Man so all that increase in the subscriber base was just people leveling alts? And then they went on and made this the most alt unfriendly expansion to date? Someone is drunk at the wheel I swear.
Man so all that increase in the subscriber base was just people leveling alts? And then they went on and made this the most alt unfriendly expansion to date? Someone is drunk at the wheel I swear.
My opinion is that the game fails to teach proper simultenous movement and skill usage. That, personal/raid cds and an approximately good rotation are the only things needed to finish normal. If it was taught during leveling, dungeons and/or specific scenarios, % of normal kills will be much higher without doing 1-mechanic bosses.
Because it IS easy when you get the know-how not in the game.
Which vanilla 5 mans exactly (keep in mind he is talking about level cap)? I guess there was DM but iirc that was added a bit later. Now maybe some could 5 man strat or whatever, but an average pug had no chance. BC made the 5 man dungeon 'end game' content 'popular' but the heroics were quite clearly out of reach of the average player (though they were absolutely awesome... actual challenging content you could just get a 5 man group for and go rather than needing a full raid) and even some of the non heroic 5 mans were more than what the average players could handle if you look at lfr (shattered halls, that one by TK with millhouse manastorm that I can't remember the name of).
So anyway, I am not sure really how anyone would be shocked that the majority of the wow pop didn't do those.
I dont always read this thread. But when i do, i make sure i have popcorn!
While I believe this is true, I also believe that doing so would raise the attrition rate for leveling up considerably from what it is today. That is the game would lose significantly more players in the process of leveling up where this stuff is learned and while as a percentage you would have a more skilled max level pool of players, the effect of reducing the overall size of the playerbase would be much more pronounced than the number of people who actually stuck to it and learned the ropes who wouldn't end up doing that when they figure out that they need to improve to finish normal mode raiding.
Gradual difficulty increase should be the goal to minimize attrition while maximizing the acquisition of skill among the player base, which is precisely the problem right now. Normal is a much larger step up from LFR than heroic is from Normal, ideally it would be a smoother transition to facilitate more natural learning.
People here say there is a big gap between LFR and normal raiding. And that's true. Why? Because normal raiding requires coordination, cooperation and it's challenging. Everything before normal raiding is very easy.
That is just one part of the equation why less and less people raid normals. Other would be LFR. More people are quitting then subbing. And so on.
You can't just pick one thing and stick to it like it's written in stone.
And one more thing about minorities and majorities. It's popular to pull that card. But when it comes to normal (so called average raiders) they are minority of minority.
The game's focus has shifted to endgame. It's actually pretty difficult to start from scratch and level a character up to 90 for the first time just because of the incredible amount of information a new player has to absorb and put to use. It's difficult to become a BAD fresh level 90.
And now you want to make it ACTUALLY difficult to level? Yes, that would kill the game dead right there.
I think most the nerfs are just to make it easier for less than ideal raid comps. They do for sure exist, our raid 1 group had a significantly easier time than our raid 2 group, simply because their class comp has been awesome for most if not all fights.
Don't really think most of the nerfs are needed though. Even one of the worst guilds i know managed to over come 9 of the encounters after spending a good amount of time each week on them. I personally think the added challenge is a good thing, so this isn't really a step in the right direction.
That said making stuff like garalon easier for undergeared catchup players or alts isn't a bad idea. It isn't current content, so not like it matters how hard the fight is now.
Last edited by Xucuroz; 2013-04-19 at 09:58 AM.
We are warriors, born from the light
An army for freedom, defenders of life
Warriors, euphoria will rise
Returning from darkness we bury all lies
Making a fight too easy off the bat means that it can hardly be buffed since that would be unfair to the players who haven't yet killed it. A greatly undertuned boss also turns into "non-content" for many because it lacks any gameplay value for them. Overtuned encounters mean that the players who managed to kill them are in some ways rewarded for killing them earlier, and adjusting them down won't be seen as unfair. It is also easier to adjust an overtuned fight since the numbers are easier to analyze in context and the nerfs can be targeted more accurately.
Last edited by Keoren; 2013-04-19 at 10:48 AM.
Leveling alts is a ton of fun for me. I mean, it was. It sort of is again now.
On the other hand I find having a "main" boring as all fuck, even though I do enjoy playing my most advanced character.
---------- Post added 2013-04-19 at 02:40 AM ----------
They continue to subscribe for their alts though.
It shouldnt, I dont propose to turn leveling into a punitive and gruesome experience. Highlighting how good and useful are that new cd you got, how to do a simple but effective rotation while dodging shit would if anything make leveling more fun.
Again, they are easy, once you have the basics covered. Only heroics require time and dedication beyond that.
Would help. In the abence of teaching, it makes no sense to have raids require CD usage then, surely?
Can't be true, because hundreds of thousands tried to raid T14 and T15 and the majority of them failed.Again, they are easy, once you have the basics covered. Only heroics require time and dedication beyond that.
Easy, good, bad etc are all relative statements. They can only be relative to the people they apply to. To say something is easy as though easy was some objective measure doesn't work, it's like saying everyone can be tall.
---------- Post added 2013-04-19 at 01:04 PM ----------
It does illustrate something I hve been finding. Plenty of people who used to be able to raid at the sharp end (or could just about get by in normal mode) are struggling as of late because the difficulty has ramped up. They haven't changed, their abilities capped out back in wrath of TBC or whatever at which time the content was tolerable for them - but the game has started to grow more and more tricky.
One issue I think is the difficulty of communicating this to people who haven't experiences it. It's like an old sportsman who can still perform to near his peak standard, and his standard was shit hot back in the day but modern methods and training and insights mean his up to date equivalents completely annihilate him and his old standard is now mediocre at best.
Maybe, but you know, I think you can't be as sharp as you were back then if you're now just doing normals and raiding a lot less. You have to train for it or you'll loose some bit by bit.
I used to have a pretty decent aim when I was playing a lot of FPS (Quake and such), now when I try to play some, its nowhere near what is was before, some old reflex are still there, but its clearly not as sharp.
I'm sure you got some remnants in there and you never loose all of it, but i'm not sure at all my best days as a mage are right now.
I'd say that there is nothing wrong with encouraging people to use certain abilities, or even just reminding them of their existence. It doesn't have to be something compulsory or even make the leveling experience any harder; in some cases it can even make the leveling easier or more fun.
Last edited by Keoren; 2013-04-19 at 12:22 PM.
Personally, I am fine. But t14 and t15 have had the T11 effect (back then the guild basically split into two because half of the old crew could no longer keep up) on people who made the grade previously.
Indeed, but why on earth should you need to be on your best days to do something "easy" "for bads" etc?I used to have a pretty decent aim when I was playing a lot of FPS (Quake and such), now when I try to play some, its nowhere near what is was before, some old reflex are still there, but its clearly not as sharp.
I'm sure you got some remnants in there and you never loose all of it, but i'm not sure at all my best days as a mage are right now.
I don't need to, but it may be one of the reasons some of us find T14 and T15 are hard. Imho, I don't feel the same way, because we've been raiding with the same people for years now and we just don't seems to find it hard. We almost always cleared normal modes in time, despite having to pug 2/3 people every week since we started HoF (most of the time, tanks), some week we couldn't raid and we finished just in time (we could've finished a lot sooner if ToeS wasnt gated and empress was so hard comparing to others encounters)
In fact, we were always having around the 35/40 down of the server and now we're always around 22/23, maybe because there's less people, but I feel we've never been as fast as this tier.
We never spent more than 4 hours on a boss in T15, but we did spent a lot of time on Garalon and Empress, probably more than 7/8 hours.
2/3 of us even changed character, our tank is now playing his Shadow Priest, one of our dps is now healing, we lost our tanks and just recruited 2 (undergeared) last week despite searching for some since ToeS.. Maybe we're getting better, but I doubt it.