Opinion Thread: Has WoW gotten too hard?

[Deleted]

LOL no .. not even.

I am a person that plays on a Legacy server (i'm not promoting or advertising it).. the one thing I miss is the challenge of leveling and current wow is so boring/ easy is leveling and as soon as you hit 100 you are full epic in a few hours.

I've been max level for weeks and still wearing blues / greens.. love it.

Someone didn't bother to read past the title before opening his fat mouth.

[arinth]

Also, large simplification of rotations, well beyond the minor reductions in complexity they've already added, to reduce the difference in performance between those with skill/high end PCs/very low latency/add-ons, and those without.

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The mere presence of the higher difficulty modes sucks the reward out of the lower ones. The game is saying "you suck, but let me throw you a pathetic bone".

What Blizzard needs to do is target the median players, and not the high end. Trying to please the latter spoils the game for the former.

If you win a third place trophy, you either content yourself with that or aspire to win the silver or gold next time. You dont say "give me the gold, because my bronze doesn't feel as special in comparison."

[Osmeric]

If you win a third place trophy, you either content yourself with that or aspire to win the silver or gold next time. You dont say "give me the gold, because my bronze doesn't feel as special in comparison."

If Blizzard designed a game in which players who got third place trophies weren't happy and quit, it isn't the fault of those players that Blizzard's game didn't satisfy them. It's always the fault of the game designer for failing to please the customers. Responsibility flows in the same direction as money.

[arinth]

Heart of Fear, Terrace, Thunder King, these are the memories of WoW that make it fun. Exciting. Brilliant.
...But doing it while it is current content, makes it a billion times more exciting.

Why is it more exciting though? You can walk through old dungeons and smash everything but its not as fun because its too easy. The reason its more exciting is because it is challenging. What is "challenging" is different for different people though, so they have more different levels of challenging.

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If Blizzard designed a game in which players who got third place trophies weren't happy and quit, it isn't the fault of those players that Blizzard's game didn't satisfy them. It's always the fault of the game designer for failing to please the customers. Responsibility flows in the same direction as money.

I respectfully and fully disagree with you here. I think it is absolutely the player's fault in this example.

[LiiLoSNK]

The game feels pretty retard proof these days. The games not hard, it's just that most people are terrible awful smelly casuals.

[Osmeric]

I respectfully and fully disagree with you here. I think it is absolutely the player's fault in this example.

Let me ask you this: do you think it's possible for Blizzard to design an expansion that would be too difficult?

If so, why do you think that is or is not the case now?

[precious]

The game is way class depended. Thats it, nothing more nothing less.

[Osmeric]

The game feels pretty retard proof these days. The games not hard, it's just that most people are terrible awful smelly casuals.

But this argument is fundamentally dishonest. Difficulty is always relative to an audience. You are just stacking the deck by saying that the vast majority of that audience should be ignored when determining if the game is easy.

[LiiLoSNK]

Exactly. Bad people made them make it easy.

[Skalm]

I do not think it is that the difficulty level has gotten that much higher. Yes, encounters are more complex than they used to be, but complexity =/= difficulty. The real issue is how 'dumb' the general population has become (which trickles into the game's player base). Schooling in the U.S. is terrible unless you go to a private school. If it is a public school, more often than not they teach students at the level of the 'lowest' child in the class.They also do not teach kids to think for themselves, but to suck up whatever the media tells them. It is all about teaching for the 'Test' so the school can get more government money. As long as they get their money they don't give a shit how the kids turn out. It's pathetic.

Also, this whole 'everyone gets an award because you participated' bullshit is ridiculous. There needs to be winners and losers. You know why? It makes those 'losers' want to work harder to become winners. Without that competition you just create a population of extremely lazy entitled shits that think everything should be handed to them without having to work for it at all.

[Venant]

Well, there is no way to sugar coat it. If you can't beat normal raids, your just terrible at the game, period. The game is most definitely not to difficult. LFR is a literal loot pinata, and normal is only marginally ahead.

They have made idiotic design choices like taking tier sets out of LFR, but then they decided to make your tier set absolutely mandatory for some classes to be effective. How does it make any sense to balance so much around tier sets, and then put in no entry level route to attaining those sets? LFR should be a bridge to Normal mode raiding, but as it stands now nobody is going to invite somebody in LFR gear to the vast majority of normal difficulty raids.

They also should have buffed apexis gear more. They should allow you to use the empowered fragments to give +5 ilvl boosts up until ilvl 715. Its really too bad that the whole apexis system was useless at the beginning of WoD, I hope in legion they have more effective mechanics similar to this for gearing up solo.

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

Sounds like a great way to make an already forgettable game even more undesirable to play.

Too bad dude. That's the direction we're going. Baseline rotations are getting more simple, with the extra complexity being optional through talents. You might want to play WoW like Piano Hero 2016 but not everyone does

There needs to be winners and losers. You know why? It makes those 'losers' want to work harder to become winners. Without that competition you just create a population of extremely lazy entitled shits that think everything should be handed to them without having to work for it at all.

This is a good attitude to have in the real world but surely not in a goddamn video game. Just because people take them waaaay too serious does not mean everyone else has to as well.

[vindicatorx]

WoW, is the easiest it has ever been. When I was an active raider during Vanilla and BC we never downed a final tier boss. Since then I have killed every final boss at least once.

[arinth]

Let me ask you this: do you think it's possible for Blizzard to design an expansion that would be too difficult?

If so, why do you think that is or is not the case now?

I don't doubt that its possible, but I personally don't think we're in danger of getting there anytime soon.

I don't think it is too difficult now because players are still clearing it. I don't have the time/dedication/skills to do Mythic and compete at the highest difficulty, so I settle into Heroic instead. Its too difficult for me, but tons of other players out there enjoy the challenge. I think they deserve better rewards for the extra effort they put in.

[Osmeric]

I don't doubt that its possible, but I personally don't think we're in danger of getting there anytime soon.

But why? Why exactly is it that the current expansion has not crossed the "too difficult" line? What criteria do you use to make this determination?

[arinth]

But why? Why exactly is it that the current expansion has not crossed the "too difficult" line? What criteria do you use to make this determination?

Because its still possible. There is a way to progress through the encounter, kill the boss, and get the loot. "Too difficult" imo, is if the encounter is borderline impossible.

[Osmeric]

Because its still possible. There is a way to progress through the encounter, kill the boss, and get the loot. "Too difficult" imo, is if the encounter is borderline impossible.

Borderline impossible is still possible. What percentage of the player population do you think has to be able to do it to move it from one to the other?

(What I'm getting at here is either you have a way to justify that percentage from some other consideration, like business performance, or you are possibly just expressing personal preference, as in the % should include you. The former would lead to the conclusion the game is too difficult currently; the latter would lead others to ignore you, as your personal preferences are irrelevant to anyone else.)

[Uoyredrum]

Hi guys and girls. I'm making this thread because I have been a player since 2005 and I have noticed a sharp climb in the difficulty of encounters. I'm not talking about Pve single player questing. But I honestly started out in BC with a guild that happily raided. We weren't very good, but it was fun, and not migraine inducingly difficult.

Now over the years, players have been clamoring for challenges and raising of difficulty, up to the point of insult if you are not up to their level. To quote a book I enjoy, it's like playing chess, while knitting, while playing jeopardy, while driving a car. This is a game people. NOT a physics/calculus/Latin course. And I have a frikking degree! I was reading a thread about min/maxing using a certain trinket, when I realized I couldn't understand what I was reading. And I'm considered a mathematician.


So what's the point? Can we please not lock all the cool rewards behind Olympic level difficulty? I can't even raid at this point outside LFR, and we all know the wonderful rewards from there. I understand some few enjoy beating their heads against a keyboard after the 316th time wiping, but I am not one of them. Please. Lower the difficulty for us mortals.

Hopefully you're trolling. These raids are very easy in general outside of mythic and most guilds only require like 3 addons, tops. A lot of them only require 1 (DBM/Bigwigs). Your entire post is an exaggeration. If you have half a clue about how to play your class/spec and you pay attention to the mechanics of a boss for 5 minutes and maybe see it once or twice, you should have a good understanding of what YOU need to do. It's not like you have to learn every spec's rotation and role and mechanics for that fight, you just need to know yours, which is usually like 3-4 things per boss.

[Pua]

Yes, it's gotten too hard. Ludicrously so.

The resolution to the conundrum, really, is how big a percentage do you want your "top percentage" to be?

At the moment, for example, Heroic Archimonde (that's Heroic, not Mythic) has been killed by 4.1% of the entire playing population using wowprogress numbers. Less than 5% have managed to clear the Heroic tier by killing its final boss, and some of those may have been done with better gear than it was tuned for due to boxes and upgrades.

I would suggest that less than 5% is plenty exclusive enough. In fact, there's no lucid argument I've seen to this point that reasonably disputes that assertion.

Sadly, there is also a significant design reason why Blizzard should also call it a day at that point:

No encounter they create can be better than the top players.

There simply isn't a mechanic that Blizzard can design that the top players can't master. This effectively means that the only way to meaningfully hold up progression is via tuning which, ultimately, feels like a cheap way of synthetically holding players up beyond letting them progress at the pace their skill dictates. This is why the top guilds look to lose tanks and healers whenever they can, or why they plan raid cooldown use to specifically - it's because they're trying to kill bosses that they're not geared for.

The reason we're in this boat is, quite simply, bad design priorities. It would have been better for the entire community had Blizzard capped difficulty at Wrath level, and built the game around that. The reason I say this is because it means that the entire game, including the endgame reward structure, could be far more diverse than simply expanding the loot treadmill in raids.

And why did the priorities end up so skewed?

Because the current design team are hardcore raiders.

They're making the game they want to play, but that the overwhelming majority of players don't. In Legion, the reason I'm excited about artefacts or world content is because I believe they'll put a check on the rampant inflation of basic raiding requirements. Now everyone has to be on voice; everyone needs a boss mod; everyone needs an alt; everyone needs WeakAuras; everyone needs to watch YouTube before playing. When my chums and I started in Karazhan, there simply wasn't a necessity to jump through all these hoops and everyone had a better time as a result.

Now?

"What if I don't want to be on voice?"
"What if I don't want to install lots of mods?"
"What if I don't want to watch videos?"
"What if I don't want to have two alts?"

In too many cases, the answer is:

"You don't get to raid".

But don't expect a reasoned debate on this subject. Many players on these forums are raiders, a far higher percentage than are actually in the game, and it's also worth remembering that many will tell you they're part of a Mythic guild but aren't really. The problem is that the Internet causes people to deal in extremes, while simultaneously not showing any willingness to understand what's good for the game rather than merely what's good for them.

None of that stops you being right, OP.

[arinth]

Borderline impossible is still possible. What percentage of the player population do you think has to be able to do it to move it from one to the other?

(What I'm getting at here is either you have a way to justify that percentage from some other consideration, like business performance, or you are possibly just expressing personal preference, as in the % should include you. The former would lead to the conclusion the game is too difficult currently; the latter would lead others to ignore you, as your personal preferences are irrelevant to anyone else.)

As long as players are clearing it. 1%, .01%, .001%, whatever.

I think our opinions differ in that I don't feel like that percent NEEDS to be justified in any way. As long as its not 0%.

If Blizzard loses subs due to top raid tiers being too difficult for more people to access, I think that is a problem wit the mindset of the player, not the game design.
If the player feels the encounters are too difficult, and chooses to play at a lower difficulty, but is not satisfied with the weaker drops-- Thats an issue with the player, not the game. I think this is where we disagree.

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