM didn’t properly present the material correctly, and again that’s an entirely different debate too.
All I have left to say at this is that there is always the possibility that development on the stupid systems, like covenants, is already so far along it would cause a greater delay in getting the expansion out.
This means the best way to deal with it is to limit the negatives, maximize the positives, and change course if the next expansion has similar already planned.
BIG AGREE! Not enough people are saying this. The entire freaking point of the new talent tree system was to finally rid us of the garbage power reduction that we face every expansion. Not only are we losing thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of gold we spent on legendries, conduits, set gear and currencies but now we are literally losing buttons we’ve had since VANILLA.
Bloating the new talent trees with all of our most integral base line abilities is garbage. The new talent tree should have just had old artifact powers, set bonuses, legendries and then new and creative abilities and passives, I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO TALENT INTO FREAKING WILD GROWTH AS A RESTO DRUID. Why is Hibernate on the tree for druids?! Most of the active abilities they stapled onto all of the talent trees should have been baseline and we should not be thanking Blizzard for gutting our characters this hard.
Absolutely, if you’ve already thrown all your eggs into one basket, I can see that and it’s really hard to backtrack on that when you’ve committed to deadlines, but that leads up to the issue where it’s more about shareholders & pre-orders than a polished product.
I don’t know if it’s Hubris or what, but I think there is merit in having AMA / Q&A interviews well before any major development goes into the next expansion to gather input on ideas that players might like or dislike and just get some general feedback before too much resource time has been allocated to a system that players then dissuade the designers to change throughout alpha and beta, only to find come .1 or .2 that they should have listened.
On this, I just ask people to think of the infamous “you think you do but you don’t” argument. The truth is, we think we do, and we do, but not the way you think might be more accurate.
It’s shaping up into another version of ‘class/spec on a rail’ gameplay. This just isn’t a game with much buildcraft in it. There is some to be fair, but it is more about optimalization rather than new gameplay loops to try out.
Moon bear is a completely new build for Guardian Druid in DF. However, the trees aren’t big enough for “player created” builds, its mostly builds Blizzard has in mind that players will discover exist. Blizzard put the moon bear stuff in there with the intent players would build around these new options.
There is no game on the planet that offers multiple builds where there are not some builds which are more effective than others. Every game with a pass/fail state can be optimized. WoW is no different.
I’m frankly bewildered that people are surprised that core abilities are on the talent trees. Remember that talent trees are the new backbone of our character and the chief vehicle of development from level 10 to 70. Of course there are going to be fundamental spells on it.
If there were some massive barrier to unlocking any specific talent I could see the issue. But there isn’t. The tree is fully unlocked at max level and I’m assuming most of us intend to be max level within a week of launch, You can change your talents at literally any time outside of combat so what’s the big barrier here?
It’s because I remember a time when we did have almost every ability in our spellbook at max level. Talents simply emphasized what your character was best at. I would prefer that. You aren’t wrong of course, but like what I like. I’m bewildered that you think everyone thinks the way you do.
There are several games (mmo’s) that are better for having more freedom of choice in what to bring. Yes there is optimal, but my problem with that is it requires a specific comp to achieve optimized results in progression in this game. Again, I remember a time when wow was a bit more open in its design.
I’m not asking anything to be dumbed down, but I prefer an approach that allows exploration. If I have to take all the basics, then why don’t they give us those basics? And then add in more interesting choices.
Glad to hear it. Maybe I should be more patient as the trees are still being tweaked. My eye is on Shaman, DK, and Warlock.
I do think these trees are a step in the right direction, but it’s like turning the car around and then stopping. I still haven’t gotten where I want to go.
I think people are imagining a lot more friction towards the new talent system than it actually comes with. Yes we won’t have every ability on our tree selected at the same time, but that doesn’t mean we’ve thrown every other talent into the trash heap. We can swap around our talents at will for free at any time. Many selections on the talent trees are situational or only useful in specific types of content. We’ll take them when they’re useful and won’t take them when they’re not. End result? A far greater percentage of the talent trees will see regular play even if there are parts of the tree that are not universally taken. Abilities that are good now will still be good in talent trees and will still see regular play.
The good news is that there’s a difference between viable and optimal despite how often this community confuses the two. By definition, you will always get worse performance than the optimal build if you’re not using it. That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to progress assuming the build you do chose actually has a modicum of thought behind it.
Then you remember incorrectly. Optimal builds have existed in this game since day 1.
Because the talent tree is serving dual purposes. It is not only our means of customizing our character, but also the means through which new characters grow into all of their core abilities from level 10 to 70. I think we would both agree it doesn’t make sense for new players to get all of their abilities at once, even core abilities. Right now we gradually unlock core abilities through our spellbook, and now we gradually unlock core abilities through our talent tree. What’s more important than whether or not an ability is on the tree or not is its location and how much investment is required to get it.
