Heroic dungeons dumbed down

[jbombard]

I know we're not supposed to comment on peoples spelling here but the word is: DUNGEON. Only pointing it out cause it made your post hard to read and understand at first. Plus, you know, it's right in the title of the thread.

Oh he was talking about dungeons, I thought he was talking about Don Johnson.

[Kickbuttmario]

...I think I found the problem here... you're deliberately editing in your mind what I wrote to say something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

I said I find no difference between Spamming an AoE button and spamming my Backstab button. Where the heck did you get CCing and sapping out of THAT!? Sapping IS CCing, one I occasionally use at the start of a pull... and I hardly call that "skill" or "fun". :P

Both AoE and Backstab are button spamming... but one I do for an hour while often standing still and the other I'm perpetually moving and getting a quick adventure.

No. That was a mistake. I remember what you said. CC'ing and Aoe'ing. I just had sapping in the mind. Not reading a single book but doing calculus only and playing video games, getting stoned, has that effect.

---------- Post added 2012-06-18 at 01:48 AM ----------

Weren't master modes in Rift meant to be a true alternate progressions style? I never got to do them (there were only two, anyways, and only one until Caduceus Rise came out with.. 1.6 I think? Whatever patch added Ember Isle) but my impression is they were meant to be sidegrades to T1 raids; something you could do to help fill gaps between raids or something to do if you didn't have 10/20 people to do raids with (although again back in that time there was only one master mode dungeon, although it had like what 10 bosses or something)

I honestly have no idea why they even added it, but when I heard that the difficulty was very high, then I wouldn't be surprised that people liked doing it. The reward from the t1 gear wasn't all that bad either, some gear that can upgrade your current existing gear.

And it probably was to help fill the gaps between the raids.

[Mammoon]

I don't like heroic dungeons being faceroll, but Blizzard is more concerned about subs than my opinion, so w/e.

But I am far more concerned about raids being faceroll, because Blizzard wants to fit all the new bosses into their LFR, which means completely dumbed down fights...
Even if you take away mechanics (such as fights like Spine), that is only the tip of the iceberg. As it has been said, fights like Nefarian, Ragnaros, Lich King, Conclave, even something like Thorim (or Beth'tilac) that requires 2 groups to split up... Basically any fight that requires any organization at all can't fit into the LFR model, because no one is going to organize and assign groups... and since Blizzard is determined for LFR to work, expect a lot of faceroll mechanics in MoP raids.

Hopefully I am wrong.

[JKim]

I definitely like heroics being easy, I want to be able to have something to do if I only have a short burst of time to play.

[asharia]

Had to happen unfortunately. When you consider how many hundreds of thousands of subs they lost because Cata heroics had a little bit of fire you had to sidestep.

[mvaliz]

Had to happen unfortunately. When you consider how many hundreds of thousands of subs they lost because Cata heroics had a little bit of fire you had to sidestep.

Stares at the corridors filled with 1-shotting Bowser Castle Spinning Fire Wheels in Deadmines...

...looks back at the 4 other pugs not knowing what's going on.

"Yeah... "a little bit of fire you had to sidestep" hey says..."

[Alvito]

They stopped making lvl capped dungeons because nobody runs them. If there were lvl 90 normal dungeons ppl might run it once or twice tops in normal before they would move onto heroics, with many just skipping the normal mode all together. Why set up loot tables and mechanics for a dungeon that isn't going to be ran at all? Isn't it better to have them spend the time that would have taken on the heroics or other dungeons or anything really?

[Adlen]

Stares at the corridors filled with 1-shotting Bowser Castle Spinning Fire Wheels in Deadmines...

...looks back at the 4 other pugs not knowing what's going on.

"Yeah... "a little bit of fire you had to sidestep" hey says..."

and hence the realization that what most people consider an "average" player is actually pretty elite

and most WoW players are alot worse than they realize

[mvaliz]

They stopped making lvl capped dungeons because nobody runs them. If there were lvl 90 normal dungeons ppl might run it once or twice tops in normal before they would move onto heroics, with many just skipping the normal mode all together. Why set up loot tables and mechanics for a dungeon that isn't going to be ran at all? Isn't it better to have them spend the time that would have taken on the heroics or other dungeons or anything really?

That is a good point too. I honestly can't recall a time when I ran NORMAL Arcatraz, Mechanaar and such. And I KNOW I never even bothered with normal Halls of Lighting, Halls of Stone, Oculus, Utgarde Pinnacle or ANY of the other Normal level 80 dungeons. Soon as I hit 80 - BOOM... I was in them with the guild.

[Deleted]

They stopped making lvl capped dungeons because nobody runs them. If there were lvl 90 normal dungeons ppl might run it once or twice tops in normal before they would move onto heroics, with many just skipping the normal mode all together. Why set up loot tables and mechanics for a dungeon that isn't going to be ran at all? Isn't it better to have them spend the time that would have taken on the heroics or other dungeons or anything really?

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...

[Cows For Life]

IIRC, heroics weren't gatekeepers to anything. You only needed to do a handful of normal runs to get attuned to Kara which was doable with normal dungeon/leveling gear. The only reason to really grind the rep was for the faction rewards.

Until you needed to run Heroic SL, SV, SH, and Arcatraz to get into T5 content...

I enjoyed it, most probably did on their first level 70 character, it didn't really take long and it just felt like a better line of progression.

However, when it came to alts, it was shit.

I would like this sort of system again, but it has to be account wide or it will just be horrid.

I'm not expecting them to go anywhere near this system again though, which I don't understand as it keeps you playing the game longer.

People notice when things are setup to act as a deliberate time sink which is how they were setup in TBC.

[Deficineiron]

That is a good point too. I honestly can't recall a time when I ran NORMAL Arcatraz, Mechanaar and such.

If you wanted a heroic key on a toon, you ran them quite a few times (10+ dungeons total per toon) for each toon up until the change to honored keys. After that, of course, the toon hopes to never step foot in normal again....shatar was one of the reps you didn't have a non-binding turn-in item/mob you could farm or buy to get extra rep (e.g. arrakoa feathers, plant parts, naga and shattered hand kills, etc), just quests (including the arca key quest) and dungeons.....

bc game design had a place for normal 70 dungeons - to gear up for karazhan and to some degree heroics. the entire process took long enough that it made sense, whether a particular poster liked it or not. today, as I understand the system, you gear up so quickly in the 15-minute dungeon snacks that the point of having a separate tier of 85 content does seem pointless.

---------- Post added 2012-06-18 at 02:51 AM ----------

People notice when things are setup to act as a deliberate time sink which is how they were setup in TBC.

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.

[mvaliz]

If you wanted a heroic key on a toon, you ran them quite a few times (10+ dungeons total per toon) for each toon up until the change to honored keys. After that, of course, the toon hopes to never step foot in normal again....

/snaps fingers!

That's right! I was trying to remember how that worked. I'm a one-toon kinda guy so I literally did that in the first few months of BC... it also didn't help that I was a rogue... so heroic keys didn't matter that much to me! It was fun to be temporarily popular then for lockpicking, Particularly when the key to Mechanaar was initially bugged! ^_^

[Cows For Life]

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.

Late TBC had the benefit of badge gear and nerfed heroics/entrance requirements, nerfed raid attunements, among other things added mid expansion.

[PHOENIXZERO]

There are plenty of reasons why so many left in Cataclysm, the abrupt changes from Wrath was a big part of it, people who started playing WoW part way into Wrath when it was easier to gear up weren't use to the experience of starting at square one and failed to adapt, it also didn't help that the 5 mans were much harder than most of the Wrath 5M, the whole cross realm community crap certainly didn't help. Hardly anyone wanted to tank or heal randoms which is why they introduced Oculus like bribes to LFD to get more of each to queue. Stress and taking abuse in a ****ing five man with a bunch of random, potential d-bags is not fun.

I can't express enough how much I look forward to going back to 20-30 minute dungeons. I might actually queue for randoms alone again knowing I won't be stuck in there for an hour or two if I want to see the end of it. That shit was... Not.... Fun.

[mvaliz]

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.

..and to use your totally amazing sense of logic that doesn't twist or spin ANY factual data into something that it's not... TBC and Vanilla players are LONG gone and haven't played in about 2 years... because Blizz revealed at the ECTS in 2011 that there were more canceled WoW subs than active subs... which translates to over 12 million INACTIVE subs durring Cataclysm. Meaning there were MORE canceled subs now than there were TBC players. So, using your logic, those MUST be the TBC and Vanilla players canceled... and today are JUST Wrath-players - right? :P

[Adlen]

Us as players have no proof as to why subs dropped in Cata. Only Blizz has the data to make and educated guess.

For all we know Obama being elected made players not wanna play WoW anymore.

I dont really care about this, I just want Blizz to not call easy mode dungeons as "heroic"

[mvaliz]

Us as players have no proof as to why subs dropped in Cata. Only Blizz has the data to make and educated guess.

For all we know Obama being elected made players not wanna play WoW anymore.

And there... my friend... you are wrong. (and not just about the Obama bit :P)

I've got at least ONE clear-cut piece of evidence that a player can easily show that Cata expansion was the reason for the drops in subs, and not some "sudden onset 7 year burnout" theory that people have.

That evidence is called Cataclysm's release in China.

You see, China did NOT get Cataclysm until Q3 of 2011. They were on Wrath the whole time until 3rd quarter. So, here's a little history lesson...

Cata launches in USA - first quarter numbers drop 500k
2nd quarter - 300k lost...
Cata launches in China - 800k loss in subs - Blizzard flat-out says in their conference call that, this time, the MAJORITY OF THE LOSSES THIS QUARTER WAS FROM CHINA!

What was amazing was Blizz, and indeed most people on the forums, expected a massive SURGE in Q3 numbers due to Cata being released in China... well GUESS what happened INSTEAD! :P

Why is it wherever Cataclysm lands, a massive outbreak of unsubscribing happens? :P

Also.. as you say... Only Blizz has the data... and by judging by the changes in 4.3 and in MoP - I think it's pretty DAMN clear what Blizz believes the loss of subs seem to stem from. :P

[Adlen]

I dont really care if content is easy or harder.
All i want is for Blizz to make a decision. and then leave it at that.

When content is released, its difficulty should not be fucked with all these nerfs.
If Blizzard wanted it to be easier, than nerf it at the very beginning. Thats the thing that pisses me off about all this.

Making it easier is un-fair to people who have already killed things.
Making it harder makes it un-fai to people who have yet to kill things.

[mvaliz]

Making it easier is un-fair to people who have already killed things.
Making it harder makes it un-fai to people who have yet to kill things.

Does going back and soloing Karazan today make your experience back then any less? So, why would a 5% nerf then effect you in a few months later?

And I REALLY don't think the majority of people who haven't killed certain bosses feel its un-fair to them. Most are probably saying "THANK GOD we can finally move on from that cockblock boss!"