Monday, March 12, 2007

Dream features: Solo / Group talent build switch

World of Warcraft has 8 million amateur game designers, all of them convinced that there are features that they could have designed better than the developers. :) So I thought I'd start a column where I discuss single features that I think are easy enough to implement and which could make World of Warcraft a much better game.

What we discussed frequently in the last weeks is the problem of people preferring a talent build which is optimal for soloing, but less-than-optimal for grouping. Add to that add dungeons in which less-than-optimal groups are unlikely to succeed, and you get a big problem. I know several people in my guild who changed their talent build repeatedly in the last couple of weeks, torn between the different requirements of different play styles.

It is obvious that Blizzard doesn't want us to have free respecs whenever we want, because that would mean that any two players of the same class would be exactly the same, just a few clicks away from having the same talent build. So we end up having only one semi-permanent build, which is only viable for certain modes of gameplay, and de facto excludes us from participating effectively in other sorts of gameplay. Why have a game in which you can solo, can group, can raid, can PvP, and then make it so that you can't do them all with one build?

So my suggestion would be the possibility to have not one, but two different talent builds for each character, with a simple button to switch between them. Thus you could have both your dps-heavy soloing build, and your group-friendly support build. There would still be a sense of uniqueness, for example my holy priest has a build with 23 points in discipline for the improved spirit buff, while another holy priest goes for the 41-point circle of healing holy talent instead. The talent build switch would allow us to go shadow priest, fury warrior, or feral druid whenever we are just soloing, or when we want to participate in PvP.

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