Artificial Difficulty in Legion

[Laqweeta]

Videogames are "artificial difficulty" by design. And WoW is aracade MMO with NO RPG elements, not pure MMORPG as you expected for a pretty long time.

Fixt for u bb <3 :*

[Gaidax]

Noone cares about your elitistic POV on stuff anyway.

On the contrary, I merely reinforced what other person said to begin with so that makes your statement incorrect, also you took time to reply meaning you care about my opinion, thank you.

Nice sig there, I bet you just rushed into this thread happy at the opportunity to bash Blizzard no matter the context.

[ItachiZaku]

Cordana was by far the worst for me, first time in there BOOM, punted and dead. I got a BR and was like, I don't even know what that was, we aren't stacked in mid... "idiot, look for gap in wall"... "WHAT FUCKING WALL" and then the 3rd time in there, i figured it out. But damn it.

[FrostyK]

This pretty much.

Sounds like a bunch of shitters trying too hard to find excuse for their lack of awareness and terribad positioning.

I, for example, fuck up plenty in raids, but it never ever was because "baed camera artifishul difficulty, wtf Blizz?" - it is almost always purely my own fuckup because I failed one way or another to pay attention or simply went overconfident and did not live up to my own expectations.

Seems quite a lot of people think they are infallible and they fail because floor was not flat enough or bullshit like that.

"I am by no mean saying, these challenges and artificial difficulty are hard. Some of them are quite easy actually. What I would like to discuss is rather the direction that Blizzard heading in terms of dungeon/raid difficulty design." That was my first paragraph. Not sure you missed it or you refuse to acknowledge it. But I sense that you came into this thread with a pre-judgement of what you think this thread is. So nothing I write will change your mind.

I am not bashing nor complaining. If you like this path of difficulty design Blizzard have took in Legion, you're free to comment on why you like it in a civilized and detailed manner. I am excited to read it.


FYI:I jus copied and pasted the same reply I posted to the person you quoted.

It is very evident from responses to see who are the mythic raiders who understand the underlying issues with designing difficulty base on camera. It is also very evident who are the elitists wannabe who goes "roflmao, i beat H KJ and did +15HoV. camera issue are no prob. git gud filthy causuals". Ironically, trying to sound like an elitist without any much forethought in your reply only shows how much of an eltist you are NOT.

There are people who care about the game in terms of raid design and mechanics. There are people who cares which direction the game is heading. Not everyone just log on, queue LFR and get your titanforges and then unsub until next patch.

[potis]

I think you guys need to take a chill pill and learn to play or quit. All of the mechanics you talked about are easy as fuck, or fun. This is the type of thing that is needed more in wow, mechanics that you have to look at the boss and the surrounding area to beat. Not just look at your hotbars and dbm timers.

Even maiden, you guys are bullshit, its easy as fuck to distinguish which orbs are green and which yellow. Dragons on Hymdall are a retard check. You can't imagine how many players die on them every day, even on easy mythic+ keys. Shows just how bad most of the playerbase is. I could go on but there is no point.

I know I sound toxic, but fuck, you guys just try so fucking hard every day to blame blizz for something. They are just trying to create new mechanics, don't give them so much bullshit. Ye sure, maiden orbs are same as thaddius, but most of the legion dungeons have some nice and fresh mechanics here and there.

This really.

Adorable thread, shows the level of the average WoW player is way lower than some people realize.

Yes, the camera change created some new form of "difficulty" which never existed if you played correctly before.

Most of the "camera artificial difficulty" you experience isnt there really, Hymdall is harder when lightning from the drake hits despite not being there/having already despawned after it went off just because the game is lagging for whatever reason or my connection spiked etc etc, but finding the drakes is ZzZzZ moment, considering you only need to find the first and run inside after it to dodge the rest of the mechanic.

The bigger problem WoW actually has with the camera is when i try to Heroic Leap on random places in dungeons or on a tree in CoS

Or dropping DnD on the same spots as a DK.

Plus, the camera change happened for this very reason also, supposedly Arena reason, but its the reason it got changed, bigger screens, saw more, made things irrelevant cause apparently most of WoW population still gamed on 4:3 screens apparently in 2015 when the changed happened.

[Fabinas]

On the contrary, I merely reinforced what other person said to begin with so that makes your statement incorrect, also you took time to reply meaning you care about my opinion, thank you.

Nice sig there, I bet you just rushed into this thread happy at the opportunity to bash Blizzard no matter the context.

You're well known for your attitude on the Warlock community. Glad i was given a chance to light things up for the rest of the MMO-C posters.
You not fucking up on the camera angle "mechanics" means nothing. The problem is WHY Blizzard designs mechanics this way and why is trying to enforce a limited view. Not everything in this game is about you and your skill as a player etc.

[Gaidax]

"I am by no mean saying, these challenges and artificial difficulty are hard. Some of them are quite easy actually. What I would like to discuss is rather the direction that Blizzard heading in terms of dungeon/raid difficulty design." That was my first paragraph. Not sure you missed it or you refuse to acknowledge it. But I sense that you came into this thread with a pre-judgement of what you think this thread is. So nothing I write will change your mind.

I am not bashing nor complaining. If you like this path of difficulty design Blizzard have took in Legion, you're free to comment on why you like it in a civilized and detailed manner. I am excited to read it.


FYI:I jus copied and pasted the same reply I posted to the person you quoted.

It is very evident from responses to see who are the mythic raiders who understand the underlying issues with designing difficulty base on camera. It is also very evident who are the elitists wannabe who goes "roflmao, i beat H KJ and did +15HoV. camera issue are no prob. git gud filthy causuals". Ironically, trying to sound like an elitist without any much forethought in your reply only shows how much of an eltist you are NOT.

There are people who care about the game in terms of raid design and mechanics. There are people who cares which direction the game is heading. Not everyone just log on, queue LFR and get your titanforges and then unsub until next patch.

Since when realization one is not perfect and ability to admit their own mistakes instead of coming up with various bullshit reasons to failure is considered "elitist"?

If anything it's the other way round. I am not hiding who I am and my record can be seen in signature and I am fully content and satisfied with it. You are trying too hard and reality is that you are wrong because Legion objectively did nothing that did not exist beforehand in WoW when it comes to situational awareness requirements.

If anything, Legion is a bit conservative compared to WoD for example that had quite a bit more stuff going on in raids. I'd say BRF alone has more advanced stuff than all Legion so far in raids.

[Doffen]

Never seen this much complaining in a thread before, its only 3 pages so far. And look, its all the WoW-haters in one topic. Who would've tought... (not looking at you op, fairly interesting subject)

I hate HoV Hymdal...

[Arainie]

Exactly what I feel too. The issue isnt to add something that "trivialize mechanic" but rather...

The fact they removed something that could trivialize the mechanic to make raid challenging, is not a good sign. It's either they are running out of design ideas that they have to resort to this form difficulty or they are just experimenting with a few mechanics (I truly hope its the later). FPS is a game where managing camera angle is a skills, but WoW is not an FPS game. Its good have camera angle mechanic once in a while in MMORPG to spice things up a bit, but I felt that the way it was handled in legion, was a bit overboard.

I completely disagree with you. The fact that they remove something that could trivialize a mechanic in order to make said mechanic challenging is good. Nameplate addons like on Star Augur Mythic or even going back to ICC the infamous AVR on Putricide have far too much of an impact on gameplay to be considered okay. I can agree that short camera distance is annoying in the case where we have walls behind us limiting the range even more, but I completely disagree that the current maximum camera distance a bad choice (and yes, I have more or less always played fully zoomed out). When you can create an overview to the extent of seeing everything in the entire room at once mechanics are infinitely harder to design well, and you can no longer force players to make active decisions and predictions based on experience rather than on a full top down view of everything in the room.

Last but not least, don't pretend like camera angle hasn't played a role in pretty much every raid so far. You've always had a slight advantage by altering your camera angle in pretty much every single fight, it's just a bit more impactful on some recent fights than it was before.

Exactly. Summing up the OP in a simple and concise way. Anything in Legion is designed to gate you, imped you, delay you, obstruct you, in order to spend more MAUs, to design and produce less quality and quantity content in less time. Sad to see this has affected raiding design as well, which was mostly innovative and higher quality than world content design.

I mean, you're so negative I'm surprised anyone still wants to be around you... (or do they?)
If you allow me to generalize (forgive me if I'm wrong) and assume you're inconvened by restricted flying, Argus mob density, AP, Legendary RNG etc I find it safe to say that if the game was designed your way we'd be back at WoD raid logging levels with nothing to do outside of organized PvE and PvP. I myself would find that game so terribly unengaging and boring that I'd unsub (which I did for the first time in WoD, it was a sad story after a couple of months!).

[Beastiel]

Oh wow. You have absolutely no idea what artificial difficulty actually means.

[God Save The King]

I mean, camera angles, orientation, and off screen events have always been a think that I can remember? First few times they wreck you, then you get used to them. Legion didn't really add to it, but they did approach it in some more interesting ways. Having to use the in-game camera to accomplish some in-game task is not 'artificial difficulty', it's just normal difficulty presented in a different way. Randomly jerking the camera away when you're making a jump? Artificial. Having something occur off screen, but with a voice cue? The game.

Sartharion (LK) would spawn waves behind or infront of you. If they were behind, you'd need to turn to avoid them.
Helgen (LK) would light up sections of the room, you needed to change your camera angle to overhead to avoid them.
Loatheb (LK) had little spores floating around you needed to go find.
Gluth (LK) had the zombie guys
Kel'Thuzad (LK) had that annoying add phase, coming from all directions.
Onyxia (LK), when you were managing the adds she would fly around and do breaths. This was off screen. Generally you had a healer watch her and tell the raid.

I don't really feel like going beyond T7 encounters, but I think the point's been made. Each raid tier and many dungeons have had things happen off screen that you needed to rotate to handle. Legion isn't new in this regard. Some of the off-screen mechanics are new, which means the old methods we developed over years may not work, but that's an issue with the mechanic itself, not the fact that you have to turn to face it, or look around to handle it.

[Fabinas]

I completely disagree with you. The fact that they remove something that could trivialize a mechanic in order to make said mechanic challenging is good. Nameplate addons like on Star Augur Mythic or even going back to ICC the infamous AVR on Putricide have far too much of an impact on gameplay to be considered okay. I can agree that short camera distance is annoying in the case where we have walls behind us limiting the range even more, but I completely disagree that the current maximum camera distance a bad choice (and yes, I have more or less always played fully zoomed out). When you can create an overview to the extent of seeing everything in the entire room at once mechanics are infinitely harder to design well, and you can no longer force players to make active decisions and predictions based on experience rather than on a full top down view of everything in the room.

Last but not least, don't pretend like camera angle hasn't played a role in pretty much every raid so far. You've always had a slight advantage by altering your camera angle in pretty much every single fight, it's just a bit more impactful on some recent fights than it was before.



I mean, you're so negative I'm surprised anyone still wants to be around you... (or do they?)
If you allow me to generalize (forgive me if I'm wrong) and assume you're inconvened by restricted flying, Argus mob density, AP, Legendary RNG etc I find it safe to say that if the game was designed your way we'd be back at WoD raid logging levels with nothing to do outside of organized PvE and PvP. I myself would find that game so terribly unengaging and boring that I'd unsub (which I did for the first time in WoD, it was a sad story after a couple of months!).

I unsubbed. I'm no longer in support of the game design of WoW, my 3 account subs lapsed on End of August but i havent been playing since june or July. All those features i speak so negatively about could have been better implemented in order to not cause frustration, gating and prolonging, but enjoyment. Time gates to restrict flying is shit. Restricting flying behind not only Pathfinder, but an epic quest line would be fine. With no weekly time gates.

- - - Updated - - -

I mean, camera angles, orientation, and off screen events have always been a think that I can remember? First few times they wreck you, then you get used to them. Legion didn't really add to it, but they did approach it in some more interesting ways. Having to use the in-game camera to accomplish some in-game task is not 'artificial difficulty', it's just normal difficulty presented in a different way. Randomly jerking the camera away when you're making a jump? Artificial. Having something occur off screen, but with a voice cue? The game.

Sartharion (LK) would spawn waves behind or infront of you. If they were behind, you'd need to turn to avoid them.
Helgen (LK) would light up sections of the room, you needed to change your camera angle to overhead to avoid them.
Loatheb (LK) had little spores floating around you needed to go find.
Gluth (LK) had the zombie guys
Kel'Thuzad (LK) had that annoying add phase, coming from all directions.
Onyxia (LK), when you were managing the adds she would fly around and do breaths. This was off screen. Generally you had a healer watch her and tell the raid.

I don't really feel like going beyond T7 encounters, but I think the point's been made. Each raid tier and many dungeons have had things happen off screen that you needed to rotate to handle. Legion isn't new in this regard. Some of the off-screen mechanics are new, which means the old methods we developed over years may not work, but that's an issue with the mechanic itself, not the fact that you have to turn to face it, or look around to handle it.

Yes, they were. But the room design and the camera distance factor allowed pre-positioning of the camera in most fights. The examples given here are not comparable.

[FrostyK]

I completely disagree with you. The fact that they remove something that could trivialize a mechanic in order to make said mechanic challenging is good. Nameplate addons like on Star Augur Mythic or even going back to ICC the infamous AVR on Putricide have far too much of an impact on gameplay to be considered okay. I can agree that short camera distance is annoying in the case where we have walls behind us limiting the range even more, but I completely disagree that the current maximum camera distance a bad choice (and yes, I have more or less always played fully zoomed out). When you can create an overview to the extent of seeing everything in the entire room at once mechanics are infinitely harder to design well, and you can no longer force players to make active decisions and predictions based on experience rather than on a full top down view of everything in the room.

Last but not least, don't pretend like camera angle hasn't played a role in pretty much every raid so far. You've always had a slight advantage by altering your camera angle in pretty much every single fight, it's just a bit more impactful on some recent fights than it was before.



I mean, you're so negative I'm surprised anyone still wants to be around you... (or do they?)
If you allow me to generalize (forgive me if I'm wrong) and assume you're inconvened by restricted flying, Argus mob density, AP, Legendary RNG etc I find it safe to say that if the game was designed your way we'd be back at WoD raid logging levels with nothing to do outside of organized PvE and PvP. I myself would find that game so terribly unengaging and boring that I'd unsub (which I did for the first time in WoD, it was a sad story after a couple of months!).

I completely disagree with you. The fact that they remove something that could trivialize a mechanic in order to make said mechanic challenging is good. Nameplate addons like on Star Augur Mythic or even going back to ICC the infamous AVR on Putricide have far too much of an impact on gameplay to be considered okay. I can agree that short camera distance is annoying in the case where we have walls behind us limiting the range even more, but I completely disagree that the current maximum camera distance a bad choice (and yes, I have more or less always played fully zoomed out). When you can create an overview to the extent of seeing everything in the entire room at once mechanics are infinitely harder to design well, and you can no longer force players to make active decisions and predictions based on experience rather than on a full top down view of everything in the room.

Last but not least, don't pretend like camera angle hasn't played a role in pretty much every raid so far. You've always had a slight advantage by altering your camera angle in pretty much every single fight, it's just a bit more impactful on some recent fights than it was before.



I mean, you're so negative I'm surprised anyone still wants to be around you... (or do they?)
If you allow me to generalize (forgive me if I'm wrong) and assume you're inconvened by restricted flying, Argus mob density, AP, Legendary RNG etc I find it safe to say that if the game was designed your way we'd be back at WoD raid logging levels with nothing to do outside of organized PvE and PvP. I myself would find that game so terribly unengaging and boring that I'd unsub (which I did for the first time in WoD, it was a sad story after a couple of months!).

Camera angle have always existed in WOW, no denying that. It's what separate a good players from bad ones. The unaware one from the ultra alert players. To that extend it is good. It rewards the players who take a step further in their gameplay.

However in Legion, it is forced upon the players in some cases and if you fail, its a wipe. Look at MoS Helya on +15 Tyran. It forces you to look at her to determine the direction. I mentioned Helya because, most boss with frontal cone attack that can one shot you will shade the affected area on the ground as a pre-warning. This is absent from Helya BY DESIGN, the fight wants players switch their camera angle. The issue here is NOT discussing if this is hard or easy to do, but rather is this form of diffculity design a good one.

This get taken up to eleven in TOS, when it requires every player to rotate their camera to spot all soaking zones (The encounter room is intentionally made huge to amplify the need for camera rotation), and failure to do so results in raid wipe. It is no longer the case of, rewarding good players for "awareness". Why do you think M KJ was nerfed from 10 Armageddon zone to 8?

Again to people who think this is complaining. It is not. It is to discuss mechanic design of camera angle-induced difficulty, and if it is a good or bad thing. Yet so far, only a few have answered and replied from that perspective. Most are just "dont QQ git gud" which is very sad as that is the sort of response I expect from official WoW GD, not MMO-champ.

We had awesome raids like Karazhan (TBC), Naxx, Ulduar, ICC. Sure in some of the fights, camera angle could be an issue, but it was more of an exception or unintentional. In Legion, it seems like it is made intentional and the punishment for not doing it right is raid wipe.

[Boraal]

Not to mention how the big change here Is World Quests which simplifie quests to a laughable degree. There's world quests that are literaly so easy you only do: Kicking squirel nuts and squirels around, growing trees as a wisp while avoiding the nemesis of a wisp: a fish. You jump on a casket of wine until the guy says "Your feet are so nicely wet", a quest on broken shore where you pick up a living bomb buff on yourself, press W until the spiders near you die from the living bomb area, or lastly the world quest which I knew would be turned from normal quest Into world quest cause ofcourse is doing this: Flying around In a "Lightforged warframe" bombarding enemy artilerry and flying units, while taking NO DAMAGE AT ALL - that's was the straw for me, like where's the bloody challenge then, where's my failure state, I'm literally being given free shit at that point for doing absolutely nothing

Yes, lord forbid there be variety in world quests. We should have every single one be go kill "50 of x" or collect 20 items that don't drop at a reasonable rate. Not every quest has to be combat based, it leads to fatigue and in a game where combat is 99% of what you do, these are a nice break.

[Gaidax]

However in Legion, it is forced upon the players in some cases and if you fail, its a wipe. Look at MoS Helya on +15 Tyran. It forces you to look at her to determine the direction. I mentioned Helya because, most boss with frontal cone attack that can one shot you will shade the affected area on the ground as a pre-warning. This is absent from Helya BY DESIGN, the fight wants players switch their camera angle. The issue here is NOT discussing if this is hard or easy to do, but rather is this form of diffculity design a good one.

You mean like Onyxia Deep Breath? Totally new thing to look at boss and define positioning of the incoming ground effect based on that.

This thing is used since Vanilla, in various ways, for goodness sake. It's literally making shit up here as you go, is it?

If anything last 3 expansions were a massive influx of various flashy telegraphs added due to the constant arms race vs players and addons and when you suddenly see something not telegraphed by big flashy effect, you cave? That's the "artificial" difficulty?

[david0925]

I actually don't understand this thread. Is this just throwing reasons things that are hard that you don't like into "artificial difficulty" category, whatever that means?

Everything, not just video game, is going to have a X is hard because of Y (reasons).

I can also argue Shadow Priests are artificially harder to play because there's more timers to be aware of. The best argument I see from this is "i know what is making something more difficult for me and I know the solution, but I can't/won't change anything I personally do about it; or I will change it but I dislike what I'm changing".

[FrostyK]

I completely disagree with you. The fact that they remove something that could trivialize a mechanic in order to make said mechanic challenging is good. Nameplate addons like on Star Augur Mythic or even going back to ICC the infamous AVR on Putricide have far too much of an impact on gameplay to be considered okay. I can agree that short camera distance is annoying in the case where we have walls behind us limiting the range even more, but I completely disagree that the current maximum camera distance a bad choice (and yes, I have more or less always played fully zoomed out). When you can create an overview to the extent of seeing everything in the entire room at once mechanics are infinitely harder to design well, and you can no longer force players to make active decisions and predictions based on experience rather than on a full top down view of everything in the room.

Last but not least, don't pretend like camera angle hasn't played a role in pretty much every raid so far. You've always had a slight advantage by altering your camera angle in pretty much every single fight, it's just a bit more impactful on some recent fights than it was before.



I mean, you're so negative I'm surprised anyone still wants to be around you... (or do they?)
If you allow me to generalize (forgive me if I'm wrong) and assume you're inconvened by restricted flying, Argus mob density, AP, Legendary RNG etc I find it safe to say that if the game was designed your way we'd be back at WoD raid logging levels with nothing to do outside of organized PvE and PvP. I myself would find that game so terribly unengaging and boring that I'd unsub (which I did for the first time in WoD, it was a sad story after a couple of months!).

You mean like Onyxia Deep Breath? Totally new thing to look at boss and define positioning of the incoming ground effect based on that.

This thing is used since Vanilla, in various ways, for goodness sake. It's literally making shit up here as you go, is it?

If anything last 3 expansions were a massive influx of various flashy telegraphs added due to the constant arms race vs players and addons and when you suddenly see something not telegraphed by big flashy effect, you cave? That's the "artificial" difficulty?

My friend. Relax. Once again, I am discussing the design of dungeon/raid mechanic. I am not caving or complaining that it is hard. Wowlog me, you will see I have done +18MoS, HoV , VoTW and MTOS 8/9. None of these are HARD. Sir you have cleared M Avatar. So please don't look at it from the perspective that "WOW IT IS HARD TO CHANGE CAMERA ANGLE, I CANT DO THIS! HALP BLIZZZZ".

Onyxia is jus one boss in whole of Vanilla(WOTLK) with such mechanic. Legions is choke full of such scenario and that if you fail its a raid wipe. The discussion is IF THIS sort of design is healthy for the game. If you enjoy such design and you feel that it have a place, please feel free to share your view constructively. I am very excited to listen to your opinion. Thank you sir.

[Gaidax]

I actually don't understand this thread. Is this just throwing reasons things that are hard that you don't like into "artificial difficulty" category, whatever that means?

Everything, not just video game, is going to have a X is hard because of Y (reasons).

I can also argue Shadow Priests are artificially harder to play because there's more timers to be aware of. The best argument I see from this is "i know what is making something more difficult for me and I know the solution, but I can't/won't change anything I personally do about it; or I will change it but I dislike what I'm changing".

The guy is literally making shit up as he goes, all his examples of "new insidious ways to make artificial difficulty in Legion" are actually things that existed in WoW often as far as Vanilla. Apparently all was fine and well in the kingdom and suddenly Legion came and evil Blizzard introduced some totally new requirement to soak or avoid things on the ground, insane new tech never seen in WoW raiding before. What's more you need to rotate camera and look for things around, unheard of.

That's basically the thread.

[david0925]

My friend. Relax. Once again, I am discussing the design of dungeon/raid mechanic. I am not caving or complaining that it is hard. Wowlog me, you will see I have done +18MoS, HoV , VoTW and MTOS 8/9. None of these are HARD. So please don't look at it from the perspective that "WOW IT IS HARD TO CHANGE CAMERA ANGLE".

Onyxia is jus one boss in whole of Vanilla(WOTLK) with such mechanic. Legions is choke full of such scenario and that if you fail its a raid wipe. The discussion is IF THIS sort of design is healthy for the game. If you enjoy such design and you feel that it have a place, please feel free to share your view constructively. I am very excited to listen to your opinion. Thank you sir.

But the whole argument of "X is easy and just Y making it hard" has been in like every game. You are just picking out the "Y" reasons that you like or dislike right now.

Using your platformer as an example. You can argue that 1-frame perfect jumping is hard and it is and 2 frame not-as-perfect jumping is easy, but if you put 10 2 frame perfect jumping in a row it becomes not only hard but also inflated difficulty from just stacking things that are easy

In the end you change things up to make things more difficult, and camera angle is something that is completely legitimate. You seem to dislike camera-based reason for adding difficulty but it seems completely fine to me and that is just something else players adapt to overcome a challenge.

[Donald Hellscream]

I never noticed that and I never had any problems with handling any of the mechanics maybe besides Cordana's wall the first couple of times I did vault of the wardens at launch so really for me personally I don't really care.