Shadowlands: Why won't blizzard bring back uniqueness?

[HitRefresh]

You're right, one presses chain heal while the other presses flash of light. Its really varied.

If you want to be pedantic about it, yeah go ahead and choose a single spell that is similar. That isn't the point, obviously. It's fine if two classes have an interrupt, for example, but when every class has an interrupt it loses a little bit of what makes that class separate from the others, and when you do it en masse, which they have, it homogenizes things. It starts with the smaller things, and it continues to creep over the years. That's just the state of the game in general. You simplify grouping, tagging enemies, traveling, etc, now you have a world that feels empty because no one is on the ground, no one is doing the same quests, no one is talking and grouping up for quests, etc.

[Lucetia]

That isn't the point, obviously. It's fine if two classes have an interrupt, for example, but when every class has an interrupt it loses a little bit of what makes that class separate from the others, and when you do it en masse, which they have, it homogenizes things.

Yeah, no one wants to go back to where only certain classes had an interrupt which pretty much limited who you took in to groups. Not to mention you have to rely on that person to interrupt when they should. With almost every one having an interrupt it makes it easier to do group content without stacking specific classes and excluding others and makes you less reliant on others and hope they interrupt because if they don't you have yours as least and able to interrupt every X seconds.

Not to mention people mention being "unique" but all the things they believe that makes a class or something unique can easily be found or broken down into the same that someone else does.

[munkeyinorbit]

It's pretty simple. You either have uniqueness or everyone can do group content. You can't do both.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

It's pretty simple. You either have uniqueness or everyone can do group content. You can't do both.

You can have both even in vanilla groups really don't matter if you get enough gear. It works the same on live. It only matters for like 30+ keys but doing 15 with 1 shaman 3 elementals shamans and "x" tank is viable.

[Swnem]

No, stop with the nostalgia drive. The unbalanced classic is right there for you.

I think a game with 12 viable classes is better than one with only 3. I am sick and tired of the nostalgia drive forcing the devs to repeat the same mistakes of the past.

I don't want to go back to vanilla, stop forcing it on the rest of us.

[Otimus]

You can have uniqueness between all specs and classes without it being based in power or abilities, IMHO. Blizzard just kinda sorta sucks at it.

[Swnem]

The reason is that a part of the playerbase view this fantasy mmorpg like a competition like DOTA or CS:Go.

This game arent built with the intent of competitive play because even when you pick a class at level 1 you have an uneven playingfield.

The same people dont want uniqueness. They want the only factor that makes them different to another player is their skill at the game.

Just look how the tone of these people have changed the last 5 years. There used to never be any issue about RNG before. People was usually happy if a guilde got a huge rare 2 handed weapon from the last boss and he would suddenly do 20 percent more damage.

Now they play for ego and cant stand someone else having an advantage over them and they have no means to reduce the difference.

Its all about dps and hps output. Tanks used to be kings at positioning and tactical thinking and bulding threat. Now even tanks mostly think about their damage.

If you dont do the same amount of dps as another specc you are considered not viable by these people even though you excel at the more important stuff like mechanics and teamwork.

Its a very sad state for the game and it would require a lot of hard work from Blizzard keep the game alive for the majority of the playerbase while battling this mindset.

Personally I think Blizzard should make the game as entertaining and meaningful as possible for the most amount of people and these people could stop playing the game entirely.

That is not true and you sound just like the devs blaming the community for design decisions.

Blizzard loves esports. Mythic invitational? World first race? Arena tournament?
The game is competitive and is designed to be this way. Players are incentivized to push mechanics and numbers to be better.

People AoE cause that is how they can make the timer and push. DPS'ing one mob at a time is not gonna work. The game is DESIGNED that way. Blizzard wants that to be the case.
But, then theres a sub-set of developers that want to make it an RPG.

The problem is you can't have both. When mythic+ is infinite and has a time limit people will AoE. It's the biggest DPS you can do.
The new AoE limits will just create a new meta and those that are uncapped will be meta.

It's the game we have.

Go ask Blizzard to stop making tournaments for pvp and dungeons. Don't blame people for playing the game the way it's designed.
If you think you are gonna get a WoW that is less meta, you will not get it by attacking those playing the game as intended. You are literally saying the customer is wrong, even though they don't make the product. It's pretty frustrating.

[Biomega]

Blizzard loves esports. Mythic invitational? World first race? Arena tournament?

Blizz has never officially endorses the WFR.

They're de-emphasizing M+ now because it screws too much with balance, and for all that MDI is fun to watch, they're more concerned with people whining about M+ driven class balance concerns. And Arena? Nobody watches that, because you can't follow shit without being super into PvP. Naive players have no idea what's going on, and watching 2 teams bounce each other around 90% HP for 20 minutes until dampening is high enough for some broken combo to wipe someone off the planet doesn't exactly help.

The game is competitive, sure, but the esports project has created more problems than it has solved, and Blizzard is realizing that.

AoE etc. aren't really related to esports, and let's face it, those have been problems for a long time, not just after doing 100-mob pulls with 2 UH DKs in an MDI.

Competitiveness in this game will exist irrespective of MDI and friends, because that's what WoW is about. You wanna know why it isn't such a big problem in Classic? Because Classic has one difficulty mode, and it's piss easy. Any ol' kitchen table bumbler can stumble their way into Classic raid clears - on Retail, those people wouldn't survive the first raid boss on mythic, let alone clear. And even with that, people STILL go apeshit in Classic over hardcore min/max bullshit.

The only way to get the competitiveness out of the game now is to dumb it down so much nothing matters anymore.

[Swnem]

Blizz has never officially endorses the WFR.

They're de-emphasizing M+ now because it screws too much with balance, and for all that MDI is fun to watch, they're more concerned with people whining about M+ driven class balance concerns. And Arena? Nobody watches that, because you can't follow shit without being super into PvP. Naive players have no idea what's going on, and watching 2 teams bounce each other around 90% HP for 20 minutes until dampening is high enough for some broken combo to wipe someone off the planet doesn't exactly help.

The game is competitive, sure, but the esports project has created more problems than it has solved, and Blizzard is realizing that.

AoE etc. aren't really related to esports, and let's face it, those have been problems for a long time, not just after doing 100-mob pulls with 2 UH DKs in an MDI.

Competitiveness in this game will exist irrespective of MDI and friends, because that's what WoW is about. You wanna know why it isn't such a big problem in Classic? Because Classic has one difficulty mode, and it's piss easy. Any ol' kitchen table bumbler can stumble their way into Classic raid clears - on Retail, those people wouldn't survive the first raid boss on mythic, let alone clear. And even with that, people STILL go apeshit in Classic over hardcore min/max bullshit.

The only way to get the competitiveness out of the game now is to dumb it down so much nothing matters anymore.

I can only hope, but i see them keeping the design esports driven.

[dextersmith]

I agree. I want every spec to be viable, But Id love to see some more unique stuff like commanding shout, bloodlust, stampede.etc
Id love to see classes have a support spec that helped groups and raids differently like buffing people with dmg reduction/dmg increase/movespeed while doing either dmg or heal.(but not as much as a pure dmg/heal spec) id love to be a support spec, but I quess it would be too complicated for wow players

That sounds a lot like disc priests in cata, I think. It was hated by everyone other than priests until people realized how op it was to have a healer who could heal and mitigate as well or better than others, as well as being 50% of an average dps too. If your disc could only perform 80% of a healer's job, you were a waste of space cause you couldn't carry your own weight; nobody wants a jack of all trades but master of none. The consequence of uniqueness means to max out on an op spec, or people begrudgingly taking one player of your one-trick-pony spec because stfu-you're-only-here-for-bloodlust.

"My dps sucks but it's fun...." until you can't get into a raid. Uniqueness got rogues nerfed in pvp all the time because of stealth.

There were times when ret was designed to do less dps but expected to off heal and it felt stupid to waste gcds and resources on that because I came as dps so I can dps. Sensible uniqueness would be great but you were often asked to come only as your alt due to buffs. It was worse being asked to bring a different alt for every boss.

Unique utility is not always useful, you're a snowflake because you can make a portal but it's not going to help you down a boss, which is what really counts. Being a unique super star in SW doesn't do shit for your advancement.

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Pray tell what real uniqueness did we ever really have? Classes have never been completly different. And useless flavour abilities still exist.

BR being a druid exclusive? Great. Give it back and you are basically forced to take a druid into every dungeon.
Bloodlust? Give it to shamen. Great. Same problem.

The only way this would not fuck up the game right now is to remove Mythic+ and any 5 man content. That won't happen.

But 5 man content can be done with any combo.

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Well yeah why would it? It never was like that. That would make a new game completly. I don't think you will get people back like that. Rather get rid of existing ones.

Timers is the only thing that makes Mythic+ hard.
Remove enrage timers? You also want no mana restrictions for healers? Serves the same purpose.
No one froces anyone to use the damage API. I like to know how i am performing in regards to others. Many do.
If you don't and think there are many others. Play with them. No one is forcing you to look at the damage meters

The problem is, everyone else is looking at meters.....and kicking.

[Krakan]

That sounds a lot like disc priests in cata, I think. It was hated by everyone other than priests until people realized how op it was to have a healer who could heal and mitigate as well or better than others, as well as being 50% of an average dps too. If your disc could only perform 80% of a healer's job, you were a waste of space cause you couldn't carry your own weight; nobody wants a jack of all trades but master of none. The consequence of uniqueness means to max out on an op spec, or people begrudgingly taking one player of your one-trick-pony spec because stfu-you're-only-here-for-bloodlust.

"My dps sucks but it's fun...." until you can't get into a raid. Uniqueness got rogues nerfed in pvp all the time because of stealth.

There were times when ret was designed to do less dps but expected to off heal and it felt stupid to waste gcds and resources on that because I came as dps so I can dps. Sensible uniqueness would be great but you were often asked to come only as your alt due to buffs. It was worse being asked to bring a different alt for every boss.

Unique utility is not always useful, you're a snowflake because you can make a portal but it's not going to help you down a boss, which is what really counts. Being a unique super star in SW doesn't do shit for your advancement.

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But 5 man content can be done with any combo.

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The problem is, everyone else is looking at meters.....and kicking.

When push comes to shove people don't want to choose to suck at a video game.

I think the I do what I want crowd is now vastly inferior to those that at least try to be as good as they can be. I don't think you can really go back to just guessing things in a video game with how easy information has become.

[cozzri]

That sounds a lot like disc priests in cata, I think. It was hated by everyone other than priests until people realized how op it was to have a healer who could heal and mitigate as well or better than others, as well as being 50% of an average dps too. If your disc could only perform 80% of a healer's job, you were a waste of space cause you couldn't carry your own weight; nobody wants a jack of all trades but master of none. The consequence of uniqueness means to max out on an op spec, or people begrudgingly taking one player of your one-trick-pony spec because stfu-you're-only-here-for-bloodlust.

"My dps sucks but it's fun...." until you can't get into a raid. Uniqueness got rogues nerfed in pvp all the time because of stealth.

There were times when ret was designed to do less dps but expected to off heal and it felt stupid to waste gcds and resources on that because I came as dps so I can dps. Sensible uniqueness would be great but you were often asked to come only as your alt due to buffs. It was worse being asked to bring a different alt for every boss.

Unique utility is not always useful, you're a snowflake because you can make a portal but it's not going to help you down a boss, which is what really counts. Being a unique super star in SW doesn't do shit for your advancement.

You could say uniqueness started its slow death in alpha with the decision to create instanced dungeons and raids. The design shift from open world to instances allowed them to create a difficult experience for limited amount of people; totally different from raids and dungeons in Everquest at the time. You could no longer just throw more and more people in to make the encounters easier; which goes without saying.... This change led the community, over time, to where it is now when it comes to raids; its all a numbers game.

This trend didn't really start to become widely apparent until the end of WotLK when gearscore became the baseline of getting invited to raids; that compounded with the multiple levels of gear you have access too led players to look at numbers more closely because of social pressure. I understand the appeal of classic, raids were way more forgiving than they are now, the size and difficultly allowed people from multiple different skill levels to get together to complete raids (not to say it doesnt happen now; its noticed less because the difficulty divide. you don't see people shooting their wand the whole fight in mythic, you will come across that in LFR though) My point is that the difficulty use to account for bad players in your raid; as numbers get tighter, people look to trade uniqueness for effectiveness in the name of min/max; which brings us to the here and now. As long as the raids remain how they are, I find it hard to see how the game would transition into having support roles again; the community is too individual performance driven to justify it.

[Sansnom]

Wouldn't it be amazing to see some unique flavour back in the shadowlands. Why won't blizzard let one class excell in some shape or form and be less good in other aspects of the game. Is it because blizzard wants to appeal to a broader audience by homonisation of skills? Maybe.

It is not Blizzard, it is the player base. If you do not have a skill that is of benefit of the group, you will placed at the bottom of the invite list. I recall certain dungeons were easier if CC was available. As a result, classes that could CC were preferred over other classes that did not.

[WowIsDead64]

Excuse me for typo in title: Breng = Bring obviously.

I would like to discuss the following evolution the game has been through: Classes do not have any unique flavour left in their toolkit, even items nowadays can do things that normally only some classes could. (a good example are the drums that give bloodlust, orginally only reserved for Shamans)

Wouldn't it be amazing to see some unique flavour back in the shadowlands. Why won't blizzard let one class excell in some shape or form and be less good in other aspects of the game. Is it because blizzard wants to appeal to a broader audience by homonisation of skills? Maybe.

If classes have something that distinguishes them and makes them valuable it truly feels more like an MMO to me. So Blizzard should further unprune stuff and make new unique abilities or skills for classes to make WoW feel like an true MMO again.

How cool is it that only mages could blink, you see a mage blink and it felt special and what about a priest that has one unique very powerfull prayer of healing effect but the other classes dont, these classes can have something else awesome. Why do classes need so much overlap between them nowadays.

My question for you guys: opinions on how to implement more uniqueness in Shadowlands for the classes?

Same problem, as with covenants. Visual/RP choice shouldn't affect your ability to do content. Because your right visual/RP choice would be able to turn into wrong power choice then. For example you like your class, but it's weak in PVP. What would you do? Choose other class, you don't like? Each class should have some base toolkit. Single target damage, AOE damage, etc. Otherwise classes would be limited in content, available to them. For example class without any selfheal is very uncomfortable in solo content. Mage for example. It's ok, when you are able to nuke mobs or use your CC and mobility. But what if you can't? What if mobs are immune to CC? Blizzard love to make generic outdoor mobs to be like raid bosses so much.

[Eurhetemec]

You could say uniqueness started its slow death in alpha with the decision to create instanced dungeons and raids. The design shift from open world to instances allowed them to create a difficult experience for limited amount of people; totally different from raids and dungeons in Everquest at the time. You could no longer just throw more and more people in to make the encounters easier; which goes without saying.... This change led the community, over time, to where it is now when it comes to raids; its all a numbers game.

This trend didn't really start to become widely apparent until the end of WotLK when gearscore became the baseline of getting invited to raids; that compounded with the multiple levels of gear you have access too led players to look at numbers more closely because of social pressure. I understand the appeal of classic, raids were way more forgiving than they are now, the size and difficultly allowed people from multiple different skill levels to get together to complete raids (not to say it doesnt happen now; its noticed less because the difficulty divide. you don't see people shooting their wand the whole fight in mythic, you will come across that in LFR though) My point is that the difficulty use to account for bad players in your raid; as numbers get tighter, people look to trade uniqueness for effectiveness in the name of min/max; which brings us to the here and now. As long as the raids remain how they are, I find it hard to see how the game would transition into having support roles again; the community is too individual performance driven to justify it.

Very well said!

Few people seem to recognise the deep long-term consequences of limiting dungeon/raid numbers, I suspect because so few people have played games where that wasn't the case.

And yeah, as long as WoW players remain hyper-focused on individual performance, support classes will remain something that exist only in other games. A pity, because my favourite classes have mostly been support classes.

It's worth noting that WoW's own developers were basically opposed to both support and "hybrid" classes when they played EverQuest. I always found it curious that Kaplan and so on campaigned so aggressively against them in EQ, then basically recreated a lot of the issues in early WoW, before moving to a design which made more sense for what they seemed to believe (i.e. no viable support classes, little hybrid play).

[Liftinmammals]

This is pretty insane since mythic+ should not be about AOE.

We even have affixes like bursting that encourages single target dps.

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The reason is that a part of the playerbase view this fantasy mmorpg like a competition like DOTA or CS:Go.

This game arent built with the intent of competitive play because even when you pick a class at level 1 you have an uneven playingfield.

The same people dont want uniqueness. They want the only factor that makes them different to another player is their skill at the game.

Just look how the tone of these people have changed the last 5 years. There used to never be any issue about RNG before. People was usually happy if a guilde got a huge rare 2 handed weapon from the last boss and he would suddenly do 20 percent more damage.

Now they play for ego and cant stand someone else having an advantage over them and they have no means to reduce the difference.

Its all about dps and hps output. Tanks used to be kings at positioning and tactical thinking and bulding threat. Now even tanks mostly think about their damage.

If you dont do the same amount of dps as another specc you are considered not viable by these people even though you excel at the more important stuff like mechanics and teamwork.

Its a very sad state for the game and it would require a lot of hard work from Blizzard keep the game alive for the majority of the playerbase while battling this mindset.

Personally I think Blizzard should make the game as entertaining and meaningful as possible for the most amount of people and these people could stop playing the game entirely.

Whole heartedly agree. The Esports scene shouldn’t be part of WoW. Be a fantasy MMO. Not CoD.

[Krakan]

Very well said!

Few people seem to recognise the deep long-term consequences of limiting dungeon/raid numbers, I suspect because so few people have played games where that wasn't the case.

And yeah, as long as WoW players remain hyper-focused on individual performance, support classes will remain something that exist only in other games. A pity, because my favourite classes have mostly been support classes.

It's worth noting that WoW's own developers were basically opposed to both support and "hybrid" classes when they played EverQuest. I always found it curious that Kaplan and so on campaigned so aggressively against them in EQ, then basically recreated a lot of the issues in early WoW, before moving to a design which made more sense for what they seemed to believe (i.e. no viable support classes, little hybrid play).

Support classes don't really make sense in video games as they are either to powerful or useless and run into the healer problem when it comes to making groups.

Either the support class provides more of a damage gain then another dps and becomes mandatory or it does less dmg then what another dps would do and becomes useless.

[dextersmith]

Same problem, as with covenants. Visual/RP choice shouldn't affect your ability to do content. Because your right visual/RP choice would be able to turn into wrong power choice then. For example you like your class, but it's weak in PVP. What would you do? Choose other class, you don't like? Each class should have some base toolkit. Single target damage, AOE damage, etc. Otherwise classes would be limited in content, available to them. For example class without any selfheal is very uncomfortable in solo content. Mage for example. It's ok, when you are able to nuke mobs or use your CC and mobility. But what if you can't? What if mobs are immune to CC? Blizzard love to make generic outdoor mobs to be like raid bosses so much.

Vanilla rogues were terrible if you had more than 2 active mobs because they had no self heal or aoe, eating after each fight. Remember warriors trying to off heal with bandages? lol

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Very well said!

Few people seem to recognise the deep long-term consequences of limiting dungeon/raid numbers, I suspect because so few people have played games where that wasn't the case.

And yeah, as long as WoW players remain hyper-focused on individual performance, support classes will remain something that exist only in other games. A pity, because my favourite classes have mostly been support classes.

It's worth noting that WoW's own developers were basically opposed to both support and "hybrid" classes when they played EverQuest. I always found it curious that Kaplan and so on campaigned so aggressively against them in EQ, then basically recreated a lot of the issues in early WoW, before moving to a design which made more sense for what they seemed to believe (i.e. no viable support classes, little hybrid play).

I liked hybrid classes for their survivability but it took forever to kill anything. Think vanilla ret vs. rogue.

[loras]

Excuse me for typo in title: Breng = Bring obviously.

I would like to discuss the following evolution the game has been through: Classes do not have any unique flavour left in their toolkit, even items nowadays can do things that normally only some classes could. (a good example are the drums that give bloodlust, orginally only reserved for Shamans)

Wouldn't it be amazing to see some unique flavour back in the shadowlands. Why won't blizzard let one class excell in some shape or form and be less good in other aspects of the game. Is it because blizzard wants to appeal to a broader audience by homonisation of skills? Maybe.

If classes have something that distinguishes them and makes them valuable it truly feels more like an MMO to me. So Blizzard should further unprune stuff and make new unique abilities or skills for classes to make WoW feel like an true MMO again.

How cool is it that only mages could blink, you see a mage blink and it felt special and what about a priest that has one unique very powerfull prayer of healing effect but the other classes dont, these classes can have something else awesome. Why do classes need so much overlap between them nowadays.

My question for you guys: opinions on how to implement more uniqueness in Shadowlands for the classes?

Because you don't want to turn half of the classes useless outside of a niche, what you call a true mmo sounds a lot like the countless dead husks of mmos out there.
Also there are too many classes nowadays to really get everyone something unique.

Imo it would be far better to at least make sure every class has an own fantasy niche that forms a nice harmonious whole with their particular playstyle.
(*glares at slam being a main spell for arms warriors*)

[LordTakeo]

Excuse me for typo in title: Breng = Bring obviously.

I would like to discuss the following evolution the game has been through: Classes do not have any unique flavour left in their toolkit, even items nowadays can do things that normally only some classes could. (a good example are the drums that give bloodlust, orginally only reserved for Shamans)

Wouldn't it be amazing to see some unique flavour back in the shadowlands. Why won't blizzard let one class excell in some shape or form and be less good in other aspects of the game. Is it because blizzard wants to appeal to a broader audience by homonisation of skills? Maybe.

If classes have something that distinguishes them and makes them valuable it truly feels more like an MMO to me. So Blizzard should further unprune stuff and make new unique abilities or skills for classes to make WoW feel like an true MMO again.

How cool is it that only mages could blink, you see a mage blink and it felt special and what about a priest that has one unique very powerfull prayer of healing effect but the other classes dont, these classes can have something else awesome. Why do classes need so much overlap between them nowadays.

My question for you guys: opinions on how to implement more uniqueness in Shadowlands for the classes?

I honestly think it's fine as it is now.
Classes have different perks and reasons to be brought along, but being too unique, will develop into a problem again where stuff like Visions, or certain rares, fun little modes, become trivial or impossibly annoying to do.
Having baseline perks like CC, dispells, movement, interrupts is just important to have on classes for the general enjoyment.

Right now, alot of classes are plenty unique right now. A look at warlocks/pally/druid/shaman/dk/ect and what they all can do is pretty unique, wouldn't you say?