Why have you reduced quality of the Talent Advisor screen?

[kreelor]

The Talent Advisor screen no longer displays the 'green arrow' highlight for the recommended next talent selection as it used to.

Blizzard didn't help much by screwing the whole thing up! Now, we have to read each of 16 choices with extremely small fonts (at my screen rez) merely to find the ones that Zygor recommends. The way you (Zygor) had it before was far easier to see and to select the next recommended Talent. Even the Talents don't make any sense anymore, since Blizzard played around with them -- just because they could!

Not only that, but after spending a fortune in gold to buy certain glyphs that Zygor recommended, the asses at Blizzard TOOK AWAY PRIMARY GLYPHS! Geeeesh!

By the way, I'm really pissed at what Blizzard did. I'm not at all angry at Zygor's Guides, but those idiots at Blizzard can't ever seem to do anything right without convoluting the hell out of everything we've grown accustomed to over the years. Inane, rediculous confusion --just because they can! There's no logical reason to make users learn "a brand new game GUI" and eliminate skills we've worked hard at acquiring, when the game UI they had was quite workable. Hell... even simple shit like my "Elixir of Giant Growth" has been taken away! That's just one quick example I've noticed out of the many I could mention. It was stupid of them to take that away instead of working on a better mapping system like the Carbonite addon -used- to have. Carbonite has died as an addon for WoW. It no longer functions. That's too bad, indeed!

That's my $5.50-cents worth for the day. I hate what they did to the game which I liked as it was. I will NEVER buy MoP.

How about adding the "highlights" back to the Talent Advisor screen? You can add this to the "wish list" from Zygor users.

Better yet....
Why doesn't Zygor find some way to buy full, exclusive rights to the Carbonite addon (and then, do it right and keep it up-to-date)? Zygor would have a monopoly on the best addon(s) available, and I'd pay gladly. So would others.

[eweiss]

Have you selected a desired build for the current Talent Advisor?

There should be a icon on the suggested Talent for each row. It will appear as a Z in the upper right of the talent. These Icons will only appear if you have picked a build already though.

If you hit the Z that is on the right side of the talent window, it will show our popout (very similar to the old system) and then all the choices and information can also be seen in that popout.

Talent/Specialization/Glyph suggestions can be seen there and/or on the talent screen itself.

[kreelor]

Of course I selected a build first. That's how I got to the screen that I referred to. It's just not working the simple and easier way that it used to. There is no "highlighted" recommended choice (as there used to be).

[Cartman]

I think you can still learn the suggested talents by clicking on button at the advisor panel. I checked it with a Paladin I have copied to the beta server and it was no problem, the talent advisor showed which talents bon't fit the Zygor build so I cleared them with this new tome and let the advisor distribute those new.

Highlighting something depends on if it is easily possible to mess around with the talent frame. If it can be done I'm pretty sure we see such small improvements in the future, probably the Zygor team simply did not have the time to polish this as they were working on getting the guides ready for the patch and are working on the new viewer and new functionality for the gear guide.

[kreelor]

Hi, Cartman. Before I posted here, I had already figured out how to do it. My comments were about the fact that the Talent Advisor screen no longer displays the highlighted choices, as it used to. It was much easier to find the appropriate Talent, and it saved some time. Now, having to read all those Talents with the small typeface is an unnecessary nuisance. That's why I brought the issue to attention. It was better before (IMO).

[Cartman]

I added some text to my previous post, I think if it's possible we'll see it in the future.

[kreelor]

Cartman, thanks for replying so quickly. I'm sure they will catch up to making it match their previous method, eventually.

No comment on my "Better yet..." comment? heh heh. (It's in red text in earlier my post). I'm really hoping.......!!!

[Cartman]

I don't use Carbonite because it messes around with too many things I like to use other addons for and has many features I don't need

The big question with that topic would be how many people are willing to pay for such an addon. I think not enough as the Carbonite developers still maintain this addon in their spare time.

Also there's a big problem with selling an addon. According to Blizzard addons have to be free of charge. The only workaround for guides like Zygor's is that the viewer addon is free, you only pay for the files with the data. I don't know if this would be possible with the current Carbonite addon.

[mzanker]

Let's be honest - Blizzard have simplified the talent system so much with 5.0.4 you don't actually need an add-on any more. If ever there was a time for players to do a bit of thinking for themselves it's now. One talent choice every 15 levels - hardly rocket science!

[kreelor]

Thanks for replying, Cartman.

To answer your "big question," there are MANY people willing to donate. The problem is that the developers "do not" maintain the Carbonite addon. Their forum is filled with people begging them to do something, but the developers haven't even replied to anyone in over a year or two! Not even one update, except for a single "date change" issue last January!

Only today did I find that someone has taken the issue into his own hands and has created "fixes" for things that haven't been fixed in a very long time. He has it working for Blizzard's latest patch (MoP) -- as of 8-28-2012. He's still working on it; it's slow-going because their original coding was a real mind-bending, convoluted mess. I downloaded his fixes and I can now play the game with the Carbonite great mapping system. It was broken this morning and unuseable, but his fixes made it playable again. And, since this morning, he's updated it again! And, he's conversive on the forums, letting everyone know what's going on. It's promising.

I'm certain that as long as people continue playing WoW, that they will benefit by having the "Google-type" zooming map system, as well as the other great features. Blizzard's maps suck royally!

You say you don't need many of the features. I understand that. But, just because they are available, that doesn't mean you have to use them. They don't take up any screen space. You can still enjoy the better parts, like the maps, the Warehouse, etc.

Zygor Guides has done such a good job with what they do, I just thought that they'd be interested in finding a way to earn tons of money by providing what so many people are begging for. The Carbonite addon is an original concept that has never yet been surpassed, or even equalled. The developers have stopped updating it due to personal real-life issues, which we all have occassionally. The point is that there's a very real opportunity, and a need.

If the better features of the Carbonite addon were merged into the Zygor Guides, every one of you would be able to build your own castles in Hawaii, southern Italy, and "Sweet Home Alabama!"

[Cartman]

I agree Carbonite has some interesting features. But as you pointed out, maintaining such an addon takes a huge amount of time.
Maybe someone takes it over and makes it more modular so that you can choose which features you want to use.
But I doubt the Zygor devs have the time to take such a huge project over. Maybe we see some new features of the guide viewer with MoP, I hope we get some dynamic routing so that the guide makes use of portals or ships without the need to include all those steps in the guide files.

[mzanker]

Dynamic routing might be the one feature that would bring me back to Zygor. Competitor has had it for a couple of months now and it works really well.

[Zygor Admin]

As you can see in this screenshot, the guide now places icons over the recommended talents. How would you like it to "highlight" it exactly. We originally were going to give the entire frame of the individual talent a lighter background, but decided against it because we thought it was too confusing since the talents you've learned as get a different background and we didn't want to confuse users.

[kreelor]

Zygor Admin.... Thanks for the reply. You asked: "How would you like it to "highlight" it exactly."

Heh heh. If I could add an inline picture to my posts (like you have) I'd offer a couple graphic examples (since I'm a now-retired Commercial Artist/Technical Illustrator). But, for some reason, your forum's insert "Image" tool doesn't work for me.

But, here's just a quick suggestion or two; How about adding a 'bright green' colored frame surrounding each of your "Z" logos? Or, change from the logo to a bright green "checkmark" (symbol) as you used to use in the older Talent Advisor? It was instantly noticeable in the older version, but at my screen rez, the "Z" is very difficult to see, especially since it is a dark color on a dark background. Because your logo is small, it won't be too distracting.

I guess I'm just being picky, so I apologize for that.

[Kamchak]

So If I understand correctly, Kreelor, you just want it to pop off the screen more? Now that you know what to look for, will you still be unable to see them on different characters you play?
Thanks.