So, yes, it makes it harder for melee and tanks. I've raided and did PvP with every class available since Wrath. I won't sit here and say it's not harder for melee and tanks, because it is and ranged have it much easier. But it doesn't stray from the fact that having double the view distance from what's currently in-game makes it much easier for all parties.
There is a difference between not enjoying something and being unable to play it...
If you played with a setting for 10+ years and it's taken away from you doesn't mean you can't play but sure as hell will reduce your enjoyment. Perhaps we should just remove mouse look so everyone has to keyboard turn...in the name of fairness and what not. Would you still enjoy the game as much if that happened?
Only this is not DOTA. It's WoW and we have been doing this for years. Even with Blizzard's assistance at the forums guiding players to use the console command. Who am i being unfair to in PvE? Archimonde? "Hey, you use cvar console command? Finger of Death!". Don't compare apples to oranges.
I'll tell you what I think it is. Ion Hazzikostas, like him or not, is a pretty thoughtful guy about the game. Again, like him or not, he has opinions--and has always had them going all the way back to his days at EJ--about game design and everything associated with it. I'm reasonably certain that over the years he's generated a long list of things he deems to be less than good design and things that are problematical with the game. He's now an assistant game director and for the third time, like him or not, there is someone in that group pushing system changes for stuff that's been in the game for years and it would make sense that it's him (assistant game director and all).
And so here we are. Whether or not anyone accepts his explanation, the explanation itself is pretty much pure, undistilled Watcher if you've been paying attention to anything he's said over the years. So whatever you or really, anyone else thinks that's probably how they see it.
Take that or leave it. As to your theory: I'm fairly certain that their long, incoherent process over flying didn't really make them any money. I'm fairly certain that implementing CRZ and cross-realm stuff reduced their income from realm transfers. Not eliminated it certainly but reduced it for a certainty. There are other things that fly in the face of your supposition that everything in the game is done to increase profit; things you routinely ignore as they don't fit into your specific framework. And that's OK. If the site enforced everyone making sense all the time, a great many people would never be able to post.
Commenting out a few dozen lines of code isn't going to save them anything and the certain knowledge that it would upset people isn't going to increase revenues or profits either.
So, you know, stick to your theories. They don't make any sense but you're in excellent company here.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2016-06-26 at 10:44 PM.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
Wrong analogy. In DOTA you're not allowed to do this. In WoW you are still allowed to do this with a simple command easily found in a google search. In WoW, if you want to see more playing field NOONE stops you from getting it on your screen. if you need it, you can get it. Nothing unfair.
Personally I wont be affected by this, but I still don't think this was a great move :/
Lots of salt over this.
Personally having a secret advantage that detracts from immersion isnt good design in the slightest, and making it so that the optimal way to play the game is practically as a moba while being zoomed out that far isnt a great decision.
I use it, dont get me wrong, but its a bandaid for the shitty camera that we have in game that makes it impossible to see anything above head height.
Besides, they have added in a ton of extra camera options in legion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC2nzmN1M-4
that fix a number of options in the game, which i consider a great tradeoff. This game should be supported as an RPG not an RTS game with the character as a dot on the screen. This might not be enough to get there, but its a good start imo.
Other improvements i would like to see would be ways to stop mobs from stacking and general screen clutter
As i said in a previous post about the matter the console theory starts to seem plausible in my mind, given all those recent design choices. Saying this is pure undistilled Watcher doesn't actually prove anything except that he has lost the touch with his playerbase. If he actually thinks maxcamera distance IS an unfair advantage, despite his mythic experience in EJ and being a dev in WoW for years... then my opinion is there's something wrong with him on an intellectual level.
Pretty much this, its not supported in game with the base slider, you have to do workarounds to use this, that means that there is hidden power only accessible through google, which is just shitty design, blizz had the choice of either removing this, or supporting it and making the best way to play this game with the camera distance of an RTS, which isnt something they want to support.
I really don't get the issue at hand. I play with a steering wheel and dance dance revolution matte, so naturally I use first person.
The salt argument. Gratz for being a sheep in the herd. Care to express yourself in your own way please? The "advantage" is not secret. it's a legitimate game option of the game residing in a console command. And it's readily available with the use of any search engine.
Funnily, after messing with the wardrobe in Beta and started actually playing the toon, the first thing i tried to do was to distance my camera far more than the game allowed. Not to the max, but much further. Despite my search and enquiries this was not possible. I haven't logged since. THAT's the level of annoyance this cahnge gave me.
- - - Updated - - -
You're calling an in-game console command a "workaround"? Then what are macros and Lua scripts (the latter also known as addons)? This exists in game for years and years. Please stop the bullshit about "hidden power" accessible to google only and that wasn't supported by Blizzard when it's was their OWN design.
What are you even talking about "hidden power only accessible through google"? This "hidden power" was hidden to only you it sounds like while the majority of the community wants it in the game because its used and loved not to mention its been in the game forever... probably longer than you have been playing it sounds like.
This might be the 2nd place winner for silly comments in this thread.
But don't worry guys, to compensate, Ragnaros will now be double his height so you can clearly see that kneecap..
Gotta agree with this. Ion is passionate about the game - and his history with EJ is he's also very passionate how everyone should play the game - according to him. Chilton has never been over crictical of how people actually play, in my memory, in fact he's rather wishy washy overall, which is something I dislike about him.
I have no problem imagining Ion, with his lawyerly background, is very concerned about players being in the box/lane/rail they belong in or on, with no way to see beyond, seeing the game in the viewbox he deems appropriate. Lawyers can be awfully stuffy like that. They could also be battling bots with this change. Who knows? But it fits with someone or someone's on the current team being very adamant that as little exploration outside of the Blizzard™ approved paths be allowed. Is it just Ion? Don't know - but it would fit his personality, past professional and academic training.
If this change was a "Duh, that's an obvious fix" - just do it. By releasing a statement like this beforehand, he KNOWS it's going to be unpopular, he KNOWS it's going to drive drama, and he KNOWS he's on shaky ground with his rationalizations - he's declaring the battle line, before there's a battle. The guy has learned nothing - he creates more drama than if he'd just ordered the change in the game, thrown up a quick reference in the patch notes, and moved on, ignoring the complaints. I give Ion credit for making comments about things, as something is better than nothing, but he's tonedeaf to what's appropriate and what's not. Ghostcrawler would have handled this much differently, and with a metric tonless drama. This is a change that should have just been made, with no comment - but now here we are, we have a 500 page thread on it, and I'm sure Twitter and their forums are blowing up over it. Ion must like the taste of his foot, for the amount of time it spends in his mouth.
I don't have a horse in this race, as I'm not buying Legion, and I'm pretty sure I'm done with WoW unless some substantial changes happen - and this small change is indicative overall of the shift away from a game I enjoy, and into one I don't. This is just another small change, sure, that on the surface isn't game breaking, but it's one more way to forbid exploration and playing the game differently than how the devs think you should, and that's antethesis to an MMO that's supposed to be about exploration, in part. It's a dangerous mindset for this kind of game - and it fits a lot of the changes that have been coming since Cata, especially the questing on rails aspect that I really loathe, that have made me move on from this product.
Like it or not, this is the game Ion and the others think you should play, and how they think you should play it. You have two options: work within that vision - or don't. But I know there will be another episode like flying, or legacy realms, and complaining and temper tantrums will be held to force them to change it. The relationship between the devs and the players breaks down a little more. Rinse and repeat. If this change makes you so unhappy - go find a game that doesn't make you so unhappy! Life's too short. If Ion is boxing players in like a tyrant - go play someone else's game. YOLO, and all that.
You know what? Fuck this nonsense.
Blizzard seriously, why do this? You are fucking with people now.
Get your head out of your asses for once.
It's a pretty old-school form of game design but it's also a fairly old-school game. This isn't my favorite thing they've done by any means but I don't think it rises to the level of some of the hyperbole I've seen. At the end of the day WoW's customers have been invited to express their opinions but the game design belongs to Blizzard. It always has. It always will. Very few things are up for a vote. One either accepts that or not. Blizzard has always set the boundaries under which the game is played and that's not going to change. No one should be pretending otherwise.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."