Today I want to play a bit of devil advocate with Gordon from We fly Spitfires who talks about how he’d rather have the Mist of Pandaria talents in SwTor over more classic talent trees where everyone ends up picking the same. He argues that since we all end up with the same choices, why bother with talent trees? Why not go with MoP system of having the same build with a few talents at every X level for flavor?
Here’s what I don’t buy with this argument. As soon as you have a choice between a number of abilities, either one will be superior to the others and become the default choice or they offer insignificant advantages which make the choice meaningless. MoP talents clearly falls into the former option. For example if I look at the Dk talents, Outbreak is the clear winner for any raiding DK and in the second tier Bone Shield is the default choice for any tank. It’s still a talent tree, but with a lot less choice.
Talent trees offer depth
Yes, if your into min-maxing, your choices in a talent tree will be the same as the rest. But, and this is where it gets interesting, while most of your choices are the same you still have a bit of wiggle room to adjust the spec to your preferences. Gordon is right when he says that being 2% better in swords is not very exciting but maybe that’s what you need. Or maybe you want that Freezing grenade talent because your raid is short on CC or it could be you want a run buff or that a friend covers a critical buff and allows you to choose other talents.
Whatever your need or situation, a talent tree offers you customisation that the simplified MoP model simply does not offer.
Another great feature of talent trees is that it allows for experimentation that sometimes leads to some very original and efficient builds. The Jedi Shadow tank spec is a good example of this. Jedi shadows are at their core a melee dps class but with clever mixing of talent trees choices, players have found out a viable tanking spec. It’s not something that would have been possible with MoP model.
Edit: That was a bad example which LaralSong pointed out to me. I misread the information on Shadow tanks. However, the point still stands I believe and you could replace Shadow tank with the Unholy Dk of Wotlk for example.
Finally, there’s quite a few players out there that don’t care about optimizing their characters and just want to pick whatever talents they feel is cool or helpful to them. I’d rather give them more choice to experiment with whatever crazy build they want and not restrict them.
I’m not saying that Blizzard and Gordon reasoning are wrong. They’re right when they say that most talent trees end up being close copies of each other. However, even with their new system it will end up being the same because as soon as you put a choice in front of a player, someone somewhere will tell you what is the optimal choice. There’s no escaping that. Knowing that, I’d rather give more options to the players in case they do want to experiment rather than restrict them.
Completely agree with you.
I agree somewhat. I only looked at the Hunter tree, and anything that is remotely connected to damage or damage mitigation will lead to a definite “right” choice. The crowd control choices are interesting, and I think for solo play and 5-mans, it will probably come down to personal preference. For raids, however, the choice will either be inconsequential or predetermined based on the needs of the raid.
Bottom line, I don’t really see there being more choice here. A better way to give us choice would be to allow hybrid builds again or to give better talents at lower tiers, so you really were forced to make a choice with those last couple of talent points.
Keep in mind that the Jedi Shadow advanced class of Consular is meant to have the choice of either melee DPS or Tank specs. They get an entire tree devoted to tanking, so it’s not that people have put together a clever mix of talent selections that allows the Shadow to tank, the class was meant to be a tank. And Shadows who wish to tank will spend at least 30+ talent points in the Kinetic Combat (tanking) tree or risk not being even remotely viable tanks.
Honestly, I think that we have the exact same amount of “choices” in the SWTOR talent trees as the MoP talent selections. It’s just that MoP has completely given up on presenting the illusion of many choices, while the SWTOR trees have stuck to the previous design of presenting the illusion of choice through so many “options”.
hmmm… I must have misread the shadow tank then. Again, if faced between mutliple false choices and few false choices.. i’d rather have the multiple.
Still post corrected to reflect your input Laral, thanks
It is very much down to personal preference at this point: would you rather be presented with lots of different choices and have the majority of them pre-determined to be correct for your chosen role, or would you prefer to see just a handful of choices and have there be pre-determined correct choices for your role/the current boss encounter? Personally, I’m not sure I care as long as the game is fun. As much the various developers are trying, we’re never going to escape the realm of the modern theorycrafter where every time we’re presented with an in-game choice some group online has already researched the math behind the options and figured out the optimal way to make your choice. So, at least at end-game, I’m not sure that the method the developers have selected to present the choices matters all that much.
While working up to max level, I think that you “feel” the different designs a lot more (for lack of a better description). Personally, I think I prefer the MoP style when leveling because it seems less likely to put you in a situation where you become either gimped or overpowered with respect to solo content due to middle-of-the-tree talent selection.
Oh, I just saw your edit! And yes, I was also enthralled by the flexibility options of the DK talent trees in WOTLK, frequently running either as an unholy specced tank, or a blood specced melee DPS. I did get the impression that it was a tremendous pain to balance and tweak that flexibility from a developer perspective, and that was the primary reason why, when they did the massive Cataclysm talent revamp, DKs got pushed into the same situation that other classes already had where the tanking role gets only one clearly required talent tree.
Yeah… those were fun times. I think the exit might be by going this way. Offer within the same class mutliples ways to accomplish something. Dk tanks were a good example of this in Wrath. Blood was active tanking, Frost was the block of ice with cooldowns and unholy was the weird jack of all trades. All worked and despite the theorycrafters you actualy saw all styles in raids.
Also, content itself can be an alternative. If mutliple builds can achieve the goals the content offer, then there’s less pressure to have the perfect spec. The theorycrafters will still find the best way but if you don’t need to be perfect to succeed then there’s more room for experiementation
I definitely agree with you. I like the idea that on the talent tree, talents can be connected. I may have to look ahead and say, “I want talent X, so I need to take talent Y first.”
In addition, I’m one of those people who, in TOR, may need to be flexible in my talent choices. I plan on playing a sith sorcerer with a focus in healing, but since I do like to play solo at times, I also need to be able to deal damage when necesary. Luckily, there are a couple of talents on the sith sorcerer healing tree that allow for that, so I’m all good. On the other hand, when I get to max level and am doing nothing but raiding, I might change it up a little.
So, I guess that’s my last point. It may be that there is one great build for sith sorcerer healers at end game. But that build probably isn’t the same build as what a sith sorcerer would want at level 20. I seem to remember a talent in the first or second tier that increases healing and damage of AOE abilities… but at level 20, I didn’t really have any, so I skipped that talent. At level 50, it might be a different situation entirely.
I love Gordon, think he’s awesome to read and I enjoy his thoughts, but I have to disagree with him here.
Why bother even having talents if there is little to no choice available to matter?
Not everyone looked up the ideal specs on EJ and a lot of people (even doing that) failed because they didn’t understand why the choices were ideal (or more importantly when) let alone how to actually prioritize their abilities.
I like how the SWTOR talent trees have panned out. I am not a fan of the new “pick 1 of 3 talents every once in a while” approach we’ll be seeing WoW move to with MoP, especially when some of those levels will have 1) nothing I want or 2) too many things I want (AOE roots or AOE knockback in same level? Pffft.)
i love spending those talent points each lvl even if it does come down to all being the same for a raid build at the end.. thats like my cookie i work for when i lvl up.. that and new abilities… <— and gear is what makes a mmorpg addictive to me.. take one of those aways seems stupid to me.