Gratz
Comic 1555 - Rise of a lounge
Author Notes:
The problem with long term continues products is future proofing. As with WoTLK WoW ran into a problem where the talent trees where getting so big it was becoming difficult to manage, so they cut them down, then cut again into what we have now. Then and idea was formed. Expansion based power progression. This would make it so at the end of each expansion the power system was wiped clean and so future proofing was obtained.
But was that the best answer?
See Well wiping out a character progression every expansion may help prevent the wild growth. It also can kill the since of any growth at all. As such it leads to a feeling of building for a future at the expense of the present. The major down side being when the future arrives is sacrificed to the present.
Few games have had as long of a life span as WoW so I think it was absolutely worth looking into ways for manage future growth of the game. But with all that has happened from Cata to WoD to SL I think there are something we just have to except need to be done every few years to keep the game healthy.
1. Stat crunch: Numbers get to big over time and need to be compressed.
2. Level crunch: I think this also will need to be done over time to keep the feeling of levels manageable.
3. Talent tree pruning: I do think Talent trees need to come back and be the main core of character progression and power customization, However they will need to be pruned and adjusted every few years.
Much like tree WoW may just require regular pruning for it's own health and that may just be a reality of running an MMORPG.
(next update 8-18-21)
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1. Yes, generally. Apparently numbers can still get too large for even Ryzen chips to process efficiently.
2. No, they don't. Changes to lower-rank leveling, combined with restoring the power to heirlooms, would take care of the problem of "too many levels." Character level is a measure of personal progression; and, it's hard to feel progression logging in to a level my character was at 3 expansions ago.
3. Yes, WITH an actual talent TREE to work with. Then every other expansion take the talents from the bottom rung of choices and then "bake those in" to base character power. F no to any more expansion power systems.
Friday I told Lacking that GRATZ progression was looking good, but had potential problems. Let's have a look:
First week 8/1 - 8/7, GRATZ recorded 98 total votes, which was huge. That was an average 14.0 votes/day, one of the best voting starts we've had, and which drove the comic to #166 on the Top Webcomic List.
Then came week 2: 8/8 - 8/14, and voting fell off to only 82 total votes, 11.7a votes/day. We still managed to end the week at #160 on the list, but that drop is what I'm concerned about.
When we have strong, consistent voting, the comic makes gains on the list. When we have dropoffs, it becomes difficult to maintain ranking. Please make the effort to vote for GRATZ every day. You've seen how it makes a difference.
It's just not possible to balance as many talents as there are in the trees and make them meaningful at the same time. For every point giving you a neat new feature you have to have 3 that are "Add 1/3/5% stat". I much prefer the current wow system of cutting out all the minor things and just keeping the powerful abilities that were sprinkled through the old trees.