Fundamental Problems of Modern WoW

[Jester Joe]

Dead-end classes if you subscribe to min/maxing.
I guarantee there will be Classic guilds using non-standard setups to raid... just because they can, and want to be different.

If you want the least path to resistance... sure min/max.
But it is not the only path Grasshopper.

Again, it's NOT min/maxing if the class lacks the tools to do the role.

A min/maxing is "we're not bringing you because x can do your job with more damage". Which yes, will happen I'm sure with some dps classes. Why bring one if another can do more damage.

But if a tank literally cannot do the role to the point where it hinders the group in a situation where aggro is already an issue, then no you're not going to see the class because it is missing a core mechanic.

[Mullet Man]

Again, it's NOT min/maxing if the class lacks the tools to do the role.

A min/maxing is "we're not bringing you because x can do your job with more damage". Which yes, will happen I'm sure with some dps classes. Why bring one if another can do more damage.

But if a tank literally cannot do the role to the point where it hinders the group in a situation where aggro is already an issue, then no you're not going to see the class because it is missing a core mechanic.

Lacking core mechanics is seen as a challenge to some groups.
Do you think everyone plays WoW the same way you do?

Not everyone is playing to be top on damage/healing meters.
Not everyone is min/maxing to make the experience as easy as possible.
Not every group cares about perfect rotations and what class is flavor of the month.

But this is what Retail has become... and one of the reasons it is slowly dying.

[Jester Joe]

Lacking core mechanics is seen as a challenge to some groups.
Do you think everyone plays WoW the same way you do?

Not everyone is playing to be top on damage/healing meters.
Not everyone is min/maxing to make the experience as easy as possible.
Not every group cares about perfect rotations and what class if flavor of the month.

But this is what Retail has become... and one of the reasons it is slowly dying.

As I said before, you ignore fact to just to deflect back to the boogeyman of "min/maxing".

Hate to break it to you, but min/maxing has always been there.

[Mullet Man]

As I said before, you ignore fact to just to deflect back to the boogeyman of "min/maxing".

Hate to break it to you, but min/maxing has always been there.

What fact am I ignoring?
Of course players min/maxed in Vanilla.
That doesn't mean they all did.

Does this really need to be said?

[Jester Joe]

What fact am I ignoring?
Of course players min/maxed in Vanilla.
That doesn't mean they all did.

Does this really need to be said?

So congratz, just like retail.

[Pheraz]

Oh god will these threads ever stop

Edit: I don't even believe in god

[enigma77]

You could write a whole novel on everything that went wrong with the game.

But who wants to waste so much effort on such a bad game?

Just play Vanilla and see the difference.

[Mullet Man]

So congratz, just like retail.

The difference being that Blizzard chased the min/maxer crowd and made it a requirement in Retail.
Retail caters to the go-go-go, top of the meters, world first, highest key, player base.

This has forced them to move away from the "flawed" RPG style of game that was Classic.
Every class in retail needs to pull similar DPS numbers, and have a similar toolset.
Every healing class needs to pull similar HPS numbers, and have a similar toolset.
Every tank must have a similar set of damage reduction and aggro tools.
They even removed the talent tree, because it allowed for non-min/max spec choices.

In a real RPG this isn't the case.
You don't want, or need, that level of homogenization.
You want classes with very specific strengths and weaknesses. It's part of the Lore of the game.

As MonaLisa put it in her reply to me, the journey from 1 to 60 allowed for a lot more of this.
I agree.
Leveling 1-60 then casually raiding was a lot more fun for me, than anything Retail WoW has to offer.

[Jester Joe]

The difference being that Blizzard chased the min/maxer crowd and made it a requirement in Retail.
Retail caters to the go-go-go, top of the meters, world first, highest key, player base.

Except there's more role diversity than ever outside of your box of "look at what the world first people are doing".

Right now I can hop into game and get into any group as a ret paladin. Or hell, I can get into a lock raid as a lock.

Those are things that couldn't happen in Vanilla simply because of the restrictions of dots, and that paladins weren't balanced to be anything more than buffbots.

[potis]

The difference being that Blizzard chased the min/maxer crowd and made it a requirement in Retail.
Retail caters to the go-go-go, top of the meters, world first, highest key, player base.

This has forced them to move away from the "flawed" RPG style of game that was Classic.
Every class in retail needs to pull similar DPS numbers, and have a similar toolset.
Every healing class needs to pull similar HPS numbers, and have a similar toolset.
Every tank must have a similar set of damage reduction and aggro tools.
They even removed the talent tree, because it allowed for non-min/max spec choices.

In a real RPG this isn't the case.
You don't want, or need, that level of homogenization.
You want classes with very specific strengths and weaknesses. It's part of the Lore of the game.

As MonaLisa put it in her reply to me, the journey from 1 to 60 allowed for a lot more of this.
I agree.
Leveling 1-60 then casually raiding was a lot more fun for me, than anything Retail WoW has to offer.

You do understand you are blaming Blizzard for what the community requested right?

Every single word of your latest posts is the community demands from 2007 to 2015.

Enh Shamans and Paladins crying in TBC that they want to do similar DPS to Rogues and Warriors and they dont want to be mana batteries or totem bots because no one needs more than 1 of those in the raid and they dont wanna Holy.

Moonkins and Ele shamans were the same, with each other and Mages/Warlocks.

And 500 other changes from the crying of the class forums for the last 15 years.

Not everyone wants to remain in the cesspool of terrible players forever because you have some sort of entitlement about "MAH RPG ELEMENTS".

Classic will be worst than retail instantly by the way cause there are 15 years behind saying "Class X is useless", good luck.\

Also, you have no clue what you are talking about, making sure if you didnt realize it from my post.

[Mullet Man]

...paladins weren't balanced to be anything more than buffbots.

Again, if you buy into the min/max mindset.

Paladin's could do all kinds of things in Classic.
I suspect you will be surprised at the different roles classes take this time.

As many have noted, Classic wasn't all that hard, we were just new.
And this is true for most of the game outside the last few Raids.

Expect to a see a lot more diversity in roles in Classic.
This is a good thing.
But if you are stuck in the min/max mindset, you won't consider these options, and only play the "correct" spec for your class.

[Jester Joe]

Again, if you buy into the min/max mindset.

Paladin's could do all kinds of things in Classic.
I suspect you will be surprised at the different roles classes take this time.

As many have noted, Classic wasn't all that hard, we were just new.
And this is true for most of the game outside the last few Raids.

Expect to a see a lot more diversity in roles in Classic.
This is a good thing.
But if you are stuck in the min/max mindset, you won't consider these options, and only play the "correct" spec for your class.

I'm not stuck in the anything mindset.

You're the only one harping on "min/max, min/max, min/max!". If I play anything it will be a hunter, I don't care.

[Mullet Man]

You do understand you are blaming Blizzard for what the community requested right?

Every single word of your latest posts is the community demands from 2007 to 2015.

Enh Shamans and Paladins crying in TBC that they want to do similar DPS to Rogues and Warriors and they dont want to be mana batteries or totem bots because no one needs more than 1 of those in the raid and they dont wanna Holy.

Moonkins and Ele shamans were the same, with each other and Mages/Warlocks.

And 500 other changes from the crying of the class forums for the last 15 years.

Not everyone wants to remain in the cesspool of terrible players forever because you have some sort of entitlement about "MAH RPG ELEMENTS".

Classic will be worst than retail instantly by the way cause there are 15 years behind saying "Class X is useless", good luck.\

Also, you have no clue what you are talking about, making sure if you didnt realize it from my post.

Yes, Blizzard chased this group of players, to their detriment.
WoW grew from Classic to BC, levelled off for Wrath, and has been in decline ever since.
Why?
Because Blizzard followed this vocal community, instead of sticking with their RPG roots.
It was, and is, the wrong approach for WoW, in my opinion.

They should have introduced more diversity in the classes.
But doing that makes game design harder, so instead they homogenized the classes to one of three roles (DPS, Heal, Tank), and gave everyone a similar toolset.
Then the instanced the hell out of everything, and turned the World into a lobby as a place to queue for the instanced group content.
It's basically a Diablo Clone now with similar loot distribution.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not stuck in the anything mindset.

You're the only one harping on "min/max, min/max, min/max!". If I play anything it will be a hunter, I don't care.

You obviously have an opinion on what roles classes are allowed to play.
And the opinions you have stated align with the min/maxer groupthink, whether you realize it or not.

[Eurhetemec]

1. You joined the ranks of people who failed to explain the problem whilst complaining about them. Good job I guess?

2. This seems really confused, and breaks down to two points:

2a. "Make items drop less" - Vague and silly, frankly. A more reasonable suggestion would be to make quests and Heroic/Mythic 0 dungeons drop better gear than they do in terms of pure stats/ilvl, but make other sources have more special items.

2b. "Make items have weird, largely useless abilities". Ummm. Maybe not?

3. This is actually a legit good suggestion. It would be hard to balance, but it would be interesting and fun.

4. You say you're talking "quests", but this whole lengthy section can be basically summed up as

"Make WoW into Guild Wars 2"

I mean, sure, there's a little more to it, but you're essentially demanding that WoW become an entirely different game that it's never been with a lot of that.

A better suggestion might be to have have some kind of difficulty slider for the outdoor world, like Diablo III, where you could increase difficulty and also increase rewards. At the same time, they could remove scaling at max level, meaning your gear was always a clear upgrade, but if you wanted better rewards, you switched to a harder version of the outdoor world (peak difficulty would still give lesser rewards than M+ or even LFR, of course).

5. A mix of nice and ideas (long, multi-zone questlines) and the ridiculous (zones "cleared of threats" - this WoW for god's sake).

Either way you'd need 1-2 expansions worth of work to do what you're suggesting. I think however nice it was, that might have er... an impact on subs, and not a positive one.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Don't agree with most of this, especially the titanforged discussion, but the reason you are saying these things is respectable.
I would love to see a more concerted focus on the early game, but its important to realize that the "fundamental problem" with modern wow is that the people playing it aren't actually trying to enjoy it.

The game really hasn't changed that much, and ironically, many of the things that people now seem to be swooning over in Classic were beginning to creep back into the game, but people threw an ABSOLUTE FIT about them.
Look at flying, leveling changes, threat changes etc.

All things actively trying to make the game more like classic, and all things GD hated and still hates to this day.

I would like to see WAY less gear in the game and a total revamp of leveling and the world content out there, but it wont matter.
People will still say they hate the game.

Its not because its bad.
Its because they are incapable of realizing it should be made in a way other than exactly as they want.

[Shinrael]

I think I can count on 2 hands the number of quests I have read in my entire time playing WOW, I have and always will use Questhelper if it isn't built into the game I don't Play video games to read so I don't read them I just skip to the end get the experience so I can get into dungeons as this has been my favorite part of the game the small group content I miss 10 mans dearly I loved them and had the most fun raiding. I could care less about the story just want to play the game any amount of story I get will be gotten through cut scenes or small videos. I could care less about the story, now if they did like SWTOR and did cut scenes and the voice'd quest I would watch every one as that is great. But aside from that I agree with your other points.

Well that is sad. Without the story and other aesthetics, the game is just a button & number simulator.

That's like the tip of the iceberg @Shinrael OP

I agree. But people are complaining about the length of my post enough as it is :P

Oh god will these threads ever stop

Edit: I don't even believe in god

What's wrong with the thread itself?

You could write a whole novel on everything that went wrong with the game.

But who wants to waste so much effort on such a bad game?

Just play Vanilla and see the difference.

I have played Vanilla and I loved it. I still play the game and still love it. And that is why I want it to change/improve for the better (in my vision that is).

.

.

Will you two cut it off? Don't hijack people's threads.

1. You joined the ranks of people who failed to explain the problem whilst complaining about them. Good job I guess?

2. This seems really confused, and breaks down to two points:

2a. "Make items drop less" - Vague and silly, frankly. A more reasonable suggestion would be to make quests and Heroic/Mythic 0 dungeons drop better gear than they do in terms of pure stats/ilvl, but make other sources have more special items.

2b. "Make items have weird, largely useless abilities". Ummm. Maybe not?

3. This is actually a legit good suggestion. It would be hard to balance, but it would be interesting and fun.

4. You say you're talking "quests", but this whole lengthy section can be basically summed up as

"Make WoW into Guild Wars 2"

I mean, sure, there's a little more to it, but you're essentially demanding that WoW become an entirely different game that it's never been with a lot of that.

A better suggestion might be to have have some kind of difficulty slider for the outdoor world, like Diablo III, where you could increase difficulty and also increase rewards. At the same time, they could remove scaling at max level, meaning your gear was always a clear upgrade, but if you wanted better rewards, you switched to a harder version of the outdoor world (peak difficulty would still give lesser rewards than M+ or even LFR, of course).

5. A mix of nice and ideas (long, multi-zone questlines) and the ridiculous (zones "cleared of threats" - this WoW for god's sake).

Either way you'd need 1-2 expansions worth of work to do what you're suggesting. I think however nice it was, that might have er... an impact on subs, and not a positive one.

1. Always having a better version to aim for of what you loot trivializes the thing you looted. And thus making any item drops trivial. Whereas in the past it would be such a huge thing. It kills people's desire to continue playing.

2a. Scarcity would make each item feel more impactful and unique. By the time I level through Pandaria 80-90 I get 3 gloves pieces with the same item level and stats. Don't you see the problem in this? Getting a 360 ilvl weapon then a 365 WF version of it then a 370 WF version of it then a 380 TF version of it... this isn't fun. It splits the joy of looting that item into 4 different pieces and by the time you get the final one, considering how the countless vain attempts and bonus rolls, you feel nothing. Empty.

2b. I like immersion. Minor effects like these with flavour would boost my immersion. Absolutely open for even better traits as long as they have strong flavour/fantasy and so on. Something to make the world feel alive. And our characters a part of it

4. No, this is just wrong. What do you mean "Make WoW into GW2" ? Which part? All sections of that paragraph (1. the quest objective helper/yellow dot/arrow 2. the weak outdoor mobs that don't provide any challenge or need to use utility abilities 3. giving strengths and weaknesses to mobs such as fire elementals being immune to fire) are things that were originally in WoW (Vanilla). Where do you see GW2? The only game I gave as an example here is Magicka (because of how it utilizes mixing of elements and creating new spells and its physics - lightning on a wet target = bonus damage).

[Grimbold21]

Again, you are stuck in the min/max mindset.
You look at what classes made things easiest, and expect other classes to have the same tools, giving you the same experience.
This is the problem with retail WoW.

You're desperately clinging to this "min/max mindset" argument even though what you're being presented with is an entirely different thing.

The fact that a tiny minority of players made use of specs that were at a clear disadvantage because of poor design doesn't disprove the fact that some specs were useless.

Not bringing ret paladins, shadow priests, enhance/elemental shamans or what have you, into raids because they were recognized to be inferior or downright bad, isn't synonymous with a min/max mindset.

You want an anecdotal case too? One night we had killed Nefarian, I think, and this holy priest used his dkp on a 1 hand dps weapon because he wanted it for his shadow spec, even though he didn't raid as such, and drama ensued. Why? Because you didn't raid as shadow. Priests were holy, they were healers. period. That's not a hardcore mentality of let's optimize ourselves as much as we can to clear this raid. No, it was because some specs were just bad.

[Aggrophobic]

To each his own... but I found every class in Classic very fun to play.
They each had a very distinct personality, with strengths and weaknesses compared to other classes.

You mean like 3 classes domination every aspec of the game and the rest just being memes? Yeah, pretty much.

[Jester Joe]

You obviously have an opinion on what roles classes are allowed to play.
And the opinions you have stated align with the min/maxer groupthink, whether you realize it or not.

I don't have an opinion, I'm telling you what everyone has been saying everywhere.

You do what you want.

Will you two cut it off? Don't hijack people's threads.

You made a thread about "problems of modern WoW", did you think vanilla wouldn't come up as the comparison point?

I mean, if you want a response to what you just said to someone else.

1) That's always been the process of WoW. New raid, aim for a newer thing. I mean, it's the core idea of D3 and people keep going back to it season after season, along with PoE. You don't like it, fine. But that doesn't mean you're right by saying it "trivializes" things.

2a) And then you have the flip side where Blizzard tried to implement multiple new stats and ended up realizing "Wow this sucks for balancing" and removed all but the most simple. You're always going to have pieces of gear with similar stats, and classes are always going to prefer certain stats. There's nothing inherently wrong with that unless you want to start making new stats which just bogs down all gear with "why can't I get the gear with the stats I want to drop ever".

2b) But it serves little to no purpose. Extra flavor, sure. But we already have Azerite traits in game that proc for double effect against the enemy faction and yet I don't see anyone excited about that, which is basically the same thing you're claiming you want just in a PvP situation.

[seleri]

1. No player housing.

That's all.