CoverItLive Q&A: Class Design & Balance -- (11/9)
To follow up on our first World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria developer Q&A on the CoverItLive platform, we’re gathering the entire class design team to field your questions on the past, present, and future of World of Warcraft classes. Anyone is welcome to join in the live Q&A this Wednesday, November 9, beginning at approximately 10:45 a.m. and concluding around noon PST.
You can read along via the CoverItLive client embedded below while the Q&A is live. To participate, you just use your Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or OpenID credentials, or simply sign in as a guest. If you’re on the go while the event’s underway on Wednesday, be sure to check out the free mobile apps available on the Android Market and iTunes Store.
We’ll see you back here on Wednesday morning! (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Daily Quests and Game Design
We typically provide some boundaries because, as you've illustrated, something that we allow, is something that can all too easily seem mandatory. That's not what we want, but we do want to provide a reason to come into the game, be in the world, and see what's happening on a frequent basis. It's nice to also be able to offer some rewards for doing that. Naturally, dailies shouldn't be the only way to accrue rewards, and they aren't. Dailies were, in part, a response to a World of Warcraft where there wasn't a lot of incentive to come play on non-raid days, since for many players, the only way to progress became dungeon runs and, for a few, raiding. We also wanted to provide another means of acquiring currency aside from professions, and new ways to acquire reputation with important factions too. They're designed to hit a lot of notes (I'm probably missing some), and I think that they're pretty successful. You don't have to hit your cap, (indeed, one of our fears about a raised daily cap is that players might feel compelled to hit the new, higher cap) but you can if you want to put in the time. Naturally, we also want to continue to add other means of progression to the end-game, and we're looking for ways to do so in a fun and compelling way.
I get concerned when I see players throwing out words like 'bad design'. Perhaps an individual dislikes a design choice, and that's fine. We do our best, but World of Warcraft can't be all things to all people, all the time. That said, making a value judgment about whether the design is 'bad' or not is not only un-constructive, but in the vast majority of the cases I've seen, such an assessment reveals that the design was not well understood to begin with. These forums represent an opportunity to have a dialogue about the game. I think that choosing words that have context and meaning, and offering alternative solutions, makes for feedback which is more readily useful.
There are plenty of other dailies where the rewards have been non-power related. The goal was different for Molten Front, and we deliberately wanted to offer a separate path to power for interested players. So, we wanted it to be compelling in that way. Still, it remains that there are alternative, non-raid, paths to power aside from Molten Front.
It could be argued that, by adding nuances to the zones they're in, they do enrich the game. They add things to hunt for, to seek out, and achieve. They're not easy to get, and that's fine, because they weren't designed to be easy to get. It's a very particular kind of goal for a particular kind of player - we don't expect everyone to pursue them, and if it's not fun for you to do so, then hopefully there are fun goals for you to achieve that are suited to your playstyle.I don't think it would be reasonable to suggest that we haven't made mistakes. We've made them, and acknowledged them throughout the years. There are, however, differences between mistakes and bad design.
That said, those mistakes haven't typically aligned with the criticisms of 'bad design' I was referring to. Like I said, in just about every post where I've personally seen the words 'bad design' used, there was also a fundamental lack of understanding about design in general.
Usually, it boils down to just another way for people to try to enforce their vision of what World of Warcraft should be. I'm just pointing out that using that tactic in one's feedback is a good way to start off on the wrong foot. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
LFR Loot Rules: Questions and Quirks
What we are doing for 4.3 with the Raid Finder looting system (detailed here:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3608426) is an experiment in order to try and reduce loot drama without removing the chance to benefit from offspec gear completely. In fact, a lot of what we are trying with Raid Finder for 4.3 is our very first attempt at a design that is going to need a lot of iteration before we’re happy with how it works. We’ll use the information we gather on the new looting system (we can call it Need+, for simplicity's sake) and Raid Finder in 4.3 to make both features even better for Mists of Pandaria.
The game currently does not have a very robust notion of what your spec is, so for now we can’t make the loot rules very stringent, other than checking your current role. In Mists of Pandaria, the game will have a well-developed "concept" of spec, and we can do things like let an Enhancement shaman roll need plus on an Agility axe without letting the Restoration shaman roll need plus. (The Resto shaman could still roll need though, since shaman can use axes and the player might presumably have an Enhancement offspec.) (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Item Squishing and Old Raids
It seems to me that some of those that have expressed misgivings about the squish are worried about feeling 'nerfed' when facing older content, but the item squish shouldn't mean that soloing older raid content will die, necessarily. Though we appreciate the feedback, I think it's safe to say that we wouldn't want anyone to turn their back on the idea purely out of concern for losing the ability to take down older raids solo or in small groups.
Isn't the point of big numbers that they're big relative to the other numbers in the game, though? I can't speak for you, obviously, but I enjoyed putting out big numbers in previous expansions, and I expect that once I got a feel for the new baselines, I'd likely feel the same way in the future as well. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Shadow Priest Set Bonus
Shadow Word: Death ignores absorption effects for purposes of the mana returned. The “damaging attack” part is still reduced by absorption effects though. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Deathwing's Spine encounter, No hunter gear?
The trinket Wrath of Unchaining is intended to proc on both melee and ranged attacks. We will fix the trinket so that it does. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
A Day in the Life of a Diablo III Developer
Over on Blizzard.com, we’ve just published “A Day in the Life… Mike Nicholson.” Mike is a Senior Artist on the Diablo III Team and a UI Specialist. In this, the first of a series, we asked Mike to answer the question “What would it be like to actually work for Blizzard?”
You can read the full article
here. (
Blue Tracker /
Official Forums)
Yet another Timewalking loot post ( As directed by GM)
Opened timewalking Cache before hotfix
The WoW Companion App is Retiring
Did Blizzard just hotfix an ilvl requirement onto Awakened LFR?
Best way to farm Tusks of Mannoroth?
MMO-Champion
Recent Blue Posts
Recent Forum Posts
Originally Posted by Simca
Reply With Quote
