Poll: What do you think about the one hour time frame?

Be advised that this is a public poll: other users can see the choice(s) you selected.

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  1. #41

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    I don't have the time to read all 3 pages of posts, but I wanted to throw in my 2 cents.

    It's absolutely asinine to say, at this point, that this 1-hour time limit is a "cop-out" method to make Algalon harder. Wait until you fight him and he eats your tear-ducts dry before assuming that.

    Like many have undoubtedly said, its most likely to remove the "banging your head against a brick wall" strategy. I.E. you simply get a group with nothing but time and slam your head into the encounter for hours every day until you get him. This is gonna make it so people have to actually plan ahead, think about what they're gonna do and execute it properly.

    As far as the comments that said you would be left with nothing to do...maybe its time for you to pack it in, because there is so much more to this game than raiding, if that's your stance on it, that's pretty sad, imo.

    Lastly, I'm pretty sure it will be a system where he will despawn 1 hour after being engaged the first time, including all time spent running back from wipes, rebuffing etc.

    Just my 2c.
    If you don't like it, go on the internet and complain.

  2. #42

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    I thought Blizzard's intention was to design raiding around creating less stupid drama? More accessible, which is "casual" in a way that means you don't poop in a sock to continue raiding.

    This looks like more then a stall then anything. I think Ulduar if an appropriate ramp up to around TK/SSC level if you attempt the intended difficulty (not easy mode). With the rate the intended difficulty encounters are dropping, and Blizzard's need to buff them, it really appears as though 1 hour Algalon was implemented purely to slow progression. A throwback to the old days of "fuck you" style attunment designed to waste time or, in this case, drag out the rate at which content is cleared between patches.

    One thing is for sure, WoW's playerbase has become much better then Blizzard wants it to be/thinks it is. Panic moves like this aren't a particularly good idea. I really don't care about who wins the "race" to down a boss first. I wanted to, and did see all the content in previous expansions, and guess what? I didn't have to be in Ensidia/Nihilum to do so.

    I very very rarely believe Blizzard fucks up on a massive scale like most forum posters would seem to think. I'm still playing the game after all these years. This, however, goes back on the entire design philosophy I thought Blizzard was heading for. Doesn't bode well at all in my opinion.

    So, the guild with the best raiders and the best data miners kills Algalon first? Top end guilds start making private servers so they can remove the time limit and get several hours or face-time in? Is Algalon that much more difficult then the other "hard" mode style encounters?

  3. #43

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Quote Originally Posted by Offhand
    I thought Blizzard's intention was to design raiding around creating less stupid drama? More accessible, which is "casual" in a way that means you don't poop in a sock to continue raiding.

    This looks like more then a stall then anything. I think Ulduar if an appropriate ramp up to around TK/SSC level if you attempt the intended difficulty (not easy mode). With the rate the intended difficulty encounters are dropping, and Blizzard's need to buff them, it really appears as though 1 hour Algalon was implemented purely to slow progression. A throwback to the old days of "fuck you" style attunment designed to waste time or, in this case, drag out the rate at which content is cleared between patches.

    One thing is for sure, WoW's playerbase has become much better then Blizzard wants it to be/thinks it is. Panic moves like this aren't a particularly good idea. I really don't care about who wins the "race" to down a boss first. I wanted to, and did see all the content in previous expansions, and guess what? I didn't have to be in Ensidia/Nihilum to do so.

    I very very rarely believe Blizzard fucks up on a massive scale like most forum posters would seem to think. I'm still playing the game after all these years. This, however, goes back on the entire design philosophy I thought Blizzard was heading for. Doesn't bode well at all in my opinion.

    So, the guild with the best raiders and the best data miners kills Algalon first? Top end guilds start making private servers so they can remove the time limit and get several hours or face-time in? Is Algalon that much more difficult then the other "hard" mode style encounters?
    They haven't changed their design philosophy though - the entire rest of Ulduar conforms to the newer, more casual type of raid environment that allows more players to get at the content. Algalon is their answer to the many people crying for a new Sunwell-level of uber, for something that drops gear no casual will ever have, ever, and they did it without having to design an entirely new raid, which is pretty sly of them, imo.

  4. #44

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    You missed the point entirely. Please read what I had said again thoroughly.

  5. #45

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Quote Originally Posted by Offhand
    You missed the point entirely. Please read what I had said again thoroughly.
    I read it quite thoroughly. You seem to be under the impression that the hour time limit must be some kind of 'oh shit!' panic move by Blizzard in an attempt to just make the content last longer.

    I responded that it isn't, Blizz has given people precisely what they asked for, because unless you've been ignoring the forums since... forever, everybody seemed to love those 'fuck you' style fights, because they're all waxing nostalgic all over the place.

  6. #46

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    What makes me laugh, is so many people saying "omg, they just slapped a time limit on it cos they cant make it difficult".

    Who's to say the fight isn't M'uru difficulty with a 1 hour time limit?

    This is a good thing. Hopefully in 6 months time, he still won't be down. I like the sound of that. And im sure my guild will enjoy trying it.
    [center]Ultemicia - Warlock

    All 10/25 Ulduar Content Cleared - Except Algaon. Working on hard modes!
    All 10/25 WotLK Content Cleared - Including Sartharion + 3 Drakes


    Bloodscalp EU

    Ultemicia - Lv80 Warlock
    Tungusic - L80 Restoration Shaman
    Ingafel - L75 Rogue (In progress)
    Ratenu - L70 Prot Warrior (In progress)

  7. #47

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    12 July 2005
    The timer for Vaelastrasz the Corrupt is now more persistent. You can no longer reset the one-hour time limit for beating him by leaving the instance. Also, Vaelastrasz the Corrupt will not respawn for 12 hours if he has not been beaten when the timer expires.

    10 October 2005
    There is no longer a one-hour time restriction on the Vaelastraz the Corrupt encounter in Blackwing Lair.

    3 January 2006
    Instances
    * The Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj (outdoor 20-player instance)
    * The Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (indoor 40-player instance)

    As i said, been done before and it sucked and was just as much of a slowing down mechanism then as now, 1h / day could have been fair enough but once you clear ulduar in a day or two and only have this left to go for the 1h / week is a pisstake and just there for them to say "well you didn't beat Alaglon yet so there is still content"

    In the end im sure the time will be increased, just need that new raid instance to be on the horizon first.

  8. #48

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Quote Originally Posted by Herecius
    I read it quite thoroughly. You seem to be under the impression that the hour time limit must be some kind of 'oh shit!' panic move by Blizzard in an attempt to just make the content last longer.
    I don't understand how you could consider this anything else.

    Quote Originally Posted by Herecius
    I responded that it isn't, Blizz has given people precisely what they asked for, because unless you've been ignoring the forums since... forever, everybody seemed to love those 'fuck you' style fights, because they're all waxing nostalgic all over the place.
    There's a difference between a difficult fight, and a fight you only get to attempt once in a while. I have no doubts Algalon will be challenging. But the merit of the fight should be the fight itself and not the hoops you jump through around the fight. Yes, Blizzard killed "hardcore" in 3.0 by removing crap like farming for excessive amounts of consumables or stupid long attunement chains, good riddance. When things like this are implemented, they're done specifically to slow down progression enough if the challenge of the fight remains the same. It's seems as though Blizzard's realized that they can't/won't design a fight that is challenging enough in it's own right without a kind of stall built in. Sartharion 3d was supposed to be that fight, it got stomped by some guild a day after Naxx was first cleared. I reiterate my point, WoW's playerbase has become much better then Blizzard wants it to be/thinks it is.

    This is when I realize that the stupid time sink portion of ridiculously bad grind MMO's was implemented for a reason. Some old school players still believe that time spent = skill but I'm sorry, farming ghost mushrooms or whatever for a raid didn't require skill, it wasn't skill, it was going through the motions to get what was required of you to raid.

  9. #49

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Quote Originally Posted by Nezoia
    Sunwell Gates over again.

    .....

    And face it, 999/1000 people who's going to write "it sucks" comment on this forum, the official forums, and any other forum, is to casual for Algalon, and won't reach him the next 4 months.

    And in 4 months time they'll remove the limit, have nerfed him 5-6 times, and it'll take the average guild under a hour to kill him.

    WoW in a nutshell.
    Logical fallacies abound in this wonderous post... First off, made up statistics. Because lets face it: I guess things make more sense with numbers, regardless of how applicable or valid. Tacked on to this, is an equally 'factual' time frame. Go, go hyperbole! Next, some Nostradamus predictions of the future. Love it. Also, you run a strange Appeal to Authority gambit... "Area of expertise" is a valid question to bring up in a discussion, but when those same people are reading this forum, the official forums, and any other forum, I can't help but imagine that they probably give a damn about raiding, and aren't as "casual" as you would lead people to believe? Don't be disingenuous.

    Ultimately, not a single one of these "points" debunks the claims brought forth: That some people view this as not a measure of "true" difficulty, but another hinge for Acts of God to hang upon, which is a fairly valid concern. A side issue is the nature of this challenge, in how it's a strange path for a developer to head down in terms of dealing with the demand for challenging content, and I for one am concerned about the mentality behind this.

    In the end, apparently you thought you were proving a point, when in fact you were simply projecting yourself as one of the "elitist" that give people who take this game at least somewhat seriously as a past time a bad name. Perhaps you would be more convincing if you actually took a step down from your gold lacquered soap box and addressed questions that are brought forth with a more discerning and objective eye?

  10. #50

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    I do see what you're saying, for sure. The old methods of halting the downing of a boss were much lamer than anything currently in WoW, but I'm still advocating that the one hour time limit is a very good thing.

    The way I see it, is that they can't actually make a fight so difficult that players can't down it - they either have the gear to, in theory, down it, or they don't, and after that, it's all a matter of properly executing the strategy. The foil for this, of course, is RNG during a boss fight, with random ass shadowbolts blasting out for ginormous damage, for example, killing random raid members and basing things a little too much on luck.
    They can't make the fight actually more difficult than the gear level, as the ultra-overtuned pre-nerf M'uru very nearly was. They WANT people to be able to do down him with the current level of gear (meaning Ulduar gear), but they obviously don't want any guilds to just facegrind against Algalon for 15-straight hours until they finally happen to pull the strategy off, once.

    So.. is it a compromise? Yes, definitely. But I still think it's the correct compromise.

    So I suppose I will agree to disagree here.

  11. #51

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Quote Originally Posted by Alyssa
    12 July 2005
    The timer for Vaelastrasz the Corrupt is now more persistent. You can no longer reset the one-hour time limit for beating him by leaving the instance. Also, Vaelastrasz the Corrupt will not respawn for 12 hours if he has not been beaten when the timer expires.

    10 October 2005
    There is no longer a one-hour time restriction on the Vaelastraz the Corrupt encounter in Blackwing Lair.
    Before you blah, blah, yes. I read the rest of your post. I just trim stuff to keep things brief.

    There's a pretty significant difference in developer mentality between the second boss of a new instance, and the final, heroic-quest-line-summoned optional boss of another. One is a slowing mechanism, the other is a childish fit.

  12. #52

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    I find this amuseing as hell.

    People who make perfect perperation and learn fast will down this boss first instead of people with unlimited time.

    That being said this boss will be a constant source of rage and sadness I'm sure some poor guys will be kicked out of their guild because they screwed up the kill.

    So... he really feeds on our tears.

  13. #53

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Not really it's only slowing people in the end (and to get Nefarian to respawn after wipe you had to soft reset the instance and he was the end boss, hell even after that was changed the 15min respawn was allso just a slowing mechanism), im quite sure the high end guilds will just start with alt runs to get more face time with Algalon hence puting just as much effort in it as if they where allowed unlimited tries.

  14. #54

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Alyssa and Offhand are totally right. This is a bullshit move by blizzard to keep players from clearing content fast. And its expecially low because quite a lot of blue posts pointed to "Algalon the raid destroyer" as an example of truly challenging content.

    And now the "challenge" is that you can only fight him for an hour a week? Thats laughable.

    Sure in its own right the argument has some merit that it should not be possible to just zerg/force through encounters by putting a massive number of trys on them. Just banging your head should not bring you further along the way to a kill. It should be constant improvement from try to try. New ideas, slighty different tactics/movement and so on.

    For those kidding themselves with the idea that now other guilds than the "hardcore" ones will have a chance since they can try Algalon for an hour a week too...wake up. The "grind style" hardcore guilds will still down him first because they will put massive amounts of theory crafting into it and training besides being at the boss himself. Also as someone alreday mentioned they will surely create private server where the Algalon fight probably won't be exactly the same as on live but they will still be able to train certain aspects. Twink runs will also bee a way to have more time to try him as Alyssa points out.

    Heck there will even be training programms. Little games where you can do certain parts of the fight. I read about such things having been done for certain fights before.

    It just plain sucks that blizzards cheats their customers this way. And yes thats what they do. We do not get the bang out of our buck we should. Where is all the content for those casual gamers? For the non-raiders? Where are all those quests? New 5 player instances?

    Its not only that they do not provide enough content for raiders not to mention hardcore gamers...they don'tz provide enough content even for the majority of their player base.

    And no...for a gamer who doesn't really want to raid not having cleared Naxx oder sart3d is NOT available content. Blizzard has billions to produce content and they spit in our faces by only spending millions to do so.

    The latest kick in the butt is this kind of "haha...you can't clear the content!" by a total artificial time limit. Why don't they put in some fucking serious hardmodes? That don't allow you to make ANY mistakes. That have highly complicated movement and need you to squeze like 99% damage/healing out of the equip you got? It might even give a certain top ring for each role/class+a mount and a title.

    It can't be that hard to programm stuff like that and thus satisfy hardcore raiders. Just like it wouldn't be so hard to programm a few more 5 player instance , quest lines (possibly even in the old areas of kalimdor/eastern kingdoms) and other stuff for non-raiders. It comes down to this: GIVE US MORE DAMNED CONTENT! We do not want to play the same shit for months over and over again. Neither hardcore nore casual players want this.

  15. #55

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Quote Originally Posted by Suikiele
    Logical fallacies abound in this wonderous post... First off, made up statistics. Because lets face it: I guess things make more sense with numbers, regardless of how applicable or valid. Tacked on to this, is an equally 'factual' time frame. Go, go hyperbole! Next, some Nostradamus predictions of the future. Love it. Also, you run a strange Appeal to Authority gambit... "Area of expertise" is a valid question to bring up in a discussion, but when those same people are reading this forum, the official forums, and any other forum, I can't help but imagine that they probably give a damn about raiding, and aren't as "casual" as you would lead people to believe? Don't be disingenuous.

    Ultimately, not a single one of these "points" debunks the claims brought forth: That some people view this as not a measure of "true" difficulty, but another hinge for Acts of God to hang upon, which is a fairly valid concern. A side issue is the nature of this challenge, in how it's a strange path for a developer to head down in terms of dealing with the demand for challenging content, and I for one am concerned about the mentality behind this.

    In the end, apparently you thought you were proving a point, when in fact you were simply projecting yourself as one of the "elitist" that give people who take this game at least somewhat seriously as a past time a bad name. Perhaps you would be more convincing if you actually took a step down from your gold lacquered soap box and addressed questions that are brought forth with a more discerning and objective eye?
    No

  16. #56

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Quote Originally Posted by Marus
    Alyssa and Offhand are totally right. This is a bullshit move by blizzard to keep players from clearing content fast. And its expecially low because quite a lot of blue posts pointed to "Algalon the raid destroyer" as an example of truly challenging content.

    And now the "challenge" is that you can only fight him for an hour a week? Thats laughable.

    Sure in its own right the argument has some merit that it should not be possible to just zerg/force through encounters by putting a massive number of trys on them. Just banging your head should not bring you further along the way to a kill. It should be constant improvement from try to try. New ideas, slighty different tactics/movement and so on.

    For those kidding themselves with the idea that now other guilds than the "hardcore" ones will have a chance since they can try Algalon for an hour a week too...wake up. The "grind style" hardcore guilds will still down him first because they will put massive amounts of theory crafting into it and training besides being at the boss himself. Also as someone alreday mentioned they will surely create private server where the Algalon fight probably won't be exactly the same as on live but they will still be able to train certain aspects. Twink runs will also bee a way to have more time to try him as Alyssa points out.

    Heck there will even be training programms. Little games where you can do certain parts of the fight. I read about such things having been done for certain fights before.

    It just plain sucks that blizzards cheats their customers this way. And yes thats what they do. We do not get the bang out of our buck we should. Where is all the content for those casual gamers? For the non-raiders? Where are all those quests? New 5 player instances?

    Its not only that they do not provide enough content for raiders not to mention hardcore gamers...they don'tz provide enough content even for the majority of their player base.

    And no...for a gamer who doesn't really want to raid not having cleared Naxx oder sart3d is NOT available content. Blizzard has billions to produce content and they spit in our faces by only spending millions to do so.

    The latest kick in the butt is this kind of "haha...you can't clear the content!" by a total artificial time limit. Why don't they put in some fucking serious hardmodes? That don't allow you to make ANY mistakes. That have highly complicated movement and need you to squeze like 99% damage/healing out of the equip you got? It might even give a certain top ring for each role/class+a mount and a title.

    It can't be that hard to programm stuff like that and thus satisfy hardcore raiders. Just like it wouldn't be so hard to programm a few more 5 player instance , quest lines (possibly even in the old areas of kalimdor/eastern kingdoms) and other stuff for non-raiders. It comes down to this: GIVE US MORE DAMNED CONTENT! We do not want to play the same shit for months over and over again. Neither hardcore nore casual players want this.
    Does the Argent Tournament ring any bells?

    Programming is all about prioritizing. You will always have a list of 900000000 things to do and only so much time to do that in. Blizzard could hire 4000 new developers tomorrow and as my boss (I work at a software company) is fond of saying " You get 9 guys together on a project and they won't make a baby in a month".

    Stop crying, get to Algalon and try him or go play something else.

  17. #57

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    Makes sense to me, though I understand why some people would be pissed about it.

    By throwing on a time limit, sure it's a cockblock for a lot of people but it brings a different thought process to learning the fights. Up to now, it's been a face to the wall, "bulldoze through" method of clearing content. Raids go in, and go at it until they brute-force learn the encounter and clear it in a couple hours. This ends up meaning stuff gets cleared faster because people want to go as fast as they can.

    Instead, now they are forced to stop, think, collaborate a bit and use that one hour as efficiently as possible and learn on the fly.

    And if the time limit is removed or lengthened at some point, who cares? By the time this happens, strats will exist and what really makes the encounter special right now won't be as big anymore.

    Chances are I won't see the encounter until much much later and that doesn't bother me. I'll enjoy the other content, and see stuff at my leisure. It's not a race for everybody.
    Whoever said cats always land on their feet wasn't throwing them right.

  18. #58

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    I think Herecius is exactly right. It's very hard to create a truly "difficult" encounter. "Put enough monkeys in a room with a typewriter, eventually they'll make Shakespeare". That's how some kills go for some people, they just bang it out again and again until eventually the stars align and the boss dies. And no matter how "tricky" a boss is, this strategy can work almost every time. The only 2 fixes to this are: a) over tune the fight so that only people with mostly BiS gear are gonna be able to survive; b) limit the number of attempts. I mean what did everyone expect from Algalon? Did you just want an insanely difficult fight that only the best-of-the-best gear could survive. If that had been the case, the same people would be on the other side of the fence saying that Blizz screwed it up and over-tuned it or whatever.
    If you don't like it, go on the internet and complain.

  19. #59

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    You also have to consider this into the equation. The general playerbase isn't the same anymore. It's evolved and theorycrafting, min/maxing, testing, finding how a square object goes in a circular space has increased tenfold. If you guys think this is a serious lack of imagination for Blizzard then you should consider what exactly making a really really hard encounter would entail. Regardless of the state of the forums the general raiding base is getting quicker, smarter, they've seen most mechanics in some form or fashion now so nothing's really that new. I really think you guys underestimate the level of difficulty need to make a genuinely hard hard encounter like that anymore. I'll reiterate what others are saying that it's very doubtful they want an encounter where people like ensidia will just sit there and force their way through it a matter of days. Because no matter what they throw at the them they'll figure out a way to kill him in a few days if that were possible. I really don't think they're copping out on this I think they did this to give people the challenged feeling of actually having to think about a fight first. I dunno could be wrong but i think this is a good idea. Maybe putting it to 1 hr a day would be better but it's a good idea in general.

  20. #60

    Re: The Algalon Hour

    I suppose that, in it's way, this is a more transparent cockblock than the impossibly bugged end-bosses of yore.

    Remember the days when C'Thun was so buggy that he was impossible to beat? Then, one hotfix later--like two months after the instance's release, after Death and Taxes threatened to quit the game altogether and around the time Naxx 40 made it's appearance on the PTRs--the top guilds suddenly were able to defeat him almost overnight. IIRC, weren't the original 4H and Vashj also "intentionally" bugged to artificially impede raiding progression?

    So this will be the same--except the top guilds have many more options at their disposal to use to help them surpass this hurdle and greater motivation to spend 24/7 exploiting them. I mean, even increasing the difficulty level of some of the hard modes didn't stop guilds last week from beating them. (Remember when the easier versions of these hard modes were tested on the PTR, these same guilds required special "uber" gear to help them win?)

    In the end, the only thing this time limit is going to do is moderately increase the amount of time that it will take for the best guilds to figure the fight out and beat it. It won't allow less elite guilds to catch up, it won't level the playing ground between casual and hardcore guilds and it won't help Blizzard achieve its goal of making raiding accessible to every one. Instead, like all of the other cockblocks in the past, it will just become another bonehead move by the developers.

    Oh and maybe the level of hazing will make the first guilds who do defeat Algalon decide to keep their tricks and strats to themselves instead of posting them all over for everyone else to use. :-P THAT might actually help make WoW slightly more difficult again. :-P


    BTW, I somehow doubt that guilds like Ensidia win their world first's by merely beating their heads against the encounter. The reason these guilds are first is because they do actually apply intelligence to their raiding.

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