"We have nothing to do!"

[melodramocracy]

It's grinding. That's it. That's all it is in this format, unlike what it is in a P&P RPG.

It's not grinding, it's a decision on the players part. Just like it was in a P&P rpg, just like it is in other rpg games.

[The Madgod]

We see the logic behind it. We don't see the logic behind people claiming there's any realistic, decent way of fixing it.

There might be decent solutions for it, but just slapping the system back in with minor tweaks is not one of them. IF WoW could be made into a game that's based around leveling, that could work. At the same time, stuff like attunements could be integrated into the leveling process.

Instead, it's all about the endgame... and that's why weapons skills are completely unneccessary. Interestingly, though the OP claims these changes were made at the behest of the casual playerbase, it's way more complex than that. The transition to an endgame model was made due to the hardcore crowd and that led to a trimming of fat. It's a web of cause and effect.

Ugh something something and that's why pigs are pink.

The problem I see with weapon skills in MMO's is that unlike P&P's, they are pretty much exclusively about combat.

Characters in a P&P game can go around with no weapon skill at all and still be useful. No combat skills, even. Or very little. Because those games are far more free-form in their objectives. You have room for those characters who are more diplomatic, or pacifist, or anything like that. Weapon skills in a P&P RPG facilitate the means to show what character is better in combat with a particular weapon.

But the thing is, that can't really work when everything is resolved by combat, because then everyone needs to maximize their weapon skill. By removing that free-form style to the objectives (by necessity, arguably) you make it so that characters who cannot fight... really aren't viable design decisions. So fighting is mandatory. And in the MMO culture, where min-maxing is pretty prevalent, that means you HAVE to max out your weapon skills in order to be considered viable.

EDIT: Plus there's another disparity that was pointed out to me: unlike in P&P RPG's where melee can focus on weapon skills whereas casters need to get all their spells, in an MMO, both melee and casters need to get their class abilities, but melee need to get weapon skills. There's less of a pseudo-parity there and that is also bad design.

It's not grinding, it's a decision on the players part. Just like it was in a P&P rpg, just like it is in other rpg games.

No, it isn't, no, it isn't, and no, it isn't. If you think weapon skills in WoW are similar to those in a P&P RPG, then you haven't played either type of game.

See above

I'm talking about why the weapon skill system was implemented because there are comments floating around about it being implemented for no reason. It's idiotic to pretend that there wasn't a logic behind it being implemented - that logic made sense at the time, it wasn't just "because reasons".

I've stated many times that we've grown away from that in the modern form of WoW, and that weapon skills are gone and I'm glad they're gone, but you're cherry picking my comments.

Even then, grandfathered in is still just "because reasons". If you have something more than that, I'd love to hear it. Unless earlier MMO's weren't just primarily combat, whether weapon leveling was a good idea is still questionable and simply adding it in because they wanted a digital P&P RPG is... not really excusable. I don't think that idea is even feasible. You have to limit it in some fashion. See above for a bit more.

And again, you're being obtuse and argumentative. Nitpicky, even. I get where you're coming from, but you're coming off far too contrarian. Let's all chill, yeah?

[Deleted]

I'm talking about why the weapon skill system was implemented because there are comments floating around about it being implemented for no reason. It's idiotic to pretend that there wasn't a logic behind it being implemented - that logic made sense at the time, it wasn't just "because reasons".

The 'because Reasons(tm)' line was referring specifically to the attempts made to justify reintroducing weapon skills into the game, not why it was introduced (in a very flawed manner) back in the day.

[Vark]

Geez, what a bunch of blind people - if something is bad (like original weapon skill) it can be UPGRADED/CHANGED/DELETED. The problem is Blizzard (and from what we can see in your posts players as well) likes extremes so they rather delete something bad instead change it. You have 70 lvl, 1/375 axe skill and you're hitting 70 lvl mob? Every hit gives you for example 10 weapon skill. So much grind wow. Everything can be changed, we have imagination, so things can be better, this idea is bad? Let's think about another. I have to say this - if you rather delete some feature instead of changing it - you deserve to play WoD as it is.

[IIamaKing]

All this was horrible. And I have been playing since Vanilla.
It might look fun, but it totally isnt. Who wants to level for more than 72 hours? Yes there were people that did it way faster, but thats a small %.

The game isnt all that good now thought, but I would never want the vanilla times back it was just horrible.
Only 1 viable spec per class. Itemazation was shit. and loads of more crap xD

I loved all that stuff, made the game feel like an RPG. We can bring back some of the chores of vanilla without the horrible itemization and class balance.

[Thage]

Geez, what a bunch of blind people - if something is bad (like original weapon skill) it can be UPGRADED/CHANGED/DELETED. The problem is Blizzard (and from what we can see in your posts players as well) likes extremes so they rather delete something bad instead change it. You have 70 lvl, 1/375 axe skill and you're hitting 70 lvl mob? Every hit gives you for example 10 weapon skill. So much grind wow. Everything can be changed, we have imagination, so things can be better, this idea is bad? Let's think about another. I have to say this - if you rather delete some feature instead of changing it - you deserve to play WoD as it is.

Yes, let's hear how happy your raid is that you don't have max skill in Two-Handed Axes, because you forgot to relevel your skill when you specced back to Enhancement, so you need to stick with an inferior blue 2h Mace for the rest of the night or get carried through trash packs while leveling your skill to a point where you stop flailing around like you have cerebral palsy.

[Lady Dragonheart]

Absolutely not.

Wasting time on things like that doesn't equal a rewarding investment of time. Those things were all incredibly boring and mundane and it was good that they were removed.

[Dragore]

I loved all that stuff, made the game feel like an RPG. We can bring back some of the chores of vanilla without the horrible itemization and class balance.

Oh yeah absolutely loved leveling my weapon skill every time I switched from Resto to enhance. That right there is true RPG gameplay.

[jackofwind]

The 'because Reasons(tm)' line was referring specifically to the attempts made to justify reintroducing weapon skills into the game, not why it was introduced (in a very flawed manner) back in the day.

Well alright then, sorry for missing the intent of your initial comment.

[Deleted]

Well alright then, sorry for missing the intent of your initial comment.

'S fine boyo, I'd offer you some of my beer as a peace offering but I can't find a way of uploading it on the internet. I'm pouring it in the CD tray and everything. :/

[Vark]

Yes, let's hear how happy your raid is that you don't have max skill in Two-Handed Axes, because you forgot to relevel your skill when you specced back to Enhancement, so you need to stick with an inferior blue 2h Mace for the rest of the night or get carried through trash packs while leveling your skill to a point where you stop flailing around like you have cerebral palsy.

Reading is very hard ;d With 10 skill per hit you should hit 37-8 times which could be done during trash clear, afking for 1-2 minutes hitting mob. And I will flail around as long as you "players" will be so blind and deaf. All you do is saying "no cause reasons". I thought LoL community is bad but after reading posts here LoL community is filled with kind people ;]

I posted a good balanced way to reintroduce this feature again so there will be more choices and there won't be this much grind. I hope some dev will dig through all this whining and find this post

[Dragore]

Yep, We have nothing to do. And this is what most ppl wanted this game to become.

Lets check past what we had.
-You had to lvl your weapon skills.
-You had to go to trainer to learn new skills.
-You had to actualy drink to fill your mana pool time to time. (yes manabar actualy did matter)
-You had to buy your ammos, arrows/you had to make the poisons for your weapons.
-mobs 1-2lvl above you took time to kill. and a pack of those did kill you.
-You had to communicate(ask help) with ppl to continue on some quests.
-You had to communicate and make plans even on the lowest lvl dungeons to finish them. "sap purple, sheep blue etc.."
-no teleportals on every corner
-Lvling took time!!
-Character progression
-attunements
-items took time to get and you got that rewarding feeling, you actualy felt a joy about new weapons, armors etc. Now when you get new stuff it feels like nothing. Imo EPICS should take time to get and even blues should need some short of effort. But its all meaningles now and its sad.
I could go on and on but you get my point.

I know you will say "but all those things were just pointles, time consuming, stupid".

But imo these little things are GOOD for the game. These things made the game feel like a journey. These things made the game feel REWARDING. The feeling of achieving something is long gone and thats really sad. Theres nothing that drives you forward. Ppl used to have always something to do. But that time is long gone.

And this.
"but i can play only 1 hour per day. I dont want to go buy ammos and waste my time on that!" Well if you dont have time to play and you complain that you cant rush to the end and get all shiny epics right away. MAYBE MMORPG IS NOT A GAME FOR YOU. Have you think about that? (sry little rant in the end)

What are your thoughts about this?

- Weapon skills were so stupid and annoying, took away gameplay.
- Going to trainer was just annoying. Could you imagine doing that now, with how fast alts level.
- We should drink more i'll give you that
- Buying ammors/poisons took away gameplay glad they got rid of it. Ah shit I ran out out of ammo, guess ill melee Rag...
- 1-2 Mobs can still kill you. No mobs stood a chance when i got gear. Same for today.
- Communication still happens but a lot less definitely. Most people ignored everyone back then too.
- No one did that in vanilla unless you were in a raid
- Im still barraged by people asking me for ports (Main right now is a mage)
- Leveling took time because the game was new, no one knew what the hell they were doing. 1-100 still takes some time.
- Theres was no character progression. If any, its the same as today.
- Attunements were a pain in the ass. As a raid leader at the time of attunements it was so hard to recruit people, guild snipping was very common.
- You will never get that feeling of items again. The game was new, a white item was amazing the first time. (Nostalgia)


And your rant doesn't make any sense, you sound like you're just whining. Some good points but have to disagree with a lot.

[Deleted]

Reading is very hard ;d With 10 skill per hit you should hit 37-8 times which could be done during trash clear, afking for 1-2 minutes hitting mob. And I will flail around as long as you "players" will be so blind and deaf. All you do is saying "no cause reasons". I thought LoL community is bad but after reading posts here LoL community is filled with kind people ;]

I posted a good balanced way to reintroduce this feature again so there will be more choices and there won't be this much grind. I hope some dev will dig through all this whining and find this post

So... why have the skill at all then? I mean, it's just an extra calculation that your PC and the WoW servers have to handle. At best it's a minor inconvenience for anyone without a raging hard-on for missing the first 5 swings.

[The Madgod]

Reading is very hard ;d With 10 skill per hit you should hit 37-8 times which could be done during trash clear, afking for 1-2 minutes hitting mob. And I will flail around as long as you "players" will be so blind and deaf. All you do is saying "no cause reasons". I thought LoL community is bad but after reading posts here LoL community is filled with kind people ;]

I posted a good balanced way to reintroduce this feature again so there will be more choices and there won't be this much grind. I hope some dev will dig through all this whining and find this post

The problem with your idea is, even if it's an easier grind, it's still a grind. And if it's so easy to level it up that you have max at a couple minutes, why even keep it in if it's so meaningless?

Mechanics in a game shouldn't be one-off like that... it's impractical and a waste of resources. Mechanics should have significance for the player. Simply adjusting how fast a mechanic takes to complete, when ultimately completing it doesn't really DO anything for you, isn't really a fix. It's a band-aid at best, but the smarter thing to do is completely remove it as is and re-implement it later with a better design that remains significant for the player, rather than simply being another chore they need to do.

[Varabently]

Today's Facebook gamers would never stand for those things. The game is in a lot better state than the forums would suggest. It's the gamers who need to get the heave-ho. Me.me.now.now is sadly the state of today's gamer. Instant gratification or off to the forums to whine.

But why does WoW have to cater to Facebook gamers? There are PLENTY of other games doing that, and better than WoW can possibly do it. This "accessibility" bullshit just makes no sense to me. Blizz should be focusing on a particular playerbase, not trying to please everyone. It spreads resources too thing. Imagine if Blizzard only cared about questing and all their dev time went into making new quests, zones, etc. Wouldn't it be a great game? Even if you liked to raid, you would still enjoy a game that had amazing quests, tons of dailies, good rewards, etc.

[Thage]

Reading is very hard ;d With 10 skill per hit you should hit 37-8 times which could be done during trash clear, afking for 1-2 minutes hitting mob. And I will flail around as long as you "players" will be so blind and deaf. All you do is saying "no cause reasons". I thought LoL community is bad but after reading posts here LoL community is filled with kind people ;]

Ha. Ha.
Okay, yeah. Go ahead and tell your raid you're wasting their time to level up a weapon skill, or that you'll be late because you're respeccing to Enhancement as requested (and thus need to level up your weapon skills all over again). Or hey, let's say you're a warrior who hasn't had a 1H Sword drop since you got Dragon's Call in a moment of blind luck.

And if we go with the private server route of making it over and done so quickly as you'd suggest... what's the bloody point?! At that point there's no point behind having weapon skills except to arbitrarily make it a mild annoyance. That's not "No 'cause reasons," that's "No 'cause it's a pointless, arbitrary mechanic that is a waste of your raid's time at best or negligible to the point of meaninglessness at worst." And if you think this forum is anything like LoL's community, you obviously haven't played LoL in a team-versus-team match.

I posted a good balanced way to reintroduce this feature again so there will be more choices and there won't be this much grind. I hope some dev will dig through all this whining and find this post

It's intellectually-dishonest to call them choices. Any raid group worth its salt is going to force their raiders to do all of that, and as a result the community will adopt that as its cookie cutter, just like they did with dailies, reforging, and talents.

[Deleted]

Random thought though: not getting weapon skills back... how about weapon talent trees?

Have them function like the old talents (mostly passives, maybe the occasional ability) so those of us who really really like the new talents can keep those and those who liked the old ones can still toy around with different build options with different weapons. As for the issue of getting a new piece, respeccing could simply cost one tome.

BAM I dids a thing.

[IIamaKing]

Oh yeah absolutely loved leveling my weapon skill every time I switched from Resto to enhance. That right there is true RPG gameplay.

some of the chores of vanilla

10chairsss

[melodramocracy]

But why does WoW have to cater to Facebook gamers? There are PLENTY of other games doing that, and better than WoW can possibly do it.

Because those players are the ones who comprise most of this playerbase (and funnily enough, are the drivers behind most QoL nonsense that gets injected in this game). As far as other games doing things better, it's pretty obvious, but the developers seem to have not caught on to this yet.

[jackofwind]

Random thought though: not getting weapon skills back... how about weapon talent trees?

Have them function like the old talents (mostly passives, maybe the occasional ability) so those of us who really really like the new talents can keep those and those who liked the old ones can still toy around with different build options with different weapons. As for the issue of getting a new piece, respeccing could simply cost one tome.

BAM I dids a thing.

If it can provide meaningful choices when picking what weapons to go for I think it would be cool, especially to add some flavour.

Imagine critical hits with swords proccing bleeds or a mini haste buff, all built right into your weapon specialization. Meanwhile axes grant an increased chance to critically hit, while also providing minor cleave damage on crits.

Yes, it would be really hard to tune it to be balanced. But it would also be pretty cool, and it would also be interesting because characters might actually pick their weapons based on certain fights or for open-world playing. (And they might keep a bunch of weapons to pick from given the circumstances - think the weaponmaster archetype)

I think it would add some depth and bring back some of the feeling of collecting powerful items, rather than getting the highest-DPS weapon you can and using it for everything you do.

I remember doing Vanilla goblin reputation farming during BC and using my Thunderfury because the proc actually made AOEing things faster when I was ploughing through groups of mobs and didn't need more single-target damage but wanted more damage spread.

I think it could be a really cool thing, plus it brings back a bit of the flavour of old talent trees without overwriting the changes they've made to the traditional ones, and it does it in a way that could be largely ignored by people who don't care about fine-tuned min-maxing.