*~To change one's life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.~*
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
*~To change one's life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.~*
These are perfect. You're still subject to brutal deaths if you ignore every mechanic, but as long as you're actively trying to do it right you'll win. Unlike Cataclysm launch where if you didn't perform every action in absolute synchronization at times and interrupted EVERYTHING you would die. They tuned dungeons in Cataclysm for premades and expected 5 random people with no voice chat to be able to CC pulls (when CC generated aggro), have the tank get them off of you, interrupt the mechanics that would one-shot or just flat out deal too much damage (trash SUCKED in Cataclysm), and then you had the bosses who were rife with one-shot mechanics or massive single hits (shatter, ground slam, flame invocation, blitz, ground siege, flame shield, shock blast, etc.) I think they're tuned exactly where they should be and the challenge modes are where the hardcore wanted heroics to be in general. Go run those if heroics are too easy.
Anyone else think Jaime Lannister only has the Kingslayer title because he was just too lazy to kill the king on heroic mode?
You're contradicting yourself here a bit, but I digress. One thing is certain, what isn't fun is having no content in a game that feels both meaningful and challenging, or, in different terms, "nothing worthwhile left to do". Granted, the definition of worthwhile will be different for everyone, but there's a consistent underlying theme going on in this thread that seems to indicate that heroic raiding should be the ONLY gear progression difficult content in the game (challenge modes aren't in this argument due to the nature of the rewards)
So to put this another way.... you're ok with such a relatively small % of content being very challenging? You're ok with the idea that the only way to experience very challenging pve content is to be grouped with 9/24 others?
To experience very challenging pve content in a MMO yes I expect ppl having to be grouped with 4/9/24 others. That's what the multiplayer in MMO stands for. And gear progression is not something I appreciate, for all I care all gear should be cosmetic and content be gated by means other than high stat inflation. High inflation is reason why older content gets invalidated so fast. Or maybe all content should apply ilvl cap. Something like 450 for heroic 5 mans for example.
As for the relatively small % of content being very challenging I don't know what you want. You have challenging version of raids and challenging version of 5 mans. Do you want challenging leveling up or what else is there.
My part in this story has been decided. And I will play it well.
What you said is also a boldfaced lie...
It took THREE quarters of losses before they "nerfed everything to crap". The major nerfs didn't happen until the very tail-end of Firelands... about a month away from 4.3... and you damn well know that. Stop adjusting the truth just to meet your "I hate casual content" view.
You seriously expect me to believe that they nerfed all the content after Q1? You mean... when they released the TROLL DUNGEONS!? That, to you, was NERFED content? Brand-new Re-vamped ZG was NERFED CONTENT? Wasn't ZG nerfed right along with Firelands if I recall? Wasn't it a month after Firelands came out that Ghostcrawler himself said "players need to stop complaining and face the challenge"... to then 2 months later have the nerfs happen?
Also, tell me this, if 4.3 nerfs were so bad - what made there be only 100k losses in Q1 and ZERO losses in Q2? If people hated the EZ content so much... why didn't they bail right at Q1 after 4.3 came out? Why did they suddenly dramatically slow down?
EDIT: and why did 1.1 million leave in Q3? Well, MAYBE it has to do with not JUST the content getting stale fast, Unlike Wrath - which had 15 dungeons in the random queue vs THREE in HoT queues... and lets face it, that's ALL the dungeons those people ran... combined with a particularly large named game about a character-driven fantasy style game by the same makers of World of Warcraft... that JUST so happened to be advertised directly to them, even used as a marketing perk for (gasp!) over 1 million AP users!
Last edited by mvaliz; 2012-10-05 at 06:58 AM.
fine the way they are. ive played since 2006 and i like that i can get in a dungeon, get what i need and get out quickly. i am by no means a top tier player but im also not some random noob who doesnt know that im doing. i dont think its fun to do a dungeon over and over that i know is going to take me an hour at least to complete. i seem to remember VERY clearly back in BC people only wanting to run mechanar and slave pens because you could get 3 badges (or however many it was) in about 15 mins with very little effort.
people look back and say that the harder heroics of BC were amazing and everyone loved them. that couldnt be further from the truth. i remember people hating shattered halls and shadow labs because they were long and took forever. i find it funny now that people ask for heroics of that difficulty again and when blizzard tries to bring something like that back (beginning of cataclysm) people complain. then when they take thing back to the easier dungeons of wrath....people STILL complain.
mists heroics are fine the way they are. quick and easy. the BC style heroics are fun the first couple times then they just become a chore to work through. ill take the quick 15 min runs over that any day.
Wrong, the first wave of massive nerfs was with the 4.0.6, as already said in this thread.
Wrong again.You seriously expect me to believe that they nerfed all the content after Q1? You mean... when they released the TROLL DUNGEONS!? That, to you, was NERFED content? Brand-new Re-vamped ZG was NERFED CONTENT? Wasn't ZG nerfed right along with Firelands if I recall? Wasn't it a month after Firelands came out that Ghostcrawler himself said "players need to stop complaining and face the challenge"... to then 2 months later have the nerfs happen?
First, the troll instances were very, very easy. Not as facerollable as LK heroics, but still boringly easy. The difference is that in LK you could faceroll them with PuG, while ZA/ZG were facerollable with premade. Still nothing even close to challenging.
Second, the famous Ghostcrawler saying "yes, heroics are hard" actually happened less than one week before the massive nerfs of 4.0.6.
This actually was extremely ironic to see side-to-side one Blizzard news about how the content was adequately tuned and it was up to the players to learn to play, and one Blizzard news caving in to the whiners, the entitled and the bads with "well, they are overtuned, we will adjust them".
Annual pass.Also, tell me this, if 4.3 nerfs were so bad - what made there be only 100k losses in Q1 and ZERO losses in Q2? If people hated the EZ content so much... why didn't they bail right at Q1 after 4.3 came out? Why did they suddenly dramatically slow down?
alittle too easy for being everyone is in almost blues and greens. Especially after reading that people just 4dps 1 tank them -_-
Ok are you playing the same game as me and did you play the same BC I did?
In MOP casuals won't even make it into LFR when it comes out if the play one hour a day. You will need 463, and you have to rep grind.
You fondly mention TBC, but you forget you had to rep grind for keys to get in heroics. So I am confused with the glorification of BC then the complaint of rep grinding. BC had a ton of rep grinds, attunements etc.
Oh and since when has questing been hard?
"Peace is a lie"
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
I think the problem is none of them actually seem to understand they are not the average player, not at all.
Anyone that says Cataclysm heroics were "faceroll" or that they were nerfed in the first patch to be anything viable to casuals never actually paid attention. The troll heroics in 4.2 were the most numbingly difficult heroics I had to deal with since BC, and I hated them for it. They will still come in and say how "easy" it was though, because they think of themselves as "omg sooooo pro".
Just make heroics to award VP when you do them outside LFD. Difficulty is fine when you duo-trio these dungeons.
I would consider those tuning and not nerfs. If you check through all of that you'll see that several bosses were buffed, and some mechanics were altered to adjust for random party makeup, or the massive issue several people had with latency. At 4.0 prior to Cata dropping I went from a world latency of ~60-80 to 400+ with no change on my end, just the patch. Mechanics such as Static Cling, Shatter, Ground Slam, Cursed Bullets, etc. were a death sentence to me because as soon as I saw the cast bar I knew I was already dead server-side. Some CC necessary mechanics were also hit because of obvious lack of CC in some randoms. I kid you not, I was in in multiple randoms with a warrior tank and a DK and Warrior for the other 2 DPS making my Repentance and whatever the healer had the only CC (when they still generated aggro and you had to be REALLLLY good at planning that stuff without voice chat.) Justice points were also added to the 85 dungeons and the random dungeon reward was increased to 140 because if you had issues with heroics you were stuck earning 490 total justice points for the week and taking weeks to earn the currency for one purchaseable upgrade. They also removed the trick people were using to avoid certain dungeons by making it no longer necessary to find the dungeons to queue for them. Several people were purposely ignoring finding Grim Batol and Halls of Origination because they were long, difficult, and HoO also had too many optional bosses that people would skip even if someone needed an upgrade from them.
Bullshit! I don't think what I emphasized in your quote can be driven home any further. PREMADES DID NOT HAVE THE ISSUES THAT RANDOMS DID!!!!! LFD was a tool that was meant to be used, but you were in essence punished in the dungeons for using them with random people. The troll dungeons were so over the top it was obscene if you were in a random, and unless you were in current tier raid gear (ie. the dungeons offered you no upgrades and just easy access to maelstrom crystals) you were incapable of "facerolling" them. I can't think of one time I survived a fight against Venoxis as a DPS. Every time it was always the tank and maybe the healer taking him down. The closest I got was with my mage because ranged didn't get the toxic link if they were far enough apart. I only died on that one because of the toxic maze followed by getting linked with someone who wouldn't run away from me. The mechanics were brutal, hit for WAY too much damage, and punished you for a slight mistake (taking 50k damage for a fraction of a second if you accidentally stepped in the green fog was over the top.) Zanzil sucked ass and still does. Jin'Do was just as awful trying to explain to people exactly HOW you were supposed to destroy the chains using only the chat log, and no matter what someone would not stay near a chain and it took too long to break the fist one because it seemed they were always the one targeted. They were unforgiving, brutal, necessary grinds to upgrade the several slots for the millions of people who couldn't raid that expansion and were stuck with 333/346 items (shoulders, helm, strength weapons, and wand/offhand) as well as the only way to cap valor if you couldn't raid.
You need to realize what they did finally: Dungeons were never tuned to be run with 5 random players. All the internal and beta tests were with premade groups with good communication and external voice chat. As soon as you put any 5 random people in a group you have to rely on typing commands which is not exactly something easily done in the middle of the fight. Additionally too many of the mechanics were one-shot where if you missed it by accident or had latency too high to avoid (Ozruk's shatter is the prime example of this) you were dead and the group wiped. Dungeons were designed to punish you for mistakes instead of rewarding you for playing correctly. Not a way to tune a necessary portion of gameplay. Also several of the dungeons (Deadmines was a main culprit) had overly unnecessary amounts of trash that had the exact same possibility of destroying your group as the bosses. Trash should NEVER be as hard as the bosses.
Anyone else think Jaime Lannister only has the Kingslayer title because he was just too lazy to kill the king on heroic mode?
Vanilla was tedious.
TBC release heroics where crazy hard. Some of them where worse than raids before they got nerfed. After nerfs they ranged from /faceroll to /wrist.
Wotlk heroics where a joke but I never felt the need to punch any terrible players in the face. I just laughed at them.
Cata heroics where ease if and only if everyone understood each boss and did their job. Far to many bosses had one hit mechanics.
Mop going back to something similar to Wotlk is great. Also love the challenge modes for those of us that might actually want to run a 5 man that is hard.