This game needs to be more difficult.

[Seegtease]

Of course, it never will be, because it would lose subscribers, I just wish it were.

Now before everyone gets to yelling "lol link your h rag cheevie or gtfo", you're missing my point.

Just because the most recent, highest end, most difficult content can be called hard does not mean the game itself can be called difficult. Yeah, every game has hard content. But some games have a whole path of difficulty that leads to that final hard challenge. WoW does not.

While questing, you're presented with very, very few risks of dying. Sure, you can pull obscene amount of enemies at once and try to AoE them to try and make the game feel more difficult, but ultimately it's not necessary. The baseline has the bar set extremely low. Rarely during this process do you have to really think about clever use of abilities to survive.

And dungeons while leveling are an utter joke. Unless you pull half the instance, or you have a seriously lacking group, you're not going to have any challenge at all clearing the enemies and bosses. Heck, I've cleared bosses solo before in dungeons (relevant for my level, via dungeon finder, after people left). This shouldn't even be possible. Not for any class.

My point?

The problem with the game being too easy (other than being a boring leveling process) is that it doesn't prepare someone for endgame. They spend most of the game facerolling all content without knowing much about what they are doing (or being carried, so they can get away with doing even LESS), so when they get to 85 and start doing heroics or raiding, they are the bane of groups, the downfalls of all the competent players, since it only takes a few of those per raid to mess it up for everyone else, even if the rest are good.

By making the game unreasonably accessible for all players, including people who are absolutely terrible at video games, they're really messing up the group dynamic of endgame content.

TLDR: The leveling process should prepare players for endgame.

It's just a rant, basically, since we know money prevails over all. Any other good games out there that challenge you ALL the way to max, not just the last 5% of content?

[aztr0]

You wasted your time typing your little story, just like I wasted my time replying. This kind of thread is brought up every day or every few days. Maybe they should just do a megathread for this stuff. :x.

[Peyj]

I was about ready to type the "Have you killed H Rag?" and so on because I assumed this would be a complaint about the ease of raiding.

However, I agree. The levelling process - including dungeons - is boring to the point of a snorefest. I imagine you could level up entirely with Auto-Attack without much trouble nowadays.

I have no idea what the solution is. I'm one of the presumably rare players who would actually be out there, levelling alt after alt, if there was still any kind of attention required while you did it. Because it is so boring and easy and fast, I just plain don't play alts. And I used to be an altoholic.

That said, there are players out there who welcome the speed and ease of it all, and would probably be outraged if levelling went back to being even remotely difficult or slow. I just don't have any answers for a reasonable solution, but I agree, it is definitely a big problem.

[twh]

You wasted your time typing your little story, just like I wasted my time replying. This kind of thread is brought up every day or every few days. Maybe they should just do a megathread for this stuff. :x.

daily? i'd say several times day. can't it be closed?

[skeebopshapow]

should have played cata launch. pre nerf heroics + hc t11 were HARD. glad i got to play and complete it all before the nerfs

[Osmeric]

Blizzard listened to people like you when they designed Cataclysm. They probably hate you all now.

[Clockwork Pinkie]

=

TLDR: The leveling process should prepare players for endgame.

What is there to prepare for? All the fights use common sense. There has never been anthing hard about them, it's just trying to get your whole group to use that common sense to defeat the boss and move on, not just trying to pad the meters.

[Nathan1347]

There are so many variables into making a game difficult, it's not even funny. You make it too hard, new people wont like the game. Make it too easy, people don't keep playing.

I'd hate to be in Blizzard's shoes.

[Deleted]

I was never a quiter or a doomsayer

But i just did the available new bosses on LFraid (i was a raider the entire wow carrier) and i feel like it is time to look for another game.

[Flutterguy]

I heard Dwarven Fortress was kinda challenging.

[iceberg265]

Wtf is a cheevie?

[Auloria]

Having watched several total noobs (friends I've gotten to play wow) attempt to quest by themselves, I completely disagree with you. Dying constantly is not fun.

I counter, that there needs to be a step between questing and Cata dungeons, to prepare them for endgame. I like to think that something like Molten Front is a good step in the right direction, the one friend that didn't give up on WoW is ever so slowly become less completely hopeless.

[Deleted]

i got my warlock to 85 in under 2 days played....



that shouldn't even be possible. i just dotted everything and AFKd the whole levelling process.

[Chunkyman]

lol link your h rag cheevie or gtfo

[Poodles]

Blizzard listened to people like you when they designed Cataclysm. They probably hate you all now.

should have played cata launch. pre nerf heroics + hc t11 were HARD. glad i got to play and complete it all before the nerfs

Congrats for not reading the post or even his TLDR...

I've been saying this since cata's launch. The rework of the old world made questing completely faceroll. Low level dungeons are far too easy (hey look, a mage is tanking, cool....NOT).

Add to that making endgame harder, and you have a seriously screwed up skill curve that drives people away because leveling is even more grindy and boring and endgame is too hard.

[Jeina]

How exactly are you supposed to prepare for endgame by leveling?

If they got anymore specific about what you're supposed to do, the "It's too easy" crowd would be worse than they already are.

Short of printing your rotation out for you, there's nothing more they can do. Everything you need to know is in the tooltip and in game tips. Blizzard acknowledges the off-site resources and encourages people to use them.

Blame the players for not learning how to play. There's nothing more Blizzard can do short of printing it out on a page step for step and giving it to you.

[Joodoc]

Of course, it never will be, because it would lose subscribers, I just wish it were.

Now before everyone gets to yelling "lol link your h rag cheevie or gtfo", you're missing my point.

Just because the most recent, highest end, most difficult content can be called hard does not mean the game itself can be called difficult. Yeah, every game has hard content. But some games have a whole path of difficulty that leads to that final hard challenge. WoW does not.

While questing, you're presented with very, very few risks of dying. Sure, you can pull obscene amount of enemies at once and try to AoE them to try and make the game feel more difficult, but ultimately it's not necessary. The baseline has the bar set extremely low. Rarely during this process do you have to really think about clever use of abilities to survive.

And dungeons while leveling are an utter joke. Unless you pull half the instance, or you have a seriously lacking group, you're not going to have any challenge at all clearing the enemies and bosses. Heck, I've cleared bosses solo before in dungeons (relevant for my level, via dungeon finder, after people left). This shouldn't even be possible. Not for any class.

My point?

The problem with the game being too easy (other than being a boring leveling process) is that it doesn't prepare someone for endgame. They spend most of the game facerolling all content without knowing much about what they are doing (or being carried, so they can get away with doing even LESS), so when they get to 85 and start doing heroics or raiding, they are the bane of groups, the downfalls of all the competent players, since it only takes a few of those per raid to mess it up for everyone else, even if the rest are good.

By making the game unreasonably accessible for all players, including people who are absolutely terrible at video games, they're really messing up the group dynamic of endgame content.

TLDR: The leveling process should prepare players for endgame.

It's just a rant, basically, since we know money prevails over all. Any other good games out there that challenge you ALL the way to max, not just the last 5% of content?

Without BoA gear it really isn't possibel to solo bosses for the most part, and when stuff happens, tanks die or whatever, you DO use all yoru CDs cleverly and smartly to try and survive, least you should, rather than accept the wipe. I have had 4 "wipes" to trash in the new dungeons, and I only died to one of them because I was smart enough to immediatly pop demon form and fear one, stun and death coil the other till it is down. That is where the difficulty lies, in random stuff, the accidents, those happen when levelign too. also, the leveling process used to challenege you, a lot, but it took waaaay too long to get alts maxxed

---------- Post added 2011-12-01 at 06:04 PM ----------

Congrats for not reading the post or even his TLDR...

I've been saying this since cata's launch. The rework of the old world made questing completely faceroll. Low level dungeons are far too easy (hey look, a mage is tanking, cool....NOT).

Add to that making endgame harder, and you have a seriously screwed up skill curve that drives people away because leveling is even more grindy and boring and endgame is too hard.

Without BoAs those isntances are hard, just BoAs trivialize everything, the only instances that they are close to correct is 29, 39, etc, and it is still like BiS or really close, come 30, 40, etc you are incredibly OP, and that is why it is easy

and back in LK you could solo stuff, tanking was god aweful because dps woudl pull and have no issues, ret paladins being the worst, they coudl practically solo places, and this was when there were only a couple BoA pieces. It wasn't till BC content that tanking actually became viable

[Peyj]

should have played cata launch. pre nerf heroics + hc t11 were HARD. glad i got to play and complete it all before the nerfs

Blizzard listened to people like you when they designed Cataclysm. They probably hate you all now.

I'm going to assume neither of you actually read the post at all.

[neccowafer]

I agree that leveling, as it is right now, is a completely pointless waste of time during which you learn absolutely nothing.

It's not about leveling being hard. They could make leveling take the same amount of time it takes right now, but actually involve more use of skills and teaching opportunities. It's simply the difference between "Kite this mob to the next town while avoiding these hazards" which might take 60 seconds if you don't mess up, let's say you suck and you mess up 5 times. 5 minutes. Or, you could spend 5 minutes rounding up 10 items that drop from these mobs with a less than 100% drop rate, while mindlessly mashing any button that does damage, because they'll die faster than you even if you autoattack. These things both take 5 minutes, but one is more epic, more fun, and actually involves using abilities or learning about utilities. Use your slows, use your speed boosts, the quest could even GIVE YOU slowing traps to put down so it's not class biased. You're a new player and just learned about kiting. If this mob hits you, it should be a two shot.

They tried making you actually avoid things and such in some of the cata quests, but they are so undertuned that you can ignore it. If you can ignore a mechanic and still succeed, it's like it doesn't exist.




The mechanics in heroics and raids are common sense to people who grew up playing video games and who are used to exercising the related skills in spacial reasoning and situational awareness, but to many players for whom WoW is their first video game or first MMO, or who have never played anything similar, leveling should actually offer them some chance to learn what they're supposed to do. I don't feel like writing my customary essay on this topic, so I'm going to quote myself from another thread that someone had made about how they want to be able to skip leveling.

Also, you don't need heirlooms for low level dungeons to be trivial. I just switched servers and I'm leveling 3 different characters with no looms at all and I have not noticed a major difference, really. I'm just full blues all the time. I'm losing a very small amount of stats.

I think that leveling has some issues right now.

It's fast, but it's also somewhat pointless, because none of the quests or overworld content really makes you use any class abilities. Leveling is so easy that it's trivial, all the time, so of course no one wants to waste time with it. Blizzard has gotten the idea that fast and trivial are the same thing, when really, I think there should be fewer total quests you need to do, but more quests that actually help you learn to play the game. They got the right idea with some cata quests with "stay out of the fire" and "dodge the attack" elements but most of the time it's so trivial you don't need to listen.

Most players level to max while learning little about their character. You mash buttons and things die. If leveling was both fast and informative I think that'd be ideal. More tutorial quests, more quests with non-ignoreable mechanics. Class-specific (short, not tedious like vanilla) classes that teach uses for CCs, slows, and other utility in ways that make you use the ability to win. Not hard, just teaching. Not slow and tedious, but brisk. Less "kill 100 of this thing", more "use this iconic class ability to do something strategic against a boss or spawned quest mob 1-2 times."

Leveling is a really really unproductive experience as it is. I could level as a Fire mage, using only Frost skills, and make it to 85 without dying even one time most likely. It's sort of sad.


In most good console games, you have to do something with your abilities as you get them and you learn what you need to do. Imagine playing Metroid and getting missiles and just ignoring them and not ever using them. You couldn't progress. The game forces you to learn. Abilities in WoW are not needed to level though, so you don't care. You can get all the way to 85 never once realizing that you should be using that Pyroblast thing you unlocked at level 10, because it's not necessary to use it to make it through the game.

Imagine playing Ocarina of Time and deciding that you are just not gonna use the Ocarina. You'd get nowhere. In WoW you can NEVER use whatever your core, iconic ability is, and then you're max level and you suddenly have to start learning in order to do heroics and raids. If you learned the whole time, it wouldn't be nearly as overwhelming.

You don't actually even need to learn basic mechanics like slows, debuffs, poisons, etc. Because you can kill basically every necessary quest mob in the game by spamming frostbolt as a fire mage, or doing nothing but randomly mashing buttons as most melee specs. You never need to slow. Curing debuffs isn't your job unless you're a healer. You don't need to understand how poisons work.


Based on the current state of leveling where it is a completely pointless time sink for all but the newest of players, I am not surprised at the large amount of people I hear from who want leveling to go by as fast as possible or be skipped.

[Deleted]

should have played cata launch. pre nerf heroics + hc t11 were HARD. glad i got to play and complete it all before the nerfs

No, they were not hard. It was 2 hours of hard when they were completely new.

The problem with this game? The gear scales too fast.
At the start of Cata, 5 mans needed CC because tanks were hella squishy. It didn't make it much harder, just more tactical, you had to be careful. Once you were fully geared in 346, you could steam-roll them and not CC at all and sometimes take 2 packs at once (I know from experience).
Instead, the gear should have reduced the risk, slightly improved DPS and made the tank take a few less hits to ease the healing. CC should still matter, just not as much.

You could 3 man the normal heroics and still have more DPS than when cata launched, the scaling is just too high.