Ghostcrawler on bloat vs. choice in talent trees

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Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Cataclysm

In a forum thread that started about the current state of talent tree design and the infamous "this tree is too bloated" vs. "there's not enough choice" debate for each, our old crustacean pal Ghostcrawler comes in and waxes philosophical. While I think his entire answer is interesting, I'm going to focus on just one aspect of it here.

Ghostcrawler - Re: Bloat vs. Choice
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.

source

He lists a long series of different viewpoints some players hold which I think is worth reading in its entirety. It got me to thinking about my own general prefences as to how a talent tree should be designed. I basically like it when there's enough room in any talent tree for two fairly viable builds to emerge in that tree. Back in the day, (not so far back that actual dinosaurs roamed the earth) you had the dual wield and two handed slam builds for fury, and both were fairly viable. (Dual wield did usually come out ahead on damage.) However, I think it unlikely that such a diversity of option in each talent tree is really possible, and a good compromise is the idea that you can get most of the talents you're going to want and then customize based on preference. This is seen in the current warrior protection tree on the beta where one can spec for AoE or single target after picking up most of the core tanking talents.

It's an interesting read all told. Give it a read and see what you think about the idea: how would you define your preferences for talent design? Is there a valid distinction between bloat and choice in a tree? If so, what is it?Ghostcrawler on bloat vs. choice in talent trees originally appeared on WoW.com on Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.




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