Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Pilat]

Im pretty sure he has nothing to really lie about now, and probably no love for the legion anymore after what they did to him.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Im pretty sure he has nothing to really lie about now, and probably no love for the legion anymore after what they did to him.

Well he did fail at the Undercity at one point. If I was Sargeras, I wouldn't reward failure too kindly, that said even Tichondrius failed once(Illidan). Guess Varimathras got the short end of the...demon stick.

[lazypeon100]

Im pretty sure he has nothing to really lie about now, and probably no love for the legion anymore after what they did to him.

It's kind of in their nature to lie. The source at any rate is so untrustworthy that he could be telling the truth and still wouldn't make sense to trust him.

[Deleted]

It's kind of in their nature to lie. The source at any rate is so untrustworthy that he could be telling the truth and still wouldn't make sense to trust him.

It's one thing to doubt in the words of a dreadlord, but why doubt Blizzard? I mean, why would Blizzard put some fairly vague yet suggestive dialogue about Sylvanas in a raid on Argus of all places. They could just as well have had another boss instead of Varimathras. Varimathras could just as well have spoken about something else. But nope, he's there and he's specifically choosing to mention how Sylvanas is about to screw us over. I'm pretty confident we can trust him on this one.

[lazypeon100]

It's one thing to doubt in the words of a dreadlord, but why doubt Blizzard? I mean, why would Blizzard put some fairly vague yet suggestive dialogue about Sylvanas in a raid on Argus of all places. They could just as well have had another boss instead of Varimathras. Varimathras could just as well have spoken about something else. But nope, he's there and he's specifically choosing to mention how Sylvanas is about to screw us over. I'm pretty confident we can trust him on this one.

We are going with in character / in universe. If say thrall or varian say something, it doesn't make it necessarily objective truth just because blizzard came up with it. Those characters would still have their flaws and their own reasons for saying things whether they are true or not. For those two particular characters, they will say or act on things they believe to be true. That's not necessarily the case for all characters, and even if they believe something to be true they can be wrong.

We see this in Thrall, because he thought Garrosh would be a sound leader. He ended up being wrong and helped to try and correct that mistake.

The same cannot be said for Varimathris. He has a vested interest in undermining trust in Sylvanas due to their past, and the fact that he's a dreadlord. It's what they do.

[Nihilan]

Plot twist: He's talking about Vareesa. The other, other, Windrunner sister.

[lazypeon100]

Plot twist: He's talking about Vareesa. The other, other, Windrunner sister.

I'd laugh my ass off lol.

[Eurhetemec]

Unfortunately the "biggest" development team isn't giving us the best content we ever had (and not even the most unless copy & paste needs so much manpower).

That's obviously completely subjective.

In terms of well-rounded content, I don't think anyone even trying to be objective can say Legion isn't doing better than other expansions. The raids are good, the dungeons are good, the ongoing SP content is good, the story content is good, the class halls are good, I could go on.

Are any of them "the very best we've ever seen"? It would be pointless to claim they were or weren't, because clouds of nostalgia, irrational hatred, and people lying through their teeth because they an agenda (I'm not talking a political one) all pile up to obscure that. To me it looks like they are producing overall, holistically, the best content we've ever had.

Given the increased fidelity of the content, it does require more manpower - the number of new and upgraded textures, models, and so on in this expansion has been extremely high.

[rda]

It's one thing to doubt in the words of a dreadlord, but why doubt Blizzard? I mean, why would Blizzard put some fairly vague yet suggestive dialogue about Sylvanas in a raid on Argus of all places. They could just as well have had another boss instead of Varimathras. Varimathras could just as well have spoken about something else. But nope, he's there and he's specifically choosing to mention how Sylvanas is about to screw us over. I'm pretty confident we can trust him on this one.

Let's go with it. What could it be?

1. Sylvanas commands the undead to get her the entire Azeroth. We spend the expansion fighting her, she plays Arthas 2.0 raising new armies all the time and we are feeling screwed until some miracle happens.

2. Sylvanas commands the Horde to attack the Alliance in order to weaken both and do 1. We spend the expansion butting with each other and at the end of the expansion we hear "muhahaha! and now you are all mine" from Sylvanas.

3. Sylvanas secretly works to re-open some portal into yet another demon world. We notice the fallback from her failed experiments and she has to fight without being fully prepared. This lasts for the entire expansion and in the end she either goes down while the portal she left in some secret place opens or she manages to open the portal and escape or whatever.

4. Sylvanas impregnates herself with parts of Sargeras dripping from the wound in Silithus and we only discover that at the end. We spend the expansion fighting a pointless war with the Aqiri who decided that the knocking from Sargeras was a signal that the world has to end now.

Frankly, I can continue for a long time. This is a fruitful topic, indeed.

[lazypeon100]

That's obviously completely subjective.

In terms of well-rounded content, I don't think anyone even trying to be objective can say Legion isn't doing better than other expansions. The raids are good, the dungeons are good, the ongoing SP content is good, the story content is good, the class halls are good, I could go on.

Are any of them "the very best we've ever seen"? It would be pointless to claim they were or weren't, because clouds of nostalgia, irrational hatred, and people lying through their teeth because they an agenda (I'm not talking a political one) all pile up to obscure that. To me it looks like they are producing overall, holistically, the best content we've ever had.

Given the increased fidelity of the content, it does require more manpower - the number of new and upgraded textures, models, and so on in this expansion has been extremely high.

I think legion overall has some pretty good content. I think I would have preferred some more natural story progression between characters and story arcs that are currently open ended.

Major complaint would be class design right now, and I think overall that partially taints the rest of my views of legion, which is unfortunate.

[rda]

Given the increased fidelity of the content, it does require more manpower - the number of new and upgraded textures, models, and so on in this expansion has been extremely high.

The increased fidelity comes from (much) better tools, not from higher manpower. In fact, what you said is the exact reverse of what is going on. There is less manpower needed because the progress in tools outpaces the increases in fidelity.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Content being split between classes, hurt it(Despite the fact the quality was good Artifact quests and class campaigns were relatively good). Class designs..


Hit or miss depending on how you feel about it. Everyone has their tastes. I enjoy my Mage, probably would of at launch but I was a Paladin, but it was semi frustrating at first, now I'm fine with it(YAY FOR STAT PROGRESSION).

[lazypeon100]

Content being split between classes, hurt it(Despite the fact the quality was good Artifact quests and class campaigns were relatively good). Class designs..


Hit or miss depending on how you feel about it. Everyone has their tastes. I enjoy my Mage, probably would of at launch but I was a Paladin, but it was semi frustrating at first, now I'm fine with it(YAY FOR STAT PROGRESSION).

I play a hunter. I could go on for awhile what I think feels wrong with the class, but it would be easier to just link the thread I have over on the class development section on the WoW forums.

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...7636300?page=1

I don't think everything they did with the class was necessarily wrong this expansion, but how it plays plus por implementation (in the case of Survival) really hurt the overall experience. That thread has essentially evolved into a megathread of people giving suggestions on what they think would be good ways to fix it.

[Eurhetemec]

1. Since after MoP.

Okay, but what's the evidence? Everything I've heard says the dev team is as large as it's ever been. Unless you've got Blizzard or ex-Blizzard people saying otherwise, it seems like we're at an impasse.

I am a dev and I can gauge what takes more vs less time.

What game do you work on and in what approximate position? (I don't need your name or anything and obviously feel free to vague out a bit so you aren't identifiable). Nothing else there really matters as a claim unless you can answer that, because you're specifically making an argument to authority - the authority being you. If you're non-game software developer, I'm sorry, I don't respect your opinion on that because I know too many non-game software devs (a couple of them earning hundreds of thousand of pounds) who make ridiculous, demonstrably ignorant claims and rely on the "BUT IM A DEVELOPER!" a great deal (and then when they're wrong it's always "Well I had no way to know that!"). I'm not saying you're them, but I don't respect the opinion of non-game devs on game software development, not indie devs on AAA (unless they're ex-AAA). They might have the odd insight but... a claim like yours requires recent AAA game industry experience.

3. I agree that some things that are "small" in terms of development effort can produce big paybacks for the player. This is true. The problem is that in this case scale works, "small" things produce such big paybacks rarely and maybe one or two, while "big" things produce big paybacks more often and more numerous, you can frequently extend "big" things in many different ways with good potential.

Could you give us like, a dozen-item each list of "big" and "small" things? I've seen some examples from you before but I'm not sure I have a consistent idea of what you mean?

Added: "but the former required more balancing and systems design (because Garrisons got into every aspect of the game), but way, way, way, way less art design, level design, story design, quest design, lore writing, and so on." --- I disagree with several of these parts, garrisons required more of everything where there is code / scripts and were quite on par with models.

Well, you're straight-up wrong to disagree. I'm sorry there are legit differences of opinion and this isn't one of them. The amount of unique art required for both Garrisons was probably on-par with 1-2 class halls each. It's not remotely on par with 12. The same applies for the quests. Even one class hall has more and better unique quests than an entire faction's Garrison too.

What was no doubt difficult about Garrisons was that, gameplay-wise the entire expansion was balanced around them and their buildings, upgrades and so on. Which is not the case with Class Halls.

- - - Updated - - -

The increased fidelity comes from (much) better tools, not from higher manpower. In fact, what you said is the exact reverse of what is going on. There is less manpower needed because the progress in tools outpaces the increases in fidelity.

That's a remarkable and extreme claim, given AAA devs are on record as repeatedly claiming the opposite, and further, demonstrably the opposite is happening, in that art, sound, and so on teams are getting larger.

So.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Random, but I feel like MMOs need a larger team compared to your typical AAA single player/Multiplayer game.

[Eurhetemec]

Major complaint would be class design right now, and I think overall that partially taints the rest of my views of legion, which is unfortunate.

That seems to be the one consistent complaint I'm seeing re: Legion. It's not one I share, but I mostly play tank DH and DK (with a bit of Druid) this expansion, and I'm not sure they're ones with problems.

Certainly I've played all three specs of Hunter this expansion and didn't find any... satisfying. But nor did I in WoD or MoP. It does seem kind of worse though.

[lazypeon100]

That seems to be the one consistent complaint I'm seeing re: Legion. It's not one I share, but I mostly play tank DH and DK (with a bit of Druid) this expansion, and I'm not sure they're ones with problems.

Certainly I've played all three specs of Hunter this expansion and didn't find any... satisfying. But nor did I in WoD or MoP. It does seem kind of worse though.

In the case of hunter for all three specs they took a major departure from the design of the class they had been improving upon since classic, and I'm not specifically talking about survival.

None of the specs offer me a playstyle where I can feel impactful at range with a trusted companion fighting up front. BM has the two pets which waters down the importance of the first, and the range doesn't feel impactful since you do more fist bumps at the air either summoning pets or using dire frenzy (not as bad as summoning pets IMO) with almost zero focus on the hunter itself (power gap between hunter and pet has become much more significant this expansion than it has in the past).

Marksman has vulnerable as a mechanic which a lot of hunters despise, though they did reduce the impact of vulnerable. What we were told was we would get a sniper, but almost all of the damage is RNG. In addition, blizz has admitted that they actively penalize you if you don't choose lonewolf (the other two talents have gone on record as not being balanced against lonewolf). So the classic feeling of shooting at range with pet is gone. Old SV was also promised to be maintained within MM talents but blizz never followed through with that promise leaving a sizeable amount of hunters feeling miffed.

And current SV needs help on several fronts. Theme, gameplay, and community perception. All of that stems back to how blizz decided to implement it. I have no issues with a melee hunter, I just feel as though current SV is all over the place.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I can't speak for Hunters in Legion. I only know from Mist and maybe a tad in Warlords. That's all I know, my Hunter is still in Warlords.

[rda]

Okay, but what's the evidence? ...

I said what the evidence is - it is the content in the game.

I am not going to tell you what I am working on except that it is not a game. (I wrote a few more sentences but then just erased them all because I don't see it making me any good besides the imaginary Internet points, so I'd rather deal with my arguments declared to be arguments from authority and rejected on that basis, that doesn't bother me.)

List of big things vs small things dev-effort wise:

Big: dailies for the first time in TBC.
Small: random activation of dailies in Legion.
Big: gradual unlocking of a zone for the first time in TBC.
Small: gradual unlocking of Isle of Thunder in MoP.
Big: phasing for the first time in WotLK.
Small: phasing of quests in Cata and after.
Big: vehicles for the first time in WotLK, first moving quest hub.
Small: vehicles after WotLK.
Big: LFG with the first auto-queue.
Small: LFR building on LFG.
Big: challenge modes for instances as a concept plus scaling people down for the first time in MoP.
Small: mythic instances reusing both the concept and scaling using already present tech.
Big: pet battle system in MoP.
Small: pet battle instances in Legion.

"Well, you're straight-up wrong to disagree." - Oh, I am straight-up wrong because you can't count and forgot half of the things about garrisons? Like *tons* of new buildings with multiple very complex models each? OK. Cool.

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That's a remarkable and extreme claim, given AAA devs are on record as repeatedly claiming the opposite, and further, demonstrably the opposite is happening, in that art, sound, and so on teams are getting larger.

Wow. I guess we are done here since you know it all, buddy. "Demonstrably." Coming from a completely illogical reasoning that since art terms are growing then the increased fidelity comes mostly from the increased manpower. Hey, maybe art teams are growing because game creators find it easier to extend games in that direction rather than in others because of more predictable results and cheaper costs? No? Nah. "Demonstrably." Wow.

[Nyel]

That's obviously completely subjective.

In terms of well-rounded content, I don't think anyone even trying to be objective can say Legion isn't doing better than other expansions. The raids are good, the dungeons are good, the ongoing SP content is good, the story content is good, the class halls are good, I could go on.

Are any of them "the very best we've ever seen"? It would be pointless to claim they were or weren't, because clouds of nostalgia, irrational hatred, and people lying through their teeth because they an agenda (I'm not talking a political one) all pile up to obscure that. To me it looks like they are producing overall, holistically, the best content we've ever had.

Given the increased fidelity of the content, it does require more manpower - the number of new and upgraded textures, models, and so on in this expansion has been extremely high.

Legion isn't doing better than "other expansions" per se. It's doing better than Cataclysm and WoD but worse than TBC / WotLK / MoP. Middle of the road. As I said, copy & paste content isn't quality content. With it's biggest team ever Blizzard is aiming for quanity instead of quality and that's not good in the longer run. Quality content in Legion? Very sparse. We had quality content in the launch version and with 7.1. 7.2 and 7.3 are anything but quality content.

The raids are good but nothing outstanding like we had with Ulduar or ICC or Throne of Thunder. The dungeons? Cathedral was good, the 7.3 dungeon (I don't even remember the name) is awful. The SP content? I say it's abysmal but that's subjective, as you said. And the class halls are good? What? They were nice in the first weeks of Legion now they're just "there" without any purpose except being some kind of "hub".

Best content we've ever had? If you say so...

Legion until 7.2 was amazing. It went downhill with 7.2.