Is WoW not becoming too complex, especially for new players?

[ls-]

If there is one thing that is overly complex in my opinion it's gear. The whole secondary stats nonsense is such an outdated and unnecessary thing. Why does it matter if i got 36% crit or 40%, why is there something like haste? All of this just brought us into the idiotic situation that way higher ilvl gear is worse than lower one depending on those stats. That's more than confusing for new players and the logic decision to equip a higher level item makes them worse and they no not even notice.

Even i as an experience player often have no clue if an item is better than the one i already have. literally i often simply don't know if i should roll on it, eventually win it and "stole" it from another player who has way for need for it than me.

Crit, Haste, Versatility should be gone. Its only STR/INT/AGI + Stamina. Gear should additionally have some minor traits like "Reduces cooldown of X by Y" or "Movement speed increased by X", something that gives you some choices to pick one piece of gear over another, but still its something minor that should not affect sheer DPS i.e., only giving some kind of utility or convenience.

They could keep mastery as a flat portion of main stat, although i had to problem with giving up the whole mastery thing. it's simply irrelevant.

Higher ilvl = Upgrade. End of story.

Lol, it'll be the same shit again then... It'll be calculated that stacking CD reduction, or movement speed, or whatever is the way to go, and yet again people will start stacking minor traits instead of secondary stats.

The only way to avoid and end this "issue" is to either get rid of all secondary stats, or replace them w/ one spec specific thingy, e.g. +% DPS for DD specs, + n% HPS for healers, etc, but it can be done via main stat anyway...

And I fear that eventually it may be the case, cuz Blizz WANT to make all secondary stats more or less equal, and ilvl to be the one and only indication of an upgrade. If all stats are equal, they're the same, and what's the point in having them?

The game will lose yet another bit of depth

[Deleted]

NO. the game is dumbed down to a point that is terrible for older players to see. your list had like 6 things on it, but 4 of them were just learning how artifact weapons work which should take anyone with a brain maybe 15 minutes to work out, and the other 2 were crafting items.

questions like this are cancer, because some people are just really dumb or lazy and they'll agree with it, and then slowly the game becomes what it is today. and now, amidst the most dumbed-down and lazy version of the game to ever exist, it's still being asked. please stop. go play hearthstone if you need your game to be that simple.

they should make it more complex with rotations, let people have multiple spell schools again, stop putting restrictions on things like gliders in dungeons... let us have fun with a complex game. maybe im just the minority these days, i enjoyed my time on nostalrius and i'll be doing that again and also playing legion at the same time, but the complexities of the old game is what draws me in, even with all the bugs and shitty graphics.

What made vanilla complex? Just the rotation and spell levels? I don't recall having these currencies, etc. that we have now?

[Cracked]

You'll be surprised to know that there was a reddit post the other day from someone that went to lvl 16 weapon with no AK because he didn't know it existed. And there were quite a few people commenting on it that they didn't also know that it existed.

Then they are kinda .. what's the non offensive word for retarded? There is a tutorial quest that forces you to queue AK research to progress your class hall mission for christs sake!

[Deleted]

A lot of stuff has been simplified. When I was new to the game, I had no idea how certain things work, e.g. armor types and which items I should equip. Nowadays, you cannot even get the wrong armor type unless you explicitly buy it from a vendor or other player.

[Vaelorian]

The new player is a myth. There are NO new players.

[Halyon]

No, not really, just more abusive with farming X and Y.

[Deleted]

yes too complex. pls more ability pruning.

[rowaasr13]

Not everyone does every quest out there, I think you are just ignoring that fact.

Also you are ignoring the fact that a new player won't know what anything is and until you look on the web there is no way for you to figure out artifacts or anything rly. You just have to go and read guides for it.

WTF are you smoking? I'm pretty sure vast majority of players don't give a flying fuck about "web" and I've yet to see player without artifact. They remind you about them on every step. They give you upgrades for it from every activity. You have to be completely blind to "miss" it.

[Shaso]

Then they are kinda .. what's the non offensive word for retarded? There is a tutorial quest that forces you to queue AK research to progress your class hall mission for christs sake!

pretty much this.

Well you know.. the difference in vanilla was: YOU ACTUALLY HAD TO READ SHIT (the questlog + story) in order to understand how to solve a quest or where to find an item etc.

Unfortunately it's not common sense anymore for everyone nowadays.You can be brainafk the whole time... and then people even complain it's too complicated. :O

[Lochton]

Artifacts, Artifact power, Artifact Knowledge, Relics, Obliterum, Blood of Sargeras, multiple dungeon and raid difficulties, etc, etc.

Are all of this needed to make the game enjoyable or are they there just to provide a gating system to ensure content longevity?

Hmm, still easier than other MMO's. Even so, it is easy to put yourself in to as you normally aren't max level when new.

[Deleted]

.. what's the non offensive word for retarded?

Hum... handicapped?

[Deleted]

What made vanilla complex? Just the rotation and spell levels? I don't recall having these currencies, etc. that we have now?

Nothing. There was nothing complex about Vanilla, at all.

[Deleted]

No, a new player wont need to know these things at first, but will gradually learn about them as they play. That is what happened me. I didnt even know about raiding for a year.

[Thelxi]

Sometimes I think about this too. I started playing PoE recently and I gained a lot of new insight into how it is to be a noob in a complex game. And WoW is far more complex than most of us realize.

[SirBeef]

Artifacts, Artifact power, Artifact Knowledge, Relics, Obliterum, Blood of Sargeras, multiple dungeon and raid difficulties, etc, etc.

Are all of this needed to make the game enjoyable or are they there just to provide a gating system to ensure content longevity?

It's there to provide longevity. It's an MMO for Pete's sake. All other iterations of WoW had similar things, like a long slog to hit level cap, slow rep grinds, limited pull attempts on bosses, low drop rates, legendary crafting, resistance gear requirements, valor/honor caps and so on. If there was no gating of any sort, players would rush through everything and be done until the next content update every time. These sorts of things are needed to keep players around in MMOs.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Not for the average player, but if you walk into wow expecting to be a mythic raider or top pvper then yeah...

[Ribesal]

The problem is that you "learn" and this can take some time.
I never played EQ but in WoW new players are literally throwned at end game.
You start with a 100 boost and you take few days to max lvl your toon and BAM endgame. With like SEVEN days played (or even less).
That's why you see people doing HC dg with timewalking weapons instead of artifact weapons (it really happened).
In the end, it's not about being intelligent or not, sometimes it's game fault not the player.

Well, at first i thought it's extremely dumb to have weapons drop in timewalking, until i did a few with my new lvl 110 shaman who had a 780 weapon, these 820 and 835 i got from timewalking had more than twice as much weapon damage.

And players who use the lvl 100 boost on their first character...well...do these players also skip every tutorial and/or story cutscenes in games and wonder why they understand nothing? They shouldn't be surprised.

[MonsieuRoberts]

I would have to know so little to start playing now compared to back when I started 2 weeks before WLK. Ability ranks, weapon skill, instance keys, item allocation, armor types, the value of the breadth of stats on gear (MP5, hit, expertise, multi-primary stat gear, block and defense rating, Armor Penetration etc), correct talent tree selection, correct itemization dictating if I can even reliably hit a target or not, and all of that is throwing the leveling experience Pre-cata without the nearly replete set of heirlooms out the window. Getting to max level was an achievement and a learning experience on its own!

The game today is easier, simpler, less complex than it has ever been. The systems you listed off are so surface-level and explained in detail through tooltips and tiny tutorial windows alone that they're as front-facing and easy to learn as, say, learning about your spellbook or video settings.

Clueless people get to max level easily these days. A couple expansions ago, those same clueless people may still not be max level. Years ago, they wouldn't be half way there.

[Donald Hellscream]

You'll be surprised to know that there was a reddit post the other day from someone that went to lvl 16 weapon with no AK because he didn't know it existed. And there were quite a few people commenting on it that they didn't also know that it existed.

They must be blind then, the goddamn npc has a exclamation mark over his/her head and is quite clearly visible on the minimap.

[Ifeanychukwu]

You'll be surprised to know that there was a reddit post the other day from someone that went to lvl 16 weapon with no AK because he didn't know it existed. And there were quite a few people commenting on it that they didn't also know that it existed.

That's because people don't read. It's not even like it's a huge deal to read the text that describes those features. It's a few paragraphs maybe at most that completely explains why AK is and how it works, people just choose to ignore it.