Internally, it’s interesting, the team has coined this problem. It is a cooperative MMO, where in the design space of “I can make my comrades, my allies stronger!” it seems like a viable support type role that should exist in an RPG setting. I understand it’s controversial, but at the same time, some of this gets back to the earlier discussion of party and raid buffs, and our philosophy there with adding new ones. Are there any changes being planned to address some of the issues the community has with the ability, such how it impacts class balance? In terms of community feedback, one of the hot topics recently has been the return of the controversial ability, Power Infusion, on the priest talent tree.
But the general design space of “I can make choices that make my buddies stronger in a cooperative game" feels like a natural one we want to explore. But I think we want to test out individual ideas, see which are most compelling, and also take a look at the sum total of it and make sure it’s not too much in terms of that complexity space that ‘s going to lead to micromanagement. Making a raid group as a raid leader was a matrix of 15 different buffs - your Rogues need Battle Shout from a warrior, but the Warrior needs Windfury from the Shaman, and all that interconnection. I think for the space of party and raid buffs, at the end of the day, it’s an MMO, we have tons of cooperative gameplay in all of our modes, whether it’s dungeon, raid, group PvP - and the ability to make choices that are augmenting the capabilities of the people around you is an interesting RPG space to explore.Īt the same time, we also want to be mindful that we want to dip our toes in the water without going too far to the extreme of 15 years ago in Burning Crusade. And not everything that is in these first iterations of talent trees is necessarily going to make it to live, but we want to get the stuff out there to begin that conversation and feedback around what the individual trees end up being. So I think this is definitely a space that we’re interested in exploring.