Why don't they return to the roots of the game in difficulty?

[Shelly]

swtor core concept was bound to cause longterm decline -you can't produce story as fast as people consume.
Rifts target market never gave it a chance. If you ask the wow playerbase you will find out that many are uninformed in terms of the mmo market and wont try others even if disgruntled.

SWToR failed/turned into F2P partially because of EA leadership - they just tend to do that with all their games, they've always seen a massive jump in revenue after going F2P with only a few games being sub for a short time to get some quick cash.

The other problem that SWToR has/had is that the gameplay is boring. This is actually a Bioware problem, with the exception of Mass Effect it seems like every single Bioware game I've played tends to be very boring in terms of gameplay. They tend to make games that look like really good meals, only when you sit down at the table and take that first bite everything is unseasoned. There's no oomph in play, at least not for me, as things stand WoW did and still does turreted MMO-gameplay the best, I'd have rather had a far more dynamic and interesting play experience equivalent to Mass Effect rather than sitting back and just watching my characters play themselves.

[Ellixen]

SWToR failed/turned into F2P partially because of EA leadership - they just tend to do that with all their games, they've always seen a massive jump in revenue after going F2P with only a few games being sub for a short time to get some quick cash.

I wish they would do that with all their games, alas WAR sits in sub limbo with no dev team.

[Otimus]

The game is losing popularity anyway, why don't they return it to something like "Algalon being hard for the whole of the expansion", no nerfs at all? I know, WoW vanilla wasn't technically "hard", but why not anyway?

Because even if it's "Losing popularity", it's still 95% casual, 4% mid-core, and 1% hardcore :x

[Eon Drache]

Only 48k guilds have defeated the first boss in MSV. Even if we assume ALL of those guilds are 25 man guilds, that's only 1.2M A little less than 20% of the entire game population NOW. Less than 1/5th the game has defeated Stone Guard on Normal mode. Not even half that has done that boss on heroic. And that's assuming those are all 25 man guilds. Chances are that number is much closer to 10% and 5%.

Jump to Throne of Thunder. All of a sudden 15k less guilds killed Jin'rokh the breaker than have killed Stone Guard. Again, assuming an all 25m guild database, that's 842k players. 12%. 5% of the entire playerbase beat that boss on Heroic.

12k Guilds have downed Immerseus. For some of us, that boss is the biggest faceroll the game has to offer. However, that is still less than 5% of the playerbase. Now, this tier is new, so this could change, however, with the drop from MSV to ToT, I'm better this one will drop it down to about 20-25k

[Deleted]

People who claim Vanilla raids were "as easy as LFR now", did not raid in Vanilla. Not with their own chars, before every boss got nerfed. Vanilla was not hard, but it was harder then what we have now. Not just because the bosses were hard, most of them were easy in design, but because at first no one had the equip for it and no one knew what to do, also some were extremly chaotic.
For those of us who raided MC before there were ANY guides, in blues and greens, it was kinda hard. And do not forget, Horde did not have Paladins, who made some encounters almost trival. So if you raided as Alliance and do not remember going into raid in greens and blues, you did not raid. You went into raids. There is a difference.
That is the biggest difference in raid "difficulty" now. You go into the raid already sligthly over equipped. Every mechanic is known, every tactic is out there. And most of the time there is only one way to do it right. If you want a challange, you go into hardmodes, where you are not overequipped, if you just started raiding and one slight error can wipe your raid.
I leveled a priest to lvl 90 just before the patch. Ran exactly three heroics, went into LFR and did all LFR raids in three days, because I did not want to push it. Could have done it in one day. As a healer. That is how easy LFR is. Was I carried? Maybe, but I do not think so, as in every raid I put out the second best HPS numbers out, while mostly trying to save the tanks and one raid even the best HPS all the way. All the first time I was in there. I did not even know the mechanics. Did not read any guide, because I wanted a slightly challange.

Now, you have to move faster, react faster. In Vanilla you had to think faster, on the fly. This is lacking from WoW completly. It is what I miss the most. Picking up adds as a dd, because the tank was almost one hit and saving the raid. Tanking more adds then deemed possible. Healing trough the kill, after a wipe was called, because most of the other healers went down. A Boss kill, where at the end every one is still alive is way less satisfying then one where half the raid did bite the dust, but you killed the boss anyway.

One very good point made is the extremly fast leveling. It is just wrong. Especially for your first char. If you want faster twinks, give them a buff to xp after the first char reaches max level. But pushing new players to max level in under a week. Then letting them see all raids the week after is just wrong. It cheapens the experience for everybody.

I very much doubt that WoW could go back anyway. Not to Vanilla like grind, not to harder raids, not to trying to balance PvP. That ship has sailed in WoTLK. It would hemorrage subscribers, not just bleed them. Maybe they copy the idea Wildstar has and give the 1% top players something to do. They try it already with invitationals and time runs for charity, but it is not enough, because those are for the 0.1% who get in.

[Dakho]

People often confuse difficulty with being time consuming. Leveling was slightly more difficult in vanilla, instanced content not really. Most of the difficulty in vanilla relates to how time consuming the preparation was. Mechanically it wasn't very difficult.

I do think WoW has made a mistake with the super accelerated leveling in the game, and the speed at which you can do things now, it makes it all feel trivial. It took a lot of time to get a full resist set together in vanilla, if you need to pick up gear to run some specific content now it doesn't take very long at all.

Pretty much fully agree with this guy. Although with leveling you either have to make it part of the whole experience or make it quick and painless. WoW decided to make endgame the primary aspect of gameplay, and as such leveling is just a lengthy tutorial. It would require fundamental changes in design to make leveling mean anything more than a time sink.

Anyhow, I feel like Timeless Isle is a very nice level of difficulty for solo, out-in-the-world content. People regularly are throwing groups together and many of the elites are relatively difficult (fucking Kilnmasters...). We're also pretty spoiled. Just consider that a single Yaugnol elite has more complexity to it than many bosses in GW2 haha. The only problems with TI, I think are the rares with far too little health and lack of variety after you get the one-time chests and get a hang of the layout of the island. I really love the concept though, and the enhanced difficulty (compared to facerolling through dailies) is really appreciated.

[Sand Person]

the reason why vanilla was so "difficult" was because nobody knew the game like they do now. it was still new and peeps didn't have it figured it out 100%.

[Krathdar]

Oh, this post again....Well since this is brought up, might as well give my two cents. When a majority of players can clear heroics, get all gold in dungeons and breeze past pvp, then I'll join in on 'the game is too easy' train but since I, or in my opinion a majority, of players can not devote the time or possess the skill required to do all of these things, let's allow the game to be as is. As patches come out, people will continue to complain about how easy the game is, and how casual friendly the game has become. I really don't share the same thought, but hey, I suck at the game. The game in the current state that we have is fun, and challenging to a majority of players. More things are becoming available to do in the downtime of bg ques and waiting for raids to start or reset. The game is good, and if this game is not 'challenging' enough for the majority then we may have a discussion about tuning. Until then, why don't we enjoy the game we have, see the content on one of FOUR difficulties in raids, and do as well as we can in PvP.

[Shurkuris]

I haven't played since near the end of Cata, but are their any bosses that actually require "skill" to beat, not just gear coupled with basic competence?

Take for example Demon/Dark Souls, you can go through the entire game with a basic non-upgraded first level sword, a basic 100% physical block shield, no armor and rarely if ever use a healing plant/potion throughout your entire playthrough.

Why? Because the game rewards those who block, dodge and carefully parry/riposte, time attacks and in general not be a dumbass.

@Dakho - Is this correct for the "Yaugnol elite"?

http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/08/ho...l-rare-spawns/

They sound pretty easy to kill, dodge the AOE, and keep a distance of 5-10 yards from him (Unless your primary is melee, which in then your shafted). Bosses in GW2 are pretty easy, it's all the damn minions running around. It's normally hard to fight more than 5 80's at a time unless you can burst dps them down.

[hrugner]

I haven't played since near the end of Cata, but are their any bosses that actually require "skill" to beat, not just gear coupled with basic competence?

Take for example Demon/Dark Souls, you can go through the entire game with a basic non-upgraded first level sword, a basic 100% physical block shield, no armor and rarely if ever use a healing plant/potion throughout your entire playthrough.

Why? Because the game rewards those who block, dodge and carefully parry/riposte, time attacks and in general not be a dumbass.

@Dakho - Is this correct for the "Yaugnol elite"?

http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/08/ho...l-rare-spawns/

They sound pretty easy to kill, dodge the AOE, and keep a distance of 5-10 yards from him (Unless your primary is melee, which in then your shafted). Bosses in GW2 are pretty easy, it's all the damn minions running around. It's normally hard to fight more than 5 80's at a time unless you can burst dps them down.

That looks like the ability list of a standard GW2 mob, Ettins I think, he must be referring to something else.

[nnelson54]

People who claim Vanilla raids were "as easy as LFR now", did not raid in Vanilla. Not with their own chars, before every boss got nerfed. Vanilla was not hard, but it was harder then what we have now.

Every single fight pre TBC with the exception of Razorgore and C'thun were tank and spanks with a raid wide resistance gear requirement and a billion dispells(until Blizzard banned the Decursive add on's original functionality). There was nothing at all difficult about the raids themselves back then. People confuse "difficult raids" with "putting as much time in as a full time job on non raid nights in order to prepare for raid nights"(or in Four Horsemen's case, "requiring ten Naxx geared Warrior tanks") because consumable and resistance gear farming were just out of control and stupid. Even the simplest boss in today's WoW is hundreds of times more complex and difficult than the most difficult boss in Vanilla.

[Grimble]

Do I really need to go to the other thread and copypaste a bunch of shit?

Short version: WoW is declining at a time and a rate that is perfectly in line with other leading MMORPGs. These games grow for about six years, then shed about half their users in the space of 2 or 3 years, and finally level out into a slower decline. It's the product cycle, it's how they almost all work, quit trying to connect it to whatever your idiotic pet gripe is.

[Cirque]

They tried that in Cata. It was not appreciated by most.

This. Sinestra was unkillable by most for most of the expansion, and remember the 5mans?

I don't see how this was interesting design, in the end nobody gave two shits about Sinestra and nobody cared either if you killed her or not.

There IS hard content, have a go at heroic raids. Even now, most casual players will find themselves unable to clear MSV or HOF heroic if there's not some major mechanic that can be skipped by sheer outgearing.

- - - Updated - - -

Every single fight pre TBC with the exception of Razorgore and C'thun were tank and spanks with a raid wide resistance gear requirement and a billion dispells(until Blizzard banned the Decursive add on's original functionality). There was nothing at all difficult about the raids themselves back then. People confuse "difficult raids" with "putting as much time in as a full time job on non raid nights in order to prepare for raid nights"(or in Four Horsemen's case, "requiring ten Naxx geared Warrior tanks") because consumable and resistance gear farming were just out of control and stupid. Even the simplest boss in today's WoW is hundreds of times more complex and difficult than the most difficult boss in Vanilla.

And I could not have put this better myself. Thanks for that.

[nnelson54]

Do I really need to go to the other thread and copypaste a bunch of shit?

Short version: WoW is declining at a time and a rate that is perfectly in line with other leading MMORPGs. These games grow for about six years, then shed about half their users in the space of 2 or 3 years, and finally level out into a slower decline. It's the product cycle, it's how they almost all work, quit trying to connect it to whatever your idiotic pet gripe is.

EverQuest was released in 1999 and peaked at about 450,000 subscriptions in 2003, before beginning its decline. It just now shed enough subscribers that it had to go F2P last year in March of 2012. People who think WoW is going away any time soon or think the current subscription decline is anything out of the ordinary or has anything to do with anything Blizzard is doing are dumb.

[Cirque]

the reason why vanilla was so "difficult" was because nobody knew the game like they do now. it was still new and peeps didn't have it figured it out 100%.

That and because you got twoshot if you didn't have 4 sets of different resistance gear that you spent hours farming off AH, mobs, and old bosses you killed a gazillion times.

[Whiskra]

Because ultimately, people aren't playing this game to be challenged. In the themepark that is MMO's, they don't like the booths where you knock down bottles with ballthrows, they like the merry-go-rounds with pretty animals and the lottery wheels that gives them gear at the flip of a coin. If they don't feel they get their money's worth out of their experience, they won't keep playing.

[kendro1200]

The game is losing popularity anyway, why don't they return it to something like "Algalon being hard for the whole of the expansion", no nerfs at all? I know, WoW vanilla wasn't technically "hard", but why not anyway?

"Roots of the game in difficulty" is vanilla, which wasn't hard, it was literally one button spam and having the right resis gear on, and having a quarter to half of your raid knowing what they're doing.
Algalon wasn't that hard either, just frustrating, it forced people to stay out of the game to play the game (i.e. spend hours debating what strats should be used for those precious minutes of time you could actually attempt him), H-LK had the same issue when it had attempt limits, although admittedly H-LK was actually hard even without the attempt cap, in appropriate gear and no buff.

Cata wasn't returning the game to its roots, it was trying to make things more like TBC, except even heroics in TBC weren't used really as stepping stones to get gear pre-raid in TBC for the most part, and Cata was set up for people to GRIND heroics to get pre-raid gear. That was a mistake, especially with the LFD crowd. Challenge modes are the right way to do rough content, off to the side, unique reward, and relatively fixed difficulty. As for trying to make players "better" by trying to get them to improve by making content they only have access to harder, that's not going to work. People only get better at the game if they want to, and just making harder isn't going to make them want to get better. Getting a better carrot at the end of the stick that hovers above the skill stairmaster is needed to make the playerbase better.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The challenge is not to make the game more difficult by increase boss health and damage and reducing player stats, but to require the players to actually work up a strategy and be able to compensate when things go wrong, rather than simply opening up a WoWpedia guide on that boss and just do everything it says word-for-word.

[hrugner]

The challenge is not to make the game more difficult by increase boss health and damage and reducing player stats, but to require the players to actually work up a strategy and be able to compensate when things go wrong, rather than simply opening up a WoWpedia guide on that boss and just do everything it says word-for-word.

They should start by making other parts of the game challenging enough that people learn to play their class before making it to the end game rather than never.

[Pyrolight]

Vanilla? Hard? Broken maybe but not hard. Heroic raiding now is harder then anything that has ever been in the game besides a few select bosses (pre nerf heroic rag ect.). If you want hard content there is more then ever in the game right now.

You are forgetting pre nerf x10 Sunwell. Also to be fair, some of the pre nerf BC heroics (going away form raiding for a sec) were truly evil.