Simple Way to make WoW harder.

[Deleted]

The thing here is: For what kind of player do you want to make the game harder and do these kind of players see any problem with the current system?
For I always see people who do not play high-end and see their game focused on the leveling, low level dungeons, campaign questlines etc. complain about how easy the game is. But you could also just tell them the lack of game-insight.

Just as the pro-vanilla people are playing the game entirely different from the current top 1000 raid guild people. There is a huge gap in philosophies how to play the game also coming from how blizzard designs the game. When raid mechanics and tuning, pvp tuning and class tuning takes so much more "resources" as in "dev interest" (game support) than anything else, it suggests a certain group to be more on "bright side".

[Vash The Stampede]

There needs to more done to the game to make it harder. If PTR is really used as a beta test for the raid, and I hope that isn't true, then Blizzard has other problems they need to deal with. Pay people to find bugs, cause open beta testing has never worked. Almost everyone uses beta testing as a way to get early access to it.

The developers need to agree on a totally new approach on how difficult WoW should feel overall. Not just in raids, but the entire game as a whole. Cause right now difficulty is restricted to Mythic raids. Every other part of the game gives the illusion of difficulty by wasting the players time. This is why WoD failed horribly.

- - - Updated - - -

The thing here is: For what kind of player do you want to make the game harder and do these kind of players see any problem with the current system?

That is nearly an impossible question to answer. The devs don't know, the players don't know. There's obviously a problem with the current system, unless you think losing 7 million subscribers were people who are just bored of WoW?

For I always see people who do not play high-end and see their game focused on the leveling, low level dungeons, campaign questlines etc. complain about how easy the game is. But you could also just tell them the lack of game-insight.

Those are people who are bored of their main, and just level alts. Cause the most productive thing you can do in this game is level alts.

Just as the pro-vanilla people are playing the game entirely different from the current top 1000 raid guild people. There is a huge gap in philosophies how to play the game also coming from how blizzard designs the game. When raid mechanics and tuning, pvp tuning and class tuning takes so much more "resources" as in "dev interest" (game support) than anything else, it suggests a certain group to be more on "bright side".

It doesn't help that the game has like 4 raid difficulties. LFR, Normal, Heroic, and now Mythic. If raids had ONE difficulty, then dev resources are free to work on other areas. And I doubt many people like this system as well.

[Deleted]

...

See but you want a different game-design. What they are currently developing focuses on a competitive multiplayer experience which has its pinnacle in mythic raiding. The current game design defines the entire game around the challenge to organize 20 people, master the class and boss mechanics as tight as possible and compete with different groups. This game-design was explored and expanded when in vanilla the first kills on every server were in any (unofficial) realm forums the thing people talked most about, people got most out from. Hell I have seen huge flame-wars by guilds "who posts the first kill news first". It was a certain playerbase that created this current game design by making all other things vanilla had to offer look trivial, uninteresting and not challenging. The prestige came originally from raids.

Blizzard hence focused on that by focusing on making this field better. They removed most RPG stuff to tune classes and gear as tight as possible to "bring the player not the class". They used prunes and homogenization to tune raid-bosses even harder, even tighter, requiring even more personal skill by adding more and more complex mechanics - trivializing even the "master your class" thing.

And the first time they lost with this path was cataclysm t11 (again with entry boss in MoP, 2nd boss in ToT...). When tier-attunements for EASY raids were lost and mechanics became even more in the focus than just regular class-mechanic (min/max dps enrage timer etc). That's when they lost the "middle class" of players. And they tried to get them back with LFR and easier raid difficulties, including them into the current design philosophies. Hell I remember Ghostcrawler even saying that players desire to get better - that was a huge miss assumption.

So I feel the entire game design is currently under heavy critique by people who were left behind by the ever harder getting game. The message of those people "to make the game harder" caused this by the way with the end of WotLK. It was this misunderstanding that made cata to what it became. And the thing here is: The people who were left behind do not understand the current game design nor the motivation and exceptions of the high-end players hence they completely blank them out and continue to tell blizzard to make the game harder...

It's a tragedy that goes on and on... Makes me so sad.

[Vash The Stampede]

So I feel the entire game design is currently under heavy critique by people who were left behind by the ever harder getting game. The message of those people "to make the game harder" caused this by the way with the end of WotLK. It was this misunderstanding that made cata to what it became. And the thing here is: The people who were left behind do not understand the current game design nor the motivation and exceptions of the high-end players hence they completely blank them out and continue to tell blizzard to make the game harder...

It's a tragedy that goes on and on... Makes me so sad.

I really don't understand your entire post. I quote this section cause I think I understand some of it.

From Vanilla to TBC, the game design was pretty much unchanged. The game was hard, and was doing well, as sub numbers went up. WOTLK started the whole "bring the player not the class" which is totally fine and should have been done since Vanilla. But Naxxramas was a disappointment, as people cleared the raid with little effort. Ulduar fixed this by introducing hard modes that you triggered during the encounter. A very well thought out, and well done process. But after that raid, everything had a Heroic mode which you just switched on before you began the encounter. From there we got LFR in Cata, and Flex during MoP.

A lot of the problems with modern WoD WoW is there's too many raids. LFR counts as a raid, a very boring raid. This is how I think the WoW community sees the raids.

LFR - Where players Rage quit after a pull, and 70% of the players don't know how to play their class.
Normal - Where wearing PvP gear is a sin.
Heroic - You need AOTC, and the ring. Don't have these things then nobody wants to look at you.
Mythic - Nobody does Mythic. It's pointless. Ok some do, but whatever.

Just go back to a single raid system. Where people have a legitimate challenge. The incentive besides epics, was also seeing the crazy stuff. Players do need to be properly rewarded for their efforts. Unlike today where you get gold, resources, or stupid apexis crystals. Blizzard developers can learn a lot from Dark Souls design and balance system. Which is odd because the Dark Souls developers have taken notice to Vanilla WoW and probably incorporated some of that into their game. There is a Leeroy Paladin in Dark Souls.

[Echocho]

When SSC/TK were first able to be done, they have massive bugs that really gunked up progression and though that can still happen here and there, the chances are greatly reduced with a PTR for people to test as much has possible.

Final Fantasy XIV seems to be doing fine. I can't imagine Blizzard doing worse than them.

[AeneasBK]

See but you want a different game design...<snip>

Good post.

[Deleted]

Noone forces anyone to play PTR or read forums. Or spoilers.

[Azerox]

It doesn't need to be harder.

I only need some quests that take immensive time to complete with cool rewards.

[Deleted]

I really don't understand your entire post. I quote this section cause I think I understand some of it.

From Vanilla to TBC, the game design was pretty much unchanged. The game was hard

You see this is where it goes wrong.
The game was easy back then.

The high-end players we're talking about are top raiders. The game design we're talking about is only top raid-centric (in current terms, this applies only to about top 100 Mythic guilds. That's the only group Blizzard listens to).
The game has, in this context, been getting harder and harder.

But of course for everyone else, the game has been getting incredibly easy.

Because not everyone is a top 100 Mythic raider. But this is what Blizzard believes - they live in the echo chamber of top-end raiders giving them feedback, so they believe everyone in their forums is at the same level.

So when a Joe Casual writes about "bohoo the game is such faceroll" - Blizzard devs interpret this as "oh, ok, they want harder Mythic mechanics - let's tighten it a bit and add another riverdance-mechanic - there we go, good job, we're listening to the players"

At the same time Joe Casual is still wondering where the elite mobs from Redridge went..

[Tart]

Ive been barking up this tree for years now regarding in-depth guides, youtube and addons that may as well be able to play your char. Its easy to say dont use them, but getting everyone else to follow suit just leaves you out in the cold.

[Deleted]

Without PTR you get unkillable bosses like C'thun used to be :P They'll just overtune the shit out of everything to be sure it doesn't get killed too soon.

[tankbug]

Remove LFR and LFD to bring back hard-working and community in the realms. It makes game harder too.

Just throwing in my two cents.

The community is gone forever.

[AeneasBK]

Without PTR you get unkillable bosses like C'thun used to be :P They'll just overtune the shit out of everything to be sure it doesn't get killed too soon.

Out of curiosity, what do you think would be longer term implications for this change? Would pinnacle raiding lose all prestige as the race is muddied? I remember bosses at the start of Cata being unkillable (iirc Atramedes 10Hc, possibly others) but were overcome by thinking outside of the box, this would for some people cheapen the achievement, but others would credit the creative thinking...

People say "Ah you'll end up with unkillable bosses like C'thun" - were any other guilds actually progressing on him after the hotfix (genuinely asking from ignorance) I was under the impression Nihilum were head and shoulders ahead of other competition in that era. Either ways, I'm personally (I've never been part of a hardcore progression guild) not sure what all the negatives are for having overtuned bosses that are potentially "unkillable" on release; I trust Blizzard not to go fully overboard in that regard.

[Tyze]

Would you like a prestige realm?

[Deleted]

Out of curiosity, what do you think would be longer term implications for this change? Would pinnacle raiding lose all prestige as the race is muddied? I remember bosses at the start of Cata being unkillable (iirc Atramedes 10Hc, possibly others) but were overcome by thinking outside of the box, this would for some people cheapen the achievement, but others would credit the creative thinking...

People say "Ah you'll end up with unkillable bosses like C'thun" - were any other guilds actually progressing on him after the hotfix (genuinely asking from ignorance) I was under the impression Nihilum were head and shoulders ahead of other competition in that era. Either ways, I'm personally (I've never been part of a hardcore progression guild) not sure what all the negatives are for having overtuned bosses that are potentially "unkillable" on release; I trust Blizzard not to go fully overboard in that regard.

Maybe c'thun was a bad example, Mu'ru maybe? Bosses that are literally unkillable because the enrage timer or stats required to survive the damage aren't in game at that point.

[AeneasBK]

Maybe c'thun was a bad example, Mu'ru maybe? Bosses that are literally unkillable because the enrage timer or stats required to survive the damage aren't in game at that point.

Mu'ru wasn't literally unkillable, right?

AS far as I'm away C'thun is the only boss that Blizzard have conceded might have been unkillable; every other one was killed by a tiny proportion of guilds using shonky tactics like stacking classes. Personally I'd see that as a fault in class balance rather than encounter design.

[Deleted]

Mu'ru wasn't literally unkillable, right?

AS far as I'm away C'thun is the only boss that Blizzard have conceded might have been unkillable; every other one was killed by a tiny proportion of guilds using shonky tactics like stacking classes. Personally I'd see that as a fault in class balance rather than encounter design.

That same out of the box thinking caused the saronite incident at LK :P Smart use of game mechanics or exploit? Like some vicious cycle about who can exploit the hardest. It might also lead to more class stacking. Bosses forcing certain niche setups to be even remotely killable early progression.

[AeneasBK]

That same out of the box thinking caused the saronite incident at LK :P Smart use of game mechanics or exploit? Like some vicious cycle about who can exploit the hardest. It might also lead to more class stacking. Bosses forcing certain niche setups to be even remotely killable early progression.

Fair cop, the Saronite grenades incident is a legitimate case where PTR testing could have avoided a shit storm

[cFortyfive]

As the title states, easiest way to make the game "harder" is to remove PTR. While it is nice to see what's coming up in the next year or so, PTR also kill a lot of the excitement and surprise factor when it comes to World of Warcraft. For example:

Dumb bs ptr testing doesn't do anything for 95% of the population.

(in current terms, this applies only to about top 100 Mythic guilds. That's the only group Blizzard listens to).

Had a mild chuckle.

[Alydael]

1) You don't have to read any of the spoiler "guides." You don't have to remove them (hence removing it for people that actually want those guides), you can just decide not to read them.

2) You can make the game instantly harder by just equiping old gear. (How far can you get in those lvl 15 greens, hmmh?) It is really super simple to do so.