Overall, was Survival a failure?

**Zeidia** · 2017-02-07, 09:36 PM

Actually i'm MM (like 90% of people doing pve) and i got legend bis boots and 4p set but everytime i switch to SV to do arenas i really think why i cant play it on pve, really guys, its like super fun to me compared to MM or BM and i dont wanna reroll to another mele class when i like SV, even when my legends are Ullr's , zevrim, roots and prydaz.

So the question to all that people who say survival is a failure: Are you speaking about dps numbers or playstyle and if you are speaking about numbers, is sv that far away from bm or mm? because i have used simulationcraft and it gives me a diference of 10k dps between my MM profile (with prydaz and ullr's) and an hypothetical SV profile with same number of traits, prydaz and roots equipped and same ilvl relics.

Deleted · 2017-02-07, 09:52 PM

Originally Posted by Sonrisha

Actually i'm MM (like 90% of people doing pve) and i got legend bis boots and 4p set but everytime i switch to SV to do arenas i really think why i cant play it on pve, really guys, its like super fun to me compared to MM or BM and i dont wanna reroll to another mele class when i like SV, even when my legends are Ullr's , zevrim, roots and prydaz.

So the question to all that people who say survival is a failure: Are you speaking about dps numbers or playstyle and if you are speaking about numbers, is sv that far away from bm or mm? because i have used simulationcraft and it gives me a diference of 10k dps between my MM profile (with prydaz and ullr's) and an hypothetical SV profile with same number of traits, prydaz and roots equipped and same ilvl relics.

we are speaking about ranged spec turned to melee, and a lot of hunters wants to stay ranged with all 3 spec... i personaly dont care about surv game play its damage and all atention gms are giving to it... I want old surv back... thats what we are talking about...

**threads** · 2017-02-08, 03:01 AM

Originally Posted by Sonrisha

Actually i'm MM (like 90% of people doing pve) and i got legend bis boots and 4p set but everytime i switch to SV to do arenas i really think why i cant play it on pve, really guys, its like super fun to me compared to MM or BM and i dont wanna reroll to another mele class when i like SV, even when my legends are Ullr's , zevrim, roots and prydaz.

So the question to all that people who say survival is a failure: Are you speaking about dps numbers or playstyle and if you are speaking about numbers, is sv that far away from bm or mm? because i have used simulationcraft and it gives me a diference of 10k dps between my MM profile (with prydaz and ullr's) and an hypothetical SV profile with same number of traits, prydaz and roots equipped and same ilvl relics.

nobody wants to play melee except the 5 hunters that claim to be SV in vanilla.

**sololux** · 2017-02-08, 12:13 PM

I challenge you to find one single thread, before the announcement of survival turning melee, in favor of it.

**Banard** · 2017-02-09, 06:36 PM

Surv is a complete failure. Got my main weapon 54 and started to dabble in surv again... i hate melee...HATE IT. now my class has only 2 options...when it use to be 3...more the old surv has been my fav spec and now its dead and gone.

Complete and utter failure. If they wanted to change the hunter specs they should of added another roll. BM range tank.....that would of been interesting and very unique.

**cLax0n** · 2017-02-10, 01:50 PM

Honestly, the current iteration of MM is basically the previous expansions' SV & MM combined. Right now, MM has abilities that come directly from Survival: Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, Vulnerable (Expose Weakness), A Murder of Crows (I need confirmation on this one). The thing is, Black Arrow still sucks, Explosive Shot doesn't work like it did for SV in the previous expansions, and no one likes the Vulnerable mechanic. I'm just pointing out these things because I believe Blizzard stated that because they are changing SV to melee, they would be giving MM some of the SV ranged abilities as a compromise, I can't find the article/post but I saw it somewhere.

Currently, Survival as a melee spec does not bother me, I like the idea. I tried it, and it just needs more polishing. I do agree with what other people said in regards to MM and BM receiving less attention/tuning because people dedicated to the design/development of the Hunter class in Legion spent most of their time and resources on the Survival spec overhaul only to have something that only like 5% of all Hunters would actually permanently play, and negatively affect 95% of all other Hunters. Like Gurg said, it is painfully obvious that SV is unfinished, but it is also painfully obvious that the other specs were unfinished/unpolished because when you look at other things like BM 2PC not affecting Dire Frenzy, or MM Vulnerable mechanic being a failure. Blizzard has made a very bad decision in this, but I honestly don't think we should care so much about the fact that Survival is melee, I rather them just finish polishing the spec, and then polish MM and BM. I would be more upset if they spend more time overhauling SV back into ranged because that would just mean even less time devoted to MM and BM.

The actual content of this expansion is amazing, but the class design is seriously lacking. Blizzard went so out of their way to change things that did not need much changing. For example, why the fuck do we need yet another class? I don't give a shit about Demon Hunters, who cares about yet another melee class with a tank spec? It's literally every single new class they brought in is a melee class with tank/dps spec, and sure Monk with healing. But the main thing about Demon Hunter is that it only has 2 specs, and the very creation of Demon Hunter meant that they had to overhaul Demonology Warlock. So basically they took a spec away from one class, created a whole new class with that same spec, and then added a tank variation, and then had to do more work on top of that to replace that spec they had taken away, sounds familiar? It should, because thats exactly what they did with Hunter. I don't know who the Supervisor/Productions Manager of Blizzard is, but they seriously need to hire some better people who have the critical thinking capabilities to recognize when some ideas are good, and when some are clearly bad.

**Rosinante** · 2017-02-10, 04:10 PM

For people who say "Now i have only two options": Other classes have only 1 option, or two.
So, please, stop crying.

**Bheleu** · 2017-02-10, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by cLax0n

I'm just pointing out these things because I believe Blizzard stated that because they are changing SV to melee, they would be giving MM some of the SV ranged abilities as a compromise, I can't find the article/post but I saw it somewhere.

Can't post the link because I'm too new here, but Google search "Legion hunter class preview" should be the first result. (has 19911277 in the URL)

The problem is it states:
"And, as a note for those who enjoyed the previous version of Survival gameplay, we have moved certain abilities, such as Black Arrow and Lock and Load, to Marksmanship-specific talents."

Problem is all that moved was the name of the talents. The talents themselves are not like the previous version, and the gameplay style is not like the previous style. At the end of the day I lost 6 WoW hunters, and Blizzard lost a loyal paying customer....

**Bepples** · 2017-02-10, 04:47 PM

Originally Posted by cLax0n

I don't know who the Supervisor/Productions Manager of Blizzard is, but they seriously need to hire some better people who have the critical thinking capabilities to recognize when some ideas are good, and when some are clearly bad.

The problem is that Blizzard seems to historically have a "don't knock it 'till you try it" attitude, which sounds positive until you realise that they take ideas that are CLEARLY bad on paper and figure that you don't know for sure that it will be bad until you actually spend a great deal trying to implement it. The stuff you mentioned, including Survival in Legion, are great examples of it. The legendary system in Legion is another great example, where pretty much everything people thought could have gone wrong with it has now gone wrong despite Blizzard's insistence to the contrary every single time.

Another good example is limited attempts in WotLK: remember how they kept trying out new limited attempt systems every tier and people hated them every time? Blizzard for some reason was obsessed with making this idea work despite absolutely EVERYONE involved despising the idea as soon as they heard it, thinking that people need to see it implemented before they could judge it properly. And what do you know, people hated it in practice, too. Sometimes you CAN knock it before you try it.

Or think back to the daily quests in MoP: they said that they felt they needed to test two parallel quest models where one had fewer quests with each giving higher rewards (August Celestials, Shado-Pan, Tillers, Order of the Cloud Serpent, Anglers) while the other gave a multitude of quests each having smaller rewards (Golden Lotus, Klaxxi); they had both of these at the same time to figure out which people liked more. So...you could either do 4 quests to get a certain reward, or you can do 12 quests and get roughly the same reward. More effort for the same reward. Why did this even need to be tested? Once again, "don't knock it 'till you try it".

This attitude stems from a larger issue where there just isn't enough internal criticism at Blizzard. There is just no real consequence for developer failure: it takes a massive, Tseric-level fuck-up to get you fired. I'm always reminded of how Square Enix handled the FF14 situation: when that game released it was an unmitigated disaster; a clusterfuck of incompetent game design so severe that it significantly harmed the company's financial position. When SE admitted fault (something that you RARELY see from Blizzard these days) they did not fuck around with rectifying the situation. Heads rolled over that: the director was sacked, and if I'm not mistaken a number of lead developers were let go as well. They got new talent and made damn sure they weren't going to fuck it up again and then they rebooted FF14 as an actual successful MMO and the only real competitor to WoW (even then, it's distant).

You just never see that at Blizzard. Remember how badly WoD damaged the game? A heap of the issues with those expansions were totally avoidable as well, yet absolutely no one at Blizzard saw any real consequence for that. Hell, at least one of the great minds behind several of that expansion's failings got PROMOTED: Hazzikostas, the architect of the whole no-flying fiasco, is now lead developer. When a company has no internal criticism, it's relying entirely on external criticism to point out decisions that will lead to inevitable failure. And it's a whole lot easier to ignore external criticism, which is Blizzard's MO at this point.

Originally Posted by Rosinante

For people who say "Now i have only two options": Other classes have only 1 option, or two.
So, please, stop crying.

Irrelevant. We used to have 3 options for ranged DPS, now we only have 2. That means we are in a worse position from where we started. The majority of hunters picked the class to play a ranged DPS so making one of the specs melee serves only to alienate people currently playing the class and fail to appeal to people who aren't playing the class. Also, as someone who liked the way old Survival played, I now have 0 options for specs of that variety because no spec in the game is even close to what that was... not even the other 2 hunter specs.

Originally Posted by Bheleu

Problem is all that moved was the name of the talents. The talents themselves are not like the previous version, and the gameplay style is not like the previous style. At the end of the day I lost 6 WoW hunters, and Blizzard lost a loyal paying customer....

It's occurred to me that the only people who think that they adequately made up for old SV with those talents are people who don't play hunters and can only speak from the perspective of an uninformed observer. Frustratingly, it seems like when regarding hunters Blizzard is listening to those people more than actual hunters at this point.

**Guran** · 2017-02-10, 06:36 PM

Originally Posted by FpicEail

Irrelevant. We used to have 3 options for ranged DPS, now we only have 2. That means we are in a worse position from where we started. The majority of hunters picked the class to play a ranged DPS so making one of the specs melee serves only to alienate people currently playing the class and fail to appeal to people who aren't playing the class. Also, as someone who liked the way old Survival played, I now have 0 options for specs of that variety because no spec in the game is even close to what that was... not even the other 2 hunter specs.

Fury used to have 2 options, now only have 1 (2H DW only)
DKs used to have 2 options for tanking and 3 for DPS, now they have 1 & 2.
None of these come close to DW Frost tanking.

The majority of Hunters that want to play ranged DPS still are, either as BM or MM.

It seems to me all your arguments are "this one time, we used to be great, why can't we stay that way?"
You're not entitled to the spec staying as it is, this goes for ANY spec. (Disc has been changed drastically every other expansion)
Looking at the past and crying is also not productive.

**cLax0n** · 2017-02-11, 01:34 AM

Originally Posted by FpicEail

The problem is that Blizzard seems to historically have a "don't knock it 'till you try it" attitude, which sounds positive until you realise that they take ideas that are CLEARLY bad on paper and figure that you don't know for sure that it will be bad until you actually spend a great deal trying to implement it. The stuff you mentioned, including Survival in Legion, are great examples of it. The legendary system in Legion is another great example, where pretty much everything people thought could have gone wrong with it has now gone wrong despite Blizzard's insistence to the contrary every single time.

Another good example is limited attempts in WotLK: remember how they kept trying out new limited attempt systems every tier and people hated them every time? Blizzard for some reason was obsessed with making this idea work despite absolutely EVERYONE involved despising the idea as soon as they heard it, thinking that people need to see it implemented before they could judge it properly. And what do you know, people hated it in practice, too. Sometimes you CAN knock it before you try it.

Or think back to the daily quests in MoP: they said that they felt they needed to test two parallel quest models where one had fewer quests with each giving higher rewards (August Celestials, Shado-Pan, Tillers, Order of the Cloud Serpent, Anglers) while the other gave a multitude of quests each having smaller rewards (Golden Lotus, Klaxxi); they had both of these at the same time to figure out which people liked more. So...you could either do 4 quests to get a certain reward, or you can do 12 quests and get roughly the same reward. More effort for the same reward. Why did this even need to be tested? Once again, "don't knock it 'till you try it".

This attitude stems from a larger issue where there just isn't enough internal criticism at Blizzard. There is just no real consequence for developer failure: it takes a massive, Tseric-level fuck-up to get you fired. I'm always reminded of how Square Enix handled the FF14 situation: when that game released it was an unmitigated disaster; a clusterfuck of incompetent game design so severe that it significantly harmed the company's financial position. When SE admitted fault (something that you RARELY see from Blizzard these days) they did not fuck around with rectifying the situation. Heads rolled over that: the director was sacked, and if I'm not mistaken a number of lead developers were let go as well. They got new talent and made damn sure they weren't going to fuck it up again and then they rebooted FF14 as an actual successful MMO and the only real competitor to WoW (even then, it's distant).

You just never see that at Blizzard. Remember how badly WoD damaged the game? A heap of the issues with those expansions were totally avoidable as well, yet absolutely no one at Blizzard saw any real consequence for that. Hell, at least one of the great minds behind several of that expansion's failings got PROMOTED: Hazzikostas, the architect of the whole no-flying fiasco, is now lead developer. When a company has no internal criticism, it's relying entirely on external criticism to point out decisions that will lead to inevitable failure. And it's a whole lot easier to ignore external criticism, which is Blizzard's MO at this point.

Well said. And yes, I do remember the limited attempt thing in WotLK. Its painfully obvious that Blizzard fails at listening to the community feedback, and I honestly think they just became aware of it ( http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/7...communication/ ) but its kind of sad that they need to make a big deal about this when this is something that should have already been since the game has been out for so long. What is the point of the PTR other than to gain feedback from the community? Are they only concerned with bugs and that's it? How many times have they gone through with a change that the majority of the community was against, only to revert the changes much later? WoW is a great game, but if it ever fails, it will be due to poorly made decisions that could have been easily avoided.

**Bepples** · 2017-02-12, 05:28 PM