Why do people deny they are simplifying the game when Blizz says explicitily they are

[Drilnos]

When you do nothing but add complexity four expansions in a row, eventually you're going to wind up outside the range you want to be in. WoW passed that point around five years ago. To that end, the question is not whether the simplification goes too far, but whether it goes far enough. Far enough that they can comfortably add things in at least a couple more expansions before they have to do this again. And that time will come.

[cFortyfive]

Because even using one button is a complex process for some.

[Dasani]

Your hyperbole is 1000000000000000000000000 times inaccurate (huehue). A 5 or 6 year old could...possibly get to level 50? 60? But after that they'd probably start to struggle and stop. Besides a short attention span and lack of long-term interest in any one thing it's much more difficult at that age to comprehend abstract ideas.

Not sure how many 5 or 6 year olds you know, but when wrath was current content my niece was only 5 years old and I let her play on a hunter whenever she was at my house and she got to 80 very easily which of course was the level cap at the time. She even did dungeons, although she was terrible at them, she almost never got kicked and got basically the best gear from 5 mans you could get.

As for the OP, anyone denying they are dumbing down the game is just in denial. Blizzard themselves are using horrible strawman arguments for the shit they are doing.

They cite examples like Serpent Sting being removed from survival hunters because it is uninvolved. You cast it once per fight and then it maintains it's self and you never have to cast it again. So I, and most others, agree with them that baking it into arcane shot is a better call than having that one button on your bar that you literally only hit once per encounter. I agree with the change, I think it's a good one.

However that isn't where it stops. They make completely unreasonable and unneeded changes to a multitude of classes, removing abilities that they DO actually use routinely. It's change for the sake of change and ripping abilities off your bar just to make it simpler and easier to play which is quite frankly disgusting. After loading up my characters on beta for the first time, my action bars looked barren. So many gaps where things used to be that simply don't exist anymore. Core rotational abilities, raid cooldowns, all kinds of shit gone.

I worry WOD will be a huge deal for WOW in that it'll hurt it more than any other expansion before it has. There has NEVER been as huge and drastic changes as there are coming in WOD. Even class-specific major changes like the changeover with hunters going from mana to focus, those were good things, and they were obviously good things from the first time they were even mentioned. Any hunter who actually played with mana and had to endure the garbage that was Aspect of the Viper was like "FUCK YES! FINALLY!". Only people who were against this change were the minority of hipsters that wanted it to stay mana just because it always was mana on live. When they revamped warlocks and gave each spec it's own unique identity, it was controversial because it really changed how they played and made them all pretty different from each other and so on. I think a lot of people were pretty happy with the changes though, and especially after playing with the new system, there may be a few specific examples of things they dont like such as not having corruption or curse of agony as destro, that sort of thing, but mostly it's for the best.

But having every class lose heaps of abilities, most of which they actually used routinely, combined with the stat squish, combined with ground-only play and no flying, combined with the new healing changes which will screw over healers yet again like cataclysm did when it first released, combined with their new philosophy that combat should be slow as shit and every class has a lot of dead time where they have nothing to press for several seconds, I think it's all going to be too much at once and a lot of people will hit their breaking point.

I don't know what they're thinking, but I believe WOD will see the largest drop in subs than any other expansion to date. I hope i'm wrong, I hope it all turns out fun somehow, magically, but I was invited to the first wave of beta since I was one of those veteran players that's had an account since WOW launch, and I haven't seen anything endearing or interesting in WOD. It has a few gimmicky things that are fun to play with like garrisons but the shine and fun wears off that kind of thing pretty quick, especially when the core mechanics of your class are gutted and destroyed.

[deadman1]

People aren't denying that the game is being simplified, they are denying the notion that simplification means easy. Or that simplification is a bad thing.

[melodramocracy]

There are folks who will side with Blizzard no matter what. That's really all there is to it.

Bottom line is two-fold. 1) the game introduces talents to you in a very relaxed manner as you level up (if you're a new player), so there is no real feeling of being overwhelmed as you go. 2) Fewer options aren't deeper gameplay, they're simply fewer options. And when you remove a players capacity to not only think outside the box, but perform outside it, you're dumbing the game down, plain and simple.

[Trubo]

It's how you package the statement. Let me give 2 examples for clarification

"We've simplified some aspects because they became too complex through the years"

or

"GG Blizz u dumb game down and cater for teh bads and casualz!"


I do believe they are trying to simplify certain things but I don't believe for example the attempt to remove button bloat is overtly dumbing things down.

The following is a video of WoD Alpha Arms. This video is still very representative of what Beta/PTR WoD Arms is sans Rend. Please tell me that this isn't "overtly dumbing things down".

This.
They are making stuff easy to learn, not faceroll to master

A few builds ago you could play Arms with a /castsequence macro and be ~95% as effective as someone playing Arms perfectly. Currently, you can hit whatever buttons you want however you like and be ~85% as effective as someone playing Arms perfectly.

If you think I'm bullshitting you, then please read this.

[Gourmandise]

I remember fondly of my superior in complexity friend vanilla...
Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light.

[Calfredd]

I remember fondly of my superior in complexity friend vanilla...
Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light.

You were a bad paladin. You forgot to buff in the middle there.

[Jonexe]

I remember fondly of my superior in complexity friend vanilla...
Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light. Flash of light.

You forgot to spam your Decursive button in there.

[Gourmandise]

You forgot to spam your Decursive button in there.

Crap. I forgot to increase my complexity by 100-200%!
I had more keyboard and mental interaction in specs that would not allow you to raid by just fishing and talking.

[zoomgpally]

A few builds ago you could play Arms with a /castsequence macro and be ~95% as effective as someone playing Arms perfectly. Currently, you can hit whatever buttons you want however you like and be ~85% as effective as someone playing Arms perfectly.

If you think I'm bullshitting you, then please read this.

So 1 spec can do 85% of their max dps while pressing random buttons.
85% of max is not nearly enough to get you a raidspot in a top guild unless you sleep with the raidleader/guildmaster.
My point still stands.

[zoomgpally]

Crap. I forgot to increase my complexity by 100-200%!
I had more keyboard and mental interaction in specs that would not allow you to raid by just fishing and talking.

Another 500% complexity if you used your singletarget buffs like you should, but nooo you had to be a baddie casual.
(joke, please don't give me infractions)

[Zka]

Never seem anyone denying that, nice strawman.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

I see more people saying "X is being dumbed down!" rather than "Blizzard is simplifying X, I dislike the change". I welcome stepping away from needlessly complex rotations that require you track trinket procs to know exactly when to apply dots.

[Zka]

The following is a video of WoD Alpha Arms. This video is still very representative of what Beta/PTR WoD Arms is sans Rend. Please tell me that this isn't "overtly dumbing things down".

Well, guys. Most specs' rotations became simpler. Overall, this is not what defines your game and its difficulty. That is mostly defined by the pve encounters, which are great so far. The sky -yet again- will not fall.

[Trubo]

So 1 spec can do 85% of their max dps while pressing random buttons.
85% of max is not nearly enough to get you a raidspot in a top guild unless you sleep with the raidleader/guildmaster.
My point still stands.

You really see no problem with being able to perform that well just mashing keys as you see fit? And what does being in a top guild have anything to do with the topic at hand of some specs, particularly Arms, can be facerolled to be nearly as effective as optimal play? In case you didn't watch the video or read the thread I linked, here's a rundown of how to play Arms optimally:

1. Charge
2. Rend
3. CS on cd
4. MS on cd
5. WW until out of Rage or MS coming off cd
6. Refresh Rend when it's about to end.
7. Repeat steps 2-6.

Congrats, you are now doing the optimal Arms single target rotation. Here's AoE rotation.

1. Charge
2. Rend everything
3. WW everything
4. Repeat 2+3 when Rend is about to expire

Last I checked this is the strongest spec in the game with only Frost Mage being any sort of competition.

Well, guys. Most specs' rotations became simpler. Overall, this is not what defines your game and its difficulty. That is mostly defined by the pve encounters, which are great so far. The sky -yet again- will not fall.

I'm not claiming that the sky is falling. I'm trying to demonstrate that some specs are practically faceroll in terms of difficulty while remaining competitive in WoD. As things are I'm either going Gladiator (assuming tuning makes it so that it can actually compete in ST and AoE) or Feral (cause Fire cat).

[Xar226]

The really sad part about all of this isn't nonsense trollbait like "zomg dumbing the game down!" it's how little Blizzard listens to anybody outside of their own echo chamber. I've seen dozens of well-written posts for a number of different classes and they are rarely even acknowledged. Certainly I have yet to see a single change in response to any such post, for any class. Warriors bitched and got some changes a few different times, but none that actually address what they were saying.

And what is the purpose of all of this? To make it easier for new players? Is Blizzard naive enough to believe that they have streams of new players who just can't handle the DPS rotations and walk away? Pissing off your customers because of hypothetical new customers who are bad at your game seems like a losing business strategy to me.

I think WoD ITSELF looks great. The zones look great, the quests and bosses seem fun, the dungeons and raids I have seen (without a beta invite mind) look fun. But a lot of what they have done to classes just has me scratching my head. And now we're at a point where Blizzard doesn't have time to make significant changes, they'll just turn some knobs, get numbers looking similar and not give a hoot that they didn't address a single player's concerns for how their class plays.

It honestly feels like they just bit off more than they could chew. They're struggling enough just to balance DPS numbers after their stat squish (lulz demonology warlocks being outdps'd by prot warriors). I get the distinct impression I am now paying for beta-quality software, and that doesn't leave me in a good mood.

[fixx]

And yet when anybody talks about the game becoming progressively more and more simplified people get agitated and deny that's happening, even when the lead developer is saying that's actually what they try to do.

There's a big difference between depth and complexity, and because depth is preferred they're removing complexity.
Watch this and understand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVL4st0blGU

[Zka]

And what is the purpose of all of this? To make it easier for new players? Is Blizzard naive enough to believe that they have streams of new players who just can't handle the DPS rotations and walk away? Pissing off your customers because of hypothetical new customers who are bad at your game seems like a losing business strategy to me.

They probably have statistics of that, unlike us. If this is the case, they may end up keeping more new players than before and it may worth losing some of the old. Simple business decision that any rational person would make.
Anyhow, the pruning of ability sets was really necessary. Most specs currently have way too many buttons to push, way too many deeply situational things on live. It's got to end somewhere, you can't just increase the bloat forever.

I get the distinct impression I am now paying for beta-quality software, and that doesn't leave me in a good mood.

WoD is beta, so it's beta quality, what's the problem? And the beta itself is free, so I'm not sure what are you talking about.

[Deleted]

We are denying the misinterpretation of it.