A Parody of Blizzard's Thought Process on Problem Solutions

[Deathpony]

Blizz Dev #1 - 'Okay guys, we got this problem with PvP. People just trying it out for the first time are getting steamrolled by experienced players. They aren't enjoying it and soon stop. What should we do?'

Blizz Dev #2 - 'Well is there a way to balance it out between the different tiers of gear?'

Blizz Dev #3 - 'Don't forget about the PvE gear, and the role it plays in PvP with many players using it effectively. Especially those Shado-Pan Assault trinkets - man we really screwed the pooch on that one!'

Blizz Dev #4 - 'Is it really that bad? Is this stopping them from playing and paying to keep our lights on?'

Blizz Dev #1 - 'Well no not at all.'

Blizz Dev #4 - 'Then I don't see the problem.'

Blizz Dev #2 - 'It means a lot of complaints on the forums and unhappy players.'

Blizz Dev #4 - 'Unhappy with an aspect they don't normally play. I still don't get it. What's the big deal? They still play and they are still paying. PvP doesn't keep them playing, obviously, for these PvE'rs so why mess with PvP?

Blizz Dev #3 - 'Because they'll complain!'

Blizz Dev #4 - 'So what? What's wrong with complaints. I could complain about how Nasa is doing on their space projects, but since I'm not an astronaut is anyone really going to care?'

Blizz Dev #2 - 'YES! We will!'

Blizz Dev #1 - 'This IS a problem Blizz Dev #4 and we need a solution. A long, elaborate, convoluted, and alienating to the current PvP player base solution.'

Blizz Dev #5 - 'NERF BAT ALL SOLUTION!!... except Frost Mage.'

Blizz Dev #1 - 'Yes Greg, err I mean "Blizz Dev #5", that would allow us to finally hit our previously untapped gamer player base, gamers ages 6 months to 2 years, but that is simply too linear of a solution.'

Blizz Dev #3 - 'If people just getting into PvP are having a bad experience with better geared and playing players, why not just separate them by instilling lower gear cap scaling BG's that players can select? Kind of an intro to BG PvP LFR kinda thing. We could even make the honor rewards and daily random BG CP cap lower, since there would obviously be less of a requirement to quickly PvP gear

Blizz Dev #5 - 'FROST MAGE GOOD! EASY FIXES BAD! COMPLEX SOLUTIONS MEAN ME KEEP JOB!'

Blizz Dev #1 - 'Ya'rly. I like my job here vastly more than my previous one fixing typewriters.'

Blizz Dev #2 - 'Yeah I hated my previous job at my father's car garage.'

Blizz Dev #5 - 'TYPO FIXING FOR ULTIMA ONLINE HURT EYES!'

Blizz Dev #2 - 'Awww it's OK Blizz Dev #5. You won't go back. Don't worry.'

Blizz Dev #6 - 'I don't know why we are even discussing this. We all know people play this game for the lore and story.'

Blizz Dev #1-5 - 'METZ!!'

[omgmewmewcat]

Unless you have a degree in game design, you really can't comprehend how difficult it is to balance a game properly...

[Deleted]

Unless you have a degree in game design, you really can't comprehend how difficult it is to balance a game properly...

so this means you have a degree in game design? enlighten us!



@ OP: i like your post!

[steale]

Unless you have a degree in game design, you really can't comprehend how difficult it is to balance a game properly...

This makes sense. Doesn't Greg Street have his degree in marine biology or something similar?

[Pull My Finger]

Stupid and not even close to being funny.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

This makes sense. Doesn't Greg Street have his degree in marine biology or something similar?

He does AND he's had a degree in computers and gaming related. You can switch careers you know.

[Valedus]

He does AND he's had a degree in computers and gaming related. You can switch careers you know.

Preposterous!

[Mutaattori]

Unless you have a degree in game design, you really can't comprehend how difficult it is to balance a game properly...

A PARODY of Blizzard's Thought Process on Problem Solutions.

Did you miss that possibly?

[Deleted]

This makes sense. Doesn't Greg Street have his degree in marine biology or something similar?

Sharks are op, Plankton is fine. -Herring.

[Daerio]

...I think the PvP gear change is a good thing.

In fact, I think they could take it further and do stuff like Guild Wars, for example, where everybody is using the same gear by default, so the only thing that matters is skill and class mechanics. The reason they don't do this is because they want people to feel like they're improving their character, and they think it keeps people playing longer... which I'm not sure if that's true or not - if people like doing PvP, they'll do it because it's fun, not necessarily because their gear gets better. (but I guess some people will only do it for the gear anyway)

I don't see why "the real PvPers" hate it, other than they feel like they spend that extra time playing (not a skill issue, just a timesink) and they deserve to win by default because they spend more time playing.

[forwards1ca]

Sharks are op, Plankton is fine. -Herring.

BRILLIANT!!!!!! +100000000 internets to you, good sir

[Deathpony]

Unless you have a degree in game design, you really can't comprehend how difficult it is to balance a game properly...

This is satire.

And for your information, I have two published gaming titles to my name, and a large number of mmo development experience long before the introduction of World of Warcraft. Before I learned to program in C, I actually was breaking down class skills and balance in notebooks for dev work on online MMO's.

Game Developer wasn't an official educational Major in college level schooling until around 2000. How do you think all the games got made before then? Or hell, Microsoft Windows for that matter? World of Warcraft is based off its founder, MUD's, which is based off.. *dramatic music* non-computer game systems like *climax* Dungeons and Dragons gaming system. All things I have vast technical and creative experience with.

I don't work for Blizzard because they can't offer me a better job than the one I currently have now. And as a former MMO developer, who actually has PREVIOUS MMO DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCE before having a job like the folks at Blizz, I dam well know what it takes to balance an MMO.

On these very forums back around tBC I told GC to balance PvP all he needed to do was make skills work different in PvP vs PvE and tweak them accordingly. Arena.net had enough damn sense to do it and had the desired balance result. Instead what GC told me was 'he didn't want to make artwork meaningless.' But here we are like 4 years later with Transmorgrification, which did exactly that to the art department, while under the most imbalanced PvP situation in the history of this game.

I'm not mad. Colossal stupidity doesn't make me mad, it just irritates the hell outa me.

[Kiqjaq]

Someone put way too much effort into this considering it's not really very clever.

[Dcruize]

On these very forums back around tBC I told GC to balance PvP all he needed to do was make skills work different in PvP vs PvE and tweak them accordingly.

This is what annoys me the most - the reasons for not doing so are ridiculous. There'd be no confusion, casuals wouldn't even notice - can anyone here tell me the calculation for working out the damage of their main hard-hitting spell without reading the tooltip? I can't, I wouldn't even notice if Blizzard introduced a stealth fix to eviscerate that reduced the base damage by 15% in PVP environments - it hits from anywhere from 30k-150k depending on countless variables.

They could easily tweak individual abilities in PVP without upsetting the dragonslayers and without confusing the player base - when was the last time you saw a mage post on the forums to say 'I used polymorph on a shaman and it only lasted 8seconds instead of 60, this game is bugged'? They won't though, as this means spending time analysing balance in PVP and not just watching representation figures/reading qq on the forums then making ill-advised and borderline retarded changes.

[thelordymir]

He does AND he's had a degree in computers and gaming related. You can switch careers you know.

I know people with Sys Admin and Comp Sci degrees who are terrible at most computer related tasks other then a very few things. Degree doesn't mean crap when there are colleges you can just get them from w/o even trying.

They could easily tweak individual abilities in PVP without upsetting the dragonslayers and without confusing the player base - when was the last time you saw a mage post on the forums to say 'I used polymorph on a shaman and it only lasted 8seconds instead of 60, this game is bugged'? They won't though, as this means spending time analysing balance in PVP and not just watching representation figures/reading qq on the forums then making ill-advised and borderline retarded changes.

I agree, an easy fix but they refuse to do it, and then tell us the reason is because WE ARE too stupid to understand. Really?



Also no offense at the OP but you know the guy has a programming background just with how dull the parody was in parts :P Programmers and sys admins arnt really the funniest of people to most.