Argument 1: It will allow people to have a PVE & PVP spec
Response: The issue is that dual-spec as it was in WOTLK (which is what most people want) does not require anything specific for that 2nd spec. It COULD be a PVP spec…or it could just be a 2nd PVE spec that every serious guild will make you do. Not to mention the real issue is that TBC wasn’t balanced around players having 2 specs so they assumed you’d either use hybrid specs, someone fulfilling the role but not being optimal in it as their spec is wrong, or different tactics to overcome the non-ideal raid comp for a specific encounter. Having the entire raid with access to a 2nd spec means you’d never be short on any class or spec for any fight and could use the most optimal comp at all times.
Argument 2: It can be a gold sink
Response: I mean sure but at the same time many of the people wanting dual-spec complain they are spending tons of gold a week on respecs…which would also be a gold sink. Really these people like to just throw this argument out to get people onboard for their desired convenience change.
Argument 3: Well we are doing #somechanges now so why not add this?
Response: As another user posted a thread about #somechanges does not mean “let’s add new features” It’s more a policy that they won’t let the game be broken and abused like Classic was. The goal of #somechanges rather than #nochanges is to try to re-create THE EXPERIENCE of TBC by making some small changes to combat player knowledge of various exploits or game dev oversights. Back in Vanilla guilds weren’t stacking World Buffs so if they had been removed from Classic this would have more accurately represented how the game was actually played just like most guilds didn’t have 25 leatherworkers in TBC to cycle drums. These changes are specifically to address player metas that didn’t exist back in the day. Adding dual-spec would not fall under this umbrella.
Argument 4: It’ll make people more willing to help out with dungeon runs
Response: I think if retail is anything to go by with the dungeon finder it won’t play out this way. People will quite commonly queue up as a tank or healer just to try and get DPS gear. With selling tank services as much as we see now in Classic I wouldn’t be surprised if we see similar behavior but the price being a specific DPS item if it drops. People will be less reliant on their guilds as they can fill multiple roles for pugs and you’ll see less not more guild dungeon runs
Rest of the arguments are all along the same general line or just are wanting things to be more convenient which really isn’t an argument. Sorry this was so long.
This one if my favorite. In retail, we’ve had free respec for a while now. People can play whatever role their class can offer; however, tanks still have instant queues. It is hard for me to understand how anyone can believe that if we had duel spec, then people would actually be playing more tanks and healers. They think it will happen, but it wont. I am completely fine with people wanting to zone while dpsing so they watch netflix, but to say there will be more people who will tank and heal is an absolute lie.
This was one of the arguments I made prior to all of this, when they announced the seal changes. I said what if I’m someone that mains a pally and can heal, dps, or tank depending on what the raid team needs.
For retail, I personally prefer tank and healer classes for the faster queues.
I also like those roles more than seeing if I can beat someone else on a dps meter. So I for one would be more willing to tank / healer for dungeons (depending on the class I end up maiming). But being able to solo play when I’m not doing that would be great without having to go to a trainer and spend 50g and redo all my action bars and everything.
Response 1 :
This always gets thrown up as the argument against dual spec. Let’s pretend you are correct and every serious guild requires this… Well the arguments for dual specs never want this sort of thing to happen either. So lets all agree that no one wants the ability to change specs mid raid and put some rules around what we allow.
An easy solution would be to lock your spec to the raid and require you to visit your class trainer like you do now and pay a reset fee of 50g if you want to change your spec during a raid. This solution makes no difference to how specs currently work for raiding but open up a whole lot of gameplay to players.
Response 2:
I don’t understand your point here sorry, but I don’t think keeping or removing this gold sink would really impact the economy either way.
Response 3:
I agree with you on we need to make some changes to align how the meta works and this is why I am pushing for dual specs. If you played back in the day you will know it was much more casual and there were more “any spec goes” (sure there were still the top guilds who didn’t follow this, but the casual player could just play the game without caring). These days you are lucky to get a dungeon invite if you are not in the right spec. This min max mentality that was reserved for a small percent the first time around is now filtering its way down to most casual players. This is where the requirement for dual spec comes in. Most of us want to chase PVP and PVE and to do this with the current community playing classic we need to be in the correct spec.
Response 4 :
tanks selling services for DPS gear is actually an argument for dual specs. It highlights the lack of tanks and healers we have for dungeons and that is what allows them to request such ridiculous prices / reserves. Allowing more people to switch to these specs should hopefully increase the chances of finding a tank / healer for a dungeon.
But even if it does not mean DPS players will magically switch to a tank spec where their class allows, it would mean the player who is usually a tank but has specced for their weekly arena is more willing to switch back to tank spec. If you think finding a tank / healer was bad in classic, wait till some of those players are off in their PVP spec grinding honour
Do you have this stored in a notepad somewhere and toy just copy and paste it in every thread without talking to the points brought up in the thread. I’m fairly certain this is the equivalent to “too long, didn’t listen”.
They did a faithful recreation of vanilla wow too, but a lot of people weren’t happy with that. They didn’t like the spell batching system, the world buff meta, the in-game boosting system with how xp works.
So blizzard is taking lessons learn on how the community has changed over the years and how unpolished their games were since at the time people didn’t take advantage of features they didn’t realize were there.
So boosts aside, blizz is “balancing” paladins (not faithful), removing spell batching (not faithful), changing drums in some way (not faithful), allowing tbc racss in prepatch (not faithful), using the modern lfg ui instead of the old (not faithful and honestly vastly superior)
So the term “faithful” is subjective here. Now if you’re argument is “well those are okay because of balance and we need that but no dual spec that’s not faithful” then that’s your opinion. Which brings us to why we are having this debate in the first place.
People are making their case to blizzard and its up to blizzard to decide. But it is a feature a large group of people want blizz to add. Evidence from outside these forums show that to be the case. You have popular Twitter and YouTube wow personalities doing polls of some 20k players with a majority (not 51% either, more in the 70-80% range) wanting dual spec. You have the poll that was made here on the forums that show they want it. The threads on both classic subreddits have a ton of up votes and support in them (and you know those subs are notorious for people downvoting so to have a positive score you need more up voters than down and them some).
Then for the anecdotal evidence of every person I’ve spoken to in game and out have said they want this feature. This is from my guild, dungeon pugs, and open world elite quest pugs.
Except this is not a democracy, or shouldn’t be. Players do not know what is good for themselves. The history has proven this over and over. And so they need an adult to stick to the overarching design philosophy and goals and make the decisions for them.
If you poll players and ask them if they want more options and conveniences and free $hit handed to them, the majority is pretty much always going to say yes, because they are human and thus ignorant, weak, selfish, and short-sighted. And if Blizzard listens to polls when it comes to game design, the players will end up ruining their own game, every single time. It happened with retail, and it will happen again with Classic if Blizzard goes down that path again.
You are entirely right, all we can do is present blizzard with our opinions and let them decide what they’re going to do.
Which means if you don’t like a certain feature it would be in your best interest to present an actual argument about why it’s bad instead of just ranting #nochanges, especially since blizzard is giving that a lot less weight for TBC Classic.
His only actual valid point was his first point, IE people switching specs every 5 minutes. Which is very easily solved by simply adding a cool down to switching and I’m willing to bet most people in favor of dual spec would be perfectly fine with that.
I like his point about what #somechanges means, or should mean.
Blizzard has a stated design philosophy of an “authentic Classic experience” or “a faithful recreation.” And I think it would be best if it sticks to that.
#nochanges was too rigid, and it got us the world buff meta and player-provided boosting services in Classic vanilla, which completely changed the game and made it very inauthentic and unfaithful to the original experience.
#somechanges is a better philosophy, IMO, to provide flexibility to counter unintended player-exploited flaws in the game design that make the game inauthentic and unfaithful if left in the hands of modern players.
But, IMO, changes should only be done with that^^ goal in mind. Not because the majority of players want this modern feature or that modern feature according to some online poll, because that would not be consistent with the stated design philosophy.