The Hopes For A Game

[Deleted]

Hello fellow MMO-Champion members.
As I and some other people discussed a month earlier, some people do not like the current state of the game and it's mechanics.
In this post I want to ask you weather or not I am alone with this opinion and weather or not the idea I have to solve this ... let me call it problem ... is an idea people would accept. It realy took time to write this so please give me your opinion, even if you think you would just troll ... or even if you want to troll ... give me feedback! - I will try to answer to every feedback I get so be sure to check in later!

A small story ... question?
Now that WoW is getting a huge overhaul in terms of stats, talents and game mechanics, it might also be the right time to adress this issue.
The thing I mean is the actual gameplay and the fun you gain out of it.
In current WoW, you fight a bossencounter with maybe 3 - 6 abilities in a battle with 2 - 3 phases that either swich by time or by a percentage of the boss's health. The majority of the battle takes place in your lower part of the screen. You press buttons, not even much buttons, but these buttons very, very often. Mostly not only often but also for a very long time. Battles can take up to 10 minutes, where you move not much, but just slam your keyboard to keep up your rotation or have your priority list-ed cooldowns occupied. Your actual contribution towards the battle is at a bare minimum, the difference between a success and a "wipe" is mostly just a step to the wrong or right direction. When you die, sometimes you do not even know if it was you who just caused this, or was it the healer who oversaw your depleting health meter. Was it your tank who turned the boss in the wrong direction or was it the guy with the big mark of a boss mod walking into the group, freezing them all to death (yeah I am looking at Sindragosa right now)? It doesnt matter anymore, you die, minutes of your life wasted because of a single mistake.

A problem of the game, not the players.
The problem here is not that people make mistakes.
The problem is not that every person sometimes seems to make the mistake at least once before he gets the point of how to prevent it.
The problem is that whenever someone makes a mistake, everyone suffers at full force:
The healer dies instantaniously due to a mistake he never did before, the tank gets crushed because he gets no heal in the bare 1,25 seconds he has, the boss rages through the group ... wipe.
The damage dealer dies due to a mistake, his damage is misssing in the encounter, the boss enters enrage mode ... wipe.
The tank makes a mistake, taking a little bit too much damage at once that the healers can not outheal ... wipe.

The game punishes a group for the mistake of single persons. Not even the developers like it, but they stick with it because they seem to not know better. Due to the massive overhaul of cataclysm, things can change!

The direction they give us
Blizzards latest patches revealed a few new things for everyone:
Nearly every class gains "self healing abilities". Warriors heal themselves with Victory Rush and multiple talents. Rogues can spend combo points for healing. Warlocks always had life drains. Death Knight - especialy Death Knight TANKS - can heal themselves. Mages can at least shield themselves. And the rest is a healing hybrid class anyway ... maybe not Hunters but thats not the point here.

Blizzard gives us these abilities with the possibility to "support healers" by healing ourselves.

Healers should not have infinite mana and spamheal everything to death they say.
Healers should watch what and how they heal they say.
Healers should FIGHT with the group and not stand around waiting for something to take damage they say.
Healers should regenerate mana by doing the point above they say.

But there are still some small steps to take before these ideas can wear fruit!

You can see at the paladin changes that there are even further steps to actually get to this point: The 0 Mana Cost heal. The AoE Heal, the Cone Heal, everything needs consideration, active participation and actually TEAMWORK (YES baby YES *euphory*).

Currently in the BETA (its a Beta, everything can and should change), people are mostly saying "I can still spamheal." "I still have to spamheal." is another expression you can get out of people who liked the idea above.
I also do not see wheather or not the game changes by this. I say ... no. The tank takes damage ... much damage. The healer heals the damage ... non stop ... and the DDs have the incredible (boring) job to kill the monsters ... in under 20 minutes ... (yes~ *scepticism*)

The way to solve this
Now to the most important part!
1. Get rid of passive mana regeneration.
It gives us nothing. WotLK battles are long, so long that a single mana pool is not enough. So Blizzard implemented a way to increase the mana pool ... with regenerating mana. This stat is so often found and used nowadays that most healing classes ignore their mana anyway. The abilities to regenerate mana in a pinch like "Innervate" or the Shamans Totem (forgot the name) are either mandatory in EXTREMLY long fights or useless in other ones. I do not think that in any RPG these "abilities" were supposed to be used this way.

Due to the fact that healers should now play actively in a fight to regenerate mana makes this stat useless as a "fun increasing stat". The healers should regenerate mana only through fighting. If they have to heal too much, they go OOM. If they spam heal too much, they go OOM. If their group prevents lethal damage and heals themselves with their own abilities, the tank uses his abilities right and the healer watches closly at what is happening, his mana will be enough to lead the group to victory.

2. Lower the damage the tank and raid takes.
Nowadays, a tank does not survive a high end encounter longer than 4 seconds without being healed. Most of the time the healers have to spamheal the tank because they never know when the next shot will be lethal. Some encounters are even designed to act like a "2-shot"-fest.
This does not contribute to a diversive gameplay.
Also in current encounters, especialy in "hard modes", characters that are "not Tank" are oneshotted by an ability you should avoid.
Yes you should avoid a giant blast, but to be killed instantaniously the first time it hits you is not fun. The player is punished by making a mistake and due to his punishment, everyone suffers.

Lower the damage the tanks take to something like 20% per hit. Even if a non tank is attacked directly by an enemy they should not "fall over" instantaniously. Also healers would have a reason to consider WHEN to heal the tank to keep their overheal low.
Do not implement "INSTA KILL" abilities in bossencounters. When you make a mistake, you are punished by an HP loss. Either the healers now look at you with an angry stare, or you heal yourself up. Either way, you fight on, having learned something and hopefully watch out better next time. You learned something and make some kind of "personal progress". When you die instantaniously you most often do not even care what happens next or even what just happened... because ... it is over ...

3. Increase the speed of the battles
Though this all seems to "make everything easy mode". This is a valid point and thus we need to counter this.
By increasing I do not mean "make things die faster". I mean, force the player to focus. Today abilities of bosses strike a player very rarely. They have to dodge, act, move, (insert action here) , 1/5 ; 1/10 ; 1/25 of the time every 30 seconds. The rest of the fight is ... standing around and hammering on buttons.
Design encoutners where abilities strike the player every 5 seconds. Like the beam in the Halion encounter, make it explode every 10 seconds and last for 5 seconds instead of 30s / 10s . Make Icehowl of TotC stomp and storm the raid only. If they dodge he is attackable, if he hits something it might get killed the next round, being ahead only 5 seconds away.
Abilities with cooldown would be of greater importance. If you have long time, use many weak abilities in succession with small cooldowns. If you have a short time to deal damage to the enemy, use an ability with a high cooldown, dealing high burst damage, because you have to move and do other stuff the very next second after.

I hope you get the idea where I think things are "fun" and "frustrating". And a game should make "fun" rather than "frustrate" you - this should be clear.
I do not want you to take these ideas word for word, but I hope you get the point where I think "Blizzard you are having a good idea but you are not thinking far enough!"

TLDR (too long did not read)

Blizzard gives players new possibilities to make a better game with better gameplay:
- Selfheal
- Active Mana Regen
Blizzard fails at doing the next right step:
- Removing Passive Mana Regen
- Reducing Damage to let Selfheal and Active Mana Regen have any effect
- Increasing FUN by faster gameplay with lesser instant punishment due failiures but higher rate of possible failiures.
-> Noobs stay Noobs but Noobs do not ruin Pros day and game.

Thank you for your feedback.
Xenon

[Ashla]

At first i thought this was going to turn out to be a QQ fest, but I agree whole-heartedly with your ideas, speaking as a paladin healer/dps, the idea of taking out the many mana regen would be refreshing, right now, if you use your T10 2set bonus correctly, you can regen 25% of mana without any dire effects every 3 minutes, or every 1 minute if you use trinkets to reduce the limiting factor of heals. You have my vote with this idea

[Direpanda]

Blizz is actually doing a lot of the things you suggest.

Damage will be lower relative to health pools all across the board. We know that passive mana regen, while not going away entirely, will be much less of a crutch than it is today.

As for faster gameplay, we can only wait and see what kind of encounters are thrown our way. It is extremely annoying at best, and terribly penalizing to personal DPS at worst, if we have to move every 5 seconds. Remember that any ranged class is going to benefit from casted spells, especially since healers will really need to watch efficiency come Cata; these spells frequently have a 2.5-3 sec cast time. Haste and talents may bring that down under 2-2.5, but the game is structured such that most spell rotations can't get going in two casts.

Also consider offensive cooldowns. They need to have a noticeable increase in DPS, or they feel worthless; and because they provide a substantial boost, they must have substantial cooldown periods. If a fight is very short, everyone will only get to use his cooldowns once, and much of the strategy involved with cooldown stacking and timing—which sometimes has a central role—will be eliminated.

Blizz usually does a good job of sending new and interesting mechanics our way. Especially given the new spells and mechanics, I'm sure it'll be anything but boring.

[Chareoss]

Yes 'noobs' have been a huge problem for me lately, especially in dungeon finder heroics and server raid pugs.. There is always going to be noobs in the game, but we can safely blame blizzard for the increased number of them because of the way this game was 'dumbed' down this expansion.. let's not forget the amount of loot dictating that's going on in the game at the moment; from reserving to ninja'ing. These are 2 things that is quickly killing the game for me.. But let's not forget finding the right server/guild can fix both of these problems.

I completely agree with the mana thing... I would love to run out of mana as a healer if I over use my healing abilities.. Remember the times people would say "don't worry i'll bandage" to save a healer's mana? On the other hand I really think 'out of combat' mana regen could be hugely increased, instead of having to drink after every pull that requires alot of healing.. (you would need to save your mana regen abilities for in combat regen) Who wants to spend 20 seconds sitting down drinking after every pull that requires a decent amount of healing while the other 4 people wait for you? Not me...

Not sure I like the idea of people healing themselves.. Classes should have ways of avoiding or absorbing damage to save themselves in tight situations.. that is the skill of using your abilities at the right time.. but what's the point of having a healer if every class could heal themselves? stupid.

I watched the stonecore boss videos and have to say I was really dissapointed in the boss fights.. I mean, surely the designers can think of some new mechanics for bosses in stead of just moving out of a shadow on the ground or killing a few adds that pop out? one is just a tank and spank giant for game sakes.. I do like the fact the bosses have some decent hp though..

[agdelian]

The throne of the tides mobs require a good bit of coordination, and keep in mind these dungeons are in beta AND normal versions. So far it looks like regular dungeons are getting a much needed difficulty increase after the facerolling that is LK.

[Garekh]

The whole "self healing" thing reminds me of Guild Wars 2's approach a little bit:

"We're making players more self sufficient, but are also providing appealing ways for them to effortlessly work together to create a more inspired moment-to-moment experience. That is why Guild Wars 2 does not have a dedicated healing class.

Everyone take a deep breath. It's going to be OK."

[Deleted]

[...]

Thank you.

[...]

Well the current statements I get from people discussing the Beta is that they still have absolutly no mana issues.
The best example was the priest I listened to on friday:
"I am having absolutly no mana problems here!"
"Didn't Blizzard say they want to see healers go OOM more often?"
"Yeah they did! My flash heal now costs EXTREMLY much mana. But there is this other healin spell - 'Heal', some spell we had when being low level now coming back to the high end player. It costs absolutly low mana and does the job."

And the "faster gameplay" with more movement should involve everyone more, so even meele DPS will have lesser time at the boss and ranged will have to decide "Cast a long spell and activate all one-time-cooldowns first to realy make THIS spell hit HARD and get the hell out of here!" or "Cast a spell combination for more damage, use cooldowns with a longer active time, but be endangered for a longer time." The same goes for meele, like the rogue "having to decide if he finishes now with 4 combo points and leaves or he waits 3 seconds longer to regenerate enough energy to use the new Strike and make the finisher worth its 5 combo points". Dont take this too serious. Its just a quick example.

[...]

Well discussing noobs wasnt realy the point here ... but well your opinion on WotLK is clear now :-)

And yes out of combat mana regen would be a good thing. Though it would have again huge impact on PvP, like when the healer gets out of combat his mana is refilled extremly fast ... that would be both overpowered when it actually works but also a tactical part of battle, keeping the healer infight. This was in TBC when "Arena PvP drinking" was an issue. Maybe you could solve this by making the normal drinks last only 10 seconds and the Arena Only drinks need 30 seconds to be fully effective.

The self healing is IMHO a good thing. It speeds up the leveling process and it makes new types of encounter design possible. AoE damage can be healed by the players themselves and for an example:
A boss spawns adds that the offensive skilled warrior starts tanking and taking it down quickly. He then uses Victory Rush to heal himself up, regenerating the health he lost by tanking the add. The healer can focus on the main tank the whole time. (The same can be said for Warlocks using their pet as a tank for this situation, rogues tanking with evasion and using recuperate or death knights using death strike afterwards).

The throne of the tides mobs require a good bit of coordination, and keep in mind these dungeons are in beta AND normal versions. So far it looks like regular dungeons are getting a much needed difficulty increase after the facerolling that is LK.

Yes I also like the trash mob design, though I dislike the idea of having to fight all this trash 30 times a week. Like Total Bisquit said in his most recent video: "[They should not kill the ability by using it too often]". When this add that throws people in the air lives for too long the abiliy goes from exiting to annoying and the trash goes from difficult to a "waste of time". Not fun!

The whole "self healing" thing reminds me of Guild Wars 2's approach a little bit:
[...]

Teamwork is a good part here. Just look at the paladins cone heal ability. He will need to shout "align yourselves in a row so I can heal you! quick!" and the group should follow that order. Align yourself, get healed, fight on, everyone is happy to have worked in a team. *happy happy joy joy* ... ok you get the point I hope.

[lumaria]

Wall of text Crits for over 9000!

[Deleted]

Read the bottom, I have an extra TLDR section for people like you!

Wall of text Crits for over 9000!

[Direpanda]

If there are still no mana issues, Blizz needs to fix that. But I doubt that the various class' heals and mana costs are balanced at this point—that seems like something that would be one of the last steps of the beta. First get it into the game, make sure it works, then fiddle with numbers.

Also I expect that a number of beta testers are running around in full ICC gear; and just like Sunwell-geared raiders stomped through WotLK's beginner stuff, I'm sure that ICC raiders overgear these encounters.

As for faster gameplay ... it might be good in concept, but I can't really see a solid way of executing this that doesn't make the encounter feel like a 70's-era arcade game. WoW has a certain tempo right now, what with global cooldowns and standardized cast times, and then there's also the issue of latency. I think the encounters certainly could throw more at the players, and perhaps one particular boss fight with absurd amounts of movement as you describe could be fun; but especially with some of the new class skills, I'd prefer to see a wider variety of unusual challenges and more complex encounters, rather than a faster pace but relatively simplistic ones.

If all you challenge are a player's reactions and positioning, the game will get boring fast.

[Hinansho]

Have you ever played Ragnarok Online? Go try a week over there before complaining about wow's mechanics for battle.

Ever since I came over from the dark side I haven't been able to play my X-sin. I think the problem is with the community at not having experiences like that in an mmo. I'm not saying wow should go off the deep end in difficulty, but stay where it is now.
Wow really has struck a nice balance between difficulty and forgiveness. I don't think in normal raids that a single mistake should cause a wipe, BUT players are given the tools to prevent that. In HC raids I do believe that a single mistake should be the end of the raid if not handled quickly enough. That content is, always has been, and hopefully always will be for the dedicated few willing to put the effort in to that end.

[Numeanor]

No no no no faster pace of encounters and moving all the time is bad idea. Blizz already made hunters in cata like stationary glass cannons. We have focus, we shot 1-2 shots and we are on 0 focus with lower regen than rogues have energy regen. Now if we want to regen focus we NEED to spamm steady or cobra shot to increase that focus regen and also from some talents we can get some more additional regen from shoting those two shots (MM tree). Now if we have to move constantly we won't have time to shot all those steadies or cobra shots to regen focus. We will shot some instant after that maybe one steady and we will have to move and there will be only 30% focus back. Ok while moving we can switch to fox aspect but there will be like 4 aspect switches in 10 seconds is like more aspect switching than DPSing.
Also they have reduced the bonuses got from haste so that means all casters will also cast slower than in WOLTK. Blizz said they want casters to be interruptable in PvP and also not spamming to fast in PvE. So that leads us againt your logic to make faster pace and more moving. More moving in encounters will only restroy ranged classes and melee will dominate again in all aspects of the game... NO NO NO NO enough of that melee OPness. I'm sick and tired to see melee facerolling boss all the time while range have to move like idiots to not get hit or even more being forced not to move to not take damage, while melee faceroll boss (blood council ICC HC).
Ulduar was epic raid, ICC was total boring crap, ToC was somehow good, but only filler content. RS is kinda stupid...

[Deleted]

Ok ... that was hard to read Numeanor ...
But let me explain what the point of the whole thing is in more detail:
Not only for healers but for all classes there should be a certain importance in everything they do. Currently you just slam your buttons and do your rotation for hour after hour. I think after my first LK kill I went to the bathroom to cool my fingers because spamming 15 minutes the 1 Button for Heroic Strikes is kind of exhausting for a whole evening.
Let me explain the idea behind with an example on a fire mage:
Lets just say this as a baseline:
A Pyroblast would deal 20k damage non crit
A Scorch would deal 4k damage non crit
A Fireball would deal 8k damage non crit
(unrealistic I know but deal with it)
Now you are in a motion heavy encounter.
You see you have about 8 seconds peace for now, now you have two options:
Use 5 seconds to cast Pyroblast, deal huge damage and run on.
Or activate combustion and use Scorch, 2 Fireballs and hope for a hot steak, dealing way more damage in total, but it would require 6 - 7 seconds for you to pull it off. Now the first option is good when you have only 5 - 6 seconds, but the second option may result in more damage. It would matter what you do and how you do it, and a good player would be way better than a bad player in this, making a clear difference and making it unable for idiots to look up class guides and check what they need to do and be as good as a player as someone who invested years in their character. Knowledge is key!

[Numeanor]

Why you ppl smashing the buttons? Make castsequence macro for most used abilities and put it on mouse wheel, then all u need is rool it up and down whole fight. I use buttons only for stings that are used every 15 sec or once if MM, hunter's mark which is used on start of the fight and maybe some CD's...
And making all encounters so moving is fail since hunters won't regen enough focus to compete with other classes. Give us too much focus and we may be OP in PvP or even non-catchable in PvE on DPS... no no no bad idea. Blizz already fucked up all talent trees and with that kind of encounters... bad bad idea.

[Emaluri]

When I think about it, I don't see any real purpose for castsequence macros other than making things easier than they already are. I'm inclined to think, unless real purpose can be added, that they ought to be removed.

I wonder what percentage of the population complaining that things are too easy do so with such macros on their bars.

[Will]

while i do not disagree that mistakes can often be punishing for hard modes, I do not believe this to be the case on normal modes. I noticed a lot of boss mechanics are often slacked and yet we can still kill it.

However, I do believe there is a difference between making mistakes while playing correctly, or playing incorrectly in the first place, so yes, players are as much to blame as the game is.

[Deleted]

I would like to hear more opionions about this.
Also ... I'd like to see the game made harder, not easier, in both encounter design and classgameplay. When you are even able to make a makro to play the game for you, the game has a problem to be solved, and this means a lack of real difficulty. Most encounters are "hard" because the boss two-shots tanks and oneshots all others. Then goes the enrage timer.
Just look at Sindragosa Hardmode:
The fight is not hard. Not at all. Damn I killed her with one hand and the other holding my head up so I wont fall asleep (I realy did). The problems are the enourmous numbers that pop up. Aura, Spellcaster Explosions, Magic Damage Taken increase in phase 3. Realy interesting is the Iceblock Phase. After this its all "try to make it more interesting by forcing the player to stop doing what they always do". Its all a fight to manage your debuffs so the healers (again, the healers are a core point) can actuall outheal the raiddamage. Then when you die in phase 3, its most often "god damnit why werent I healed for 10 seconds?" - its frustrating, not difficult. When I would die because of her lethal cold or frostexplosions in her airphase, I could realy say "I made a mistake!" when I die with 3 stacks frozen and 2 stacks magic damage increase, its just lame. The next best point to start flaming me here is "then dont let it stack that high!" - yeah as if there would be any case it would be actually in any kind of usefull to prevent it ... just look at the enrage timer and you know it is not a viable point. You "need to do this", and the healers "need to outheal" ... sorry ... "spam-outheal" this as a part of the encounter. And its boring the 50th time you engage her. And as a fact that whenever someone dies you have to restart 90% of the time, it gets boring realy fast.
When there would be possibilities to counter powerfull abilities (again look at it in the very old discussion called "Diversity within ..." ... I dont remember the name), a one shot wouldnt be "so" boring and frustrating because you set yourself in a danger on purpose.
And before you start flaming and trolling: This is a discussion about how to increase the fun you have in the game. Not about how to fight a boss better ...