Bloat vs. Choice

I think the word "bloat" has become like the word "clunky" in these forums. It's so often used as a synonym for "I would have designed this differently" that it has lost a lot of specific meaning.

I think in the end one of the things we've really learned about what players are looking for in a talent tree is that they are often looking for different things. Some players are perfectly happy spending every point on say damage. Damage is what they do, so any point not related to damage feels wasted. Some players want every possible talent build to be legit. They don't want there to be any wrong answers such that they could almost assign points at random and have something that was functional and diverse. Some players, and this surprised us a little, like to have the ability to make bad choices and are perfectly happy making wrong choices -- to them the freedom to choose trumps the desire for power. Some players just want every point and agonize about having to leave anything out. Some get really bent out of shape at the thought of spending even 1 talent point on a talent that they may not use say once every 30 min or so. They would rather respec into a situational ability when that situation comes up rather than have it just in case. Some are mostly interested in just seeing something different. They are less interested in the perfect talent tree than they are in having them change over time. Even powerful abilities feel like old hat and they want the new hotness. You see this a lot for the classes whose talent trees changed earliest in Cataclysm, who are now wondering when "their overhaul" is coming. Opposing them are the nostalgia buffs who can't stand the thought of any talent or ability going away because it's iconic for their class.

I'm really not building towards any kind of conclusion with any of that. It has just been interesting to see the feedback. I guess I can offer that you might want to be careful about who you think you are speaking for when you say "we feel this" or "we don't want that." Players, even the microcosm of the forum community, want different things.

Q u o t e:
In current beta players are forced to spend 29+ points in their main spec, effectively removing choice from the equation by only leaving 0-2 points free. Players are complaining about this state of affairs because it runs directly contrary to the dev goals you yourself have repeatedly and even recently posted on these boards.

We really haven't ever supported the true hybrid builds where someone goes halfway down two trees. It would be one thing if someone really wanted to play say an Affliction warlock who also emphasized demons or the Ret paladin who also wanted to be a better healer. But almost without exception the hybrid builds that have ever existed involved sneaking down into a second tree to get an overpowered talent or two. The developers never really wanted the last talent in a tree to be a decision. They want you to get that talent. When players would make builds that didn't go to the bottom of their tree they would feel like something was wrong with the tree. Nobody wants that 31-point talent to be a hard choice.

So, yeah, go get that 31-point talent. You'll have some decisions to make on the way down and then you'll have 10 points that can get you 3 or 4 additional talents from a pool of 15 or so that are left over. Not all of those builds will make sense, but many of them will. That feels like plenty of choice to me and both you and we will know that you have the basics that make your spec work.

Q u o t e:

The conclusion you were building to was, quite naturally, a chance to admonish players for claiming they know what's best, and what their spec wants. So you kinda slipped into Crustacean Overlord at the end there, admonishing ppl who may or may not have been making those kinds of posts :3

Not really. I was more pointing out that because players want so many different and diverse things, it's never as simple as just giving players what they want. So we make the decisions we think are right for the game, but we make sure to let feedback inform those decisions.

Q u o t e:
The Death Knight is a DPS class. Hence all DPS-increasing abilities in your chosen tree are mandatory talents, because those strengthen the class' primary role. Anything that doesn't, or is highly situational for DPS are optional talents. If there are so many mandatory talents that you don't have room for optional ones, that is "bloat."

Think through that design a little further though. If every talent point has to be an unambiguous dps increase, then one of two things is probably true: A) talent 1 and talent 2 are different talents but provide identical dps increases in almost all situations, or B) talent 1 is proven to be 2% more dps than talent 2. Guess what happens to talent 2 in that scenario?

Now imagine talent 1 is survivability and talent 2 is utility. Which one is better? It depends.

Q u o t e:
This is fundamentally what led me to believe that we'd be seeing 10 or so 'activation' abilities (the Warrior examples I gave earlier were Concussion Blow, Piercing Howl and Warbringer) as juicy options to take when the announcement of streamlined trees was made. You're right, we're basically looking at roughly the same number of 'utility' choices now as we were before.

That's just too many active abilities to add to a tree though. Even if we could balance them all, do you really want say 5 additional buttons on top of the ones Cataclysm is already offering in the trees and at the higher levels?