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Dark Heart PTR Development Notes
Dark Heart PTR Development Notes
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The War Within: Warbands Preview
I forgot to post about that article today but since the news are very quiet today, I strongly suggest that you spend 5 mins of your time reading it. Making sure that angry gnomes won't steal your account is something you probably want to do.
Trade Secrets of a Trade Prince -- Leaders of the Horde and Alliance, Part 3
Blue Posts
Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
Capital cities NPC Equalization in 4.1
We're doing a full NPC equalization in the next major patch to ensure each capital city has the same tradeskill, trainer, and supply resources. Hopefully to ensure that any city can be visited for the majority of uses.
We don't have any plans though to extend the dailies and portals in Stormwind and Orgrimmar to the other cities. They were specifically chosen as the main capital hubs for Cataclysm, and as such a lot of work went into updating and improving them knowing they would be the primary hubs, including new and redesigned areas for the dailies and portal hub.
In the same way that Dalaran or Shattrath were the main cities for their expansions, and housed unique quests and services, Stormwind and Orgrimmar are the main cities for Cataclysm. (Source)
Vote kick abuse penalty
2. There is an incentive not to take pugs for that last spot or two because of the stiff penalties I have to face if they are bads.
You're exaggerating the penalty quite a bit. The penalty for issuing Vote Kicks too often is hidden from you and is issued in almost all cases when players are way too trigger happy with this option.
Yes, you could be in a dungeon with three other friends and pick up a bad player. You could get two bad players in a row. Maybe more. The penalty still shouldn't really apply to you unless you're kicking player after player on a whim because you and your friends get absolute say over whether that fifth player gets to stay in your group or not.
This change should have little affect on the majority of players running dungeons with three other friends, so long as they're being reasonable about when to use the Vote Kick feature. (Source)
Vicious Gladiator's Bonegrinder nerfed model
I'm genuinely sorry to hear that you're disappointed. I hope that, despite being smaller, that your mace will still hit hard enough to have made the purchase worthwhile.
While it might have been of impressive stature, the previous model for the Vicious Gladiator's Bonegrinder was a bit too large and its size was causing some graphical issues and clipping. While a little clipping is to be expected, in this case it was pretty excessive and needed to be changed.
By necessity, change happens in World of Warcraft all the time. There's always fine tuning to do and improvements to make, and if there's a bug or other issue at work we'll do our best to fix it. (Source)
Feedback on official forums
To some there's a disconnect between what they want, and what we agree is best for the game, or what we're able to deliver at the current time (depending on what we're talking about). We're managing a live game that (ideally) appeals to the millions of people playing who have widely varied interests. You might want a specific class nerfed, a change reverted, some feature added, etc. and we take that feedback, get some info, and hopefully have some kind of response. Most of the time though that response is going to be that we have no current plans to do so, or that we don't agree with the feedback, but hopefully we provide enough info to at least make our case known.
In addition, there seems to be an expectation that we're going to continue discussing topics we've already made statements on. That we're ignoring the issue because we're not continuing to discuss certain topics beyond our initial response on it. While I agree an open dialog is nice when it can occur, it's generally best for us to relate our thoughts on specific topics, and then watch the feedback that we receive after. Continuing to kick the hornet's nest, as it were, is rarely productive.
If there are specific questions we haven't gotten to yet, then that's our bad. In some cases we may avoid some topics specifically, or maybe don't feel that it merits a response. In others we maybe just don't have an answer yet. We are in the process of developing some new forms of direct developer communication, though, tied to forum interaction. We're hoping it helps out in some of these areas. (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)
Juggernaut Nerf
2. Why the Nerf seems so harsh.
Warriors had gotten used to having extremely high mobility. Arms warriors were so mobile that kiting wasn't very effective against them, and their uptime was very high as a result. In fact, we'd arrived at a place where melee in general just had too much up-time on casters, especially healers. Conditions were prompting a move toward more instant cast spells and casting on the move, when we wanted to take PvP back to a place where cast time spells could still have a place on the battlefield. We feel this approach introduces more choices in PvP both for the casters and melee in terms of what abilities to use, when to close the gap, when to make space, what to interrupt, etc. Rather than give casters yet more tools to generate breathing space and perpetuate that arms race, it made sense to take a second look at melee mobility instead.
We understand that you need to be on your target to do your jobs, but it didn’t really make sense to allow close to 100% up time either. On the other hand, we understand that without high up-time warriors might not bring as much to an Arena or Rated Battleground team, and we're adding new utility in a future patch to help address that, though we’re not yet ready to share details.
Going back to the point though, we didn't want to funnel warriors into speccing into Fury, and that was never the intention. While it would be nice if both specs were equally viable for PvP and PvE, we realize that's a tough goal to meet. On the other hand, if Fury is the best spec for both PvP and PvE and Arms is left with nothing, then that's not a great place to be either.
As for some general notes, we do think Arms damage is a little low in both PvP and PvE, and we might adjust that soon. This isn't a solution to current PvP viability issues, and we understand that. I'm just mentioning it because we're on the subject of Arms and it's worth noting. While we’re on the subject of stuff ‘worth noting’, we also don’t like jumping to avoid Charge, so we're examining some potential solutions for that too.
We're not looking at changing the talent trees at the moment, since we’re very happy with both the Arms and Fury trees as well as the results of some of our core mechanics changes, such as normalizing rage, redesigning Heroic Strike and changing stance penalties.
1. The Usefulness of Heroic Leap.
Heroic Leap involves a lot of movement code, which is among the most challenging things we can do in our engine. We wouldn't have included it if we believed that it was useless, or wasn't usually effective. We think it's a cool ability that does offer greater mobility on the battlefield, even if it isn't as useful specifically for closing with a target as intercept or charge are.
It doesn't help us, or you, to just say that it's useless or almost never works on the forums. Heroic Leap functionality is something we're actively working to improve, so if you find yourself consistently unable to find a path to the jump target, when you submit a report let us know when it didn't work, where you were, and what you were trying to do. The more specific and detailed you are, the more tools you give us to make your tools work better. (Source)
State of Warrior Talent Trees
We're happy with the talent trees themselves in terms of their current structure and content. That's not the same as saying we're completely happy with the current state of warriors in general. "Broken" is also an exaggeration that I prefer to avoid, because it occludes more than it reveals. (Source)
We're doing a full NPC equalization in the next major patch to ensure each capital city has the same tradeskill, trainer, and supply resources. Hopefully to ensure that any city can be visited for the majority of uses.
We don't have any plans though to extend the dailies and portals in Stormwind and Orgrimmar to the other cities. They were specifically chosen as the main capital hubs for Cataclysm, and as such a lot of work went into updating and improving them knowing they would be the primary hubs, including new and redesigned areas for the dailies and portal hub.
In the same way that Dalaran or Shattrath were the main cities for their expansions, and housed unique quests and services, Stormwind and Orgrimmar are the main cities for Cataclysm. (Source)
Vote kick abuse penalty
2. There is an incentive not to take pugs for that last spot or two because of the stiff penalties I have to face if they are bads.
You're exaggerating the penalty quite a bit. The penalty for issuing Vote Kicks too often is hidden from you and is issued in almost all cases when players are way too trigger happy with this option.
Yes, you could be in a dungeon with three other friends and pick up a bad player. You could get two bad players in a row. Maybe more. The penalty still shouldn't really apply to you unless you're kicking player after player on a whim because you and your friends get absolute say over whether that fifth player gets to stay in your group or not.
This change should have little affect on the majority of players running dungeons with three other friends, so long as they're being reasonable about when to use the Vote Kick feature. (Source)
Vicious Gladiator's Bonegrinder nerfed model
I'm genuinely sorry to hear that you're disappointed. I hope that, despite being smaller, that your mace will still hit hard enough to have made the purchase worthwhile.
While it might have been of impressive stature, the previous model for the Vicious Gladiator's Bonegrinder was a bit too large and its size was causing some graphical issues and clipping. While a little clipping is to be expected, in this case it was pretty excessive and needed to be changed.
By necessity, change happens in World of Warcraft all the time. There's always fine tuning to do and improvements to make, and if there's a bug or other issue at work we'll do our best to fix it. (Source)
Feedback on official forums
To some there's a disconnect between what they want, and what we agree is best for the game, or what we're able to deliver at the current time (depending on what we're talking about). We're managing a live game that (ideally) appeals to the millions of people playing who have widely varied interests. You might want a specific class nerfed, a change reverted, some feature added, etc. and we take that feedback, get some info, and hopefully have some kind of response. Most of the time though that response is going to be that we have no current plans to do so, or that we don't agree with the feedback, but hopefully we provide enough info to at least make our case known.
In addition, there seems to be an expectation that we're going to continue discussing topics we've already made statements on. That we're ignoring the issue because we're not continuing to discuss certain topics beyond our initial response on it. While I agree an open dialog is nice when it can occur, it's generally best for us to relate our thoughts on specific topics, and then watch the feedback that we receive after. Continuing to kick the hornet's nest, as it were, is rarely productive.
If there are specific questions we haven't gotten to yet, then that's our bad. In some cases we may avoid some topics specifically, or maybe don't feel that it merits a response. In others we maybe just don't have an answer yet. We are in the process of developing some new forms of direct developer communication, though, tied to forum interaction. We're hoping it helps out in some of these areas. (Source)
Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Skills/Talents)Juggernaut Nerf
2. Why the Nerf seems so harsh.
Warriors had gotten used to having extremely high mobility. Arms warriors were so mobile that kiting wasn't very effective against them, and their uptime was very high as a result. In fact, we'd arrived at a place where melee in general just had too much up-time on casters, especially healers. Conditions were prompting a move toward more instant cast spells and casting on the move, when we wanted to take PvP back to a place where cast time spells could still have a place on the battlefield. We feel this approach introduces more choices in PvP both for the casters and melee in terms of what abilities to use, when to close the gap, when to make space, what to interrupt, etc. Rather than give casters yet more tools to generate breathing space and perpetuate that arms race, it made sense to take a second look at melee mobility instead.
We understand that you need to be on your target to do your jobs, but it didn’t really make sense to allow close to 100% up time either. On the other hand, we understand that without high up-time warriors might not bring as much to an Arena or Rated Battleground team, and we're adding new utility in a future patch to help address that, though we’re not yet ready to share details.
Going back to the point though, we didn't want to funnel warriors into speccing into Fury, and that was never the intention. While it would be nice if both specs were equally viable for PvP and PvE, we realize that's a tough goal to meet. On the other hand, if Fury is the best spec for both PvP and PvE and Arms is left with nothing, then that's not a great place to be either.
As for some general notes, we do think Arms damage is a little low in both PvP and PvE, and we might adjust that soon. This isn't a solution to current PvP viability issues, and we understand that. I'm just mentioning it because we're on the subject of Arms and it's worth noting. While we’re on the subject of stuff ‘worth noting’, we also don’t like jumping to avoid Charge, so we're examining some potential solutions for that too.
We're not looking at changing the talent trees at the moment, since we’re very happy with both the Arms and Fury trees as well as the results of some of our core mechanics changes, such as normalizing rage, redesigning Heroic Strike and changing stance penalties.
1. The Usefulness of Heroic Leap.
Heroic Leap involves a lot of movement code, which is among the most challenging things we can do in our engine. We wouldn't have included it if we believed that it was useless, or wasn't usually effective. We think it's a cool ability that does offer greater mobility on the battlefield, even if it isn't as useful specifically for closing with a target as intercept or charge are.
It doesn't help us, or you, to just say that it's useless or almost never works on the forums. Heroic Leap functionality is something we're actively working to improve, so if you find yourself consistently unable to find a path to the jump target, when you submit a report let us know when it didn't work, where you were, and what you were trying to do. The more specific and detailed you are, the more tools you give us to make your tools work better. (Source)
State of Warrior Talent Trees
We're happy with the talent trees themselves in terms of their current structure and content. That's not the same as saying we're completely happy with the current state of warriors in general. "Broken" is also an exaggeration that I prefer to avoid, because it occludes more than it reveals. (Source)
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