WoW XX: It's Not A Recolor, It's An Original Thread [Archive]

Icewraith

2018-04-10, 03:18 PM

Are mogs really that expensive? Personally I'd rather their racial be a small chance to reroll a mog they already acquired into something else from the loot table or something. Finding mogs is a bigger issue than paying for them I think.

Do you have a source for these stats? Genuinely curious, but also wondering if some of the stats might be skewed too. I mean, yeah more Night Elves are druids than Worgen, but NElf druids have also been around 6 years longer, so... I think there's more possible explanations for the figures than "eww, uggo dog people."

EDIT: Just saw your source and yeah, it bears out my fears. "It's important to remember that we're simply counting the number of characters seen for each category. This does not mean the number of players, nor the number of actively played characters. We can't efficiently get activity data yet, so some characters may not have been played for a long time." They don't focus on level or activity, so every single bank alt who's ever touched the AH or even belonged to a guild where someone touched the AH is being included, as well as every alt that never made it past the 40+ doldrums. That's a lot of noise to be drawing conclusions from I'd say.

In PvE it gives them another interrupt to add to their tanking repertoire - nothing to sneeze at in many encounters.

Speaking as someone who has had Shockwave on their action bar for most of the ability's existence, stating that an AoE stun, especially one with a long cooldown, is an additional interrupt in PvE is (IMO) way, way too strong. A Stun can be used to temporarily stop spellcasting from (most) trash and some fights with caster adds. Most bosses are immune to stuns but many still have some kind of interruptible cast. Furthermore, interrupts force the caster to move for several seconds (becasue of the lockout) while stuns force the caster to stand still (and usually immediately resume casting when the stun ends). This is a crucially important distinction when it comes to basic add control and dealing with ally damaging or mob healing/buffing ground effects. Using an AoE stun like an interrupt on threatening "trash" (higher keystone dungeons) without repositioning slightly will result in a damage spike on the tank as all the non-caster mobs affected by the stun simultaneously swing on the tank when the stun ends.

I've lost count of the number of times I've asked who has interrupts and someone volunteers a stun. If I'm asking for interrupts, it's because we're on a boss where interrupting is important and we need more interrupts than the melee and tanks can provide (or we need a backup, so I'm putting people with longer cooldown interrupts like Mages on notice).

Short-term spellcaster crowd control, stuns, interrupts.
Fruit, apples, oranges.

Spore

2018-04-10, 03:39 PM

Short-term spellcaster crowd control, stuns, interrupts.
Fruit, apples, oranges.

And then there's my Disc Priests Dispel Magic

https://media.giphy.com/media/xT5LMCwPuSv5KYBO6I/giphy.gif

Psyren

2018-04-10, 04:40 PM

Remember that druids are primarily judged by the appearance of their animal forms, not their base model. Also races with instanced starting zones are offputting (to me). Troll druids spawn in the world and can immediately interact with other non-troll characters. A goblin hunter has to endure the 'funny' goblin starting zone that is nice and creative the first time you play it. And gets increasingly annoying to the point where I am angry that this stuff is considered canon.

To roll a goblin you have to play a Jersey Shore parody and a Lost parody.

I agree, instanced starting zones suck. The Worgen one in particular goes on for waaaaay too long, with multiple cutscenes. One thing I felt they did well with Draenei and Blood Elves was give you the option of exiting partway through - Draenei start crashed on Azuremyst but then they can just leave and head to Teldrassil (or whatever is going to replace Teldrassil) without finishing all the Furbolg nonsesne or setting foot (hoof?) on Bloodmyst, while Blood Elves can set out for Undercity almost immediately too.

Speaking as someone who has had Shockwave on their action bar for most of the ability's existence, stating that an AoE stun, especially one with a long cooldown, is an additional interrupt in PvE is (IMO) way, way too strong. A Stun can be used to temporarily stop spellcasting from (most) trash and some fights with caster adds. Most bosses are immune to stuns but many still have some kind of interruptible cast. Furthermore, interrupts force the caster to move for several seconds (becasue of the lockout) while stuns force the caster to stand still (and usually immediately resume casting when the stun ends). This is a crucially important distinction when it comes to basic add control and dealing with ally damaging or mob healing/buffing ground effects. Using an AoE stun like an interrupt on threatening "trash" (higher keystone dungeons) without repositioning slightly will result in a damage spike on the tank as all the non-caster mobs affected by the stun simultaneously swing on the tank when the stun ends.

It might not work in every fight, but it's still there and it does work on some bosses. I wouldn't expect (nor want) a specific racial to be fantastic in PvE anyway since then you're just punishing everyone who didn't take that race, but a situational use is fine with me.

Spore

2018-04-11, 03:14 AM

I agree, instanced starting zones suck. The Worgen one in particular goes on for waaaaay too long, with multiple cutscenes.

At least it has relevant lore for the upcoming story lines. Goblins and Pandaren might as well have teleported in from cartoon dimension. (the Pandaren one is important for the faction split but come on, Ji. Using goblin explosives to remove a thorn? I almost chose Alliance on my Pandaren, and my server has 1% alliance side).

Demon Hunter is slightly annoying too. But if you watch it ironically - yes, it's that hipster saying from 2010 - with all the fellow Illidari trying to outedge each other, it is incredibly fun. I mean, it is an elite operation against the legion to get a key item. I get that 'sacrifices' are important. But the guys just dying from the fel knowledge you unearth? Couldn't this have waited? The one dude who dies to open a portal. The other one incinerated by fel magic with the spell that you learn effortlessly.

And I think I have seen as many corrupted demon hunters and imprisoned ones that I think less NPCs are free and working.

Icewraith

2018-04-11, 02:30 PM

I agree, instanced starting zones suck. The Worgen one in particular goes on for waaaaay too long, with multiple cutscenes. One thing I felt they did well with Draenei and Blood Elves was give you the option of exiting partway through - Draenei start crashed on Azuremyst but then they can just leave and head to Teldrassil (or whatever is going to replace Teldrassil) without finishing all the Furbolg nonsesne or setting foot (hoof?) on Bloodmyst, while Blood Elves can set out for Undercity almost immediately too.

It might not work in every fight, but it's still there and it does work on some bosses. I wouldn't expect (nor want) a specific racial to be fantastic in PvE anyway since then you're just punishing everyone who didn't take that race, but a situational use is fine with me.

The Blood Elf racial literally is "an extra interrupt to add to your tanking repertoire" and works on all PVE fights where interrupts are useful. The point I was trying to emphasize isn't that the Tauren racial isn't useful in PVE, it's that the cases where the Tauren racial has the same use as the Blood Elf racial decrease sharply as the level of organization required for the PVE content increases.

If you pick up an apple and say "I can add this orange to my cooking ingredients"... unless you happen to be making fruit salad, you're going to be dissapointed. Especially because apple pie and orange chicken are a lot more common than fruit salad.

Psyren

2018-04-11, 04:14 PM

The Blood Elf racial literally is "an extra interrupt to add to your tanking repertoire" and works on all PVE fights where interrupts are useful. The point I was trying to emphasize isn't that the Tauren racial isn't useful in PVE, it's that the cases where the Tauren racial has the same use as the Blood Elf racial decrease sharply as the level of organization required for the PVE content increases.

If you pick up an apple and say "I can add this orange to my cooking ingredients"... unless you happen to be making fruit salad, you're going to be dissapointed. Especially because apple pie and orange chicken are a lot more common than fruit salad.

...You seem to be thinking my statement was trying to contradict you or show you up in some way. That's not the case. I was illustrating your own statement ("the Tauren stun isn't as useful in PVE") by providing one example of how it could be used there.

The_Jackal

2018-04-11, 04:15 PM

The Blood Elf racial literally is "an extra interrupt to add to your tanking repertoire" and works on all PVE fights where interrupts are useful. The point I was trying to emphasize isn't that the Tauren racial isn't useful in PVE, it's that the cases where the Tauren racial has the same use as the Blood Elf racial decrease sharply as the level of organization required for the PVE content increases.

If you pick up an apple and say "I can add this orange to my cooking ingredients"... unless you happen to be making fruit salad, you're going to be dissapointed. Especially because apple pie and orange chicken are a lot more common than fruit salad.

I've still never encountered a situation in which the player's execution of their core class abilities didn't utterly swamp their racials. If you know how to play a warrior, you're going to be an excellent warrior with any set of racials. There's no question that some racials are better for a certain class, but their benefit is so marginal, even in the optimal case, that they can, for most purposes, be ignored.

Psyren

2018-04-11, 05:05 PM

I've still never encountered a situation in which the player's execution of their core class abilities didn't utterly swamp their racials. If you know how to play a warrior, you're going to be an excellent warrior with any set of racials. There's no question that some racials are better for a certain class, but their benefit is so marginal, even in the optimal case, that they can, for most purposes, be ignored.

For the most part this is true, but some boss mechanics proc randomly and so having a spare/emergency ability (for when your class abilities are all on cooldown) can help, especially on a progression encounter where everyone's gear isn't quite up to snuff.

Also, some class deficiencies can be helped by racials. For example, Death Knights are weak when it comes to escape cooldowns (i.e. "run over here immediately.") The Worgen racial however gives them a speed boost, which can be the difference between your tank needing extra healing (or even a battle-rez) or not.

The_Jackal

2018-04-11, 05:28 PM

For the most part this is true, but some boss mechanics proc randomly and so having a spare/emergency ability (for when your class abilities are all on cooldown) can help, especially on a progression encounter where everyone's gear isn't quite up to snuff.

Also, some class deficiencies can be helped by racials. For example, Death Knights are weak when it comes to escape cooldowns (i.e. "run over here immediately.") The Worgen racial however gives them a speed boost, which can be the difference between your tank needing extra healing (or even a battle-rez) or not.

I'll concede that the active abilities have the potential to be more impactful than the passives, however, all raid content is designed with running it without any particular class, to say nothing of a particular race/class combination, and the utility of one set of racials is going to vary wildly with the encounter in question.

At day's end, however, I'm not talking about mechanics, I'm talking about human nature, and the character of the median WoW player. This is not a forum-crawling hardcore raider, this is the average scrub you'll run into in LFR. Those make up the overpowering majority of the WoW player base, and I'm pretty confident they're picking the race/class that pleases their sense of aesthetics.

Psyren

2018-04-11, 05:55 PM

Oh I agree, aesthetic concerns are probably the driving factor behind race choice (both in general, and for a certain class combo.)

But you can't also correlate the prevalence of a certain race and their aesthetic qualities either. Certainly that's a factor (albeit a subjective one) but there are plenty of others, such as certain race/class combinations simply not being available, or the races themselves not being available, or specific cosmetic options for a given race that a lot of people would like not being available, or lots of people rolling a race during expansion X when it was new and shiny before swiftly getting bored with WoW as a whole, and so on. So pulling out a survey that says more alliance druids are night elves than worgen is fine and factual, but concluding that the numbers clearly mean most people believe worgen are teh uggo is not.

Winthur

2018-04-11, 06:15 PM

but concluding that the numbers clearly mean most people believe worgen are teh uggo is not.

Purely objective and entirely agreeable opinion: they are. The snarl is stupid, not even dog-like and their postures are weird.

The_Jackal

2018-04-11, 06:28 PM

Purely objective and entirely agreeable opinion: they are. The snarl is stupid, not even dog-like and their postures are weird.

Seconded. If you don't want to use a pejorative term, then we can go with 'human-like and not human-like' in lieu of pretty and ugly. Look, we can all agree that attractivness is subjective, but in general, a consensus forms about beauty which is based on norms.

I really liked the look of my male Undead Warrior, I think he looked hyper-metal, but I think it's fair to say that the look I chose was not popular, and my conclusions about the developer motivations which drove the new playable races they chose is driven by that popularity. That's really the only point I'm trying to make.

At least in my own case, there are other aesthetic issues which can attract me to, or repel me from, a particular racial pick. One in particular is the Draenei voice acting, in particular their 'HAH!!! HIIIIYAH!!!' spam with all their combat animations. Sooooo annoying, and unfortunate, because I really like the look of Dreanei, but not enough to put up with the constant shrieking during combat.

Or, to take another example, the incessant butt-scratching animations of the Tauren. I'm a legendary warrior of the horde, with access to mighty artifacts of yore, and yet I comport myself like a 7-year old boy with poor hygiene. Not cool.

For that matter, one thing that always annoyed me about the Night Elves (personally) was the incessant bouncing.

Winthur

2018-04-11, 07:05 PM

was the incessant bouncing.

Kinda don't get what's up with that when they were kinda supposed to be those really feral badasses that gave Grommash Hellscream the greatest murderboner of his lifetime and then they bounce around a bit. Then again, I like pretty much everything about Night Elf animations, I just always wondered why this one is so odd or even in character. Then again, the general neuterization of the Night Elves (impact on the world, mannerisms, Tyrande's decision making) is a pretty huge complaint for most people I've interacted with.

I also play with stuff mostly muted because I play this game to disassociate and I care much less about sounds when I have a podcast or whatever in the background. It definitely helps me mask unsavory aspects of the game like the Human Male sounding like a douche, Gnome Male sounding way too high-pitched and hyper no matter what, Dwarf Female sounding like Nanny Ogg and pretty much all the OG Horde females sounding like a bagpipe with a smoking addiction.

The primary issue I have with WoW models is that most males look atrocious without beards. Humans have the light reflect very weirdly from their face without facial hair, Night Elves look like Smooth Squidward without one, Gnomes generally benefit a lot from visually reducing the mass of their head, Orcs without beard draw attention to their slanted mouth. Honorable mention to the Undead who look best embracing their Raziel mode and having no lower jaw.

Psyren

2018-04-11, 11:36 PM

Purely objective and entirely agreeable opinion: they are.

Heh.

Seconded. If you don't want to use a pejorative term, then we can go with 'human-like and not human-like' in lieu of pretty and ugly. Look, we can all agree that attractivness is subjective, but in general, a consensus forms about beauty which is based on norms.

Right... :-\

Well, I'm not here to try and convince you that Worgen look great. I for one hate their casting animations, and the way robes look on them. Though being a druid makes that pretty moot, since I'll be laserbearchicken half the time anyway. But do WoW's humans look any better in my opinion, heck no.

The_Jackal

2018-04-12, 02:46 AM

Right... :-\

Well, I'm not here to try and convince you that Worgen look great. I for one hate their casting animations, and the way robes look on them. Though being a druid makes that pretty moot, since I'll be laserbearchicken half the time anyway. But do WoW's humans look any better in my opinion, heck no.

Yes, certain races work better, aesthetically, with certain classes. I think Worgens make great rogues, and humans look pretty good in heavy plate, and yes, to Winthur with regard to facial hair. I liked my Nelf mage, I think Dwarf Hunters look cool, and I also would accept a Goblin Hunter on a motorcycle with a Devilsaur pet. Which is kind of my point, here. I'm not saying what you should like, I'm saying that my driving goal when making a character is achieving an aesthetic, and everything else kind of takes a back seat to that.

Neftren

2018-04-12, 02:08 PM

For anyone stuck on Imp Mother Agatha: Lightblood Elixirs stack, so just use about ten of them and then the encounter is pretty easy. :smallcool:

Icewraith

2018-04-13, 01:49 PM

Welp, my raid group is as progressed as it's going to be. AOTC is done, and we don't have the raw numbers or people on the same server to think about Mythic.

We should have had this several weeks ago, but were delayed thanks to 1: Heroic Coven and 2: Real Life issues. 4 hours a week!

Heroic Coven is incredibly frustrating. It's also mostly boring, with short bursts of RNG that eventually combine to screw us over. Our raid composition is also fairly bad for handling Norgannon's Army.

MCerberus

2018-04-13, 01:50 PM

Sian

2018-04-13, 02:00 PM

It's very tentatively shaping up to at the very least not being a total dud after Legion which is widely considered the best expansion since Wrath ...

Jury is still out through since we still know so relatively little about how the meta-plot is tied together other than Alliance and Horde start hating each other again

Icewraith

2018-04-13, 02:06 PM

I've found gnome rogues to look pretty good in northrend armor and an eyepatch. They vary super wildly depending on item set though.

Anyway, Activision/Blizzard is currently on my naughty list. Is the newest expansion shaping up to be anything worth reconsidering this for?

It's too soon to say anything definite about how the next expansion will shape up until it drops in a few months, the current one I think will compare favorably to previous expansions for most people. The current expansion is probably in my top three, personally. Possibly my top two.

Sian

2018-04-13, 02:21 PM

my expansion rankings would probably be Wrath>Legion>BurningCrusade>Cataclysm>Mist>Warlords ... if you were to plug in Vanilla somewhere, it would be somewhere between BC and Cata

Psyren

2018-04-13, 02:26 PM

Yeah, Legion is pretty up there. The big lore payoffs, Mythic+ as a viable alternative to raiding, the varied artifact acquisition stuff, them trying (and mostly succeeding) to make each spec play differently while all being viable, and scaling the endgame area were all great additions to the formula. Class Order Halls beat the pants off of Garrisons too as collaborative spaces.

Where they stumbled, besides WoW's general flaws of uninspiring small-scale combat and being a subscription MMO with so many quality F2P options available, was in the horrendous AP grind. By the time they improved it, they had turned off quite a number of returning players, all of my friends included.

But with all those pluses I don't think I'll be back. I have no interest in "Battling for Azeroth", and certainly none for the current faction leaders eagerly charging off with their respective idiot/villain balls. Call me when Azshara shows up to take a soaking wet dump on everything so we have to join forces again.

my expansion rankings would probably be Wrath>Legion>BurningCrusade>Cataclysm>Mist>Warlords ... if you were to plug in Vanilla somewhere, it would be somewhere between BC and Cata

My ranking mirrors yours, except I would move Vanilla down one more slot to be just above Mists rather than just above Cata.

Sian

2018-04-13, 05:07 PM

My ranking mirrors yours, except I would move Vanilla down one more slot to be just above Mists rather than just above Cata.

Well ... giving it more than a quick think, I'd probably review my listing into saying that Cataclysm and Vanilla is so close as to be practically equally good/average/bad

From what we know as of yet, I'm cautiously certain that BoA would at the most pessimistic clock in somewhere between TBC and Cata/Vanilla ... and depending on exactly how strong/durable the end-game activities are, it might be up just below Legion (... the villain ball carrying on all sides would probably drag it down below Legion in any case, unless that manage to plot themselves into very good reasonings ... and probably kill off (or at least neuter) Sylvanas since she's probably the most annoyingly hyped character in the whole setting)

MCerberus

2018-04-14, 12:19 AM

It's too soon to say anything definite about how the next expansion will shape up until it drops in a few months, the current one I think will compare favorably to previous expansions for most people. The current expansion is probably in my top three, personally. Possibly my top two.

That doesn't bode well, since Legion at this point was endless hype shouting, but that could just be... you know... Warlords.

As for ratings, if we're allowed to go home again:
Wrath> BC>Legion>Vanilla>Panda>Cata>Watching all the boss kill scenes on youtube > elective foot surgery>Warlords.
Without the nostalgia goggles, Vanilla and BC take a hell of a beating though. Seriously, you got one-shot by a dude whose biggest stat is spirit, cause that's all they give him, because of RNG and a 3.6 speed weapon, but win anyway because more people on your team could afford horses.

The Glyphstone

2018-04-14, 08:37 AM

And let's not forget that in Vanilla, 'adds spawning in the middle of a fight' was a amazing and innovative boss mechanic to deal with.

Spore

2018-04-14, 08:43 AM

Kish

2018-04-14, 08:44 AM

And let's not forget that in Vanilla, 'adds spawning in the middle of a fight' was a amazing and innovative boss mechanic to deal with.
I don't think the Deadmines boss fights were really supposed to be seen as all that amazing and innovative.

Psyren

2018-04-14, 04:04 PM

The meme part of my brain wants to make a "Muscle Wizard style" Maghar Orc Priest. The lore nerd wants to create a cool Shadowmoon "void/light shaman". I also want my priest to be a golden-eyed female blood elf.

How should I decide on a main character class when I cannot even decide on a race?

Wait, are Orc Priests a thing now? :smallconfused::smallyuk:

I don't think the Deadmines boss fights were really supposed to be seen as all that amazing and innovative.

Cataclysm made that place downright scary :smalleek:

MCerberus

2018-04-14, 04:36 PM

And let's not forget that in Vanilla, 'adds spawning in the middle of a fight' was a amazing and innovative boss mechanic to deal with.

Ooh, how about "we're not going to buff hunters, we'll just make sure the raid wipes if you don't have enough"

Spore

2018-04-17, 07:47 AM

Wait, are Orc Priests a thing now? :smallconfused::smallyuk:

Why, yes. Though I find Orc Mages a lot more odd. At least shadowmoon void shamans aka shadow priests make sense. And there is no outcry seeing undead holy priests (they should be destroyed by their magic), or the undead discipline priest Alonsus Faol who is canon btw (http://de.wowhead.com/champion=875/alonsus-faol).

Maybe emboldened: At least they are not destroyed by their primary source of magic!

(Yes, I realize a player character permanently in shadow form would be insane after a couple hours and only an undead would not waste away by using shadow magic constantly. the priest class is a walking contradiction if you use both healing and shadow)

Kish

2018-04-17, 08:38 AM

Not only that, how do mages work? Fire? Fire kills people (and that's what fire mages use it for)!

Or maybe using magic to control an element doesn't imply being constantly immersed in the most destructive manifestation of that element.

Psyren

2018-04-17, 08:53 AM

It's a short hop from Orc Priests to Orc Paladins, which... sigh.

Well, if they end up abolishing all race/class restrictions at least I'll finally get my friggin' Worgen Monk.

The_Jackal

2018-04-17, 12:44 PM

Eh, I'm conflicted about race/class restrictions. On the one hand, I think some of the most classic fantasy characters are people who fly in the face of tropes. On the other hand, some combinations really make no sense, like a Tauren Rogue.

Spore

2018-04-17, 05:02 PM

Well, if they end up abolishing all race/class restrictions at least I'll finally get my friggin' Worgen Monk.

Monk needs additional animations but you can do Pandaria's rolling daily quest as worgen so at least a Worgen rolling animation is ingame.

Icewraith

2018-04-18, 02:38 PM

Why, yes. Though I find Orc Mages a lot more odd. At least shadowmoon void shamans aka shadow priests make sense. And there is no outcry seeing undead holy priests (they should be destroyed by their magic), or the undead discipline priest Alonsus Faol who is canon btw (http://de.wowhead.com/champion=875/alonsus-faol).

Maybe emboldened: At least they are not destroyed by their primary source of magic!

(Yes, I realize a player character permanently in shadow form would be insane after a couple hours and only an undead would not waste away by using shadow magic constantly. the priest class is a walking contradiction if you use both healing and shadow)

Undead Holy/Disc priests aren't weird as soon as you establish that Forsaken aren't harmed by healing magic. Orc Mages though... I am having a bit of trouble with that.

Spore

2018-04-18, 03:47 PM

Undead Holy/Disc priests aren't weird as soon as you establish that Forsaken aren't harmed by healing magic. Orc Mages though... I am having a bit of trouble with that.

The forsaken startimg area explicitly states that channeling the light is imcredibly painful for undead. A fact that drives many light wielding undead humans away from it.

Kish

2018-04-20, 02:57 PM

Anyone know what Ben Brode did for/to WoW?

The_Jackal

2018-04-20, 03:32 PM

Anyone know what Ben Brode did for/to WoW?

He was a QA tester (https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Ben_Brode), he was one of the first people assigned to Team 5, the Hearthstone team, put there by Rob Pardo, WoW's lead designer at the time. He good his moonshot opportunity at Blizz, and made the most of it, so good on him.

Does anyone care enough to calculate the force of said explosion?

A 22 gram frog converted entirely into energy would produce approximately 6.6 million joules of energy, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, which is equivalent to about a kilogram and a half of TNT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent). If released more slowly, it's enough energy to heat water for a 7 minute shower (http://genesisnow.com.au/reference/energy-examples/).

Kish

2018-04-20, 03:35 PM

So little or nothing in WoW can be traced to him, is the answer to my question?

The_Jackal

2018-04-20, 03:40 PM

So little or nothing in WoW can be traced to him, is the answer to my question?

Well, nothing that's been published, but speaking as someone who works in the industry, don't underestimate the influence and impact of good QA, and the crippling time-suck that is bad QA.

Spore

2018-04-20, 04:31 PM

A 22 gram frog converted entirely into energy would produce approximately 6.6 million joules of energy, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, which is equivalent to about a kilogram and a half of TNT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent). If released more slowly, it's enough energy to heat water for a 7 minute shower (http://genesisnow.com.au/reference/energy-examples/).

Ah, total conversion to energy and back with the weight difference would do the trick. You need more energy to produce the missing "prince" parts. :)

Anyone know what Ben Brode did for/to WoW?

I don't know but he will always be Lumberjack Santa to me.

The_Jackal

2018-04-20, 05:35 PM

Here's an interesting video I ran across recently, some interesting observations, not all of which I agree with, but still, worth looking at and discussing, if people are interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfVtrIAvo80

It's a long video, but I think he's got some good points and bad points, and I'm interested in what other folks might think.

Psyren

2018-04-20, 08:31 PM

I mean, Cliffnotes? That's a lot of WestWorld episodes I could be catching up on :smalleek:

The_Jackal

2018-04-20, 08:58 PM

I mean, Cliffnotes? That's a lot of WestWorld episodes I could be catching up on :smalleek:

Fair point.

Kish

2018-04-20, 09:09 PM

Yeah...I know why I want it. If someone made a long video based on the premise that they speak for everyone who want(ed/s) it, using the past tense, I suspect watching it would just be needlessly annoying.

MCerberus

2018-04-20, 09:12 PM

I know a lot of people have their reasons, but I still don't think the classic server is going to be long-term successful. Imagine you get transported back into high school with adult memories, experience, and competencies. Even your SO/best friends... you couldn't relate to them at all. You're different.

What I think people want is more modern WoW where realms matter again. Where if you see someone on the gulch, IT'S ON. Where you meet someone who invites you to tag along on farm content, leading you to a new guild. They want alliances, and ad-hoc PvP events, the heroes, the heels, the "personalities", the clique channels. The server is its own story, and people want to be one of all these things. Hell, I was in a "heel" guild all through vanilla. The best times.

I don't think wow is in a state to provide these by going back to past mechanisms.

Psyren

2018-04-21, 10:33 AM

I don't think a summary of the

good points and bad points
from a 2+ hour video is too much to ask for. Or just pull out the 1 or 2 you want to discuss most.

I know a lot of people have their reasons, but I still don't think the classic server is going to be long-term successful. Imagine you get transported back into high school with adult memories, experience, and competencies. Even your SO/best friends... you couldn't relate to them at all. You're different.

Yep.

What I think people want is more modern WoW where realms matter again. Where if you see someone on the gulch, IT'S ON. Where you meet someone who invites you to tag along on farm content, leading you to a new guild. They want alliances, and ad-hoc PvP events, the heroes, the heels, the "personalities", the clique channels. The server is its own story, and people want to be one of all these things. Hell, I was in a "heel" guild all through vanilla. The best times.

I don't think wow is in a state to provide these by going back to past mechanisms.

Outside of an RP server I've never really connected with the other folks online. My favorite online games are the ones that I can play with IRL friends, and for the most part the online-only players are just bots capable of complex behavior. If I needed help (or they did) we could interact, but that was about the extent of what I wanted. No doubt it's a minority experience but I don't want "personalities" or "alliances" or "heels" clogging up my free time for gaming, I want to be left alone. (Or as Yahtzee put it in his Guild Wars 2 review, "I want to play by myself where everyone can see me.")

Icewraith

2018-04-23, 05:19 PM

He was a QA tester (https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Ben_Brode), he was one of the first people assigned to Team 5, the Hearthstone team, put there by Rob Pardo, WoW's lead designer at the time. He good his moonshot opportunity at Blizz, and made the most of it, so good on him.

A 22 gram frog converted entirely into energy would produce approximately 6.6 million joules of energy, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, which is equivalent to about a kilogram and a half of TNT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent). If released more slowly, it's enough energy to heat water for a 7 minute shower (http://genesisnow.com.au/reference/energy-examples/).

You forgot to square the c.

22g is .022kg
c is ~3x10^8 m/s
E=m*c^2 (Special Relativity mass-energy equivalence at rest)
.022*(3x10^8)^2 = 1.98x10^15 kg*m^2/s^2 = 1.98*10^15 Joules.

Using your links, that's almost a day's worth of natural gas for the entire continent of Australia.
Or ~470000 metric tons of TNT. (Just under half a Megaton of TNT)

I was reading your examples and thinking to myself "that can't be right, if I took a seven-minute shower using the heat from anything macroscopic completely converted to energy I should be dead several times over. Probably from plasma exposure, not steam burns."

The_Jackal

2018-04-23, 06:10 PM

You forgot to square the c.

22g is .022kg
c is ~3x10^8 m/s
E=m*c^2 (Special Relativity mass-energy equivalence at rest)
.022*(3x10^8)^2 = 1.98x10^15 kg*m^2/s^2 = 1.98*10^15 Joules.

Using your links, that's almost a day's worth of natural gas for the entire continent of Australia.
Or ~470000 metric tons of TNT. (Just under half a Megaton of TNT)

I was reading your examples and thinking to myself "that can't be right, if I took a seven-minute shower using the heat from anything macroscopic completely converted to energy I should be dead several times over. Probably from plasma exposure, not steam burns."

Whoops, you're totally right.

MCerberus

2018-04-23, 07:09 PM

I was reading your examples and thinking to myself "that can't be right, if I took a seven-minute shower using the heat from anything macroscopic completely converted to energy I should be dead several times over. Probably from plasma exposure, not steam burns."

Eventually, we all get jaded enough in age to need a shower that will physically destroy the room it's taken in to wake up in the morning.

edit, such a thing would actually make sense in the Wow universe. The only thing is getting chewed out because the spirit healer hasn't had her coffee yet.

The_Jackal

2018-04-23, 08:32 PM

I don't think a summary of thefrom a 2+ hour video is too much to ask for. Or just pull out the 1 or 2 you want to discuss most.

Indeed not. I'll just pick the first point I find interesting:

"The demand for classic servers is driven by changes introduced to the game over time. The game has improved in ways, but gotten worse in some ways, and in my opinion the things it has lost do not make up for the things it has gained"

This is a point that really resonates with me. I think anyone trying to trot out some kind of mechanistic argument saying that any particular expansion is 'better' is probably going to run afoul of accusations of nostalgia and subjectivity, but the notion that the trade-offs made between early WoW and the modern game have been, on balance, for the worse. Now you might argue that the game has had to evolve to stay relevant, and that if the game had stayed in its "Golden-Age" format, whatever Golden Age you'd choose, it would not be as successful as it is now, but I basically reject that reductive argument, that the only alternative to 'progress' is 'stasis'.

Noxious's musings are grounded in game design terminology, namely the MDA framework (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDA_framework), analyzing the game in terms of mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics.

Graphically, Blizzard is, in my opinion, beyond reproach. WoW is still among the best-looking MMOs on the market, and while aesthetics are subjective, if you accept that Wrath-era WoW was great, it's hard to argue that it's worse now. Any aesthetic quibbles I have with their art team's choices are, for lack of a better term, superficial. So I can't argue that WoW is aesthetically flawed. Mechanically is a bit more debatable, though it's certainly hard to argue that modern WoW compares unfavorably mechanically to, say, Vanilla or Burning Crusade. Certainly the game engine is more polished, and there are fewer bugs, fewer dead specs, fewer dumb rotations, etc. So really, the discussion of what's ailing WoW, to my mind, really occurs in the game's dynamics, the effect that the design choices made by the developers have altered the player behavior and the experience of the game.

Take the dungeon/raid queue mechanics. Certainly, there's nothing mechanically flawed with this system, and you should have no trouble pointing out the drawbacks of the system that preceded its introduction (basically, the manual matchmaking nightmare that vanilla WoW could devolve into). But the introduction of these systems had, IMO, devastating knock-on effects on the the direction the game wound up taking, and those decisions had repercussions that continued to carry us down the track to where we are today. Let me expound on one simple example:

Tanking: Thunderclap vs. Consecrate

In Vanilla and TBC, thunderclap had a target cap: You could affect a maximum of 4 targets in your AOE target rotation, and 3 of those targets would be chosen randomly. In early WoW, this limit had profound implications: You needed to make use of crowd control to ensure that your warrior tank could get enough aggro on his targets. A good tank would supplement his thunderclap damage by switching targets and hitting with sunder armor and heroic strike, to ensure that healers would get too much aggro, and would be able to quickly switch to a loose target and taunt->sunder->heroic to regain aggro should anything get loose on your DPS. By comparison, Paladin had a really easy aggro grab with Consecrate, supplemented by abilities which damaged enemies as they him, but had less straight-up durability when compared to the warrior. Each class provided different challenges to the player, and different rewards for playing well, and also the game mechanics encouraged liberal use of the crowd control abilities that were dispersed among the various classes and specs. Too many mobs could overwhelm a Paladin, while too many mobs might not kill a warrior, but he'd struggle mightily to cope with juggling aggro on too many targets.

The solution the Blizzard developers came up with was pretty unremarkable, and worked fairly well: The thunderclap target cap was removed, and it was given a DoT component to make it stickier, while the paladin's durability was bolstered, and tank threat was improved across the board. Now you had a situation in which you could fairly rely on a decently geared stranger to drop into your group, and be able to keep aggro while you DPSed. Problem solved, right? Well, yes... but you now had a different problem: Namely, once players began to get geared up, the improved aggro control and durability of tanks meant that crowd control became more or less unnecessary. Now you had the late-era Wrath problem where heroics had turned into a boring faceroll. To be sure, other design decisions also contributed to this problem, such as the liberal injection of non-raid content that the designers added to wrath, improving the median level of gear for nearly every player to the point where just about everyone could sleepwalk through, say, Azjol-Nerub.

Once the next expansion dropped, team 2 decided to swing the pendulum in the other direction: Ensure really challenging dungeon content, to make sure the game stayed engaging and challenging. Except that the player based, by this point, weaned on cakewalk dungeons for the past 2 years, immediately rebelled, and unsubscribed in droves, as many dungeons turned into aggravating repair parties where players would routinely drop queue, looking for greener pastures (or, more accurately, someone over-geared to carry them). Clearly, challenge wasn't what players wanted; at least, that's what they said when voting with their feet. So, the dungeon difficulty was patched, and more changes made to ensure parity between various players, and smooth operation of dungeon queues, so that no one would be confronted with an unpleasant experience. The loot systems were changed, talents scrubbed down to a tiny set of minimal options to ensure nobody could make too bad a build, itemization was broken up to reduce loot contention, dropping a large set of items for a wide variety of classes (hunters being the most affected).

Now the narrative I offer here suffers from the flaw of every narrative, that it's never that simple, and more than one motive is behind any decision. But I think I would find few arguments with the assertion that Blizzard's overriding motive has been to make WoW more approachable, less complicated, and more conducive to low-engagement play. Where I might find some argument, however, is my own opinion that those goals have made the game substantially less rewarding to play than the game it has replaced. Other commentators have likened the MMO experience to a mountain climb: Each step may not be profoundly challenging, but it's a pastime that rewards persistence and dedication, and I think it's an apt metaphor, or at least one that suits my point, which is that Blizzard has been steadfastly been re-grading the mountain for the past 12 years, to the point where it all feels like a kiddie slope.

Well, that turned into a bit of a meandering rant on my own. :P

Kish

2018-04-23, 08:37 PM

That sounds substantially more accurate and less aggravating than I feared it might be. Thanks, Jackal.

Winthur

2018-04-24, 11:30 AM

I tried playing on a TBC private server that shall not be named the other day, and I found the need to pull every single mob with 100% health and mana rather aggravating and the levelling pace to be too slow, though I do agree with the fact that the late Wrath approach had many obvious flaws. It seems like it's very difficult to reconcile "need to push for the end-game of every expansion ASAP because that's where the meat is" with "making levelling fun and challenging instead of a sleepwalk".

Psyren

2018-04-24, 01:42 PM

The_Jackal

2018-04-24, 05:47 PM

On the subject of the leveling experience I don't have much to say, as I haven't leveled a new character start to finish since Cataclysm, multiple expansions ago at this point. It's possible that the most recent pre-BfA world-scaling changes have made that feel more challenging/rewarding and less faceroll/tedious, I wouldn't know. If I ever get compelled to reroll for WoW - which might be this expansion or the one after - I'll try it out then.

Hopefully Team 2's introduction of level scaling will address this issue somewhat, though I still think the mentor/sidekick mechanic is genius, from a community-building and content value standpoint.

The idea is that difficulty should come from the dungeon mechanics, not from fighting with the mechanics of your own class. Now, in Cata, some of the dungeons were actually overtuned (Stonecore at launch for example, and a couple of fights in Grim Batol, and the sheer length of Deadmines was an issue) and these were seen as frustrating - but the majority were fine.

I think 'Difficulty should come from dungeon rather than class mechanics' is a bit of a false dichotomy. Rotational complexity and interesting decisions are absolutely part and parcel of what make a class interesting to play, and why few mages, for example, would campaign for a return to Vanilla era frostbolt spam. I completely agree that the class mechanics should be fun and satisfying, and will concede that thunderclap as originally conceived may not have been the best-designed ability.

But my point is more about how the dedication to automating the match-making process and then relentlessly simplifying the game mechanics and dynamics to try and eradicate the resulting consequences of an anonymous queue has resulted in a game which has progressively had its aesthetics and challenge washed away. Signature abilities and class features have been pruned away, or watered down to the point where they no longer feel as impactful as they once did. To be fair, not every change was made exclusively to cater to the needs of the PvE queue systems, but I feel like the most consequential changes have been. Also, I do understand why many of the changes were made, because balancing options is hard, and when you've got 36 talent trees, each with 30+ talents, regression testing and iteration becomes progressively more insane, to say nothing of having problems just running out of ideas. But I really do mourn the loss of detail. That ability to tweak a couple talent points off a cookie cutter build, or to come up with something off the approved template, and make it work, really made the game more rewarding, and made me more invested in my character. Now they've got a system where you're more or less expected to swap talents between each fight. It's not longer a piece of your character's identity, it's just a strange new set of trousers, or stance you can swap when you're out of combat.

Psyren

2018-04-24, 08:28 PM

A lot of what you're calling bugs, I call features. Being able to queue for group content and being able to swap your build between boss fights for optimal effectiveness are both very good things in my opinion. And we have more "signature abilities" (by spec now, not just by class) than ever before thanks to Legion.

Spore

2018-04-25, 03:56 AM

All this sounds like Classic Servers will fail spectacularly.

Kish

2018-04-25, 09:39 AM

This thread is probably the last place it makes sense to look for people who actually want old World of Warcraft back.

The_Jackal

2018-04-25, 10:41 AM

This thread is probably the last place it makes sense to look for people who actually want old World of Warcraft back.

I don't think you're going to find many places where you have more people who are sufficiently invested in a 12+ year old game to consider going back to a time when it wasn't as much of an over-curated theme-park. Sporeegg is right, imo. Classic WoW will be a damp squib. At best it will be a 6 month affair while nostalgic players come back, take a spin around the old stomping grounds, then go back to playing what they're playing. But I also think it's fair to suggest that there's more to the nostalgia than just nostalgia, if you know what I'm saying.

Kish

2018-04-25, 12:32 PM

I don't think you're going to find many places where you have more people who are sufficiently invested in a 12+ year old game to consider going back to a time when it wasn't as much of an over-curated theme-park.
This seems a contradictory sentence. Given that you and I, if no one else here, apparently agree on a fundamentally negative description of modern WoW...why wouldn't we play the version of the game we enjoyed playing if it was available again? Would you like to count how many of the threads on this forum are dedicated to games at least 12 years old?

(If you do, have fun; I don't see the point myself--but that's because I find the "it's 12 years old" argument entirely incomprehensible, not because I find it invincibly compelling.)

The_Jackal

2018-04-25, 01:22 PM

This seems a contradictory sentence. Given that you and I, if no one else here, apparently agree on a fundamentally negative description of modern WoW...why wouldn't we play the version of the game we enjoyed playing if it was available again? Would you like to count how many of the threads on this forum are dedicated to games at least 12 years old?

(If you do, have fun; I don't see the point myself--but that's because I find the "it's 12 years old" argument entirely incomprehensible, not because I find it invincibly compelling.)

Because there are games on the market now that were not on the market in 2004? Because technology is constantly progressing? Because we've seen and done it all already? I think its important to distinguish the dynamics of Vanilla WoW with the content of Vanilla WoW. My affection for the places in vanilla WoW, like Winterspring, Un'Goro crater, and Blackrock mountain are mostly nostalgic in nature; what I like about them is the feeling I had visiting these places for the first time. By any objective measure, newer zones in the newer expansions are better. There's no question that Surmar is light-years better than Winterspring (in fact, I think overall Suramar was a triumph, and the 'long-term progression' zone is an idea that MMOs should really develop more aggressively). So when I talk about wanting to go back to the Vanilla era, I'm talking about dynamics: The effect that game mechanics and systems have on the behavior of the player community, and the general experience of play.

Look, I like some old games to, but there are old games that age well, and there are old games that don't. Alpha Centauri is an example of a game that has, at least for me, stupendous legs. Games that are iterative, and have good replay value can age well, where games that are narrative and finite in their content tend to do less well, in my opinion. I really liked "No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in Harm's Way", it's a great game whose graphics and gameplay hold up surprisingly well, but I can't really imagine bothering to go back and replay it again, to do the same gunfights and watch the same cut-scenes. Likewise, all of us going back to Tirisfal Glades or Goldshire or Razor Hill with a level 5 <your class here> is just going to be the same exercise again. In fact, barring a certain lack of challenge and abrupt leveling curve, there's nothing stopping you from doing just that, for free; after all, WoW is free up to level 20.

So, if nobody is busting the doors down on the current low-level experience, I think it's daft to expect that they'll do it when they roll back to an earlier build of the game.

Kish

2018-04-25, 01:31 PM

In fact, barring a certain lack of challenge and abrupt leveling curve, there's nothing stopping you from doing just that, for free; after all, WoW is free up to level 20.
Lack of challenge, mechanics that amount to "your damage button might create a slightly different visual effect if you're a different class/spec" until well after level 20, hideous graphics, obnoxiously smug self-referential jokes...any dungeon groups you join being all "charge ahead full-tilt and smash everything..."

In other words, barring that the game we're talking about--World of Warcraft as it was pre-Cataclysm--currently doesn't exist, there's nothing stopping people from playing it, and if no one wants to play the current, how did you put it, "over-curated theme park" version of WoW, why would they want to play the version lots of people wanted to play? Uh...

You continue to mystify me by answering your own questions before you ask them, Jackal. I get "I like the current version of WoW," though I can't relate. I even get MCerberus' argument that, assuming everyone who wants classic WoW just wants to reclaim their childhood somehow, everyone who wants classic WoW will inevitably be disappointed. I do not, in the least, get the logic behind pointing out that something's awful and then saying anyone who doesn't want that surely doesn't want something that was fun, either. The closest I can get to what you're saying making sense, is focusing on the "there are games on the market now that were not on the market in 2004" part and treating that as a statement that you don't believe people play 12-year-old games--but you explicitly said that's not the case. Pre-Cataclysm WoW did not age badly, because it didn't get a chance to age at all; a Cataclysm hit it, an unfortunate hazard of MMORPGs.

Lemme tell you a story. One which, I promise, has a happy ending.

Recently, I was given two free weeks of time on my old WoW accounts. I was curious enough about the current mechanics to load up a character I played before I quit, a Demonology warlock, spend a few minutes figuring out the new mechanics, and queue for a random Burning Crusade dungeon. (I kind of wanted to try the raid finder, but the only characters I had high enough level to queue for that were tanks, and I didn't want to try a more demanding role. ...Anything you say about Raid Finder being too easy to have demanding roles will be used against you in courtthis thread.) We got Shadow Labyrinth, a dungeon which was notoriously, gloriously tough in Burning Crusade days.

My group ran through it full-tilt. We came up on Blackheart the Inciter. As one did when I was last there, I switched to my lowest-damage minion, my voidwalker. The tank asked why I had a tank pet out. After the battle, I resummoned my felguard; the tank said something that made it clear that, even after being repeatedly mind-controlled by Blackheart, he had no idea why I wouldn't have kept the felguard out throughout. We continued, smashing everything. Incidentally, at over level 80, I had fewer abilities than a level 20 warlock did when I first played.

So. We got to Murmur. I noticed that at some point Blizzard had added this bright red highlighting to Murmur's blast zone, which wasn't exactly subtle before. Of course (or once it would have been "of course"), I stayed outside the blast zone, including running out of it when Murmur pulled me in. Murmur started casting Sonic Boom. My felguard ran out independently; huh, they buffed minion AI at some point.

Murmur completed the Sonic Boom, and in the chat log, I saw that three group members had just died. The tank was down to a sliver of health. The only one who'd shown any interest in avoiding getting blasted was me.

Told you it had a happy ending.

(Oh, we--which mostly means me, since almost everyone else was dead--killed Murmur, no trouble. So, so, so easy now, even if Murmur's Sonic Boom still has teeth should one completely ignore it.)

So yeah. Why wouldn't someone who wanted classic WoW back play what's currently on live? You tell me.

The_Jackal

2018-04-25, 03:23 PM

You continue to mystify me by answering your own questions before you ask them, Jackal. I get "I like the current version of WoW," though I can't relate. I even get MCerberus' argument that, assuming everyone who wants classic WoW just wants to reclaim their childhood somehow, everyone who wants classic WoW will inevitably be disappointed. I do not, in the least, get the logic behind pointing out that something's awful and then saying anyone who doesn't want that surely doesn't want something that was fun, either. The closest I can get to what you're saying making sense, is focusing on the "there are games on the market now that were not on the market in 2004" part and treating that as a statement that you don't believe people play 12-year-old games--but you explicitly said that's not the case. Pre-Cataclysm WoW did not age badly, because it didn't get a chance to age at all; a Cataclysm hit it, an unfortunate hazard of MMORPGs.

"I like the current version of WoW" is not how I would have condensed my block of text, though. There are features that I think are legitimate improvements, and there are features that completely detract from the overall MMO experience, to the point where one is tempted to ask, "Why don't I just play Skyrim?". My suspicion is that were we to discuss this in person, we'd quickly agree more than we disagree as to the state of WoW, and what could be done to improve it. And that's really what my point is: "These are trends which, while they may seem positive, have pernicious outcomes in how they wind up shaping the experience of play".

I'm not sure what I said to invoke your ire, I think we largely agree on the rather meager theme-park immitation of itself that WoW has devolved into. But I, personally, do not expect Classic WoW, that is, a complete rollback to vanilla, without any concessions to later game innovations, to succeed. Not because it's not a better game than the current fare, it absolutely is (in my opinion), rather because we, the fan base of this old game, have played it, thoroughly, and for years. If, for some reason, Blizzard had stopped development on WoW at 2009, and simply left the servers unchanged from late Wrath to today, I think we'd find the state of affairs just as dreary and intolerable as now, only for different reasons (namely, a lack of new content, and meaningful rewards to pursue).

What I want is not Classic WoW, it's WoW Reborn, with a return to a type of engrossing, immersive, and challenging game that WoW was at its inception, with all the detail, depth and complexity I enjoyed, and a decided turn away from the highly optimized multiplayer treadmill that we currently have. I'd be happy to see them actually even drop the Warcraft setting and try a new fantasy IP, something whose aesthetics are more compatible with modern platform capabilites, and whose scope is geared more toward enjoyable group content, and less on weekly lockout content. But hey, if some peeps really go back and get into Classic WoW, I'm happy for them, but I can't imagine that's going to be a sudden resurgence of the missing millions of players who left WoW after it jumped the shark.

Lemme tell you a story. One which, I promise, has a happy ending.

Recently, I was given two free weeks of time on my old WoW accounts. I was curious enough about the current mechanics to load up a character I played before I quit, a Demonology warlock, spend a few minutes figuring out the new mechanics, and queue for a random Burning Crusade dungeon. (I kind of wanted to try the raid finder, but the only characters I had high enough level to queue for that were tanks, and I didn't want to try a more demanding role. ...Anything you say about Raid Finder being too easy to have demanding roles will be used against you in courtthis thread.) We got Shadow Labyrinth, a dungeon which was notoriously, gloriously tough in Burning Crusade days.

My group ran through it full-tilt. We came up on Blackheart the Inciter. As one did when I was last there, I switched to my lowest-damage minion, my voidwalker. The tank asked why I had a tank pet out. After the battle, I resummoned my felguard; the tank said something that made it clear that, even after being repeatedly mind-controlled by Blackheart, he had no idea why I wouldn't have kept the felguard out throughout. We continued, smashing everything. Incidentally, at over level 80, I had fewer abilities than a level 20 warlock did when I first played.

So. We got to Murmur. I noticed that at some point Blizzard had added this bright red highlighting to Murmur's blast zone, which wasn't exactly unsubtle before. Of course (or once it would have been "of course"), I stayed outside the blast zone, including running out of it when Murmur pulled me in. Murmur started casting Sonic Boom. My felguard ran out independently; huh, they buffed minion AI at some point.

Murmur completed the Sonic Boom, and in the chat log, I saw that three group members had just died. The tank was down to a sliver of health. The only one who'd shown any interest in avoiding getting blasted was me.

Told you it had a happy ending.

(Oh, we--which mostly means me, since almost everyone else was dead--killed Murmur, no trouble. So, so, so easy now, even if Murmur's Sonic Boom still has teeth should one completely ignore it.)

So yeah. Why wouldn't someone who wanted classic WoW back play what's currently on live? You tell me.

Good story, and yes, happy ending. Now I'm sure someone will tell you that the experience you're looking for is still in the game as 'Mythic+' dungeons, but to me, that implementation makes it feel like more treadmill at the end of the escalator, rather than an integral stepping stone in your progression to the top of a challenging journey. It also sharply reduced the number of players from which you can recruit to continue your progression. In my last twirl through Legion, I was in an active and friendly guild, got regular raid slots, but nobody was interested in doing mythic+ content, because getting raid gear was easier to schedule and far more reliable, as a source of quality loot, and in particular, cool-looking set pieces that motivated many players (myself included) to continue into the endgame treadmill in the first place.

Kish

2018-04-25, 03:43 PM

"I like the current version of WoW" is not how I would have condensed my block of text, though.
The only one of those that was meant to be paraphrasing you was the one I said I didn't get. "I like the current version of WoW" is Psyren, and MCerberus, and all the people in this thread I'm not addressing because their perspective is as straightforwardly strange to me as "I like eating broken glass, get that chocolate cake away from me" would be.

You didn't invoke my ire, or I wouldn't be posting this at all.

I think we'll have to wait and see 1) first if it's actually a complete rollback to original WoW or if Blizzard does something characteristically boneheaded, like "WoW Classic! Just like original WoW, except of course everyone loves the dungeon queue!" and 2) how many people want to play it if they do. This is, as I said, pretty close to the worst possible place to look for people who want original-WoW back; I might be the only person in this thread who isn't a current WoW player.

But also, what is "succeed"? Will it have the numbers WoW did at its height? Unlikely. Will a lot of players accustomed to modern-WoW play it for a day, go, "Why am I not maximum level yet?" and quit? I'm sure they will. Will it have enough continuing players for guilds and dungeon groups and Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and at least a few Naxxramas raids? Unless Blizzard actively messes up in a way that loses all of Classic's base (see 1 above).

Psyren

2018-04-25, 06:22 PM

The only one of those that was meant to be paraphrasing you was the one I said I didn't get. "I like the current version of WoW" is Psyren, and MCerberus, and all the people in this thread I'm not addressing because their perspective is as straightforwardly strange to me as "I like eating broken glass, get that chocolate cake away from me" would be.

To carefully extricate the broken glass that is your words out of my mouth, I'd like to point out that I actually don't like the current version of WoW. The game has added a number of progression mechanics that I quite like the idea of (Mythic+ being the most recent), but they're hampered by being shackled to the same stale core gameplay that we had a decade ago - hash table combat, holy trinity, tab-targeting and all. What I'm doing here is praising WoW's innovation (or more accurately, their masterful ability to steal the better progression mechanics of other MMOs and polish them to a mirror sheen) in nearly everything else, but the core is still woefully stagnant and possibly even rotting at this point.

Classic Servers are unfathomably regressive to me because they take those very updated progression mechanics - in my mind, the only strength WoW has left - and remove even that. And whatever community and camaraderie you think will result from going back to battling the UI itself to get anything done, I expect to be fleeting, as Sporegg stated.

Winthur

2018-04-25, 09:46 PM

The_Jackal

2018-04-26, 12:11 AM

Curiously: what exactly is the problem that the dungeon queue causes? Looking in World chat for a long while and hoping that the eager yet slightly underleveled Retribution Paladin suffices isn't exactly the most fun experience, nor is it *that* socially reinforcing.

In my opinion the ultimate effect of an anonymous queuing system is to undermine people's investment in their own behavior and reputation. There's no consequences for behaving like a prick, no particular incentive to communicate, use teamwork, or even tough out a tough encounter or boss fight. There's no reason to impart advice or help to someone who's struggling with their role or class. If you behave like a jerk, there's always another queue, and particular to WoW, if you play one of the advantaged classes (healers or tanks) you can use your privileged position to exert unearned authority upon your team. Now that's not to say that there aren't games where playing in anonymous pugs can work, but these tend to be much less complex, more intuitive games. But games which require and reward coordination do not do well. So, in order to limit the frequency of negative experiences that the queue would produce, the developers gradually turned the game from a game which required teamwork and coordination, to one that did not, and, as Psyren points out, the simplistic mechanics of the game do not hold up without these features.

I'm certainly sympathetic to the woes of the DPS players who languished in LFG for hours prior to the queue's introduction, after all, my first level 60 was a hunter. But on balance, I'd rather do the work to earn the trust and respect of tanks and healers so I could get re-invited than get dumped into a mindless faceroll. I'd rather work to build a party for a challenging and fun dungeon than queue for a boring loot dispenser.

I also think it's possible to re-design WoW so that it handles a queue more gracefully, and supports a wider diversity of roles. I've long argued that the tank/healer/dps trope is holding the MMO genre back, and that a more flexible game that made players more self-sufficient, spread around group synergies more diversely, and had a more engaging NPC AI would make for a much more exciting, intuitive game, one that would much more successfully leverage a 'pick-up-and-play' matchmaking system. There's no mandatory support classes in Diablo 2, and that had fantastic multiplayer. City of Heroes had a much less rigid party system, where you could form a team of up to 8 players, gave tanks more self-sustain, game supports more independence, and also provided hybrid and control archetypes in a game that, once they shook out the bugs, was really very solid, and it had a great community. That's why there's still activity over at their subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/), and still multiple projects to resurrect the game. It was by no means as good a game as WoW, but they definitely found the fairway when it came to making a game engaging to casual and hardcore players alike.

As for Classic, I'll reiterate that while I really appreciate the nuances and difficulty of pre-Cata progression, I don't appreciate the braindead rotations and the general sluggishness of progress. A Protection Paladin one-shotting world mobs with his early game Avenger's Shield is pretty stupid. But drinking before every pull and resorting to fairly counterintuitive mechanics (keep walking backwards while punching this monster in order to exploit the fact that their attack animation has a slightly shorter range than yours!) to save time is also not my cup of tea. I think the levelling experience of Classic WoW has flaws, even if the road to 60 can be engrossing (or not, if you recall the popular conspiracy theory on what the true purpose of the Paladin kit actually is). Having to approach every single boar or spider with caution and respect would be nice if it didn't get really old after the 12th pull and the 13th drink.

Well, I can't really speak with authority on the Paladin design, but I can certainly agree that many classes didn't have the most accessible design or well-thought out rotations and abilities. The warrior, for example, didn't get their major damage dealing ability until level FORTY, and before that, play was largely 'apply rend, swing for white damage, and dump rage with heroic strike'. Again, I'm a huge proponent of making games more intuitive and mechanically challenging, in lieu of making them just arcane and obtuse, both when it comes to class mechanics and encounter mechanics, so I think we're on the same side of this one.

I also insinuate that although Kish's story is somewhat reflective of my experiences, I'd assume that even the proest WoW players upon the game's first iteration were pretty trash at it - though, ofc, you can argue that they had much more stuff to discover. I once watched the World First Ragnaros clear with some commentary and a lot of people made comments on how sloppy the play was, or how screwed up rotations or combos were.

Oh, absolutely. But the trouble with dungeon queue is that you can stay trash, and still get loot, all you need to do is keep queuing until you get matched with someone who overgears the content so badly they can solo the dungeon outright. While you might find someone to carry you with the dungeon finder, there's at least some more incentive to stay engaged with your class, your role, and the content, and some incentive for a better player to help an up-and-comer, as they might be useful to group with in the future.

Psyren

2018-04-26, 12:34 AM

In my opinion the ultimate effect of an anonymous queuing system is to undermine people's investment in their own behavior and reputation. There's no consequences for behaving like a prick, no particular incentive to communicate, use teamwork, or even tough out a tough encounter or boss fight.

You know what good games do? They actually design around that. They don't puncture your tires just to force you to hitchhike - they fix the gorram road.

Unless you're in God-Tier Double-Peppermint-Mocha Mythic Raiding, a mode you should only be running with friends/guildmates in the first place, you shouldn't have to communicate at all - at least not verbally. You should be able to clear the majority of group content by at most emoting, marking targets, pinging the map and using ready check. Mass Effect 3 is my gold standard for small-scale multiplayer for this very reason - the game's mechanics encourage teamwork without any of the kind of social ostracism Big Brother you're promoting above, while still managing to be challenging and engaging and not faceroll. Guild Wars 2 executes a similar philosophy on a much larger scale.

Winthur

2018-04-26, 08:45 AM

YYou should be able to clear the majority of group content by at most emoting, marking targets, pinging the map and using ready check.
Uh, well, but in this game it's generally really boring to do stuff that way, and you can still run into cocky, hotshot tanks that create an impossible pace for you to heal or loot-ninja DPSes.

Kish

2018-04-26, 09:01 AM

Spore

2018-04-26, 09:03 AM

Uh, well, but in this game it's generally really boring to do stuff that way, and you can still run into cocky, hotshot tanks that create an impossible pace for you to heal or loot-ninja DPSes.

They really should make instances have an upper item level. I LOVE timewalking because you cannot faceroll a boss as easily. But you are hard pressed NOT to basically ignore the healer in the current "heroic" instances because stuff is so incredibly easy (and boring). Heck, until mythic +7 everything just dies and barely needs healing (I play vengeance but still).

The_Jackal

2018-04-26, 01:00 PM

Yeah, that...at that point, you're in outright "the game should be awful" territory, as far as I'm concerned. If it needs multiple players then it should need communication. If you could do it just as well with bots then you should have bots to do it with.

Though I guess that explains some of why you would consider the current game bad but the original game even worse.

I'm of two minds about this. I do agree, if you aren't prepared to communicate or think, and you just want a faceroll meatbash, then we need to agree to disagree on what kind of game WoW, or any MMO, should be. On the other hand, there's no mechanic, game system, or incentive you can put in any game that's going to completely eradicate human stupidity, so you're going to have turds in any multiplayer game, period, end of file. As Sartre put it, "Hell is other people."

On the whole, however, I feel that there's more to be gained by putting in systems that encourage people to communicate and have fun together than there is to be lost by occasionally putting players in a situation where the lack of communication will result in being sent to the showers. I have made real-life friends playing WoW. I can't say that about Diablo 2 or Left4Dead or Overwatch. Anyone who can't see value in that, I have sincere concerns about their mental health.

The_Jackal

2018-04-26, 01:20 PM

They really should make instances have an upper item level. I LOVE timewalking because you cannot faceroll a boss as easily. But you are hard pressed NOT to basically ignore the healer in the current "heroic" instances because stuff is so incredibly easy (and boring). Heck, until mythic +7 everything just dies and barely needs healing (I play vengeance but still).

Destiny 2, in spite of being a content-light latrine-fire in general, had, what I thought, was a really ingenious itemization system: Your power level only counts if you're below the enemy's threat level. Overcapping does nothing, so none of the content ever becomes trivial. It's a great system, and one that more games should implement. Sadly, the lack of content, lack of end-game progression, and lack of item balance, and fairly tedious gameplay.

MCerberus

2018-04-26, 03:41 PM

There's an aspect of the 'old design better' argument that hasn't been touched much yet. And that's that WoW has, actually picked up competitors over the years that have kept many of the old-style design choices but iterated the wonkiness out of them without eliminating them.

A big example is Rift, which has toolbar-overload, pretty much the same crafting system, pre-cata talent tree, a fantasy trope vs collection of misfits two faction system, and more. The thing is though, they've added quality-of-life changes everywhere on top of new features wow doesn't have like player housing (bless them... they tried in Warlords).

Then there's ToR, ur WoW clone, which has been quietly doing multiple-expansion arc stories better and avoiding the "we all have Ashbringers" problem since day one.

The_Jackal

2018-04-26, 07:03 PM

And just to prove that I'm chemically incapable of avoiding equivocation, I'd like to point out some examples of later-era WoW features and changes that I actually thought were good! In no particular order:

Scenarios. I kinda liked these bite-sized coop content, and felt that they actually *did* work in the 'fun casual pick up group' type of content that Psyren might appreciate. I do understand why they didn't continue them, as I think they wound up starving dungeon queues of players in MoP. The question really becomes 'where is the sweet spot?' when it comes to level of effort versus rewards, and the 'correct' answer is subjective, but I do think there's a big problem when a particular class of content offers a 'shortcut', because people will ruthlessly exploit it, get all the rewards in the game, and then complain about having nothing to do.

Treasures, from Mists of Pandaria, I thought were kind of okay. A scavenger hunt that gave each player some pocket cash for exploring the world, and added cool lore was a nice way to add some cool flair to the story, kind of like finding Bobbleheads in Fallout 4. Of course, they went completely berserk with them in Warlords of Draenor, while letting regular content languish.

On a related note, Timeless Isle was actually kind of fun, when it was a one-off concept zone. Of course, when that model was spread across the entire continent of Draenor, the shine quickly faded. For both of these concepts, the key is variety.

Suramar's 'Withered Army Training' was another mini-game that I actually enjoyed quite a bit. It was just one fixed location, in a weekly reward system, had fun mechanics and its own little progression system, with some cool rewards. Altogether, I thought it was quite cool.

So it's not like the new custodians of WoW are completely asleep at the wheel, imo. The problem is, they also do some really bizarre and inexplicable changes, like this (https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2018/4/26/17286606/blizzard-world-of-warcraft-battle-for-azeroth-gcd-cooldown). This is a classic example of a team so completely bumfuzzled that they build classes around lining up a ton of cooldowns into a burst window (Colossus Smash, for example), and then throttle the GCD so you can't actually fit all of the cooldowns inside the burst window.

There's an aspect of the 'old design better' argument that hasn't been touched much yet. And that's that WoW has, actually picked up competitors over the years that have kept many of the old-style design choices but iterated the wonkiness out of them without eliminating them.

I think few people in here are advocating a pure, unadulterated reversion to vintage 2004 WoW. I'm certainly not. It's not mere change that's objectionable, it's the effects of those changes on the experience we're having.

A big example is Rift, which has toolbar-overload, pretty much the same crafting system, pre-cata talent tree, a fantasy trope vs collection of misfits two faction system, and more. The thing is though, they've added quality-of-life changes everywhere on top of new features wow doesn't have like player housing (bless them... they tried in Warlords).

I think player housing is an idea that sounds cool but is invariably bad for the game. The more people stay squirreled off in their own personal pocket dimension, the more you're undermining the 'multiplayer' in MMO. Now, guild housing, you have my attention. City of Heroes Super-Bases were a great implementation, let you design your base, earn facilities and teleporters, and also made for a good resource sink, as all bases cost rent. The main thing here is you want to foster a sense of ownership, but without undermining the sense of community. Like, if you could make a Guild-Wide garrison where each player in the guild could show up, and decorate their own building, that would be mega.

Then there's ToR, ur WoW clone, which has been quietly doing multiple-expansion arc stories better and avoiding the "we all have Ashbringers" problem since day one.

You mean Star Wars: The Old Republic? I'm sorry, but while SW:TOR had a group of solid single-player campaigns, as one would expect from Bioware, their MMO components were a mess. The 'NPC faction grind' quiz that game with every mission and flashpoint made doing almost everything super-tedious, and robbed me of any sense of investment I had in my character, since I was pretty much required to curry favor with whichever obnoxious douche companion I was carting around because I wanted their affinity bonuses. Plus, after the 3rd daily mission, I don't want to slog through 4 dialogue circles. Jeebus.

I agree that the 'everyone is special' decision for Legion was a bad misstep, one they started blundering into with Warlords of Draenor, and only got worse with Legion. The worst part is, in addition to causing migraine-inducing cognitive dissonance, they undercut the premise that you're the savior of Azeroth at every turn by having every cutscene focusing on someone else stealing your thunder. My personal favorite was watching Y'rel upstage me in the Battle of Shattrath. It's one thing to be upstaged by some legend of the setting, but Y'rel starts the expansion off as being some random prole, and now she's getting all the cool one-liners after I basiecally carried her worthless hide through two zones.

Kish

2018-04-26, 07:38 PM

ToR is the best single-player CRPG disguised as an MMORPG I've ever played. Also the only single-player CRPG disguised as a morepig I've ever played.

It would have been better if it had simply been designed and released as KotOR 3 with no pretense of being an MMORPG, and it's certainly not in the same market as WoW; that it manages to do the dungeon queue so much better* is entirely a reason for WoW to be mortified. It is not something I would recommend to anyone who said they wanted to play a morepig, because it's not really a morepig.

*In ToR, there are Story modes for each of the half-dozen or so dungeons that are strongly tied into the overall plot, which can be easily soloed; Veteran modes for every dungeon for a group of players regardless of roles, tuned so that a group of all damage-dealers can run them, with healing stations all around each boss fight; and Master modes that require a tank, a healer, and damage-dealers. This means that queuing for Veteran dungeons is nearly instantaneous for everyone, not just for tanks. There's too little communication in random groups for my tastes, but it seems to be exactly Psyren's described ideal; people react to the mechanics instead of ignoring them like in WoW, and there's only discussion if a group wipes or someone has a reason to think someone else doesn't know what to do for a fight where that person needs to do something nonobvious.

Don't ever mistake "better than WoW" for as good as "not existing" where the dungeon queue is concerned, though.

MCerberus

2018-04-27, 01:08 PM

One thing to remember about skirmishes is that they were directly lifted from a competitor (not judging in either direction. We're talking about the game industry, it's how it goes), LotRO. They were great, wasn't given a reward structure that made sense, withered and died.

Well they really don't have an option of going back but having improved systems with an insane amount of effort going into what the WoW dev team called failures. Total recreation and rewrite and potential of introducing a "tree and root" system just to get talents working. Then we think hit. Are we going to back to the weapon skill system? that was the ultimate garbage. Then if they go with the expertise system, wow that's a lot of gear they have to go back and change. Introduce the rating system and change aaaaaaaaaaaaall the gear. Maybe they go with the base no-miss system... wait that's not old WoW.

I think housing would work... if they take trade chat out. It's a place to go back and store items or relax or decorate or host friends. Garrisons should never have had trade chat.

I will defend ToR's MMO-ness for one reason: flashpoints. The way the story is set up the flashpoints (dungeons) feel not like "oh look a dungeon" but when things GET REAL. You're the 4 baddest dudes. Ancient sith ghosts trying to invade the galaxy! Rescue someone and restart the galactic war! Invade the capital of a planet before they deploy their WMDs!

The_Jackal

2018-04-27, 03:15 PM

Well they really don't have an option of going back but having improved systems with an insane amount of effort going into what the WoW dev team called failures. Total recreation and rewrite and potential of introducing a "tree and root" system just to get talents working. Then we think hit. Are we going to back to the weapon skill system? that was the ultimate garbage.

I'll concede that having to kill up different weapon skills was tedious and pointless. I want to be clear, there should be a clear delineation between challenge and grind. Part of the big, big problem with modern WoW is that they've kept the grind by edited out the challenge, the result being tedium. I just want goals to have in my play that aren't mediated by 'click a button and log out' or 'do this instance once a week', and I want the activities I undertake to achieve those goals to be fun.

Then if they go with the expertise system, wow that's a lot of gear they have to go back and change. Introduce the rating system and change aaaaaaaaaaaaall the gear. Maybe they go with the base no-miss system... wait that's not old WoW.

That system should not come back. In fact, one of the main reasons I prefer leaving behind the 'combat resolution via hash table lookup' systems is because mechanics like critical hits or misses start being about aim and location hitboxes, rather than being some hidden game lore that players must discover through external research and tons of spreadsheet simulations.

I think housing would work... if they take trade chat out. It's a place to go back and store items or relax or decorate or host friends. Garrisons should never have had trade chat.

Perhaps, but I think an shared space you and your guild and friends passively share would be insanely, wildly preferrable. Yes, you could visit each others' garrisons, but think how much better it would have been if the garrison had been guild-wide and larger, with plots divided up among members? So much more potential there, imo.

I will defend ToR's MMO-ness for one reason: flashpoints. The way the story is set up the flashpoints (dungeons) feel not like "oh look a dungeon" but when things GET REAL. You're the 4 baddest dudes. Ancient sith ghosts trying to invade the galaxy! Rescue someone and restart the galactic war! Invade the capital of a planet before they deploy their WMDs!

Nothing that WoW didn't do better before. There are a ton of quests in Elwyn Forest and Westfall which culminate in the Stockade and Deadmines, and the Razorfen dungeons do the same for the missions around the south Barrens. I'll concede that STO makes a bigger deal about your character's own role in the story, but that 'chosen one' narrative causes cognitive dissonance, like when you and the other Imperial Agent in your party is swiping your dialogue, or when you choose one dialogue option, and someone else chooses the opposite. I'd much rather that the stories be a bit looser, and more of the rewards be emergent, and your own personal role in the world actually comport with the fact that you're playing a game with lots of other people in it. There's nothing wrong with a single-player RPG, but I think it's a mistake to conflate the MMORGP and CRPG types.

Lord Raziere

2018-04-27, 06:16 PM

Finally got the Nightborne.

Yaaaaaaay.

thankfully most of the last parts of the reputation was earned by doing a combination of the last parts of good Suramaritan and the beginning parts of Insurrection. just made my rep go up by leaps and bounds.

now I have an arcane mage nightborne.

to level 80 levels to get a transmog set.

......yeah. thats an achievement for another day.

Spore

2018-04-27, 11:19 PM

now I have an arcane mage nightborne.

to level 80 levels to get a transmog set.

......yeah. thats an achievement for another day.

20 -> 110 is 90 levels though.

Lord Raziere

2018-04-27, 11:28 PM

20 -> 110 is 90 levels though.

Oh. Sorry thought it was to 100, my bad.

Psyren

2018-04-29, 05:49 PM

Uh, well, but in this game it's generally really boring to do stuff that way, and you can still run into cocky, hotshot tanks that create an impossible pace for you to heal or loot-ninja DPSes.

"Loot Ninja" has been solved (for years now) in other games, it's called personal loot. We have all the technology we need to pull it off. Hell, we can apply it to resource nodes too like GW2 does.

"Boring" is where revamping the combat engine comes into play; the gameplay should be fun enough to stand on its own without needing all the social blocks to fall into place perfectly too. But as long as the pablum remains profitable they've got no incentive to do anything about that, so there's nothing (for me anyway) to really do, save waiting until it isn't anymore and they decide WoW 2 is worth the investment.

But I'm hopeful that the success of games like Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, and Final Fantasy XV is whetting people's appetite for actual meaty combat and physics engines in their fantasy RPGs.

If it needs multiple players then it should need communication.

For the hardest content in it (Mythic Raids, Mythic+, Rated BGs, and Arena) I agree with you, it should. But there's a huge difference between it being necessary at the top end, and being necessary for everything else. It all hinges on how badly Blizzard really wants to solve their toxicity problem in the end.

Kish

2018-04-29, 06:21 PM

It all hinges on how badly Blizzard really wants to solve their toxicity problem in the end.
...okay? Clarify? Would making communication necessary for all multi-player content be or require solving the toxicity problem, or is not making communication necessary what would be or require doing so?

(I don't think the toxicity problem for modern WoW is solvable, or has been since before Cataclysm came out. Stick a fork in it, it's done, as far as I'm concerned.)

Psyren

2018-04-29, 07:28 PM

...okay? Clarify? Would making communication necessary for all multi-player content be or require solving the toxicity problem, or is not making communication necessary what would be or require doing so?

More the latter. To clarify, it would involve doing two things simultaneously:

1) De-emphasizing (or to go nuclear, outright removing) all freeform communication that isn't "opt-in" - guild chat, friends lists, and the like. This could be limited to instances if removing it from the world proper would be a bridge too far.
2) Design the game such that lack of communication outside of the highest-difficulty modes of said instances (i.e. the content people would only be running with their opt-in list in the first place - their friends, in other words) isn't a hindrance.

The root of toxic behavior comes from handing everyone a megaphone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt9GwmOWoqo) while letting them retain their anonymity - "GIFT" in other words. But the way WoW is currently set up, getting rid of that megaphone has negative consequences even in instanced content that really shouldn't need it, because the tools to communicate without it are underdeveloped. For example, marking targets should be a much simpler exercise than it is now, where almost every group going into an instance has different conventions for what the symbols mean (aside from skull, I think everyone gets that one at least.)

MCerberus

2018-04-29, 07:59 PM

More the latter. To clarify, it would involve doing two things simultaneously:

1) De-emphasizing (or to go nuclear, outright removing) all freeform communication that isn't "opt-in" - guild chat, friends lists, and the like. This could be limited to instances if removing it from the world proper would be a bridge too far.
2) Design the game such that lack of communication outside of the highest-difficulty modes of said instances (i.e. the content people would only be running with their opt-in list in the first place - their friends, in other words) isn't a hindrance.

The root of toxic behavior comes from handing everyone a megaphone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt9GwmOWoqo) while letting them retain their anonymity - "GIFT" in other words. But the way WoW is currently set up, getting rid of that megaphone has negative consequences even in instanced content that really shouldn't need it, because the tools to communicate without it are underdeveloped. For example, marking targets should be a much simpler exercise than it is now, where almost every group going into an instance has different conventions for what the symbols mean (aside from skull, I think everyone gets that one at least.)

Getting back on to the topic of retro servers, if done properly the classic servers would help with the general toxicity problems in the opposite direction. In the modern wow era, your identity sticks to your bnet account. Without server links, you actually need a small amount of social cache to really function. Group finder and LFR were pretty... monkey paw curse in what it did to the social element of the game.

I know this is counter to your earlier stated play style, but it may be something that ends up happening.

Kish

2018-04-29, 08:04 PM

MCerberus

2018-04-29, 09:06 PM

Psyren

2018-04-30, 12:14 AM

Ah.

I think getting rid of the dungeon queue entirely would go further toward getting rid of the toxicity. I also think it would do that by getting rid of about 95% of the players, at this point. So, like I said, not really a solvable problem.

And with good reason - spamming chat hoping for premades for every group activity is not engaging in the slightest. I think there's a middle ground here, and a better game will try it out first.

The_Jackal

2018-04-30, 07:07 PM

And with good reason - spamming chat hoping for premades for every group activity is not engaging in the slightest. I think there's a middle ground here, and a better game will try it out first.

I don't think anyone's advocating a return to the raw, unmediated 'spam chat' method of building groups. I'm certainly not. Here's what City of Heroes did: The group finder inverted the normal convention of letting people browse groups, and was geared more towards letting players list themselves as available to run content. So, if you wanted to run a particular type of content, you just went to the group finder, looked for the Archetype (class) you were looking for, narrowed for the level range that would suit your content, and send them a tell inviting them. Quick, and easy.

You didn't need to squat in a city to wait to get invited to something, you could go out in the world and grind solo stuff, or, heavens forbid, browse the players marking themselves as 'available' for your desired content, and send them tells until you had your group. They also didn't have a fixed group size, so you could have groups of anywhere from 2 to 8 players.

They also had a feature which matched the members of the group to the level of the party leader, so you could get a group of friends and guildies into some new players' content, and everyone could a) have fun, and b) get cool stuff.

Why could you get cool stuff? Because their loot system was based on all crafted components. There wasn't a 'this gear drops this item from this boss', rather you collected various types of ingredients of varying rarities, and once you had the right bits, you crafted your item. But you could get useful parts for crafted gear from like level 10 to the level cap. All loot was personal, and all items could be traded or sold, so even if you personally didn't have a use for 'Rikti Telepathic Gel' or whatever, you could still flog it on the exchange.

Finally, they had a difficulty slider, which increased the numbers, health, damage, and control resistance of the foes you fought, so if you found you'd been paired with some less than stellar teammates, you didn't have to choose between a re-queue and a repair party, the party leader could just downcheck the difficulty and finish the content, albeit with a slightly reduced payout of loot and XP. And there's plenty of ways you could put in cheevos and cosmetics to promote people reaching for the tip-top difficulty content.

Psyren

2018-04-30, 07:46 PM

I don't think anyone's advocating a return to the raw, unmediated 'spam chat' method of building groups. I'm certainly not. Here's what City of Heroes did: The group finder inverted the normal convention of letting people browse groups, and was geared more towards letting players list themselves as available to run content. So, if you wanted to run a particular type of content, you just went to the group finder, looked for the Archetype (class) you were looking for, narrowed for the level range that would suit your content, and send them a tell inviting them. Quick, and easy.

You didn't need to squat in a city to wait to get invited to something, you could go out in the world and grind solo stuff, or, heavens forbid, browse the players marking themselves as 'available' for your desired content, and send them tells until you had your group. They also didn't have a fixed group size, so you could have groups of anywhere from 2 to 8 players.

They also had a feature which matched the members of the group to the level of the party leader, so you could get a group of friends and guildies into some new players' content, and everyone could a) have fun, and b) get cool stuff.

The only difference between that and an automated LFD queue is lots of extra clicks and reading. I don't need to peruse a bunch of bios before I swipe right; I'm running a dungeon, not going on a date. This is precisely what I mean when I say they should design their automated system to defeat the jerks, rather than inflict a tedious manual system on everyone who isn't one.

Why could you get cool stuff? Because their loot system was based on all crafted components. There wasn't a 'this gear drops this item from this boss', rather you collected various types of ingredients of varying rarities, and once you had the right bits, you crafted your item. But you could get useful parts for crafted gear from like level 10 to the level cap. All loot was personal, and all items could be traded or sold, so even if you personally didn't have a use for 'Rikti Telepathic Gel' or whatever, you could still flog it on the exchange.

I'm not against this loot model (Warframe uses it.) It does however run into the JC Penney Problem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfkWZPAUg4) of being an objectively better system (craft exactly what you want) that feels worse (no big rush from a great random drop.) To use another analogy, your paycheck is a much more reliable income stream than gambling in a casino, yet many people would rather go to Vegas than to work if they had the choice. In Warframe it works because it ties into the monetization model so well - you're paying for free, so waiting on your gear to "cook" followed by taking it out of the oven feels like a free lunch. In WoW, having to run to the oven to bake all your drops would feel like a timewaster even if they came out instantly, and time is literally money here.

Finally, they had a difficulty slider, which increased the numbers, health, damage, and control resistance of the foes you fought, so if you found you'd been paired with some less than stellar teammates, you didn't have to choose between a re-queue and a repair party, the party leader could just downcheck the difficulty and finish the content, albeit with a slightly reduced payout of loot and XP. And there's plenty of ways you could put in cheevos and cosmetics to promote people reaching for the tip-top difficulty content.

I'm okay with this too, except noticing that the group leader has done that would feel pretty bad for everyone else. Imagine if a single player game did that without telling you - well actually, you don't have to imagine it because several do. But in this case, whether making that button controlled by the party leader or making it automatic, the players would undoubtedly know it was there and the result, I think, wouldn't be pretty - even for groups that might need the help.

The_Jackal

2018-04-30, 08:11 PM

The only difference between that and an automated LFD queue is lots of extra clicks and reading. I don't need to peruse a bunch of bios before I swipe right; I'm running a dungeon, not going on a date. This is precisely what I mean when I say they should design their automated system to defeat the jerks, rather than inflict a tedious manual system on everyone who isn't one.

To which my response is, why play a MMORPG at all? If all you want is action game with other players, how does WoW or any other offering compare favorably to Diablo 3, or for that matter, Skyrim or Dark Souls or something? If your teammates are just random pubtards that don't listen, take direction, or anything, how do they compare favorable to bots? I'm not down on simpler games, I like them alot, but I think you're you're just trying to make a multiplayer lootbash, you don't need all those MMO constructs at all.

I'm not against this loot model (Warframe uses it.) It does however run into the JC Penney Problem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfkWZPAUg4) of being an objectively better system (craft exactly what you want) that feels worse (no big rush from a great random drop.)

The crafting materials you get can still have varying rarity, rather than just being a 'here's your Frozen Orb for completing this dungeon. Plus it will save you from the It's going to be so cool when you don't get it (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/03/31) problem. Your average fruit machine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine) can manage to be exciting to gambling addicts without actually having the thing dispense armani suits. In any case, the intrinsic rewards are for playing the game; you know, the combat and teamwork. The progression is there to keep you pulling the lever, it's the bells and lights that entice the eyes and ears.

To use another analogy, your paycheck is a much more reliable income stream than gambling in a casino, yet many people would rather go to Vegas than to work if they had the choice. In Warframe it works because it ties into the monetization model so well - you're paying for free, so waiting on your gear to "cook" followed by taking it out of the oven feels like a free lunch. In WoW, having to run to the oven to bake all your drops would feel like a timewaster even if they came out instantly, and time is literally money here.

WoW has used tokens of varying types in many iterations prior, including many of the far more successful iterations of the franchise. If you want to make someone still have a longshot of getting something great, then put a 1/10,000 chance of dropping 5 top-tier crafting reagents or lockbox keys or whatever.

I'm okay with this too, except noticing that the group leader has done that would feel pretty bad for everyone else. Imagine if a single player game did that without telling you - well actually, you don't have to imagine it because several do. But in this case, whether making that button controlled by the party leader or making it automatic, the players would undoubtedly know it was there and the result, I think, wouldn't be pretty - even for groups that might need the help.

Left4Dead's AI director does exactly that, and it works fine, and I suspect that after sufficient trips from the ICU, the team will probably not argue a change in difficulty. You're comparing the disappointment of getting slightly less loot with the frustration of being bounced into the group finder for another 30 minute wait and no better chance of being queued into someone who isn't a tard.

Kish

2018-04-30, 08:27 PM

Let me clarify my position:

I hope WoW Classic is exactly like WoW was as of patch 1.11. I also hope it's successful enough (whatever that means to Blizzard) that they release one or more BC servers...which are, or arrive, at the rules of the game in patch 2.4.

That's it. I consider WoW modern beyond any possibility of salvaging, and thus for all of me they're welcome to change it in any way at all or none. If I was designing the precise game I wanted, it wouldn't look exactly like BC circa patch 2.4 (though the things I would change are not the things that modern-WoW players seem to point to to go, "SURELY you don't want THAT back?!"), but any changes made to it would not be chosen by me: they'd be chosen by WoW's current development team, the people who gradually turned the game into what's on live now, and if I wanted to play what they considered the "best" version of WoW I'd be doing so. If they resist all urges to "fix" things and follow the precise template the people who were working on WoW at the time used before, then they'll have brought back a fun game--at least, for those weirdos like me who still play twelve-year-old games. If they do that, I and the people here playing modern WoW can periodically remember briefly that the other version of WoW exists and shake our heads in synchronized disbelief that anyone would choose to play it.

Psyren

2018-04-30, 10:30 PM

@ Kish: I hear you. Hopefully enough of the classic server crowd want your specific version that that is what you get to play.

To which my response is, why play a MMORPG at all? If all you want is action game with other players, how does WoW or any other offering compare favorably to Diablo 3, or for that matter, Skyrim or Dark Souls or something? If your teammates are just random pubtards that don't listen, take direction, or anything, how do they compare favorable to bots? I'm not down on simpler games, I like them alot, but I think you're you're just trying to make a multiplayer lootbash, you don't need all those MMO constructs at all.

Well you could ask the exact same bolded question of games like Destiny and Warframe (and Anthem and Firefall and Em8er and...), and my answer would be the same to you there - the MMO format provides long-term progression/rewards, an evolving world/story - and yes, community (I'm not opposed to it, I just think it should be more tightly regulated than it is now.)

And I think I've said this to you multiple times in the past (including in other game threads - ohai, Overwatch!) but I just don't have the experiences with rampant "pubtards" that you seem to. But even if I did, my recommendation to the designers would be the same - give us tools to coordinate our assault that don't simply hand a megaphone to any jerk who wants to be toxic.

The crafting materials you get can still have varying rarity, rather than just being a 'here's your Frozen Orb for completing this dungeon. Plus it will save you from the It's going to be so cool when you don't get it (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/03/31) problem. Your average fruit machine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine) can manage to be exciting to gambling addicts without actually having the thing dispense armani suits. In any case, the intrinsic rewards are for playing the game; you know, the combat and teamwork. The progression is there to keep you pulling the lever, it's the bells and lights that entice the eyes and ears.

WoW has used tokens of varying types in many iterations prior, including many of the far more successful iterations of the franchise. If you want to make someone still have a longshot of getting something great, then put a 1/10,000 chance of dropping 5 top-tier crafting reagents or lockbox keys or whatever.

Oh, I know material rarity would still exist, I just don't think it's enough outside of Warframe's model. I could be wrong though, given that I have a sample size of one successful game that uses it. If there's a subscription-based game that relies primarily on crafted gear rather than drops, I'd love to see how they do it.

Left4Dead's AI director does exactly that, and it works fine, and I suspect that after sufficient trips from the ICU, the team will probably not argue a change in difficulty. You're comparing the disappointment of getting slightly less loot with the frustration of being bounced into the group finder for another 30 minute wait and no better chance of being queued into someone who isn't a tard.

You're right that L4D's AI Director works well, but you're forgetting why that is. Remember, these are two completely different genres. WoW, like most RPGs, is meant to be empowering - the challenge should feel tough enough to be engaging but ultimately, the fun is in winning and feeling like a hero/badass. Left 4 Dead meanwhile is intended to be disempowering; your goal is mere survival and lurching from safe house to safe house by the skin of your teeth. Thus when the AI makes things easy in L4D, rather than getting bored, the players feel tense - it's the calm before the storm, and it means a tank or witch or boomer is probably right around the corner, thus they stay engaged. And when the AI makes things crushingly difficult, your job is to get everyone who is currently disabled by a superzombie on their feet (or leave them to die!) and haul ass to the next checkpoint. Lulls in a WoW instance meanwhile simply mean you have more of your cooldowns ready to go, not to mention being able to take a drink to refill your resource bar (for the classes that even need one) too. In short, L4D has a much, much wider band of difficulty to play with (both the peaks and the valleys) - and what creates valuable tension in one game, does nothing but destroy it in the other. Oh yeah, and lest we forget, all the L4D characters are identical in capability, while WoW classes have to play and feel different from one another.

Could they make some similar kind of automatic-difficulty-adjusting algorithm for WoW? Probably, but the level of tuning it would require to keep the peaks and valleys from getting too far out of whack (especially across every class and spec) would be nightmarish. Which is why Diablo and Mythic+ just hand it to the players (before they start the run.)

The_Jackal

2018-05-01, 01:35 AM

Well you could ask the exact same bolded question of games like Destiny and Warframe (and Anthem and Firefall and Em8er and...), and my answer would be the same to you there - the MMO format provides long-term progression/rewards, an evolving world/story - and yes, community (I'm not opposed to it, I just think it should be more tightly regulated than it is now.)

No disrespect intended to those games, they aren't MMORPGs. They're basically 3d Diablo III. And if that's all you want, more power to you, but that's not WoW, or EQ, or any of a jillion other games trying to maintain the pretense of a complete world. If that's the ultimate fate of the genre, I'll survive, but it's not my preference.

And I think I've said this to you multiple times in the past (including in other game threads - ohai, Overwatch!) but I just don't have the experiences with rampant "pubtards" that you seem to. But even if I did, my recommendation to the designers would be the same - give us tools to coordinate our assault that don't simply hand a megaphone to any jerk who wants to be toxic.

I'll certainly support the idea that games that want to support multiplayer play should make it easier to coordinate, and it wouldn't even be hard to deliver. Just an 'attack my target' emote that actually put a marker on your current target, and showed a UI prompt to teammates show you want them to shoot would be golden. That said, however, voice gives you much, much, much better depth of communication.

Oh, I know material rarity would still exist, I just don't think it's enough outside of Warframe's model. I could be wrong though, given that I have a sample size of one successful game that uses it. If there's a subscription-based game that relies primarily on crafted gear rather than drops, I'd love to see how they do it.

As I said, CoH had it, and it worked a treat. I think it helps because the SuperHero genre kind of innately resists regular equipment, so there was less of a 'immersion' penalty hanging on the abstraction.

You're right that L4D's AI Director works well, but you're forgetting why that is. Remember, these are two completely different genres. WoW, like most RPGs, is meant to be empowering - the challenge should feel tough enough to be engaging but ultimately, the fun is in winning and feeling like a hero/badass.
Left 4 Dead meanwhile is intended to be disempowering; your goal is mere survival and lurching from safe house to safe house by the skin of your teeth. Thus when the AI makes things easy in L4D, rather than getting bored, the players feel tense - it's the calm before the storm, and it means a tank or witch or boomer is probably right around the corner, thus they stay engaged. And when the AI makes things crushingly difficult, your job is to get everyone who is currently disabled by a superzombie on their feet (or leave them to die!) and haul ass to the next checkpoint. Lulls in a WoW instance meanwhile simply mean you have more of your cooldowns ready to go, not to mention being able to take a drink to refill your resource bar (for the classes that even need one) too. In short, L4D has a much, much wider band of difficulty to play with (both the peaks and the valleys) - and what creates valuable tension in one game, does nothing but destroy it in the other. Oh yeah, and lest we forget, all the L4D characters are identical in capability, while WoW classes have to play and feel different from one another.

So why shouldn't a dungeon feel tense, oppressive, and scary? That's when WoW felt the best: When you were doing stuff for the first time, you pulled packs wrong, and had to tough out crazy fights. I think it would be a lot better if you had specific points at which you could rest and recover, rather than being able to just snack between each trash pull. Besides, there's lots of 'rescue your teammate' mechanics in WoW dungeons and raids, just like the leaper or smoker attacks in L4D. So yeah, a game where the AI changed stuff up on your party? Where it's not just the same pull in the same spawns, following the same aggro table? That all sounds great to me.

Could they make some similar kind of automatic-difficulty-adjusting algorithm for WoW? Probably, but the level of tuning it would require to keep the peaks and valleys from getting too far out of whack (especially across every class and spec) would be nightmarish. Which is why Diablo and Mythic+ just hand it to the players (before they start the run.)[/QUOTE]

Psyren

2018-05-01, 10:05 AM

No disrespect intended to those games, they aren't MMORPGs. They're basically 3d Diablo III.

Respectfully, I couldn't care less about No True Scotsman labeling. I care about the qualities I listed, which Diablo doesn't have.

I'll certainly support the idea that games that want to support multiplayer play should make it easier to coordinate, and it wouldn't even be hard to deliver. Just an 'attack my target' emote that actually put a marker on your current target, and showed a UI prompt to teammates show you want them to shoot would be golden. That said, however, voice gives you much, much, much better depth of communication.

Absolutely, but with voice (or any other freeform communication medium) comes a greater degree of responsibility for using it properly. Thus I believe it should be earned (or at least regulated) rather than given freely, and that the lower-difficulty content should be readily doable without it as a result. It should absolutely still be there for the high-level content (though if it isn't, folks will just alt-tab and use Discord etc anyway - but that too is "opt-in.")

As I said, CoH had it, and it worked a treat.

*looks around at passing tumbleweed*

I mean, did it?

So why shouldn't a dungeon feel tense, oppressive, and scary? That's when WoW felt the best: When you were doing stuff for the first time, you pulled packs wrong, and had to tough out crazy fights. I think it would be a lot better if you had specific points at which you could rest and recover, rather than being able to just snack between each trash pull. Besides, there's lots of 'rescue your teammate' mechanics in WoW dungeons and raids, just like the leaper or smoker attacks in L4D. So yeah, a game where the AI changed stuff up on your party? Where it's not just the same pull in the same spawns, following the same aggro table? That all sounds great to me.

The problem is that style of play doesn't mesh with a game where you're supposed to be getting stronger over time. To repeat myself, the core experience of L4D is disempowerment, where even the calm moments fill you with dread. The first time you step into a WoW dungeon might be scary, but that's not sustainable by the 5th go, nor should it be in a power fantasy game.

The_Jackal

2018-05-01, 11:17 AM

Respectfully, I couldn't care less about No True Scotsman labeling. I care about the qualities I listed, which Diablo doesn't have.

Okay, what qualities are those, again, exactly? Because I'm not trying to make a semantic argument, the games you list all lack qualities that I like about MMORPGs: Namely, a deep crafting system, in-game reputations, mounts, cool unlockables, a world you can explore with depth, an inter-player economy, really, just a fully realized setting where you get engrossed, rather than a shared lobby in front of some instanced content.

Absolutely, but with voice (or any other freeform communication medium) comes a greater degree of responsibility for using it properly. Thus I believe it should be earned (or at least regulated) rather than given freely, and that the lower-difficulty content should be readily doable without it as a result. It should absolutely still be there for the high-level content (though if it isn't, folks will just alt-tab and use Discord etc anyway - but that too is "opt-in.")

Sure, hence my "let's put in a difficulty slider or AI director" recommendation, and give people better tools to coordinate without having to jump on the mic.

*looks around at passing tumbleweed*

I mean, did it?

Eh, I think that's an unfair argument. Yes, CoH is gone now, and WoW is still around, but CoH lasted 8 years during WoW's heyday, from 2004 through 2012, on a game that launched earlier, in a genre (Superheroes) that hadn't quite hit pop culture stride. Ironically, now that spandex are the new wizard robes, there's nobody coming out with a big multiplayer Superhero title, and all there is to get by with is DCUO and Marvel Heroes. In any case, I'm not suggesting that CoH was a perfect game, it had big flaws as well:

1) Bad core game engine. If you want to see what a dumpster-fire the City of Heroes in-game engine, with animations and herky-jerky combat feels like, download a copy of Star Trek Online and do some ground combat. It's the same engine, and it's kind of garbage. Laggy inputs, unhelpful targeting, rooting attack animation, just... ugh.

2) Content desert. City of Heroes gave you a really generous palette to craft your Hero, but the city itself was basically a bunch of outdoor zones that, while pretty to look at, really had nothing 'there' there. Scaling was good, but few of the NPCs were interactive, there were just a bunch of placeholder citizens, and the odd quest giver. Your typical mission was carried out by opening a door, then being transported into an instanced, procedurally-generated map with random NPC villains. The one bright spot was the city had a sprawling sewer system and some unique zones, but for the most part, lots of generic-feeling maps with generic-feeling villains, especially early on. Things got better later on, but WoW definitely wins out in the 'first 20 levels feel unique and interesting' front, at least back in 2004.

3) Hideous bugs. Doors that don't work, crashes to desktop, falling out of the sky for no reason when flying, I could go on and on about the glitches in the game.

4) More Content desert. They also had problems adding new content. Your typical WoW expansion gets 3-4 raids per expansion, each with its own release of accompanying content. With Cryptic/NCSoft's slower cashflow, they could never keep up with that rate of content every few months. That's really what makes the MMORPG a winner-take-all market. You either captivate enough money to fund your content creation to keep your subscribers engaged, or you slowly crumble as bored players bog off to do something else. Now they did eventually ad player-created content, which is a genius idea, IMO, and I wish Blizzard would release tools or players to make their own stories in the world, but I don't think that will ever happen.

In spite of all that, CoH retains a high user-score on Metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/city-of-heroes), and I think that has a lot to do some of the features I've mentioned previously, and it still has devoted fans working to bring it back to this day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_PGczD5y5s). It's far from the best game ever made, but in an era festooned with super-thin ripoff titles like Sea of Thieves or No Man's Sky, CoH doesn't look that bad.

The problem is that style of play doesn't mesh with a game where you're supposed to be getting stronger over time. To repeat myself, the core experience of L4D is disempowerment, where even the calm moments fill you with dread. The first time you step into a WoW dungeon might be scary, but that's not sustainable by the 5th go, nor should it be in a power fantasy game.

Eh, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. I don't feel disempowered when playing L4D, unless I get screwed by dumb teammates throwing. Sure, it's the zombie apocalypse, but I've got a deagle and a shotgun, and enough ammo to see me to the next safe house. Might I lose and get beat? Sure, but that's why it's fun. If you can't lose, winning gets boring. I don't see any reason WoW should be any different, and being stronger means you can fight off larger hordes of tougher foes, which an AI director can throw at you if it detects you're sleepwalking through the dungeon.

Psyren

2018-05-01, 04:19 PM

Okay, what qualities are those, again, exactly? Because I'm not trying to make a semantic argument, the games you list all lack qualities that I like about MMORPGs: Namely, a deep crafting system, in-game reputations, mounts, cool unlockables, a world you can explore with depth, an inter-player economy, really, just a fully realized setting where you get engrossed, rather than a shared lobby in front of some instanced content.

Well actually, Firefall and Warframe do have every quality you just listed (except for one in Warframe's case, namely the shared wide open world) in addition to mine. But my list was:

"Well you could ask the exact same bolded question of games like Destiny and Warframe (and Anthem and Firefall and Em8er and...), and my answer would be the same to you there - the MMO format provides long-term progression/rewards, an evolving world/story - and yes, community (I'm not opposed to it, I just think it should be more tightly regulated than it is now.)"

And as it happens, I like your list too - but more as "nice to have" than "integral to the experience." Stuff like mounts and rep grinds and cool unlockables are easy to add after the fact (see Guild Wars 2.) "Deep crafting" I can take or leave, it's largely busywork. All you really need for a player economy is to enable trading and they'll do the rest (see Warframe, which doesn't even have an AH.)

Sure, hence my "let's put in a difficulty slider or AI director" recommendation, and give people better tools to coordinate without having to jump on the mic.

The latter I agree with wholeheartedly. It's the former I think would be tricky to implement in a way that feels good.

Eh, I think that's an unfair argument. Yes, CoH is gone now, and WoW is still around, but CoH lasted 8 years during WoW's heyday, from 2004 through 2012, on a game that launched earlier, in a genre (Superheroes) that hadn't quite hit pop culture stride.

*snip*

Oh, I'm not saying that CoH's definitely loot system led to its failure. I'm sure there were other (and possibly more pertinent) factors too. It just makes it more difficult to use that as an example proving it works.

Eh, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. I don't feel disempowered when playing L4D, unless I get screwed by dumb teammates throwing. Sure, it's the zombie apocalypse, but I've got a deagle and a shotgun, and enough ammo to see me to the next safe house. Might I lose and get beat? Sure, but that's why it's fun. If you can't lose, winning gets boring. I don't see any reason WoW should be any different, and being stronger means you can fight off larger hordes of tougher foes, which an AI director can throw at you if it detects you're sleepwalking through the dungeon.

It's not so much about "you can't lose" as it is redefining what winning and losing even mean. WoW is a power fantasy, and so "winning" means crushing bosses and (full-)clearing trash like the badass you are. In L4D meanwhile, winning just means survival, and trying to eradicate the hordes completely is a great way to end up with your brains spread on a zombie's ritz cracker. The AI director works because it was designed with that in mind, and so it is capable of recognizing that anyone standing around trying to feel powerful and rack up their zombie body count probably needs a wake-up call so they can start fleeing for their lives again.

Throwing that into WoW would only ruin the fantasy it's trying to deliver on. In WoW, we're the special agents sent in to quell the Stockade riot, or bring Van Cleef to justice by the sword, or shut down a cult operation. There are specific dungeons where running for our lives is fun (Halls of Reflection final boss) but those should be the exception, not the rule.

Corvus

2018-05-16, 08:55 PM

A bunch of previews of pages from the upcoming book came up on Amazon. needless to say, spoilers ahead.

After the Legion was defeated, there was an effort by the Horde and Alliance to facilitate family reunions between Forsaken and human families members.

Needless to say, it didn't entirely work out. There were some success but mostly rejections. Genn was agains the whole thing, funnily enough, even going so far as to try and bully people into rejecting the idea. However, in the epilogue, he apologies to Anduin, saying he might have been wrong about the forsaken - maybe he is finally realising how much in common his worgen have with the forsaken, given they both have similar origin stories - both turned into mindless killing machines against their wills, only to regain control and mostly return to their old personalities.

Now it is what else going on that is the big stuff.

Calia makes a return. Urged on by the Naaru, and with the backing of Anduin, she makes plans with the Desolace Council to stage a coup to overthrow Sylvanas and take the throne of Lordaeron as Queen.

Sylvanas gets word of it. Sylvanas is not happy. The threat is ended with everyone involved, including Calia, dead.

However, she does not attack the Alliance. Even Genn gives her props for the way she managed it. She destroyed the traitors and made herself look like a hero for the rest of the Horde by not retaliating against the Alliance like she had ever right to do so. She was the wronged party after all.

This all takes place before the burning of Tedrassil, though, and nothing yet shows how that happened.

Anduin, meanwhile, is feeling terribly guilty. He promised the Desolace Council that he would protect them and failed. He also got Calia killed. Between him, Faol and the Naaru, they bring her back.

In a manner of speaking. She is no longer alive. She is a Holy undead.

Requizen

2018-05-18, 10:38 AM

So just resubbed on a whim, grinding Argussian rep for dem VElfs. Not sure what to use my boost on, thinking either Rogue or Mage. Anyone know how they're looking in BfA?

Sian

2018-05-18, 02:07 PM

If I'm going to play again (still uncertain), it's probably going to be a Highmountain Tauren Protection Warrior

Spore

2018-05-18, 02:37 PM

So just resubbed on a whim, grinding Argussian rep for dem VElfs. Not sure what to use my boost on, thinking either Rogue or Mage. Anyone know how they're looking in BfA?

Mage stays the same as in Legion. Frost is proc heavy, Fire is the methodical spec with the double procs and instant pyroblasts (and insane burst, no dot management anymore tho) and Arcane is the interplay of Conversation and Burn Phases.

As for rogue, I don't really know. They cut down on rogue "game cheats" in BfA. you can't cloak as many mechanics anymore, but PvE will stay similar as in Legion, with the exception that they plan that you can opt out of RNG talents (such as Roll the Bones).

Ionbound

2018-05-25, 08:56 AM

In other news, looking like Fury's back on the menu boys. (http://www.wowhead.com/news=284618&webhook/fury-warrior-battle-for-azeroth-feedback-for-may-24th)

The_Jackal

2018-05-25, 11:27 AM

In other news, looking like Fury's back on the menu boys. (http://www.wowhead.com/news=284618&webhook/fury-warrior-battle-for-azeroth-feedback-for-may-24th)

Eh. I'd prefer they get back to the original fury and arms philosophy: Randomness punctuated by strong, fury-intensive cooldowns. They've gone so hard into the 'controlled burst' design goal that the specs feel really, really predictable and boring.

Sian

2018-05-25, 02:07 PM

what is probably the slowest, most methodical (which aren't quite the same as predictable) DPS spec?

Asking as a tank that's used to focus on timing taunts and nailing the AM's at the right times

The_Jackal

2018-05-25, 03:53 PM

what is probably the slowest, most methodical (which aren't quite the same as predictable) DPS spec?

Asking as a tank that's used to focus on timing taunts and nailing the AM's at the right times

Really, I'd advise using Fire Mage. Relatively straightforward, easy to understand mechanic, built around maintaining your hot streak. That said, even more I'd recommend just doing whatever DPS spec goes with your tank, unless you have a surfeit of spare time to itemize two characters.

Ionbound

2018-05-25, 04:27 PM

Eh. I'd prefer they get back to the original fury and arms philosophy: Randomness punctuated by strong, fury-intensive cooldowns. They've gone so hard into the 'controlled burst' design goal that the specs feel really, really predictable and boring.

I dunno, as a control freak, I like the idea of being able to go berserk with a little more precision. Not that having some unpredictability to the spec is a bad thing but having enrage be moved towards being a result of massacre rather than mostly being a random proc is a good thing, IMO.

Sian

2018-05-25, 05:00 PM

Really, I'd advise using Fire Mage. Relatively straightforward, easy to understand mechanic, built around maintaining your hot streak. That said, even more I'd recommend just doing whatever DPS spec goes with your tank, unless you have a surfeit of spare time to itemize two characters.

The problem with going offspec, is kinda that I can't help but think "I'd might as well tank since the character can do that at least as well, probably better"

I've tried playing all Tank classes (bar monk for some odd reason) at (then-current) max level, and even when I started the character with the intention of going another spec (whether that be DPS or Heal), i keep defaulting into playing Tank since that is so intuitive for me

The_Jackal

2018-05-25, 07:54 PM

I dunno, as a control freak, I like the idea of being able to go berserk with a little more precision. Not that having some unpredictability to the spec is a bad thing but having enrage be moved towards being a result of massacre rather than mostly being a random proc is a good thing, IMO.

The problem I have is that it still really doesn't deliver controlability, in point of fact, it only mediates the burst with bloodthirst crits or colossus smash resets. The RNG factor is still there, they've just stacked more of the burst into the trigger effect than back in the early days of Warrior. If you played Arms or Fury, you didn't NEED to be in your burst window to do respectable execution. As they are now, everything is 'fish for procs to actually do damage', whether the 'actual damage' is from Enrage/Raging Blow or Colossus Smash doesn't matter too much. Still just as RNG dependent as before, really, just less spiky.

Spore

2018-05-26, 03:32 AM

The problem with going offspec, is kinda that I can't help but think "I'd might as well tank since the character can do that at least as well, probably better"

I've tried playing all Tank classes (bar monk for some odd reason) at (then-current) max level, and even when I started the character with the intention of going another spec (whether that be DPS or Heal), i keep defaulting into playing Tank since that is so intuitive for me

Rogue has good toolkits to help the group, such as:
Tools of the Trade: redirecting aggro to the tank
Evasion: 100% dodge for 10 seconds means you can even offtank add waves.
Feint: half damage from AoEs.
Cloak of Shadows: removes debuffs, makes you immune to them for 5s.
Crippling Poison: 50% slow for adds.
Crimson Vial recovers 30% of your health for 30 energy, leeching poison gives additional healing, cheat death makes you immune to death!
additionally you are quicker than everyone (15% base speed increase, Sprint, Shadow Step)

If you play smart, you are still never the tank but the tank's BEST FRIEND! Plus you know how fights go sometimes. If you can soak some puddles better, plus I find Assassination quite methodical and ... well subtle.

But as a pure DPS you are somewhat expected to roll the damage spec that let's you perform the best.

The Glyphstone

2018-05-31, 12:30 PM

So the new resident Old God we'll be pitted against is G'hun, the Blood God.

Brace yourself for the tidal wave of Warhammer 40K memes incoming.

Spore

2018-05-31, 01:15 PM

The_Jackal

2018-05-31, 02:51 PM

So the new resident Old God we'll be pitted against is G'hun, the Blood God.

Brace yourself for the tidal wave of Warhammer 40K memes incoming.

Bloody-Handed Khaine is canonical in the Warhammer fantasy setting as well. Blizz has a well-established history of borrowing (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10) from the Games Workshop settings. I'm never ever worried about the Warcraft fluff. Mists of Pandaria didn't bother me, Warlords bothered me a bit, only because it felt like a rerun cop-out. What I'm mainly interested in seeing out of WoW is (short of a WoW II) is taut gameplay and fun content.

The_Jackal

2018-05-31, 05:32 PM

Thinking about a main for BfA. I kind of agree with Kelani here.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A81Vl5W2R8o

Warlock is quite varied. DH is mobile and incredibly fun. Paladin is a good overall package. My main will probably picked between DH and Paladin. Depending on whether or not I want to heal (tanking will be for dungeons and mythics only, no raid tanking).

What are your experiences with the live Holy Paladin (and the BFA one if you have beta access)?

I haven't touched WoW since I did my free-tour of late-stage Legion, and got bored stupid with the intro-quests and broken shore quest zones, and noped right back out again. If I describe to buy and re-sub, it will be to play Marksman Hunter and Arms warrior, exclusively, which always winds up being a questionable gig, because being a DPS-only player turns you into a second-class citizen in the WoW community. However, I've grown tired of moderating my fun to service other players' itemization goals.

Corsair14

2018-06-08, 05:56 PM

Sian

2018-06-09, 05:05 AM

While i understand where you're coming from in terms of skill trees, and felt that they to some extent threw the baby out with the bathwater, I have to acknowledge that in practice it was solely a question if you knew what you were doing or not, since the number of usable builds within the skill trees was vastly lower than you'd think, and a lot of trap options that non-hardcore players wouldn't be able to spot unless they followed a guide (in which case the argument of 'choice' is moot)

I personally feel that they've gotten closer to a happy medium where it's simple, but you still have the ability to modify your build to taste, with Legion and BFA where the talent choices are real choices, but still mainly comes down to how you prefer to tailor your spec, rather than there being 1 true way and anyone who aren't following that are scrubs that doesn't deserve the game

Kish

2018-06-09, 10:29 AM

Sian

2018-06-09, 12:18 PM

Just out of curiosity, if I paraphrase you as having said "I like the current version of WoW," would you protest?

Meh, Legion is proberly second on my list behind WotL, so while not wrong it doesn’t imply quite the right thing

Kish

2018-06-09, 12:23 PM

What's WotL?

(Oh, Wrath of the Lich, monarchy deleted?)

If you would put modern WoW above "a dead badger" in levels of smelliness, I'd say that's a "yes" to my question.

Just to be clear: Your memories of pre-wotl WoW are completely unlike mine. People experimented with talent trees a lot. Taking the top-tier talent in any of them was optional; for every tree there were a lot of people who did, and for nearly every tree there were a lot of people who didn't. Only the tiny minority (one of the developers estimated 2% in an interview) of players who viewed the game as All About getting to the end of Naxxramas or Sunwell Plateau cared about guides that said "This talent gets you two percent more dee pee ess than that one, so that one is an abomination unto our (web)site!" 'Course, that group also made it clear that they thought they were the only people actually playing the game, and somewhere between wotl and Cataclysm Blizzard started a push to turn that into reality for some reason I will never understand.

Corsair14

2018-06-09, 12:44 PM

I don't remember what I did for my main Hunter in those days but my rogue dabbled in two of the trees, stealth and something else and I really liked the combo I had picked out. I wasn't a PVP or hardcore raider either though. I just liked exploring things and picking up rare pets and minions. I don't want to know how many hours I spent endlessly shooting up dragon whelps/centaur-things in the various places trying to get the whelping pet. The blue one was the longest if I remember right.

The_Jackal

2018-06-09, 05:21 PM

I look forward to seeing what the Classic server has to offer. They made some major mistakes IMO on designs after BC which I would like to see returned to the old system. Skill trees returning to the 3 tree mix and match is a big one for me. I liked the options it presented. I also want a return to the old Hunter Pet system where a hunter could go out and find rare pets and actually get bonuses for having them as well as having fairly unique pets from the casual hunters who didn't put time and effort into finding cool pets. So I guess we will see. At Blizzard speed we probably have another year to go anyway.

I agree that a return to proper talent trees would be welcome, but I'm not sure the hunter pet uniqueness is a winner from my perspective, as written. The problem is when everyone has to take the same pet. Now sure, I love getting unique and rare loots for my pet, but I want my choice of pet to be my choice, not the game designers'.

While i understand where you're coming from in terms of skill trees, and felt that they to some extent threw the baby out with the bathwater, I have to acknowledge that in practice it was solely a question if you knew what you were doing or not, since the number of usable builds within the skill trees was vastly lower than you'd think, and a lot of trap options that non-hardcore players wouldn't be able to spot unless they followed a guide (in which case the argument of 'choice' is moot)

I personally feel that they've gotten closer to a happy medium where it's simple, but you still have the ability to modify your build to taste, with Legion and BFA where the talent choices are real choices, but still mainly comes down to how you prefer to tailor your spec, rather than there being 1 true way and anyone who aren't following that are scrubs that doesn't deserve the game

Well, I'm compelled to disagree. It's incumbent on the designers to present a tree with interesting options, sure, but it's also incumbent on players to make intelligent decisions as to their talent choices. Dumbing the game down just to prevent players from doing a little thinking is a bad, bad design idea. For one thing, it's actually a false economy, because the game and its math is just as complex as it ever has been, and for another, it goes contrary to what games are all fundamentally about: Improvement and overcoming challenges. If you take away all the ways the game can thwart your ambitions, you won't feel any sense of accomplishment at having mastered it. The fact is, the scrubs are always going to be scrubs, regardless of how easy you make the game, so designing around them is an error.

Corsair14

2018-06-09, 08:24 PM

The_Jackal

2018-06-11, 02:04 AM

Well part of the fun was trying to find the rare unique spawn out in the field and then successfully capturing it. I never saw a problem old school with other hunters having the same pet based on a minor improvement.

Yes, that still exists in the game: http://www.wow-petopia.com/browse/collector.html. However, I see no reason to bring back the era when 95% of hunters (at least the ones who cared about how math works) were using Broken Tooth (http://www.wowhead.com/npc=2850/broken-tooth).

Psyren

2018-06-11, 01:28 PM

I agree that a return to proper talent trees would be welcome, but I'm not sure the hunter pet uniqueness is a winner from my perspective, as written. The problem is when everyone has to take the same pet. Now sure, I love getting unique and rare loots for my pet, but I want my choice of pet to be my choice, not the game designers'.

Agreed with this. Choice of pet should be mechanical at the broader archetype level (e.g. I want a tanky pet to do solo content with, a high damage one for group PvE content, and a tricky one for PvP), but at the individual animal level it should be cosmetic. You should be hunting and taming rarespawns because they look cool, not for some kind of numerical advantage that guarantees the rare will have a farming queue a mile long.

Well, I'm compelled to disagree. It's incumbent on the designers to present a tree with interesting options, sure, but it's also incumbent on players to make intelligent decisions as to their talent choices. Dumbing the game down just to prevent players from doing a little thinking is a bad, bad design idea. For one thing, it's actually a false economy, because the game and its math is just as complex as it ever has been, and for another, it goes contrary to what games are all fundamentally about: Improvement and overcoming challenges. If you take away all the ways the game can thwart your ambitions, you won't feel any sense of accomplishment at having mastered it. The fact is, the scrubs are always going to be scrubs, regardless of how easy you make the game, so designing around them is an error.

This however I disagree with. The old talent trees did not encourage thinking at all; they only encouraged netdecking the one best build that would maximize a spec's dps/hps/survivability, and there was very little variation of playstyle within a spec. If you were lucky, there'd be two builds for your spec based on whether you went 31/10 or 30/11 or whatever, but that would be it.

Current talents meanwhile, far from dumbing the game down, do actually involve thoughtful decisionmaking. They encourage both strategic playstyle choices (e.g. "Overall, do I prefer a more proactive playstyle with more cooldowns, where I have to know the fights better so I can use them properly? Or do I prefer a more reactive playstyle, one where I can quickly interrupt my rotation to take best advantage of whatever proc just fired?") as well as tactical playstyle choices (e.g. "the upcoming fight is AoE heavy, I need to tweak my talents more in that direction before we pull" or "the upcoming fight is mostly AoE-focused with some single-target, but my particular class' AoE toolkit isn't as useful against this boss as someone else's would be - I'll switch my talents up to be single-target and someone else can handle the AoE." In other words, real choices, not "I'll google this one setup and use it for the entire dungeon/raid/battleground."

The_Jackal

2018-06-11, 03:08 PM

Agreed with this. Choice of pet should be mechanical at the broader archetype level (e.g. I want a tanky pet to do solo content with, a high damage one for group PvE content, and a tricky one for PvP), but at the individual animal level it should be cosmetic. You should be hunting and taming rarespawns because they look cool, not for some kind of numerical advantage that guarantees the rare will have a farming queue a mile long.

Agreed. The one change I would advocate for is to lose the 'Exotic pet' designation, so that you're not locked into a) taking an exotic pet if you prefer the aesthetics of a classic one as BM, and b) not forbidden from taming a T-Rex if you're a Marksman or Survival Hunter. I'm a huge fan of offering more customization to the player.

This however I disagree with. The old talent trees did not encourage thinking at all; they only encouraged netdecking the one best build that would maximize a spec's dps/hps/survivability, and there was very little variation of playstyle within a spec. If you were lucky, there'd be two builds for your spec based on whether you went 31/10 or 30/11 or whatever, but that would be it.

Sure, but the new talent trees still haven't put the online third-party guide sites out of business, rather the reverse, they're just as, if not more mandatory than ever. The new system is no better than the old, in terms of being transparent in its effects on your build's power, and most importantly to me, encourage the adoption of 'talents as gear', where players routinely swap out talents to optimize for each fight. This baldly does not comport with the notion that your talents are a customization of your character. They're just a different set of pants, or more specifically, a set of dip-switches you reconfigure on your internal system board between encounters.

Current talents meanwhile, far from dumbing the game down, do actually involve thoughtful decisionmaking. They encourage both strategic playstyle choices (e.g. "Overall, do I prefer a more proactive playstyle with more cooldowns, where I have to know the fights better so I can use them properly? Or do I prefer a more reactive playstyle, one where I can quickly interrupt my rotation to take best advantage of whatever proc just fired?") as well as tactical playstyle choices (e.g. "the upcoming fight is AoE heavy, I need to tweak my talents more in that direction before we pull" or "the upcoming fight is mostly AoE-focused with some single-target, but my particular class' AoE toolkit isn't as useful against this boss as someone else's would be - I'll switch my talents up to be single-target and someone else can handle the AoE." In other words, real choices, not "I'll google this one setup and use it for the entire dungeon/raid/battleground."

I think I would wildly prefer a 'Look it up once, pick my talents to suit my playstyle and priorities, and then leave it alone until the next balance pass', to be frank. It's the 'respect between pulls' aspect that I find most intrusive and annoying about the current paradigm, because the last thing I want to do is have to juggle between learning three or four different rotations and button layouts, because I'm constantly swapping in different clicky talents with different cooldowns and mechanics. Talents should be a reflection of who your character is, not a bank of settings to customize every 10 minutes.

And finally, let's not pretend that the talents were changed for any real reason save to reduce the workload of designing and balancing talents for the developers, which, tragically, have not actually resulted in actual improved balance between classes or specs. You still have arcane mages lagging far behind Frost Mages, even when Frost is arguably the 'PvP' spec for the class.

That's why I prefer the tree system: You get to make more choices, and you can make more nuanced choices, and those choices actually have a force and effect. Heck, I'd go even further and give only 3 talent respec's a week, per specialization, per character, if I had my way. And if your encounter design really warrants giving players ways to improve their AoE or single-target performance between fights, put those modifiers on gear, like relics on Legendary weapons. At least then it would make sense.

Resileaf

2018-06-11, 03:12 PM

In the end, they're both fake costumizing options. At least the current tree gives obvious changes to your gameplay and how your abilities work.

The old talent tree was just increasing a percentage on something, which the artifacts do right now, and Azerite will do in BfA. Returning to the old talent tree will be redundant.

The_Jackal

2018-06-11, 03:40 PM

In the end, they're both fake costumizing options. At least the current tree gives obvious changes to your gameplay and how your abilities work.

Except that the math is just as uncertain and inscrutable now as it ever was. Honestly, getting 10% more to total damage, or 15% more to a main stat is way easier to understand and explain than whether Ray of Frost or Lonely Winter gives you more DPS.

The old talent tree was just increasing a percentage on something, which the artifacts do right now, and Azerite will do in BfA. Returning to the old talent tree will be redundant.

Right, so the complexity level is the same, the degree to which you'll still need to refer to 'net decking' your build will be as large if not larger, so what precisely is the merit of the paradigm where we've done nothing but shuffled the 'change how your build works' off of the talent tree into your pants? This isn't innovation or streamlining, it's just change for change's sake. In point of fact, we'd be just as well off if they'd simply reduced every item to 'item level', and poured all the choices about how your build worked into your talent tree, so you wouldn't have to cope with clunky resource mechanics and rotations until you hit whatever magic threshold the designers baked into your itemization to get the thing to work properly. You know, crit floors, crit-ceilings, haste breakpoints, etc.

What Artifact Power is doing in Legion, and what Azerite Bucks will do in BFA is the same thing that Paragon points do in Diablo 3: Offering long-term progression. And I'm fine with that, but I see no compelling reason that long-term progression should come at the expense of my character's customization choices.

Psyren

2018-06-11, 05:53 PM

Sure, but the new talent trees still haven't put the online third-party guide sites out of business, rather the reverse, they're just as, if not more mandatory than ever. The new system is no better than the old, in terms of being transparent in its effects on your build's power, and most importantly to me, encourage the adoption of 'talents as gear', where players routinely swap out talents to optimize for each fight. This baldly does not comport with the notion that your talents are a customization of your character. They're just a different set of pants, or more specifically, a set of dip-switches you reconfigure on your internal system board between encounters.

Nothing would put those sites out of business, and that's okay. But when you actually go to those sites now, you see a page that looks more like this:

https://i.imgur.com/DZyrLKN.png

In other words, one with actual choices and situational analysis on it, rather than "this single build for your spec is objectively better than all the others if you PvE, and this other one if you PvP. Don't do anything else." What's in the spoiler is what a talent spec should be, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Spore

2018-06-11, 11:24 PM

Personally I have always found sites like Icy Veins a decent primer for beginners. But the actual choices will be different ones.

1) If you want to raid hardcore or play mythic plus, you have several 'builds' that are set in stone barring some mobility/CC tools depending on the dungeon or fight.

2) For a vast majority of players - me included - ease of use is far more important than a marginal DPS increase with an unproportional increase in effort.

Take a Brewmaster Monk for example. On Lv 100, it has the feat Blackout Combo which powers up your main spells depending on which rotation you use at which specific time. Using this correctly (with the right haste level) and getting into a rhythm tends to give the perfect amount of damage reduction that the fight currently needs. While being the offtank you can even optimize for tank DPS.

For a beginner however, or even maybe a tank that is raid leading on the side coordinating ALL players, High Tolerance might just be better. Damage spikes might be a bit higher with it, and it might lead to phases where the healers are out of things to do (which is a bad thing since small heals spread over a long time is better than short burst windows from a healer perspective). But for the overall raid it is better since it does require much less attention. (If you are a pro, you can manage this both).

Resileaf

2018-06-12, 09:14 AM

My current goal in WoW: Acquire every challenge appearance. I only have three classes left to do the mage tower with. Druid, death knight and demon hunter. I'm almost able to do it with druid, but I want to make sure I have the legendary to cheese the tank challenge.

Because f*** Kruul and the designer who made him.

The_Jackal

2018-06-12, 10:17 AM

Nothing would put those sites out of business, and that's okay. But when you actually go to those sites now, you see a page that looks more like this:

https://i.imgur.com/DZyrLKN.png

In other words, one with actual choices and situational analysis on it, rather than "this single build for your spec is objectively better than all the others if you PvE, and this other one if you PvP. Don't do anything else." What's in the spoiler is what a talent spec should be, in my not-so-humble opinion.

But they're *not* choices, or at least, not choices that matter, and certainly no better than the more complex, nuanced system they replaced. Let's examine, for the sake of simplicity, the Frost Mage talents, just by way of example. I'm taking the recommendations straight out of Icy Veins, by the way, not my own editorializing.

Tier 1: Lonely Winter is the go-to option for all situations.
Tier 2: Shimmer for fights with 'bursty' movement, Ice Floes for fights with more regular movement.
Tier 3: Incanter's Flow is the best talent in virtually all situations.
Tier 4: Splitting Ice is the best option for either end tier talent and should be used in virtually all end game environments.
Tier 5: None of these talents have use for raiding currently.
Tier 6: Unstable Magic is the best option on single target encounters. Arctic Gale is the best choice for 2+ targets.
Tier 7: Thermal Void is our default choice for virtually all situations in raids.

Those aren't so much choices as settings, and almost all of them are non-choices. There's a indisputably superior pick in most tiers, and the other tiers have picks which are determined the encounter mechanics. Now I should point out that I don't use the Icy Veins cookie cutter build, no more than I precisely followed cookie-cutter tree builds back in pre-MoP days. And for my part, I would much rather my talents return to being a mechanism for expressing player customization, and have an actual consequence of choosing one over another.

Now sure, some of the talents in a more complicated tree are going to be less 'interesting', like 3% crit chance to frost spells. But on the whole, Wrath or Cata's tree system offers more opportunities to tweak a build and make it your own. Better yet, the smaller number of 'keystone' talents, ie: powerful activated abilities which revolutionize your build, mean that more functionality can be baseline to the class, and the consequences of picking some 'off-meta' picks to suit your playstyle and priorities are less onerous. For example, I, personally, love Ice Nova. I play with Ice Nova, and pay a non-trivial tax on my DPS on cleave fights to do so. But a tree system might afford me to get both Ice Nova and Splitting Ice, and trade off some other points in a portion of the tree I'm not as worried about. But the current system will never afford that kind of freedom. You can't pack points into a tier crowded with fun, strong, or useful talents. They're just dip-switches.

Spore

2018-06-12, 04:27 PM

Now sure, some of the talents in a more complicated tree are going to be less 'interesting', like 3% crit chance to frost spells. But on the whole, Wrath or Cata's tree system offers more opportunities to tweak a build and make it your own.

I've been thinking and with the demon hunter there ARE several builds one can take. So it is really more of a mage problem than a design problem imho.

You need synergistic talents (such as Eye Beam resetting when entering Metamorphosis, Eye Beam TRIGGERING a short Metamorphosis, and Eye Beam shortening the cooldown on Metamorphosis), not talents with isolated effects (such as mage).

Mage has almost exclusive talents that don't interact. How would it be if Unstable Magic would randomly proc a Blizzard close to your character's main target on Frost Bolt casts? Or if Blizzard hits would push up your Incanter's Flow level? Or if Splitting Ice procs would reduce the cast time of Blizzard and/or reduce the CD on Frozen Orb?

The_Jackal

2018-06-12, 04:58 PM

I've been thinking and with the demon hunter there ARE several builds one can take. So it is really more of a mage problem than a design problem imho.

You need synergistic talents (such as Eye Beam resetting when entering Metamorphosis, Eye Beam TRIGGERING a short Metamorphosis, and Eye Beam shortening the cooldown on Metamorphosis), not talents with isolated effects (such as mage).

Mage has almost exclusive talents that don't interact. How would it be if Unstable Magic would randomly proc a Blizzard close to your character's main target on Frost Bolt casts? Or if Blizzard hits would push up your Incanter's Flow level? Or if Splitting Ice procs would reduce the cast time of Blizzard and/or reduce the CD on Frozen Orb?

Okay, how about Arms Warrior (another class I play regularly):

Tier 1: Dauntless is the clear choice and should be taken in nearly all situations.
Tier 2: Double Time is the go to choice in the tier when there is no extra crowd control needed, as it is a significant increase to mobility.
Tier 3: Depends on itemization. Tier 21 set, use Trauma, Tier 20, use Rend.
Tier 4: Bounding Stride for mobility, Defensive stance for survival cooldown in less mobile fights.
Tier 5: Fervor of Battle if Tier 21 set, otherwise use Titanic Might.
Tier 6: In for the Kill is the best choice in this tier.
Tier 7: Another 'depends on set bonus' pick.

I actually have less problem with a talent pick that offers some synergy with itemization, but I think it's still a matter of 'if you know what's good for you, consult a spreadsheet'.

Kish

2018-06-12, 05:03 PM

Demon Hunter has only two specs.

Reason given: It couldn't have a ranged spec because of lore.

Somehow, not having a ranged spec didn't restrict warriors, death knights, or rogues (who don't even have a tank spec) to two specs (or to one for rogues).

I wouldn't want to make an argument for significant amounts of character customizability in modern WoW that used demon hunters as its example, m'self.

Psyren

2018-06-12, 08:09 PM

But they're *not* choices, or at least, not choices that matter, and certainly no better than the more complex, nuanced system they replaced. Let's examine, for the sake of simplicity, the Frost Mage talents, just by way of example. I'm taking the recommendations straight out of Icy Veins, by the way, not my own editorializing.

Tier 1: Lonely Winter is the go-to option for all situations.
Tier 2: Shimmer for fights with 'bursty' movement, Ice Floes for fights with more regular movement.
Tier 3: Incanter's Flow is the best talent in virtually all situations.
Tier 4: Splitting Ice is the best option for either end tier talent and should be used in virtually all end game environments.
Tier 5: None of these talents have use for raiding currently.
Tier 6: Unstable Magic is the best option on single target encounters. Arctic Gale is the best choice for 2+ targets.
Tier 7: Thermal Void is our default choice for virtually all situations in raids.

For the few talents that are just better at a given tier, that just comes down to numbers - numbers can be tweaked. What cannot be tweaked are playstyle differences, which the tired and obsolete single-build talent system doesn't give you.

For example, Rune of Power can actually provide superior throughput to Incanters Flow (which the site itself tells you) provided you're good with your placement and the fight doesn't require much movement. Skill ceiling. Choice.

For others, they apply heavier weighting to options that don't change your playstyle, not because they are objectively better. This is the case for Thermal Void, which actually comes behind Glacial Spike in sims.

Lastly, for the encounter-dependent ones, these often come down to playstyle too. Or as the site itself puts it: "Ultimately the choice is encounter dependent and also comes down to the preference and comfort level of the player with each talent."

Which, again, is what talents are meant to do - come down to preference and situation. Anything else is a boring, linear track and they might as well not even ask you what you want to pick.

Demon Hunter has only two specs.

Reason given: It couldn't have a ranged spec because of lore.

Somehow, not having a ranged spec didn't restrict warriors, death knights, or rogues (who don't even have a tank spec) to two specs (or to one for rogues).

I wouldn't want to make an argument for significant amounts of character customizability in modern WoW that used demon hunters as its example, m'self.

Honestly, I don't blame them for doing this. Not every class needs 3 specs. Look at how they've been struggling to make Survival be somehow different than "bow guy with beast" and "beast guy with bow," to the point that their best idea so far has been "hey, what if we ditch the bow but also they're not a rogue?" And speaking of rogue, the best we got there is "the super sneaky one should do heavy burst damage, while the assassin should be the one that kills slowly, and also there's a fake warrior with RNG mechanics." To say nothing of the near-constant rollercoaster that is tuning Discipline.

Kish

2018-06-12, 10:13 PM

Look at how they've been struggling to make Survival be somehow different than "bow guy with beast" and "beast guy with bow," to the point that their best idea so far has been "hey, what if we ditch the bow but also they're not a rogue?"
I fear we, once again, critically disagree on whether you just said what amounts to "Look at how hard differentiating specs is" or "Look at how utterly devoid of creativity the current WoW development team is and how cookie-cutter every spec now is."

As I implied before, but more explicitly, as of last I played, I didn't see a meaningful difference between different specs of different classes as long as their role was the same. A warlock is a purple-magic mage. A hunter is a bow-wielding mage. An arms warrior is a rogue who uses a single two-handed weapon. Etc. Four character types: Ranged damage, melee damage, tanking, healing. You might as well choose one of those roles, then roll a die to determine which specific class and spec you go with. It gets more like that with every major patch (which is indeed meant to imply that if the patches went backward it would steadily become less like that and wind up very unlike that).

Again:

Your memories of pre-wotl WoW are completely unlike mine. People experimented with talent trees a lot. Taking the top-tier talent in any of them was optional; for every tree there were a lot of people who did, and for nearly every tree there were a lot of people who didn't. Only the tiny minority (one of the developers estimated 2% in an interview) of players who viewed the game as All About getting to the end of Naxxramas or Sunwell Plateau cared about guides that said "This talent gets you two percent more dee pee ess than that one, so that one is an abomination unto our (web)site!" 'Course, that group also made it clear that they thought they were the only people actually playing the game, and somewhere between wotl and Cataclysm Blizzard started a push to turn that into reality for some reason I will never understand.
I dunno if you were always one of the tiny minority of endgame raiders, or if you're looking at the past with whatever the opposite of rose-colored glasses would be, but...no, the people who followed those talent guides slavishly used to be seen as all kinds of weird by the vast majority of the playerbase. If you told the average Survival 30/Beast Mastery 21 hunter, circa BC, "You'd have higher damage if you were all one thing and still more if that thing was Marksmanship," their reaction would be, "Who is this person who thinks I want his opinion on how I play?"

Psyren

2018-06-13, 12:02 AM

You're right about one thing Kish - we critically disagree.

Enjoy your classic servers whenever they drop, I guess.

Spore

2018-06-13, 04:21 AM

Only having two specs is enitirely okay for Demon Hunters in my books.

Sian

2018-06-13, 08:21 AM

On the other hand, look at how long it took Blizzard to split Feral and Guardian, which for the longest time was part of the same talent tree

Spore

2018-06-13, 08:32 AM

On the other hand, look at how long it took Blizzard to split Feral and Guardian, which for the longest time was part of the same talent tree

Yeah, but while Feral is interesting, Guardian is likely the blandest spec out there. I LOVE the idea of becoming a hulking bear to protect my friends but the gameplay is just...so....boring...

Resileaf

2018-06-13, 08:41 AM

Yeah, but while Feral is interesting, Guardian is likely the blandest spec out there. I LOVE the idea of becoming a hulking bear to protect my friends but the gameplay is just...so....boring...

Swipe
Swipe
Swipe
Ironfur
Swipe
Swipe
Ironfur

And so on.

Sinewmire

2018-06-13, 09:17 AM

I think I mostly prefer the new Talent system, as a few impactful choices seems better than several minor tweaks.

That said, I do miss the customisation available in the old system... like when in Arena I found a holy/prot build for my character that rendered me nigh unkillable, and made me a pretty decent healer for whoever I was teamed up with.

I guess it really is a matter of preference.

Kish

2018-06-13, 09:21 AM

You're right about one thing Kish - we critically disagree.

Enjoy your classic servers whenever they drop, I guess.
Oh, I hope to. I'd say "Enjoy modern WoW," but you protested when I read your defenses of it as indicating that you like it, so...enjoy your sense that the game you don't like is still somehow objectively superior to its earlier forms, I guess.

Psyren

2018-06-13, 02:20 PM

Oh, I hope to. I'd say "Enjoy modern WoW," but you protested when I read your defenses of it as indicating that you like it, so...enjoy your sense that the game you don't like is still somehow objectively superior to its earlier forms, I guess.

Eh, I'm here for the same reason you are - not enjoying the game in it's current form, discussing the reasons why, hoping they'll wise up and release something more to my tastes. That doesn't mean I can't celebrate the things they got right (like ripping out the obsolete talent trees like so many rotting floorboards.)

Resileaf

2018-06-13, 02:27 PM

Funny. I'm here for entirely different reasons. I (mostly) enjoy the gameplay and company I have... But I have grown to absolutely despise the story and where it's been going.

Kish

2018-06-13, 07:22 PM

The_Jackal

2018-06-13, 09:58 PM

Now I'm curious about something.

Hands up, anyone who would say "I like modern WoW" without any caveats. (Should this be unclear: Psyren doesn't qualify, Resileaf doesn't qualify, and I sure as death don't qualify.)

I'd have to say that modern WoW, while I don't prefer it to the Vanilla through Wrath era, or even Mists, for that matter, is still the best MMO I've tried on the market, on the whole. It's still a well-executed game, I just bemoan the generalization, simplification, and feature creep that's gradually taken over the game. I'd like to see them launch WoW 2.0, or even better, a new MMO property.

But I'd have to say I prefer it to Wildstar. I prefer it to Star Trek Online. I prefer it to SW:TOR. I can't say I've tried Guild Wars 2 or FFXIV or Eve Online, but those games never had any aesthetics which grabbed me to begin with. So it has the benefit of being a high-production value, high quality MMO with an aesthetic that I still find appealing. Final Fantasy looks like the characters fell out of Japanese YA manga, GW2 couldn't look more bland and uninspired if they hired a team of experts from Initech (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/) to replace their art department.

So... yeah, I guess I'm not a "hands up". Shrug.

I'm not sure it's a useful question to ask, though. I'm sure you could ask a thousand WoW fans what needs to change about the game to make it better, and you might get a thousand different answers.

Kish

2018-06-13, 10:09 PM

You ask the questions you want to know the answers to, and I'll ask mine.

Sian

2018-06-13, 11:58 PM

You ask the questions you want to know the answers to, and I'll ask mine.

I want to know what happens inside a black hole ... doesn't make it certain that I'm going to like the answer (or that the answer even is something I consider a answer)

sonofzeal

2018-06-14, 08:30 AM

I'm introducing my nephew to WoW.

He's pretty young, doesn't have experience in MMOs or even Action RPGs before, but he really seems to like it. So far he's gravitating to Hunters and Warlocks as his preferred classes (I've got a Mage, Hunter, Druid, and Monk, and my wife has a Rogue), but having not played regularly myself since before Warlords, there's a lot that's different.

What's the consensus on class/spec balance these days? Especially at lower levels, are there any that lag behind or are noticably OP? What are the biggest changes to watch out for if we're not playing end-game content?

Psyren

2018-06-14, 08:38 AM

But I'd have to say I prefer it to Wildstar. I prefer it to Star Trek Online. I prefer it to SW:TOR. I can't say I've tried Guild Wars 2 or FFXIV or Eve Online, but those games never had any aesthetics which grabbed me to begin with. So it has the benefit of being a high-production value, high quality MMO with an aesthetic that I still find appealing. Final Fantasy looks like the characters fell out of Japanese YA manga, GW2 couldn't look more bland and uninspired if they hired a team of experts from Initech (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/) to replace their art department.

GW2 is my favorite one right now (by contrast, I find the aesthetic gorgeous, and the lack of sub means I can drop it to play something else and pick it back up whenever without feeling obligated), but I'm about to give ESO a college try too. (It wasn't on your list, so I don't know whether you've tried it.)

I'm not sure it's a useful question to ask, though. I'm sure you could ask a thousand WoW fans what needs to change about the game to make it better, and you might get a thousand different answers.

Indeed.

I want to know what happens inside a black hole ... doesn't make it certain that I'm going to like the answer (or that the answer even is something I consider a answer)

Ha! :smallbiggrin:

What's the consensus on class/spec balance these days? Especially at lower levels, are there any that lag behind or are noticably OP? What are the biggest changes to watch out for if we're not playing end-game content?

"Biggest change" depends on when you stopped playing. If it was Cata or before, Talents would probably be the biggest. If it was Pandaria, drastically differentiating the classes and specs would probably qualify. If it was WoD... sucking less?

Resileaf

2018-06-14, 08:47 AM

My current favorite MMO is actually Final Fantasy 14 atm. Although I wish you could see how much HP a given creature has rather than just a life bar... Seems like MMOs just don't show numbers anymore. Wonder why.

sonofzeal

2018-06-14, 08:56 AM

"Biggest change" depends on when you stopped playing. If it was Cata or before, Talents would probably be the biggest. If it was Pandaria, drastically differentiating the classes and specs would probably qualify. If it was WoD... sucking less?

I stopped around the time WoD was coming out, I think. The big thing I've been noticing is that monsters auto-scale to your level now, in every zone we've been in lately. I'm reeeeally not sure how I feel about that.

Oh, one other important question - is there any power difference between the various possible Hunter pets? Like is which pet you have mostly just aesthetic? Or are there any in particular that a low-level Hunter should go tame ASAP?

Resileaf

2018-06-14, 09:54 AM

I stopped around the time WoD was coming out, I think. The big thing I've been noticing is that monsters auto-scale to your level now, in every zone we've been in lately. I'm reeeeally not sure how I feel about that.

Oh, one other important question - is there any power difference between the various possible Hunter pets? Like is which pet you have mostly just aesthetic? Or are there any in particular that a low-level Hunter should go tame ASAP?
If you want a tanking pet, get a turtle of some kind. They have powerful damage reduction abilities that will help a lot against tougher monsters, especially rare spawns.
Just make sure to turn off growl in dungeons.

Psyren

2018-06-14, 10:47 AM

I stopped around the time WoD was coming out, I think. The big thing I've been noticing is that monsters auto-scale to your level now, in every zone we've been in lately. I'm reeeeally not sure how I feel about that.

Right, I forgot about that. That was actually a BFA pre-patch addition, so even newer than Legion itself. I actually like it - from a leveling standpoint, there were far too many quests where no matter how interesting the storyline was, you would outlevel them too fast and completing them became pointless. This was especially egregious when a questline would extend between zones, and you would end up outleveling the entire next zone and thus leave the questline completely orphaned.

GW2 does something different - instead of scaling the monsters up, it scales you down - but the effect is basically the same.

Resileaf

2018-06-14, 11:08 AM

The_Jackal

2018-06-14, 11:52 AM

You ask the questions you want to know the answers to, and I'll ask mine.

Fair enough.

Okay, my question is this:

What three changes would you make to modern WoW which you believe would improve the game and bridge the divide between the classic and modern enthusiasts?

I'm introducing my nephew to WoW.

He's pretty young, doesn't have experience in MMOs or even Action RPGs before, but he really seems to like it. So far he's gravitating to Hunters and Warlocks as his preferred classes (I've got a Mage, Hunter, Druid, and Monk, and my wife has a Rogue), but having not played regularly myself since before Warlords, there's a lot that's different.

What's the consensus on class/spec balance these days? Especially at lower levels, are there any that lag behind or are noticably OP? What are the biggest changes to watch out for if we're not playing end-game content?

Let him play what class appeals to his sense of aesthetics. Hunter is a great class for a young player, in my opinion. They're very solo friendly. Marksmanship is the king of endgame raiding, but I'd recommend he steer clear of anything but LFR until he's older, so I'm going to go out and recommend Beast Mastery.

The game is actually quite well-suited for a young player, where earlier revisions of the game definitely required more dedication and research. That's actually what we're arguing about right now.

GW2 is my favorite one right now (by contrast, I find the aesthetic gorgeous, and the lack of sub means I can drop it to play something else and pick it back up whenever without feeling obligated), but I'm about to give ESO a college try too. (It wasn't on your list, so I don't know whether you've tried it.)

I tried ESO in the beta, went through the intro arc, did some of the open-world content, and immediately got bored and annoyed. I didn't like the way they implemented combat mechanics, it just felt like WoW but a lot more sluggish and clunky. As for GW2, I suppose I should download and check it out, at least for science purposes, since it's free. Though, to be honest, I make F2P to be a drawback in the form, not a benefit. I'd just assume play a game where the developer gets paid to make the game fun, rather than just making overt grabs on your wallet in-game.

My current favorite MMO is actually Final Fantasy 14 atm. Although I wish you could see how much HP a given creature has rather than just a life bar... Seems like MMOs just don't show numbers anymore. Wonder why.

Because WoW is going through it's third stat squish, maybe?

I stopped around the time WoD was coming out, I think. The big thing I've been noticing is that monsters auto-scale to your level now, in every zone we've been in lately. I'm reeeeally not sure how I feel about that.

It's actually great. It means you can stick with a zone as long as the story holds out, instead of leaving quests half-finished because nothing gives you worthwhile XP anymore.

Oh, one other important question - is there any power difference between the various possible Hunter pets? Like is which pet you have mostly just aesthetic? Or are there any in particular that a low-level Hunter should go tame ASAP?

I would strongly advise going for what he likes the look of. There are pet mechanic differences, but few of them are important enough to warrant moving away from something you like.

Resileaf

2018-06-14, 12:21 PM

Because WoW is going through it's third stat squish, maybe?

I don't think so. It still shows you your own stats. It didn't fall into WoW's power creep trap by just not raising the stats gear gives you by the thousands (yet). It's just enemy HP that doesn't show up. I've noticed GW2 didn't, I think Korean MMOs like Tera don't either, so it seems like something that newer MMOs just implement purposely. I imagine there's some kind of psychological reason for it. Maybe prevent someone from knowing at a glance if they can take a monster or not? It's easy to tell in WoW if you can kill something since you know how much damage you deal and how much HP the monster has. If you can't see the HP, you have to start attacking yourself to see how much damage you do and then decide if you need to haul ass or not.

Psyren

2018-06-14, 12:24 PM

It also helps with those quests where you need to weaken but not kill an enemy, but you're at a so high level that looking meanly at them would overkill them by the millions.

Honestly, those are just poorly designed in general. They should make it so that if someone who has the quest is fighting that mob, that once they hit a certain damage threshold they become invulnerable and {thing you are supposed to do to them} automatically happens. When every system in the game encourages you to hit as hard as you can, forcing players to figure out arcane and unintuitive ways of pulling their punches is just dumb.

Fair enough.

Okay, my question is this:

What three changes would you make to modern WoW which you believe would improve the game and bridge the divide between the classic and modern enthusiasts?

Not directed at me, but I'm not sure one game can do both of those things. But if any studio can afford to run 2-3 MMOs at once, it's Blizzard. (Heck, they're about to run two right now.)

The game is actually quite well-suited for a young player, where earlier revisions of the game definitely required more dedication and research. That's actually what we're arguing about right now.

Not saying you're implying otherwise, but I'm still compelled to add - a game needing less research to play is great for older players too, especially those with families and full-time jobs and lives that don't have the time for a second vocation during their leisure hours. It is not just a consideration for youth.

I tried ESO in the beta, went through the intro arc, did some of the open-world content, and immediately got bored and annoyed. I didn't like the way they implemented combat mechanics, it just felt like WoW but a lot more sluggish and clunky. As for GW2, I suppose I should download and check it out, at least for science purposes, since it's free. Though, to be honest, I make F2P to be a drawback in the form, not a benefit. I'd just assume play a game where the developer gets paid to make the game fun, rather than just making overt grabs on your wallet in-game.

I can't speak to how it was in the beta, but my understanding is it has improved considerably. That's secondhand though, as I have yet to actually knuckle down and play it after my partner purchased my copy.

Because WoW is going through it's third stat squish, maybe?

And WoW shows numbers anyway. As does GW. IIRC most of the big ones do if you enable it.

Resileaf

2018-06-14, 12:30 PM

Kish

2018-06-14, 01:40 PM

What three changes would you make to modern WoW which you believe would improve the game and bridge the divide between the classic and modern enthusiasts?
If you're asking me specifically rather than everyone, I have no real answer, I'm afraid. I'm uncertain that there is such a thing as a modern enthusiast (that's what my question was aimed at), and no three changes would bring the game back to a state where I would want to play it...nor, honestly, would as many changes to gameplay as I wanted, as long as those changes couldn't include making it that the MoP "Varien's Alliance is about lawful good overdrive and the Horde occupies the moral low ground forever and ever" story thing never happened.

sonofzeal

2018-06-14, 02:10 PM

Right, I forgot about that. That was actually a BFA pre-patch addition, so even newer than Legion itself. I actually like it - from a leveling standpoint, there were far too many quests where no matter how interesting the storyline was, you would outlevel them too fast and completing them became pointless. This was especially egregious when a questline would extend between zones, and you would end up outleveling the entire next zone and thus leave the questline completely orphaned.

GW2 does something different - instead of scaling the monsters up, it scales you down - but the effect is basically the same.

I get that... but it also removes the sensation of progress from the game. My lvl 15 Mage tromps off to babysit my nephew in lvl 5 quests, and dies when they aggro too many. The power curve seems to be more about spikes when you get a cool new ability or item, followed in a couple levels by troughs where you're now struggling against monsters that were easier before. It also makes it much more annoying to travel through previous zones, since you can't just blow things up if they aggro on you.

Mostly it's the lack of a sense of progress that bugs me. I remember getting to Outlands the first time in the middle of one of those scripted demon attacks and having a blast trying to "help" the defenders. It was pointless but cool. Equally cool was visiting again at lvl 80 and just laying waste to the attackers, butchering their forces in a one-sided curbstomp. Yeah you don't get anything for doing that, but it was fun. As was trying to sneak through a high level zone, or carving a bloody swathe through a low level one.

I get that the new system may be easier, giving you level-appropriate rewards and a manageable challenge wherever you are, but it's less fun.

Kish

2018-06-14, 02:44 PM

Not to propose modern WoW should do anything specific, just providing information: EverQuest 2 has something called mentoring. You can right-click on another party member and reduce your effective level to theirs (your gear and skills become weaker, but you still have skills you wouldn't actually have, and you're still actually substantially more powerful than you were at that level), or talk to an NPC in one of the capital cities and pay five gold to be effectively locked at any level divisible by five below yours that you choose. Or you can blow through things way below your level if you choose, and you can advance quests that way, but you won't get XP or non-trivial loot for kills.

The_Jackal

2018-06-15, 01:11 PM

Honestly, those are just poorly designed in general. They should make it so that if someone who has the quest is fighting that mob, that once they hit a certain damage threshold they become invulnerable and {thing you are supposed to do to them} automatically happens. When every system in the game encourages you to hit as hard as you can, forcing players to figure out arcane and unintuitive ways of pulling their punches is just dumb.

Agreed. When your mission design's principal challenge is fighting with the user-interface, you have failed as a game designer. That said, you can always score the nerf sword (http://www.wowhead.com/item=137663/soft-foam-sword) to help with those.

Not directed at me, but I'm not sure one game can do both of those things. But if any studio can afford to run 2-3 MMOs at once, it's Blizzard. (Heck, they're about to run two right now.)

It's directed at anyone. Even if you're happy with modern WoW, what would you do to make it better?

Not saying you're implying otherwise, but I'm still compelled to add - a game needing less research to play is great for older players too, especially those with families and full-time jobs and lives that don't have the time for a second vocation during their leisure hours. It is not just a consideration for youth.

I completely agree that non-intuitive game mechanics aren't desirable in general. One ought to be able to compromise between accessibility and depth in a game. I've never appreciated complexity for its own sake, it's the depth and freedom to customize that I'm after.

I can't speak to how it was in the beta, but my understanding is it has improved considerably. That's secondhand though, as I have yet to actually knuckle down and play it after my partner purchased my copy.

I doubt very much my misgivings about the game would have been addressed post-beta. I've ranted many times on this forum about the limitations and shortcomings of the 'combat via hash-table' mechanic which dominates the MMO market today. If I'm going to drop my sunk costs from WoW into another game, they have to bring something truly next-level, not just an iterative tweak, a button shuffle, and a palette swap. I'll take a flyer if the aesthetic catches my fancy (like I did with Wildstar), or if the IP resonates with me (SW:TOR), but the Elder Scrolls setting does neither of those things for me. If I were to take a person with no access to popular culture and put screenshots (minus the UI) of Aeon, Guild Wars, and ESO in front of them, I doubt they'd even be able to determine that they came from different games. Yawn.

And WoW shows numbers anyway. As does GW. IIRC most of the big ones do if you enable it.

Sure. My answer was half jest, half conjecture; nevertheless, there are plenty of gaming companies which are less than assiduous about being transparent about their game math. The very appropriately named 'Cryptic Studios' being a prime example.

If you're asking me specifically rather than everyone, I have no real answer, I'm afraid. I'm uncertain that there is such a thing as a modern enthusiast (that's what my question was aimed at), and no three changes would bring the game back to a state where I would want to play it...nor, honestly, would as many changes to gameplay as I wanted, as long as those changes couldn't include making it that the MoP "Varien's Alliance is about lawful good overdrive and the Horde occupies the moral low ground forever and ever" story thing never happened.

I am asking everyone, but you're included in everyone, but I wasn't necessarily concerned about story, more gameplay. And I'm not asking for a complete breakdown, just some thought-out talking points about what you want out of a Fantasy multiplayer game, and how to get it.

Not to propose modern WoW should do anything specific, just providing information: EverQuest 2 has something called mentoring. You can right-click on another party member and reduce your effective level to theirs (your gear and skills become weaker, but you still have skills you wouldn't actually have, and you're still actually substantially more powerful than you were at that level), or talk to an NPC in one of the capital cities and pay five gold to be effectively locked at any level divisible by five below yours that you choose. Or you can blow through things way below your level if you choose, and you can advance quests that way, but you won't get XP or non-trivial loot for kills.

Yes, I've often touted City of Heroes' sidekicking/mentoring system as a great example of how to promote replay of older content, uptake of new blood, better community, etc, far better than heirlooms or level scaling do currently. However, I do think level scaling provides the opportunity for more content to be interesting, even if it undercuts some of your power fantasy. I liked the way Destiny 2 handled it, actually. You simply reach a point where your excess power level doesn't increase your damage or resistance in any way, but they still let you have some of the other effects of improved gear, like higher stats, lower cooldowns on abilities, etc. Too bad the content in D2 is so shallow and repetitive.

Psyren

2018-06-15, 04:33 PM

It's directed at anyone. Even if you're happy with modern WoW, what would you do to make it better?

Real combat/physics engine would be mine. They could leave nearly everything else the same.

(I really, really wish Firefall hadn't been mismanaged into the ground. Anthem or Em8er might deliver where it failed though.)

I completely agree that non-intuitive game mechanics aren't desirable in general. One ought to be able to compromise between accessibility and depth in a game. I've never appreciated complexity for its own sake, it's the depth and freedom to customize that I'm after.

You can indeed achieve both depth and accessibility in the same game. Consider an RPG franchise like Pokemon - a child can experience all the PvE content in those games, but hardcore players know quite well just how deep that rabbit hole can go.

I doubt very much my misgivings about the game would have been addressed post-beta. I've ranted many times on this forum about the limitations and shortcomings of the 'combat via hash-table' mechanic which dominates the MMO market today. If I'm going to drop my sunk costs from WoW into another game, they have to bring something truly next-level, not just an iterative tweak, a button shuffle, and a palette swap. I'll take a flyer if the aesthetic catches my fancy (like I did with Wildstar), or if the IP resonates with me (SW:TOR), but the Elder Scrolls setting does neither of those things for me. If I were to take a person with no access to popular culture and put screenshots (minus the UI) of Aeon, Guild Wars, and ESO in front of them, I doubt they'd even be able to determine that they came from different games. Yawn.

I can easily tell the aesthetics of those three apart myself. I don't mind WoW and Wildstar's cartoony aesthetic either, of course.

My current problem with ESO isn't the combat, it's how long you have to spend in noobville before you unlock the meatier stuff. Yet another place GW2 has the competition beat imo.

Yes, I've often touted City of Heroes' sidekicking/mentoring system as a great example of how to promote replay of older content, uptake of new blood, better community, etc, far better than heirlooms or level scaling do currently. However, I do think level scaling provides the opportunity for more content to be interesting, even if it undercuts some of your power fantasy. I liked the way Destiny 2 handled it, actually. You simply reach a point where your excess power level doesn't increase your damage or resistance in any way, but they still let you have some of the other effects of improved gear, like higher stats, lower cooldowns on abilities, etc. Too bad the content in D2 is so shallow and repetitive.

I actually think not increasing was one of Destiny 2's biggest flaws; it left you with nothing to work towards. When your gear stops improving and you're struggling with a Nightfall, the knowledge that no amount of grinding is going to help you with that struggle is a huge turnoff. Sure the endgame progression can be very slow, like how getting to 800+ Paragon in Diablo or max AP in WoW are very slow, but there's a palpable difference between slow and stopped.

The_Jackal

2018-06-15, 06:42 PM

I actually think not increasing was one of Destiny 2's biggest flaws; it left you with nothing to work towards. When your gear stops improving and you're struggling with a Nightfall, the knowledge that no amount of grinding is going to help you with that struggle is a huge turnoff. Sure the endgame progression can be very slow, like how getting to 800+ Paragon in Diablo or max AP in WoW are very slow, but there's a palpable difference between slow and stopped.

Oh, I thoroughly agree. When I talk about how Destiny 2's level scaling worked, I meant only that places like EDZ and Titan remained relevant after you had outleveled them. Level scaling mechanics and having endgame progression needn't be mutually exclusive. Ultimately, what killed Destiny 2 was a desperate content shortage. Only seven strikes, one raid, and incredibly repetitive outdoor areas, with lots and lots of samey public events. Really, they needed to make more different kinds of activities still be relevant to your guardian's continued progression, the way artifact power works in WoW, or how Paragon levels work in Diablo 3. Stuff like the story replay missions, lost sectors, etc. quickly became irrelevant to anything other than appearance farming, and some regular world-building would also not have killed them.

The Glyphstone

2018-06-16, 10:23 AM

For the Classic server nutters, interesting behind-the-scenes blog post about how Blizzard is building them and what they're including.

sonofzeal

2018-06-16, 10:28 AM

Resileaf

2018-06-16, 11:35 AM

- Does WoW's new enemy-scaling continue indefinitely and in all zone? If I bring my lvl 82 Druid around to help my nephew, is everything going to be lvl 80-84 for me in every zone?

- Is there a big difference in power between Hunter pets, and is there anything worth tracking down and taming?

- Is there anything to be aware of, class balance wise? So far BM Hunter seems super strong so I'm glad he's gravitating there, but my Ele Shaman I had travelling with him is seriously struggling. The Arc Mage I have going with my wife seems way stronger than... any of her Rogue specs she's tried. Are we just missing something, and if not, how long until things start levelling out? Or is Ele Shaman always going to have awful DPS compared to a BM Hunter?

Scaling is dependant on the expansion. Classic will scale to 60. BC and Wrath will scale to 80. Cata and MoP will scale to 90. The other expansions remain at their current levels.

Pet damage is the same across pets, but what you have to look for in pets is their abilities. Some pets excel at being tanks with damage reduction, some pets have damage buffs that you can use to make them better damage dealers, and so on. If you're BM hunter, you can tame exotic pets, which do have better abilities/higher damage. Exotic pets are generally unique rare spawns, or stronger beasts than what you usually fight.

Classes with pets are generally much stronger than other classes during leveling because the addition of a second damage source is worth a lot when fighting stuff. Casters start off really strong, but generally fall off in damage quickly if they don't keep up with gear.

Psyren

2018-06-16, 12:51 PM

Oh, I thoroughly agree. When I talk about how Destiny 2's level scaling worked, I meant only that places like EDZ and Titan remained relevant after you had outleveled them. Level scaling mechanics and having endgame progression needn't be mutually exclusive. Ultimately, what killed Destiny 2 was a desperate content shortage. Only seven strikes, one raid, and incredibly repetitive outdoor areas, with lots and lots of samey public events. Really, they needed to make more different kinds of activities still be relevant to your guardian's continued progression, the way artifact power works in WoW, or how Paragon levels work in Diablo 3. Stuff like the story replay missions, lost sectors, etc. quickly became irrelevant to anything other than appearance farming, and some regular world-building would also not have killed them.

Agreed - but even beyond the lack of content, there were still difficulty spikes, walls and cliffs gulfing off parts of it. So even with the lack of endgame things to do, there were still folks (not ashamed to put me and my friends on this list) that weren't able to see even all of that.

For the Classic server nutters, interesting behind-the-scenes blog post about how Blizzard is building them and what they're including.

Link (https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21881587/dev-watercooler-world-of-warcraft-classic)

Other than the specific patch they're working from (1.12, so pre-BC) there is precious little gameplay detail though. Lots of nuts and bolts engineering crunch that I find pretty interesting however.

Classes with pets are generally much stronger than other classes during leveling because the addition of a second damage source is worth a lot when fighting stuff. Casters start off really strong, but generally fall off in damage quickly if they don't keep up with gear.

It also means a second target for enemies to focus on - this means you don't lose dps from getting interrupted, cc'ed, having to stop your rotation to pop survival cooldowns or run away entirely to patch yourself up.

The_Jackal

2018-06-16, 01:03 PM

Agreed - but even beyond the lack of content, there were still difficulty spikes, walls and cliffs gulfing off parts of it. So even with the lack of endgame things to do, there were still folks (not ashamed to put me and my friends on this list) that weren't able to see even all of that.

I'm an old-school FPS gamer from way back, and had friends who were too, so I was able to get all of the raids done, in spite of them being riddled with far more annoying jump puzzles and cat herding problems than actually challenging gameplay. For example, the last boss of the first raid, Calus, was, for all intents and purposes, a targetting dummy fight, except for the phase where your teammates need to call out icons for the guys in the main room to trigger, based on the one not shown. Here's a pro-tip for every game designer: When the most difficult thing in your encounter is explaining your encounter to the people doing it, you have failed at producing fun.

Link (https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21881587/dev-watercooler-world-of-warcraft-classic)

Other than the specific patch they're working from (1.12, so pre-BC) there is precious little gameplay detail though. Lots of nuts and bolts engineering crunch that I find pretty interesting however.

It also means a second target for enemies to focus on - this means you don't lose dps from getting interrupted, cc'ed, having to stop your rotation to pop survival cooldowns or run away entirely to patch yourself up.

Yes, I also enjoy the programmer talk, but it's mostly a story about how hard making Classic servers is, which is no surprise to me. Taking an outdated codebase and dataset and making them work with more modern tools, libraries, and hardware can be very challenging.

Kish

2018-06-16, 01:20 PM

Link (https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/21881587/dev-watercooler-world-of-warcraft-classic)

Other than the specific patch they're working from (1.12, so pre-BC) there is precious little gameplay detail though.
Skill ranks, talents, no achievements, no transmog: not much in terms of detail, but all good so far.

sonofzeal

2018-06-18, 07:11 PM

Resileaf

2018-06-18, 08:53 PM

Spore

2018-06-18, 10:53 PM

Few more quick questions

- do instances now scale with level too?

- What level do you think we should be before an incompetent BM-Hunter, a semi-competent Warrior, and a fairly competent Shaman can run Ragefire Chasm?

- Is there a way to toggle capes on and off?

- Is there a way to make the Skinning skill, when in a party.... NOT awful?

Yes. Vanilla scale from 15-60. After that I am unsure. BC and Wrath instances go from 58-80 but are two queues weirdly (slowing the times down if you are not a tank or healer). Not sure how the spread with Pandaria, Cata and Warlords is. Probably one after the other though.

As soon as you get access to the dungeon finder. Heck, I've run it with my Prot Paladin with a healer that maaaybe healed a third of what I did.

Yup, you can transmog the appearance "hide cape". I like it because capes always clip through every other item. Same with helmets. Not that I love the face of every one of my characters. But I hate these clipping issues.

Skinning is...a mix between positioning, using movement speed buffs and picking worgen. For some reason, gathering enchantments and Darkmoon Fire Water gets shut off in dungeons. On my hunter, I'll usually skin, then turn my back to the group, use Disengage and if available the running speed to catch back up. Gladly this is a non issue with my demon hunter (he is about twice as fast as other specs).

The_Jackal

2018-06-19, 12:54 AM

do instances now scale with level too?

http://www.wowhead.com/dungeon-item-level-requirements-guide

What level do you think we should be before an incompetent BM-Hunter, a semi-competent Warrior, and a fairly competent Shaman can run Ragefire Chasm?

If you're using the queue, as soon as you're eligible. If you're trying to just do it as a trio, not til 60+, because scaling.

Is there a way to toggle capes on and off?

Transmog.

Is there a way to make the Skinning skill, when in a party.... NOT awful?

No. Skinning is the tradeskill you want if you LOVE grinding. You can make mad cash with it. Otherwise, stay away.

sonofzeal

2018-06-19, 07:18 AM

Re:capes - "Transmog" isn't something I'm familiar with. I googled and found this (http://www.wowhead.com/transmog), but now I'm just more confused.

Re:skinning - the problem I've been having is that I'm not allowed to skin something until everyone in the party has looted every item from it. This isn't that bad for instances, but in the overworld we {a} might not be that near eachother, and {b} might not all want to loot every common drop. I seem to remember that party leader could change how looking is handled, but it doesn't seem to let me any more.

Re:Ragefire - How many people of dubious competency do you expect it'll take to solo an instance like this? Is there anything we desperately need to know before subjecting some random strangers to our attempt?

Spore

2018-06-19, 08:59 AM

Re:Ragefire - How many people of dubious competency do you expect it'll take to solo an instance like this? Is there anything we desperately need to know before subjecting some random strangers to our attempt?

A class that has enough self sustain can solo it. DPS is just to speed it up, a healer for emergencies and bigger packs. Honestly, WoW is a joke nowadays. Instances become a tad more difficult once you hit the mid-40s.

Re:capes - "Transmog" isn't something I'm familiar with. I googled and found this (http://www.wowhead.com/transmog), but now I'm just more confused.

https://i.imgur.com/f5PRziw.jpg

Resileaf

2018-06-19, 09:06 AM

The_Jackal

2018-06-19, 10:28 AM

Tranmogrifying is something that allows you to pick a piece of gear and make it look like another. You need to find vendors in capital cities (Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Dalaran (Legion version)) and pay them a fee to transform your gear into another one you prefer the look of. You can make helms, capes and shoulder armor pieces disappear like this.

Just to be clear, disabling Cape, Helm, and Shoulder graphics are free, which I feel is an important distinction, in case hearing that it costs gold may put you off of doing it.

A class that has enough self sustain can solo it. DPS is just to speed it up, a healer for emergencies and bigger packs. Honestly, WoW is a joke nowadays. Instances become a tad more difficult once you hit the mid-40s.

This could certainly be true, I haven't tried any low level instances since level scaling has been implemented.

Re:skinning - the problem I've been having is that I'm not allowed to skin something until everyone in the party has looted every item from it. This isn't that bad for instances, but in the overworld we {a} might not be that near eachother, and {b} might not all want to loot every common drop. I seem to remember that party leader could change how looking is handled, but it doesn't seem to let me any more.

Yeah, it's personal loot only now. If you're teaming with your friends, however, I would let them know they're leaving behind free money by not looting stuff, and it all adds up. It's a pretty high tax to pay for not bothering to manage your bags. That said, yeah, you're gonna have people who can't be arsed to loot stuff, which makes skinning a screaming pain.

Re:Ragefire - How many people of dubious competency do you expect it'll take to solo an instance like this? Is there anything we desperately need to know before subjecting some random strangers to our attempt?

Wouldn't soloing imply that one is the only valid answer? ;)

In all seriousness, I'm not sure. Just out of curiosity, why? Just queue for it, the PUG train isn't that bad.

sonofzeal

2018-06-19, 11:19 AM

In all seriousness, I'm not sure. Just out of curiosity, why? Just queue for it, the PUG train isn't that bad.

I'm mostly playing with my wife and nephew, all three of us sitting in the same room. My wife's a veteran but hates optimizing gear and skill orders, and my nephew is... young, and new, and I'd like to call him a newbie but he's really more of a noob, if that distinction still makes sense to anyone.

The nephew plays through the tv though, so I'm playing my own character and periodically calling out suggestions/instructions to him, and my wife and I spend an awful lot of time just bailing him out of whatever. It's going to be frustrating for any random stranger as he spends five minutes trying to climb a wall section that isn't intended to be climbed, or Leeroy Jenkins around, or whatever. And if the nephew dies too often and ragequits, that's bad too y'know?

Psyren

2018-06-19, 11:46 AM

Yeah, it's personal loot only now. If you're teaming with your friends, however, I would let them know they're leaving behind free money by not looting stuff, and it all adds up. It's a pretty high tax to pay for not bothering to manage your bags. That said, yeah, you're gonna have people who can't be arsed to loot stuff, which makes skinning a screaming pain.

...What? Ugh.

At least the mob scaling means you won't be grinding grey mobs for scraps.

Kish

2018-06-19, 11:52 AM

Three people should not have the slightest trouble with the joke dungeons in the modern game. Even if one of them is more burden than group member.

Psyren

2018-06-19, 12:02 PM

Three people should not have the slightest trouble with the joke dungeons in the modern game. Even if one of them is more burden than group member.

Before the scaling I'd have agreed with you (at least up until SFK), but I haven't tried them since then myself.

Spore

2018-06-19, 01:58 PM

Before the scaling I'd have agreed with you (at least up until SFK), but I haven't tried them since then myself.

You can still only wipe if you actively try to ruin the others experience or go afk.

Resileaf

2018-06-19, 02:08 PM

As long as a healer is present, I think even someone who has no idea what they're doing can easily survive.

Sian

2018-06-19, 02:33 PM

Specially if that someone is a DPS and his 'handlers' are the healer and the tank

The_Jackal

2018-06-19, 02:43 PM

I'm mostly playing with my wife and nephew, all three of us sitting in the same room. My wife's a veteran but hates optimizing gear and skill orders, and my nephew is... young, and new, and I'd like to call him a newbie but he's really more of a noob, if that distinction still makes sense to anyone.

The nephew plays through the tv though, so I'm playing my own character and periodically calling out suggestions/instructions to him, and my wife and I spend an awful lot of time just bailing him out of whatever. It's going to be frustrating for any random stranger as he spends five minutes trying to climb a wall section that isn't intended to be climbed, or Leeroy Jenkins around, or whatever. And if the nephew dies too often and ragequits, that's bad too y'know?

Understood. In light of that, yeah, I'd avoid the PUG queue. I'd also likely avoid any instanced content, unless they're really excited to knock it out. That said, playing some classes is going to help a lot if you're looking to carry your team. One of the more self-sustaining tanks, like Blood DK or Vengeance Demon Hunter will help bailing your less 'l337' family members out from certain trubs. Also, I'd consider seeing if you can find a family-friendly casual guild to team up with, so if your buddies know they're going in with little kids, there's a well of patience from which to draw. I've done raiding with a group of mixed vets and scrubs, and it's fun, as long as you limit your expectations and keep it light.

...What? Ugh.

At least the mob scaling means you won't be grinding grey mobs for scraps.

Yeah, I'm not a fan either, but I think it's a small price to pay to get level scaling into the game. Also, they've really skewed the cash economy toward doing world quests, as far as I can tell, so losing the odd leather due to inattentive teammates isn't quite the bank breaker it once was.

Three people should not have the slightest trouble with the joke dungeons in the modern game. Even if one of them is more burden than group member.

You're using that word (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/should) again. That said, yes, if you're a decently geared tank of the classes I mentioned before, carrying is not impossible.

You can still only wipe if you actively try to ruin the others experience or go afk.

This, above all, is my big beef with modern WoW. The talent changes, the compromises to verisimilitude and detail, I can live with all that, but the notion that there's no real consequence for playing badly seems, to me, to be a major design flaw in the game. I realize that not everyone is going to have the same level of investment and competence, but I do think there's a problem with making the general experience of the game so utterly unthreatening that you barely need to pay attention. It also runs contrary to their own claims about how they want the player to be engaged with the world, ie: removing flying. What difference does it really make to force me to ride around the map on the ground if nothing is capable of being a threat to me in the event I'm dismounted? How can you claim that it's anything but a pointless, drudgerous timesink?

In a related point, I've unlocked flying, and it's night and day how much more enjoyable the game becomes when you don't have to spend 80% of your time commuting back and forth to world quests. Mind you, this is on my Mage, so I actually have the best travel options in the entire game. Now to crank out my Argussian Reach and Army of Light reps for Allied races.

Spore

2018-06-19, 04:02 PM

This, above all, is my big beef with modern WoW. The talent changes, the compromises to verisimilitude and detail, I can live with all that, but the notion that there's no real consequence for playing badly seems, to me, to be a major design flaw in the game. I realize that not everyone is going to have the same level of investment and competence, but I do think there's a problem with making the general experience of the game so utterly unthreatening that you barely need to pay attention. It also runs contrary to their own claims about how they want the player to be engaged with the world, ie: removing flying. What difference does it really make to force me to ride around the map on the ground if nothing is capable of being a threat to me in the event I'm dismounted? How can you claim that it's anything but a pointless, drudgerous timesink?

In a related point, I've unlocked flying, and it's night and day how much more enjoyable the game becomes when you don't have to spend 80% of your time commuting back and forth to world quests. Mind you, this is on my Mage, so I actually have the best travel options in the entire game. Now to crank out my Argussian Reach and Army of Light reps for Allied races.

I completely and wholeheartedly agree. But keep in mind WoW has a very 'needy' customer base and a wide array of class difficulty and variation. Content for a Havoc Demon Hunter or BM Hunter is of course easier than for a similarly geared Rogue or Ret Paladin. Not to mention differences in player skill. WoW is as successful because it doesn't penalize clueless players (or at least doesn't feel that way).

I have had people stop playing Dark Souls 10 minutes in because they got frustrated with the tutorial. Heck, I played it beyond the tutorial area 2 years after I have purchased it. In that way, WoW is like a bread crumb/candy trail. That makes it so addicting and rewarding. Honestly, the whole structure is - as Yahtzee would put it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMTahXSEw4w) - entirely evil. Not for a lack of morality but because it heavily manipulates us.

I feel the game is broken beyond repair. But as long as it is still churning out cash (https://wobblybloggy.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/disn-jpeg-copy.jpg)

Psyren

2018-06-19, 05:10 PM

This, above all, is my big beef with modern WoW. The talent changes, the compromises to verisimilitude and detail, I can live with all that, but the notion that there's no real consequence for playing badly seems, to me, to be a major design flaw in the game. I realize that not everyone is going to have the same level of investment and competence, but I do think there's a problem with making the general experience of the game so utterly unthreatening that you barely need to pay attention.

I think it's less that there's no consequences and more that the consequences are delayed; walled off from the leveling experience. Current "dungeon difficulty" imo should be Easy, while Heroics are Normal and Mythic is hard. That's what I would like to see myself. Then Heroic difficulty could be available while leveling for the Heirloom crowd, with increased rewards.

Yeah, I'm not a fan either, but I think it's a small price to pay to get level scaling into the game. Also, they've really skewed the cash economy toward doing world quests, as far as I can tell, so losing the odd leather due to inattentive teammates isn't quite the bank breaker it once was.

I don't see why level scaling meant we had to lose group loot options though. If I'm questing with friends (literally the only people I'd group with out in the world anyway, minus a particularly tough elite area), then I don't care which one of us hoovers up the contents of a corpse; if one of us finds something cool he'll just let the others know anyway. And if you were grouping with randoms you could simply choose not to do FFA loot. But generally we're fine letting the guy who needs to kneel over every corpse anyway be the one to grab their contents.

As for the economy, I think it's less that they intended quests to be the moneymaker and more that their quality of life changes made gathering mats less lucrative. For example, you don't need X amount of leather spread across W, Y, and Z different grades in order to advance leatherworking anymore, you can just focus on getting to cap and then start leveling it right there in the end zones.

The_Jackal

2018-06-19, 06:26 PM

I completely and wholeheartedly agree. But keep in mind WoW has a very 'needy' customer base and a wide array of class difficulty and variation. Content for a Havoc Demon Hunter or BM Hunter is of course easier than for a similarly geared Rogue or Ret Paladin. Not to mention differences in player skill. WoW is as successful because it doesn't penalize clueless players (or at least doesn't feel that way).

s/needy/entitled/, and I agree. But this is why I'd just assume they put in a difficulty slider. The game should be as challenging as you want to make it, and to be honest, earning anything in this game is largely a function of repetition. Sure, if you've got muscular dystrophy or something, you're probably not going to ever succeed at Mythic, but barring that, it's fair to assert that time + effort = success.

I have no interest in penalizing anyone, rather, I think the player ought to be given control over the challenge knob, instead of dropping in a bunch of material incentives to stuff queues for players who sleepwalk through everything, because there's no real reason to challenge yourself. Fun isn't something you should have to work your way up to.

I have had people stop playing Dark Souls 10 minutes in because they got frustrated with the tutorial. Heck, I played it beyond the tutorial area 2 years after I have purchased it.

I gave up on Dark Souls 3 before I started the game. Can't remap controls, your game is dumb and bad, and you should feel bad. I'm not advocating for Dark Souls, I think that would be the opposite of good for the game. For one thing, Dark Souls doesn't have to get you to pay a subscription fee for bouncing on bosses with insanely BS mechanics. For another thing, Dark Souls is a single-player game. If WoW was designed so that one player mis-timing a dodge resulted in a wipe, the game would have been depopulated before the end of 2007.

In that way, WoW is like a bread crumb/candy trail. That makes it so addicting and rewarding. Honestly, the whole structure is - as Yahtzee would put it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMTahXSEw4w) - entirely evil. Not for a lack of morality but because it heavily manipulates us.

I find Yahtzee amusing, but he's a terrible judge of games, in my opinion. He's way too far down the 'dialogue tree storywank' spectrum of gaming. A classic example of his elitist attitude is expressed in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkmBPtglbDs

I swear, every time I hear/read some reviewer talking about 'Games as an art form', it only makes me want to track them down, kill them, and teabag their corpse in real life. Look, if you like a style of game, that's great. I'm happy for you. But I have NO patience for the kind of rank snobbery of a critic who freely insults the audience of a popular game just because it doesn't meet their own criteria of 'quality'.

But leaving aside ad-hominem attacks, every game uses operant conditioning to design reward systems and make their games fun. Really, it's an issue of labels more than anything. When people talk about an activity releasing dopamine (by reading facebook, watching movies, playing games, eating cheese, or shooting heroin, for example), all you're really describing is the neurotransmitter by which your body experiences pleasure. I know a game has been devised which doesn't lead to any release of dopamine, it's called 'No Man's Sky (http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/no-mans-sky/critic-reviews)'. But only a complete idiot (https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2017/06/26/cheese-addiction/#151efaa13583) would equate eating cheese to chasing the dragon.

I feel the game is broken beyond repair. But as long as it is still churning out cash (https://wobblybloggy.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/disn-jpeg-copy.jpg)

Well, I wouldn't put it that way, rather, I'd say that with a game of WoW's, shall we say... vintage, you're not really making the most of your software development investment.

I think it's less that there's no consequences and more that the consequences are delayed; walled off from the leveling experience. Current "dungeon difficulty" imo should be Easy, while Heroics are Normal and Mythic is hard. That's what I would like to see myself. Then Heroic difficulty could be available while leveling for the Heirloom crowd, with increased rewards.

I don't see the merit of forcing players to slog through a bunch of tedium before they get to the fun parts. Again, difficulty slider. You can still have 'elite-tier' locked content if you want to where the difficulty is fixed, if you must. But the idea of dumbing down the entire experience for the entire player base, just for the expressed purpose of accommodating the tail end of the bell curve, is a rotten, pernicious idea. World Quests don't have a difficulty slider. The daily stipend of gold, wakening essence, curious coins, and other resources is all gated, for everyone, on dumb, spud-tier quests whose biggest challenge is traversing the map to the enemy.

I don't see why level scaling meant we had to lose group loot options though. If I'm questing with friends (literally the only people I'd group with out in the world anyway, minus a particularly tough elite area), then I don't care which one of us hoovers up the contents of a corpse; if one of us finds something cool he'll just let the others know anyway. And if you were grouping with randoms you could simply choose not to do FFA loot. But generally we're fine letting the guy who needs to kneel over every corpse anyway be the one to grab their contents.

We didn't have to, I'm sure. I'm just saying that FFA loot is a feature I'm not that broken up about losing. Yes, it is, without question, a dumb removal of a useful feature. Who knows why they changed it? Optimizing GM tickets on loot arguments? Bollixing corner-case farming strats?

As for the economy, I think it's less that they intended quests to be the moneymaker and more that their quality of life changes made gathering mats less lucrative. For example, you don't need X amount of leather spread across W, Y, and Z different grades in order to advance leatherworking anymore, you can just focus on getting to cap and then start leveling it right there in the end zones.

Actually, my angle is much more Orwellian than that: By putting most of the money into world quests, they limit the amount of progress you can make on any particular axis in the game. They'd rather get you sucked into maintaining a giant stable of alts than let you power through on one character, and complete all the content the game has to offer. It winds up being another time-gate. Personally, I would much rather have a paradigm where I can choose what I spend time grinding toward, even if the rate of progress is as slow, or even slower, than just queuing up for a fat wad of gold and other loot from a daily giveaway.

sonofzeal

2018-06-19, 08:34 PM

Ragefire Chasm Report

Me: lvl 18 Tauren Resto Shaman
Wife: lvl 18 Panda Arms Warrior
Nephew: lvl 18 Tauren BM Hunter

My wife and I are both old players who've gotten up to about lvl 80 the hard way, but only I spent any time at all in instances, mostly just soloing them when I had doubled the recommended level. My nephew's brand spanking new and doesn't have the best impulse control, so we knew not to expect a flawless victory. I let them know the general lay of the land, and basic strategy IRL, then we all met up in Orgrimmar and I led them through the Cleft of Shadows and through the Ragefire portal the old fashioned way.

Initial Impressions

Things actually seemed hopeful when we got inside. The initial Flame Hounds went down without too much trouble, but we had our first death against the 2x Mature / 1x Houndmaster formation a bit beyond the lava flow. Both of the Hounds aggroed on me, and despite calls for help and healing myself as fast as I could, I went down just as Wife and Nephew took down the Houndmaster. This was followed closely by our first wipe, as Wife and Nephew discovered that taking on two Mature Flame Hounds without a healer wasn't as productive as they might have hoped.

A sign of things to come, I'm sure.

The Midgame

From there... there was a lot of dying, but consistent forward progress. Adarogg proved not so dangerous, although at one point Nephew revived his pet in (apparently) and un-pathable spot, causing Adarogg to reset to full health every ten seconds or so? I figured out what was going on, and frantic shouts for him to dismiss and re-summon his pet resolved the issue.

I don't think we had any deaths against Adarogg at all, but we learned not to underestimate the Acolytes. There were a couple times Nephew jumped the gun and the results were pretty dire, but we quickly became old-hat at running back to pick up where we left off, a little more careful the next time.

End Result

All told, we cleared the first two (of four) bosses, and rescued 4/5 of the Peons before calling game on account of Nephew's bedtime. I think we might have been able to win, given time, but it was pretty slow going and I think we were right to stop when we did. I got a Dark Ritual Cape out of it, and we all got some nice gold. Nephew and Wife had fun, and it's certainly something we might try again some day.

Afterthoughts

...good lord, healing is stressful. One wipe against Koranthal was completely my fault, because I failed to switch targets from Nephew to Wife in time, healed him instead of her, and couldn't recover before she died. There's a lot of juggling back and forth, aggravated by a desire to keep up my DOTs on him, stay off his Shadow Storm, etc. I can see why so few people want to play it, and also why it's the job that takes the most heat. It's definitely not always the healer's fault, but if there's not an obvious reason why everything went pear-shaped, a healer misclick is as likely a culprit as anything.

I do have to wonder how accurate the auto-scaling is, though. As we get new abilities and new items, shouldn't it get proportionately easier even if basic damage/health ratios stay the same? If we try again in a few levels, would we have an easier time of things?

I've applied to a couple guilds. I'm hoping to find a guildmate or two willing to help us through without zerging the whole thing down like PUGers seem to. Otherwise though, we may just stick to standard questing and save Instances for special occasions when we have a lot of time to kill and a willingness to die over... and over... and over...

sonofzeal

2018-06-19, 08:53 PM

My Wife wishes me to clarify that she did try to rescue me from those Flame Hounds in that first wipe.

She also thinks it's important to note that, during one wipe against the Acolytes when both my Wife and I had gone down and he was on a sliver of health, he decided the best tactic was to jump off the bridge and into the river of lava. Which, at that point... well, fair. No heroic outplay was going to save his life there, so going out in style was a reasonable call IMO.

Y'know, I'm probably not the first person this has occured to, but... if the healer dies, it's probably the tank's fault. If the tank dies, it's probably the healer's fault. If the DPS dies, it's probably their own dang fault.

Spore

2018-06-19, 10:48 PM

I think the player ought to be given control over the challenge knob, instead of dropping in a bunch of material incentives to stuff queues for players who sleepwalk through everything, because there's no real reason to challenge yourself.

I disagree slightly here. If you want capable players that behave in group content reliably, you have to adjust its difficulty slowly upwards. If you do not want to partake in group content, more power to you. And story driven questing and the occasional difficulty spike should keep that interesting. Because you know what's not cool?

Basically bashing your head onto the keyboard and winning for 100 levels and then running face first into a brick wall once you hit recent content that you cannot overgear and actually have to pay attention to.

For another thing, Dark Souls is a single-player game. If WoW was designed so that one player mis-timing a dodge resulted in a wipe, the game would have been depopulated before the end of 2007.

See? That is what I was afraid of. I took Dark Souls as an example for a game that is difficult. Not because it is comparable in any other metric. Now you just compare the differences with each other and call me out on that. I never said that.

Also there were and are many raid bosses that call for a wipe when (single!) people don't react to a mechanic. I distinctly remember wiping for three weeks at Garalon with my scrub guild because our hunter could not kite adds and everyone else lost so much damage that we further fell under the DPS requirement.

Can't remap controls, your game is dumb and bad, and you should feel bad.

You even started with objective criticism and then derailed yourself.

Can't remap controls, your game is dumb and bad, and you should feel bad. [...] But I have NO patience for the kind of rank snobbery of a critic who freely insults the audience of a popular game just because it doesn't meet their own criteria of 'quality'.

You do realize he is just playing up the snarky brit thing for internet points (and views and cash)? Funnily enough if you learn to look deeper into his review style and what he is and isn't okay with, you can more easily judge if the game is for you.

Well, I wouldn't put it that way, rather, I'd say that with a game of WoW's, shall we say... vintage, you're not really making the most of your software development investment.

It's more directed at the fan base and its expectations and certain staples that hold designing the game back. Demon Hunters are a great class, both from the game design and the possible builds. Lorewise, they're 105% edge, but I feel WoW doesn't care anymore because Void Elf Rogues casting "Shuriken Storm" and other weeb and dark stuff exist.

Older classes...tend to be paralyzed by old talents and skills. Fire Mages must do a fire based dot, else it doesn't feel like a fire mage. They have Rune of Power since Pandaria despite many players saying they hate the spell. They're bound to having Mirror Image because it's a D&D spell and was in vanilla and thus HAS TO BE in the game somewhere.

They turned some specs around by 180° (see Survival hunter) that aggravated people perfectly happy with the old ranged dot spec (see for example...me). WoW today is like an, uhm...you are familiar with WoW's abomination that is sewn together from a huge amount of corpses? Yea, some are fresh and nice to be around, some are old and rancid, and some got a make over so that you don't notice the old smell as badly.

Why yes, I am the king of metaphors! :smallsmile:

All told, we cleared the first two (of four) bosses, and rescued 4/5 of the Peons before calling game on account of Nephew's bedtime. I think we might have been able to win, given time, but it was pretty slow going and I think we were right to stop when we did.

:smallannoyed: So....you wiped in an instance that is supposed to take up 15 minutes of time? You wiped several times? Did you go with 5 players as recommended?

..good lord, healing is stressful. One wipe against Koranthal was completely my fault, because I failed to switch targets from Nephew to Wife in time, healed him instead of her, and couldn't recover before she died.

Haha, yup. Two problems with the standard ui pop up with healing. First the health bars are at the side. Second you have to click to change targets.

As we get new abilities and new items, shouldn't it get proportionately easier even if basic damage/health ratios stay the same? If we try again in a few levels, would we have an easier time of things?

Heavily depends on the class but yes, definitely.

Nephew and Wife had fun, and it's certainly something we might try again some day.

Are you on the US side of things? If you are EU, I might have a tank in your range lying around so I can both look at what you are doing and give some tips.

Let me just say common courtesy, not knowing how old your nephew is and board rules are holding me back on unleashing my full snark. Wiping can def. happen in earlier instances. But you are doing something EXTREMELY WRONG for it to become a wipe fest.

The_Jackal

2018-06-20, 02:03 AM

Ragefire Chasm Report

Have your Wife swap to protection for running instances, her ability to hold threat and absorb punishment for your team will be like night and day.

I disagree slightly here. If you want capable players that behave in group content reliably, you have to adjust its difficulty slowly upwards. If you do not want to partake in group content, more power to you. And story driven questing and the occasional difficulty spike should keep that interesting. Because you know what's not cool?

Basically bashing your head onto the keyboard and winning for 100 levels and then running face first into a brick wall once you hit recent content that you cannot overgear and actually have to pay attention to.

Yes, I think the default difficulty should be higher, and yes, the general play should more readily mirror the experience of regular endgame content. But I think putting in a slider you can mess after a wipe would do a better job of accommodating less astute players than the current status quo, where the default state of play is idiot-proof.

See? That is what I was afraid of. I took Dark Souls as an example for a game that is difficult. Not because it is comparable in any other metric. Now you just compare the differences with each other and call me out on that. I never said that.

Also there were and are many raid bosses that call for a wipe when (single!) people don't react to a mechanic. I distinctly remember wiping for three weeks at Garalon with my scrub guild because our hunter could not kite adds and everyone else lost so much damage that we further fell under the DPS requirement.

Sure, but 'failure to kite' isn't missing a single keystroke, it's a pretty high level of inteptitude. Dark Souls will ruthlessly send you to the loading screen for missing a single dodge. Look, I'm sure in practice we're both on the side of, "The game needs to improve its median level of challenge". How we describe that may differ, but that's

You even started with objective criticism and then derailed yourself.

Whatever. I refuse to play a game that doesn't let me customize my control scheme. I have limited free, and I want to play a game, not fight the user-interface. I do that kind of work for a living, and my consulting rate is over $100/hour.

You do realize he is just playing up the snarky brit thing for internet points (and views and cash)? Funnily enough if you learn to look deeper into his review style and what he is and isn't okay with, you can more easily judge if the game is for you.

Yes, I do realize his hyperbolic sarcastic persona is affected, but he's pretty clearly not a fan of FPS games, or MMORPGs, so I tend to discount his views on what constitutes a good game.

It's more directed at the fan base and its expectations and certain staples that hold designing the game back. Demon Hunters are a great class, both from the game design and the possible builds. Lorewise, they're 105% edge, but I feel WoW doesn't care anymore because Void Elf Rogues casting "Shuriken Storm" and other weeb and dark stuff exist.

Older classes...tend to be paralyzed by old talents and skills. Fire Mages must do a fire based dot, else it doesn't feel like a fire mage. They have Rune of Power since Pandaria despite many players saying they hate the spell. They're bound to having Mirror Image because it's a D&D spell and was in vanilla and thus HAS TO BE in the game somewhere.

What's wrong with my class keeping the style of my class? What, exactly, would you prefer that fire mages do, in lieu of setting people on fire? The problem I have with WoW is their tendency to discard class features that are popular or interesting for reasons that appear to be no better than design ideology, like the aforementioned gutting of the Survival Hunter for (just what we needed) yet another melee class.

They turned some specs around by 180° (see Survival hunter) that aggravated people perfectly happy with the old ranged dot spec (see for example...me). WoW today is like an, uhm...you are familiar with WoW's abomination that is sewn together from a huge amount of corpses? Yea, some are fresh and nice to be around, some are old and rancid, and some got a make over so that you don't notice the old smell as badly.

Why yes, I am the king of metaphors!

Yeah, this. Ultimately, what's driving the class iteration is 12+ years of feature creep. The code base has gotten too large and filled with bloaty irrelevant BS that some segment of their market still professes to like, like (shudder) pet battles. I've been playing my mage, hunter, and warrior since Vanilla, and of all the complaints I have about them, I do *not* mind that they still play mostly as they did back in the day. Rather, it's the relentless erosion and streamlining of my favorite characters, to the point where they're barely recognizable. I would happily remove Colossus Smash from Arms, I would happily bring back Impale and Weapon Specialization. I would happily bring back melee weapons for Hunters, and ranged slot items for everyone else. I would welcome the ability to make a hybrid spec, like combining frost and fire talents on my mage. I really liked being able to freeze an enemy with frost nova, wind up a frostbolt, and and line up a shatter with fire blast. No, Ice Lance is not the same.

Ultimately, I think what's wrong with WoW is that the people who had the passion and vision to make the original what it was have largely pushed off, and the people they brought in have also pushed off, and now the game is in the hands of a crew that don't seem to have a cohesive vision of what kind of game they're making, and for whom. I'm not left with the overriding impression that they're actually playing the game they're making, and considering the workload that maintaining that behemoth codebase is, and how much mindless timesink and 'click and wait' they've put into the game, I can't say I blame them. Well, I don't blame them for not playing. I do blame them for making a game they themselves don't want to play.

I also think that's an implicit argument against the 'forever game' model. It's not remotely reasonable to expect the people making the game to stay invested in the same project for 12 years. Oh well.

sonofzeal

2018-06-20, 07:08 AM

:smallannoyed: So....you wiped in an instance that is supposed to take up 15 minutes of time? You wiped several times? Did you go with 5 players as recommended?

Nope. As I said before, my wife and I decided that, under the circumstances, it was better to keep communication just in our living room. We'd rather struggle than have PUGers get frustrated with Nephew's antics, or just mindlessly zerg it down as most seem inclined to.

Heavily depends on the class but yes, definitely.

That's good news then. The three of us had precisely one "blue" item between us, so retrying with less-awful gear should help.

Have your Wife swap to protection for running instances, her ability to hold threat and absorb punishment for your team will be like night and day.

That should help too, yeah. I didn't even think to ask her that.

In hindsight, I.... think we "only" wiped three times? I know we never wiped at the same spot twice, which was at least a little encouraging. And our ability to coordinate aggro definitely improved throughout the process. We'd probably have better luck doing it again, even without Wife swapping to Protection. A mini-wipefest isn't the worst thing ever if it's also a learning experience.

Spore

2018-06-20, 07:53 AM

Dark Souls will ruthlessly send you to the loading screen for missing a single dodge.

No it won't. Maybe if you are playing at Level 1 while naked. Some bosses and large enemies have a grab attack that is easy to avoid and particularly cheap when you don't know they can do that. But the powerful attacks are telegraphed and slow. Similar to WoW's raid bosses it is just learning a pattern and adapting. I feel for Dark Souls I the boss you can only beat when you understood the boss mechanics is Smough and Ornstein. That's 20-25h in for a determined newcomer. Yes, it is a learning curve. But it's not as steep as you make it out to be.

Whatever. I refuse to play a game that doesn't let me customize my control scheme. I have limited free, and I want to play a game, not fight the user-interface. I do that kind of work for a living, and my consulting rate is over $100/hour.

I have stopped many games because the control scheme was crap. Latest one was Witcher 1. Also there is no need to add your salary per hour. Actually I should not give a damn but I feel you belittle me here.

What's wrong with my class keeping the style of my class? What, exactly, would you prefer that fire mages do, in lieu of setting people on fire? The problem I have with WoW is their tendency to discard class features that are popular or interesting for reasons that appear to be no better than design ideology, like the aforementioned gutting of the Survival Hunter for (just what we needed) yet another melee class.

I said Rune of Power. I really mean it. Also if you haven't paid attention, late WoD, Combustion was the main source of damage for a Fire Mage. Makes sense that "burning" a long time is worse than those fireballs flying your way. But somehow the dot could become so huge with all cooldowns that it did a major chunk of DPS. As a result, fire mages suffered the same fate that Shadow Priests did. In order to reel their overall DPS in, their damage outside cooldowns was gutted.

Incoming salt of a former priest player: I loved my priest. I was never a shadow as a main but I never wanted to level as Disc. But now that Voidform is so powerful, Dots outside are just weird. and just recently the Shadow Priest found to its fluff. Before it was some weird disease/negative energy damage/ anti-mage mana management class. Now it is firmly a class connected to the Old Ones and the Void so Void Form is here to stay (as much as I want Devouring Plague back). Improved fluff, but worse crunch.

I also think that's an implicit argument against the 'forever game' model. It's not remotely reasonable to expect the people making the game to stay invested in the same project for 12 years. Oh well.

A tad cheesy and philosophical but nothing lasts forever. Especially not online games. It makes good money for Blizzard (very good actually) so it is in their best to keep the game as healthy as ever. Even further it is - along with the bnet launcher - a way where they can advertise their other games without marketing costs.

I'd never have sunk 600+ Euro into Hearthstone if not for WoW. I never would have played Heroes of the Storm without its predecessor Warcraft 3.

Spore

2018-06-20, 07:56 AM

Nope. As I said before, my wife and I decided that, under the circumstances, it was better to keep communication just in our living room. We'd rather struggle than have PUGers get frustrated with Nephew's antics, or just mindlessly zerg it down as most seem inclined to.

I feel that "learning curve" is actually a bit pointless. You get knowledge you cannot really apply in the end content. And for how many miserable people I have annoyed with my hunter antics and my brainless tanking, as much if not more life have I made better by basically performing heroic raid worthy healing in LFR (yes, I loved sniping heals as Disc back in Pandaria).

Kish

2018-06-20, 09:19 AM

Mirror Image was introduced in Wrath of the Lich King, just incidentally.

The_Jackal

2018-06-20, 12:15 PM

I have stopped many games because the control scheme was crap. Latest one was Witcher 1. Also there is no need to add your salary per hour. Actually I should not give a damn but I feel you belittle me here.

Fair enough, but I'm not. The point I'm trying to make is that time has value. It's the most valuable thing we have, because all the other things we get in life, we trade time to get. Frankly, I don't care if you don't quite earn minimum wage, there's no reason for a game to make you fight the user-interface.

I said Rune of Power. I really mean it. Also if you haven't paid attention, late WoD, Combustion was the main source of damage for a Fire Mage. Makes sense that "burning" a long time is worse than those fireballs flying your way. But somehow the dot could become so huge with all cooldowns that it did a major chunk of DPS. As a result, fire mages suffered the same fate that Shadow Priests did. In order to reel their overall DPS in, their damage outside cooldowns was gutted.

Yes, well, that is something we agree on, completely. The same thing has happened to virtually every class. Frost Mages get most of their damage from ice lance procs, the base spells are barely noticeable. Arms Warrior is completely dependent on Colossus Smash, or soon, Overpower. Sustained, consistent, predictable damage output is, for some reason, the enemy of the designers. Look, I don't want a return to single-button rotations, but the pendulum has swung far too wide of proc-triggered burst.

Incoming salt of a former priest player: I loved my priest. I was never a shadow as a main but I never wanted to level as Disc. But now that Voidform is so powerful, Dots outside are just weird. and just recently the Shadow Priest found to its fluff. Before it was some weird disease/negative energy damage/ anti-mage mana management class. Now it is firmly a class connected to the Old Ones and the Void so Void Form is here to stay (as much as I want Devouring Plague back). Improved fluff, but worse crunch.

Yes, I never played much priest, but I feel your pain. The notion of taking a DoT-focused class and putting MORE of its damage potential behind a ramp-phase is absurd. It shows just how much the game design is catered toward big raid encounters at the expense of everything else.

A tad cheesy and philosophical but nothing lasts forever. Especially not online games. It makes good money for Blizzard (very good actually) so it is in their best to keep the game as healthy as ever. Even further it is - along with the bnet launcher - a way where they can advertise their other games without marketing costs.

I'd never have sunk 600+ Euro into Hearthstone if not for WoW. I never would have played Heroes of the Storm without its predecessor Warcraft 3.

No, it's not cheesy, it's true. In fact, I think we're sort of living that fact. The designers don't appear to have any passion for the game, they certainly aren't interested in making the regular parts of play engaging, the sandbox parts of the game are really just filler for the raid encounters. That's where their effort goes, because that's where their pareto principle pays off.

sonofzeal

2018-06-20, 10:26 PM

I feel that "learning curve" is actually a bit pointless. You get knowledge you cannot really apply in the end content. And for how many miserable people I have annoyed with my hunter antics and my brainless tanking, as much if not more life have I made better by basically performing heroic raid worthy healing in LFR (yes, I loved sniping heals as Disc back in Pandaria).

We're not looking at end-game raiding though. The ideal goal would be to just do what we did here, but with more success - tackling low-to-mid level instances as a group of three (or four if we can rope in a friend). It's that or overworld questing. You can only go through Barrens so many times, or have so many iterations of "collect 20 body parts of such-and-such" or "find 12 boxes of whatever".

Nephew had a blast, Wife seemed to really enjoy it too, and it involved all three of us working together rather than competing for quest goals or me not being able to skin anything because he's off mining and she's collecting battle pets. Compared to that, wiping a few times in the easiest of instances isn't all that terrible as long as we could recoup and try again.

The_Jackal

2018-06-21, 02:13 PM

We're not looking at end-game raiding though. The ideal goal would be to just do what we did here, but with more success - tackling low-to-mid level instances as a group of three (or four if we can rope in a friend). It's that or overworld questing. You can only go through Barrens so many times, or have so many iterations of "collect 20 body parts of such-and-such" or "find 12 boxes of whatever".

If you're persistent, and use a tank/healer, there's no reason you can't do most instances with just the 3 of you. You can also go back and do classic raids, places like Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, and Naxxramas all don't have really complicated raid mechanics. People solo those places all the time.

Nephew had a blast, Wife seemed to really enjoy it too, and it involved all three of us working together rather than competing for quest goals or me not being able to skin anything because he's off mining and she's collecting battle pets. Compared to that, wiping a few times in the easiest of instances isn't all that terrible as long as we could recoup and try again.

There's battle pets dropped by instance and raid bosses your wife might want to acquire. Some of them are really, really good (http://www.wowhead.com/item=93040/anubisath-idol).

Psyren

2018-06-21, 04:54 PM

I don't see the merit of forcing players to slog through a bunch of tedium before they get to the fun parts. Again, difficulty slider. You can still have 'elite-tier' locked content if you want to where the difficulty is fixed, if you must. But the idea of dumbing down the entire experience for the entire player base, just for the expressed purpose of accommodating the tail end of the bell curve, is a rotten, pernicious idea. World Quests don't have a difficulty slider. The daily stipend of gold, wakening essence, curious coins, and other resources is all gated, for everyone, on dumb, spud-tier quests whose biggest challenge is traversing the map to the enemy.

We actually agree here, I'm fine with earlier dungeons having difficulty settings too. It's one reason I find Timewalking to be so much fun. Not a "slider" necessarily (you don't want to get too granular outside of the endgame - see Diablo for an example done poorly) but having multiple categories like Regular, Heroic and Mythic, absolutely.

We didn't have to, I'm sure. I'm just saying that FFA loot is a feature I'm not that broken up about losing. Yes, it is, without question, a dumb removal of a useful feature. Who knows why they changed it? Optimizing GM tickets on loot arguments? Bollixing corner-case farming strats?

No clue and it is indeed dumb. No, it wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me either (again, you can level skinning on your own time just fine) but I can still gripe about it.

Actually, my angle is much more Orwellian than that: By putting most of the money into world quests, they limit the amount of progress you can make on any particular axis in the game. They'd rather get you sucked into maintaining a giant stable of alts than let you power through on one character, and complete all the content the game has to offer. It winds up being another time-gate. Personally, I would much rather have a paradigm where I can choose what I spend time grinding toward, even if the rate of progress is as slow, or even slower, than just queuing up for a fat wad of gold and other loot from a daily giveaway.

Making quests be the primary way to make money might very well have been intentional. As for me, I see it as an inevitable consequence of the QoL changes they made elsewhere, and those changes were necessary to the continuing health of the game anyway. Changes like letting you level skinning and mining from zero in the max level areas so all those folks who used a level boost don't immediately get bored having to run around Azuremyst looking for copper nodes etc.

sonofzeal

2018-06-21, 08:23 PM

Ragefire Chasm v2.0

After Wife respecced her Warrior into Protection, and after I levelled up my Enchanting skill for some better effects, we tried again - still just the three of us at lvl 18.

And..... wow. Yeah, much better. Part of that was the upgrade, but a much larger part was the improved coordination. Tank-and-spank was in full effect, and the results were much more consistent. Instead of wiping three times by the second boss, we made it through to the last boss - and got him down to 5-10% health - before wiping.

The big lesson learned there was mana management. I OOMed about two thirds of the way through the fight and was able to limp out enough heals to keep us going for a ways, but that very directly lead to our eventual deaths. Fortunately, we could regroup, trudge back over, and take him on again with me minding my mana efficiency much more. And hey presto, we beat him!

Nephew still has a nasty tendency to pull mobs without telling us, and I have to pack mana pots I guess, but the experience was encouraging. If one of us goes down the group's going to wipe, but that's not going to happen unless one of us messes up. I think we'll be able to add 3-man Instance-running as a regular part of our WoW experience.

Is there anything we should know before going into any of the other low-level raids? Any tricks to the boss fights beyond "proactively heal the person whose name gets broadcast" and "don't stand in fire"? Anything that'll make our experience easier besides recruiting a fourth?

The_Jackal

2018-06-21, 10:06 PM

We actually agree here, I'm fine with earlier dungeons having difficulty settings too. It's one reason I find Timewalking to be so much fun. Not a "slider" necessarily (you don't want to get too granular outside of the endgame - see Diablo for an example done poorly) but having multiple categories like Regular, Heroic and Mythic, absolutely.

Well, my problem with the current paradigm of raid tiers is how it bifurcates the player pool, which has three negative consequences. The first is carrying. If you have one mythic geared raider who's willing to stoop to visit normal plebs for a lockout, that one player can trivialize the raid for 24 other players. This can really make raiding feel unrewarding if you're trying to experience the progression legitimately, and is very hard to argue against when you're in a guild where what most players care about is 'the lewts'. The second, arguably more pernicious, is what I call the roller-coaster effect, "You must be this tall to ride this ride", where you get group leaders insisting on itemization levels in excess of the rewards of the content they want to run. Typically this happens when some player wants, usually for itemization reasons (looking for BiS gear, in lieu of ilvl) some rare drop out of raid content they'd normally progressed past. Finally, the third is just plain old math bloat, where you've got to have stat squishes after every other expansion, because in order to offer meaningful rewards between four different raid tiers (and now Mythic+), you've got to slather on the bonuses extra thick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMqQOGTshak).

What you wind up with is the worst of both worlds. The good players have no incentive to help carry the bad ones, and the bad ones have no incentive to improve when they can leech off the accomplishments of the good ones, and everyone has game math so wildly inflated that damage meters may as well use scientific notation.

That said, I am glad we're fundamentally in agreement, if for no other reason than its rarity makes it special. :P

No clue and it is indeed dumb. No, it wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me either (again, you can level skinning on your own time just fine) but I can still gripe about it.

And you may consider me griping right alongside you. Another agreement! Where's Allen Funt (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053489/)?

Making quests be the primary way to make money might very well have been intentional. As for me, I see it as an inevitable consequence of the QoL changes they made elsewhere, and those changes were necessary to the continuing health of the game anyway. Changes like letting you level skinning and mining from zero in the max level areas so all those folks who used a level boost don't immediately get bored having to run around Azuremyst looking for copper nodes etc.

While I'm mostly in favor of those kinds of changes, I do think there's a downside to taking the 'daily stipend' system of bonuses too far. The effect is to create an economy where, after you've done all your 'one-a-day' bonuses, further engagement with the game is far less profitable, and subtly discouraged. I would not be saddened to see them limit these kinds of 'remember to log in' bonuses to present incentives for multi-player content. That's one thing that Diablo III has on WoW, they don't seem to need a bribe to get people to engage with the game regularly (well, maybe Seasons kind of count). But I guess I can understand their incentive, since nothing can kill a MMO (http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/wildstar) like deserted zones.

Ragefire Chasm v2.0And..... wow. Yeah, much better. Part of that was the upgrade, but a much larger part was the improved coordination. Tank-and-spank was in full effect, and the results were much more consistent. Instead of wiping three times by the second boss, we made it through to the last boss - and got him down to 5-10% health - before wiping.

Outstanding, I'm glad our advice was helpful, and you can welcome your wife to joining the ranks of the most glorious (https://wow.gamepedia.com/I_am_the_Warrior) class & spec of the game.

The big lesson learned there was mana management. I OOMed about two thirds of the way through the fight and was able to limp out enough heals to keep us going for a ways, but that very directly lead to our eventual deaths. Fortunately, we could regroup, trudge back over, and take him on again with me minding my mana efficiency much more. And hey presto, we beat him!

Congratulations!

I have to pack mana pots I guess

LOL, I usually answer these posts one paragraph at a time, and I had to go back to remove "Was your mana potion on cooldown when you wiped?", before I read the implicit answer here. Yes. Potions are cheaper than repair bills. Of course, sometimes you wind up buying both.

Is there anything we should know before going into any of the other low-level raids? Any tricks to the boss fights beyond "proactively heal the person whose name gets broadcast" and "don't stand in fire"? Anything that'll make our experience easier besides recruiting a fourth?

Yeah, that's kind of a loaded question. My honest advice would recommend reading the 10th Anniversary guide to Molten Core, here (http://www.wowhead.com/guide=2750/wows-10th-anniversary-november-21-january-13#molten-core). Raid mechanics tend to get a lot more complex and less intuitive than dungeons, and while you can ignore many of them if you overgear them sufficiently, if you're going to make things interesting, you'll want to hit them when they're still somewhat challenging. The trend of raid mechanics is only going to crank up from there.

Resileaf

2018-06-22, 08:38 AM

A little more than 50 days left to get all the challenge appearances... Feeling the pressure mounting. Hopefully druid appearances won't be too much of a pain to acquire. Ugh, wish I had the tank legendary to cheese the boss. I hate it so much.

Psyren

2018-06-22, 09:38 AM

That said, I am glad we're fundamentally in agreement, if for no other reason than its rarity makes it special. :P

Yeah, about that... :smalltongue:

Well, my problem with the current paradigm of raid tiers is how it bifurcates the player pool, which has three negative consequences. The first is carrying. If you have one mythic geared raider who's willing to stoop to visit normal plebs for a lockout, that one player can trivialize the raid for 24 other players. This can really make raiding feel unrewarding if you're trying to experience the progression legitimately, and is very hard to argue against when you're in a guild where what most players care about is 'the lewts'.

I disagree - look, you can't please everyone and it's foolish to try. Quite frankly, I think the positive benefits of overgeared players being ABLE to carry, far outweigh those few who lack the backbone/assertiveness to say "I'd rather experience the content at progression difficulty even if that means wiping all night" and back out. Since you can't please both, I'm going with the former. Hell, for many guilds (particularly those with a younger, lower-income/higher-progressed base) carrying is a pretty regular revenue stream and another strong source of engagement with the game.

It's also not a binary between legitimate players and lazy people. Maybe on your main you do experience the content the "right way" (insofar as you are the arbiter of the "right" way to experience content someone else is paying for - just saying,) i.e. steadily progressing from your quest greens to your dungeon blues to Heroics to Mythics and slowly saving up for whatever AH purples you can get your hands on while you watch strats on Youtube. But on your alt(s), rather than slog through all that mess a second (or third or fourth) time, you just use your main to get some gold and have your alt pay for a carry to skip the line. Or you trade a carry on your main for a carry for your alt. Or it even happens in reverse - your main gets the initial carry, and having learned the "boss dance" firsthand, now you know how to apply it to another character leveling the "traditional" way. Again, the benefits of it existing far and away beat the downsides.

The second, arguably more pernicious, is what I call the roller-coaster effect, "You must be this tall to ride this ride", where you get group leaders insisting on itemization levels in excess of the rewards of the content they want to run. Typically this happens when some player wants, usually for itemization reasons (looking for BiS gear, in lieu of ilvl) some rare drop out of raid content they'd normally progressed past.

This kind of toxicity is going to exist whether there are raid tiers or not. The simple fact is that insisting on an item level that exceeds the rewards for the raid itself is ludicrous, and even if chat is full of fools doing it, you can and will find a guild with the sense not to. It's certainly a nice-to-have, particularly on your tank(s), but clearly not everyone is requiring it or nobody would've been able to run the content in the first place.

Finally, the third is just plain old math bloat, where you've got to have stat squishes after every other expansion, because in order to offer meaningful rewards between four different raid tiers (and now Mythic+), you've got to slather on the bonuses extra thick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMqQOGTshak).

Putting aside that math bloat is easily fixed even if it did become a problem, you're forgetting the positive benefits of big stat jumps - namely, the folks able to go back and solo older content (e.g. dungeons and raids) looking for transmog gear. And big numbers are just cool. Nobody wants to come back to the game for a new expansion and find themselves light-years behind the folks who spent the last several months raiding; all that's going to do is make them deactivate for good this time. Hence the quest gear in the new area being on par with at least the heroic gear of the previous one. A recalibration of the numbers every now and again is a small price to pay for that.

What you wind up with is the worst of both worlds. The good players have no incentive to help carry the bad ones, and the bad ones have no incentive to improve when they can leech off the accomplishments of the good ones, and everyone has game math so wildly inflated that damage meters may as well use scientific notation.

You probably didn't intend it this way but this does smack of elitism to me. Gear is not equivalent to skill. If anything, it correlates most strongly with time investment. If you play long enough you'll get decked out in purples, it's just a matter of learning the bosses' dance moves and putting in the time needed to upgrade pieces of your gear via alternate means (e.g. rare mats, lots of gold, and crafting.)

Expecting the players without that time to invest to continue subsidizing the experience of those who do with no recourse is a losing proposition for the game as a whole. Blizzard rightly realized that, which is why raid carrying exists. Perhaps Mythic Carry shouldn't be, however expensive, but I'd say they brought that on themselves by making some content (e.g. entire bosses) be Mythic-only and thus forcing folks to go through Mythic in order to see it. If Mythic was purely a difficulty rather than a gate for some of the lore itself, I think it would be less in demand than it is and they'd be justified in tuning it to make it impossible to carry (if they can even do that in the first place.)

Spore

2018-06-22, 09:59 AM

The big lesson learned there was mana management. I OOMed about two thirds of the way through the fight and was able to limp out enough heals to keep us going for a ways, but that very directly lead to our eventual deaths. Fortunately, we could regroup, trudge back over, and take him on again with me minding my mana efficiency much more. And hey presto, we beat him!

Congrats. The bosses are meant for three DPS that don't really know what they're doing - yet. If you beat them with a single DPS your nephew did his job well. Hunters are not the most complicated class but still. =)

Basic but forgotten things for all three specs:
1) Tanks: Check your healer's mana. Let them drink if they are not topped off (70% mana is no cause to stop, 30% mana is). Pull responsibly and try to stop spellcasts (you get Pummel at 24), try to use your damage mitigation often but especially at the start of pulls and during high damage.

2) Healers: Check your mana, and if you are infight. If not, try to sit down to drink. Even if you just get 3-4 ticks of mana in, you are faring better than without drinks. Either buy enough or become friends with a mage. Don't panic with damage spikes. Dungeon mechanics are rarely made so two high damage effects overlap killing your wards. But if your tank goes below 30%, you can use the quick expensive heals. Try to always stay casting (even if it is the odd damage spell when you don't have to heal for a bit).

3) DPS: Try to position outside of damage effects. Maximize your DPS and learn your class. For pet classes, turn of the pet taunt. Get to know aggro ranges. Feign Death comes online at 28. Use it!

The_Jackal

2018-06-22, 12:25 PM

I disagree - look, you can't please everyone and it's foolish to try. Quite frankly, I think the positive benefits of overgeared players being ABLE to carry, far outweigh those few who lack the backbone/assertiveness to say "I'd rather experience the content at progression difficulty even if that means wiping all night" and back out. Since you can't please both, I'm going with the former. Hell, for many guilds (particularly those with a younger, lower-income/higher-progressed base) carrying is a pretty regular revenue stream and another strong source of engagement with the game.

If you just implement one itemization path for everyone, and mediate player skill/challenge appetite with a difficulty slider, then the whole concept of carrying becomes moot. And frankly, the notion of top-tier guilds selling their time to earn in-game gold from less astute players to let them unlock top-tier rewards is also cutting across the whole value premise of making the game challenging in the first place. If you can get your AotC (http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=12110/ahead-of-the-curve-argus-the-unmaker) rewards just by buying a couple of WoW tokens, then what, really, is the point of having the exclusive reward in the first place? Both systems feature scrubs trying to end-run their own challenge and fun, only mine does it with a lot fewer negative side effects to the rest of the player pool.

It's also not a binary between legitimate players and lazy people. Maybe on your main you do experience the content the "right way" (insofar as you are the arbiter of the "right" way to experience content someone else is paying for - just saying,) i.e. steadily progressing from your quest greens to your dungeon blues to Heroics to Mythics and slowly saving up for whatever AH purples you can get your hands on while you watch strats on Youtube. But on your alt(s), rather than slog through all that mess a second (or third or fourth) time, you just use your main to get some gold and have your alt pay for a carry to skip the line. Or you trade a carry on your main for a carry for your alt. Or it even happens in reverse - your main gets the initial carry, and having learned the "boss dance" firsthand, now you know how to apply it to another character leveling the "traditional" way. Again, the benefits of it existing far and away beat the downsides.

No, it's not a binary arrangement, which is why I want a difficulty slider. You can still have the very hardest content which requires locking the slider at the maximum difficulty, and which will require only the most skillful, coordinated, and well-equipped teams to defeat. You lose nothing, except for an extra 50-100 levels of ilvl bloat.

As for 'the right way', I think you're mis-interpreting my position. I don't wish to *be* carried, that's my primary objection. I don't want my experience to hinge on whether the ringers from mythic decide to show up on raid night. What I would like is a mechanism whereby I can tailor the difficulty of the evening's content to the capabilities of the group I have to hand, an any particular evening.

This kind of toxicity is going to exist whether there are raid tiers or not. The simple fact is that insisting on an item level that exceeds the rewards for the raid itself is ludicrous, and even if chat is full of fools doing it, you can and will find a guild with the sense not to. It's certainly a nice-to-have, particularly on your tank(s), but clearly not everyone is requiring it or nobody would've been able to run the content in the first place.

No, that's simply not so. The reason the item limit shows up in pre-mades is that's the only way you can ascertain whether you've got sufficient firepower to defeat the scenario. Your payoff is contingent on downing the bosses. Well, when you can just dial in the difficulty to the capability of your team, you're far better off staffing up and getting to work than giving yourself piles sitting around in Orgrimmar.

Putting aside that math bloat is easily fixed even if it did become a problem, you're forgetting the positive benefits of big stat jumps - namely, the folks able to go back and solo older content (e.g. dungeons and raids) looking for transmog gear. And big numbers are just cool. Nobody wants to come back to the game for a new expansion and find themselves light-years behind the folks who spent the last several months raiding; all that's going to do is make them deactivate for good this time. Hence the quest gear in the new area being on par with at least the heroic gear of the previous one. A recalibration of the numbers every now and again is a small price to pay for that.

That's also not a benefit. Trivializing earlier content releases is a *bad* thing. It would be far better for the game is every component would scale with your level. Are you honestly declaring your preference for people soloing the Firelands for easy cash and mounts than playing together, where the content is still challenging and fun? Transmog, pets, mounts, and other rewards feel far more rewarding when they're legitimately earned. My favorite mount to this day is the Red Proto-Drake, because it's one I earned honestly, getting all the achievements while they were still at-level. And I'd venture to suggest that you also feel more attached to rewards you go from doing content at-level, instead of going back and midget farming.

You probably didn't intend it this way but this does smack of elitism to me. Gear is not equivalent to skill. If anything, it correlates most strongly with time investment. If you play long enough you'll get decked out in purples, it's just a matter of learning the bosses' dance moves and putting in the time needed to upgrade pieces of your gear via alternate means (e.g. rare mats, lots of gold, and crafting.)

Well, I am an elitist (http://oliverdemille.com/meritocracy-elitism/), but I'd hardly equate accomplishment in WoW to anything requiring superior phsyical or intellectual capabilities. The game engine simply does not permit it. I completely agree that accomplisment in WoW is a function of time, not talent or skill. And I'm fine with that. That's how a game should be.

[QUOTE]Expecting the players without that time to invest to continue subsidizing the experience of those who do with no recourse is a losing proposition for the game as a whole. Blizzard rightly realized that, which is why raid carrying exists. Perhaps Mythic Carry shouldn't be, however expensive, but I'd say they brought that on themselves by making some content (e.g. entire bosses) be Mythic-only and thus forcing folks to go through Mythic in order to see it. If Mythic was purely a difficulty rather than a gate for some of the lore itself, I think it would be less in demand than it is and they'd be justified in tuning it to make it impossible to carry (if they can even do that in the first place.)

Oh, do let's not pretend that there's any reason Mythic carries are bought and sold, other than the AotC rewards. Otherwise, why would you dump $10 worth of gold you could use to offset your play time balance when you could just wait for the next expansion? Both methods are cheesing, one is far, far less expensive. Maybe for the few goblins who apparently enjoy running TSM more than showing up for raids, it's not a big deal, but for the average player, I doubt it.

Psyren

2018-06-22, 03:24 PM

If you just implement one itemization path for everyone, and mediate player skill/challenge appetite with a difficulty slider, then the whole concept of carrying becomes moot. And frankly, the notion of top-tier guilds selling their time to earn in-game gold from less astute players to let them unlock top-tier rewards is also cutting across the whole value premise of making the game challenging in the first place. If you can get your AotC (http://www.wowhead.com/achievement=12110/ahead-of-the-curve-argus-the-unmaker) rewards just by buying a couple of WoW tokens, then what, really, is the point of having the exclusive reward in the first place? Both systems feature scrubs trying to end-run their own challenge and fun, only mine does it with a lot fewer negative side effects to the rest of the player pool.
...
No, it's not a binary arrangement, which is why I want a difficulty slider. You can still have the very hardest content which requires locking the slider at the maximum difficulty, and which will require only the most skillful, coordinated, and well-equipped teams to defeat. You lose nothing, except for an extra 50-100 levels of ilvl bloat.
...
Well, I am an elitist (http://oliverdemille.com/meritocracy-elitism/), but I'd hardly equate accomplishment in WoW to anything requiring superior phsyical or intellectual capabilities. The game engine simply does not permit it. I completely agree that accomplisment in WoW is a function of time, not talent or skill. And I'm fine with that. That's how a game should be.

First off, the constant digs about players who are "less astute" and "bad" are why I have trouble taking your PoV seriously. Especially after you yourself just admitted that accomplishment in WoW is a function of time investment, rather than intellect or skill. All you can truly conclude about a player with no purples+ is that they haven't been playing endgame long enough.

Secondly, even if they implemented a slider, what makes you think the maximum end of that slider would be any more difficult than Mythic Raiding now? Again, you're starting from a premise that has yet to be proven - that Blizzard is both willing and able to calibrate a difficulty so exacting that it's possible to succeed at (that being the point and all) but impossible to carry anyone through. This is especially true given that the whole point of running top-end difficulty would be for gear that would make top-end difficulty even easier (otherwise why do it?) and make such carries more feasible. Such calibration, on top of being a waste of their time, would just lead to an arms race - and with it, the very "math bloat" you were just opposed to.

As for 'the right way', I think you're mis-interpreting my position. I don't wish to *be* carried, that's my primary objection. I don't want my experience to hinge on whether the ringers from mythic decide to show up on raid night. What I would like is a mechanism whereby I can tailor the difficulty of the evening's content to the capabilities of the group I have to hand, an any particular evening.

If you don't want to be carried, then don't be. It seems pretty basic to me :smallconfused:
Why should your preferences dictate the play experience for everyone else?

No, that's simply not so. The reason the item limit shows up in pre-mades is that's the only way you can ascertain whether you've got sufficient firepower to defeat the scenario. Your payoff is contingent on downing the bosses. Well, when you can just dial in the difficulty to the capability of your team, you're far better off staffing up and getting to work than giving yourself piles sitting around in Orgrimmar.

Let me first reiterate that I support difficulty settings for all instanced content. But proposing them as a remedy for this specific behavior is ludicrous. If you give the folks you talk about (the ones with "piles") a difficulty slider, they're just going to crank it all the way up and go right back to spamming trade for recruits with higher ilvls than the instance like they are now. Designing around those folks is pointless. Instead, just ignore them; eventually they'll either get a bored elite to sign up, or they'll relent and run the content with folks looking to gear up like they themselves often are. Either way, no additional design needed.

That's also not a benefit. Trivializing earlier content releases is a *bad* thing. It would be far better for the game is every component would scale with your level. Are you honestly declaring your preference for people soloing the Firelands for easy cash and mounts than playing together, where the content is still challenging and fun?

They already have scaling for old content, it's called Timewalking. If you really want old content to be challenging and need proper groups and tactics to pull off, that's your answer. But if all I want from an old instance is a transmog or mount, I shouldn't need to gather up 24 other people every single time because there was no way around the content scaling.

Challenge is fun in an RPG, I agree - but so is a power fantasy. Being able to go back to a dungeon that your group struggled with years ago and curbstomp it with a much smaller group (or solo!) is cathartic. And WoW has done the right thing by letting both be options.

Honestly, the only major issue I have with the game in its current form is the core engine, almost every other decision they've made (well, except garrisons, eff garrisons) I've been on board with. It's a big issue sure, but if and when we finally get to a new engine, I have a feeling all the other design lessons they've learned over the years won't just be jettisoned.

Oh, do let's not pretend that there's any reason Mythic carries are bought and sold, other than the AotC rewards. Otherwise, why would you dump $10 worth of gold you could use to offset your play time balance when you could just wait for the next expansion? Both methods are cheesing, one is far, far less expensive. Maybe for the few goblins who apparently enjoy running TSM more than showing up for raids, it's not a big deal, but for the average player, I doubt it.

Given your own supposed wages disclosed above, I'm confused how you could consider $10 to be some titanic expenditure. Especially compared to waiting, when that time is much more valuable. Yeah you can just wait until the content isn't new anymore to see the cutscenes and obtain the drops in-game, but I'm hoping you see the value proposition to not doing so from both the player's side, the guild's side, and Blizzard's as a whole. Simply put, it keeps people engaged with the game who would otherwise run out of things they're interested in doing (at all strata) and gives them time to design additional content for everyone to enjoy. It's win-win-win.

Psyren

2018-06-23, 12:15 AM

BTW, double-post to add:

For those who want to try the level-scaling and stuff without resubbing, hey, free weekend (https://welcomeback.worldofwarcraft.com/)

Spore

2018-06-23, 12:31 AM

BTW, double-post to add:

For those who want to try the level-scaling and stuff without resubbing, hey, free weekend (https://welcomeback.worldofwarcraft.com/)

Just tanked one of the more dangerous dungeons and I can say that monsters are pretty dangerous now. The Disc priest was struggling to keep me alive. We wiped thrice (and I sort of know what I am doing as a tank) in Dire Maul.

Resileaf

2018-06-24, 12:41 PM

I managed to get all the druid challenge appearances yesterday, leaving only Death knight and Demon hunter to go! Still fifty days to go, although if the tower closes with the pre-patch, that puts a much more severe time limit on my goal, depending on how early it will be.

Psyren

2018-06-24, 06:12 PM

Just tanked one of the more dangerous dungeons and I can say that monsters are pretty dangerous now. The Disc priest was struggling to keep me alive. We wiped thrice (and I sort of know what I am doing as a tank) in Dire Maul.

I think I identified the problem :smallbiggrin:

Kidding aside, that's kind of good to hear, I enjoy those older dungeons having a bit of teeth to them. Were you/they in heirlooms?

sonofzeal

2018-06-24, 08:17 PM

Few questions....

- When my Wife, Nephew, and I are 3-manning instances, is there a way to do it without being by the instance entrance? I've poked around at the Group Finder, but don't see a way to do it with anything other than Healer-Tank-3xDPS.

- I vividly remember Cat Druids having a "Pounce" attack akin to a Warrior's Charge, but I don't see it anywhere in the list. Has that been removed?

- What's the best way to get a couple heirlooms? I've never actually reached level cap, but I've got one lvl 82 character and an heirloom from the Darkmoon Fair.

- My Nephew presently has his heart set on getting some sort of raptor baby battle pet. I've got a pretty wide assortment but managed never to get any like that even though I know they exist. Any suggestions?

The Glyphstone

2018-06-24, 08:58 PM

Take your pick:

https://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/beast/raptors/

The (1 of 1) pets are guaranteed drops from their indicated locations. The Zandalari pets are rarer but you can check the AH.

The_Jackal

2018-06-24, 10:41 PM

- My Nephew presently has his heart set on getting some sort of raptor baby battle pet. I've got a pretty wide assortment but managed never to get any like that even though I know they exist. Any suggestions?

Darting Hatchling, from Dustwallow Marsh.

Mutant Sheep

2018-06-25, 02:12 AM

There's a particular baby raptor pet you can get from a Stranglethorn Vale questline. It's a pretty great Cata bit, tied to the Zul'Gurub heroic dungeon.

I remember Pounce too, but it's been removed since I think Draenor? The Second talent tier has Wild Charge, which, in cat form, does something similar. It doesn't have a stun and it doesn't break your stealth, but you leap behind the target.

Darkmoon Faire and most holiday week events are the best ways of getting heirlooms. A few days of doing a few daily quests during and you can get an heirloom. Midsummer Festival offers heirlooms, and it's available for the the next week and a half.

Three manning instances sounds hard already, but there's no way to teleport into dungeons like in Groupfinder unless you are using groupfinder. (And yes, groupfinder requires you have the 3 dps tank healer setup.) If you have a tank and a healer, groupfinder should give you fairly quick queues. It's not as much fun having two strangers being quiet, but you'll get extra XP, gear, and much less travel time if you use the groupfinder to fill in the other two slots. (And a wide variation of dungeons.) Most people you'll queue with will be extraordinarily untalkative, but they can do damage, and dungeon's dont get any easier the less people you have in them.

Spore

2018-06-25, 05:58 AM

I think I identified the problem :smallbiggrin:

Kidding aside, that's kind of good to hear, I enjoy those older dungeons having a bit of teeth to them. Were you/they in heirlooms?

As a resident Disc priest, you just commited sacrilege! To be honest, Disc is a confusing spec to newcomers, and she (female High Tauren) did a few things wrong: 1) Penance as direct healing. 2) Almost never used PW: Shield. 3) Almost exclusively smited and then spammed Shadowmend. 4) Never used Purify to remove magic debuffs.

(5) DPS was ****. I had addons turned off, but the DPS players piddled in their damage.)

About the only right thing to do here was spam Shadowmend. But then, a Disc priest should not get into the predicament of having a tank drop below 50% life when he pulls in a decent pace.

Were you/they in heirlooms?

I was, and the enhancement shaman was. If the priest was, she transmogged "pretty robes" over it. Maybe not. But the pulls should be doable by a character not in heirlooms. To be fair, we only wiped (and once in the garden area because we managed to pull two groups at once) because of lack of healing at the last boss who was dangerous BEFORE the revamp.

That is a problem in its own though. Beginner's guide don't mention dispelling harmful effects. The healer page on the spec selection shows 6 skills that make the healer work but don't show the dispel spell. There are almost no talents that interact with dispelling that reward correct dispelling (when I saw the demon hunters gained ressources from Consume Magic, I was wondering why no other class got DPS/healing out of it).

Psyren

2018-06-25, 03:17 PM

But the pulls should be doable by a character not in heirlooms.

Agreed, but definitely nobody should be wiping in heirlooms.

The issue is that some of the specs are more unforgiving post-Legion (and especially post-scaling) than others. Disc, which was once my favorite healing spec ever, is one of those. As with every other spec, Legion created a large hole in their rotation that the Artifact weapon power was meant to fill. That hole just happened to hit Disc harder than most others. (Brewmaster Monk has a similar problem, or at least it had one last time I tried leveling or Timewalking one.)

That is a problem in its own though. Beginner's guide don't mention dispelling harmful effects. The healer page on the spec selection shows 6 skills that make the healer work but don't show the dispel spell. There are almost no talents that interact with dispelling that reward correct dispelling (when I saw the demon hunters gained ressources from Consume Magic, I was wondering why no other class got DPS/healing out of it).

Yeah, dispelling/decursing should be a mandatory aspect of healer education.

Spore

2018-06-25, 03:54 PM

(Brewmaster Monk has a similar problem, or at least it had one last time I tried leveling or Timewalking one.)

Can't say but I assume you are right because I played a Brewmaster in this scenario. :)

Psyren

2018-06-25, 08:34 PM

Can't say but I assume you are right because I played a Brewmaster in this scenario. :)

Ouch. Yeah, Brewmaster + Disc is a bad combination even after you get your artifacts. It's perhaps the least reactive tank+healer combination in the whole game. It doesn't surprise me that you'd be feeling the pain even through heirlooms.

The_Jackal

2018-06-25, 08:34 PM

Yeah, dispelling/decursing should be a mandatory aspect of healer education.

Wouldn't it be better to remove gameplay that can be boiled down to 'push this button when I tell you to'? I mean, heal whack-a-mole isn't very interesting to me, but at least there's the potential for nuanced decisions. Purify is just 'push button when DBM shouts at me'. The only remotely interesting decision is 'who do I purify'/

Psyren

2018-06-25, 11:17 PM

Wouldn't it be better to remove gameplay that can be boiled down to 'push this button when I tell you to'? I mean, heal whack-a-mole isn't very interesting to me, but at least there's the potential for nuanced decisions. Purify is just 'push button when DBM shouts at me'. The only remotely interesting decision is 'who do I purify'/

Putting aside that you can reduce almost all gameplay to "press X button when Y event" if you wanted to, for me it would depend on what we're replacing it with. Yeah "dispel or don't dispel" isn't a particularly interesting decision on its own, but when you have to weigh it against numerous other stimuli demanding the healers attention in a given moment then it can be. The other problem is that stuff like poisons, diseases and curses are pretty iconic to the genre at this point, particularly if you're going for role-based gameplay.

The_Jackal

2018-06-26, 06:54 PM

Putting aside that you can reduce almost all gameplay to "press X button when Y event" if you wanted to, for me it would depend on what we're replacing it with. Yeah "dispel or don't dispel" isn't a particularly interesting decision on its own, but when you have to weigh it against numerous other stimuli demanding the healers attention in a given moment then it can be. The other problem is that stuff like poisons, diseases and curses are pretty iconic to the genre at this point, particularly if you're going for role-based gameplay.

That's legit, I just have my stated preference that more of the game is engaged with paying attention to the in-game action, rather than the user-interface or add-ons like WeakAuras. I think the game would be generally more accessible, more fun, and more engrossing if the user-interface were less intrusive, and more of the game's mechanics were intuitive as opposed to 'button lights up, button is pressed'.

Spore

2018-06-27, 12:08 PM

Purify is just 'push button when DBM shouts at me'. The only remotely interesting decision is 'who do I purify'/

Low level dungeons often throw out 2-3 different debuffs. Using and saving your dispel for an actually dangerous debuff. On the flipside, using debuffs early enough so you can dispel more debuffs.

Also there are bosses that give a player a timed debuff (dispel at x stacks so the explosion is manageable but the debuff doesn't fly around the raid all the time). And at last, dispelling is a major part of playing healers in PvP, so it should be taught if people want to go there.

The_Jackal

2018-06-27, 08:08 PM

Low level dungeons often throw out 2-3 different debuffs. Using and saving your dispel for an actually dangerous debuff. On the flipside, using debuffs early enough so you can dispel more debuffs.

Okay, none of this contends with the issue that you're basically interacting with user-interface prompts, rather than responding to something intuitive.

Also there are bosses that give a player a timed debuff (dispel at x stacks so the explosion is manageable but the debuff doesn't fly around the raid all the time). And at last, dispelling is a major part of playing healers in PvP, so it should be taught if people want to go there.

Yes, I'm not contending that in practice, understanding what debuffs to cleanse, and when, can't be a challenge, it's just a well-designed challenge. It's a problem you only solve with trial and error, or, in the real world case, if you're not the guys from Fatboss or a progression guild, looking up a strat on the internet. ALL of these mechanics are shorthands for, "Consult internet guide to tell you what the game-designers couldn't contrive to supply."

I'm not suggesting that players shouldn't be asked to read their skill tooltips, or learn how their class works, but when it comes to stuff like 'what does this debuff do', and 'why did everyone wipe', the developers are setting the average player up to fail. That's why there's this vast gulf between Heroic (the 'intended' raid difficulty) and LFR in terms of challenge. Because LFR has to assume that nobody showing up is going to bother to put on their pants straight, let alone do research on boss fight mechanics. And I don't think the average player who doesn't want to do 20 minutes of homework on a dungeon encounter is in the wrong here.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the "What killed me?" moment is kind of a design failure. Far too much of WoW's mechanics rely on parsing the really obtuse user-interface, or, more accurately, using a third-party addon to parse the really obtuse use-interface for you, and tell you what to do.

If you can make a system whereby debuffs are intuitive and easy to understand, as opposed to having a WeakAura that gets thrown up saying, "Cleanse Dim-Mak Debuff from Tank!", then I'm all in favor of using them. I just don't think that's possible, in light of the game's engine and design.

Psyren

2018-06-27, 11:52 PM

The point I'm trying to make here is that the "What killed me?" moment is kind of a design failure. Far too much of WoW's mechanics rely on parsing the really obtuse user-interface, or, more accurately, using a third-party addon to parse the really obtuse use-interface for you, and tell you what to do.

If you can make a system whereby debuffs are intuitive and easy to understand, as opposed to having a WeakAura that gets thrown up saying, "Cleanse Dim-Mak Debuff from Tank!", then I'm all in favor of using them. I just don't think that's possible, in light of the game's engine and design.

I agree totally, especially with the bold part. I just don't think that "remove dispels entirely" is an appropriate solution. It would make healing even more boring, for starters. And Sporegg is right, recognizing the debuff colors and reacting appropriately is a key learning element for PvP. (I personally have no interest in PvP, but if you're going to have it at all, PvE needs to have ways to teach you how to play.)

Jera

2018-06-28, 01:12 AM

Few questions....

- When my Wife, Nephew, and I are 3-manning instances, is there a way to do it without being by the instance entrance? I've poked around at the Group Finder, but don't see a way to do it with anything other than Healer-Tank-3xDPS.

Unfortunately no, you do have the option, of two of you summoning the third using the summoning stone, but that's pretty much it.

- I vividly remember Cat Druids having a "Pounce" attack akin to a Warrior's Charge, but I don't see it anywhere in the list. Has that been removed?

Yes, it got removed a while ago, someone mentioned wild charge, but it's basically blink with a 2 second speed buff at the end.

- What's the best way to get a couple heirlooms? I've never actually reached level cap, but I've got one lvl 82 character and an heirloom from the Darkmoon Fair.

Gold, if you're willing to drop $20 on a token, you can easily buy a full set of maxed out heirloom gear for all three accounts, and have plenty of gold left over.

- My Nephew presently has his heart set on getting some sort of raptor baby battle pet. I've got a pretty wide assortment but managed never to get any like that even though I know they exist. Any suggestions?

Wailing Caverns and Dustwallow March would be your best bet to get one, Deviate Hatchling and Darting Hatchling respectively. Darting Hatchling is probably your best best as that's a guaranteed drop. Or if you went the token route for heirlooms you could probably pick one up at the auction house.

--

I just finished leveling a void elf Monk, doing the Iron Man challenge until lvl 100. And all I can say is I am so disappointed that I didn't play monk throughout Legion. I've mained Paladin through most of my time playing WoW and whilst I think I might stick to pally heals for raiding, DPS and even tanking is so much more involved on the monk, it's so engaging as with hit combo I have to keep track of what skills I've used and actually plan ahead to make sure I don't have down time. Healing Orbs, Ox Totems and Paralysis make me almost as survivable in my DPS spec as I am in my Tank spec, against non-rare elite mobs.

I think with Shadowmeld a Night Elf Windwalker Monk might be the best class for solo pve play.

Sian

2018-06-28, 08:21 AM

Solo PvE i’d say NE vengence Demon Hunter or maybe Tauren Blood Death Knight

The_Jackal

2018-06-28, 12:18 PM

So, this most recent patch has added a quick little quest-line in Silithus which will:

Max out the artifact power on all your legendary weapons.

I'm a bit conflicted as to this turn of events. I'm generally not much of a fan of catch-up mechanics, as I think there's implicit damage to the effort that players who did things the hard way were able to accomplish. On the other hand, I was never a great fan of how artifact power needed to be split between your three specializations, so it was nice to be able to swap specs and toy with some stuff I hadn't been able to grind through yet. Obviously, BFA will take care of the spec issue, but I'm still on the whole vexed by all this, not the least of which because I knew when Legion announced that everyone was going to get a legendary weapon, that they'd have to contrive some way to take them away when the next expansion hit. So it was always going to be a formula for weapons-grade anti-climax.

Resileaf

2018-06-28, 12:22 PM

I wish the sentient weapons had a reaction of any kind in Sillithus when you complete the latest questline. This is literally ultimate, infinite power. How are Xal'athah, Aluneth and the Eredar skull whose name escapes me atm not absolutely thrilled by it?

sonofzeal

2018-06-28, 12:34 PM

Gold, if you're willing to drop $20 on a token, you can easily buy a full set of maxed out heirloom gear for all three accounts, and have plenty of gold left over.

Pardon the ignorance, but what's a token?

Psyren

2018-06-28, 12:38 PM

I'm generally not much of a fan of catch-up mechanics, as I think there's implicit damage to the effort that players who did things the hard way were able to accomplish.

Whereas I find this notion ludicrous. The grinders/early adopters already got their reward - being early. The number of people that hear this and think "oh cool, I'll resub and try it!" is always, always going to outweigh the diehard elitists.

As for taking the weapons away... yeah that is annoying actually, though it'd be nice for my fire mage and shadowpriest to be able to use a staff again (hopefully.)

Pardon the ignorance, but what's a token?

Game Time Tokens, purchasable via the in-game shop. You can then list them on the AH and get a substantial sum of gold.

It's been suggested (though not proven?) that Blizzard themselves buy up tokens when they get too plentiful, keeping their gold value high and making them an attractive way for new or lapsed players to gear up, buy heirlooms etc.

Jera

2018-06-28, 12:40 PM

Pardon the ignorance, but what's a token?

A wow Token is an in game item you buy in the blizzard shop that can be sold for gold, I looked a few days ago when they were having the sale and it gets you about 210,000 gold give it take a bit. Also you can buy them with in game gold and get a months subscription with it.

Resileaf

2018-06-28, 12:43 PM

Pardon the ignorance, but what's a token?

Blizz has started selling game time tokens, which you can buy with real money. They cost the same thing as normal game time, but you can sell them for in-game gold on the auction house rather than use them.
What this means is that a gold-rich player can buy game time with gold, and money-rich players can sell game time for in-game gold.

Edit: Ninjaed! Twice!

Kish

2018-06-28, 02:14 PM

Whereas I find this notion ludicrous. The grinders/early adopters already got their reward - being early. The number of people that hear this and think "oh cool, I'll resub and try it!" is always, always going to outweigh the diehard elitists.
Just out of curiosity, and not attempting to convince anyone of anything about what Blizzard "should" do for any reason, just inspired with curiosity by this argument--did they ever make the old-style titles (Scout, Grunt, High Warlord, Champion of the Naaru, and so on) available again by any means?

Resileaf

2018-06-28, 02:30 PM

Psyren

2018-06-28, 02:49 PM

Just out of curiosity, and not attempting to convince anyone of anything about what Blizzard "should" do for any reason, just inspired with curiosity by this argument--did they ever make the old-style titles (Scout, Grunt, High Warlord, Champion of the Naaru, and so on) available again by any means?

To be completely clear, I'm not referring to titles and achievements when I say that. But mechanical things like artifact power should absolutely have catch-up mechanics for later in an expansion (or even at the tail-end.)

The_Jackal

2018-06-28, 08:18 PM

To be completely clear, I'm not referring to titles and achievements when I say that. But mechanical things like artifact power should absolutely have catch-up mechanics for later in an expansion (or even at the tail-end.)

I think there may be some argument for truncating some of the slog, but I kind of feel like just picking up a level 110 and immediately getting maximum artifact power through a 7 quest chain is akin to dousing your entire expansion in lighter-fluid. Theoretically, they should have 12 years worth of RPG content that one would consider a value add. Which begs the question: If WoW thinks their game is so fun, why do they keep offering (and indeed charging for) ways to skip it? Would you buy a level boost in Mass Effect to skip to the end of ME3?

In my opinion, one of the main draws of the MMO genre is the sense of investment and accomplishment from having persevered at something. In light of that, I'd much rather they work on making level scaling a thing, and make mentoring a thing, so that these older sections of content can retain their relevance, and no longer be relegated to backfilling cheevos and transmogs.

Psyren

2018-06-28, 11:03 PM

Jera

2018-06-28, 11:21 PM

I think there may be some argument for truncating some of the slog, but I kind of feel like just picking up a level 110 and immediately getting maximum artifact power through a 7 quest chain is akin to dousing your entire expansion in lighter-fluid. Theoretically, they should have 12 years worth of RPG content that one would consider a value add. Which begs the question: If WoW thinks their game is so fun, why do they keep offering (and indeed charging for) ways to skip it? Would you buy a level boost in Mass Effect to skip to the end of ME3?

In my opinion, one of the main draws of the MMO genre is the sense of investment and accomplishment from having persevered at something. In light of that, I'd much rather they work on making level scaling a thing, and make mentoring a thing, so that these older sections of content can retain their relevance, and no longer be relegated to backfilling cheevos and transmogs.

The thing is the expansion is over, I downloaded the BoA pre-event patch today, presumably it goes live next week. Legion has been out for two years, and Blizzard(and I) assume that if you cared at all about any of the things you mentioned, you would have played sometime in the last 8 months since 7.3.5 dropped. People who are resubbing now aren't doing so to play Legion content, they're doing so to get ready to play BoA.

Anecdote from someone who bought a boost, I picked wow back up for Legion after quitting a month into Cataclysm, I had no interest at all in play Draenor content. During the intervening years my original account was lost, so I grabbed one of the free month/game codes from the Warcraft Movie and started a new account, leveled up a Paladin, but wanted my Druid and Priest back as well, When I bought Legion I boosted a Priest, now I could do what you suggest and spend 30+ hours rehashing 100 levels of content that I had literally just finished a week prior or spend 60 bucks and be good to go right then and there. Those 30 hours of my time is worth more than $60. Not having to spend 10 miserable hours in the Outlands is worth $60,

Comparing boosting a character to skipping to the end of ME3 is a false equivalency, because getting to max level in WoW does not end the game, it doesn't even stop you from going back and exploring the story of zones you skipped. I played through the entirety of Legion on that druid, I'm 11/11 H Antorus on that druid, do you know what I missed by boosting that toon? Not having to quest in Outlands or Draenor. I had and am having a lot of fun playing that druid. The only thing that frustrates me about it is that I've been running Firelands weekly for the last year and still haven't looted Farandels Seed Pouch.

Lord Raziere

2018-06-29, 12:13 AM

Yeah, I think I might've been foolish leveling up my Rogue main normally while boosting other classes I want to play.....I think I should've just boosted my Rogue as well, but now its 106. barely worth doing so....

oh well I guess I'll get around to leveling my rogue to 110......eventually.....

Resileaf

2018-06-29, 06:30 AM

My raid group has defeated Heroic Argus!
Thank you supercharged weapons!

Psyren

2018-06-29, 09:24 AM

My raid group has defeated Heroic Argus!
Thank you supercharged weapons!

How dare you celebrate? You skipped all that investment and accomplishment! Go flog thyself!

Resileaf

2018-06-29, 10:10 AM

How dare you celebrate? You skipped all that investment and accomplishment! Go flog thyself!

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my AWESOME MAGIC BIRD!

The_Jackal

2018-06-29, 02:28 PM

How dare you celebrate? You skipped all that investment and accomplishment! Go flog thyself!

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my AWESOME MAGIC BIRD!

Yes, rewards are so much more fulfilling when you don't actually have to work for them! What we all really want is no gameplay, just a loot dispenser button that hands out cool 3D models for our characters to wear in our cartoon fantasy Barbie game!

Resileaf

2018-06-29, 03:04 PM

Yes, rewards are so much more fulfilling when you don't actually have to work for them! What we all really want is no gameplay, just a loot dispenser button that hands out cool 3D models for our characters to wear in our cartoon fantasy Barbie game!

Please, just because we needed that boost to finally beat Argus (technically we were at Coven) doesn't mean that we didn't work for that kill.

Psyren

2018-06-29, 03:17 PM

Please, just because we needed that boost to finally beat Argus (technically we were at Coven) doesn't mean that we didn't work for that kill.

When will you learn that The_Jackal is the final arbiter on all achievement and fun? You must forgo Blizzard's temptations of the flesh, clothe yourself in itchy burlap and eat nothing but flavorless gruel until you get your purples the right way. No matter when in the expansion your playgroup decided to stop being lazy slobs and grab those bootstraps. :smalltongue:

The_Jackal

2018-06-29, 05:39 PM

When will you learn that The_Jackal is the final arbiter on all achievement and fun? You must forgo Blizzard's temptations of the flesh, clothe yourself in itchy burlap and eat nothing but flavorless gruel until you get your purples the right way. No matter when in the expansion your playgroup decided to stop being lazy slobs and grab those bootstraps. :smalltongue:

Well said.

In all seriousness, I've long advocated for eliminating the difficulty tiers and putting in a difficulty slider. If your gang wants to coast through the game and collect all the things because they finished the game how they wanted to, great! I just think it's kind of absurd to have this sliding scale where hard is hard until the developers arbitrarily decide to hand out participation trophies to everyone. Heck, just give away the Friendship Birb (http://friendshipbirb.com/) to everyone when the finish LFR. I mean, this has more or less the same effect.

I mean, what's the message here, exactly? You want the coolest stuff in WoW? Buy each upcoming WoW expansion, use the free-level up to hit the level cap ASAP, run World quests for a week or two to score all the handout catchup loot, then crowdsource a carry for the one-and-done achievements you'd miss out on before the next expansion. Then, when that expansion drops, cancel your sub, wait 2 years, and do the same thing when the new content is headed into the pipeline. Intervening raid tiers? Who needs to do that stuff? If there's something you really want out of them, go back and farm them when they're -10 levels and about 300 item levels below you.

So, sure, I'll accept it, I am an elitist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8I9pYCl9AQ). I want special things to stay special.