Rather they should provide a variety and customization.
In other words, players shouldn’t need to change their talent spec to optimize around different content types. They should be changing their talent spec based on play style preferences rather than it providing some optimized way of playing the game.
Discuss…
So should talents just be entirely cosmetic things cuz that’s the only way you’ll never need to swap around talents
Or just have ones be so broken you never swap off them and instead have half the tree be dead
i never switch talents but i never do anything requiring me to either
much of the game already is just a cosmetic choice but no, that’s not what I’m suggesting.
What I would like to see is that talent choices determine the style of play I want to engage with rather then an optimization for the best possible overall output for some particular problem that is being solved.
You need to make up your mind.
Man I’m too tired today, I didn’t even realize these were two different threads
Given the opportunity players will optimize the fun out of a game.
And you have every chance of not doing it.
Maybe for others, being optimal is fun.
No, winning is fun. Losing isn’t. Being okay with losing is something someone does as a conciliatory nature, but the goal is always to win. Under that condition, it doesn’t make sense not to optimize a game, especially a multiplayer game.
No matter what you do, other then making all the talents worthless, there will always be a optimized meta build for every character.
Sorta irrelevant to anything I said.
Very few people run content where they need 100% “optimization”. You can still win +20s without being fully optimized.
Or maybe I just like having discussions, on a forum, where I’m able to talk about multiple different topics.
And no, these positions are not mutually exclusive. They aren’t even related in that context.
The two things you suggested contradict each other. If different content are designed with different abilities in mind, that means those abilities are optimal for that content.
Here you ask for the removal of optimization.
When a person makes multiple contradictory views, via creating new threads. On a Sunday.
It just screams “I am a troll, do not take me serious”.
But then you top it off by hiding behind “its just a discussion”
The only way for this to be true was if the talent tree changed only visual effects…
Not really. If given the choice to do something inefficiently, or efficiently, people will choose to do it efficiently. I don’t do M+ more than casually btw, I PVP in which this “Just pick what you like” attitude will not help you very often.
The above quote that you responded to, was a quote from Sid Meier, creator of the Civilization series. He was referring to the challenge of designing a game that has appealing choices, and the quote often followed up after this is “One of the responsibilities of designers is protect the player from themselves”.
Incorrect.
I can lose and still have fun in the process.
Winning isn’t the goal, having a good time is the goal. If the end result of playing is that I win, that’s just a bonus.
Many people will. Hence my response.
You can choose not to run it in 100% optimization. Nearly 99% of all m+ +20 and below is not run in 100% optimization. Because people are regularly choosing fun over being perfectly efficient.
Pretty sure winning is the goal or else there’s no reason to even attempt to win. People can have fun losing a game to be conciliatory, but the goal is to win.
I can have fun in a game where I was close to winning but just couldn’t quite cinch it, but I would always prefer to win over losing. That doesn’t mean the goal wasn’t to win, just that I can content myself otherwise.
I think that was the intended goal of the new talent setup to begin with. It just hasn’t panned out (yet) from a balance perspective, as there are still clearly talents that simply better to take in a given situation (if being optimal is the goal).
I’m hopeful that, as they iterate, they will get closer to achieving more viable choice. It won’t ever be perfect, but maybe close enough that using what you enjoy vs what you feel you need to will be offset by just simply playing better with talents you don’t hate.
And it’s likely that if you never win you’re eventually going to stop having fun getting creamed all of the time. 