Torghast in Beta, Growing Concerns

[goldentforce]

I don’t find failure and bad runs fun. I’m fine with it being easy and to always succeed. If I want to fail at something, I’ll log off and go do some real life.

This is a fair opinion in honesty. Then torghast isn't really for you, and I think the 6 floor format for legendary could be beneficial to you. The point of the convo is there are some changes that diminish the rogue-like gameplay torghast is supposed to represent. I think there was space to take away some of the power gain in torghast while still keeping it run and not painful for just the legendary components for people like you. I just think there are improvements to torghast needed after the changes I listed, and that doing 6x6 intro floors makes the content unfun as an opening to end game and should be changed in someway so people are not offput by torghast from the intro versions. The 18 floor more rogue like experience is not portrayed well in the 6 floor version.

[Belloc]

You failed to state what looks fun and challenging about Torghast? The videos I see are of people running around one-shotting everything because your abilities do absurd damage. What's fun about that? I watched people do 99 floors and none of it was a "challenge". Your shield throw as Prot Paladin does a million damage and kills everything. This is fun? Sounds like garbage content.

That's kind of the point of roguelikes. The randomness means that the challenge of the game either steadily goes up when you get weak powerups, goes way down when you get overpowered powerups, and everything in between. The goal is to get as far as you can (or finish the game) and, when you inevitably fail, you try again and you keep trying until you git gud.

Sounds like WoW's version might be tuned to be a bit more friendly to noobs, but who knows what it'll look like at launch... or a few patches later. If they can do it well, it'll be a great addition. If they'd make it drop current heroic raid ilvl, I'd probably return to the game and play Torghast almost exclusively.

[Wheeler]

I think it's more a testament to why Rogue-Like is it's own genre, and the MMORPG is separate from that.

I did the first few wings solo and with friends. With both, it's boring after a very short while. You're going to exhaust the abilities and how fun they are pretty quickly (Maybe first month, MAX), and then it's just going to be Visions v2.0 where you can't be bothered because it's boring you to tears.

I'm aware there are outliers - People that are going to play this thing until 10.0 religiously, and people that are going to hate it from the jump. I had fun with it initially, but the novelty wore off quickly and I was over it.

[Osmeric]

A winners attitude.

The problem, of course, is that Blizzard can't cater just to "winners". Difficult content, by definition, will exclude and frustrate most players. And yet the devs keep trying to make this sort of content. There's some ingrained failure there on that team.

[goldentforce]

The problem, of course, is that Blizzard can't cater just to "winners". Difficult content, by definition, will exclude and frustrate most players. And yet the devs keep trying to make this sort of content. There's some ingrained failure there on that team.

Disagree with this. Diffculty is key to so many popular games: dark souls(and like) games, rogue-likes, competitive pvp games, battle royales. All these games have a high rate of death or defeat and are popular amongst so many people. Maybe a portion of wow audience does indeed stray from difficult content, but torghast is inspired from rogue-likes and they should not give that up to make it more accessible, and instead make a good rogue-like experience and see if there is space for this content in the future.

[Orwell7]

Risk vs. Reward.
Basig game design.
Unfortunately the whole MMO-genre went down on a specific road and there's no coming back.

See, "back in the day" WoW was the easy MMO. It was like IDDQD in Doom. Most players loved it, of course, because it was A LOT bigger than other "easily digestible" games, so players didn't see this as bad because the content was great! Long "friends" from previous Warcraft games, great story, etc.
But it killed the spirit of MMOs - where ACCOMPLISHING something truly great took months, and not bullshit timegated months. You needed crafting (!!!) with really hard-to-get materials, multiple crafters, even GETTING to a dungeon / quest area for these epic quests was dangerous IN A GROUP! It wasn't enough to be at max level (and scale mobs to you damnit), you had to play your class well, you had to make a good group and then it still wasn't 100% TO EVEN GET TO THE DUNGEON!
And for a "legendary" item you needed 15 steps, all required group effort. Not just spam-invite, get stoned and get done with it, no-no-no...

It was magical, and WoW killed this, sacrificed on the altar of "accessibility" and here we are now, at the end of the road, where everything is piss-easy except Mythic Raids, where dungeons has to be scaled for our delicate measurement of difficulty.

Where nothing matters anymore in an MMO it's just a shit-looking single player game with multiplayer option.

[Osmeric]

Disagree with this. Diffculty is key to so many popular games: dark souls(and like) games, rogue-likes, competitive pvp games, battle royales. All these games have a high rate of death or defeat and are popular amongst so many people. Maybe a portion of wow audience does indeed stray from difficult content, but torghast is inspired from rogue-likes and they should not give that up to make it more accessible, and instead make a good rogue-like experience and see if there is space for this content in the future.

These are not mass market games, and WoW was never built on a player base of the kind that likes the very difficult games. Moreover, in an MMO, your fails are on display before everyone else, which makes it even worse.

So, go ahead and disagree, but I think you're clearly wrong.

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But it killed the spirit of MMOs - where ACCOMPLISHING something truly great took months, and not bullshit timegated months.

You know what else kills the spirit of MMOs? Not actually getting the accomplishment.

The design philosophy you are espousing there is very superficially attractive but it falls apart if you think about what it implies. It will cause most MMO players to churn out and stop playing.

[Sensa1]

If the OP's descriptions of the changes is accurate it falls into the category of "inevitable" and goes to the core design hole that Blizzard has created for themselves.

The moment they made Torghast required content for Legendaries it was inevitable it would be neutered to the ground so the least talented and skillful players would be able to obtain "legendaries" - a misnomer if there ever was one considering the fact everyone can get them. This is a continuation of the design philosophy that took hold in Wrath, and with the exception of initial Cata heroics, has infested almost every aspect of the game ever since.

There's just no way, in the current climate and with player expectations being what they are (partly player's fault / partly Blizzard), that Torghast would end up being challenging.

The only question regarding this news is why anyone would be surprised about this development.

[goldentforce]

These are not mass market games, and WoW was never built on a player base of the kind that likes the very difficult games. Moreover, in an MMO, your fails are on display before everyone else, which makes it even worse.

So, go ahead and disagree, but I think you're clearly wrong.

I do not agree that the whole player base of wow wants easy and near 100% success content and was shown by immense dissatisfaction with islands and warfronts, and a much more positive response towards visions. But more importantly about you point that your fails are display is just wrong about this piece of content compared to pvp, dungeons,raids,etc. This content is very much a solo instance. Your failures in a torghast run affects no one else but people you choose to party with to do the content together, completely optional. If a run goes bad or you mess up or ends, you can just queue up again with no penalty unlike any of the other instance content listed in the post. You do not have to wait a reset, you do not need to wait for a group to be made, you do not need to farm a currency to unlock; you just try again. Way better feeling and with the knowledge that torghast has failure as a part of the game, its an entire different experience to the other content. It seems this content doesn't appeal to you, and I am okay with the legendary torghast 6 block run being pretty much free win as long as it feels fun playing with the powers for the player base. However much of my complaints and feedback and the importance of difficulty should be an important part of the 18 floor runs to make it feel rewarding and similar to a rogue-like experience. If blizz make some changes to that mode then its entirely in the playerbase's hands if they like it and if it can stay in wow.

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If the OP's descriptions of the changes is accurate it falls into the category of "inevitable" and goes to the core design hole that Blizzard has created for themselves.

The moment they made Torghast required content for Legendaries it was inevitable it would be neutered to the ground so the least talented and skillful players would be able to obtain "legendaries" - a misnomer if there ever was one considering the fact everyone can get them. This is a continuation of the design philosophy that took hold in Wrath, and with the exception of initial Cata heroics, has infested almost every aspect of the game ever since.

There's just no way, in the current climate and with player expectations being what they are (partly player's fault / partly Blizzard), that Torghast would end up being challenging.

The only question regarding this news is why anyone would be surprised about this development.

The 6 floor legendary resource block has issues IMO not necessarily because its easy but because its a chopped up block of the overall rogue-like experience. 6 floors is really short and with the power of brokers right now the power gain is so immense you just destroy the floors similar to an arpg or something. It would be okay if brokers are reduced a good bit overall though, its just not true to the rogue-like experience you feel in the 18 floor blocks when the player was less powerful in previous builds. The issue is having the intro to experiencing torghast be 6 of these 6 floor blocks doesnt give the actual feeling of torghast, and is just flat out too much for an intro, 3 would be fine. I think the 6 floor blocks could also be a chore to people who really enjoy doing 18 floor runs, and would like the option for those players to get the same amount of rewards for a 18 floor run if they want to keep this format. At the end of the day a 1-18 floor run is also still very easy and not a challenging piece of content, but still very fun to progress and grow.

TLDR: 6 floor block runs are fine if they reduce to amount you do at the beginning and give the option to get the same amount of rewards a week for a 18 floor run, or make the 6 block runs more fun to those who like the 18 floor runs in some way.

[infinitemeridian]

Based on the forum thread and Preach's last video, it does seem heavily watered down than what it was intended to be.

I'm fine with it being easy if the builds are fun and the exploration is good, but the former will get old eventually, especially since you can purchase powers now so you'll always want to go a certain way, while the latter is non-existent.

[Osmeric]

Based on the forum thread and Preach's last video, it does seem heavily watered down than what it was intended to be.

I'm betting the participation in HVs, especially at 5 masks, was not good.

[MrLachyG]

main question for me: is it going to be fun? the answer: most probably.

[dcc626]

main question for me: is it going to be fun? the answer: most probably.

the real question is: how quickly will people get upset that torghast doesnt give gear like visions.

[MrLachyG]

the real question is: how quickly will people get upset that torghast doesnt give gear like visions.

well it's never been promised that Torghast would give gear..... however that won't stop people who have the IQ of a pencil complaining

[TheRevenantHero]

A winners attitude.
So you'd rather play something utterly pointless and boring which is no challenge at all and where it simply does not matter what you do and how you play, instead of having the possibility of random but incredibly fun drops which have the potential you get absolutely crazy and fun gameplay on higher floors? It's not like torghast was incredibly hard before...it just was harder when you were incredibly unlucky.
Content where you can't fail will always suck. Just like islands. Or warfronts. Or scenarios.

And that's your own opinion. My opinion is that rogue-likes are aggressively annoying. If I wanted to do an activity that can result in me losing and losing EVERYTHING, as Amerissis said, I'd just go off into the real world. Video games are an escape. A game can be challenging without having you lose and start from absolute zero every time.

- - - Updated - - -

Risk vs. Reward.
Basig game design.
Unfortunately the whole MMO-genre went down on a specific road and there's no coming back.

See, "back in the day" WoW was the easy MMO. It was like IDDQD in Doom. Most players loved it, of course, because it was A LOT bigger than other "easily digestible" games, so players didn't see this as bad because the content was great! Long "friends" from previous Warcraft games, great story, etc.
But it killed the spirit of MMOs - where ACCOMPLISHING something truly great took months, and not bullshit timegated months. You needed crafting (!!!) with really hard-to-get materials, multiple crafters, even GETTING to a dungeon / quest area for these epic quests was dangerous IN A GROUP! It wasn't enough to be at max level (and scale mobs to you damnit), you had to play your class well, you had to make a good group and then it still wasn't 100% TO EVEN GET TO THE DUNGEON!
And for a "legendary" item you needed 15 steps, all required group effort. Not just spam-invite, get stoned and get done with it, no-no-no...

It was magical, and WoW killed this, sacrificed on the altar of "accessibility" and here we are now, at the end of the road, where everything is piss-easy except Mythic Raids, where dungeons has to be scaled for our delicate measurement of difficulty.

Where nothing matters anymore in an MMO it's just a shit-looking single player game with multiplayer option.

You realize that difficulty that doesn't scale is a form of gating. Because once you gear enough, you can just steamroll everything. How is that any different than timegating?

[goldentforce]

And that's your own opinion. My opinion is that rogue-likes are aggressively annoying. If I wanted to do an activity that can result in me losing and losing EVERYTHING, as Amerissis said, I'd just go off into the real world. Video games are an escape. A game can be challenging without having you lose and start from absolute zero every time.

The game is supposed to be a loop, and the amount of time is only about an hour to go up 18 floors (depending on difficulty). You also get checkpoints every 6 floors, so there is some progression to torghast. You do lose all your powers but thats part of the gameplay of gaining powers as you go. Losing and gaining different powers adds fun in a variety of builds so each run is different. Thats why one of my complaints was against the broker in the initial post, too much set power gain every run. Rogue-likes aren't for everyone but they are short gameplay loops with a lot of variety, creating many different runs with different tools every time.

[Kyphael]

I don't get why anyone would want an "endless mode." Everything needs an end for it to mean something. I can't imagine sitting there and going up this endless tower grinding the same shit over, and over. Let me finish it so I can move on or log off and go do something else.

[Alcsaar]

To be fair, you shouldn't be able to fail something especially if its no fault of your own and miss out on a legendary or component or whatever. That's not fun and is basically the same problem that random RNG legendaries had - people haven't to get lucky to get good legendaries.

If they're going to balance around legendaries (which they clearly are), then they should be relatively consistently accessible for everyone regardless of luck or even skill.

Its bad enough that you HAVE to do this game mode to get legendaries at all. What happens to the people who don't enjoy it but are forced to do it for legendaries? It just becomes a chore like every other boring system (like islands)

[Wuusah]

wile watching someone play it doesnt look very fun,its completly different when playing it yourself,thats the case with many kinds of games

like WoW for example. Seriously, WoW is one of the most boring games to watch.

[WowIsDead64]

...

Problem is - rogue-like mechanic is against Blizzards' desired rewarding system. Rogue-like is about exploration. And visions clearly show, that soft-timer mechanic is terrible for exploration. But Blizzard want to put soft-timers in order to limit your ability to use starvation tactic to bypass obstacles and get valuable rewards, like legendaries. So they basically try to split it into two modes. Journey mode just for rogue-like experience and hardcore mode for rewards. That's it.

I personally have tried rogue-like and it looks like, that this genre isn't for me. I played console games without save files back in old days, i.e. I'm familiar with "grinding victory" and "repetition" rogue-like mechanics. But RNG adds another layer of grind into such games. And I think, that it's way too much for me.