#0 - July 16, 2010, 10:05 p.m.
RPG. Role-Playing Game. The pinical of man made creation. It is in this genre that we are able to create worlds, to develop civilizations, to mold Heros and determine destiny. We are able to play god. In the RPG, we are able to go into another planet as another person and develop our character over time and help shape the planet. We get too be ourselves, but more importantly, we get to define ourselves. We, as both players and creators, are able to do what we are unable too in life; create our own perfect person. Since the 1970’s and the creation of Dungeons and Dragons, technology has only served to enhance this experience and has served to make it more possible for each person to define not only what they are, but who they are. It is only in the on coming of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft: Cataclysm that we ask ourselves if we have regressed, but more importantly, what have we lost.
To start out, WoW is like many other Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG or MMO). You start out being able too create a character by choosing the race, the sex, the class, the name, and other different distinguishable customizations. Apon creation, you have made a person that is unique. There is no other person exactly like yours. Now, in comparison too other games, one could argue that WoW lacks in customization on a number of levels, and they’d be right. WoW’s itemiziation causes many players of the same class to become static in visualization and the inability to fully pick any class with any race leaves creators trapped in decisions. However, WoW’s most redeeming quality, one that many games have not entirely replicated, is the Talent Tree. In a simple yet elegant design, the creators have allowed each and every person to not only develop their character in a unique fashion, but have also allowed players to define themselves from not only their class, but the rest of the population.
The Talent Tree is essentially a way of making your character stronger. With each level starting at level 10, players gain 1 talent point that they can spend on whatever they like including damage increase, healing increase, survivability, or a number of other combinations that improve efficiency and effectiveness of your job. As a player spends more talent points in any given tree, more options are given too them in that specific tree. This gave way of allowing people to be able to define themselves from one another by letting players say “Yes I can damage, but I will survive longer than you” or “Yes I can heal, but I also provide party and raid wide buffs”. Indeed each class contained 3 different talent trees, and as such, even the most common tree combinations gave you at least 3 separate ways of playing your class. The problem, however, is that in the realm of maximizing performance, there were simply too many talents to pick up, and too few spare talents to spend on whatever players wanted. With 71 talent points, most players ended up with either 5 talent points to spend wherever they wanted, or in some extreme cases actually having so few points that even having 71 points they were unable to get everything they needed.
Needless to say, each class had a set way of doing its job efficiently. This reduced players’ ability to distinguish them from the next. Blizzards design philosophy for Cataclysm was such that they would trim down the mandatory talents, and make way for more fun talents for people to pick whatever they want to define them. The proposed model however did the exact opposite to an extreme. In this new model, players have less than half the talent points given to them as they did previously. The talent trees are also cut in half and have lost a lot of the “useless”, though signature, talents. The trees were then left with a mass amount of mandatory talents and anywhere on the order of 3 “fun” talents. To further emphasize the problem, most often the “fun” talents were picked up only by means of progressing in the tree and were not seen as fun or desirable. Players lost their ability to define themselves and in some cases even lost all ability to pick any talent that might seem unique.
What went wrong in the design? In both cases, there were mandatory talents and unique talents. In both cases people were essentially forced to picking particular builds in order to optimize. While in one case the talent trees were much larger, the smaller tree was unable to give a feeling of customization and only further magnified the mainstream builds. The problem lies in the number of talents that people had to pick up in order to do their job correctly and efficiently.
In today’s talent system, many classes have somewhere in the order of 68 points that have a predestined position, leaving 3 talent points to freely wander in what little option they have left. In the new talent system of 31 points, most classes have 29 points that are predetermined. In both cases, an astounding percentage of the given points are already determined and the player has very little option with whats left. If we took a new model that gave us still the same 71 points, but only 50 of those points were predetermined, each player would have 21 points to divide up as they please. These extra 21 points would allow players to pick up survivability talents, mobility talents, utility talents, or flexibility talents. Each player would be able to play their job to optimum ability while also having the availability to distinguish themselves by being able to survive longer, move faster, provide their group with unique buffs, or even the ability to switch in and out of different sub roles within their main role. A damage dealer could distinguish himself or herself by being able to switch targets better than another is. A healer might be able to heal just as well as another person but bring a different party buff. A tank might be able to flexibly be a main tank and have enough distinguishable talents to be able to pick up additional enemies better than another tank. It is these options that allow each player to not only feel like an individual, but more importantly to be an individual.
Customization comes from having more points with fewer of them mattering in the scope of things. The Customization is not in having fewer talents to play with or having a bloat of excess talents. The Customization comes from having very few points that help you do your job efficiently and more points that let you play your job uniquely. The more overall talents you are able to spend on things that don’t affect your performance, then the more you see people truly customizing and defining themselves
TL;DR - Less percentage of mandatory talents = better imo
