Amount of Changes in Mists of Pandaria
This is a really tricky space for class designers to navigate. We see a lot of "why won't you fix my issues?" pleas mixed in with "I don't want to relearn how to play." Neither opinion is right or wrong of course, and there is a lot of subjectivity about what each mean. "I only wanted you to change A and B, not C and D" is posted in the same thread as "Please don't change A!" Even the OP above had to add "don't change... except for...."
The talent changes do give us the opportunity to clean up (in our parlance) various rotations because we now have the concept of spec spells. Previously, we often had to jump through hoops to keep players from having to use awkward yet higher DPS rotations.
To use one example, we didn't want Fury warriors to have to "cast" Slams and most Fury warriors didn't want to either (meaning we weren't just smacking players' wrists for finding a way to play that we had not envisioned). But any time we needed to buff Slam for Arms, we risked Fury side effects unless we messed with the Bloodsurge proc for Fury to keep Slam the same for them. In Mists we can just make Slam an Arms spec spell to avoid that issue completely. There are many other comparisons, especially for rogues and warlocks who often incorporated many more buttons than they needed to do to execute a rotation just because those buttons were there.
Similarly, it gives us a chance to clean up action bars a little by doing things like streamlining the number of heals non-healers need. Shadow needs some heals to feel like a priest, but it doesn't need the repertoire that a Holy priest has.
But these changes, made with the best of intentions, still count as changes. Returning players, especially players returning from early Cataclysm or Lich King still have to learn them. I had a warrior player the other day ask me why he needed Heroic Throw and Heroic Leap because they were just extra buttons on his bars, yet I also imagined the outrage if we tried to prune them.
We really try not to make change for changes sake (and you are free to call us on it if you think you see it). Every change is to solve some problem, likely a problem that representatives of the various classes and specs have advocated at one point or another. (Here is where players will typically say "I have been an X for 8 years, and I never remember seeing someone ask for Y" - please don't turn the rest of this thread into that).
We have also been trying to limit large class changes to expansions and not patches, even though that policy frustrates players as well who don't want to wait many months for a more dynamic rotation or a quality of life improvement. It's a design philosophy challenge for sure.
The best advice I can give you (any of you) is to offer specifics. Generic "I don't like my guy anymore" doesn't give us much indication of what we would have to do to get you to want to play him again. If there is a change you don't like, let us know, but be prepared to defend that position against other players who may disagree with you. We're not actually looking for players to vote on changes, but it is helpful for us to see both sides of a debate.
Also remember that nearly every change at this stage is made for fun and not for balance. That means our hands aren't tied. But it also means we are making decisions based on something really subjective upon which players very possibly are not going to agree.I find the discussion really interesting, especially when it sticks to the topic of "How much change is appropriate?" and doesn't try and discuss every single class in one thread.
I did want to clarify a few points just to make sure we are all on the same page.
We haven't changed healing. Healing should feel really similar to how it felt in Cataclysm, but a little more forgiving when you're still in greens and blues.
We do want to give tanks more control over their survivability, but that's because we've really toned down the effort it takes to maintain threat, so we want tanks to have something upon which to focus their attention.
We also spend a great deal of effort balancing at 85. As we have mentioned before, we want everyone who logs in when the expansion goes live to have about the same amount of damage and healing that they have today in Cataclysm. The sources of some of that damage and healing will change, but overall the numbers should be familiar. (
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Exploiting Bugs and Glitches in Beta.
I'm unable to go into specifics so I'll just say this:
If you come across a bug and you want to retain your ability to test in the beta, report it and don't exploit it. (
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Ji Firepaw Feedback
Thanks. Your feedback has been received. I don't think we need another 100+ pages of discussion about one line of quest text or this will end up being a very long beta.
Whether or not you've contributed to this topic, it's time to move on. (
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10 and 25 Player Raid Size Balance
We'll continue making adjustments as necessary to keep 10- and 25-player raids within a relative alignment, in terms of time investment, difficulty and rewards. It may never be perfect, but we still see interest in both raid sizes for different reasons. And ultimately we'll continue designing 25-player raids as long as there are a decent number of guilds interested in the format. We've seen no evidence as of yet that such interest is waning to any degree that should cause us great concern.
We tend to begin raid design around 25 players anyway before tuning for the various sizes and difficulties. That, when combined with our intent to carry on with 25-player Raid Finder group sizes, makes it very much worth our time to continue designing 25-player raids.
Regardless of what players' personal preferences or opinions are regarding the varied raid formats in World of Warcraft, we don't see removing options as a smart choice in the foreseeable future. (
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Faction Favoritism
You act as though I don't think there's any disconnect at all, or that all complaints from Alliance players about perceived story imbalances between factions are baseless.
These are fallacies which, as with this one below from you, I was initially biting my thumb at in my post you quoted.
The frustrating thing, though, is that you haven’t just received criticism, but constructive criticism as well. Plenty of people have offered copious amounts of suggestions since even before the release of Cataclysm, and you’ve ignored every single one.
You do everyone on the forums, yourself included, a disservice by making the leap in logic that, because we didn't act upon feedback submitted to us, we ignored it. Many of the suggestions you referenced in your post would've been pretty massive undertakings toward further redesigning the 1-60 experience in Cataclysm. From your point of view, and given how you feel about Alliance design, it's probably a pretty easy call. The decision should've been to make those changes to better flesh out the Alliance and, in particular, worgen story.
But we don't get to do this over, so we have to look at it from a pragmatic standpoint. Regardless of what we know today, it still would've been an incredible risk back then to delay the expansion, just to further redo the 1-60 experience to ensure the Alliance portion cannot be seen as anything other than equivalent (at least) to the Horde portion, in terms of quality. This is not to mention that, to a sadly large extent, the revamp of the 1-60 experience went pretty unnoticed to the average player. The average player has been more concerned about a lack of content at level 85 than what zone story lines ended more in favor of the Horde than vice versa.
And since we weren't going to change the expansion's story partway through purely based on the concern that players didn't feel Thrall was a neutral enough character, we went ahead with our plan.
Now enter Mists development. For months now we've been listening to the Alliance concerns on all types of matters, from lore, to faction pride, to populations, to behavior at BlizzCon, etc. And so many of them are legitimate. We've taken a lot of this to heart while developing the next expansion, while also building upon the larger story that's sure to span many more expansions and even new games (hopefully) down the road.
But then these valid concerns get whittled away and almost lose their meaning as they're put on this tit-for-tat list, where they're used as emotional leverage. And suddenly every little piece of information that comes out regarding future content gets ripped apart to determine exactly where our true motivations and biases lay. It actually increases the social divide between players, inflames the loudest people on both sides of the aisle, and prevents us from getting any reasonable word in edgewise without being cut down for our perceived ignorance in all matters relating to Alliance player wants/needs, if not our malicious attempt to outright make the Horde the cooler faction by story and design.
While both sides have done some pretty great and pretty terrible things in the stories past, there's a reason we don't make one the definitively evil or definitely good side (don't point to a few moments on a recent timeline to refute this point -- I'm talking big picture). Playing with friends aside, it's still a goal of ours to make sure that you're playing whatever faction and race you think is coolest, or which one you identify with or enjoy most. To think we're actively designing the game any other way is to get caught up in this debate so much so that you lose sight of what the game is all about.
I'm proud to be all gnome when it's time to crawl dungeons with my Alliance friends. I'm excited to represent goblins when it's time to collect bounties with my Horde friends. That said, my ultimate affinity is for my gnome and the Alliance, if not purely because that's how I ultimately jumped on the Warcraft train.
And I'm sure plenty of you out there would spit on both of those races. And -- since these words have never come back to bite anyone in the past -- I say bring 'em on. (
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