You can only do that so far until it starts to remove the concept of solo survivability. Should tank specs be unable to survive solo content without a healer now? What about older content. Should we have to rely on other people to do old raids for transmog and mount runs, thus increasing competition for rewards from outdated content?
That's a non-sequitur.
A strict definition of the term "MMO" contains nothing at all in it that mandates that players must be grouped up together. It's simply a massive (however that is defined but WoW has always met that test) multi-player online game, i.e. multiple people can inhabit the game space and that game space is an online entity. MMO's, every one of them, have always included a great deal of solo content as well as content that requires players to work together to accomplish something. But it's no mandate and most attempts to force this sort of thing end up pushing that piece of the game into a place where most players tend to ignore it. Especially with a player audience that is often Darwinian in nature and then abusive on top of that.
Players like choice--they can and should demand choice about who they socialize with or whether they choose to socialize at all--and so should developers. If an MMO could become 15% larger by going over-the-top with solo content it certainly would in a heartbeat.
The issue of self-healing is a risk for Blizzard. I agree with you that the incentive is to make friends with a healer to do things. But it's up to the individual player as to whether or not they do so. Guaranteed failure for the solo player only loses a customer.
There are no rules to this. One shouldn't pretend that a personal ideology about how a social game should behave is the same as a mandate that it must function in that way.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2016-07-22 at 10:24 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."
One advise, make sure to get Trinket from Kazaak.
It really help while soloing old raids
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Soloing current content at level 110 will not be an issue, trust me. The class hall set 2 piece gives you rather rapid recovery out of combat. But it only works in Broken Isles outdoor zones.
There's no mandates, certainly. But the entire premise of the genre has always been cooperative gameplay, at least in every MMO I've ever played, including WoW. I'd say that solo play in MMO's most typically shows up in the form of unintended results... in WoW's case, being able to solo old raids is a great example. That was by no means an intended 'feature' when this game was created, but instead a side effect of power scaling over time.
MMO's having an emphasis on grouping plays to the the strength of the game.. it's what these games do best. Show me an MMO that provides a ton of single player content, and I'll show you an actual single player title that probably delivers it in a better fashion, for a whole variety of reasons. But I digress.
Self healing seems to be a bit of a rewind for Blizzard, at least as it plays on live right now. I guess we'll see.
By Heal i meant spell hence the word heal and not mentioning a way to regen health Yes there is food but that takes time, gold, bag space etc. The point i was trying to get across was that they gutted every ones in combat healing but did nothing to shift what they took away and put it into OOC.
I like it. Went in to the Legion zones with my ±710 ilvl fury warrior and after the initial quests the mobs did quite a bit more damage. Taking on 2-3 mobs resulted in me sitting at 50-70% health. I mean it is still largely faceroll, but I did die 2 times when taking on a rare + a bunch of nearby mobs that got aggro-ed.
I'm curious as of what Indalamar has to say
I switched over from shadow to disc. I can even solo stuff I couldn't solo before the patch.
The only non healers who should have any self healing, are specs that are built around it, ie: Blood DKs, Affliction Locks and that is about it.
If you want to regain health, sit your ass down and eat. Remember food in WoW? Do you? Remember that mechanic? Remember leaving a city or hub in WoW classic and forgetting food and having to run back? Yeah. It forced players to think and plan ahead, as well maximize their gameplay instead of this silly God of War aoe spam fest.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
Here we see rose tinted goggles for vanilla in action. Vanilla is dead, get over it. Going back to it wont be fun nor work. And you might want to tell that boss in old content you're soloing that you need a break to eat and see how he reacts.
There is a place for both solo and group play. Basic leveling isn't usually the place for group play. There's a reason they even removed most of the old group quests or turned them into single player ones. Most of the end content i.e raids, dungeons, pvp require a group in one form or another already. So the MMO component they want to see does exist.