Heroic dungeons dumbed down

[Alvito]

In case you didn't notice, normal mode DUNGEONs had the same loot tables as heroics simply deflated ilvl items, and derped down mecanics similar to lfr/normal-mode.
Besides, people dodge normal DUNGEONs becase:
1) for some stupid reason PvP gear is consided valid by lfd tool
2) gear in bags too, even if it's of the wrong role (ie: int plate for a tank/dps paladin) or even the wrong kind (ie: cloth gear for a paladin)
3) extreme ease of getting purple gear (thrall quest, molten front 1st day dailies, 372 justics gear, overflowing ah crafts and raid BoE)

Fix any (better : all ! though #3 is hard to "fix" in 4.3... maybe if only 4.3 DUNGEONs gave valor...) and you'd see more people doing normals...
And more QQ about being forced to do normals too i guess...

1. That is still different gear and while it might not take long its time spent on redoing the same loot for little to no reason.
2. I could care less about making it easier for ppl to pad their item lvl and cheese their way into runs they dont have the gear to run and get carried by others.
3. You are always going to run into this issue as new content keeps coming out. Do you not want them to release new 5 mans or quest lines with each raid or large patch? You do realize your 3rd point is one of the many reasons they didn't make normal 90 5 mans.

When it really comes down to it call a 5 man whatever you want, if its fun or you could use the loot run it if not dont. Ppl get far to caught up on the color of the text the names of their items are written in and where they got it from. When new content comes out and a expansion goes live purple doesn't always mean better and item lvl most certainly doesn't mean better. Trinkets are the best example of this, there are always a few trinkets that are awesome well beyond the tier or raiding you get them in. Sadly many muppets swap out of them because they want to go up 1 average item lvl on their character.

[Austilias]

I do hope they give the challenge mode rewards a little bit of substance. Gear sets might be good but the fact is that many of the people who would be 'good' enough to do Challenge Modes do not care so much for aesthetics, or even bother to transmogrify for that matter. I agree that heroics have been dumbed down, but the current WoW community is rife with a sense of entitlement whereby people think their subscription fee determines what content they can and cannot see/do, as opposed to their skill as a player. If Challenge modes give mounts/titles and other such rewards, without crossing over into the boundaries of loot with stats/necessity, then I think it will be a success.

[Adlen]

Yeah people need to understand.

Paying for WoW does not mean you get to do and accomplish anything you want.

Paying for WoW means you get to TRY and accomplish what you wish

[Raider321]

moar epics for noobz xD

This is gonna be fun(for noobtards that is)

[Xarkan]

Sure you had to grind a lot, but if players wanted to meet the expectations, none of us really complained about the grinding then. I am sure there were some people that raged a bit back in the day but I know that some of the casual of players I met didn't mind grinding for honored rep.

Could have sworn i hated it because it was revered and the gap from honored (that was pretty much a gimme from quests) to revered felt long. But maybe i remember wrong

[orderschvank]

i am honestly.. deeply confused why people thought the cata heroics were hard... thought they were extremely easy myself... easy enough to get all the achievements for then within 10 days of cata launch..

[Cows For Life]

Could have sworn i hated it because it was revered and the gap from honored (that was pretty much a gimme from quests) to revered felt long. But maybe i remember wrong

Neutral to Friendly: 0-3000 (3000 points total)
Friendly to Honored: 0-6000 (9000 points total)
Honored to Revered: 0-12000 (21000 points total)

Some reps like Sha'tar you basically had to grind 21,000 points from almost 0. Have fun if you had caster alts that needed the helmet glyph. A complete clear of every last trash mob in each TK instance would yield 1500-2000 reputation. Everyone had lots of fun trying to put together groups for that!

For Lower City, players had to look forward to possibly 7 or 8 Shadow Labyrinth runs before they could even get enough for Auchindoun heroics. BM was another favorite that gave 1000 rep per run on the death march to revered... No the relationship between regulars and heroics was not fine.

[MasterHamster]

Where is your proof of this? Just cause the causuals cry the most cause they can't be catered doesn't make them majority. Don't want the game to be hard quit, no one wants scurbs like you playing wow anyway.

Mod Edit: Keep it constructive please.

the casuals is the vast majority of WoW's playerbase kiddo.
And no, casuals are not the ones whining the most. This thread is a good example of the e-peen strokers who take this game too seriously.

[Nekosom]

People noticed, and the western sub base just kept growing and growing in spite of these time sinks. the game is now below western subs levels from 4 years ago. In othe words, more people were playing late tbc with long leveling and hard, brain-required dungeons when run at gear/level, than are playing the game now.

Do you know why the game grew? Because they progressively took many of those time sinks out. "Late TBC" was a tipping point in WoW, when Blizzard started collapsing many of the barriers to entry that marked the early era of WoW. Badge gear was a BC invention, and attunements were all but eliminated by 2.4 (With Tier 5 raids losing their attunements by 2.1.2!). We all know what WotLK wrought on that front. And guess what? It's largely because of those efforts that WoW is still as popular as it is. The fact that it's still as popular as it was 4 years ago, given the amount of competition that has emerged on that front, is a testament to the success of that strategy. And here you knock it, as if WoW would still be growing if Blizzard "got their act together."

You're comparing the growth of the first several years with now, which is just plain unfair. WoW didn't have a legion of imitators back then. WoW had a fanbase that had much lower standards (there's not a gamer today that would tolerate some of the issues Vanilla WoW had). Most importantly though, WoW was new back then. Everything it did felt new. But, there's only so many ways to crack an egg, and Blizzard has had to adapt.

You don't have to like what Blizzard does with WoW. You don't even have to tolerate it. But to say that not-so-new direction hasn't worked out great for them is just madness.

[Granyala]

Agreed. Difficult Heroics are fun, but not when I have to pug with people that have no clue what they are doing.

One simple quote says it all.

For Lower City, players had to look forward to possibly 7 or 8 Shadow Labyrinth runs before they could even get enough for Auchindoun heroics.

Grinding that to exalted for the caster hammer almost made me puke. NOT a fond memory. The forced rep grinds in BC definitely were annoying. Glad they got rid of that one.

[Deleted]

- in almost every single circumstance, the specific boss encounters that were difficult was because they were far too comp sensitive, for example on the second day of launch, try clearing the first boss in heroic stonecore without two ranged dps. (good luck with that!)

I am not sure about your claim, but I 100% agree there were some dirty mechanics like your other example in SFK. However the famous 3rd boss in Stonecore (a PuG killer) doesn't have much to do with composition as much as people knowing their class and dexterity to move when required.

The instance is all about kiting. Actually, ditch that, the instance is first and foremost about CC, interrupt (melee are better at that), and not ninja pulling or breaking CC. After the trash, the first boss is a test to your group's kiting skills which you further need at 4th boss. Your tank's positioning (can't really call it kiting) is tested at the third boss. You say melee sucks in Stonecore? I beg to differ. About 1st boss: shadow priest was a bad ranged here because they don't have any AoE stuns, and only dispersion would save them. They also cannot precast their AoE ability (it'd only work on enemy back then). EDIT: it was also completely shit damage in 4.0.1. Warlock is also worse here: only destro has a 2 sec stun. The slow from shadowflame is good but requires excellent positioning and it has a CD. The demonic portal works fine, would be interesting to see the new group-wise warlock portal function on a fight like this. Yes both classes have fears but that means you cannot AoE the adds anymore.

Also, you're saying an assassination rogue cannot kite the small adds? Or a frost DK cannot do that, but can do Magmaw kiting? With proper positioning you can do Stonecore first boss with 2 melee + 1 ranged if they position in triangle. This is similar to 4th boss although here your tank (or melee) need to quickly be able to interrupt. The second boss is just sartharion mechanic-wise, I don't see why melee are bad there. They're merely a little bit more challenged than ranged in this example and must accept they cannot DPS a lot of the time (while ranged can, and do DoTs) but the ranged are constantly having LoS issues due to the falling stuff.

Even if you downed the first 2 bosses w/o any wipe or any death, the problems arise at the 3rd boss because people are stupid. Especially warrior tanks who have no clue what shield slam does, and are unable to read or comprehend the English language when it is explained to them in party chat. Because of their excellent movement utility they're the best on this boss though.

You'd also be surprised how many ranged (including healers) don't know how to DoT themselves and instead of learning just make the same mistake. And again, and again. Don't even ask why they die, just make same mistake again! No wonder the dungeons are dumbed down. I'll never forget this gnome arcane mage who kept dying at this mechanic. Paladins had it easy though: the holy paladin just had to do a judgement. Holy paladin was quite easy to play anyway in the start of Cata. I remember having worse gear than my resto druid, less skilled on hpala, not having to use any CDs, yet still not going OOM.

Oh yeah, and if you tanked the bloody instance and finally managed to kill the last boss of course mister plate DPS needs on the trinket, or mister failtank feels the plate DPS who made no mistakes shouldn't be allowed to need on it, /popcorn.

PS: I will never forget the holy paladin who soloed the 3rd boss in Stonecore after the tank failed. It took him about 10 minutes or something, with proper kiting. To be fair, he was fully decked in purples. I was enhancement shaman who tanked him for a little while. Nobody else could enter because they'd get stunned during their corpserun. You can guess who kept trying to get in to get to the boss... yes, the warrior tank.

So far Stonecore.

Then you had these trinkets which dropped in HoO and the tanking one from the extra boss in throne of the tides. Which is a problem still today because person A is in a hurry, selfish, or doesn't want to "carry" person B who needs one of those trinkets.

You can say it all was too difficult, but it surely was memorable because it was fun to be challenged. Nobody will remember the HoT dungeons (you could just zerg through these). Especially not raiders since they were decked in 391 ilvl gear. Even alts had that due to the FL nerf.

Try clearing the first boss in SFK at launch without two interrupters or at least a tank that could interrupt (which paladins could not reliably), again good luck with that!

That is also true (probably also why all pala got rebuke now). Actually, it isn't only class/spec, you still need someone who is specced for interrupting. For example a feral druid can or cannot spec for that (in DS you don't need it at all). A shadow priest usually only has silence in a PvP/solo spec.

Because people are able to respec talents (and have 2 of 3 specialisation) w/o running to the trainer and with little cost (only the reagent) I expect to see some challenges involving respecs. It is at the very least less trouble. Looking forward to earn some coins with my scribe on the reagent, too.

As for your conclusion you do have a point (and there are more examples), but you can just as well blame LFD tool for it. People were just used to easy HC dungeons, but HC dungeons are also a prerequisite for normal raid. If you have 5 strangers together with a random composition it is just a recipe for trouble. The LFD tool has received some upgrades though: it prefers players with different armor types, and players from same realm.

By moving the challenging content into challenge mode and making it a prestige you can show off they circumvented the LFD problem. It is win-win.

---------- Post added 2012-06-18 at 02:10 PM ----------

You're comparing the growth of the first several years with now, which is just plain unfair. WoW didn't have a legion of imitators back then. WoW had a fanbase that had much lower standards (there's not a gamer today that would tolerate some of the issues Vanilla WoW had). Most importantly though, WoW was new back then. Everything it did felt new. But, there's only so many ways to crack an egg, and Blizzard has had to adapt.

WoW also had name Blizzard and Warcraft 3 behind them.

I wasn't into MMOs in 2004 so I can't say if there was more competing or if the market was booming, but I did recently play some GW2 and therefore also tried GW which is, for me, simply unplayable but I can see how it competed with WoW back then.

[Matson]

This is the last post I am going to post here. If you don't get it then you don't or don't want to.

The reason that I have been "crying" like most of you like to see it. What is it? Why am I doing it ?
Many of you have said that the game should not be like a second job, it should be for fun. The word "fun" is not same for everyone. Some people have fun while they can relax in this game without having any stress while running couple of dungeons.
Fun for me is not either challenge nor a loot , but both of them mixed together : How I get my loot. And another point : How can I see my gear upgrading.

The dungeons at the beginning have an evil atmosphere. The danger is all around. We move as a group and watch out for mobs that might cause us a wipe - Exciting. We finally reach a boss. "Okay guys, who knows the tactics here? " . We wipe once, maybe twice. 3rd try we finally down the boss *Phew!* and the best thing is I got a new trinket! A new helpful item for me. Awesome! Later on when I have gotten like 5 or more items I enter the dungeon again. The dangerous place have became bit easier. I can feel how my character is getting more powerful. A pull that would have previously made us wipe is now doable. Question is - Where do I get this kind of shivering if the dungeons are dumbed down and doesn't feel dangerous even at the very beginning? Challenge mode offers me only the difficulty. It will always normalize my item level down so I won't see how my character is getting more powerful each dungeon. Don't get me wrong. The idea of challenge modes are fun, but everything else (a player who has no time to raid does) shouldn't be dull.

Frustration is not the same for everyone either. Some people find wiping to be really frustrating. I find it to be part of the game. The thing that has caused me frustration is that during WotLK and end of Cataclysm when I do a dungeon as Tank I felt that I don't take damage - At all. And the threat is REALLY easy to get. I don't have to use my damage reduction cooldowns, I just dps . When I chose the protection tree with my paladin, I sure as hell did not want to DPS.
With my Priest it's even worse. I love the new holy tree. But when I went to try it out in HoT I got an overgeared DK tank. He seemed to take zero damage and even if he did, he selfhealed it all back during the same second. I felt useless. This is not what I call playing the game. I wanted to try out all my cool healing abilities but all I had to do was to use prayer of mending and sometimes prayer of healing. This leaves me only one role - DPS. As DPS I can fullfill my role, even tho I am probably just using my aoe ability.

Why did Cataclysm fail then? I see that the learning curve was too rough. First you do way too easy dungeons from 1-80 and then you jump in to somewhat difficult dungeon in 80-85. People were shocked about the change. Why? Because too easy dungeons don't teach you how to play. They should smoothen up the dungeon difficulty while you level so that you hardly notice them getting harder.
My friend played WoW for 1st time in his life during Cataclysm he decided to play warrior. He found it extremely frustrating while running dungeons that all the mobs were always down before he got to hit them. He thought that the game was too hard because he had no chance to hit the mobs. And he left before level 80.

[Deleted]

Why did Cataclysm fail then? I see that the learning curve was too rough. First you do way too easy dungeons from 1-80 and then you jump in to somewhat difficult dungeon in 80-85. People were shocked about the change. Why? Because too easy dungeons don't teach you how to play. They should smoothen up the dungeon difficulty while you level so that hardly notice them getting harder.
My friend played WoW for 1st time in his life during Cataclysm he decided to play warrior. He found it extremely frustrating while running dungeons that all the mobs were always down before he got to hit them. He thought that the game was too hard because he had no chance to hit the mobs. And he left before level 80.

Brilliant post!

On beta we get to copy characters as level 85 (and now do one quest to get to level 86) so we don't have to lvl up. Why not on live? It is useless anyway, and the Cataclysm content is all irrelevant anyway.

There is a big difference between the difficulty while lvling and the difficulty at end-game. MoP will not fix this! What MoP will do is making it impossible to pick/make the wrong talent tree, and allow an easy and cheap respec.

Heirlooms make the problem worse; not better! Not using them would be silly: you're lvling slower, and you do less output. Who would nerf themselves? You're also not only outgearing people w/o heirloom (new players and rerollers) making it hard for them to compete with you on damage done.

How do you know you truly like your class if you were never challenged to play all of its abilities? Why do you even get talents you don't even have to use? Only when you start with end-game will you know the answer.

I think the proper answer to these questions lies in PvP. The min-maxing won't hurt you in fact most players do it, and you use far more class abilities there than in PvE at least while lvling. It is also less static content because there's more variety.

I don't agree with your solution either. It wouldn't work with LFD. Wiping and LFD just don't go well together.

[Duridi]

Gear aside, it was still stupid. If you wanted to do anything, you were forced to grind the same things over and over again. The normals and heroics were the gatekeepers to anything beyond and you had to do it and you basically got nothing out of it. It was stupid.

How is that different to what we have today? You grind 5 man instances for two years, so if anything, it's more grindy than TBC. In TBC you picked up your reputation(which in theory wasn't even required to progress, but many wanted it due to particulary proffessions recipes and because it showed raiding guilds that you had dedication) and gear, and never went back for 1 and a half year. It wasn't before the Sunwell patch, about 5 months before WotLK launch, that the badges you earned in TBC heroics(also added to Karazhan, if not all raid instances) would actually offer desireable gear upgrades. Before this the badge rewards wasn't even worthy T4 quality for pretty much every single class, if not all. None of my 4 characters could use any of the original badge rewards atleast. Since WotLK however, you have done the same instances over and over again for 2 years. That's an insane and idiotic grind if you ask me.

Neither did it take long before the gear from TBC heroics became obsolete. Why? PvP. The arena gear was pushed on to the honor vendors, making people do battlegrounds instead of dungeons. That's another discussion however.

Enjoyment of each grind will differ from person to person though, but I can promise you the current system isn't less grindy. It's just different. If you enjoy the current grind(to take that as an example), you could in a way call it disguised, because that is the thing. A good grind is disguised. It's there, but you don't notice it, because you enjoy the way it is set up.

You can't ignore the rep and other aspects because that is exactly how the normals and heroics were setup in TBC.

Yes you can. There is absolutely no reason to flat out split the systems into 4(Vanilla, TBC, WotLK, Cataclysm). None of the systems have been perfect. Personally I prefer different aspects of each expansion.

[Deleted]

Neutral to Friendly: 0-3000 (3000 points total)
Friendly to Honored: 0-6000 (9000 points total)
Honored to Revered: 0-12000 (21000 points total)

Some reps like Sha'tar you basically had to grind 21,000 points from almost 0. Have fun if you had caster alts that needed the helmet glyph. A complete clear of every last trash mob in each TK instance would yield 1500-2000 reputation. Everyone had lots of fun trying to put together groups for that!

For Lower City, players had to look forward to possibly 7 or 8 Shadow Labyrinth runs before they could even get enough for Auchindoun heroics. BM was another favorite that gave 1000 rep per run on the death march to revered... No the relationship between regulars and heroics was not fine.

Assuming you even play WoW anymore open your statistics, go into cata dungeons and take a look at how many time you did each one.
You had to do TK 10 times to cap your rep ? BIG DEAL !
My tank alt is over 30 ZA runs : i don't farm the bear mount btw, just weekly valor farming in 4.1 - 4.2 when i used to raid with that toon getting most of my valor from raid bosses!

[Matson]

Brilliant post!

On beta we get to copy characters as level 85 (and now do one quest to get to level 86) so we don't have to lvl up. Why not on live? It is useless anyway, and the Cataclysm content is all irrelevant anyway.

There is a big difference between the difficulty while lvling and the difficulty at end-game. MoP will not fix this! What MoP will do is making it impossible to pick/make the wrong talent tree, and allow an easy and cheap respec.

Heirlooms make the problem worse; not better! Not using them would be silly: you're lvling slower, and you do less output. Who would nerf themselves? You're also not only outgearing people w/o heirloom (new players and rerollers) making it hard for them to compete with you on damage done.

How do you know you truly like your class if you were never challenged to play all of its abilities? Why do you even get talents you don't even have to use? Only when you start with end-game will you know the answer.

I think the proper answer to these questions lies in PvP. The min-maxing won't hurt you in fact most players do it, and you use far more class abilities there than in PvE at least while lvling. It is also less static content because there's more variety.

I don't agree with your solution either. It wouldn't work with LFD. Wiping and LFD just don't go well together.

Now you lured me to answer again :P

How about, if they made LFD just an other content similar to LFR then? You get worse gear, but the dungeon is easy mode. But when you make a premade group and walk to the dungeon ( or fly w/e ) you get harder dungeon with better loot. You could choose who'll be in your group I am casual , but I am sure I would have enough friends to run my 5 mans with.

[Kickbuttmario]

1) No... ton's didn't ask it. Just you. I'm getting sick of your obvious exaggerations, and I imagine everybody else is too.

Post #677 I believe has asked this before. There was also a thread way back where you posted that cataclysm heroics were at fault for why so many people left, and bringing them back for MoP would just make more people pissed. And people asked and quoted you, you never once replied I remember.

2) - snip -

You're the one who has been yammering, non-stop on how the cataclysm heroics were at fault for everything. Casuals didn't like it! Wrath changed the standards of 5 man difficulty and difficulty curve and when Cataclysm heroics tried to change it back to tbc style once more, people cried. The LFD standards changed and went on and on! You kept saying, the wrath lfd was more fun and that is why people never left, when you kept kept forgetting that subs staggered a bit after 3.3.3. (somewhere in the middle of 2009).

I know of the reasons why people left. Economy, better and other games out there, and who knows maybe they just hated the direction with Cataclysm, or they just got bored with it. Since Cataclysm was known to be the expansion with the worst difficulty curve out there. Think about it, you do easy questing and easy normal modes, and get destroyed by the heroics and raids, you can't help but feel sad. Despite how actually easy it was (at least for me, 11/13HM raider on tier 11 progression, and couldn't clear the rest because only 1 week before firelands).

Part 2: - snip -

And now look, you're actually trying to justify how 3 HoT dungeons which are more wrath like in difficulty and in length never got people to return. 100k subs left at 4.3, and no one left at q1 2012. Despite all of the promotional crap. Despite how the cataclysm heroics were so nerfed to the ground that it does normally take 20 - 30 minutes to clear it. When I was ilevel 336 on my druid tank, it normally didn't take long to clear it. That's because dungeons have been nerfed greatly and the 15% buff helps a lot.

First off, to use a page out of your book... "then why isn't Rift at 10+ million players?" :P

Now, seriously, I answered this question but apparently you don't like the answer. It's not a question of CAN they... it's a question of WHY. Adding tier-difficulty options is just adding aggravation to casual players as they feel they'll need to run them. In a happy smiling world of people like you, who are clearly from the 16-bit era of gaming, wouldn't understand this as difficulty modes does not equal content to today's gamers. Hell man, you just need to glance over at the Diablo 3 forums to see all the shocked new players going "WTF... I just beat the game. That's IT!?" The concept of "now try hard mode" died out in the 16 bit era and Diablo 2. As I said to a friend of mine... "I'm betting of the 6 million players, only 10-20% of them even know what Diablo is all about - BE READY for the forum assault!". and sure enough - they came.

Yeah, all those Rift options sound wonderful and great... and probably piss off half the casuals doing them and send them packing off to another game. Hence why Rift can't break the 2 mil mark.

How is that even from my book? I am sure you know that popularity =/= better game. And there's a lot of reasons why wow still has so many subs. Main reason I see people use is addiction, community (friends) and attachment to characters.

I know you answered the question but from the sounds of it... I am going to use something from your book... you're only thinking about yourself, not the playerbase. I gave some suggestions why RIFT master modes work because although they don't offer gear on par with the highest raid content, they do have an incredible difficulty, especially master mode CC. You're not considering just how good it may be if they offered more difficulty settings. Why do you think many single players have this. Maybe its because of the replay value. Why are you so against this? Because of the casuals? Because of how many of them, or maybe you, would hate being "forced" to do them. Having more difficulty settings is just giving the players more things to do, isn't that what people want?

[plosion]

Still, I don't get why they don't let people lfd the normal dungeons, and let heroics be the "end game" as far as 5 man content is concerned. (like raids, you cannot lfd normal or heroic raids for example).
Removing heroic mode alltogether is dumb, less content for everyone. Challenge mode should be considered differently, it does not replace heroic at all, it seems to have different rewards, pacing, and purpose.

[Sylvre]

38 pages of people who don't get that 'fun' is a subjective thing.

Just an FYI, you guys have been having this argument for..... 7 years now. Aren't you bored of it?

[Krela]

Dungeons dubbed "Heroic" should be just that. I just read a blue post that, in a nutshell, said heroics aren't going to be heroics at all anymore. ORLY? Then why call them heroics? If you're a bad and can't complete an heroic dungeon, then you don't deserve the rewards that come from them. Ideally, players who can't compete should strive to become better. The end result could mean an increase in the overall skill of the majority imo...

Sadly, that's never the case with WoW.

QQ moar so they'll nerf it... and you can continue to be bad... just keep giving Blizz money and they'll cater to your every need.