aspire to do something lol?
aspire to do something lol?
Can't do much about fansites spoiling things. Although they can stop being so dependent on public test realms. And put some cease-and-desists on dataminers. People are still going to datamine, but with official sites not allowed to show the results, and visitors being so lazy, very few people will actually go the extra mile to find an "underground" datamine-results-displaying site, and even those sites can be similarly treated, since just like most people that want to visit them, so can Blizzard's lawyers find them. They could also ban some add-ons that pretty much play the game for you, and impose a delay on fansites releasing guides for recent content. Too much work, I know, but if they care there are available steps.
Of course, there are no more 60 levels to cover, but that does not mean that there cannot be developed an equally large amount of content; which is what matters the most in this subject. That is why I am coming back to quantity continuously. They can still develop as many zones, as many campaigns, as many class quests, as much complex quests, and so on. They can actually do better than vanilla; far better. But they don't, because they have gone the instanced content way, which is more convenient, and faster, and has less expenses.
Last edited by Drithien; 2013-10-31 at 02:11 PM.
Blizzard wouldn't give a shit if 75 players went on strike, not when their business is to make 7.5 million people happy, and ones personal raiding skill does not factor into making people happy. Blizzard wouldn't even feel the bump of running over those three world first guilds leaving the game. The ideal that 3 world first guilds having the power to make blizzard break seriously makes me wonder about the age of the poster who said that these 3 world first guilds could actually make blizzard change its direction.
Your problem is the difficulty level. That doesn't mean that LFR has to stay. At least not in it's current form. You can have a Flex raid on a LFR-like difficulty without having to queue and group up with complete strangers and random players. An oQueue-like LFG tool can then replace the old queueing system and we don't have to spam trade chat and we will have a much broader search for players because it's crossrealm.
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Yeah.... just go back a few pages and look what I wrote instead of telling me that I am not offering a solution and only want to remove LFR.
A Flexible raid on a LFR difficulty with an oQueue-like LFG tool can be used exactly the same as LFR if you still want that...
How is that not a good proposal?
Last edited by Gilian; 2013-10-31 at 02:15 PM.
I'm not convinced I like that attitude, but I've no doubt that you're absolutely right; it's casual players who provide the vast, vast majority of the playerbase in this game and it's high-time they stopped being fed reconstituted and watered down "content", just so that Blizzard can justify making rock hard raids from normal up.
But to the OP's question:
1) Fix the actual raiding platform; four modes is too much. Downtune normal mode and make it flexible, with heroic only being available on 25-man. The next step is putting up with the almighty din that'd come from 10-man heroic raiders, then three months down the line the raiding game ends up in far healthier shape again because 25-man guilds were salvaged. Leave LFR where it is. Lastly, remove the Thunder/Warforged items, they're not achieving anything.
2) Drop the size of raids to 9 to 12 bosses per tier, and then ensure that there is at least one dungeon per patch. Scrap challenge modes, make heroic modes truly heroic, and give them rewards equal to LFR (meta-achievements can be used for mounts/mogging gear). Stop, however, with the rail-roaded, twenty minute, 3-boss pieces of shit we've been served up for years and start thinking back to the original Stratholme and Blackrock Spire. THAT is what a dungeon should be, and it forms endgame for casual players. Then, reinstate the dungeon sets of The Burning Crusade such as the Oblivion Raiment and the like so that players can still progress in them.
3) Overhaul the profession system entirely so that it, too, can be a part of endgame. Alternative Chat recently spoke about this, but professions have been entirely stripped of their depth since mid-Wrath. It sucks. Systems could be put in place for skilled crafters so that they can make a plan, but see it get a bonus if they're particularly skilled (via skill-based profession quests, number of patterns known, etc/etc). Bonuses could include them being already 2/2 upgraded, or simply a higher item level or with more secondary stats. The absolute gold here would be a cool proc. For the love of Jeebus, bring back crafting specializations and make mastery time consuming.
4) Major lore events need to stop happening in raids. Domination Point was a great example of how to do this, and the new tech for random events on the Timeless Isle make more possibilities land squarely on the table. Reward exploration outside of quest objectives with cool visual content rather than items destined to become vendor materials (but make them repeatable, similar to the fall of the Lich King).
5) Develop scenarios so that they can be placed earlier in the game and act as proving grounds on the way up. I'd be particularly keen on solo-scenarios that revealed major lore points such as the death of Illidan or the destruction of Yogg-Saron. Players in a "raid" of NPC's can then be taught boss-related mechanics that increase their skill level while helping them to enjoy the rich lore of the game, rather than the dull proving grounds which don't really do much of anything.
6) For fuck's sake, fix PvP. Stop treating it like a meaningless side game and give the community some respect. Balance it properly with PvP specs rather than trying to shoe-horn every spec into raiding, then make the content more interesting than merely random BG's or a bit of arena. Bring back world PvP zones, and make some more from the earlier game but scale players so that there's no pointless ganking. Then make a set of PvP campaigns so that PvP players can enjoy the sense of progression from the "new content" angle rather than merely farming gear.
7) Beef up the difficulty of levelling quests and dungeons. For crying out loud it's too easy, too fast and laughably pointless. Failure isn't introduced until level 90 and that's all kinds of wrong. Levels can then be made more meaningful rather than largely forgettable, while also making casual players appreciate the content more. Stop treating new players as if they're droopy-eyed armless children who can't press buttons. They're not.
8) Lastly, and by no means least, to Blizzard: Stop blaming one side of the community when the other side cries. It's putting people at each other's throat. Take responsibility for bad design decisions rather than blaming an intangible group of people, then hiding behind "we have all the data". Stop assuming everyone wants to raid just because you do, and think about how to provide meaningful content for casual players rather than useless, queued mini-games that have no real impact on a character.
That's my starter for 10.
I can agree on the raiding vision, keeping LFR, making flex the new normal and heroic 25man I would have enabled on raid release. Let people who want heroic the choice to go in off the bat.
As for dungeons I disagree on some of it. Making dungeons hard is what drove players away in Cata. I would have Heroic dungeons and Champion Dungeons. Champion dungeons would use a flex style system where you queue with a full group and it presents a harder version of the same dungeon with better loot and theres also 2 longer dungeons in this mode. I fully agree on Vanilla/TBC dungeon sets, bring in those with a quest to upgrade them down the line. Challenge modes could remain if they are popular and are accessed as they are now.
Fully agree on Scenarios and professions. I would also like to see more dungeon drops for professions and quests tied to doing something in said dungeon (like BRD smithing for example for some rare stuff).
It's not really off track; I think it would help the casual player base because it would potentially stop them being so maligned.
It wasn't; it was the fact there were no other options for gearing up. My dungeon model would have levelling dungeons as now, rename the current heroics to "Level Cap" (where you queue up and farm valor), then have the heroics I described.
And if people want to queue up for heroics, let them. I hate this "CM's and heroic scenarios are too hard for the queue" shit.
Let the fucking players decide.
Upgradeable dungeon sets is a great idea.
Tie that in with professions, maybe?
Why cant they have a separate "PVP specialization" like how you have tank healer dps. You can have "PVP spec" Yeh it might be tricky to do. But you could have PVP healer spec (whos main purpose is healing/cleansing and all round survival tricks), PVP tank spec (whos focus is flag carrying/objective holding with cc), and pvp dps whos all about burst damage with some cc/mobility.
Yeh it would be a fair amount of work but it would be far better than trying to balance skills that work in PVE then are hugely overpowered in PVP.
i think lfr could be signifigantly improved without making any changes at all to the in-game system.
i think both socially and constructively it could be improved by simply removing the naming and shaming ethos from the forums.
as it stands the trolls, griefers, ninjas, lazies, bads, and <insert whatever else applies here> are the only ones that benefit from the system.
untill blizz steps up and ensures some form of personal responsibility returns to what you do in-game nothing will change.
it has to be the players changing before any improvements to the game will make any difference.
Absolutely. Just like PvP gear has PvP power, raid gear should have Raid Power. Actually, hit rating sort of worked like that, but recently they've been adding lots of non-raid/non-dungeon content that requires hit cap. Personally I wouldn't mind if they lowered all non-raiding mobs to level 90, removed hit rating from all non-raid gear, and made the baseline hit rating for everyone such that they could hit at 100% for level 90 with no hit rating whatsoever. Then raiders can get their hit rating gear and feel more powerful without then coming into non-raid content and decimating everything in sight. It's ridiculous that right now a BiS raider does ever three times more damage than a LFR raider on gear alone.
I think you and I describe the same thing with dungeons. I just called mine heroics for the easier setting then champion mode for the far more difficult one. Catas dungeon difficulty was that as you say it was the only way to gear up. Because it was hard and LFD people were used to wrath level difficulty only for dungeons.
I fully agree let people queue up for these things, let people who want "heroics" queue up for those and any higher setting let that go on there. I would probably make the harder ones require you to have a full group similar to flex. It would also make it so people try to form their own groups. But I would not be against full on match making instead for it.
Professions could certainly tie into it. I can see that you can do it. You have to farm some materials for a portion of the upgrade quest (so say you get 4 set bonus the upgrade quest chain unlocks and you upgrade each item by doing various tasks. Killing bosses SP scenarios. and a profession related upgrade). These materials could then be given to a smith who makes a certain item for your quest that when trade to you, you then use a quest item that merges the items to upgrade.
The issue is, is that the game's core demographic has changed from the "we want to explore" type to the "we want end game" type. It's been stated that more than double the amount of current subscribers have ever played wow, so that means at one point within the game's history there was a paradigm shift to push more directed and dynamic content at the sacrifice of free roam readiness in not just Blizzard's point of view, but the rest of the very community you preach for.
Vanilla appealed to those in the open world, and you could say that it did last a while for a lot of people. Hell it could have lasted them expansions, but when they finally reach level cap and want to do something more in say wotlk, they are met with raiding. The progression to pro-raid and anti-open world is akin only to scale at which the amount of casual players either grew bored with questing or simply wished for something new that was well within their league.
One could also state that the complexity of "try, fail, try again" has been sapped from the open world and placed within raiding. Never before have boss encounters been so complex or unforgiving, nor have there ever been the shear amount of raiders we have now. And the respects of players being of a much higher average skill level than there ever was in vanilla having access to resources that were never endorsed by blizzard, let alone heard of by a majority. These things we have now trivialize the mystery that might be the game for the sake of convenience because that is how the game was made. The game was made to absorb as much time as possible, and while the intrigue of an open world and discovery can no longer facilitate that, an essence of challenging and intuitive boss encounters can and does.
Additionally I remember quite the many threads even fairly recently preaching the exact opposite of how the zones work, that there was no over-arching story and it all simply felt thrown together in a hobbled mess of 38 zones. There was no clear villain and what villains you did fight you didn't know why. A shift from a massive amount of "go hear kill this" with vague references that harken back only to those who played the warcraft rpg series is not a good set up for any kind of story telling. Open worldness aside, because even skyrim could pull off open world with an over-arching story that meant something, something vanilla did not in any respect. Each storyline felt all over the place, while amounting to very little. I would definitely place myself among those who'd much rather have the care of a quality story-line over the mess that is a story without meaning.
Perhaps I am looking too far into this, but I do know one thing for sure, a world of warcraft that was far more open world with much less raiding would simply facilitate a different type of boredom than the current direction. Too many things readily trivialize that notion and what utility won't destroy, repetition will as it does with the current direction.
There are no worse scum in this world than fascists, rebels and political hypocrites.
Donald Trump is only like Hitler because of the fact he's losing this war on all fronts.
Apparently condemning a fascist ideology is the same as being fascist. And who the fuck are you to say I can't be fascist against fascist ideologies?
If merit was the only dividing factor in the human race, then everyone on Earth would be pretty damn equal.
While I agree that it would be a sad thing to see happen. The reality is
Say a generous 350k players doing normal mode. If all those leave but you have content for the millions of casual players and they stay subbed that's a better solution than.
350k stay but you then lose all your other customers. Its raw numbers. One side outweighs the other.
Normal mode raiders usually take a lot longer to clear content then the heroic level guilds as well. So their content could last a while. Most guilds put that content on farm when clear for a while anyway as well.
No one is demanding their money back. When I buy a single player game I have it forever without the need to pay subscription fees. If I get frustrated and quit playing it for three months the company that sold me their game doesn't give a rat's ass because they already took their money and ran. WoW is a subscription-based service, and that's where it differs. If there's nothing left in the game that I enjoy doing I'm free to quit shelling out $15 a month. That's why Blizzard cares. It's not "entitled" to demand content that you can participate in on your schedule for your $15 a month, and it's not "entitled" to unsubscribe when you're no longer enjoying the game.
And at those times you either unsubscribed (which is exactly what Blizzard doesn't want you to do) or you continued to shell out $15 for a game you didn't really even play any more (which is just stupid, in my opinion). In the first case Blizzard loses and in the second case you as a player were losing. Why do you want to force Blizzard back into a lose-lose situation?
Since when were MMOs supposed to be educational parenting tools? If you want a game like that you can check out Barney's Jungle Friends. That game is even free.
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You do need to improve if you don't want to spend two per boss every run waiting for determination to build.
The problem in my mind isn't that looking for raid provides content for people who don't feel the urge to do normal's etc. Its the fact that its a wall to get into normal. Back before Lfr, you could spam heroic's, farm those badges etc and then hop into normal. Now LFR has turned into the entry point.. And its a wall. Why should "Rick" who is a raider leveling an alt he wants to gear up have to play with "Billy" who plays a few hours a week to do looking for raid. This also contributes to a pack mentality, where if "Billy" Is really bad at the game, then other people will feel they only have to perform to the level of "Billy" to not be removed from the group. Now blizzard knows Billy is a bad player but he does pay for the game, so they made it so "Billy" can get gear to still feel accomplished. The only two reasonable fixes I see for this are to either A. Make looking for raid to have a repeated chance to drop gear, Or B. Make heroic instances or scenario's or something with a smaller wall, drop entry level items.
This has also caused allot of hate on Looking For raid since it is the end of an expansion where most guilds at first glance require a legendary cloak, So what does "Jim" who didn't keep up on the quest line or just re sub do? Do looking for raid every week, get frustrated because he has to climb a HUGE wall to raid normals.
Seeing these types threads everyday is starting to hinder my enjoyment for wow...i just don't want to play a game where it's community is so steeped in hatred, jealously and so focused on themselves that they fail to see beyond what happens in their own little circle.