Some warning signs about the expansion and possible solutions

[Mrkew]

Don't view any of these things as a problem as someone that actually has played the beta.

Then you don't play a pure dps. Try having to pick between maxing AP on single target spec or aoe spec, or crippling them both. Hybrids just change a talent or two. Hybrid tax is in the past, pure tax is a thing now.

[Deleted]

It's okay for artifact power to not be shared across all 3 artifacts. That way dickheads won't ask me to stop playing destro (my favourite specc) just because Affliction or Demonology do more dps on a specific fight

That might be part of the problem.

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It is nearly impossible to run out of Class Order Hall resources

Huh? It's extremely easy if you don't play for more than a couple of hours daily. The artifact research for example takes thousands and you don''t get thousands by a single activity.

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3. Not at all, I dont know where youve gotten that impression from.

I suspect you haven't explored all the options of resources drain. e.g. Are you doing artifact research?

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The only thing that's bugged me with missions so far is that the mage line has a spot where you have to do five eight hour missions back to back as part of ONE quest. XD That's kind of excessive, that's 40 hours assuming you start one just as soon as the previous one ends. I wish they'd shorten those in particular or allow you to do two or three at a time. But in general they haven't been a problem.

A better question is, what is the point? It has 0 gameplay. It has almost 0 skill needed.

[8bithamster]

1. I get a sense that respeccing might become obnoxious in general. The catch-up systems try to prevent that but they might only remedy a problem that might not have to exist to begin with. Progiressing a character in an MMORPG is perfectly fine, but progressing different specs might become too clunky and unnecessary because respeccing is a core part of the gameplay for many years.

Solution: Have artifact progression become class-wide in a much stronger fashion. e.g. Give all specs a relic that drops (for instance by having 2 to 4 charges) or give the artifact power to all specs simultaneously.

2. The missions table is back and it's back in the shipyard sense. It starts from very early on with day or week-long missions that must be done, similarly to the legendary ring shipyard missions.

Solution: Make the mission tables more like optional farming stations that aren't required to complete the main storyline. For instance, just as you treat dealing with a world quest, the alternative would be doing the same with missions in a slower fashion, but not a requirement.

3. There appears to be hall resources starvation if you don't play for at least 2-3 hours a day, if you want to queue the main work orders that give core character benefits.

Solution: Some better tuning appears to be needed there. The devs appear inclined to not require players to play for more than a few hours every 2-3 days.

1.) Respeccing becomes obnoxious.. yea, because not having to go to the trainer for it anymore is soooo damn obnoxious /headdesk

2.) No.. have you even played beta? I assume not.

3.) Resource starvation? Wtf.. I was at 6k at 110, spent 4k, and now back at 5k after 3 days. Again, did you even play beta?

[Deleted]

So does DH with '' work with the wardens '' missions, there are like 5 of them, seeing as mage has them as well it wouldn't surprise me if every class has it at one point.

Yep, this thing is pretty much game-wide. Almost everything in the game is mirrored. Even the training zones have almost the same dialogue.

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So, hypothetically speaking, if three months from now Destro is near the bottom of the charts and your guild tell you they're benching you for progression content you would be okay with that?

Blizzard cannot balance the specs, never have been able to, never will be. A raid or two down the line we will see situations where McIcemaster is doing subpar DPS because he picked the wrong artifact several months ago, and he will be told he's getting replaced by Legolaaas, that's the big issue with AP not being shared.

I'm seeing a lot of people getting reactionary here which is to be expected on a forum, but I'm pretty certain this system will fail and it has approximately 0% chance going to the expansion after Legion. Blizzard will be forced to nerf the secondary specs progression extremely (perhaps much further than they already plan to do) because people want to play secondary specs and some of the best players are used to be playing 3 specs. The dev team appears to know this now because in the latest interviews they stress how important they know it is to have spec balance.

[Deleted]

Well, then there is indeed no excuse.

They cornered themselves because on one hand they usually fail to balance them, which will be a problem, or on the other hand it has a good chance to make specs very similar to each other, which is another problem. The result will be somewhere in the middle of all three, balance not being perfect, some specs becoming more flat and most importantly we didn't need spec progression really. The main problem with the entire system is that MMORPGs can take class progression, that's fine, but at some point it has to end and the real skill and dedication has to shine and it's obvious at this point that the progression is crossing the line of excessive here because skill and dedication are synonymous with respeccing easily and showing your skill on another spec without artificial boundaries that have little to do with skill and dedication.

[Deleted]

That Blizzard can balance games was obvious with Starcraft. Or at least it was lauded for 3 different ways the factions play, yet noone was clearly over- or underpowered. And they continue to make games where balance is at the core, being it balancing cards / decks in HS or Heroes in HotS and Overwatch.

Could ofc be that balancing 40 (soon 42) speccs to the point where they are all the same down to 1% of dps or hps or whatnot is just plainly impossible. But if it IS possible, somebody should please link me an MMO that has achieved it.

I hear in this thread "Blizzard cannot balance classes". So who can? Maybe the proper line should be "Nobody can balance classes after a certain amount of speccs and classes)

I don't claim they should have perfect balance but that the system makes the reality that it's hard to have perfect balance problematic. It makes them inclined to make some more niche specs more like other specs in utility in order to not create imbalances and it makes them spend more development time on balance. I believe the greatest benefit of this system is having spec-Lore, and having class hall progression, hence I don't think it would hurt the game if the technical progression was class wide (e.g. artifact power given to all specs simultaneously and having relics with charges) because you would both keep the Lore interesting and have flawless respeccing and the disadvantage of not having restricted spec progression would be not a big deal (if at all).

[Phunkle]

That Blizzard can balance games was obvious with Starcraft. Or at least it was lauded for 3 different ways the factions play, yet noone was clearly over- or underpowered. And they continue to make games where balance is at the core, being it balancing cards / decks in HS or Heroes in HotS and Overwatch.

Could ofc be that balancing 40 (soon 42) speccs to the point where they are all the same down to 1% of dps or hps or whatnot is just plainly impossible. But if it IS possible, somebody should please link me an MMO that has achieved it.

I hear in this thread "Blizzard cannot balance classes". So who can? Maybe the proper line should be "Nobody can balance classes after a certain amount of speccs and classes)

I'm fairly certain that balancing games like Starcraft, Hearthstone and HotS are easier to balance than WoW. In all these games you balance the game around one single purpose which is PvP.

In WoW they have two major aspects to focus on, PvE and PvP. They might be able to pull the perfect PvE balance while PvP goes downhill.
I agree with your general point, but I think that the other games aren't as good as an example for a balancing comparison.

[Florena]

That might be part of the problem.

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Huh? It's extremely easy if you don't play for more than a couple of hours daily. The artifact research for example takes thousands and you don''t get thousands by a single activity.

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I suspect you haven't explored all the options of resources drain. e.g. Are you doing artifact research?

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A better question is, what is the point? It has 0 gameplay. It has almost 0 skill needed.

The idea is forced gating so you can't blow through the order hall quest line in one sitting. Which I don't mind in and of itself but 40 hours of it back to back is a bit much.

[GrinnersGrin]

I haven't played the beta but the game is ruined.

kek pal /10shitopinions

[Deleted]

1. While in my own opinion making changing specs harder is a welcome change because it rewards the effort that's put in one spec you are way off the mark here. If you take a look at the latest changes then it's easy to see that to get last 3 nodes on the artifact weapon (not counting the bonus increase) you need more than the amount to level another weapon to same position. What this means is that if one spec is so broken to justify leveling a different weapon then it will be easily achievable. And if those 3 nodes carry enough weight resource wise then it just means the balance is good enough to not justify a respec.

2. Some people liked mission table, some did not. We are talking about expansion that is going to last for a year at least. A mission that isn't too taxing on player time will be welcome change for a lot of people. I saw some people complaining about 40 hours back to back. In a sense of expansion length this time is simply ridiculously small.

3. I can't comment on this because I have not played the beta but I do not believe this unless someone is willing to give some evidence. Look at how WoD went with resources. Once you cleared out the first requirements you had almost nothing to do with the rest.

[nazrakin]

I suspect you haven't explored all the options of resources drain. e.g. Are you doing artifact research?

Im lvl4 with 5 and 6 being researched right now. Although thinking about I have done wquests that reward resources to complete emissary or pvp objectives. I have not gone out of my way to collect them.

[Deleted]

to get last 3 nodes on the artifact weapon (not counting the bonus increase) you need more than the amount to level another weapon to same position.

That factor might be another problem. To get to the 14th trait for example you need more points than to get to all the previous 13. I do not see anything fun, constructive or skill based on that.

This time around it's not just class gating. That would be fine because it's an MMORPG and class progression is normal. This is spec gating, and I've no idea how it's supposed to be a net benefit.

People have fun with switching specs and class progression is a regular thing, but restricting specs like it's class progression.. that's an overdose of class progression with little benefit.

[Queen of Hamsters]

...Nope, can't agree that those are warning signs, nor that your "solutions" are in any shape or form needed.

[Soluna]

So, hypothetically speaking, if three months from now Destro is near the bottom of the charts and your guild tell you they're benching you for progression content you would be okay with that?

Blizzard cannot balance the specs, never have been able to, never will be. A raid or two down the line we will see situations where McIcemaster is doing subpar DPS because he picked the wrong artifact several months ago, and he will be told he's getting replaced by Legolaaas, that's the big issue with AP not being shared.

If it is completely broken I will indeed change my specc to something else, providing I can do much better dps given the specc's power since I know how to play Demo and Affli just as well, I just prefer how straightforward destruction is and it generally feels more powerful and fun with Shadowburns and Chaos Bolts, plus green fire. I got the green fire back when it was first available in ToT with my warlock still being an alt, 470 ilvl gear and no enchants/gems, it was one of the most difficult shit to do back then without gear, so if I play my warlock, who has earned it, but can't see much of it then I think it is a bit pointless (Although I've got to admit that Demo form and soulfire/hellfire look quite neat, but demo form is being taken away anyway).

But in recent expansions, all the way from the start of pandaria up until now, warlocks (even destruction) have never been bottom of the charts, and I play destro so good that I was nearly always first on dps meters, with only a Demo with Lei shen trinket being a tough competitor for the spot. I've raided in a lot of good guilds but I've always been in the top, and now that I am not raiding much in WoD, every time I play various slightly hard content (like Mythic dungeons or Normal / Heroic HFC) I can beat almost everyone on dps that are 715 or less in ilvl with my 692 ilvl lock. I don't say destro is the most OP specc ever, or that I am unbeatable, but I am pretty sure that NO MATTER the fight, I will always be competitive at dps with other dpsers, even if they are members of a top 100 guild, unless blizz nerfs Destro to the ground.

And what is the 'motto' blizz likes to say? Bring the player, not the class, or something like that, no? I will never change what I want to play just because someone wants to get World 50, 100, or 20. Why? Because I don't give a fuck if I am world 20th, or world 2000th, as long as I get the final Mythic boss down provided I will do Mythic again. Want a realm first? Well I will help you get that, but as destro, and by playing to the best of my ability.

I will never again be forced to play Demo or whatever is the 'FotM ala PvE' just because some prick asks me to. Do you know how shitty it is to raid Throne of Thunder Lei Shen 25 HC, do 240k dps, with the second best being at 170k dps or so, and your guild asking you to change to Demo because you would do even more dps? And getting blamed that you are partly the reason you didn't get that 1.2% left Lei Shen kill? When all others could just bump their freaking dps by 10k or so and it would more than make up for double the dps gain I would get from respeccing Demo. After I got Lei Shen HC down I left them, along with a few other members, and broke the guild down, just as these prick GM/officers deserved for all these complaints they made to me. Shortly after I found a nice 10m HC guild and helped them kill Lei Shen HC, and we even killed Ra-den without ANY of them telling me 'Go demo'. After a short break and then returned back in SoO they stopped raiding, I tried to join a Mythic SoO group but as soon as we started meeting the first dps blocks they started complaining to me too. Even though I was top, by more than 30k dps, again. This is partly the reason I haven't done Mythic in WoD. Now tell me friend, how can I not be HAPPY AS FK that no one will expect me to respecc to affli or demo due to being heavily invested into the destro artifact? Yes, it will be tougher to find a guild since many might ask for the other speccs, but if I find a guild and get accepted as destro, I know that they will at least not complain to me and have accepted a destro in their guild.

[nazrakin]

That factor might be another problem. To get to the 14th trait for example you need more points than to get to all the previous 13. I do not see anything fun, constructive or skill based on that.

This time around it's not just class gating. That would be fine because it's an MMORPG and class progression is normal. This is spec gating, and I've no idea how it's supposed to be a net benefit.

People have fun with switching specs and class progression is a regular thing, but restricting specs like it's class progression.. that's an overdose of class progression with little benefit.

Wait..i didnt say whats in that quote lol

[Deleted]

That factor might be another problem. To get to the 14th trait for example you need more points than to get to all the previous 13. I do not see anything fun, constructive or skill based on that.

This time around it's not just class gating. That would be fine because it's an MMORPG and class progression is normal. This is spec gating, and I've no idea how it's supposed to be a net benefit.

People have fun with switching specs and class progression is a regular thing, but restricting specs like it's class progression.. that's an overdose of class progression with little benefit.

I think a lot of people are missing out the time investment. While you have to use more points, you don't really have to put more time to obtain them due to artifact knowledge. Now what you will have to do is to be active for a period of time. And I think that's generally Blizzards goal this time. To make people feel invested in their class and keep playing.

[RedGamer030]

Huh? It's extremely easy if you don't play for more than a couple of hours daily.

No, about one hour a day, and even then it is more than enough. Still have not played the Beta I see...