Comments on: Are talent trees a failed design?

By: Diablo 3 Character Builds: it’s like WoW mark 2 « Welcome to Spinksville!

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:46:48 +0000

[...] and glyphs (runestones) are done the way they really were intended. Incidentally, I remember blasting talent trees as a design feature a couple of years back so it’s nice to see that Blizz are finally getting with the [...]

By: xoog

xoog — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:16:30 +0000

Good post!
In my opinion talent trees worked fine in WOW Classic because in most cases your PvE spec was your PvP spec. But as the game grew and changed in each expansion they never really changed the talent tree to match those changes. In other words, almost every class has to respec to do arenas well. On the average week I respec at least 10 times because I am in a pretty hardcore raiding guild and I love doing arenas. When duel soec comes out i am gonna have so much money lol.

By: Crimson Starfire

Crimson Starfire — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:05:26 +0000

I think talent trees are fine, it’s the cost or inability to respec easily that is the problem. I definitely prefer how Guild Wars does it. You can save your setup, and load it back when ever you like with no cost involved. You can do it any time you like, as long as you’re in a town. There is no real limit to the amount of setups you can save either. I’m not sure why Blizzard charge so much and make it so difficult to respec. I would like to say is bad game design, but I’m sure there is a hidden agenda. There always is with Blizzard.

By: spinks

spinks — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:26:02 +0000

@Green Armadillo: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, the talent trees support severe specialisation. Add to this that the talents at the bottom of the trees are now expected to be more powerful (to reflect the greater cost) and you end up with a situation where devs have to balance content assuming that people will be fully specialised. Because otherwise it would be trivial for the guys who are.

The game simply wasn’t designed around constant respecs from one highly specialised build to another. Unlike Guild Wars, which is designed and balanced around exactly that. And now with dual specs, no one has a freaking clue how raids will be balanced. Will they be designed assuming everyone makes some optimal use of dual specs? If not, the guys who do are likely to have a big advantage (esp in fights that require fewer tanks/healers and more dps, or somesuch repurposing).

Talent trees were originally intended to be semi-permanent. Possibly with changes irregularly if people got bored of their playstyle and wanted to switch it up a bit. I think that’s the design that broke — certainly for hybrids and role switchers. There simply won’t be any good hybrid specs any more, why would you, when you can just use your dual spec feature?

btw, I also agree that some broken design features can still be super-fun to play. I loved my sorceress in DaoC, but I also know that it was a crowd control class of the ilk that we will never ever see again (AE mez, root, single target mez, root, confuse, aggro wipe, with a permanent pet and solid nukes thrown in … oh, and speed.) That much crowd control isn’t fun for a lot of people in a PvP game. And CC is generally disliked in PvE too among everyone who doesn’t have it – every game I’ve played people have preferred to AE stuff down where they had the option.

@Pixelated Executioner: There is certainly massive bloat, that’s for sure. It all gets increasingly complex, but that tends to happen with MMOs as they age anyway, I think.

They have to add extra new complexity to keep the older players interested.

By: Pixelated Executioner

Pixelated Executioner — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 20:33:29 +0000

I agree with G.A. with this small caveat – it’s not that there are too many points to spend, it’s that the talent trees now suffer from MASSIVE bloat.

Back in the original game, talent trees were streamlined for the most part. The system was more or less intuitive. You could figure it out fairly easily.

Well, the system is now counter-intuitive. You don’t know the ins and outs of your class anymore, and it’s nearly impossible to determine just based on tooltips.

By: Green Armadillo

Green Armadillo — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:52:49 +0000

Part of the issue may be that there are now TOO MANY talents to choose from. Any type of talent is going to improve you more for certain aspects of the game. The more talents you add, the more specialized characters get. The more specialized characters get, the more difficult it is to compete if you’re the wrong spec.

Then the problem feeds back on itself. For example, Arcane mages get a number of powerful abilities in the 21-30 point range – things like Presence of Mind and Arcane Instability (buffs ALL spells). As a result, every new tier of the other two trees (41 pts in TBC and 51 pts in Wrath) has to be more powerful to justify not becoming a more hybrid spec. And that’s how we get into the situation we’re in.

Personally, I do like the concept of shaking up my playstyle from time to time, so I’m not quite ready to condemn the whole system. Perhaps the original EQ2 launch had it right. They didn’t have talents (they do now, though they’re handled a bit differently from WoW) but they did have good/evil versions of classes. If you got tired of playing your elemental-summoning conjurer, you could betray the forces of good and become an undead-summoning necromancer. That leaves some option for shaking up an old character without some of the quirks we’re seeing with traditional talent trees.

Then again, you still have to deal with the tank/heal problem, and it’s easier to repurpose an existing character to those tasks than to level a new one (especially with so many marks of progress, like rep and achievements, that don’t carry over to your other characters).