Sounds like they are doing some really fun things here, makes me want to come back and sub for a few months and give it ago. It cant be worst than the boring "talent tree" I think that method could be dated and simplistic for simplistic players. I would like to also think Bioware is going in a direction of more options instead of limiting the player.
It's sad that people have meta-gamed the mechanics so much that games have to be built for that segment of the player population.
The necessity of this move by Bioware is a terrible thing. Players cannot make anything other than the best defined build, or the character is not viable. That means the player cannot express any sort of design over the capabilities of the character, it is all completely the packaged static path put together by the developers.
I don't know how you could make hybrids viable and not kill the trinity, but I imagine some sort of compromise or system of randomized stats for Mobs and Bosses could at least help. I'm not talking about SWTOR specifically, though, it is what it is and its players enjoy the homogenous build versus max stat bad guys approach.
I imagine this is why the GW2 guys wanted to break up the old system, but they supplied a mutated DPS virus that didn't help. I admire Bioware for being forthright about this: Hey, we built a simple game, let's not pretend otherwise.
MMORPG players are often like Hobbits: They don't like Adventures
Cookie cutter builds are not the result of talent trees. It's the result of sheep thinking that popular builds are the only way to play.
TOR DID have simplified trees, though, which meant you couldn't experiment all that much. WoW was better.
The thing to do if you want to improve that, though, is not to make the system even simpler. It's to expand the system and make choices more diverse and abundant.
That would require actual work, though, and I'm guessing the F2P model is working well by mostly adding costumes and endlessly derivative flashpoints.
Cookie cutter builds are not the result of talent trees. It's the result of sheep thinking that popular builds are the only way to play.
TOR DID have simplified trees, though, which meant you couldn't experiment all that much. WoW was better.
Agreed. WoW trees in WotLK were awesome. Rift's are even better, IMO. SWTOR"s are really scaled down and minimal, which I'm not a fan of. I want big, bold trees with the very real possibility of doing some major damage to my character when I inevitably make the wrong choices. But as long as I can switch around my talent points when I need to , I see no reason why this has to be considered a bad thing. Tinkering and experimenting with your skill set is one of the great things about MMOs and RPGs.
As for this change, it will probably be fine simply because SWTOR's trees weren't that impressive to begin with, so it won't be that big of a culture shock to me. When they pruned the WoW trees down in Cata, I died a little inside.
it's a shame that they are so against hybrid specs (the real reason why the change)
they've fought against hybrids pretty much since release and they've butchered the skill trees just to make sure they cant exist.. some clever people still managed to make some successful hybrid speccs so they went and did this to completely annihilate them.
but atleast they did this thing in a decent way and i like that the classes are getting essential abilities at lower levels and wont have to wait til close to level cap to get them due to the war against hybridization now.
anyway if they insist then im happy they did it like this.
also anyone noticed their poor defense on the live stream ? "you can still be a hybrid by switching stance" that was probably one of the dumbest things i've ever heard
Cookie cutter builds are not the result of talent trees. It's the result of sheep thinking that popular builds are the only way to play.
TOR DID have simplified trees, though, which meant you couldn't experiment all that much. WoW was better.
The thing to do if you want to improve that, though, is not to make the system even simpler. It's to expand the system and make choices more diverse and abundant.
That would require actual work, though, and I'm guessing the F2P model is working well by mostly adding costumes and endlessly derivative flashpoints.
That's what most gamers are happy with it seems.
Eh, for most games with expansive customization it usually comes down to this anyway:
1) You do what you want, and what you think is fun, and your character winds up gimped or mediocre. (Which actually IS fine if you enjoy playing it - and it works well enough to get through most content)
2) You give in and toss your build (or most of it) out of the window to get one of the four or so actually effective builds.
The Secret World is a good example of that, as is Path of Exile and other games that advertise what amazing freedom you have in building your character.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
Today, we bring to you Disciplines, a major overhaul to the class system that will be coming live with Game Update 3.0! At its very core, the Disciplines System is what WoW did in Cataclysm, therefore we must do it.
Say Goodbye to the Skill Trees
After much playing of World of Warcraft, the Skill Trees that have been with us since the launch of the game have been removed. While we hope to maintain the feeling of progression with... y'know what, just read this: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2878505
A Little Discipline is Good for You
From a player’s perspective, interacting with the Discipline system couldn’t be easier. You know how in WoW, you click a talent and you have it? Yeah, it's that simple.
Cataclysm was released awhile ago wasn't it? The WoW did it so we must argument is a little weak (now saying it is not a copy - just now a knee jerk reaction as you suggest). Dumbing games down is not new.
Cookie cutter builds are not the result of talent trees. It's the result of sheep thinking that popular builds are the only way to play.
TOR DID have simplified trees, though, which meant you couldn't experiment all that much. WoW was better.
The thing to do if you want to improve that, though, is not to make the system even simpler. It's to expand the system and make choices more diverse and abundant.
That would require actual work, though, and I'm guessing the F2P model is working well by mostly adding costumes and endlessly derivative flashpoints.
That's what most gamers are happy with it seems.
Eh, for most games with expansive customization it usually comes down to this anyway:
1) You do what you want, and what you think is fun, and your character winds up gimped or mediocre. (Which actually IS fine if you enjoy playing it - and it works well enough to get through most content)
2) You give in and toss your build (or most of it) out of the window to get one of the four or so actually effective builds.
The Secret World is a good example of that, as is Path of Exile and other games that advertise what amazing freedom you have in building your character.
Not really. There's a big difference between perceived performance and actual performance.
Most established cookie cutter builds are based around some pretty rigid assumptions, most prominently predictable PvE scenarios like raiding.
Assuming ideal movement and setup, you can reasonably approximate damage per cycle and such, but you will never be able to factor in the reality of what actually happens. The actual situations that are ideal and in which you can perform these rigid cycles perfectly are the very rare exception, and this is where being able to adapt comes in handy.
This is why certain mathetically superior builds won't produce superior numbers - because they don't take into account the "human" element and the unpredictable element.
If you build your character around your own playstyle - and you experiment with real actual scenarios, you will end up with builds that might very well vary from the norm.
Once you introduce PvP into the equation, almost everything solid about the numbers go away.
This is what people don't understand if they don't think for themselves. It's common to simply look up something and trust a source, because it looks good in terms of numbers.
That's one thing I've learned from my years playing at "top level" in MMOs. People who SEEM to know what they're talking about outnumber people who ACTUALLY know what they're talking about by a gigantic margin.
For every 100 people saying a game works in a specific way, you'll be lucky to find a single one who actually knows what he or she is talking about - and who is not only competent, but also impartial in the way you need to to be, to exclude the biased perceptions.
So they are getting rid of a useless system, seems like a good idea. If the skill tree system actually gave you some choises this would be bad, but since it was the same system WoW used to have it's the right thing to do.
The current system in WoW is actually good since the choise matters, you have to pick from 3 more or less good choises, and not just fill up your skill tree in 99% same fashion as everyone else <- What a pointless system!
Only real alternative would have been for them to broaden the skill trees to have so many places to put the points in that people actually would have to make a choise how to fill the tree, but since that would mean endless amounts of balancing and whining about "op builds" and "meaningless builds" I dont know if it really is a realistic option.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I cannot wait for this to sink in to people. They are removing talent trees completely and replacing it with the same talent system(perks) that WoW did with Cataclysm 4 years ago. I always liked the reasoning Blizzard gave at the time, so for BioWare to copy it is pretty vindicating. I can't wait to see the tears from people who hated it in WoW, and the wishy-washy people who flip and say "oh, well since SWTOR is doing it too, I guess it's not so bad." Also a little humorous BioWare is following exactly in Blizzard's footsteps design-wise, but that's a whole different discussion.
This made my day.
The big difference was that WoW talent trees were once interesting. Post BC talent trees were trash, but people remembered Vanilla and BC and wanted to go back to that, not just remove the trees altogether.
SWTOR trees were dull and boring from the start, maybe even worse than WOTLK talent trees. Hard to imagine anything not being an improvement.
All I know is I'm soooo glad I left this game 2 months after launch altho those 2 150.00 boxes collecting dust tend to remind me to beware of MMO hype every now and then.
There are games with choice, so much choice you wouldn't even believe it out there. Having a blast on Bloodfin.
All I know is I'm soooo glad I left this game 2 months after launch altho those 2 150.00 boxes collecting dust tend to remind me to beware of MMO hype every now and then.
There are games with choice, so much choice you wouldn't even believe it out there. Having a blast on Bloodfin.
Man you said it. Those things are like a cautionary tale in a box. If I ever see Daniel Erickson I will throw a shoe at his head.
MMORPG players are often like Hobbits: They don't like Adventures
Honestly the changes to Wow's talent trees to their new system solved far more problems than it caused. People simply are afraid of change. Most classes played far better and were more balanced. From day 1 of talent trees in Wow the Warlock's Demonology tree was a muddled mess of often near useless wonkiness. After the change Demonology was a thing of beauty. Same could be said for several other class specs.
It is also a myth that this dumbs down the game (other than killing hybrids). Every single person who has played Swtor knows that when spending your talent points you simply through them into roughly 90% the exact same talents that created known good builds. There wasn't choice. It was an illusion. If you are crying over the 10% or so points you surely spent uniquely that "nobody" else knew about ... you are living in funky town with a serious case of of denial. This new system actually provides far more choice compared to that.
The new system is indeed simpler compared to the mathematical variance of the old model but in fact provides far more choice than the practical options of the previous talent trees. Hell some skills are core class now that you wouldn't have even had before in some specs.
Bioware finally admitted what Blizzard found out ages ago: Talent trees offer an illusion of choice and it wasn't benefiting anyone.
Still have to wait and try it but it is a logical change. It also looks more like a meld between Rift and Wow ... and who the fuck here actually expects something original anyway after Bioware made Wow with story in space anyway.
Cookie cutter builds are not the result of talent trees. It's the result of sheep thinking that popular builds are the only way to play.
TOR DID have simplified trees, though, which meant you couldn't experiment all that much. WoW was better.
The thing to do if you want to improve that, though, is not to make the system even simpler. It's to expand the system and make choices more diverse and abundant.
That would require actual work, though, and I'm guessing the F2P model is working well by mostly adding costumes and endlessly derivative flashpoints.
That's what most gamers are happy with it seems.
Eh, for most games with expansive customization it usually comes down to this anyway:
1) You do what you want, and what you think is fun, and your character winds up gimped or mediocre. (Which actually IS fine if you enjoy playing it - and it works well enough to get through most content)
2) You give in and toss your build (or most of it) out of the window to get one of the four or so actually effective builds.
The Secret World is a good example of that, as is Path of Exile and other games that advertise what amazing freedom you have in building your character.
You let a sheep think that it is a shepherd and it thinks it i has freedom, skill tree system is just like that. All of these "freedom" boils down to copy-pasting optimal build someone else theory crafted while taking a crap.
I also see people talking about Rift's skill tree, RIft doesn't have skill tree, they have souls where each soul is effectively a class and what we do in Rift is build our class or try to master a multi class build.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
The game is fun but with the lack of time cards and the lack of being able to buy physical copies of expansions is the reason this game will slowly die because they're choosing to cut out revenue solely by choice and its the reason I have trouble sticking around with this game. Not everyone will use there CC online because of security concerns and as long as they continue down the current path then frankly this game will be dead in a few years.
For the topic itself the system could work or it won't but it was largely hated by a majority of players that played WoW and left because of it. This could also happen in this game so if they're not careful then they will be digging this games grave faster.
The game is fun but with the lack of time cards and the lack of being able to buy physical copies of expansions is the reason this game will slowly die because they're choosing to cut out revenue solely by choice and its the reason I have trouble sticking around with this game. Not everyone will use there CC online because of security concerns and as long as they continue down the current path then frankly this game will be dead in a few years.
For the topic itself the system could work or it won't but it was largely hated by a majority of players that played WoW and left because of it. This could also happen in this game so if they're not careful then they will be digging this games grave faster.
Hmm? I'm not sure what you mean by lack of time cards.
You can easily buy one on Amazon.com or such. And I believe all major gaming stores like Gamestop and BestBuy have physical editions.
As for the physical expanions... digital stores are probably more profitable these days than actual physical ones, and the little they do lose from people who are extremely cautious with their CCs, is offset by the fact that they cut out the middleman and don't lose money on making a physical box (along with shipping and the myriad of other costs associated with boxed games).
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
The illusion of choice is still better then just "getting things automatically". I hated when they did it in wow.
Right, I know. For PvP/PvE Everyone takes pretty much the same talents. In TOR, there were usually 3-5 talent points left to choose differently, just a tiny bit of flavor.
I get to look forward to pick things, especially at lower levels, with what I want.
Just not a FUN change. Sure, I understand in WoW with 7+ million people to reduce it. But there are what, 100k players? blah.
Well, another one bites the dust. SWTOR was the closest MMO to vanilla WOW around and that is why I loved it. Now it is going the way of CATA. Goodbye SWTOR. I will be dropping my sub. Killing the skill trees destroys most of the fun of leveling up for me. Bioware is doing the same thing that Blizzard did with CATA. I quit WOW shortly after CATA to go to SWTOR and now Bioware is doing the same thing. You would think that Bioware would take the loss of subs that WOW has never recovered as a lesson but no.I believe I heard that RIFT will be doing the same thing. So much for going back there. For the first time in 12 years I do not see an MMO I want to sub to. I guess Blizzard was correct - the MMO market is dying.
lazy devs! j/k. looks like they are screwing the pooch with this one. Oh well.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
They are removing talent trees completely and replacing it with the same talent system(perks) that WoW did with Cataclysm 4 years ago. I always liked the reasoning Blizzard gave at the time, so for BioWare to copy it is pretty vindicating. I can't wait to see the tears from people who hated it in WoW, and the wishy-washy people who flip and say "oh, well since SWTOR is doing it too, I guess it's not so bad." Also a little humorous BioWare is following exactly in Blizzard's footsteps design-wise, but that's a whole different discussion.
This made my day.
I'm sorry but you are utterly wrong It's actually very different from WoW if you spend a millisecond looking at the system. I finally did and here's what the system in reality is:
In WoW you take an active ability every 15 levels from 3 choises, you can only pick one and have to discard the others (vastly superior to the old system where you mostly pick passives and mandatory tree specific actives that "you are supposed to pick").
With SWTOR disciplines, you still pick mandatory passives and actives just like you used to, and then get to choose from different kinds of passives that augment your existing abilities.
You dont pick one out of three like in WoW, but you choose which ones you want from a bunch of choises unltil you unlock a higher tier "pool of choises" and then you still can pick things from the lower "pool" if you want to. Active abilities comes automatically (if you dont pick them with the current tree-system, you only nerf your character on purpose, so if you want to nerf your self, you still can by not putting the ability on the hotbar).
Originally posted by grimal I am withholding judgement until i try it in place.
You can't really know until you play, but I'm not really encouraged.
Originally posted by Varex12
Originally posted by DKLond
Cookie cutter builds are not the result of talent trees. It's the result of sheep thinking that popular builds are the only way to play.
TOR DID have simplified trees, though, which meant you couldn't experiment all that much. WoW was better.
Agreed. WoW trees in WotLK were awesome. Rift's are even better, IMO. SWTOR"s are really scaled down and minimal, which I'm not a fan of. I want big, bold trees with the very real possibility of doing some major damage to my character when I inevitably make the wrong choices. But as long as I can switch around my talent points when I need to , I see no reason why this has to be considered a bad thing. Tinkering and experimenting with your skill set is one of the great things about MMOs and RPGs.
As for this change, it will probably be fine simply because SWTOR's trees weren't that impressive to begin with, so it won't be that big of a culture shock to me. When they pruned the WoW trees down in Cata, I died a little inside.
If the changes end up being like WoW, then it's probably a deal breaker for me. I hadn't played WoW since WotLK and recently bought a month (Blizz upgraded my account to MoP for free). For me, it was horrible. The class builds were boring. Crafting felt disconnected from class play the way it was then. It just felt absolutely one dimensional and on rails in every single way. I hope this doesn't happen to TOR because it has been a pretty cool game.
It's not a final version, but it should give you a pretty good idea of how the new system works. It looks like fun to me, but then again, I was never against the whole WoW thing either, so my opinion may not count for much there.
Still, give it a try! There's a bunch of different, good abilities to pick from which should still give people some variety in their builds - probably more than the current skill trees do.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
Was any information given on the number of abilities after the change?
Will there be more/less/same number of abilities after the change?
Don't judge but I would like to see less clickable abilities for specific classes, if that is the case, I might go back to give it a look
Hmmm, I wouldn't expect much difference.
I believe they said that they're now getting rid of abilities that get an upgraded version through a specific spec, but that'd hardly lower the amount of abilities (chances are you tossed those off your bars manually anyway once you got the more powerful version).
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
They are removing talent trees completely and replacing it with the same talent system(perks) that WoW did with Cataclysm 4 years ago. I always liked the reasoning Blizzard gave at the time, so for BioWare to copy it is pretty vindicating. I can't wait to see the tears from people who hated it in WoW, and the wishy-washy people who flip and say "oh, well since SWTOR is doing it too, I guess it's not so bad." Also a little humorous BioWare is following exactly in Blizzard's footsteps design-wise, but that's a whole different discussion.
This made my day.
I'm sorry but you are utterly wrong It's actually very different from WoW if you spend a millisecond looking at the system. I finally did and here's what the system in reality is:
In WoW you take an active ability every 15 levels from 3 choises, you can only pick one and have to discard the others (vastly superior to the old system where you mostly pick passives and mandatory tree specific actives that "you are supposed to pick").
With SWTOR disciplines, you still pick mandatory passives and actives just like you used to, and then get to choose from different kinds of passives that augment your existing abilities.
You dont pick one out of three like in WoW, but you choose which ones you want from a bunch of choises unltil you unlock a higher tier "pool of choises" and then you still can pick things from the lower "pool" if you want to. Active abilities comes automatically (if you dont pick them with the current tree-system, you only nerf your character on purpose, so if you want to nerf your self, you still can by not putting the ability on the hotbar).
In WoW, you get passive abilities as you level. What's the point of making you "choose" mandatory passives? Is it even a choice if it's mandatory? And the way you've said it, you actually never get to choose an active ability - just big passive talents after unlocking the pool. How exciting. Either that's a direct WoW ripoff or it's actually worse than WoW.. either isn't ideal.
Comments
It's sad that people have meta-gamed the mechanics so much that games have to be built for that segment of the player population.
The necessity of this move by Bioware is a terrible thing. Players cannot make anything other than the best defined build, or the character is not viable. That means the player cannot express any sort of design over the capabilities of the character, it is all completely the packaged static path put together by the developers.
I don't know how you could make hybrids viable and not kill the trinity, but I imagine some sort of compromise or system of randomized stats for Mobs and Bosses could at least help. I'm not talking about SWTOR specifically, though, it is what it is and its players enjoy the homogenous build versus max stat bad guys approach.
I imagine this is why the GW2 guys wanted to break up the old system, but they supplied a mutated DPS virus that didn't help. I admire Bioware for being forthright about this: Hey, we built a simple game, let's not pretend otherwise.
Cookie cutter builds are not the result of talent trees. It's the result of sheep thinking that popular builds are the only way to play.
TOR DID have simplified trees, though, which meant you couldn't experiment all that much. WoW was better.
The thing to do if you want to improve that, though, is not to make the system even simpler. It's to expand the system and make choices more diverse and abundant.
That would require actual work, though, and I'm guessing the F2P model is working well by mostly adding costumes and endlessly derivative flashpoints.
That's what most gamers are happy with it seems.
Agreed. WoW trees in WotLK were awesome. Rift's are even better, IMO. SWTOR"s are really scaled down and minimal, which I'm not a fan of. I want big, bold trees with the very real possibility of doing some major damage to my character when I inevitably make the wrong choices.
But as long as I can switch around my talent points when I need to , I see no reason why this has to be considered a bad thing. Tinkering and experimenting with your skill set is one of the great things about MMOs and RPGs.
As for this change, it will probably be fine simply because SWTOR's trees weren't that impressive to begin with, so it won't be that big of a culture shock to me. When they pruned the WoW trees down in Cata, I died a little inside.
it's a shame that they are so against hybrid specs (the real reason why the change)
they've fought against hybrids pretty much since release and they've butchered the skill trees just to make sure they cant exist.. some clever people still managed to make some successful hybrid speccs so they went and did this to completely annihilate them.
but atleast they did this thing in a decent way and i like that the classes are getting essential abilities at lower levels and wont have to wait til close to level cap to get them due to the war against hybridization now.
anyway if they insist then im happy they did it like this.
also anyone noticed their poor defense on the live stream ? "you can still be a hybrid by switching stance" that was probably one of the dumbest things i've ever heard
I had fun once, it was terrible.
Eh, for most games with expansive customization it usually comes down to this anyway:
1) You do what you want, and what you think is fun, and your character winds up gimped or mediocre. (Which actually IS fine if you enjoy playing it - and it works well enough to get through most content)
2) You give in and toss your build (or most of it) out of the window to get one of the four or so actually effective builds.
The Secret World is a good example of that, as is Path of Exile and other games that advertise what amazing freedom you have in building your character.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
Cataclysm was released awhile ago wasn't it? The WoW did it so we must argument is a little weak (now saying it is not a copy - just now a knee jerk reaction as you suggest). Dumbing games down is not new.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
Not really. There's a big difference between perceived performance and actual performance.
Most established cookie cutter builds are based around some pretty rigid assumptions, most prominently predictable PvE scenarios like raiding.
Assuming ideal movement and setup, you can reasonably approximate damage per cycle and such, but you will never be able to factor in the reality of what actually happens. The actual situations that are ideal and in which you can perform these rigid cycles perfectly are the very rare exception, and this is where being able to adapt comes in handy.
This is why certain mathetically superior builds won't produce superior numbers - because they don't take into account the "human" element and the unpredictable element.
If you build your character around your own playstyle - and you experiment with real actual scenarios, you will end up with builds that might very well vary from the norm.
Once you introduce PvP into the equation, almost everything solid about the numbers go away.
This is what people don't understand if they don't think for themselves. It's common to simply look up something and trust a source, because it looks good in terms of numbers.
That's one thing I've learned from my years playing at "top level" in MMOs. People who SEEM to know what they're talking about outnumber people who ACTUALLY know what they're talking about by a gigantic margin.
For every 100 people saying a game works in a specific way, you'll be lucky to find a single one who actually knows what he or she is talking about - and who is not only competent, but also impartial in the way you need to to be, to exclude the biased perceptions.
So they are getting rid of a useless system, seems like a good idea. If the skill tree system actually gave you some choises this would be bad, but since it was the same system WoW used to have it's the right thing to do.
The current system in WoW is actually good since the choise matters, you have to pick from 3 more or less good choises, and not just fill up your skill tree in 99% same fashion as everyone else <- What a pointless system!
Only real alternative would have been for them to broaden the skill trees to have so many places to put the points in that people actually would have to make a choise how to fill the tree, but since that would mean endless amounts of balancing and whining about "op builds" and "meaningless builds" I dont know if it really is a realistic option.
The big difference was that WoW talent trees were once interesting. Post BC talent trees were trash, but people remembered Vanilla and BC and wanted to go back to that, not just remove the trees altogether.
SWTOR trees were dull and boring from the start, maybe even worse than WOTLK talent trees. Hard to imagine anything not being an improvement.
All I know is I'm soooo glad I left this game 2 months after launch altho those 2 150.00 boxes collecting dust tend to remind me to beware of MMO hype every now and then.
There are games with choice, so much choice you wouldn't even believe it out there. Having a blast on Bloodfin.
Man you said it. Those things are like a cautionary tale in a box. If I ever see Daniel Erickson I will throw a shoe at his head.
Honestly the changes to Wow's talent trees to their new system solved far more problems than it caused. People simply are afraid of change. Most classes played far better and were more balanced. From day 1 of talent trees in Wow the Warlock's Demonology tree was a muddled mess of often near useless wonkiness. After the change Demonology was a thing of beauty. Same could be said for several other class specs.
It is also a myth that this dumbs down the game (other than killing hybrids). Every single person who has played Swtor knows that when spending your talent points you simply through them into roughly 90% the exact same talents that created known good builds. There wasn't choice. It was an illusion. If you are crying over the 10% or so points you surely spent uniquely that "nobody" else knew about ... you are living in funky town with a serious case of of denial. This new system actually provides far more choice compared to that.
The new system is indeed simpler compared to the mathematical variance of the old model but in fact provides far more choice than the practical options of the previous talent trees. Hell some skills are core class now that you wouldn't have even had before in some specs.
Bioware finally admitted what Blizzard found out ages ago: Talent trees offer an illusion of choice and it wasn't benefiting anyone.
Still have to wait and try it but it is a logical change. It also looks more like a meld between Rift and Wow ... and who the fuck here actually expects something original anyway after Bioware made Wow with story in space anyway.
You stay sassy!
You let a sheep think that it is a shepherd and it thinks it i has freedom, skill tree system is just like that. All of these "freedom" boils down to copy-pasting optimal build someone else theory crafted while taking a crap.
I also see people talking about Rift's skill tree, RIft doesn't have skill tree, they have souls where each soul is effectively a class and what we do in Rift is build our class or try to master a multi class build.
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The game is fun but with the lack of time cards and the lack of being able to buy physical copies of expansions is the reason this game will slowly die because they're choosing to cut out revenue solely by choice and its the reason I have trouble sticking around with this game. Not everyone will use there CC online because of security concerns and as long as they continue down the current path then frankly this game will be dead in a few years.
For the topic itself the system could work or it won't but it was largely hated by a majority of players that played WoW and left because of it. This could also happen in this game so if they're not careful then they will be digging this games grave faster.
Hmm? I'm not sure what you mean by lack of time cards.
You can easily buy one on Amazon.com or such. And I believe all major gaming stores like Gamestop and BestBuy have physical editions.
As for the physical expanions... digital stores are probably more profitable these days than actual physical ones, and the little they do lose from people who are extremely cautious with their CCs, is offset by the fact that they cut out the middleman and don't lose money on making a physical box (along with shipping and the myriad of other costs associated with boxed games).
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
The illusion of choice is still better then just "getting things automatically". I hated when they did it in wow.
Right, I know. For PvP/PvE Everyone takes pretty much the same talents. In TOR, there were usually 3-5 talent points left to choose differently, just a tiny bit of flavor.
I get to look forward to pick things, especially at lower levels, with what I want.
Just not a FUN change. Sure, I understand in WoW with 7+ million people to reduce it. But there are what, 100k players? blah.
lazy devs! j/k. looks like they are screwing the pooch with this one. Oh well.I wish CoX was still around.
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I'm sorry but you are utterly wrong
It's actually very different from WoW if you spend a millisecond looking at the system. I finally did and here's what the system in reality is:
In WoW you take an active ability every 15 levels from 3 choises, you can only pick one and have to discard the others (vastly superior to the old system where you mostly pick passives and mandatory tree specific actives that "you are supposed to pick").
With SWTOR disciplines, you still pick mandatory passives and actives just like you used to, and then get to choose from different kinds of passives that augment your existing abilities.
You dont pick one out of three like in WoW, but you choose which ones you want from a bunch of choises unltil you unlock a higher tier "pool of choises" and then you still can pick things from the lower "pool" if you want to. Active abilities comes automatically (if you dont pick them with the current tree-system, you only nerf your character on purpose, so if you want to nerf your self, you still can by not putting the ability on the hotbar).
http://dulfy.net/2014/10/13/swtor-disciplines-calculator-swtor_miner/
You can play around with it on Dulfy.net a bit: http://dulfy.net/2014/10/13/swtor-disciplines-calculator-swtor_miner/
It's not a final version, but it should give you a pretty good idea of how the new system works. It looks like fun to me, but then again, I was never against the whole WoW thing either, so my opinion may not count for much there.
Still, give it a try! There's a bunch of different, good abilities to pick from which should still give people some variety in their builds - probably more than the current skill trees do.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
"I believe I heard that RIFT will be doing the same thing. So much for going back there".
I haven't seen or heard anything about this.
It is just a case of trying to add more meat to the post, or are there any articles from Rift that I may have missed.
Was any information given on the number of abilities after the change?
Will there be more/less/same number of abilities after the change?
Don't judge but I would like to see less clickable abilities for specific classes, if that is the case, I might go back to give it a look
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Hmmm, I wouldn't expect much difference.
I believe they said that they're now getting rid of abilities that get an upgraded version through a specific spec, but that'd hardly lower the amount of abilities (chances are you tossed those off your bars manually anyway once you got the more powerful version).
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
In another words... exactly like WoW?
I mean, even look at this screenshot. Looks familiar to me.
http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/wowpedia.org/3/30/Specialization_&_Talents_-_Primary_Specialization.jpg?version=240d4b5a8d2d36a4cb1aa320193afbc9
In WoW, you get passive abilities as you level. What's the point of making you "choose" mandatory passives? Is it even a choice if it's mandatory? And the way you've said it, you actually never get to choose an active ability - just big passive talents after unlocking the pool. How exciting. Either that's a direct WoW ripoff or it's actually worse than WoW.. either isn't ideal.