Ughhh… the illusion of choice argument is such total shit. Is there an ideal spec? Sure… is there an ideal way to live life in general? Of course. You still have a choice. We don’t sit here and tell people hey no more soda, water is the ideal choice, so we removed the soda option. Oh you want to take history in college? Sorry computer science is the best so we’ve eliminated the other options…. Just a dumb way to view choice.
Blizzard dies and Bobby rides
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Daidraco
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You're comparing the vapid, bankrupt imagination/ideas of WoW developers to real life choice?... Of course I can choose to live in a third world country, but why the fuck would I? Of course I can choose some dumpster fire ability that was given 30 seconds of thought, but why would I? There are great talent trees out there in the game world, but in a game like WoW - that ship has sailed.
Chris
Potato del Grande
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Earlier today I saw an interesting Elon Musk quote about this from 15 years ago.
He knew he would be successful because the limiting factor on electric car development wasn't money, it was having a highly educated and motivated team willing to take risks. So he wasn't worried about the established car industry crushing him.
Amazon can throw all the money they want at people, but it isn't going to produce great art. What they do have is people passionate about logistics and it's made them trillions.
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The psychology is the same bro.... The illusion of choice is choice. Do you actually think all the classes were equal? Would the game be better if they had a popup when you select Druid or Warlock in classic that read "NOT OPTIMAL CHOICE WARNING!!!!", or even worse just flat our removed the classes?
You people are the ones that ruin games. I realize most of you don't have the forethought, or IQ to even see that, but it's true. Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, trimming of supposedly non-optimal talents/skills, and on and on. I understand in your limited framework of thought that "this travel is totally unnecessary", "this messaging and creating a group is so inefficient", "this having to research, test, and choose the best talents is a waste of time." type mentality seems rational, and to a point it is, but those are the aspects that make games like this and life interesting.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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Talent trees were fun, I don't know why they couldn't tweak talents nobody took.
Like didn't Rogue have 5% Crit vs 5% Dodge? Why wouldn't they buff the Dodge % to be appealing for PvP or buff the damage of the ability that procced on Dodge (or make it apply a debuff or something)?
Just do tiny increments in each patch until more people were choosing it.
Like didn't Rogue have 5% Crit vs 5% Dodge? Why wouldn't they buff the Dodge % to be appealing for PvP or buff the damage of the ability that procced on Dodge (or make it apply a debuff or something)?
Just do tiny increments in each patch until more people were choosing it.
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Gutterflesh
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Right or wrong her complaint is seen in most “tech” companies especially when it’s fucking SaaS.
To clarify I’m not defending Bobby. Just saying most executives in this space are just as shitty as he is.
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OU Ariakas
Diet Dr. Pepper Enjoyer
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What she is essentially talking about is a game company's type of R&D. Does she realize that tons of work goes into products/services that never see the light of day? This is just bitter shit from an entitled baby.
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Daidraco
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Thats exactly my point, counter to what Ortega is preaching. I even say that I think talent trees are good in other games. But the WoW devs never put any effort into making alternate choices better. At best you had two in a row to choose from and the second choice was for specific fights. But whatever, its pointless to argue about shit out of my control.
Cybsled
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Right. Kings buff for Paladins was a prime example - pick shitty talents that barely improve your character just to get Kings that was all but mandatory for raids. No one wanted to be the kings buff paladin. That was like being the enchanter that would cast tash and instantly die to the raidboss in EQ: needed role, but a shit one
Mist
REEEEeyore
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The talent system in retail right now is actually a huge improvement over the old one, as they offer real choices between viable abilities useful in different situations.
But it took them a decade to get there. The 3 column talent trees started off fucking awful in Cataclysm. Rarely did you have good choices.
But it took them a decade to get there. The 3 column talent trees started off fucking awful in Cataclysm. Rarely did you have good choices.
Kirun
Buzzfeed Editor
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People who wanted to be lazy/worthless on raids chose it. We had a guy who did and I'm pretty sure he just watched fucking TV the whole raid. Did nothing but Kings and OOR rez. Lucifron and Gehennas made me fucking LOATHE that useless fucker.
Dalien
Registered Hodor
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Does she really think Bobby was micromanaging Overwatch "projects"? I doubt Bobby gives a shit about Tracer's ass or even knows what a Tracer is.
Anyways, Bobby is going to cash out his merger check, hop on his yacht, sail away to his secret little Epstein island and disappear for a year or two.
Everyone will forget about all of this shit and he'll return as CEO of Pepsi or "Facebook Gaming" or "Metaverse" or some shit. This isn't the last we've seen of Bobby.
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moonarchia
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Masakari
Which way, western man?
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Millie enjoyed his moderator powers. Mist wants to be a mod. Mist pretends to be a woman.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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Yeah this is another thing you can tweak.
If players are enjoying being a buff bot, make a path through the tree to Kings which improves other buffs and creates some skill and choice in the buffing gameplay.
If they are not, rework the tree to be more fun or make the ability base (which is what they eventually did right?).
Instead they just did nothing for all of Classic, like they had nobody working on the game.
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Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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It shouldn't be mutually exclusive, though. That is just bad game design to shoehorn someone into some ultra specialized role that brings nothing to the table except a raid buff, even if that person likes it. Even if they brought in other abilities to buff other buffs, then you get into a balance arms race nightmare because now you have to assume that every raid will bring buff-booster-bot, so now they'll account for base buff strength and boost strength, which probably would ultimately result in a nerf (which dilutes the impact of it). Or you get players complaining because they feel obligated to bring buff bot, which means someone else doesn't get to raid.
Which is kind of what WoW eventually did and is a pitfall a lot of MMOs try to avoid.
Which is kind of what WoW eventually did and is a pitfall a lot of MMOs try to avoid.
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Or just don't tune shit that tightly? The obsession with balance leads to a lot of this thinking. It got to the point where they were so worried about having to balance things, they just stopped adding new abilities to the game that they couldn't throw out each expansion. It used to be raids had room to address what I'll call the "main tank's wife" problem. In a social game like an MMO, it's not going to be a full roster (and bench) of sweaty parsers. A real guild is made up of a few really good players, a glut of decent ones, a rotating roster of recruits / temporary members and then friends/family of the guild. In EQ and early WoW, you had headroom in your group to bring people along who were friends of the guild and who would not normally get to see the content. You also had the headroom to still run the raid if you didn't have everyone online that night. Empty spots could be filled with basically anyone and it would be better than nothing.
They subsequently sort of 'sundered' raiding guilds by adding LFR tourism mode and the normal/heroic/mythic difficulties. Things that sound like good ideas but ended up sowing salt in the in game social communities of the game. I lead a guild for 10+ years and I could go on for hours about all the things they've done which strangled the organic development of communities. It was either deliberate or, more likely, they were too autistic to see the downstream effects of their choices.
They subsequently sort of 'sundered' raiding guilds by adding LFR tourism mode and the normal/heroic/mythic difficulties. Things that sound like good ideas but ended up sowing salt in the in game social communities of the game. I lead a guild for 10+ years and I could go on for hours about all the things they've done which strangled the organic development of communities. It was either deliberate or, more likely, they were too autistic to see the downstream effects of their choices.
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Fogel
Mr. Poopybutthole
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The problem with the balance issue was when they hard coded raids to 40 people. So if you weren't an optimal spec you weren't going to raid. Especially when they started adding DPS checks. No guild was going to bring a DPS druid/pally to the raid when a rogue was always the better choice.
Daidraco
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I remember back in WOTLK, I was leading a guild and we were doing Naxx. Was pushing and pulling people through that whole raid instance with just the sole intent of having fun and getting shit done, not trying to break any records since I was working tons. Had a whole family in that guild and the wife of the main couple was a healer. Still talk to them till this day since the short lived Real ID pretty much gave everyone an easy way to look up each other on Facebook. We wiped on KT I dont know how many times and it usually revolved around the wife druid healer (shocker, I know) standing in the puddles. Even after coaching and trying not to call her out directly "Puddles everyone!", she would still stand in them. Then, as smooth as things had been going .. I saw a puddle getting ready to pop under her while KT was in his final bit. When she moved, I screamed with excitement and we downed the boss. Man, such good times and I miss that kind of environment.
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