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  1. #781
    Quote Originally Posted by Belisaurio View Post
    I don't see challenge modes like that. I mean, for progress in MoP we are doing:
    Leveling (quests)--->Dungeons/scenarios--->max lvl--->H.Dungeons/H.Scenarios--->Raid LFR---->Raid Normal--->Raid Hardmode.

    I see that 5 of 7 path have a really close difficult-mode. This is not a good progression, and now, I think that it's too late to try something different. I find challenge- modes out of the progression path, like battle pets. It's not required for anything and belong to "mini-games of wow" thing.

    So, knowing that, I can't see any similar about challenge modes and heroic dungeons (maybe, in some cases, the difficult, but only in some cases). In BC (I'm not saying that was the Golden Age or anything), the progression path was more logic:
    leveling (quests)--->Leveling (group quests)---->dungeons---->max level---->H.Dungeons---->raids (10 man) /////Hard H. Dungeons---->Raids (25 man).

    This are 4 different difficult modes in the same progression path. So every step that you did, was a real progression in everything, not just ilvl. Of course that system has a lot of fails, but we can compare H.Dungeons (BC) vs H.Dungeons (MoP) and challenge modes can't be compared because are out the main panorama.
    You misunderstand what I was saying. I never said Challenge Modes were part of progression. The old version of "heroic" dungeons was removed from the progression path. The MoP heroic dungeons are intended to be equivalent to the previous exp max level normal mode dungeons. Comparing heroic previous exp dungeons to heroic MoP dungeons is not an accurate comparison because they fall in different levels of the progression path.

    TBC/WotLK/Cata Progression : hit max level -> do normal mode max level dungeons -> do heroic dungeons -> raid
    MoP Progression : hit max level -> do heroic dungeons -> raid

    So the step right after "hit max level" is where you should be doing the comparisons. That was explained by Blizz before MoP launched.

  2. #782
    Quote Originally Posted by silentk59 View Post
    I think iam kind of at a loss here. I find it hard to believe that he actually thinks they were 'hard'.

    By the middle/end of the expansion I remember steamrolling them like any other heroic dungeon. At the beginning of the expansion they were a little difficult, required some CC but thats about it.

    By the middle of the expansion people were so geared that you could just pull 3-4 groups like a normal dungeon.

    I fail to ever see this point that he claims where heroics dungeons were really THAT hard to accomplish. Maybe its just me though.....


    They were not *easy* to pug at first. I don't remember names that well, but I think the 3rd boss in the Stonecore caused many pug wipes, as well as about any boss in Grim Batol I think? The one where you flew around on dragons. I only did these heroics at the earliest possible moment though, and was "progressing" through them along with everyone else, meaning nobody overgeared them at this time. But I loved these heroics, they were challenging but not impossibly scary like TBC heroics (with progression gear) and I thought they were some of the best looking instances ever made. Cata was probably my favorite expansion at the beginning.

    But ultimately this topic is about the dumbing down of WoW.
    I believe there are TWO, and only two, groups of people here. People who don't care and will take on whatever content they are given, and then the people who pug into a heroic like Stonecore and immediately leave because they don't want to have to deal with the potential of a wipe.

    I believe, a lot of people who complain about WoW being dumbed down are also the people who immediately leave a pug group when something goes wrong, or it seems like something might go wrong. They don't want to have to go through the challenge of WORKING WITH OTHER PLAYERS, the content doesn't matter. So when Blizz decides to make content easier, it is in part to do with the "elitist jerks" who do not wish to spend the time working with other players.

  3. #783
    They were. Mid to late expansion they'd been nerfed and you had better gear than they required.

  4. #784
    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    Come on... average wow player? Anyone with half a brain could do those heroics. The things you needed were:
    1. full normal gear (or near full)
    2. enchanted gear (not the most expensive ones but still enchanted with proper stuff)
    3. gemmed gear
    4. checked tactics (even a glance)
    That was a tall order in the first few weeks with maelstrom shards going for 3k gold apiece. Maybe this expectation was reasonable by the time that DS hit when shards were only 150 gold each.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    If you had that + couple of pots (health/mana) and a flask for your role (tho the flask wouldn't be needed specifically), it would be totally managable.
    Seriously? Flask up for heroics? Maybe for some classes this was feasible. The mats weren't that easy to come by for some others.
    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    The fact remains:

    1. people thought to go in with questgreens/blues - OMG I am wiping... I cannot do this dps/healing/take punishment, this is insane!!! Help blizzard!!!
    Well, yes. What else did you expect a newly dinged 85 to do in the first three months of the game? Have their future main go back in time and hand some BoE epics to their alts? Grind the three factions that actually held useful purples for you before setting foot in a dungeon? The point of heroic dungeons is to gear your newly dinged character.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    2. people did not enchant their gear
    3. people did not gem their gear
    Again, this was not even a possibility for most players until post-troll heroics because the price of shards was sky high before then. This expectation is reasonable for raids, but too much for pug heroics.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    I was GM of a "hardcore/committed" guild back in Cata. preCata I was recruiting like mad for the new expansion. As recruits were already slim, I just invited everyone that was interested and could meet out raidtimes. Gave everyone a chance to raid with us.

    I had one prerequisite tho: gain itemlevel X and be gemmed/enchanted properly.
    And that's perfectly reasonable for guild raids. That's not a reasonable expectation for heroic dungeons that are supposed to be puggable and only drop blue gear.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    Think I had about 20 recruits. Of those 20 only 2 made it. People were casually leveling at their own pace. Meanwhile I did set a specific time in which they needed to be at the required level etc. I am talking about people who were at their pc almost 80% of the day. They just couldn't rush through content. They were so slow. They would meet the requirement perhaps 2 months after cata came out.
    Not surprising. Between having to CC every single trash pull, dealing with multiple wipes, and replacing rage quitters, each heroic dungeon could easily take 3-4 hours.

  5. #785
    Quote Originally Posted by Ronduwil View Post
    snip.
    thanks for your response.

    Sadly I don't think (Could be wrong) you got the message. The message inherently is: do not go into heroic until you are ready for it! And by the time those 3 months you are talking about were gone, they nerfed the content in this case already. Anyway if they hadn't these players would finally be able to do even more challenging stuff = heroic 5 mans.

  6. #786
    From WotLK people had the mindset that heroics are a faceroll experience where you can ignore most of the mechanics, rushing through it while aoing groups of trash.
    This style made people not used to basic things like CC, which was common pre WotLK.

    Another problem was LFD in general, since random groups (in addition to the aboce mindset) and harder content does not work well together.
    "A fool's paradise is a wise man's hell!"

    WoW leveling/heroic/LFR difficulty in one line of code:
    do {press (AnyKey)} until MobHealth=0;

  7. #787
    They were hard at the start of the expansion, still easier than TBC heroics though. I liked how well they were balanced, but I didn't really care when they were nerfed.
    Probably running on a Pentium 4

  8. #788
    Quote Originally Posted by Vaelorian View Post
    thanks for your response.

    Sadly I don't think (Could be wrong) you got the message. The message inherently is: do not go into heroic until you are ready for it! And by the time those 3 months you are talking about were gone, they nerfed the content in this case already. Anyway if they hadn't these players would finally be able to do even more challenging stuff = heroic 5 mans.
    In Cata, delaying going into heroics could actually make things harder. The best players finished gearing up their mains in heroics and moved on to raids, so the quality of the players you ran into in LFD declined with time.
    "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
    "The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
    "Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"

  9. #789
    Legendary! Deficineiron's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    In Cata, delaying going into heroics could actually make things harder. The best players finished gearing up their mains in heroics and moved on to raids, so the quality of the players you ran into in LFD declined with time.
    repeatedly I have read that very early in cat., LFD's heroics was actually workable in many cases due to the player type who was hitting 85 that fast (folks who knew how to cc, kill order, work in a group, probably quite a % with tbc heroic experience) as well. kind-of a self-selecting mechanism, as the rest of the bell curve gets to 85.

    Obviously blizzard reacted to the initial issues by simply mass-nerfing (I have speculated that the hard-content faction was essentially vanquished there), but I wonder what they would have done if they could have done it over from scratch. I can think of a few different approaches which wouldn't have impacted dev time much vs. what they must have used anyway. (since obviously the whole game is on a budget which strictly limits their ability to produce content or tune varying difficulties more than they already do, based on repeated comments from them).
    Authors I have enjoyed enough to mention here: JRR Tolkein, Poul Anderson,Jack Vance, Gene Wolfe, Glen Cook, Brian Stableford, MAR Barker, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, WM Hodgson, Fredrick Brown, Robert SheckleyJohn Steakley, Joe Abercrombie, Robert Silverberg, the norse sagas, CJ Cherryh, PG Wodehouse, Clark Ashton Smith, Alastair Reynolds, Cordwainer Smith, LE Modesitt, L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, Stephen R Donaldon, and Jack L Chalker.

  10. #790
    Heroic dungeons don't have to be hard, theres hard content there if you want it, challenge modes and hardcore raids, but dungeons are not required to be hard. At the moment the only requirement is that they give me JP or Valor and do it as quickly as possible so I can get back to doing the things I like to do and if someone with a new character gets their loot faster with less competition because I am there for valor then all the better for everyone in the group.

  11. #791
    Quote Originally Posted by DeadmanWalking View Post
    At the moment the only requirement is that they give me JP or Valor and do it as quickly as possible so I can get back to doing the things I like to do...
    One vote for vending machine-style content creation. Tally that.

  12. #792
    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    In Cata, delaying going into heroics could actually make things harder. The best players finished gearing up their mains in heroics and moved on to raids, so the quality of the players you ran into in LFD declined with time.
    True but we're talking about players who felt that cata heroics were difficult. What do you do when you're not quite up to it? Yes you gear up and sort yourself out. I had a blasr with these heroics. Also when pugging. But some people either did not belong there yet due to gear, they did not listen to friendly advice (tactics) or were unable to cc properly. Or all at once. So my advice again is take a step back and go do content where there are still boons to get

  13. #793
    heroic shattered halls was hard

  14. #794
    Quote Originally Posted by Deficineiron View Post
    Obviously blizzard reacted to the initial issues by simply mass-nerfing (I have speculated that the hard-content faction was essentially vanquished there), but I wonder what they would have done if they could have done it over from scratch. I can think of a few different approaches which wouldn't have impacted dev time much vs. what they must have used anyway. (since obviously the whole game is on a budget which strictly limits their ability to produce content or tune varying difficulties more than they already do, based on repeated comments from them).
    They've never given us the details of the process that led up to Cataclysm. It would still be very interesting to know what constraints and preconceptions led them to that design. That might also tell us what else they might have done instead, if those initial conditions had been tweaked.

    I'm going to be paying close attention to what any of the top WoW devs say after they leave Blizzard. They have their nondisclosure agreements, I'm sure, but those shouldn't last forever.
    "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
    "The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
    "Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"

  15. #795
    Cata heroics at launch were extremely challenging, but in a good way. After a week they nerfed them to the ground, and that's the version most people 'experienced', so yea, GC is accurate when he said they were hard.

    Too bad they nerfed it to cater to the casual crowd that was getting stomped (in early dungeon gear...).

    They actually reminded me of the heroics in TBC, any mistake was a death, and extremely fun to run!

  16. #796
    Quote Originally Posted by Bellatryxx View Post
    To be fair, there were plenty of guides readily available for all those dungeons on various websites like WoWhead, WoWpedia etc before inclusion of Dungeon Journal. There really is no excuse for ignorance in WoW when all that you need to know is just a few clicks away. Is it unreasonable to expect people to at LEAST know fights beforehand so they don't have to be hand-held?
    Why is this called ignorance? I never understood it. I call it cheating knowing the fight before doing it. Did you played Warcraft III campains and started to look for guides before even trying ? Stuff like this makes it impossible to even have fun in normal modes.

    I don't think a MMO can exist with so much outside information. It's just wrong on so many levels. It's like playing footbal and knowing where your opponent is gonna pass. What's the point of playing that game? The guy that did the tactic is the one that played the game, not you a simple minded creature the just learned how to read.

  17. #797
    Quote Originally Posted by hulkgor View Post
    Cata heroics at launch were extremely challenging, but in a good way. After a week they nerfed them to the ground,
    What nerf was that? After a week the heroics were still too hard for the tastes/abilities of most players. More nerfing came later, particularly the Luck of the Draw buff.
    "There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
    "The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
    "Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"

  18. #798
    they weren't brutally difficult like shattered halls, but they were sufficiently challenging and annoying.

    most of the reason people wiped endlessly in them is because they were spoiled by wrath "heroics" and tried to mass aoe everything and died due to unhealable amounts of damage. instead of adapting and overcoming (cc, some small amount of organization, creative tactics like kiting or offhealing), they went to the forums in droves to have it nerfed down so they mass aoe fests were once again the most effective way to farm pre-raid gear.

  19. #799
    Quote Originally Posted by Osmeric View Post
    In Cata, delaying going into heroics could actually make things harder. The best players finished gearing up their mains in heroics and moved on to raids, so the quality of the players you ran into in LFD declined with time.
    Not to mention that INSANE idea they made where they put the final three Hour of Twilight dungeons into its own selectable isolated bracket.

    By doing that, not only did players get burnt out of those dungeons after the first 3 days of playing... but it pulled every single well-geared player OUT of the older dungeons - thus reducing the old dungeons back into the launch-day hell grinds.

  20. #800
    Warchief Byniri's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hulkgor View Post
    Cata heroics at launch were extremely challenging, but in a good way. After a week they nerfed them to the ground, and that's the version most people 'experienced', so yea, GC is accurate when he said they were hard.
    A week?

    The nerfs happened like 3(?) months in.
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