Blizzard repeats the same mistakes over and over

[Deleted]

It's always the same scheme blizzard designs expansions. It's always the same mistakes they repeat at every start of every new expac, without any chance to ask them to change their design paradigms.

Examples:

1.) At every start of a new expac, make healing and mana regen awkward.
This has been very bad in cataclysm, it was nearly same in MoP, and it will be the same in WoD. With starting gear, your manaregen will be low close to starving, and at the end of an expac, mana regen will allow healers to overheal and cast the most expensive heals over and over. While i doubt that blizzard would ever manage to balance this correctly, i even doubt they want to balance mana consumption that way it wont change much during an expac. Probably the best way would be to disconnect mana regen from gear progression, and to put it on a level thats working nice with mindful healers from the start.

2.) At every start of a new expac, classes are weak. And the end, they are strong.
Which is not only based on gear, but also based on a permanent buffing of classes thruout the expac. Instead of nerfing raids, blizzard just took the approach to buff classes thruout an expac, to make old content more easy. Instead of this awkward approach, classes should stay the same power, and only be able to add power by gear progression.

3.) Blizzard adds special gear for every game component.
Instead of diversity, often there is only one single way to acquire gear. You only get tier sets from (organized) raiding, you only get blue sets and pre raid gear from dungeons. And most times, there is no alternative to gear up using different approaches. For the very first time heroic dungeons will be an alternative to LFR, which infact isnt the case, as gear from LFR still is more powerfull than heroic dungeons. At the end, people will run LFR for the gear they need to start raiding and fill it with heroic items, if their skill level is adequate. A way better approach would be a diversified way to gain gear. I think that no matter what you do you should be able to gear up, with better rewards if its about challenging content, which blizzard always mixes up with the level of organzation. The level of organization is the main brickwall for players to play challenges nowadays, and i am sure that single player challenges would add a lot more ways to gear up instead the need to organize, which is a mindset from 2005, but surely not 2015.

4.) Blizzard adds a time sink to every start of their expac.
At the start of an expac progressing just feels 100 times more awkward than at the end of the expac. Just think about those mandatory dailies in early MoP, which lead to a massive loss of asian players due to the time demand. Blizzard always arguments those timesinks with scapegoat arguments, as like in the case of the removal of flying in WoD with the idea that people could skip content (which they also may in WoD without any problem). While it infact is just about the additional time spent with travelling, which will stretch the content to a large degree. Another example were the 5 mans in early cataclysm, which were a brick wall for every player, no matter, if players liked to play challenges. Blizzard adds a brick wall of this kind to every expac. They did that in TBC with attunements, did that in Cataclysm with hard 5 mans, and did that in MoP with mandatory and dull daily quests. And they will repeat that mistake in WoD with removing flying, at least temporarily.

5.) Blizzard bases design decisions on logic arguments
Whenever you talk to blizzards customer support about changes and if you disllike them, they ask your for logical reasons for changes. It seems to me, that the "collaborative" design for WoW is based on logic only, while that is the complete wrong approach to base design decisions on. Logic probably would lead to a logically designed game, a game Mr. Spock surely would love, but would it be fun for those humans like us, which actually want a funny game and not a "logically well designed" fun place for the WoW Devs?
It's a game. Its about fun. And not if removing flying is logical. It also would be logical to remove mythic raiding, as only a very few play it. Still that wont happen, as its about preferences at the end, and about the subjective idea how a MMO should be.

6.) Blizzard only knows extremes
Really, i never had to follow as fanatic people as the blizzard developers. They either switch something on or off. There is nothing inbetween.
Examples:
We want dailies. So lets add 100 of them to the start of MoP and make them mandatory!
We dont want dailies. So lets remove them all and dont think about adding even one single daily hub anymore!
We want flying. So lets make content for it, as like Sketties.
We dont want flying. So lets disable it once and for all.

What blizzard really should have done about this would have been to find a balance in design. Something blizzard never learned. To find a agreement between position 1 and position 2. And not either on or off.

7.) Blizzard changes running systems
One of the main mistakes is blizzards idea to change a game just because people want changes. I really doubt that people want to remove running systems. If i should give an example, i would bring up reputation from dungeons as example. It was highly replayable, and very convenient for alt players. Still it got replaced by a solo player grind in MoP. I could also bring as example removing flying, which was, from my PoV at least, a running system as well. At the end the complete discussion about the fact blizzard removed flying destroyed way more than the gain ever could be, as the change itself splitted the community.

If blizzard would get rid of all those mistakes, and just design the game with the most fun experience in mind without all those extremist decisions, without all those timesinks and class design ideas at start differing so much from at end of an expac, WoW could become a real great game again.

I am not really seeing blizzard changing at their paradigms to design the game. They will continue to repeat the same mistakes over and over, and there will just be no chance to ever convince them to go a different way in designing the game.

Thanks for reading. And tell me if you think blizzard should change this behaviour or if its right to continue their path.

[kjj92]

If they are repeating these design choices, maybe they are not "mistakes". And you are just using your opinions as facts "over and over".

[PrairieChicken]

I totally agree with most of the points. Expecially their emphasis on "players must feel stronger" is currently on ridiculous levels

[Kuul]

Yet we are still playing the game.

[Trassk]

If they are repeating these design choices, maybe they are not "mistakes". And you are just using your opinions as facts "over and over".

typical first vapid response to someones thought out criticism of wow.

The biggest crux with wow is it being lead by kidults with their brains still held back in the 1980s and the popular cartoon series at that time.

And yes, blizzard can't ever balance anything, EVER, they can't even balance their own story let alone gameplay, where they have all the stability of a metronome

[Stormspellz]

healing is hardly more awkward then it was a 2 weeks ago, yes some spells are hard cast not instant and the numbers are different but they are for the most part mechanically the same. Cata again wasn't really hard or healers, it was hard dealing with dps who were stuck being "wrath babies"

[Otimus]

I disagree with some of this, but overall, I think you have a very valid point. Especially about extremes. I can't imagine anyone can really honestly disagree with that part about extremes.

[themortalgod]

1. This is a design decision, and one I enjoy, I wish it persisted through the entire xpac. The start of cata was my favourite time to be a healer. It felt like every decision I made was important and that strategically managing heals as a team was critical to success. The mindless AOE heal spamming at the end of xpac is what I am bored of.

2. This is by design. They WANT you to feel stronger as you get more gear and progress farther. Scaling is designed so that as you progress you have greater resources but content remains just as hard giving the feeling that as you grow stronger you are facing stronger enemies.

3. I don't think this is so much a mistake but I agree more venues to acquiring gear is a good thing.

4. There is always going to be grinding. The entire concept of the MMO is based on the idea of grinding. Its how content lasts longer than a few days. The dailies thing was stupid but as a whole the time syncs are no where even in the realm of what they were in Vanilla and TBC

5. Logic is their best metric that they have. You seem to think they are removing flying against the wishes of the population. There is a reason there is a thread with 22,000 replies. It is a heated topic. A freaking boat load of players are very happy about this change, including me. Not to get into the argument again but I think you mistake logic being the problem when you are just complaining about their logic not matching YOUR expectations. They can't please everyone in every way and they are well aware of it.

6. Blizzard experiments in extremes and then slowly adjusts. I'd say they could probably improve a lot here but they have done a relatively good job for 10 years now using this method so I can't complain too much. No flying until 6.1 IS a compromise. Their original plan was to not bring it back at all during WoD, they are listening to feedback and compromising but there is no compromise that will satisfy everyone.

7. Blizzard constantly attempts to improve systems, sometimes they screw it up, other times they do great. If they left everything static we would still be playing vanilla (or more likely the game would be dead). Grinding rep in dungeons was stupid and pointless, might as well just remove rep, it had no purpose. Again you bring up flying, clearly you are pretty butthurt about that. That system WASN'T working from the point of view of Blizzard and many player. I guarantee you that if they could go back in time they would never have introduced flying to begin with. But again, no sense getting into the flying argument, if you want that head over to the thread and read thousands of replies about it go do that .

[Blufossa]

typical first vapid response to someones thought out criticism of wow.

The biggest crux with wow is it being lead by kidults with their brains still held back in the 1980s and the popular cartoon series at that time.

And yes, blizzard can't ever balance anything, EVER, they can't even balance their own story let alone gameplay, where they have all the stability of a metronome

Lol. Trassk the "enlightened".

Anyways, WoW is fine as is. You have to learn to roll with it OP. Either that or quit. Not much more any of us can do.

You're also welcome to make your own MMO or go work for Blizzard. If you want real change, complaining won't help.

[TZK203]

#6 is very valid.

[Deleted]

typical first vapid response to someones thought out criticism of wow.

The biggest crux with wow is it being lead by kidults with their brains still held back in the 1980s and the popular cartoon series at that time.

And yes, blizzard can't ever balance anything, EVER, they can't even balance their own story let alone gameplay, where they have all the stability of a metronome

Well, these "kidults", created the most successful online videogame ever, which is still played by millions 10 years after its launch, and despite the playerbase being below its peak for over 4 years, is generating more revenue than ever before. So pardon me, but I take the opinions of classic nerds, who recognize the pure genius of 1980s and 1990s pop culture over the utterly exchangeable "hardstylez-grindshit-shizzle-dubsteppzzz BRAH!" - grey mass of zero creativity we have nowadays, any day of the week.

As to balancing: Wow, so an RPG game with 11 different classes, each of which has access to 3-4 specs, plus talent and glyph choices plus gear collection system cannot be balanced? Wow, so insight, much surprise, very unexpected.



To OP:

ad 1) You know how manaregen will be at the end of an expansion? Wow, please lend me your magic crytal orb.

ad 2) NO! REALLY? The goal of a loot-based character development is to get stronger? WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?

ad 3) There was no LFR gearing prior to MoP. And no, people wont gear up in LFR, as LFR opens several weeks AFTER the raid opens. People who come late to the party won't either, as they will not have the ilvl required for LFR without running dungeons.

ad 4) Travel time remains the same > New fly point system. And everything in an MMORPG is a timesink. The whole game is a timesink.

ad 5) So you would rather design a game where your toon, I dont know, gets weaker with new gear, or dies when you look directly at the sun? How fun that would be .

ad 6) As does the community.
"More dalies pls!" > "WE HATE SO MUCH DAILY GRIND!"
"Flying Mounts pls!" > "WTF, I ONLY STAND IN CITY ALL DAY! SO BORING!"
A compromise for things like flying would be...what exactly? Allow flying only from 12:00 to 04:00pm? ^^

ad 7)

"One of the main mistakes is blizzards idea to change a game just because people want changes."

Please explain to me, how catering to the whishes of the customer is a bad thing?



Aaaaand finally, and this applies to every point on your list: Your personal opinion is not a fact, so don't try to present it as such.

[Grimbold21]

Cata healing wasn't as hard or strained as you make it to be. It was bothersome if you're grouped with randoms.

[Usagi Senshi]

Lol. Trassk the "enlightened".

Anyways, WoW is fine as is. You have to learn to roll with it OP. Either that or quit. Not much more any of us can do.

You're also welcome to make your own MMO or go work for Blizzard. If you want real change, complaining won't help.

*likes rummaging around rubbish bins full of nothing but sharp open cans and rusty lids instead of asking for some pillows and rubber balls to be thrown in as well*

[Kahmal]

4.) Blizzard adds a time sink to every start of their expac.
At the start of an expac progressing just feels 100 times more awkward than at the end of the expac. Just think about those mandatory dailies in early MoP, which lead to a massive loss of asian players due to the time demand. Blizzard always arguments those timesinks with scapegoat arguments, as like in the case of the removal of flying in WoD with the idea that people could skip content (which they also may in WoD without any problem). While it infact is just about the additional time spent with travelling, which will stretch the content to a large degree. Another example were the 5 mans in early cataclysm, which were a brick wall for every player, no matter, if players liked to play challenges. Blizzard adds a brick wall of this kind to every expac. They did that in TBC with attunements, did that in Cataclysm with hard 5 mans, and did that in MoP with mandatory and dull daily quests. And they will repeat that mistake in WoD with removing flying, at least temporarily.

It's called the Pre-Raiding era and I personally find it the funniest part of every expansion, from Vanilla to Cata, I wasn't here for MoP launch but I heard it was awful. Regardless it's when 5 mans are still relevant, you and your friends can run dungeon after dungeon enjoying yourselves. The Cata Heroics were trivial for me, I was a tank and all I needed was a friend to carry the DPS and CC at least one mob and we were good. Personally I loved the TBC attunements, yes they took forever, but because of that it always gave you something to do. Karazhan raid over? "Who wants to do Shatt Halls I need my key" and a bunch of responses pop up in raid or guild chat. It just needed a catch up mechanic because if you fell behind it could be aggravating.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

So many mistakes making so many dollars. So many mistakes generating so many concerning posts like this one. So many mistakes indeed.

Point of it all is no system or game is perfect. Never was, never will be, and its best to just get over it.

[Joseito]

Going to have to disagree with a lot of this. Every expansion brings changes to classes. If it didn't, why would people want to play a style where the same buttons are pressed over and over? It may feel awkward at first because anything new requires time to learn the style, which is one of the many reasons I personally enjoy a new expansion. Not just for content, but that feeling of not really knowing how your character is going to be, and to learn him/her over again is exciting.

2-You are assuming that all classes increase power at the same rate. Very rarely does Blizzard buff many classes, in fact, they mostly nerf and in some cases drastically
change classes that are out performing by a large number. For example, destruction locks. They probably received close to a 40% nerf over the course of the expansion. Imagine if that never happened? Their power would be absurdly high. Not all classes increase in power the same with gear, warriors/arcane mages have classically been known for this. But again, very rarely do we as players ever just see flat-out buffs to a class, especially an unjustified buff.


3- Its an MMO. Personally, they're just way too many single player components in the game as it is. MMO's are meant to be spent with other players which allows so much emphasis on raids. If you are looking for a way to beef out your character solo, I suggest not playing an MMO. Blizzard has done a decent job of having solo content, and organized content. Brawlers guild, pet battles, solo challenges were great single player additions to the game. But the end of the day, it is an MMO and meant to be played with friends, while making new friends and personally, I feel LFR/LFG took already took a lot of the MMO feel from the game. You can sit in a major faction city, queue up for raids or dungeons and basically play solo. Whereas queuing with friends and using a teamspeak adds more depth to the game, which looks promising and more challenging in Warlords.

Just to touch on the "no flying" which you seemed to have mentioned in most of your points. People who have played beta mostly agree that no flying was barely noticed after a few hours of gameplay. That it added depth to the game, allowed players to see everything the dev's wanted players to see. How exactly is skipping content and flying over everything that is happening fun? It turns the massive world of Azeroth so much smaller, the little things you could notice by having to use a ground mount are missed, wasted work from Blizzard who spend so much money so that they can produce an exciting fun game are lost.

Finally, while I do not think Blizzard is absolutely perfect and cannot make mistakes, they have started, what seems to me, a very solid start to a change in the positive direction of the game. Easier is not always fun, and neither is super challenging. Blizzard has to find a way balance both to a happy medium for the close to 8 million players that will probably play Warlords. The only point I can agree with from OP is the extreme ends. Blizzard has to find balance and they work on it. Sure they make mistakes.

[Jawless Jones]

Lol. Trassk the "enlightened".

Anyways, WoW is fine as is. You have to learn to roll with it OP. Either that or quit. Not much more any of us can do.

If WoW was fine as is then it would have kept the 12 million subscribers it had in Wrath

You're also welcome to make your own MMO or go work for Blizzard. If you want real change, complaining won't help.

You do realise how stupid that argument is right?

Don't criticise things that Blizzard does wrong all the time (story/balance, you cannot possibly deny they suck ass at both), just go and make your own /sarcasm

[Deleted]

If WoW was fine as is then it would have kept the 12 million subscribers it had in Wrath

And despite the asian peak gone, WoW makes more money now, than ever before.

Don't criticise things that Blizzard does wrong all the time (story/balance, you cannot possibly deny they suck ass at both)

Yes, I can deny that, as this assumption is based on your personal opinion, and I happen to have a different one.

[LilSaihah]

*likes rummaging around rubbish bins full of nothing but sharp open cans and rusty lids instead of asking for some pillows and rubber balls to be thrown in as well*

If you really think WoW is that bad then don't play it geez. :v

[Marxman]

The only two of these I actually agree with is Blizzard changing working systems/mechanics and Blizzard only knowing extremes.

It's a little silly how often they over-buff, over-nerf, or over-compensate. Dailies are a great example, where they fed us hundreds of them in MoP, we told them it was too much, and instead of reigning it in to sane levels, they just said "OH OKAY, NO MORE DAILIES EVER!". Nerfing/buffing classes is another area where they just can't get it right. There's always an OP class and several underpowered classes as far as DPS goes.