WoW should become simpler...

[Popastique]

Also I doubt a lot of people replying to me read my post, I never said make the rotations easier or whatever they have in their mind, what I've said is that the game in a previous state around vanilla to wotlk had in mind a design where you could apply a difficult rotation to your character and cheese dps but you could also be a simple person that haven't spent time on 3rd party websites learning about his/her character and still perform okish. That doesn't apply to the current game and its sad that people can't be impartial or at least get in the middle and say that there is a valid argument.

It does apply to current game, you can do *okish* as you say without spending time on 3rd party websites.

[kaminaris]

sry to hear that a 7-10 button priority rotation is too complex for u. also this 5min read, explaining said rotation https://de.wowhead.com/fury-warrior-rotation-guide overwhelm u for 2 hours. sry, but the cognitive requirement is middle-school (no toxic intent), not PhD, so y do feel overwhelmed?

Snip

You are wrong, objectively.
You said fury warr, one of the easiest specs in the game forgetting about other 35.

WoW is currently so hard (overall) that playing perfectly is only possible for bots.
Vast majority of players cannot reach 60% of their performance because overall complexity of class + boss mechanics are way to much for human brain.

Now let me show you some example: Demo lock rotation code from my addon:
https://github.com/kaminaris/MaxDps-...Demonology.lua
compare that to Fury:
https://github.com/kaminaris/MaxDps-...ation/Fury.lua

Now imagine a human brain processing this priority list twice a second (because that is the maximum interval to get fair result) while watching out for boss mechanics.

Should it be dumbed down? No, it is in pretty good spot but there are some classes that could be made easier. For example demonic consumption talent is ridiculous, and super annoying when in the middle of 15s combo you get bomb on your head.

But I do agree that it is pretty overwhelming and has super high entry point for new players because:
-120 levels
-Overall complexity - you really cannot play without using 3rd party websites, sooner or later you will be stuck at something.
-Vast amount of content with little explanation in game.
-Community - probably the worst thing in WoW.

- - - Updated - - -

And yeah, of course we will get 10000 posts on mmo champ about how the game is easy and classes are faceroll, because these comments are mostly coming from people who spent years in this environment and oftentimes grew up with wow. Unfortunately, looking at the issue from a different perspective is impossible for many of us. I know it might sound ridiculous to many of you, but playstyle in wow is still quite complicated, in comparison to other games. It's a whole different thing whether this should be changed or not, and I have no answer to that one. I'll leave it to the devs to find the happy medium that will hopefully satisfy as many players as possible

It is possible to imagine. I wrote my addon for that, been given sometimes weird requests (and even donations). For example I've been asked to make rotation for disci priest. Sometimes things like this come up on discord:

Holy shit, with this tho, my dps went from 12.k to 16k

[Daffan]

Lol, the game is in its simplest form for years now... You literally can't make it any dumber...

-No mp5 / spirit
-No sockets
-Only ring and weapon enchants that give combat benefits (remember when you could enchant literally every slot in your equipment?)
-No class sets
-No resistance gears
-No reforge
-No hit rating / expertise
-No resilience in PvP
-No glyphs
-No new talent rows for two expansions now
-No attunements for instances
-Lowest amount of abilities

And so many things are dumbed down beyond recognition... The only somewhat confusing thing left in this game is which zones to take while leveling.

Agreed. What people think is complexity is rather just an overwhelming amount of random content, content they have to work out which is useless and which is important. Just a whole lot of busy work at the start than never again.

[Alvito]

This sort of thinking is representative of the problem though. I think that playing the game is simple enough but I do agree that 1) anyone coming back for the start of an expansion is usually met with a character that plays differently than when they left and 2) Two hours of research at a 3rd party website to feel reasonably competent is not something most people will do and looked at sensibly it's a little ridiculous.

It's kind of a difficult design problem: change the classes around every 18 months, add new class functionalities that are not well explained in the game itself, and send people out to group up with others while not fully comprehending what is going on.

It's a recipe for what we see: bunches of people returning, leveling and leaving. People should be able to navigate the game and their characters without a lot of confusion without spending hours on some 3rd party website.

Blizzard does a very bad job of setting players up for success. Often times they over or under value how things work in reality and stick with the figures they have on paper as a result we often have this big disconnect of what should be and what is. If Blizzard can't sort things out for themselves new people are pretty well screwed. Even for seasoned players now there are so many moving parts when trying to set up your characters. Azerite armor and traits is a very good example of this. What is good or bad has a huge gap between them many times and it slides back and forth depending on the content you do, how you spec, the amount of targets, length of combat, down time between combat, group set up and your own stats. People could do a lot of things right and just mess up a few simple things and hamstring themselves without knowing it. If all of that wasn't enough you have the insane amount of loot rng we have now. A strong weapon, good azerite traits and solid trinkets or the lack of those can sink or sail your ship too. Game play is relatively easy, prep is the big hang up.

[sirmalta]

The only difference between now and old wow is that you didnt care about being good at the game before.

Wow was one hundred times more complicated in vanilla and BC, and has been being simplified since. Over simplified. So much so that the issue the other 99% are complaining about is how pruned, simplistic, and basic the game is. There is virtually no real RPG system in the game, since they've completely removed choice from every aspect of the game thats meaningful in the name of simplifying it for new gamers.

[aceperson]

Now imagine a human brain processing this priority list twice a second (because that is the maximum interval to get fair result) while watching out for boss mechanics.

if you're trying to act like a computer, you're going to fail. the power of the human brain is in pre-planning. if dbm says a big ability is going to happen in 10 seconds, i shouldn't start that 15 second combo now. if you think that pro players are looking at everything twice a second, then you clearly have no idea what they are doing. they are looking at their cooldown timers, boss ability timers, and positioning. they decide when they should use big abilities before they would use them and set themselves up in a space that would minimize their downtime.

if you think making the game simpler will allow you to act like a computer, you're wrong. we aren't mechanical computers. we're bio-computers with massive physical restraints. we traded the kind of processing power that computers have today (or possible a decade or 2 ago) for the ability to coordinate our body as much as we can without making the thinking process main stream. just like how a computer has it's operating system running all the applications in the foreground, our bodies are running a kind of operating system that is letting me type this message to you without having to think every single letter and action. we are not computers and we probably aren't anywhere near the technology that would let us be.

so yes, bots are the only ones that can perform a perfect rotation. that doesn't mean things need to be simpler. it means there is room for improvement. there is a reason bots can do things like perfect rotations or 360 no-scope people in fps with ease and its because their entire system is working on that task. we need to eat, sleep, digest, move, breath, etc. we are not machines and you thinking we need to be able to perform to machine levels is absurd.

[Yseraboy]

But I do agree that it is pretty overwhelming and has super high entry point for new players because:
-120 levels
-Overall complexity - you really cannot play without using 3rd party websites, sooner or later you will be stuck at something.
-Vast amount of content with little explanation in game.
-Community - probably the worst thing in WoW.

Exactly.

I was just double-checking the BattleNet store page, and the three current ways to start the game is :

1. Setup an account with Blizz, and try for free = get to level 20, as many times as you like!
2. Buy a sub, and work/play/grind your way from 1 to 110 - and buy BFA somewhere along the way.
2. Pay USD $39.99 (currently a 33% savings on the $59.99 price - for reasons??) get one boost to 110, everything through BFA, and 30-days game time.

I can imagine how frustrating it would be starting with option 3, finding-out I guessed wrong on the class/race I thought would be fun to play, and face leveling an alt the long way - through the kaleidoscope of TBC/WotLK/Cata/Mop/Wod/Legion - or paying for another boost to 110. Or, maybe decide that subscription-based MMOs just aren't my cup of tea?

Using Alliance (Stormwind) for an example: I think of the portals for Cata zones - near the ballon for the MoP portal - and all the docks with different ships going to different ports... and none of it is current content, so finding which 3rd-party sites are actually up to date is a chore in itself.

Or, where Blizz has moved the various portals - in-game - as they try to deemphasize some hubs, to get people gravitating to newer content. "Yeah, the content is still there for you to 'enjoy', but we're going to reduce the QOL for people who are enjoying it/progressing through it." SMH.

[siskokid21]

All these ignorant people coming on here saying the game is simpler now than it used to be...

Does no one remember 1 button rotations in vanilla and tbc on an overwhelming number of classes?

Does no one remember when logging didn't matter, and no one really cared how well you performed in regards to your gear?

Does no one remember how easy vanilla raids were, with little to no mechanics, compared to current raids where not watching mechanics generally leads to death? LFR is comparable in difficulty to vanilla raiding (at least the earlier raids)

Vanilla was tedious, and had more elongated grinds making the experience feel more rewarding, but if you try and say the game wasn't simple you're only lying to yourself.

[Mahmeya]

It pains me to see all those "omg rotations are simple" and "omg stats are dumbed down" crowd who things those are the only things that matter in game.

But I do agree that it is pretty overwhelming and has super high entry point for new players because:
-120 levels
-Overall complexity - you really cannot play without using 3rd party websites, sooner or later you will be stuck at something.
-Vast amount of content with little explanation in game.
-Community - probably the worst thing in WoW.

Imagine someone leaving in late Legion coming back now.
-Heart of Azeroth + AP + Azerite gear
-Pathfinder
-semi-secret questlines (Pride of KT/Zandalar forever) with little guide how to get them in-game
-allied race unlocks
-war campaign
-Nazjatar set-up + unlocks
-mechagon set-up + unlocks
-warfronts
-island expeditions
-M+ (which is taken from D3 yet, paradoxically, keeps the 'level your key' mechanic diablo got rid of very fast)

Throw someone into that out of nowhere and they will be lost and possibly frustrated

Agreed. What people think is complexity is rather just an overwhelming amount of random content, content they have to work out which is useless and which is important. Just a whole lot of busy work at the start than never again.

Yes, the content is not complex but it's the amount of mostly unrelated stuff that makes it hard to get into if you're not used to it.

[Kokolums]

WoW is really simple:

1. Wait until July 9th for season 3 of M+ and improved loot.
2. Spam M+ until you are geared for mythic raids.
3. Skip normal and heroic and run mythic raids.

[siskokid21]

WoW is really simple:

1. Wait until July 9th for season 3 of M+ and improved loot.
2. Spam M+ until you are geared for mythic raids.
3. Skip normal and heroic and run mythic raids.

Majority of the playerbase can't/won't do that. +10s are difficult for a lot of casual players, and heroic raiding tends to be the endgame for far more than mythic. There's a reason why you almost never saw any pugs able to clear past the first boss in Mythic BoD.

On top of that, no one is going to skip heroic raid, at least for the first few weeks. My guild will most likely be full clearing heroic for the first month or so, before we drop it and move strictly into mythic progression.

[Adviceanon]

I don't know if its just me and some friends I spoke to but we feel that WoW has become overly complicated over the past years and it has reached a point of being a very hard game to get into.

I played BFA at the very start as I do with every expansion. I quit after a month of grinding the dark iron unlock.

Decided to give 8.2 a try. I played for like 2 hours and decided that this is not for me and just logged out.

Now hear me out, 8.2 seems to be a big improvement to what the game was previously in BFA, and people that do play wow non-stop seem to be having fun.
The reason I logged out and my friends did too, is that the game is just too complex to grasp if you are not playing constantly.
Every expansion new things are getting added to the game, with some of them being scraped and some kept. We've reached a point where WoW is just a combination of so many different games and I feel like that is contributing to its general downgrade as a game. When you have so many points to prove as a game you don't know where to focus exactly.

Now back to my main issue, and my friends issue. For every expansion we keep coming back we have to do some research especially after wotlk. That research includes reading about our class/rotations/specs and some small bits about the new content.

This research has become more dreadful over the years and reaching all the way up to 8.2 where we just log in for 2 hours and then say nah nope logoff. Now I know a lot of people will say 'this game aint for you anymore', or 'this game not being simple is what makes it best'. I am not talking about making it simple and removing all of its depth.
If you take vanilla as an example, you didn't need to read guides or anything to get into the game at all. You could even do all of its content without reading anything. The amount of depth though you could go in was a lot and the way you could min-max your character was again closer to what it is now but without taking away from the game-play.
A person starting a warrior could do heroic strike and see that it hits for 200, a persona that is min-maxing wouldn't use heroic strike at all as its a rage dump but they'd still end up close enough, with a significant dps increase on the person min-maxing. Although both wouldn't have an issue playing the game the way they like it.

Anyways the game has progressed and it has reached this point, my suggestion would be that blizzard should be looking at making the game simpler while giving enough depth to those that need it in order to min-max and be happy and of course keep what they are doing with raids etc. Just figure out a way of making the game not needing 20 guides to be read in order to get into and start killing normal mobs outside of raids or doing a dungeon. Give us a game where both people that love to theory-craft and min-max etc and people that genuinely want to kill their time can enjoy. And I know that everyone here thinks that wow is currently a casual-fest game and while its true content wise, I don't think it applies when it comes to the game-play itself, apart from the classes being dumped down and having awful small rotations, the classes have actual rotations that if you don't read about you won't be able to kill single mobs and thats what sucks about it.

TL;DR: No easy way to explain this, for newcomers or returning players wow feels like you need to get a PhD in order to play. Find a way to accommodate newcomers and returning players as well as current players, thats one of the main things that is killing wow right now, no matter how good the content is, the treadmill on getting in the game is huge.

I completely agree with you. I had this exact same thought and mulled it over. I used to think the game had become too simple but I was wrong, it's become too complex. Simplicity I believe is key.

[ymn]

I wouldn't say it should become simpler, it should be easier to learn (and difficult to master preferably).

Simple suggests that there is little depth. I don't mind debt, but I agree that it is a hassle, if not almost impossible, to get up to speed with the game and classes without having to refer to external sources and just 'do what they do'.

- - - Updated - - -



Call me old fashioned, but having to rely on a 3rd party external source to be able to play a game is just bad design imo.

I know that ship has sailed for wow for a very very long time with all it's add-on's and database sites and strategy sites and such, but i still bugs me.

That is the opposite of old-fashioned. You sir are lazy (which is not an insult, you just don't want to spend extra time researching stuff).

Old-fashioned in the sense of old-fashioned MMORPGs?
Dark Age of Camelot? Try to figure out when to kill Battler and what character to sacrifice to him.
Diablo 2? Try to figure out that upon logging in you had a pre-determined loot-table.
Baldur's Gate 2? Good luck with that if you've never had experience with D&D.

Every RPG ever has been made with the expectations that the player will either give their 100% or do additional research (the clue is in the name). No RPG ever gave out stuff for free and ensured that "oh I am meeting enemies, that must be the right way then".

As for the OP - the classes themselves are not daunting or too complex, as many in this thread have already shown you.
However, the class can "seem" complex as the current class/spec iteration is horrendous and even Blizzard themselves have acknowledged this. That is why you're getting the feeling of overwhelming classes and some nifty bits of how they work are either not clear-cut or just straight down to some random procs.

No, the classes should be complex (it's an MMORPG) - but they should also be relatively fun and engaging to play.

8.2 has done leaps in terms of content, its sheer weight, amount and fun. If 8.2 had MoP class designs in addition to this essence system - you would see praises (although, this being MMO-C I'm sure someone would find something to complain about)

[Nerovar]

I think the problem comes with how the character progression is arranged in WoW. Currently, your class is an empty husk until you have reached max level. You can't learn your class by leveling because all of the important tools and what makes them intertwine is only given to you either at max level or a few levels prior to max level.

I remember leveling my WW monk in WoD pretty much only through skirmish. When I reached max level I was able to jump into PvP without any issues despite not having any gear. It was a great learning experience but it only worked because the progression wasn't as back-loaded.

[Kokolums]

Majority of the playerbase can't/won't do that. +10s are difficult for a lot of casual players, and heroic raiding tends to be the endgame for far more than mythic. There's a reason why you almost never saw any pugs able to clear past the first boss in Mythic BoD.

On top of that, no one is going to skip heroic raid, at least for the first few weeks. My guild will most likely be full clearing heroic for the first month or so, before we drop it and move strictly into mythic progression.

I think people aren't aware of that progression path. Otherwise more would do it.

[xindralol]

@tratra so your example is from vanilla which supposedly shows how vanilla was easier to get into but what exactly makes bfa harder?!
sure there’s minigames like the match 3 thing for world quests but do those really increase the ‘difficulty’ of the game overall?

without using actual examples it feels difficult to follow OP.

@Azerate if you actually start playing like you’re supposed to - either by using a level boost or starting at level 1 - you won’t get overwhelmed by abilities and will transition into the full game naturally.
any rpg will be difficult if you start at the endgame before being introduced to the basics - even games like dragon age 3 haha.

[tratra]

No easy way to explain this one either. This game is so easy a toddler can play it. Come to me when you play Classic, get mad because you have to actually WORK, and see you coming on the forums ranting and raving how that game is too hard.

Thanks for bringing it up, I’ve played vanilla and cleared all of it.
Apart from looking at thottbot for quests, I did 0 3rd party research for the game.
I learnt my classes by playing, was I the best at them, prolly not, did I need to to play at rank 12-14 groups? Nope, to clear any content while it was current? Nope.
So your argument has 0 standpoint.
Vanilla is a good example of a game being easy enough but having so much depth that someone can go into.

Also next time read posts before replying to them. If you do read my post you’ll see that I mentioned vanilla to world area and obviously I did that by experience.

[siskokid21]

Thanks for bringing it up, I’ve played vanilla and cleared all of it.
Apart from looking at thottbot for quests, I did 0 3rd party research for the game.
I learnt my classes by playing, was I the best at them, prolly not, did I need to to play at rank 12-14 groups? Nope, to clear any content while it was current? Nope.
So your argument has 0 standpoint.
Vanilla is a good example of a game being easy enough but having so much depth that someone can go into.

Also next time read posts before replying to them. If you do read my post you’ll see that I mentioned vanilla to world area and obviously I did that by experience.

Tbh the rotations were simple enough that you really didn't need to look anything up.
Play a Warlock? spam shadowbolt
Play a Hunter? afk auto shot
Play a Rogue? Sinister strike spam (eviserate doesnt scale with gear)
Play a Frost mage? Frostbolt spam

The raid mechanics weren't much harder either, comparable to LFR or normal raids on live.

[kaminaris]

if you're trying to act like a computer, you're going to fail. the power of the human brain is in pre-planning. if dbm says a big ability is going to happen in 10 seconds, i shouldn't start that 15 second combo now. if you think that pro players are looking at everything twice a second, then you clearly have no idea what they are doing. they are looking at their cooldown timers, boss ability timers, and positioning. they decide when they should use big abilities before they would use them and set themselves up in a space that would minimize their downtime.

if you think making the game simpler will allow you to act like a computer, you're wrong. we aren't mechanical computers. we're bio-computers with massive physical restraints. we traded the kind of processing power that computers have today (or possible a decade or 2 ago) for the ability to coordinate our body as much as we can without making the thinking process main stream. just like how a computer has it's operating system running all the applications in the foreground, our bodies are running a kind of operating system that is letting me type this message to you without having to think every single letter and action. we are not computers and we probably aren't anywhere near the technology that would let us be.

so yes, bots are the only ones that can perform a perfect rotation. that doesn't mean things need to be simpler. it means there is room for improvement. there is a reason bots can do things like perfect rotations or 360 no-scope people in fps with ease and its because their entire system is working on that task. we need to eat, sleep, digest, move, breath, etc. we are not machines and you thinking we need to be able to perform to machine levels is absurd.

You completely missed the point. I was able to get best performance average on 97.1% (same name as on forum, you can check that on WCL) during hellfire citadel. Does that mean I play like machine? Lol no. It was a lot of trail and error runs, muscle memory training etc.. Plus it was not repeatable.
Now considering I am around top 10% players or hell even 30% players, means vast majority will not be able to get close... AND remaining top% players still won't reach perfection.

Long story short, people say rotations are easy and I say its bullshit. Most of those who says it's easy never even came close to 90%.
It is relatively easy to do fair amount of dps but incredibly difficult to reach top. Which in my dictionary definitely is not "easy".

[kaiba1]

Thanks for bringing it up, I’ve played vanilla and cleared all of it.
Apart from looking at thottbot for quests, I did 0 3rd party research for the game.
I learnt my classes by playing, was I the best at them, prolly not, did I need to to play at rank 12-14 groups? Nope, to clear any content while it was current? Nope.
So your argument has 0 standpoint.
Vanilla is a good example of a game being easy enough but having so much depth that someone can go into.

Also next time read posts before replying to them. If you do read my post you’ll see that I mentioned vanilla to world area and obviously I did that by experience.

Vanilla as a game itself was more difficult than it is to play BFA, that was the point i was trying to make, how much more difficult? maybe a fraction because it didn't have all the "you completed a quest heres a free item thats purple in quality but in no way is it good."

You mentioned that BFA is hard, how? Because you cant get into it with your friends, that sounds like a "you" issue, and I could be wrong. But BFA has aspects that help you learn the game, you dont even have to level a character, you can test one. Also with bad class design it makes button rotations easy.