Refuting the common arguments against Dual Spec

Zipzo-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 1:30am

Got ya covered there easily.

Zipzo:

It removes a form of character investment that is necessary, and an important element of the TBC experience. We know that this was an intended experience for the original due to Blizzard quotes from back then.

It changes the raid meta (if however slightly or majorly) and creates a need for people to utilize it for optimization purposes, which would be emergent gameplay from a feature that never existed in original TBC, making the content more trivial that it needs to be.

It takes away from the selling points of a potential WOTLK-C, unfairly.

It ignores the fact that respeccing will become much easier as the expansion ages, due to daily quest hubs.

It ignores the fact that respeccing is easy now, as many dual-spec arguments have tried to point out “People just respec anyway”, well yeah, so then why does it need to be added?

Here’s a long write-up I did elsewhere on Reddit.

I do not want dual spec. I also play a druid and I would stand to benefit the most from it compared to any other class. I am an active player, raider, and PvPer. I make my gold and respec like is necessary.

Allow me to address all of the strawmans in this topic with actual refutations, since it seems everyone seems to think they know exactly what the argument is for anti-dual spec, but in actuality I’m just seeing a lot of people blatantly miss the mark.

“No changes isn’t a thing anymore, they added boosts/mount/etc”

We know that already. We aren’t stupid. Very rarely do we use #nochanges as our main defense anymore as a result, other than to make a conceptual point. The actual perspective is more like “limited changes”. As in, changes aren’t added simply because people want them, but out of actual necessity for the health of the game. Drums was changed for this. SotM was given to Alliance paladins for this. Feral energy (directly impacts me) was changed for this.

I actually didn’t mind any of these changes, so you cannot call me a strict #nochanges person, it’s not a valid accusation.

I however do mind dual spec, and do not want it anywhere near TBCC. So far so good, as even with the benefit of hindsight, Blizzard could have gone ahead and tacked it on at launch, but thankfully they didn’t, and also have not spoken a word on it since launch either, which indicates they’ll maybe hold strong.

The fact of the matter is, you cannot justify the inclusion or addition of any change simply because they already made other changes. You need to argue on the merits of dual spec specifically. Plenty of you do this, I’m not saying it’s never been done, but the “no changes went out the window!” thing simply is not a valid argument for adding dual spec. The argument is completely circular. The devs said there would be #somechanges, not #allchanges. So there is obviously some changes they will make, and changes that they will not. Do you know what else came in WOTLK that was a supremely popular function that saw iterations and is still in the game today? LFD. Quite a bit more divisive reactions when you mention that, but it’s really no different than dual spec conceptually. It improves QOL, people can ignore it and not use it if they don’t like it, and helps people play more parts of the game more easily, and quicker with less hassle. It doesn’t harm class gameplay.

Like LFD does with watering down socialization aspects, Dual spec negates a very important aspect of classic WoW that I feel is important to the gameplay. It eclipses the deterrence of respeccing which was blatantly baked in to the TBC game design that TBCC is intended to be a “faithful recreation” (Blizzard’s words) of. Here is a quote by a blue, back during TBC by Nethaera in a topic asking for dual spec:

This has been addressed many times before and I have to tell you, the answer is still “no” to both for the same reasons we’ve always given. There should be real investment into choosing a spec and reducing the cost or making it easy to do simple swaps would make the whole purpose moot.

…The costs are deemed reasonable. Also, I wanted to point out that the argument about people respeccing for Arena teams makes the assumption that everyone is somehow running in one and thus needs multiple respecs. This is not true. Not everyone is respeccing between PvE and PvP and it’s not a majority of players that need to… - [Nethaera] 2007

I’m not taking her out of context either, if you want to read the responses yourself here you go.

https://www.bluetracker.gg/wow/topic/us-en/98646792-we-need-free-respecs-or-spec-swapping/

So what we have here is a very clear and resounding idea of what the intended dynamic around specs and respeccing was supposed to be. They deemed the cost reasonable even for 2007 standards, and they specifically wanted there to be investment.

I think Nethaera was absolutely correct, and my reasons for not wanting dual spec directly line up with theirs: you need to be invested in the spec you choose and there needs to be a deterrence or a price to pay for not investing. This element is important to properly experiencing TBC the way it was designed.

Some are quick to say that this is essentially more nuanced #nochanges argument, but it’s not.

Some things are simply designed as a gate to the player. Think attunements. Reputation requirements. Keys. These are all things that serve to bar the player, that you must grind through in order to achieve a goal. In TBC, specs are part of that symbiotic relationship with grind.

Here’s a quote from Ghostcrawler, years after he had stopped working on WoW. However, he was at the top of the game design during WOTLK, when dual spec was implemented. These are some comments he made in reference to dual spec, many years after WOTLK:

You may recall, around the time of Lich King, we experimented with letting DKs tank with any spec. This was in an era when alts were still relatively challenging to level and gear up, and respecing was painful and expensive (though I still did it every week in (old) Karazhan).

Adding dual-spec pretty much killed the need for this. I have mixed feelings about dual-spec. It definitely gave a lot of flexibility to players, and since the only cost of respecing was hassle, it made sense just to ease that hassle. But I definitely think it made each of our individual characters (not the classes, but the characters themselves) less unique. No longer did I have a Demonology warlock with (for better or worse) max ranks in Demonic Knowledge and Master Conjurer . I just had a warlock who could be whatever he wanted to be at any moment in time depending on the immediate needs of a boss fight or how much I wanted to PvP. Diablo 2 made you commit to your talent trees, and there was something kind of cool about that compared to the unparalleled flexibility of Diablo 3.

I know that may sound like I just want to make life tougher for players, but that’s not really it. I think constraints can be a good thing for the game and ultimately more fun for players. It may just be hard to see that in the short term when it feels like the game is arbitrarily getting in the way of something you want to do. But it may feel like it in the long term when your character is something different from every other character in town. - [Ghostcrawler] 2017

Again here is the link so you don’t accuse me of taking him out of context:

https://askghostcrawler.tumblr.com/post/160282428853/in-the-previous-expansion-wow-introduced-a

Now, he’s not necessarily saying he wishes dual spec never happened, and he presided over its addition, but you have to remember, they specifically waited until Ulduar to implement dual spec. That’s 5 months after launch. This indicates potentially that they needed some headway before adding it, for one thing, and for two, that TBC was definitely not the target expansion to get it in, despite a Blizz-con panel existing where they said they were “looking in to it” when somebody brought the question near the end of TBC.

It also indicates some post-mortem feelings on the concept of dual spec and how it sort of, indeed, did negatively affect the aspects that imo are crucial to a faithful recreation of TBC’s gameplay experience.

Deterrence sometimes doesn’t feel good. It’s not really supposed to, but it’s still important.

Here’s the thing. Pretty soon, TBCC will introduce daily hubs where you will make hundreds of free gold every single day. It’s already possible to make hundreds of gold a day in this economy. Especially after dailies make it in, there is simply no justification for adding dual spec at this point when this problem can essentially be solved by just being patient. It’s not a “necessity”, it doesn’t fix any emergent gameplay issues like the other changes. All it is, is merely a convenience for people who don’t want to make the gold. People who are raid logging and simply want to reduce this game down to being in queue for a BG, or actively progressing on bosses on raid night. I’m sorry but TBC simply asks more of the player if you want to respec all the time. I know people who are paying the fee weekly, because they actually play the game, and it’s no problem to them. Players did it just fine in 2007, why can’t we? Why do they need to disfigure the game in direct contrast to it’s very design ethos, specifically for players who play the game the least?

So there. That’s my argument, with citations, why I believe it’s important that dual spec remain a WOTLK feature, and not become a “change” to TBCC. You can downvote me for disagreeing with me all you want, I’m not bothered, but at least take the time to comprehend our position correctly.

Thanks for reading.

And a counter argument when a very nice poster rebutted:

Thank you for the well thought out response. Instead of just outlining all the ways in which I disagree, I will also try to point out things that I agree with as well to balance, and then I will conclude with a reiteration of how it’s totally fine for us to agree to disagree as such.

While that was the design intention in 2007, the playerbase and general environment has changed significantly and is completely different today than in the original TBC. “Investing in a spec” is a quite a bit different when we are getting no class/spec changes as the patches progress (we have the 2.4 classes now and forever) that encourage player refinement and the fact that every player has the benefit of 15 years of hindsight in regards to the class design and content. Barring new meme builds, there is no where I can go to refine my general Prot Paladin spec, and nothing coming down the pipeline that will shake things up. Any spec changes I make from now on will not be based on some increased understanding or mastery of my character, but based solely on encounter demands (which I know ahead of time for every tier in a way that no one did in 2007). This is already a significant departure from the original TBC environment.

This quote is meant to encompass the point you make in the following 2 paragraphs as well, I just don’t want the quote to be abnormally long.

Agree that things have changed and the players are “different” (at least mentally and what they think is appropriate for wasting their time with) since 2007. You also bring up the very good point of a “change” that technically nobody really asked for but is being forced on us simply due to technical restraints: we do not have progressive patching. This means that if you use the final patch of TBC as the marker (the patch we play on balance-wise), the distance between no dual spec and having dual spec, or especially if you just want to base it on when Blizzard started “working on a way” to give more flexibility, is significantly more narrow in terms of time between when they believed in uniqueness of spec, to when they were OK with dual spec being eventually implemented.

If the uniqueness and spec investment was a true argument, then changing specs should’ve been even more punitive than it already was to preserve our characters’ spec identities, but the barrier is instead set just high enough to discourage most players instead of outright wall them from it. As many have pointed out, this is already not enough to stop people that really want the dual spec experience (and so is ineffective at doing what it was set out to do, assuming that uniqueness and investment was the reasoning) while simultaneously being just enough of a barrier to cut a large percentage of the playerbase off from the experience that they want and is essentially already there for some.

This would be where I start to disagree, and I’ll cap off with an argument to the overarching message of your post.

I personally believe that the deterrent functionality of “one-spec” design is actively working.

How do I know this? The sheer number of grumbles I see every day on the forums and reddit about their desire for dual spec. A (maximum of) 50g cost very clearly is a gate to many people. However, Blizzard has also said that they didn’t want respeccing to be impossible, so making the fee completely untenable would not, in fact, be the logical extreme of the “old Blizzard’s way”.

They wanted it to be a consideration, something that would be strongly considered, but at the same time not impossible. I’d say that, when you consider how long it’s been, they did a pretty good job of making that dynamic withstand the test of time, because here in 2021, when gold is so much easier to make, people still find the 50g to be too much for them to bother respeccing. Despite this, there are still many who find the way to respec. That is their reward for actively engaging with the game enough to make the resources to do so.

So, when all’s said and done, I see the design as “working as intended”, in all honesty, even so many years later when meta and gameplay habits have changed so drastically which I think is a testament to the timelessness of the design that makes TBC so memorable in many other aspects too.

Now I am not opposed to the idea that I may be in the minority. However, I don’t believe that we are in the minority enough for Blizzard to essentially ignore our preferences.

On the WoW forums, a passionate dual spec poster tried to formulate a “untouchable” argument for why dual spec should be added by using various polling “data” from sites like Reddit, Twitter, the WoW forum, and the like. I will cover the various data points and cite where they were from.

WillE (YT CC) - 21k Votes - 21% NO | 79% YES

Reddit Poll (on this subreddit) - 3k Votes - 25% NO | 75% YES

WoW Forums Poll - 1,401 Votes - 35.5% NO | 64.5% YES

Nano (Nostalrius Dev) Poll - 503 Votes | 37.6% NO | 62.4% YES

Here’s the post with the source links for those polls:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-tbc-classic-community-wants-dual-spec/952022

They also link a few images of subreddit posts and gauge it by upvote/downvote.

To say that this data is either flawed or in all likelihood biased would be an understatement, based on the circumstances and target audience of each poll, but I’m going to, for the sake of argument, just assume it’s bulletproof statistical data that would match Blizzard internal data if they somehow had a finger on the pulse of people who do and don’t want dual spec. We don’t even know how many of the voters in any of these polls actively actually play TBCC, but again for argument’s sake I let the dubiousness of these polls go.

At the lowest (though admittedly largest sample size) we have WillE, where 21% of people do not want it. Moving up from there we are able to reach up to 37.6% of respondents who do not want TBCC disfigured, design ethos-wise, from it’s original approach to specs.

This means if we are to extrapolate this data as empirical and objective as a viewpoint of the entire TBCC player base (I’m guessing somewhere in the hundreds of thousands, maybe + or - 600k? based on recent data regarding WoW’s decline), that’s at the very least almost a quarter of your population that would feel extremely disenfranchised by your choice to modify an element of the game that was purposely designed a certain way for a specific and stated reason. It’s higher if you average out those results. Again, Blizzard advertised this as a “faithful recreation” of original TBC, so to some, this is an non-negotiable element, not because it’s a change at all, but because Blizzard made clear what the design intent for TBC was, outlined it very clearly, and TBC original went and past with that design intent, as subscriptions continued to rise.

So is it really worth pissing off that big of a chunk of your player base who will feel essentially disenfranchised with the move? Possibly moved to quit due to feeling falsely advertised to (the “faithful recreation” bit)? Blizzard simply has never implemented significant changes based on simple majorities, the numbers would have to be staggering to the point of it being a relatively safe move.

I truly believe that dual spec is really only barring the people who play the least. There will always be exceptions of course, but my suspicion is that hamfistedly jamming the feature in to an environment where it doesn’t belong will yield very little results in terms of the activity of servers outside of main raid times. The problem is, we can’t exactly add it in for a “test run” to find out, because once it goes in, it would likely never be ripped back out (although they did this with FvF so…maybe).

I also did not touch on this point in my original post, but dual speccing adds a meta element that simply didn’t reasonably exist in any significant form in original TBC. It makes raids easier. Blizzard themselves noted that a vast minority of people used their dual spec to PvP, and instead used it as a secondary PvE spec. Healers would swap to DPS for encounters where less healing was necessary, tanks swap to DPS when less tanking is necessary, pure DPS classes swap for talents that are better suited from a fight-to-fight basis. These optimizations are the true result of what would be dual-spec’s utilization in TBCC and…this is an undesirable outcome.

The raids are easy as is, due to their age, and dual spec only stands to invalidate or trivialize the content even further by giving them the ultimate flexibility to be what they want to be when it demands. Of course, you could make the argument that people can hearth, respec, and get resummoned, but from one raider to another…does this really happen that often? This simply is not expected of anyone in any reasonable scenario, because…the deterrent is working as intended. Nobody expects you to hearth out of the raid and pay 50g every time between bosses because it’s an unreasonable expectation.

With dual spec this not only would become an ubiquitous element of raiding despite it never being so in original TBCC, but it would change in to something that is expected. For example, melee sucks in TBC. I play a feral druid. With dual spec, I could feasibly have a 2nd spec attributed to boomkin. I know how to play boomkin. I collected gear for it just for fun when I feel like paying the respec fee to get my caster jollies off.

Now take Nightbane for example, melee is kind of bad on this fight. The immediate pressure to respec to boomkin to simply buff the casters who are effectively doing way more work throughout the encounter, would be severe. Since we have dual spec, this sort of optimization could be seen as expected. Essentially, I’m pressured in to playing a spec that I don’t really…care for that much outside of an occasional one-off set of heroics or BGs throughout the non-raid days of the week, because it would be objectively better for the raid. With the fee and the deterrence aspect of respeccing, this sort of problem does not exist. Nobody expects me to respec from Feral for Nightbane specifically to help the raid more or potentially do more personal DPS. So this would be another point, that it doesn’t make sense to trivialize these raids further with the optimization that dual spec would bring to raiding, and put hybrids in precarious positions of pressure to play outside of their chosen spec in any circumstance.

As a final point, and one that is more personal to me specifically as I play a druid, I believe dual spec invalidates the unique selling point of the Druid. In fact, I am not the only amongst those I’ve asked, who may have possibly picked an entirely different class had dual spec been announced to be in TBCC from the beginning. The whole point of the feral druid is that we can be a main tank or top DPS depending on the circumstance. It’s our flexibility and efficiency as a spec that defines us. What happens to this unique selling point once Paladins and Warriors can do this just as easily? Paladins can become a DPS or a healer depending on their preference, and Warriors can become a DPS. So now that aspect of feral druid is no longer unique beyond the gimmicks of their spells, just like retail where everybody is pretty much the same other than spell effects color and class name. It brings about a startling sense of homogeneity that is a bit too familiar to those of us who do not like where class balance went in retail. WOTLK had the “bring the player, not the class”. That should be when things start to feel homogenized. No sooner.

In any case, I completely understand the desire for it, and I don’t want any of this to in any way give the message that “don’t like” dual spec. I think it’s a great feature…for the time that it made it in the game. To me, adding dual spec in to TBC is like trying to squeeze a square peg through a circular hole, and the consequences would irreversible and negative despite folks getting their initial high off of the respec cost being banished.

Again, it falls down to changes of necessity over changes of pure convenience. Is it really, truly, necessary for them to change TBC from what many want TBC to be, in order to please the players who want it? Is it absolutely required to maintain the health of the game?My opinion is it…isn’t. Of course when arguing in favor, most people will say anything. They’ll say the game is dying and will be saved if they add dual spec, etc etc.

In any case…we can agree to disagree

That enough elaboration for you?

Cheeseknife-westfall · September 5, 2021, 1:31am

This is also true. You’re also assuming that limitation Fasc keeps on telling you about by saying this. You keep dancing around this with comments like these. Maybe you should state your limitation and explain why Blizzard should abide by it in a #SomeChanges environment.

Zipzo-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 1:35am

There’s no dance, there’s no dodge, it’s a blatant rebuttal. I don’t even understand what you mean by this.

By repeating “some changes” as a justification for why dual spec should be added, you’re offering only a vague argument that could similarly be used for other absurd changes that you probably wouldn’t agree with. So you are obligated to distinguish dual spec from those other absurd changes, lest you’re OK with those other changes too.

I mean…I don’t know what to tell you. I have gone to space and back stating and restating over and over where I think Blizzard’s limit is. It’s not earlier than drums changes or feral energy, but it’s definitely before dual spec. If you want specifics, read any number of my longer posts on the subject.

Kumasama-westfall · September 5, 2021, 1:46am

Nothing he has written here is a real problem. It’s all stuff he made up that doesn’t actually have any bearing on the game whatsoever.

This is a lie he continually perpetuates based on a 15-year-old quote that has no bearing on the current game. He actually made a thread on this where he was called out and he ended up saying it was just his opinion.

Also false. People can already respec and they already do respec according to the needs of their raids, dungeons, groups, etc.

Pure speculation. No basis in reality. Blizzard hasn’t mentioned a Classic WotLK so we have no idea what they’re going to do with it and how it’ll impact the player-base.

This assumes a standard for the current player-base. There is no basis upon which he assumes this standard.

He just abandoned his previous bullet point here and adopts a new standard that he still doesn’t prove exists.

He once again goes back to a 15-year-old quote with no bearing on the current game here and perpetuates a lie. Yet he writes an entire essay about it!

Cheeseknife-westfall · September 5, 2021, 1:49am

Hmm, so no stated limitation. Still dancing dodging, etc.

No, you don’t. Yet you keep talking like you do. It’s really sad.

Zipzo-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 1:51am

In what format do you need me to state the limitation that isn’t the absolute litany of ways that I already have, for it to be a validly completed homework assignment for you?

Give me an outline or a format, and I’ll fill it out, like a form or something.

And you keep talking like you’ve actually read any of my posts, but you haven’t.

If you had, how I feel about dual spec or “Blizzard’s limits” would not be something so shrouded in mystery to you.

Cheeseknife-westfall · September 5, 2021, 1:56am

You’re assuming a limitation that you don’t even know how to express. That’s convenient for you. Or maybe you can’t express it so you need to bury it in vagueness.

Zipzo-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 1:58am

Got it, so you won’t give any format because it would put you in a position where you have an opportunity to get the answer I’m willing to give you without any certain doubt, and you know that it’s harmful to your argument.

At this point, making any concession towards me is likely impossible for your ego to handle, I get it.

Tell me though, why don’t you answer a question for me:

What makes dual spec different from LFD or Death Knights in it’s “likelihood to be added” quotient?

Fasc-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 1:58am

I don’t need a pulse on it… foreknowledge isn’t required. I can only go off the limits they gave us.

Neat, when someone argues that point, it’ll be relevant. But you’ve attributed that exactly to me when you said it here:

Sooo don’t lie.

Given they already added other non-TBC things to current servers… naw.

It is.

Yuuuuup.

A limit exists because it MUST… for REASONS!!

Zipzo-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 2:00am

C/D: There are things you don’t want added to TBCC?

Cheeseknife-westfall · September 5, 2021, 2:01am

YOU won’t. I never assumed a limit. You did and you refuse to say what that is.

Fasc-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 2:02am

There are things I don’t want added to TBCC.

Ziryus-pagle · September 5, 2021, 2:02am

That exercise would be more useful for you to do yourself, it might help you get outside of your #nochanges bubble if you actually understood that all changes aren’t the same.

Zipzo-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 2:12am

Damn, one of you answered a question, a splendiferous opportunity to actually get somewhere.

I also don’t want any of those things, for probably the same or similar reasons you don’t want those things.

The only difference between us, is out of that huge collection of things we both don’t want…

I simply don’t want +1 additional thing. Dual spec.

The reasoning may be specific to that particular feature, for example the reasons I don’t want dual spec aren’t the same as the reasons I don’t want Death Knights, but the general thrust is the same, in that it disfigures TBCC beyond a point that I believe is acceptable for what was promised with the product.

Admittedly, some features are in a grayer area, and cause disagreement as to whether it disfigures TBCC too much. Dual spec is clearly one of those things.

So it’s really not too difficult, I think, for someone who already has other things they don’t want, to conceive of why others may not want 1 additional thing on that list of things. I believe the argument for dual spec is honestly way too easily used for everything else beyond itself.

So we’re forced to kind of hone in on the thing dual spec specifically addresses on a player-to-player basis: highly mitigating if not completely removing the gold obstacle. It’s really all about gold.

All said and done, is “saving the gold” really…an ironclad reason why a thing should be added to TBCC?

I’m not asking about Blizzard things, that discussion goes nowhere, we already know.

Let’s say you’re a game dev, being asked a generic game dev question, and this is a different game that functions like WoW in most ways and we’re talking about a function that works like dual spec in most ways.

Does this scenario tell you that dual spec is worth the add, when “saving the gold” is the only indicator of it being a good add?

Fasc-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 2:13am

Cool. But I want them. So.

Neat. But I do.

Its about convenience. And…

I reject your “gold only” indicator and I think Dual Spec is worth it to add.

Zipzo-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 2:16am

What, other than gold, prevents you from acting in a way that dual spec already exists? IE just respeccing with the current functions available.

Fasc-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 2:17am

Convenience. I literally don’t want to go to a trainer.

Zipzo-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 2:17am

So let me get this straight:

The entire reason you believe dual spec is a great addition is because you believe there needs to be a way to avoid going to a trainer to respec?

Dragaan-mannoroth · September 5, 2021, 2:18am

Yes, please.

Fasc-atiesh · September 5, 2021, 2:19am

It lets me maintain two specs simultaneously. Like I said, convenience.