Rob Pardo: "Games aren't supposed to be easy at all times"

[iamthedevil]

This game was never, ever more difficult. It was more gated. Quite a difference there.

[A dot Ham]

Rob Pardo recently left Blizzard after many record breaking years.

After reading through the Rob Pardo interview, I found a very interesting quote:

"sharp edges were.. what made the game compelling.. games aren't really supposed to be easy at all times."

Basically he was saying that having difficult things to do is what makes the game compelling and having introduced LFR into the game, it probably wasn't the right direction.

LFR is just to name one, but many other things like dumbing down combat, removing leveling up combat skills with weapons, removing elite mobs from the world, making dungeons snooze fests etc etc etc, you get the idea.

Could the reason why Rob Pardo left Blizzard is because of the opposing design direction spoken about?

I am not seeing where he specifically was talking about LFR. I think you are making some jumps here. Not saying you are wrong... but don't put words in the man's mouth. Get him to say it, clarify, but don't assume and infer when he still has deniability.

You know I really would like to talk to the person or hear from the person pulling the strings, making the decisions, forcing this game down the toilet. Because Rob Pardo (Chief Creative Officer) and Greg Street (Lead Systems Designer) both are eluding to the fact that they disagreed with the direction of the game and subsequently left as a last result.

Now either what they are saying is true and their minions/underlings are the driving force for the game. I can't imagine this is true, as leaders of your departments you should be the last line of defense. If its a bad idea, someone needs to have veto power and squash it. I just don't buy the whole its a team effort (coming from leaders of those teams). If you are the low guy on the totem pole... okay that argument may hold water, not when you're A boss.

OR

There is someone else, higher up, making the call. I tend to think this is the case, I don't know who it is but to me its the only thing that makes sense.

Because both Rob Pardo and Greg Street claim that development is a team effort. Yet both voice opinions that disagree with the direction of the game? Who else is in a better position to affect change than a person in a leadership position?

[Vash The Stampede]

Could the reason why Rob Pardo left Blizzard is because of the opposing design direction spoken about?

It's probably the same with Ghostcrawler, but neither will openly admit it. You never want to burn your bridges.

[A dot Ham]

It's probably the same with Ghostcrawler, but neither will openly admit it. You never want to burn your bridges.

Absolutely, but this also suggests that someone is a stronger force than they are driving that design decision. Not the team effort they make it out to be.

I really just wish they'd come out and point the finger.

This isn't some open source development firm, someone somewhere has to have the power to either approve or veto good/bad ideas respectively. If it isn't people like Rob or Greg... Then who the fuck is it?

My knee jerk reaction is to say they are both full of shit, and did have that power, and then claim it's a team effort and blame them after the fact. It's a convenient argument because if you accept it, you can't focus your frustration at some nebulous vague group where "no one knows what they did or didn't work on"

Greg coming out and saying LFR is bad is great, it reaffirms what we've all been saying. But if he had veto power and didn't use it when he could, his hindsight is worthless. Especially if he only comes to this realization AFTER leaving the company... Great bro so how does that help us now?

[Deleted]

This game was never, ever more difficult. It was more gated. Quite a difference there.

Except the game was undeniably more difficult in it's earlier days both through the questing and dungeons. Level a character from 1 - 100 and tell me it's the same as Vanilla - WoTLK.

[truckboattruck]

I doubt it was a major factor in his decision but it was probably in his head somewhere when he was thinking about it.

i don't
the narrative for creation was working against him.
if they had him making things he didnt like then i can certainly understand why he wanted out.

[Ragedaug]

Except the game was undeniably more difficult in it's earlier days both through the questing and dungeons. Level a character from 1 - 100 and tell me it's the same as Vanilla - WoTLK.

Questing and dungeons weren't necessarily difficult, they were time consuming. That's the difference. The only reason low level dungeons "seemed" hard was because we never had a healer or tank. We would argue who would heal as everyone who explain they are DPS spec, and there wouldn't be anyone with a tank spec, so the 4 of us would just run into the group of mobs who were mostly attacking everyone while the not-healer was trying to figure out how to heal everyone.

I ran low level dungeons with a spec'd tank and with a spec'd healer during early BC and I can tell you they were just as easy then as they are now. I can remember 2 manning Scarlet Monastery with a Prot Warrior, me an Enhance Shaman without any difficulty. When they were 3 more in group is was cheese.

The reason it "seemed" hard, was because we were all noobs. The gear was awful. And everyone was in DPS spec.

Now I could see an argument to say the difficulty should be raised because we have dedicated tanks and healers in low level dungeons, and we are all were green/blue equivalent gear with itemized stats for our specs, so that's legit, but like I said, run a 5 man dungeon in Vanilla/BC with 4 other people who really knew what they were doing and had good dungeon gear and it was very easy.

[Deleted]

Questing and dungeons weren't necessarily difficult, they were time consuming. That's the difference. The only reason low level dungeons "seemed" hard was because we never had a healer or tank. We would argue who would heal as everyone who explain they are DPS spec, and there wouldn't be anyone with a tank spec, so the 4 of us would just run into the group of mobs who were mostly attacking everyone while the not-healer was trying to figure out how to heal everyone.

I ran low level dungeons with a spec'd tank and with a spec'd healer during early BC and I can tell you they were just as easy then as they are now. I can remember 2 manning Scarlet Monastery with a Prot Warrior, me an Enhance Shaman without any difficulty. When they were 3 more in group is was cheese.

The reason it "seemed" hard, was because we were all noobs. The gear was awful. And everyone was in DPS spec.

Now I could see an argument to say the difficulty should be raised because we have dedicated tanks and healers in low level dungeons, and we are all were green/blue equivalent gear with itemized stats for our specs, so that's legit, but like I said, run a 5 man dungeon in Vanilla/BC with 4 other people who really knew what they were doing and had good dungeon gear and it was very easy.

They were time consuming because they were difficult. There was real choices to make when pulling a pack because pulling too much meant the doom of your group.
You need to look no further than Private Servers if you want the empirical proof. Memory from a month ago doesn't fail me I'm afraid.

Why were they difficult? For the right or wrong reasons? Mobs slightly above your level would resist almost every attack of yours. Mobs genuinely hitting harder than ever. Less CC overall. Less threat generating abilities and especially aoe threat abilities.

Was I a noob back then? Yes. Am I a noob now? No. My experiences on a certain private server I wish not to name, have been very genuine.

[Tharkkun]

Absolutely, but this also suggests that someone is a stronger force than they are driving that design decision. Not the team effort they make it out to be.

I really just wish they'd come out and point the finger.

This isn't some open source development firm, someone somewhere has to have the power to either approve or veto good/bad ideas respectively. If it isn't people like Rob or Greg... Then who the fuck is it?

My knee jerk reaction is to say they are both full of shit, and did have that power, and then claim it's a team effort and blame them after the fact. It's a convenient argument because if you accept it, you can't focus your frustration at some nebulous vague group where "no one knows what they did or didn't work on"

Greg coming out and saying LFR is bad is great, it reaffirms what we've all been saying. But if he had veto power and didn't use it when he could, his hindsight is worthless. Especially if he only comes to this realization AFTER leaving the company... Great bro so how does that help us now?

They have a lot of younger talent in Blizzard now. They opted to go with some different design decisions to mirror where some of the other games are headed. It may have worked fine for say Rift but WoW is a different beast. I think they understand their mistakes. The sub loss alone forced them to dig deeper into why people quit. It's just a matter of undoing the wrong ideas while continuing with some of the good ideas from WOD. Or embracing some of the great ideas that came from MOP.

[A dot Ham]

They were time consuming because they were difficult. There was real choices to make when pulling a pack because pulling too much meant the doom of your group.
You need to look no further than Private Servers if you want the empirical proof. Memory from a month ago doesn't fail me I'm afraid.

Why were they difficult? For the right or wrong reasons? Mobs slightly above your level would resist almost every attack of yours. Mobs genuinely hitting harder than ever. Less CC overall. Less threat generating abilities and especially aoe threat abilities.

Was I a noob back then? Yes. Am I a noob now? No. My experiences on a certain private server I wish not to name, have been very genuine.

I think that's still subjective. You claim you aren't a noob. We can't verify that, just like we can't observe your own experience unless you have recorded footage of your adventures. Its like the whole conundrum of consciousness we can't observe it so how do we study it. I am sure if you posted that video an infinite number of people could/would come out of the woodwork to point out what you are doing wrong and why it is so 'hard' for you.

Also what patch in vanilla are you guys using on that private server? Because throughout the life of vanilla, they revisited every class and made significant changes during each class' review. Meaning yes, it could very well be difficult, possibly even more difficult than original designers had even intended or envisioned for its era.

The hardest part of this game has always been coordinating with other players. I have never experienced any true difficulty (beyond what is intended) when working with like minded, competent players.

The intended difficulty is:
(1) Experiencing fights for the first time and learning how to deal with various mechanics [every video game has this].
(2) Obtaining the appropriate equipment to deal with a given obstacle.

It was not is not, blizzard's intent that Archimonde be killed on day 1 with a handful of drops from completing the rest of the instance that week, and being full geared from the previous tier of content. You are supposed to build up your character in preparation for that fight. That is an intended difficulty one that steadily decreases as the weeks progress.

This is coming from someone who rolled a melee lock for the first several levels of vanilla btw... to my credit we did have firestone... my point is, that even being this level of noobish I never really found the game itself to be that difficult when proper coordination, leadership, and of course appropriate gear were all in place.

[Daffan]

New 730 and 740 PVP gear in S3

time to afk in bg's L O L

"With Arena Season 3 we’ll be introducing new gear, including Warmongering Aspirant gear at PvP item level 715, Warmongering Combatant gear at 730, and Warmongering Gladiator gear at 740."

too easy

[A dot Ham]

They have a lot of younger talent in Blizzard now. They opted to go with some different design decisions to mirror where some of the other games are headed. It may have worked fine for say Rift but WoW is a different beast. I think they understand their mistakes. The sub loss alone forced them to dig deeper into why people quit. It's just a matter of undoing the wrong ideas while continuing with some of the good ideas from WOD. Or embracing some of the great ideas that came from MOP.

But the blame should be able to be shouldered by someone. Someone allowed this direction to take place, someone signed off on it. Someone gives direction.

They don't just say "Hey guys we need to make a new expansion... we're thinking "Legion" have fun, be sure to make it demony!" "Okay, now go, have fun!"

In direct response to your statement, how would having a younger staff, force senior level employees into leaving, especially if that younger staff were driving the game into the ground? Wouldn't it be smart to assume that if a younger developer/junior developer made really poor decisions that resulted in millions of dollars lost, that they would be the ones unemployed? Not the senior level ones?

Greg has mentioned how "stuck in its ways" management is, and how there really wasn't room for advancement. This is a veiled way of saying how he would butt heads with big shots and nothing is/was going to change unless they left. So instead of waiting for that to happen he left.

It again suggests that someone higher up is calling the shots.

Greg, and Rob's response that it was a team effort is the definition of politically correct. It fingers no one, it burns no bridges. (It also doesn't jive...)

The only OTHER plausible scenario is that they were in part to blame for poor design choices and were asked to leave (or be fired). However, had this scenario occurred it would unlikely they would continue to talk about their previous employer in any light.

[Vishy]

Ahhhh jaylock threads. One of the things i didnt miss in my absence and return to game. Ugh.

[Deleted]

I think that's still subjective. You claim you aren't a noob. We can't verify that, just like we can't observe your own experience unless you have recorded footage of your adventures. Its like the whole conundrum of consciousness we can't observe it so how do we study it. I am sure if you posted that video an infinite number of people could/would come out of the woodwork to point out what you are doing wrong and why it is so 'hard' for you.

Also what patch in vanilla are you guys using on that private server? Because throughout the life of vanilla, they revisited every class and made significant changes during each class' review. Meaning yes, it could very well be difficult, possibly even more difficult than original designers had even intended or envisioned for its era.

The hardest part of this game has always been coordinating with other players. I have never experienced any true difficulty (beyond what is intended) when working with like minded, competent players.

The intended difficulty is:
(1) Experiencing fights for the first time and learning how to deal with various mechanics [every video game has this].
(2) Obtaining the appropriate equipment to deal with a given obstacle.

It was not is not, blizzard's intent that Archimonde be killed on day 1 with a handful of drops from completing the rest of the instance that week, and being full geared from the previous tier of content. You are supposed to build up your character in preparation for that fight. That is an intended difficulty one that steadily decreases as the weeks progress.

This is coming from someone who rolled a melee lock for the first several levels of vanilla btw... to my credit we did have firestone... my point is, that even being this level of noobish I never really found the game itself to be that difficult when proper coordination, leadership, and of course appropriate gear were all in place.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Razhork/simple
I don't think I'm a noob, but that's subjective I suppose. I play for the hard content as I find it compelling, fun and satisfying. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the game to be hardcore. Not that it ever was. But we're at a point where 3 shotting mobs during the questing experience is very real. Not dipping a single HP because you're killing the mobs before they ever get the chance to reach you.

I don't think questing and the general gameplay was hard, but compared to the WoW of today, it is certainly hard.

As for the private server; It was a 1.2.1 server afaik. I did Ragefire Chasm, Wailing Caverns, SFK and Sunken Temple. I really wish I had recorded the Sunken Temple run because holy shit. Trying to summon the Spirit of Hakkar was more intense than it should've been. I might jump back into the Vanilla server to record a dungeon run or questing in general. Having my Voidwalker tank a single minion isn't too difficult, but it gets really sketchy if you happen to pull 2 mobs. 3, you best run. Mix of mana, threat and the general damage and HP of the mobs. If you really want me to, I can provide the footage.

Heck, on the WoTLK server I play on right now it's still marginally harder than what we have today, but the dungeons and minions were heavily nerfed compared to Vanilla, but I actually feel like WoTLK hit the balance spot on, in terms of questing and dungeons for early level.

[threads]

New 730 and 740 PVP gear in S3

time to afk in bg's L O L

"With Arena Season 3 we’ll be introducing new gear, including Warmongering Aspirant gear at PvP item level 715, Warmongering Combatant gear at 730, and Warmongering Gladiator gear at 740."

too easy

doesn't pvp gear's ilvl scale down outside of BG/arenas?

[A dot Ham]

doesn't pvp gear's ilvl scale down outside of BG/arenas?

Yes, I have a suspicion that they will be testing some of the new PvP features of Legion. An entire new tier of PvP without a new tier of PvE is odd...

[Jaylock]

It's probably the same with Ghostcrawler, but neither will openly admit it. You never want to burn your bridges.

I'm sure they wont admit anything, but at least we get a glimpse into how they think about raid design by some of the comments they made. Rob Pardo saying games shouldnt be easy is proof of this.

As soon as Blizzard introduced LFR into the game, the QUALITY of the game started to diminish with it.

[bombayshow]

Activizard*

[huth]

I'm sure they wont admit anything, but at least we get a glimpse into how they think about raid design by some of the comments they made. Rob Pardo saying games shouldnt be easy is proof of this.

Well, he didn't say that. So what you're saying is there is no proof then?

Also, LFR was introduced shortly before MoP... which IMO was the best WoW was so far.