5.2 Is a big disappointment

[Osmeric]

Dailies don't encourage or foster what the spirit of what they want.

I view it as an example of cargo cult game design -- producing the appearance of something, without an appreciation of the essence.

CRZ is the same kind of thing.

[Leonard McCoy]

I view it as an example of cargo cult game design -- producing the appearance of something, without an appreciation of the essence.

CRZ is the same kind of thing.

YES exactly! That's exactly how I wanted to say it. It's a shadow but not the substance. The substance is I think gone though and frankly their is virtually nothing the developers can do about it. And without the substance it feels FORCED. Not in the sense of the normal sort of reward but in the sense that it isn't organic you know. It isn't people exploring because of wonder and curiosity, that's all gone from the game now and will never come back, but getting out there to run dailies. As a utilitarian sort of function thing to do.

However this has been the case for awhile now. Really since TBC and it's only gotten more and more like that and the developers have handled it rather well I thought. Right up until Mists. Because In Mists they actually tried to do something about it which is a mistake. They tried emulate the essence but didn't understand it if they did they'd realize it was gone and could never be brought back. They handled it by basically ignoring it because it's just the natural occurance that was going to happen anyway. Of course the world lacks wonder and mystery and that epic sort of essence. You get stronger, both as a player and as a character so all that shit goes away. That's just natural though. And it's perfectly fine. What is not fine is when Ghostcrawler says he doesn't like how flying mounts make the world feel safe. The world feels safe because you know what's in the world. You can google it or wowhead it. The world feels safe because you as a player have grown and are much better and know your way around things. The world feels safe because your stronger than you were in vanilla and the game is tuned better. The world doesn't feel safe because of flying mounts. If you took flying mounts out tmmrw the world wouldn't feel dangerous all of a sudden, it would just be fucking tedious as hell to travel.

Trying to bring it back not only feels forced but as someone who was actually playing the game in vanilla it feels fake and hollow. As I said before I don't think getting players out in the world should be their imperative. But even if you think trying to recapture the faded glory days of warcraft is a worthwhile goal then this is just hollow. It's a cadaver. It's the dead rising. The brain and the personality are gone but the automaton still walks.

[Flaks]

There are plenty of memorable quests that people enjoy and like repeating and there are several raids that people cannot stand. Argent tournament dailies were more fun than either the dungeon or raid associated with them. And I hate dailies. So, I'm sure 'said nobody ever' should actually be, says some people because we are all different.

"I'm pretty sure your opinion is wrong" - said the nobodies on the forums.

I personally couldn't stand the Argent Tourney dailies and in fact loved the dungeons and enjoyed the puggability of ToC following how bad Ulduar was at being pug-friendly. But yea, there's definitely people of all walks of life but I do think Blizzard has been overdoing it with the dailies.

[wow2011]

I never said they should drop no gear. I think the heroiucs they should have given to us should gives us items ilvl 489 (5.0 daily reputation quality gear) with some 496 in the last boss (5.1 daily reputation quality gear). None of that gear is gear i need, but it would be nice for new players to catch up and for alts.

About the difference between heroics and outdoor content, i think you are trolling if you dont see the difference.

A lot of us enjoy doing dungeons, and dont enjoy dailies. Dungeons have been the core of WoW since Vanilla, and they are being ignored in favor of making dailies in mass production.

Heroics are a sweet meal in a high level restaurant, dailies are mcdonald burgers. That's the difference to me.

Of course they would prefer to make cheap low level content instead of expensive high level one while charging the same amount, but i wont be fine with it.

Again, i am not saying i want them to stop developing dailies, i'm saying they should balance their development, and if they already gave us a chunk of dailies in 5.1, then 5.2 is the turn of dungeons.

If you reread what I wrote, you'll notice that I never even mentioned dailies and that is done on a purpose. I am talking about a zone with mobs inside.

If you just can't grasp what I am saying, then imagine this:
New Heroic: Isle of Thunder
Goal: race to the chest in the end for epics, coins, and gold.
Design: An entire island with new dangerous mobs all around. There are 10 randomly placed rare beasts that guard the door to the chests and 1 of them carries the key to open the gates. Your goal is to track and kill the beasts to retrieve the key in order to open the gate. Once the gate is open, you have 5 min to fight your way through mobs and kill the chest guardian to claim the treasure of the Thunder King.

There, I just described the "new heroic" that Blizzard has created for 5.2. You might enjoy this format or you might not. The only thing different about this island is that it's not instanced. Instead, this is an open world zone with objectives to complete and rewards to obtain.

Perhaps you are so caught up on "instanced" zones that you fail to see that a heroic is simply a zone. Blizzard gave us a different format to get loot. Instead of killing named mob 1, 2, 3 with loot table, you have to go out to find keys to open chests instead. Instanced or not doesn't really make a single difference in terms of content created. So maybe you like killing name mobs 1, 2, 3 with set loot tables instead of dealing with RNG. But that is no reason to say Blizzard is creating cheap content.

[DeadmanWalking]

I really like how you can get valor books off the rare spawns, makes it worthwhile to hunt them while queing up for dungeons rather than doing dailies or while doing dailies. That and they can drop items that spawn other guys that drop chests that have things in them I want, like elder coins. The valor is flowing much faster than before, so much so that I am valor capping on Thurs-Friday as opposed to Sat-Sunday, allowing me to double the rate of valor on my alt that much more efficiently.

[Crashdummy]

If you reread what I wrote, you'll notice that I never even mentioned dailies and that is done on a purpose. I am talking about a zone with mobs inside.

If you just can't grasp what I am saying, then imagine this:
New Heroic: Isle of Thunder
Goal: race to the chest in the end for epics, coins, and gold.
Design: An entire island with new dangerous mobs all around. There are 10 randomly placed rare beasts that guard the door to the chests and 1 of them carries the key to open the gates. Your goal is to track and kill the beasts to retrieve the key in order to open the gate. Once the gate is open, you have 5 min to fight your way through mobs and kill the chest guardian to claim the treasure of the Thunder King.

There, I just described the "new heroic" that Blizzard has created for 5.2. You might enjoy this format or you might not. The only thing different about this island is that it's not instanced. Instead, this is an open world zone with objectives to complete and rewards to obtain.

Perhaps you are so caught up on "instanced" zones that you fail to see that a heroic is simply a zone. Blizzard gave us a different format to get loot. Instead of killing named mob 1, 2, 3 with loot table, you have to go out to find keys to open chests instead. Instanced or not doesn't really make a single difference in terms of content created. So maybe you like killing name mobs 1, 2, 3 with set loot tables instead of dealing with RNG. But that is no reason to say Blizzard is creating cheap content.

What you just described in not a "heroic", its a zone event. And its not what Blizzard made for 5.2. You are trying to copmpare apples with oranges.

We dont want a different format (and its not a different format, Blizzard gave us the same exact format than in 5.1 and the same than in 5.0 daileis, which is VASTLY different from the format we are asking).

And yes, dailies ARE cheap content. You might like that cheap content as some people like mcdonalds burgers over a restaurant dinner, but that doesnt change that it is cheap content.

[Tharkkun]

They're just so slow to respond to things sometimes. This dailies fiasco is like hard dungeons all over again. People bitched about hard dungeons in cataclysm. So they gave them more hard dungeons. Next expansion they got rid of the hard dungeons. Now they give people dailies, people bitch about the dailies, they give them more dailies, and next expansion who knows. Maybe the content will revolve around fishing.

That's because you'll bitch about anything and everything. If it isn't one thing, it's another. Blizzard won't ever satisfy you so they cut their losses and continue making content for the ones who care.

[Leonard McCoy]

That's because you'll bitch about anything and everything. If it isn't one thing, it's another. Blizzard won't ever satisfy you so they cut their losses and continue making content for the ones who care.

Nah. I actually personally didn't bitch about hard heroics. I was fine with most of cataclysm, aside from the rather slow rate of patch release. I did bitch about dailies though. Lots of bitching about dailies.

Considering what they did to the heroic dungeons this expansion, BLizzard got the fucking hint. It's great. I laughed so hard the first time I ran a heroic in mists. It was just so obvious what had happened.

[MasterHamster]

There's such a lack of suggestions when it comes to dailies.
Nothing, just "I hate dailies".

I don't like them either, but since it's an MMO and I want the rewards, I do the dailies now and then to unlock them. My decision when. Without the valor cap, I'd understand the complaints. But that's not the case.
I'm glad they sticked to it in 5.2, not bending over backwards for those who feel like they have to do dailies every day to stay ahead (although it doesn't)

There's nothing wrong with thinking dailies are boring, or "lazy", but like it or not, they are a very efficient tool for slowing down progress from going rampant, and make you engage in the world.

Patch 4.3 showed us what happens when the world becomes irrelevant for gear progression, and I'm glad they went with the solution that works, while doing a great job at balancing "work" with reward.

Maybe it's because I'm so interested in game development that I can easily understand why they use dailies to gate us when it comes to progression. It's easy to whine about "chores" when you haven't experienced what'd probably happened otherwise. Start off 5.0 with faction tabards, wouldn't that be just great.

I feel like those who complain about how Blizzard gate players has never given it a real thought on how the game would be if they let us cap in cities while alt-tabbed in queues

Considering what they did to the heroic dungeons this expansion, BLizzard got the fucking hint. It's great. I laughed so hard the first time I ran a heroic in mists. It was just so obvious what had happened.

What happened:

BC heroics was for some reason harder than Karazhan, few did them
WotLk heroics was laughable in comparison, players whined because heroic dungeons were supposed to be hard.
Cataclysm changed this by making them challenging, but in the end it was challenging for no one but the healer.
MoP made heroics the very, very first easy step in progression at 90, and that's what they should be.

[Kelimbror]

But yea, there's definitely people of all walks of life but I do think Blizzard has been overdoing it with the dailies.

But see here's the realization I've come to. First ask yourself, what would you put in their place as a vehicle for telling a story and progressing the actual expansion? In the past that vehicle was only raids, and sometimes dungeons. On rare, mostly expansion changing occasions, it has been world events. Other than constantly adding ever changing quests to the game that accomplish the same purpose, there's really no ideal solution for bringing you a story in MMOs because that is essentially what they have evolved in place as: Questing.

So in reality, the problem isn't with dailies.It's literally not a problem to have repeatable quests that change over time and tell you a story. The problem is all in the implementation and execution. This includes all of the other details, which are more important. Blizzard probably has the exact right idea by giving us new areas with new dailies, but it's all the stuff surrounding it that is wrong.

Here's how I see it (and a lot of this stuff is starting to improve since launch of MoP)

1) They went back on too many principles they've established. Things like making daily LFD become 7 days a week because they don't want to force you to do a dungeon every day if you don't want. Where did this go? It was thrown in the trash because it's not convenient for how they do things. That's a very large precedent that starts all these problems.

2) In tandem with #1, they removed all of the value from outside activities other than dailies. Dungeons are quickly obsolete, reward no valor, and don't allow you to spend that currency either. This is pretty much completely breaking the dungeon system as we've known it since TBC. Was not a good idea and this is one that is still a huge problem.

3) Launch had too many dailies, too many artificial gates, not enough engagement. This is being heavily rectified and seems to get better each patch. Shieldwall and now this new stuff is less confusing and cumbersome so that you can start to enjoy the story of what is going on. Having one offs woven in between dailies is also a very good idea.

4) Not being able to earn rep outside of dailies effectively is the last nail in the coffin. Rep is a form of content that should never have its pace dictated to you. There need to be ways (though very time consuming) where you can sit down for 18 hours on a weekend and grind to death if that's what you want to do. Turn ins, specific mobs, specific dungeons, every idea they've used since TBC has all been abandonded for dailies.

This is also starting to be rectified, but not fast enough. It was great to put work orders on the farm, the championing is kinda odd and I still don't even know what activities benefit from it, but it's still not enough choices for the player. Even doing something silly like having you be able to battle pet your way to rep by clearing out 'hostile critters' would be good just b/c it is allowing all playstyles to progress through the main concepts of the game.

Getting to what Tommy was saying about artificially making people 'go out in the world', it's spot on. If you give people more ways to go do things, more areas to do them in, then you will find that people are going to go back in the world. Sure the mystery is forever gone, but the enjoyment of being there doesn't have to be. That was their poor choices. Think about all the time people spent in Felwood, EPL, all kinds of places from Vanilla forward just farming mats, rep, rare recipes, you name it. These are all concepts that need to be added, increased, magnified.

I can honestly say I see that they are doing some of this, but I'm not sure if they have the sense of urgency or the desire to go all out and make it happen pronto.

[Leonard McCoy]

T
I'm glad they sticked to it in 5.2, not bending over backwards for those who feel like they have to do dailies every day to stay ahead (although it doesn't)

No they didn't. dailies have such shitty rewards behind them now it's fantastic. I will NEVER touch one and not feel like I lost out on anything or was forced to do them because the rewards SUCK. They are bad as hell. The only thing less rewarding is heroic dungeons. Dailies will now be less forced and as a corollary less compelling and people participating in them will drop as well.

Dailies are EXTREMELY lazy both as overall content presented to player but also as a design for "something to do". If dailies is the best they could come up with as something to do then I have to ask if the developers are bored of this game? Are they so out of ideas that dailies was their go to idea this expansion? They couldn't even rip off one of their competitors? Dailies don't even make you really engage in the world. They prod you out for periods of activity.

The world has almost always been irellevant for gear progression. This solution to a problem that never existed and was never a problem in the first place is retarded. They need to think of something else.

---------- Post added 2013-03-08 at 05:48 PM ----------

Getting to what Tommy was saying about artificially making people 'go out in the world', it's spot on. If you give people more ways to go do things, more areas to do them in, then you will find that people are going to go back in the world. Sure the mystery is forever gone, but the enjoyment of being there doesn't have to be. That was their poor choices. Think about all the time people spent in Felwood, EPL, all kinds of places from Vanilla forward just farming mats, rep, rare recipes, you name it. These are all concepts that need to be added, increased, magnified.

I can honestly say I see that they are doing some of this, but I'm not sure if they have the sense of urgency or the desire to go all out and make it happen pronto.

You and I agree on alot of thigns but this is where we probably part company. You can still farm mats in mists, nothing has really changed. People spent time in felwood and epl to farm mats for raids IIRC in vanilla it made shit for the raid. Crap what was it? I remember farming shit in vanilla for raids like that. It was like making destruction potions. That kind of stuff. I don't agree that's the way to go. That's just more crap that will serve as a barrier to players getting rewards and getting into raids. Unless I'm mistaken what your after.

I honestly don't think going to the past is going to solve their issues in the future. Their is nothign wrong with the game focusing on instanced content and reward SO LONG as the developers can keep offering it at a good pace and making players feel their time in game is rewarded. Their is something very wrong with attempting to bring the good old days back though. That just doesn't work.

[Deleted]

No they didn't. dailies have such shitty rewards behind them now it's fantastic. I will NEVER touch one and not feel like I lost out on anything or was forced to do them because the rewards SUCK. They are bad as hell. The only thing less rewarding is heroic dungeons. Dailies will now be less forced and as a corollary less compelling and people participating in them will drop as well.

Dailies are EXTREMELY lazy both as overall content presented to player but also as a design for "something to do". If dailies is the best they could come up with as something to do then I have to ask if the developers are bored of this game? Are they so out of ideas that dailies was their go to idea this expansion? They couldn't even rip off one of their competitors? Dailies don't even make you really engage in the world. They prod you out for periods of activity.

The world has almost always been irellevant for gear progression. This solution to a problem that never existed and was never a problem in the first place is retarded. They need to think of something else.

---------- Post added 2013-03-08 at 05:48 PM ----------



You and I agree on alot of thigns but this is where we probably part company. You can still farm mats in mists, nothing has really changed. People spent time in felwood and epl to farm mats for raids IIRC in vanilla it made shit for the raid. Crap what was it? I remember farming shit in vanilla for raids like that. It was like making destruction potions. That kind of stuff. I don't agree that's the way to go. That's just more crap that will serve as a barrier to players getting rewards and getting into raids. Unless I'm mistaken what your after.

I honestly don't think going to the past is going to solve their issues in the future. Their is nothign wrong with the game focusing on instanced content and reward SO LONG as the developers can keep offering it at a good pace and making players feel their time in game is rewarded. Their is something very wrong with attempting to bring the good old days back though. That just doesn't work.

TL;DR

"I don't like dailies so obviously everyone else shouldn't like them too. Also, since i don't like dailies, it is obviously a poor design choice to implement them, because the game is developed for me only".

[Leonard McCoy]

What happened:

BC heroics was for some reason harder than Karazhan, few did them
WotLk heroics was laughable in comparison, players whined because heroic dungeons were supposed to be hard.
Cataclysm changed this by making them challenging, but in the end it was challenging for no one but the healer.
MoP made heroics the very, very first easy step in progression at 90, and that's what they should be.

That's not what happened. BC heroics weren't harder what they were was time consuming and the game overall was poorly tuned. I'm also not sure "few" people did them because they were your primary source of rep and had pretty good rewards at the start of the expac.
Wotlk heroics were fine. Mostly the ones that were laughable were at the end and that was fine to.
Cataclysm did make them more challenging and instead of responding to meshhegoes over this they simple made more challenging dungeons. In fact just like mists dailies we've got the same split in the community again. It's great. It's liked they learned nothing.
Mop made heroics so fast and easy (a complete 180% degrees) that you are effectively done with them after two days. That's not what they should be. They may as well not even exist imo. What do you need em for? dailies contain every source of reward you could need save justice points which are kinda worthless. Just increase the valor gain on dailies and give people a vendor with a bunch of 463 gear for gold or whatever.

Heres how I break this down. This is of course entirely just my opinion.

Hard heroics with good rewards are fine.
Easy heroics with good rewards are fine
Easy heroics with shitty rewards are not fine.

Mists heroics are easy and ultimately unrewarding. I'd be okay with end of wrath style heroics that let me farm valor gear from them. Or points or badges or whatever (without the double gate of rep)

---------- Post added 2013-03-08 at 05:54 PM ----------

TL;DR

"I don't like dailies so obviously everyone else shouldn't like them too. Also, since i don't like dailies, it is obviously a poor design choice to implement them, because the game is developed for me only".

Yes that's exactly what I said. Thank you. I was looking for a way to summarize my feelings on the matter.

[Kelimbror]

You and I agree on alot of thigns but this is where we probably part company. You can still farm mats in mists, nothing has really changed. People spent time in felwood and epl to farm mats for raids IIRC in vanilla it made shit for the raid. Crap what was it? I remember farming shit in vanilla for raids like that. It was like making destruction potions. That kind of stuff. I don't agree that's the way to go. That's just more crap that will serve as a barrier to players getting rewards and getting into raids. Unless I'm mistaken what your after.

I honestly don't think going to the past is going to solve their issues in the future. Their is nothign wrong with the game focusing on instanced content and reward SO LONG as the developers can keep offering it at a good pace and making players feel their time in game is rewarded. Their is something very wrong with attempting to bring the good old days back though. That just doesn't work.

No, it wasn't the point I was after. I just meant that we used to be in the world for all sorts of things and that I agree dailies shouldn't be the lone tool to try and accomplish the same feat. All of the suggestions I outlined are just brief glimpses of what could get people out in the world. Basically giving people options on how they want to earn *insert item/goal here* by giving a wide variety of activities beyond what we've ever seen.

Just used felwood as an example because people could be there to farm timbermaw, get crafting mats, etc. I'm OK with some things, like specific enchanting recipes, being 'gated' as rare...but instead of saying you can only have this if you get exalted, or you can only have this if you get lucky and the .001% drop happens, it should be combinations of those things. Maybe it can drop or you can buy it at some point, this way if you're lucky then great no worries, on to another rep if you wish. If you aren't lucky, at least you aren't screwed forever.

I could type forever, but ideally my point is give us more options to the same net result than imaginable. Choice, choice, choice.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Witholding judgement until we start seeing how the raid progress goes. But so far the dailies feel a bit meh, just more of the same. It doesn't have that unique sense of urgency Quel'danas had.

[zerocarbs]

I don't necessarily dislike dailies as content. In fact, I actually enjoy having dailies to a certain extent. The problem I'm having with 5.2 dailies is that they just seem so uninspired. Pretty much all the quests so far have been standard kill quests. I'm hoping that as the island unlocks it's not just a compounding of the same type of questing. And does anyone know why the rares on the island aren't operating on an open tag system?

Also for people like me who are focused on PvP, they need to have more ways to spend VP besides just PvE gear and blood spirits. Even just being allowed to spend VP on heirlooms would be nice.

[wow2011]

What you just described in not a "heroic", its a zone event. And its not what Blizzard made for 5.2. You are trying to copmpare apples with oranges.

We dont want a different format (and its not a different format, Blizzard gave us the same exact format than in 5.1 and the same than in 5.0 daileis, which is VASTLY different from the format we are asking).

And yes, dailies ARE cheap content. You might like that cheap content as some people like mcdonalds burgers over a restaurant dinner, but that doesnt change that it is cheap content.

What I have described can well be called a heroic... Call it zone event if you want. Call it dungeon event if you want (ZF 100 troll event?). But Blizzard could have made the entire island into an instanced zone where at most 5 ppl can enter at one time then it'll be converted into a heroic easily. Just gives those rares a loot tables and wala, "new heroic" borned.

Did you miss the part that I said I am not talking about dailies? I am talking about finding friends to kill rares to get keys to have a shot at 3 chests in the solo scenario. That has nothing to do with dailies. What you are asking for is a much smaller instanced zone that goes from point A to B with 3/4 named mobs on the way that you pop open for gear and VP. What we have now is a big zone with randomized rare that you pop open for key to enter a solo scenario to have a shot at 3 chests under time limit.

You have made it clear that you don't want different format. You consider going from A to B and steamroll named mobs on the way that is guaranteed to drop gears with VP at the end a wonderful dinner. Blizzard did something new here. You did not like it but just don't say content is cheap because Blizzard changed format from 3/4 mobs guranteed to drop gear to finding gear inside chests where gear isn't guaranteed. Also, just a reminder, I am not talking about dailies at all if that is still not clear at this point.

[Yriel]

So in reality, the problem isn't with dailies.It's literally not a problem to have repeatable quests that change over time and tell you a story.

Oh i have to disagree. The problems are dailies. Not that they are there per se but the fact that they are really poorly designed for the most part.
Blizzard has shown that they can do more diverse quests, look at Gnomebliteration in Uldum, that is a fun quest, i'd do it daily even without a reward. Or the plants vs Zombies stuff. Or even the quest in Jade Isle where you are the sharpshooter. Or the Top Orc races in the Netherdrake area. Or all the other fun quests.
But no, more or less all dailies are "Kill 10 X" or "collect 15 Y" with high HP mobs.

That's what makes me start to hate dailies although i always liked them. It looks as if they spend 99% of their time designing and finetuning the raids and then shove out a few daily quests half an hour before their work hours end.

[Algearond]

Having a blast so far, haven't had much of a chance to complete all of them, but really digging the isle so far.

[Myrrar]

Dailies are EXTREMELY lazy both as overall content presented to player but also as a design for "something to do". If dailies is the best they could come up with as something to do then I have to ask if the developers are bored of this game? Are they so out of ideas that dailies was their go to idea this expansion? They couldn't even rip off one of their competitors? Dailies don't even make you really engage in the world. They prod you out for periods of activity.

This is honestly how I felt about dailies since MoP release. Dailies have been in the game since BC, but they didn't feel like the only content outside of raids that was focused on. They also didn't feel like an artificial way to make you leave the town.

The main problem is, LFD has been out since the end of Wrath. In Cata, the 'expac world' drastically shrunk since all the new areas were just a port away. This is the 1st time they have had an expansion where you don't have to travel to do 5s and it's a new continent. Crafting was way oversimplified and made too easy. There were no world pvp objectives like WG, TB, Halaa, or Hellfire arena(until last patch, but that area gets about as much real pvp action outside of daily ganking as Halaa does now). Bringing back world bosses was smart, making one of them respawn every 2 minutes and the other uncampable wasn't. Unless they had added all these dailies, there would be no real reason to be out in the world.

In the end dailies are fine, but when that was 90% of your content at release and your only patch so far having your 1st huge patch be dailies and a raid isn't really the best way to go. I think a big problem is were having no mix up. Holiday events are at a solid place, so new ones or big changes to them aren't coming. A lot of the cool big things have been added in(lfd, lfr, transmog, barber shop, mount/pet tabs). Mount farming this expac consists of doing extremely easy and fast dailies everyone else does. 5s are faceroll, and that's ok, but with no tabards, no 'dailiy heroic', no real reason to do them well....there's no reason to do them.

I've been playing WoW since release, have done every raid, and have always done dailies(and loved them, even Cata ones). There is just something really off and unfun about MoP overall progression. It's sad because I really really want to love it.