Shouldn't WoW teach you how to play as you level up?

**ippollite** · 2021-05-06, 01:38 AM

The problem is this:

There are two games running simultaneously in wow. There's the ACTUAL progression game we all know and "love" (the 'three pillars'). And there's this weird mirror version of it. For each of the three pillars you have this shadow experience running alongside it (heroic v mythic dungeons; lfr v raiding; battlegrounds vs rbgs/arena). Heck even torghast doesnt have one difficulty level. Im trying to think of one feature that has a single difficulty level, that requires some competency, and that incentivies players to step up, and the only one i can think of is the mage tower. Perhaps arena (skirmishes and arena in general feel a bit more niche).

So talking about tooltips or the adventure journal misses the point a little. No player NEEDS to learn how to play the game beyond the absolute basics. There's no challenge in game that doesnt have a simultaneous easier version of it. This isnt to bash any players for choosing to just play the game how they want. The problem is that there's really no incentive to step out of your comfort zone and move into the more challenging content.

**Raisei** · 2021-05-06, 07:34 AM

Originally Posted by Crimson Spears

Food for thought... why is there such a massive skill chasm in wow when it comes to content above heroic at end game?

Shouldn't skills needed to succeed be taught while leveling? Stuns, interrupts, snares, and proper rotations why is it none of these things are introduced to you as you level as individual skill checks?

It feels like wow's leveling and teaching tools are stuck fifteen years ago. I guess the question I want to pose is the following.

Should you be able to hit level cap without understanding all the tools in your classes kite? Shouldn't leveling be where you start to learn your class rather then before you decide you want to complete heroic raiding or mythic content?

I agree completely.

But I also know this community. If there is suddenly the need to actually learn things while playing leveling content the masses will cry out. "This is not a job, I just wanna hit things with my hammer!!"

I mean just look at what the self-proclaimed casuals are saying about the Maw. "It's too difficult", "I don't wanna do this", "OMG my mount doesn't work, unsub unsub unsub!"
Or try an LFR and look how many people are interested enough to look into the boss mechanics for 2 minutes. My favourite example is the Council of Blood. Every time I queue for the LFR there are 5 people in the group flat out dying to the dance mechanic.

This attitude basically only allows Blizzard to make "learning your class" an optional endgame thing for those that are interested.

Though the new leveling island does have at least a few pointers, but nothing in depth.

So yes, I'd support your idea, but it won't fly. Too many people are satisfied not using halve their spell book.

**ippollite** · 2021-05-06, 10:56 AM

genuinely, i dont believe anyone really complained about the maw being 'difficult'. Its like complaining that world bosses are 'difficult'. Theres parts you can solo, there's parts youre probably better off in a group (or poaching tags from groups - perdition hold). The big complaints have been really the jailor's eye; the circularity of the grind; issues with grouping (requiring a port back to oribos to all get on the same layer); stygia loss (particularly in hard to reach zones). The lack of a mount is definitely up there as well. But thats more a 'tediousness' issue. My rogue has a great time in the maw in terms of picking my targets and not getting pulled into combat every other minute. Druids also. Like, i cant really grasp just how boring and annoying it can be because i just get in, do my quests, get out. If i was on my pally it might be a little more irritating.

And then i get the rewards open up and think "wait... im grinding stygia so i can spend stygia to make my grinding stygia a little easier? What am i doing with my life!"

Its not the difficulty that's annoying. Its that it feels half baked with silly time wasting systems attached to it. I mean, we can agree that its pretty tedious and not particularly fun, right? I mean, it COULD have been fun if you could just spend your day in there farming all the rares and maybe getting some fun drops. But that eye...

**Toybox** · 2021-05-06, 11:26 AM

It used to teach you. People learned more in a pre-2.4 SFK run than your average player will learn going 1-60 nowadays. The skill ceiling may have shot up, but the skill floor has dropped along with it, and that is Blizzard's fault entirely.

I remember leveling an alt Druid not long before Shadowlands (might've been Legion, I'm not 100%), and Feral didn't even get Skull Bash until level 77 or so... What on earth sort of sense does that make? How are you meant to teach people the value of interrupting when you don't give them an interrupt until they're most of the way through leveling, & make it so nothing hits hard enough to warrant an interrupt anyway?

**Wuusah** · 2021-05-06, 11:27 AM

the problem with "teaching to use your utility skills" is that not every class has the same utility. You can't just throw in a bunch of difficult mobs into open world content where you require a constant interrupting of a spell to beat it when there are classes who have a 1 minute cooldown on interrupts or don't have one in the first place.

You can't require a CC to be used when a class maybe doesn't have a CC or it didn't unlock it yet on their level.

Basically what you would need is an endgame tutorial feature that is different for every single spec in the game, that teaches the player how to use all the abilities your spec has to offer. And then those tutorials would have to be changed with every single patch and maybe even hotfix when Blizzard decides to change something about a class/spec. And then there are important utility skills that are talents and players haven't always chosen those talents. So you'd need a different tutorial depending on your chosen talents?

It's just not going to work. It's too much work because classes are just too different and ever changing throughout the lifecycle of this game.

MMOs have always taught their players how to play this game in the same way: by having the community teach each other. It's not really a flaw of the game when you have to socialize in an MMO to learn how to play it properly. Some might say it's the whole point of an MMO: socializing. Just today I went on the priest discord to ask some questions because I'm new to shadow priest and was a bit confused about cooldown usage. That's the thing about modern gaming. Socializing happens outside of the game with forums, reddit, discord, etc. That's not a flaw of the game but simply how the internet works these days. People who don't make use of the vast amount of knowledge on the internet will be left behind. That's the case in gaming and outside of gaming.

**reemi** · 2021-05-06, 11:44 AM

Game (Leveing, low dungeons, LFR) is too easy to learn this now, How to you want to learn something, even at level 60, last Heroic I joined with my 175 rogue was a random group with 2x 226 players...

sorry but, you cant learn anything untill you are doing Mythic +10, and you'll be yell at because you didnt interrupted.

**ippollite** · 2021-05-06, 12:01 PM

Anyway, thats not what i wanted to say. What i wanted to do was finish the post i made last night but then chickened out of posting (i posted the first half of it above about the mirror wow).

But heres how they fix it. And its going to annoy everyone. There's some presumptions: 1. The design should have an actual single progression path. Thats what blizzard wants. Thats what shadowlands attempted (until the mythic plus players rebelled). 2. You cannot squeeze casual players. You just cant. If the game doesnt give them something to focus on, they'll not bother telling you, they'll just play something else. You cannot just do something like removing a 'core casual' part of their game play without offering them something else in return. Well you can, but you'll be dooming the game to atrophy. And why should you do it, we have the literal systems in game right now to not make this either/or. And with that in mind.

1. LFR is gone.
2. Heroic dungeons are gone.
3. RBGs are on the queue (LFD).
4. Mythic zero is definitely replacing heroic dungeons.
5. Mythic 1-4 is on LFD.
6. Winged Flex raiding returns.
7. For later: Mythic raiding is gone and replaced by a mythic ladder system. Its NOT for the average player. Rewards are ONLY cosmetic.

So, what have we done? Lets deal with 7 first. We've horizontally peaked the game out at x-ilvl and thus narrowed down the gear gap. The idea of shadowlands is that causal players love collecting shit and hardcore players love progression through gear. This is (perhaps?) ass backward. Casual players want progression advantages to account for skill deficiencies. Hardcore players want a challenge where skill is the differential (i think?).

Anyways, just go with it

So LFR. Yikes. The thing is... the game is diminished when you have two games in absolute tandem. If theres an easier option for everything, then so many people are going to take it. If you dont need a guild to run that content, then there are so many players who will do just that. But if theres something you want, (like the mage tower in the case above) and you cant just do an easier version of it, theres going to be a lot of grumbling but accepting players. I dont want to do a single dungeon, trial or raid in final fantasy 14. I get so panicked by the idea that i literally log off for a couple of days when it comes up. But if i want to go through the MSQ, you can bet your behind im going to suck it up and persevere. This is the stick that needs to be used. Not gear caps. Content. If you want to knack sylvanas, you're gonna have to either accept youre watching it on youtube or... run the IO gauntlet. There will be raging. But if blizzard dont sit in their little tower or hide behind 'we've heard your complaints, and we're working on something' nonsense and flat out defend their vision and why players need something they have to actually work on, they might even win the battle.

But this is why we have point 6 to help them win that battle. Because raiding and lockouts is a pain. I still barely understand it. Just break it into wings, lower the time commitment, let players clear boss 3 for one group, then clear bosses one and two in another group like LFR allows (its still LFG, no LFD here). Let them commit to only that one boss if they like. By the time the weekend rolls in, the better players will be done anyway. Flex in panda was genuinely amazing. It was the perfect stepping stone between guild/organised raiding and LFR. Just bring that back. Guide players there. And with the next point, we may have given them the confidence to do this.

Heroic dungeons are gone. At an absolute minimum Mythic zero is the new heroic dungeon meta.

I have a few thoughts on this. Lets first talk about scaling. Currently we have an ilvl race to renown cap and the covenant tier set. No matter what you do to get that ilvl, once you have x ilvl your focus is just on hitting the renown level asap to access your covenant set. This is trash. Throw it away and never do this again. Heres how it should go:

You have your leveling dungeons. At 130 you can open up one of the end game dungeons. This drops a few of your covenant set pieces (hey, you can upgrade them if you want to keep that system). At 150 another dungeon opens. It drops other pieces. At 170 another dungeon opens, it drops your pieces. At 190 the final dungeon opens. It drops your chest and weapon. Where are heroics in this? Fekkin nowhere. Why? Because they're absolutely redundant. They're a holdover from a time when heroics actually impacted the game. They should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Want to just farm those 'end game' dungeons to infinity? No bother. You do you. They're more challenging than the leveling dungeons. They drop nice stuff (heck, throw in all the lego patterns if you like).
The important thing is that those dungeons get a moment to themselves to shine (and players get familiar with them). And although you could happily stay there, id argue 'why would you, when...?'

Point 4: Mythic zero is the new HEROIC dungeon level. First, it opens up way later. Lets say at 200. Actually lets say 180, but in this universe there isnt 20 levels between every end game dungeon. Lets make it... 15 levels (130/145/160/175 - if we're all really concerned about ilvl inflation). And since we're going with mega soul ash (another currency), why not just let those mythic dungeons be the resource for upgrading to 197 from 184?, like, i dunno, valor?. Im going off topic. Point is that you can queue this in LFD. It has all the incentive in the world to make you queue it. It doesnt have to be more difficult than where you'd put a current heroic at 190 instead of 171. Its doing the same function of heroic dungeons only now, not only do you have better drops, you also have resources AND access to the great vault. And a queue. Thats got to be an incentive to just try it. On TOP of this, you get this annoying key in your bags.

Point 5: Mythic 1-4 on LFD. LFG still exists in all the LFGness it currently has. Absolutely no changes. LFD on the other hand is more restricted. You can only go up one key on the dungeon you've actually cleared. Your key can sit in your bag to eternity. Keys dont matter. BlizzardIO matters. This is a matchmaking system. And that means, yeah, youre gonna wait for a tank, and yeah, youre not gonna leapfrog key levels through invites. You want all that, you list your key in LFG. You want a matchmaking system, you sit in queue like a good dps and shut up about the queue times (obvs blizz can throw in incentives to speed those queues up for tanks and healers by the way - ff14 has no trouble filling roles for its earliest content because it rewards players HANDSOMELY to do it - i get 600 poetics to run one ARR mega dungeon every day = 600 is like... 2000 anima?). If you have tier 3 plaguefall done, and m0 sanctum, you dont get to queue for a m4 sanctum. You eat your lumps like a real demon hunter and queue m1 sanctum. Like LFR though, queue for all the available runs you like. RNGeesus will pick you eventually.

Why +4 and not M0? Because you need these players to encounter the basic gameplay of mythic dungeon running. Thats all this is doing. Its setting a basic progression standard. Once they finish all those dungeons multiple times in LFD they'll "BE TAUGHT" how to play the actual (basic) game. They'll have wiped multiple times. They'll have listened and worked out their strategy/priorities. They'll have progressed as players and be involved in the actual end game. Instead of a mirror game they'll be playing ONE unified game. And as they get better, and get better gear (even if its just from the vault), they'll be in a better place to not only list their own key, but also LFG flex normal raiding. See how this all ties together?

Ooops! i missed one. RBGs are on LFD. Because of course they should be. I spent years being gy camped on alliance by premades. If i have to continue being gy camped to earn some conquest, why the heck not? Its progression. Im progressing. Im getting to have fun in the actual BGs that matter and get some gear out of it, just like it ever was. Youve got raiderio now. So why not use it to matchmake me and let me level my score. If i get precious about it, perhaps then i'll find a team. Point is, im getting conquest, and im using that to fill slots. Im ENGAGING with the progression system (oh, and im accessing the vault on top of this).

Yay! Now the game is better for everyone. No more mirrored game (except for those who stubbornly refuse to engage with content). More barriers to end game pulled down and widening of accessibility. Raiding is still king. Mythic plus is more fluid and doing exactly what it has the potential to do (acting as a transition from the casual/solo game to the hardcore/organised game). PVP is just... better. Since its actually matchmade based on io, then no more tanking your rating and farming noobs. And most important of all, players have a REASON to improve.

ETA: Oh, and id add player housing. Like ESO player housing. With crafting being crucial. Id limit titles/deeds like they did legion legendaries. Id make them BOE so they could be sold on the AH. If you buy a deed, you can build your house. And then id have hundreds of patterns players could farm in the next expansion (all boe as well) throughout all the trade skills from all over the game (plus collectibles) for evergreen content. The. End. Now if you hate feeling forced into the one single progression system, you can just bail and enjoy the game (and make bank) in other ways.

**Alroxas** · 2021-05-06, 03:13 PM