Why BFA class design is a good thing

[Deleted]

So new player joins in legion, is overwhelmed by the complexity of the game, yet "masters the game" and gets rank 1 logs less than 6 months into starting the game, but the game is too complex? Something doesn't add up here.

It might be worth 're reading my post again slowly.

The game for me now isn't too complex, that's not what I wrote. I have been through a massive and I mean massive l earning curve which at the beginign felt near vertical. For the avoidance of doubt you need to understand the journey I went through.

My post is about the depth, breath and complexity the game has at end game legion at all levels and areas of the game. You can pick your topic from the auction house with sniping add-ons, to class min maxing, mythic+ and raiding and everything inbetween plaging at a level you wish to play at. This isn't a game to can pick up today and self learn, or in my view play solo at all. I had friends in a very good guild answer my continuous questions and spend hours teaching me.

Now, read slowly. If BFA builds on legion as it is with MORE complexity new players won't pick it up and the player base will shrink naturally with no new players or subs joining to sustain the platform and game. Old players want more spells, talents and higher skill cap and little change naturally, I am one of those people too.

But pruning is needed to simplify the game, bring on new people easily, give them a comfortable starting place to join in and then build up again.

[Marrilaife]

That's why they slowed down levelling, so the new player isn't "overwhelmed" and has the time to learn their abilities 1 by 1.

Unfortunately we came to the point where people "master" the game within 1 expansion and then quit because they already feel they achieved everything so they lose motivation. Bonus point for people who reach that breakpoint within 1 major patch.

[hulkgor]

Ok so when will they fix Hunters? They are shit for 3 expansions now. ITS ONE OF THE SHITTIEST CLASS EVER.

Hunters? Shit for 3 expansions?

I understand you dudes are upset with some changes, but stop spewing lies and bullshit, please. Holy hell what are you on about.

[Dizson]

Hunters? Shit for 3 expansions?

I understand you dudes are upset with some changes, but stop spewing lies and bullshit, please. Holy hell what are you on about.

It's true.

[SirCowdog]

Make a "Post" on mmoc

MAKE A FOOL OUT OF YOURSELF!

I see you've done this before.

Seriously though, I get that there's new content such as dungeons and new islands and raids. It's just frustrating as hell to watch Blizzard remove so much at the same time and then tell us we're playing the game wrong and that taking things away actually adds things.

- - - Updated - - -

I have been through a massive and I mean massive l earning curve which at the beginign felt near vertical. For the avoidance of doubt you need to understand the journey I went through.

My post is about the depth, breath and complexity the game has

Oof...man... if you honestly felt that WoW has such levels of depth and complexity, never...and I mean NEVER go anywhere near EVE online. In fact, you should probably stay away from Path of Exile too.

But pruning is needed to simplify the game, bring on new people easily, give them a comfortable starting place to join in and then build up again.

Yes...by all means: Lets sacrifice what's already in the game that made it good, and also the existing playerbase in an ATTEMPT to fish for new players...

I get remastering and taking some things back to the drawing board in order to make them better. But the rampant and constant removal of things from the game needs to stop.

[Deleted]

So this is going to get lots hatred but it's right.

I am a legion baby, joining in the legion prepatch and played dps and healers with golden logs at a mythic level raiding by the time TOV came out. So I have some experience but very recent none of this 10yrs+ stuff.

But here's the nugget 99% of the player base have missed with BFA. When I started the game it was completely and utterly overwhelming both in size and complexity, even the basics of clicking spells to key binds to macros to customer elvui setups, add-ons, weak auras, siming pieces of gear, buying a Razer Naga. The list just goes on and on and on.

On top of that you have rotations to learn, boss fights, the nuances of PVE class balance, gear sets and talent selections this game is very, very complicated to a new player.

You can't keep building on top of this foundation of conplexity each patch and expansion because as the player base shrinks new players can't learn at the near vertical learning cure the game has.

They don't stick around and stop playing, at some point the spidersweb of complexity needs to be pruned hard so a new player has the ability to pick the game up comfortably and not have an anurism before uninstalling.

That is why the game has to be pruned to bring new players on board so we still have a game to play in a year's time. Or it can be made more complex and slowly die with a ever shrinking player base because no-one what's to learn a game this hard

what do you know about good or bad direction in class design if you didn't play the previous (and various) iteration?

the overwhelming size and complexity is not something new. it's not more complex and bigger with every xpac. interface set up, learn a rotation and boss fights…. new players always had to go thru this, and it's not worse now than in BC, WOTLK or any xpac. and basicaly you have to forget and relearn again with each new xpac. mastering the basics of the game is the only thing veteran players have over a new player.

the overwhelming complexity doesn't come from the class design IMO. I think the poor interface is the biggest problem here. it's easy to understand how your spec works, always been, but the interface limitation makes you want weak auras to see everything you need to see

I mean, look at you. you are a legion baby and you raided mythic. sounds like it's not that overwhelming and complex after all. sounds easy enough.

[Jedimindtrx]

It might be worth 're reading my post again slowly.

The game for me now isn't too complex, that's not what I wrote. I have been through a massive and I mean massive l earning curve which at the beginign felt near vertical. For the avoidance of doubt you need to understand the journey I went through.

My post is about the depth, breath and complexity the game has at end game legion at all levels and areas of the game. You can pick your topic from the auction house with sniping add-ons, to class min maxing, mythic+ and raiding and everything inbetween plaging at a level you wish to play at. This isn't a game to can pick up today and self learn, or in my view play solo at all. I had friends in a very good guild answer my continuous questions and spend hours teaching me.

Now, read slowly. If BFA builds on legion as it is with MORE complexity new players won't pick it up and the player base will shrink naturally with no new players or subs joining to sustain the platform and game. Old players want more spells, talents and higher skill cap and little change naturally, I am one of those people too.

But pruning is needed to simplify the game, bring on new people easily, give them a comfortable starting place to join in and then build up again.

I was confused at first on how to operate my weapon, I learned to, became accurate with it, and now I can manipulate it at a high level. I do range competitions and place in the top percentile. Thankfully I was a part of a club that answered my questions, spent hours teaching me, I learned a lot on my own. So many things to learn, safety, maintenance, parts, doping, zeroing, and all the things in between.

Old handlers wants more customization options, optics, paints, and add ons. I am one of those people too.

But pruning is needed to simplify the usage of the weapon, bring on new people easily, give them a comfortable starting place to join in and then build again. That is why I approve of Blizzard taking away other weapon's barrels and triggers. Making people buy those separately is good. (Making players choose talents that have been baseline
for years)

I'm just messing with you, but to a certain degree that's how it sounds. I play Demo lock and Shadowpriest. One end, I have a glorious rework, everything is new, on the other I have a pile of shit.

[Arainie]

I see you've done this before.

Seriously though, I get that there's new content such as dungeons and new islands and raids. It's just frustrating as hell to watch Blizzard remove so much at the same time and then tell us we're playing the game wrong and that taking things away actually adds things.

The issue lies in the fact that the "herd" of "sheep" (not a very kind choice of words I know ) will read comments like yours and jump the bandwagon without doing any kind of research or testing themselves. "He said it was like this and it sounds like my cup of tea!". You're clearly not that stupid yourself judging by other posts you've made (even if I disagree with them) but stuff like that just breeds more toxicity. There are plenty of posts in this thread that thoroughly explain why these changes are good, just as there are plenty of posts around that thoroughly explain why they are bad. The absolute truth probably lies somewhere in between the two camps. However, at the end of the day, the vast majority of the comments on topics like this are just meaningless and toxic ramble and there's no need for people with the capacity for logical reasoning to add to them.

[Swizzington]

So you found virtual shopping fun? I didn't mind having to buff but making sure I had reagents to do so was not fun.

Interestingly, that's not what I said! It was actually not a case of what was fun or what wasn't fun. It was just more...idk, satisfying? Immersive? It gave me something extra to think about in a game where thinking and making choices seems to be increasingly discouraged.

I am not suggesting that the removal of reagents was the single thing that took the game from amazing to boring, of course not. It was just one little thing, on the pile of seemingly insignificant "QoL" changes, that when combined together ended up watering down the experience to a great extent.

That's just what I think, anyway. You are free to disagree.

[shaunika123]

.

that's outlaw you nincompoop


also if you've never enjoyed rogue before and now you do, that probably means that rogue is no longer what rogue is supposed to be.
it changed so much that people who dont enjoy the class enjoy it.

if suddenly paladins got stealth and started stunlocking people and bursting them down from the shadows, I'd say "hey paladins are fun now and I never liked them before"

wouldnt be correct though.

I'm sorry but if you think BFA sub is an improvement you're a terrible player that cant think more than to spam 3 buttons in sequence.

but since you dont even know which rogue spec sub is and you're confusing it with outlaw, I dont even know why i'M replying.

enjoy spamming shadowstrike and evis to no end.

and this is all ignoring massive underlying issues and just focuses on bare gameplay.

BFA sub has terrible energy management and is basically forced into stacking energy talents making everything else on the row useless.
it has a talent that still doesnt work.
one of its most iconic and major dps cooldowns is now useless.
its other major dps cooldown lost its meaning because you can just spam it endlessly.
it requires no planning ,no forethought, no energy pooling, no CP pooling, you just spam shadowstrike and evis that's all you do.

if you can find me one JUST ONE good rogue player that actually prefers BFA sub to legion sub, I'll be surprised.

[tombeg]

I'm sorry but if you think BFA sub is an improvement you're a terrible player that cant think more than to spam 3 buttons in sequence.

But in legion sub literally have 3 buttons and a few cooldowns. Yeah you need understanding how to use it, but its simple(ater rework, on multitarget its even a joke really).

[shaunika123]

But in legion sub literally have 3 buttons and a few cooldowns. Yeah you need understanding how to use it, but its simple(ater rework, on multitarget its even a joke really).

legion sub is one of the most punishing specs out there what are you talking about?

if you mismanage your energy/CPs/cooldowns just a bit your dps is royally fucked.

its night and day when you compare it to BFA.
if you dotn see that you dont play rogue.

I mean its not "hard" but literally nothing is in this game. it is infinitely more deep and skillful than BFA sub tho

[Deleted]

Now, read slowly. If BFA builds on legion as it is with MORE complexity new players won't pick it up and the player base will shrink naturally with no new players or subs joining to sustain the platform and game. Old players want more spells, talents and higher skill cap and little change naturally, I am one of those people too.

But pruning is needed to simplify the game, bring on new people easily, give them a comfortable starting place to join in and then build up again.

Baseless speculation.

The game was becoming more and more bloated up until MOP and had it's greatest player growth over the first 2 expansions, and back then the content new players were being thrust into could easily kill you - if you tried wandering past The Bulwark as a new forsaken player you were going to be getting killed by bears pretty damn fast, nevermind the random spattering of elite mobs in low level zones you used to get.
The game isn't balanced like vanilla, nothing that a new player is exposed to is going to be complicated or challenging enough to hamper them. It's nigh impossible to die while leveling up, which should still take weeks at this point, if not months for a new player who's casual enough not to be after complexity to begin with.

Players are perfectly capable of picking the game up and playing it solo until they hit heroic raiding or M+ content, both things that are intended to be a challenge.

There is ample time to experience the game and get used to some of it's systems while leveling up and doing the entry level content that players can do before joining a group of players and needing to have even the remotest idea of what they're doing, draining the pool to remove any depth for the people who've progressed out of the shallow area is going to be pretty damn damaging.

The fact you think you're the 1% that's figured out that WoW is too complex for new players after pruning has been going on since MOP should speak volumes about how deluded you are, but whatever - evidently not.

[Zyky]

Not pretending to be speaking for anyone else. What I am trying to do is - show people that their OPINIONS are not final and not facts. It's about preference. But it's tiring to see only people who complain on the forums. Haters are hating like crazy whereas us, the people who enjoy the game, are enjoying our games quietly. The reason I even started posting in this thread was because I was working on my research thesis and wanted to take a break, but figured logging ingame would prevent me from doing anymore work this day. Sadly, this thread had a similar effect.

When the majority of a speaking community is speaking negative, it really doesn't matter what the nonvocal players think, they aren't expressing their opinions, so they're opinion doesn't factor into a majority or minority. It's like if you don't vote, if you don't vote, nobody really cares what you think if you don't plan on voting.

Getting into specifics of the classes you listed, Fire is losing either an extra charge on Fire Blast or Phoenix Flames(pruning and not adding things baseline makes a spec dumbed down), Ret is more dumbed down because you no longer need to manage breakpoints for 'finishers' within Judgement debuffs, Havoc has zero talent options and is locked into a specific way to play, be Dark Slash which the vocal community hates because we don't need another spec in the game with a "Colossal Smash" effect, BM is a 3 button rotation(literally the definition of dumbed down). There have been very little changes for most specs between Legion and BFA and the majority of the chances have been the removal of abilities, so yes the majority of classes have been dumbed down.

[blehmeh]

I am a legion baby

So you never got to experience the other expansions, and seem to know exactly what makes it better than what you've never experienced?

We were all "noobs" at one point, even when the game was much more complex, but guess what? We got better.

The game was its most popular when it was its most complex. And as Blizz continues to dumb the game down, more people leave. Not opinion, but facts.

BfA will tank because people will get bored of slow, stripped down class design.

[Nyel]

And even the specs with major changes (Demo, Survival) aren't necessarily better now. Survival is worse and even Demo isn't looking that much better either. Both specs had problems in Legion but not the problems Blizzard tried to solve with their BfA approach of both specs.

[SirCowdog]

The issue lies in the fact that the "herd" of "sheep" (not a very kind choice of words I know ) will read comments like yours and jump the bandwagon without doing any kind of research or testing themselves. "He said it was like this and it sounds like my cup of tea!". You're clearly not that stupid yourself judging by other posts you've made (even if I disagree with them) but stuff like that just breeds more toxicity. There are plenty of posts in this thread that thoroughly explain why these changes are good, just as there are plenty of posts around that thoroughly explain why they are bad. The absolute truth probably lies somewhere in between the two camps. However, at the end of the day, the vast majority of the comments on topics like this are just meaningless and toxic ramble and there's no need for people with the capacity for logical reasoning to add to them.

Hey, I'm only human. Sometimes I have to vent my irritation with things. And quite honestly, I was only being half-joking when I made that post. Quite frankly, it's downright insulting for Ion to sit there and tell the players they're doing it wrong, their fun isn't the right way to have fun, and that we're being treating like literal idiots when he tells people that removing things is actually adding things.

I understand the point he's trying to make. In order to make room for new game features, sometimes old features need to be reworked into the current dynamic. But the way he's going about explaining that clearly indicates his disregard for the players. He knows there's enough people who won't quit no matter what happens,. and you can feel that bleeding over in some of his interviews. Ion is NOT a stupid person; he knows exactly what he's saying.

So yeah, sometimes a little toxicity is warranted. We've tried being reasonable and it gets ignored. Ion doesn't like fun, and the sheep follow him because his name-tag says "Blizzard" on it. Seriously, if he posted the kinds of opinions that he expressed in his interviews, but without blue text and the authority of Blizzard behind it, he would get absolutely crucified by the community.

So call a spade a spade: Fuck that guy's entire approach to gaming. It DESERVES to be made fun of.

[Armourboy]

I've been playing MMO's for nearly 20 years at this point, and frankly if you can pick one up that is 14 years old and go from noob to mythic raider in the matter of a few months, the last thing the game needs is less complexity.

There are certain specs within BfA that aren't bad, most of those are ones that received a rather large amount of iteration, or they were some of the better fleshed out specs in Legion, like Fire Mage. Even with that, if you played Fire in Legion, BfA is still frustrating at times and you got to keep most of your kit. You lose your 3rd Fireblast, the GCD change really dials back the effectiveness of the spec, especially if you take Rune of Power ( and you are taking it right? ). The survivability of the spec has taken a pretty big nose dive with the loss of the blink heal, which btw was pretty interesting to use at times. You roll your legendary bracers and belt into the spec, but doing so now means you can never take the extra proc chance on Pyro, Firestarter, the ability to lower the cooldown on Combustion or Meteor, all of which you could do in Legion. So yes even one of the better playing specs in Legion got easier to play in BfA.

Then you get into those specs that didn't get work and it's pretty lackluster. A spec like Frost Mage works, but they didn't fix any of the issues with it, and in fact actually made it worse because you have less ability to actually force procs. You can literally get into a position of spamming Frostbolt 15+ times having the procs finally hit, only to have half of it wasted on one proc munching another. Yeah I'm sure the numbers will be fine, they always make the numbers fine, but that's different from how the spec feels.

If a spec like BM is what you are defining as good class design, well then our opinions just will never line up. I don't consider a spec designed well that can be played by a blind cat with two arms missing, I don't care if it does good DPS or not. Even my wife who hasn't played a full month total since Cata picked up BM and asked me if that was it. She couldn't believe anyone could enjoy that for years on end.

The content in BfA may be good, but the class design is garbage.

[zaino]

Yeah this guy lost all credibility (he didn’t have really any to begin with) when he said first bfa sub was fun then posted outlaw talents.

The only “functioning” rogue spec right now is sin if he bothered to follow anything

[shaunika123]

Yeah this guy lost all credibility (he didn’t have really any to begin with) when he said first bfa sub was fun then posted outlaw talents.

The only “functioning” rogue spec right now is sin if he bothered to follow anything

I mean sub functions.

we just use the thickest bandaids in the form of energy talents.

rip them off and it falls apart, but it is hanging in there, by a thread.