Game was harder overall in TBC, like dungeons, heroics, questing, and such.
The only hard part in Pandaria, is the raiding, and nothing else. Everything else is just dumbed down for people who can't seem to complete shit.
Game was harder overall in TBC, like dungeons, heroics, questing, and such.
The only hard part in Pandaria, is the raiding, and nothing else. Everything else is just dumbed down for people who can't seem to complete shit.
For every more complicated element there are more streamlined and well communicated elements. People confuse refinement of the game and its core systems to be 'dumbing down' which is a fallacy.
The indiviudal difficulty in this game comes in two varieties: Combat and Time
Arguably there are less time sinks than there used to be, but this wasn't a hurdle of skill merely of investment. You can say that maybe some things are watered down, but not 'dumbed' down. Combat on the other hand is more complex than it has ever been. From single mobs in the open world to raid encounters, every single aspect of the game is more refined and heightened compared to each expansion before it.
I think people are forgetting that the only mechanics we had for mobs in the game were to interrupt annnnd that's it. Now mobs while questing have abilities that one shot you, requiring kiting or moving out of specific shaped areas. They also put complicated debuffs on you (like poison frogs and whatnot), and generally require more skill than anything ever has.
We have things like Brawler's Guild, Proving Grounds, and Rares that require advanced levels of play that people typically only displayed in high end raids. To not admit that the game has gotten more complex and the playerbase has rapidly evolved to make up for it would be outright lying.
Last edited by Kelimbror; 2013-10-08 at 03:14 PM.
BAD WOLF
I would definitely say it has. Many of the TBC and Vanilla wow bosses had mechanics similar to those in LFR just all the gear and fights were tweeked in such a way were it was either a DPS or a resist check. People are just expected to do and know more now. There is an unspoken meta that is just sort of assumed by the dev team. They know we have mods like DBM and dot timers and cool down counters ect. They know there are people that do extensive math to figure out optimum spec gear glyph ect. Before all they assumed was that 25 or 40 people were gonna show up and they would probably just have vent if they were hardcore.
While some people do not feel the need for these mods and don't run with them. Blizz has better numbers then us they know how many up us are running these UI tweeks and apparently its enough to warrent building the game around it.
raids harder
rest drool worthy
That's severely over-simplified, and not what i was suggesting at all. MoP got it right for a lot of things, there was a good amount of time invested in lvling, and then roughly the same amount of time invested again into gearing completely from rep rewards and dungeon drops. After that u were set for raiding. It's not excessive (yet still people moaned and bitched about "daily grinds"...lol get real it was nothing in comparison to previous expansions), yet it still required some work outside of raids. Much better than in TBC, where u had to EXCESSIVELY farm dungeons to even get into heroic modes, then farm those for those drops, that you needed to be able to do T4, which you had to clear to do T5, which you had....you know what, just check that nice TBC progression graph, it floats around on the interwebz
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Comparing the time it took until a boss was down with a COMPLETELY different time in the game, when preparation and game mechanics all were slower and more sluggish? Plus the comparison comes from someone who hasn't experienced any real kind of heroic or hardmode progression in years? Yeah, why would anyone complain about that when you present your opinion as obvious, elitist fact that anyone else would be stupid and noobish to doubt?
Go play heroic modes now, and get some progress there. Not to prove anything, just so you can actually compare based on your experience, and not from hearsay and watching youtube videos and loling at how fast the diaper raiders got their world firsts...
Just about every part of the game is much much easier now. Heroics are easier IMO than normal modes were back in TBC, questing is VERY easy, you can go from 1 to 90 and never ask for help from anyone for anything - hell some classes can solo dungeons lol. Only part that may or may not be more challenging is heroic modes, and it's only certain bosses (first 8 in SoO are fairly easy for example). Keep in mind BC didn't have an easy mode where you can go to, to learn the mechanics for a fight too, overall I'd say BC required much more skill.
When most of that so-called refinement effectively takes decision making processes out of the hands of the player, dumbing down is an entirely accurate descriptor.
Whew! At least one other person gets the notion that time investment is a factor in difficulty.The indiviudal difficulty in this game comes in two varieties: Combat and Time
I think the bosses themselves have more difficult mechanics, but on the other hand the preperation is easier/less time consuming and the arsenal of abilities a single character has now is a lot more versatile and powerful than in BC. Nearly every spec has some damage mitigation, blink, raid CDs, movement speed, slow, interrupt, stun, selfheal/heal etc.
Also some (quite annoying I must say) mechanics like watching your threat/mana as DPS have been simplified.
I was talking about interface changes, accesibility, etc. Not talent trees. So I agree. Though I will note that some changes (which I'm assuming you don't like) are better for the game and some original ideas(which I'm assuming you like) are arbitrary choices. It's kinda a wash really.
Just depends on if you're just talking about talent trees or not.
Can't tell if serious...
Last edited by Kelimbror; 2013-10-08 at 06:05 PM.
BAD WOLF
Ok, best to be safe as we all argue with eachother all over the place. Finding common ground is awkward, but delightful. I'm not sure why someone wouldn't agree that time is one of the challenges set in any game, but specifically MMOs. I mean it's not very difficult skill wise to go get the Insane title, but you don't see everyone walking around with it.
Same with rep grinds and whatnot. I'm awful at time challenges as I really don't have the proper dedication to get those things. I like that they exist though, because it gives me something to work towards when I'm feeling like it. It would be pretty boring if the only hurdle to get over was a skill based one. I like the balance WoW has always had in that respect.
BAD WOLF
Yeah, watching a video doesn't really tell you much about the gear tuning, which many people here are ignoring.
Example. Kael'Thas p2 wasn't that hard in theory. Just aoe down all the weapons. But it was tuned in such a way that unless your dps was really really good, killing enough of them is really really hard. Or Brutallus. Didn't have any fancy mechanics beyond regularly just taking the tank from 100% to dead in a second or two.
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And god almighty but they've really butchered the low level content's difficulty. I doubt its even possible to be killed by questmobs anymore, and we've taken to 2 manning the dungeons because its far too dull and speedy with a full group compared to the old days.
The hardest heroic mode bosses shit all over most tBC bosses including M'uru.
The average heroic mode boss is comparable to or easier than the average 25 man boss in tBC in terms of coordination required.
Originally Posted by High Overlord Saurfangi7-6700 @2.8GHz | Nvidia GTX 960M | 16GB DDR4-2400MHz | 1 TB Toshiba SSD| Dell XPS 15
Which reminds me that I still have some data from Brutallus parses. Here's one, cleared of names. Gives a better idea than youtube video. And I'd like to point out that Brutallus, together with Kalecgos, was not regarded as particularly difficult at all, beside being a gear check. Still he did this:
21:21'24.659 tank-warrior is afflicted by Stomp
[...]
21:21'28.669 priest-1's Greater Heal heals tank-warrior for 6150
21:21'29.119 paladin-1's Holy Light heals damage-dealer-1 (burn) for 3903
21:21'29.466 Brutallus's Swing hits tank-warrior for 10523 Physical
21:21'29.466 Brutallus's Swing hits tank-warrior for 4777 Physical (479 blocked)
21:21'29.542 priest-2's Greater Heal heals tank-warrior for 6129
21:21'29.884 shaman-2's Chain Heal heals damage-dealer-2 (ms) for 824
21:21'29.884 shaman-2's Chain Heal heals damage-dealer-3 (ms) for 3160
21:21'29.884 shaman-2's Chain Heal heals tank-warrior for 3518
21:21'30.320 paladin-2's Holy Light heals tank-warrior for 5460
21:21'30.320 shaman-2's Chain Heal heals heals damage-dealer-2 (ms) for 921
21:21'30.320 shaman-2's Chain Heal heals tank-warrior for 2018
21:21'30.320 shaman-2's Chain Heal heals heals damage-dealer-4 (ms) for 4641
21:21'30.320 priest-3's Circle of Healing heals heals damage-dealer-5 (ms) for 1001
21:21'30.320 priest-3's Circle of Healing heals heals damage-dealer-4 (ms) for 1251
21:21'30.320 priest-3's Circle of Healing heals heals damage-dealer-3 (ms) for 1259
21:21'30.320 priest-3's Circle of Healing heals heals damage-dealer-6 (ms) for 1238
21:21'30.547 Brutallus's Swing hits tank-warrior for 11202 Physical
21:21'30.547 Brutallus's Swing hits tank-warrior for 4854 Physical (479 blocked)
21:21'31.164 paladin-1's Holy Light heals damage-dealer-1 (burn) for 3895
21:21'31.465 Brutallus's Swing hits tank-warrior for 5492 Physical (479 blocked)
21:21'31.465 Brutallus's Swing hits tank-warrior for 11408 Physical (479 blocked)
21:21'32.278 tank-warrior dies
Six hits in 1.999" (last four are in 0.918").
The damage taken is:
10523
4777
11202
4854
5492
11408
No one is avoided. It's 48256 damage taken in two seconds (and roughly 33k is taken in the last 0.9").
Can't remember exactly how much HP protection warriors had at that point but should be roughly 24k top, raid buffed and including the Tauren racial.
Last edited by Memory; 2013-10-08 at 07:14 PM.
Short answer: no. I feel like TBC still held on to a lot of really annoying mechanics both in leveling, grouping, and the toughness of the enemies that we have not seen since then. While the game certainly has content that is "hard" the fact that you can see that content (or at least most of it) and NOT be in a 5 day a week raiding guild means the game is certainly more approachable (if not easier).
There was (and is) far more to WoW than raiding.
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You've put your finger on what I think is one of the big drivers behind sub loss: the slow whittling down of the game. Post-BC, whenever Blizzard has run into difficulties keeping a part of the game fun, interesting, or balanced, they've demonstrated a strong tendency towards simplification and removal. The end result is a game that looks the same, but has been gutted.
Edited to add: Raid bosses are one exception to this, which I suspect is why people are focusing on them so much.
Last edited by ringpriest; 2013-10-08 at 08:03 PM.
"In today’s America, conservatives who actually want to conserve are as rare as liberals who actually want to liberate. The once-significant language of an earlier era has had the meaning sucked right out of it, the better to serve as camouflage for a kleptocratic feeding frenzy in which both establishment parties participate with equal abandon" (Taking a break from the criminal, incompetent liars at the NSA, to bring you the above political observation, from The Archdruid Report.)
I just don't agree with either of your positions at all. The aspects that were "whittled" away and simplified are largely non-essential, mundane aspects such as reputation farming, professions and pre-raid gearing. For raiders, these are all little tasks, "homework" so to speak, that have little to do with the enjoyment and challenge of the raid itself. So I don't see how these things actually detract from your experience as a raider.
I've already stated how i think that it's a significant over-simplification, what Belisaurio said. And if you're referring to easier heroics, for example, I point you to Challenge Modes.
Everyone that thinks that heroics are oh-so-easy now and weren't oh-so-easy in BC didn't have raid gear in BC. If you're smashing through heroics in 8 minutes with your 4 ilvl 550 buddies, you would have been smashing through heroics in 8 minutes with your sunwell-geared buddies back then. The simple difference is that there are a lot more people who have better gear now, and gear trivializes content. If you actually went with a group that needed gear from heroics, they weren't trivial. In MoP, if you remember to a year ago, people occasionally died in some heroic dungeons before they quickly outgeared them.
From a tank's perspective, raid bossfights are much more involved now than they were in BC. Back then it was mostly throughput (can you push your gear to the highest percentile output), whereas now there are many more abilities to deal with, positioning to be in/move to, and generally much larger areas to fight in. Individual responsibility is at an all-time high, and there are additional duties that classes must do in order to succeed (tanks push decent dps, everyone mitigates damage on adds by stunning/silencing/kiting, some healers dps while healing, and everyone has some raid utility). For comparison, back in BC, it was basically a tank's job to run their rotation (which was figured out to keep threat and that's about it); now all tanks actively mitigate the damage they receive while simultaneously keeping damage up, which involves active decision-making (it's not just their gear + RNG that determines whether they pass/fail).
I will say that I miss Season Two more than anything about BC (rose colored glasses and all that rot), but I'm not sure the game's become any harder or easier in that regard--I just preferred the way pvp worked out back then (even though it had lots of problems/exploits). That might also be because in BC I was a better-than-average pvp'er, yet since so many people quit pvp since BC and the better players stuck around, I'm probably just average or even below average now.