Do you miss making your Character unique?

#1 - May 1, 2017, 5 p.m.

So since I came back to WoW after the break I took when wotlk finished there was this one thing bugging me about the game and I never could put my finger on it, and I could finally get my hands on what it was in the last two weeks: Lack of character uniqueness.

So, I was playing this MMO on Japan, which is currently the #1 played here called Tree of Savior(that despite being an MMO, the playerbase numbers are growing), what got me the most hooked to it was the extreme level of customization that you can have on your character: 60+ classes with literally limitless combinations, stats setups, item builds, skill builds and so onwards. So your character always feels unique, it feels yours.

Well, obviously "to each their own", since WoW has nothing to do with a korean MMO played on Japan, but then it hit me: WoW had similar customizations in the past.
You could create very different builds, especially between classic and wrath where you could literally choose if you were going to mix Discipline with shadow or holy, or frost with fire or arcane, and how each specific build would make different stats better and so onwards.

Then I realize this doesn't exist on WoW anymore, the level of customization is so limited it gets sad, we can't make our own exclusive builds anymore, and most importantly the feeling that I get the most when playing WoW is that the devs are the ones choosing which talent builds are picked, and the extreme limit imposed on "building our own character" are so dense that we are literally all progressing in the exact same line per spec.

Ornyx

Community Manager

#41 - May 1, 2017, 7:50 p.m.

05/01/2017 10:31 AMPosted by Phlynch
There is nothing "unique" about having to ask the Internet about every single point you spent and hoping the group leader's prefered cookie cutter build was the same as yours.

We may have less options numerically, but in practice we have more choices by a long shot.

There's a bit of an 'illusion' of choice that came with them, and that's really what people hold on to.

When folks say, "Oh, but you could make a unique build" - could you? Shockadin wasn't unique, for example, there were tons of them running around, all following the same guide that they read online. I do agree that it made people feel like they had more choice, but most of that was filling in passives to move down the tree which isn't super exciting.

I think there are benefits to both styles - and, yeah, we still have cookie cutter builds today, but its something we try to be more aware of generally - but its hard to avoid there always being a "best" set of talents.

Ornyx

Community Manager

#44 - May 1, 2017, 7:54 p.m.

05/01/2017 12:52 PMPosted by Waraila
05/01/2017 12:50 PMPosted by Ornyx
There's a bit of an 'illusion' of choice that came with them, and that's really what people hold on to.

Thing is Ornyx, nothing has changed in this regard. There is still an illusion of choice in many talent builds (feral being a glaring example of this for max dps). If you're not using the max dps build in any class / spec.. you're sub optimal.

I think that's true - and wasn't trying to say otherwise. As said, there are obviously still build guides, and there are definitely 'best' talent choices out there.

It's something the class design team is constantly working on.