You can play Classic... oh wait not only it's imbalanced but many specs consist of 3 buttons. So when was actually WOW "fun"? Because in my personal experience back in MOP when Classes were the most homogenized but also had the biggest amount of fun abilities.
And no, not every class has a "button for x" which mostly means the ones that don't get benched / declined. If you spec lacks aoe, cc, immunities etc. be sure you'll be sidelined for classes that do.
One of the most garbage spec atm is shadow priest because it lacks in every aspect, has no burst, slow aoe, no immunity, no aoe stun, very long cd on interrupt, poor defensives (only one they have doesn't let them dps during it and isn't full immunity) and generally is only good when it's overtuned (like it was in 8.2), otherwise it shows how trying to make a dps spec "different than everything else" makes basically something useless.
Spriest was fun when it was in "build resource, spend resource" mode a.k.a. shadow orbs, but now they made it into some uncontrollable bar just for the sake of being different and it made a spec that is basically unfun and doesn't fit into any content except council fights in raids.
Sorry but this is completely wrong, and a total fantasy without even the slightest connection to reality.
Raids in Vanilla were trivial trash (and yes I HAVE been saying that since Vanilla*) - just like they are now in Classic. M+ with Vanilla balancing would be completely trivial in exactly the same way. You say "only certain classes could do it". Bollocks. That's not how Vanilla was designed. Instead you'd need like, a Warrior tank and that'd be about the only hard requirement. And like raiding pre-Naxx, it'd be super-easy.
* = My very first experience of raiding in WoW (having done it in EQ and DAoC previously), was one of my friends wanting to go out for an evening, but being the key healer for his raid (MC, when it was the only raid in town). So I played his character for him - the highest level WoW character I'd played before that was 40. And people were acting like this was hard, but the whole thing was just ludicrously trivial. I was even telling people what to do at one point, based on notes he'd left me (luckily we weren't on voice - because you didn't need to be, because it was trivial!).
Last edited by Eurhetemec; 2020-03-02 at 01:28 AM.
It would still function though as I said. Raiding and Mythic+ can function with out class balance as that was the case in Vanilla. There was no real balance. There was just class designed and some as you point, a warrior, were "requirements" over others. That is the entire point. The same point you are stating. Class balance is not a requirement for content to function.
Mythic+ though isn't very fun if only warrior tanks get to go. Or a Fire mage (if it was "molten core" week as an example). These are the things Blizzard balances for. To make it so every spec is viable. If Blizzard didn't do this balancing the group compositions would be even more skewed then they already are. No matter how much you want to ignore that reality it would be the case. Because even with "better" balance between the classes high keys have a clear favorite composition.
Amusingly the to 100 rankings on Raider.io show most are Warrior tanks. The encounters were trivial which is something entirely different then class balance. It is related to some degree but there is a difference between trivial mechanics and the performance of specs.
"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."
You think WoW is having it bad? Try Diablo 3. Oh boy, the classes and specs are super baaaaad. Any other game feels better to play. From Blizzard or anyone else.
They really do, on the regular, paint themselves into a corner with "class balance."
On one hand, they made a ridiculously alt-unfriendly system-bloated expansion which basically locks anyone with ambition to one class/spec. In this scenario, the investment in a class almost demands balance even at the expense of enjoyability. If I'm leaning hard into one class, and switching away from that class is cumbersome, that class can't be "wrong." It might be boring, but it shouldn't be "wrong."
On the other hand, making a goal out of that degree of sameness leads to the exact "absence of fun" that this thread talks about. And let's be real: they haven't achieved it, there are still "wrong" classes for certain situations. I'm just a filthy casual but even I feel it: If I'm focusing open world or solo content, mages and healers are "wrong" for me. If I want a time efficient personal game, I'm a tank, hunter or warlock. Surprise, my main is a warlock.
So what is the answer? Bear with me here, I'm going to try to put words in the devs' mouths based on what I've seen:
Maybe we're not supposed to take it that seriously.
Now before you throw stuff, hear me out. I'm not saying that concept is going to penetrate this sect of the community, but maybe they don't expect us to overthink "balance," and they want us to play what we want to play, run content with friends so "you're playing the wrong class" is less likely to come up, and so that the general truth of "good enough is good enough" carries the game.
Maybe they don't expect us all to make hardline goals out of Mythic or mythic plus anything. Maybe they're building for the bottom to middle (and therefore larger) tiers of the pyramid of give-a-damn.
Be honest with yourself, are you on the tier of play where balance is making of breaking your game? If you are, how big do you think that tier is? Maybe I'm just casual, comfortable and don't care... but maybe I'm the target audience. Story aside, I do feel pretty catered to...
...You know, so long as I don't try to main a Mage or Priest.
Obsession with balancing.. good laugh op. 10/10 troll. Completely unexpected topic and it came across as genuine. Literal god of satire.
Also, you need to watch this video and realize that "balance" and "unique" are not a cursed design.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uE6-vIi1rQ
It's a weird place to be in for Blizzard if you really think about it. Either 1 or 2 classes (really specs) were going to be OP and the rest felt weaker by comparison or you make them all within a few percentage points of each other as far as power goes. Blizzard obviously chose the latter, as does pretty much anyone...
Why put that content in the game then? It seems extremely counter productive to sink resources into something you assume most people won't play or care about.
It's also very nasty game design when you keep adding "meaning" to top end content like mount for completing all m+15s (previous seasons didn't have a mount) and then deliberately "balance" classes in a way that mage has 10x better chances to get into groups than a priest. That's just spitting in the face of players who don't like to fotm reroll but like to collect achievements and cosmetics (and I'm pretty sure collectors of cosmetics are a big portion of modern wow playerbase).
And even if you have "friends to play with" nobody likes to feel like a deadweight. Even if you love affliction and are a master of the spec, you'd probably respec into one of the other 2 warlock specs for m+ because affliction just doesn't fit into that content at all.
And the whole motto "play with friends" relies on very idealistic, even naive assumption that this will avoid any drama or resentment, while every so often I see threads crop up that can be summed as "I like my friends as people, but I hate them as players, they're shit and drag me down, stall my growth, how do I fix them?" Over 15+ years of wow this has been an endless source of drama especially in "casual" or "semi-casual" guilds and non-guild groups.
Adding extra layers on top of natural skill disparity (for example disparity in class balance or disparity between power level of player who has time to grind and one that has limited play time) creates even bigger drama and is generally counter productive in fostering healthy in game community.
If you are designing systems in an online multiplayer game you should account for typical people's patterns of behaviour that will affect your game. Just giving people bricks is not enough, you should also ensure they're more rewarded for building bridges than walls. Otherwise you end up in a situation where you designed systems that provoke toxicity and then wonder why is there a stink.
What nonsense. You just want an OP class.
Classes don't need to be OP to be fun. They need depth. And that's what they don't have atm. Everything is 3-4 button rotations and then they added essences like it solved anything when they are rental powers.
For the record, balance is a very good thing. Your power level shouldnt come from your choice at the character creation screen.
Last edited by Swnem; 2020-03-02 at 03:19 AM.
You're still thinking in the forum-based subset of the playerbase. Like nothing you've said is wrong IN THIS SPACE, but we're the minority.
Also, no, I wouldn't respec from affliction, because my character concept is affliction. No friends I'd play with in any content I'd care about would ask me to turn that particular character into a spec he's not. I'm not alone in this mindset. Most people don't post on the forums. Even fewer players post here.
Classes now are homogenized in playstyle but not ability, the opposite was true in MoP. There's good homogenization and bad homogenization.
Last edited by docterfreeze; 2020-03-02 at 04:00 AM.
If you want to play that card then the argument should be irrelevant since you give someone something of value for any interaction you have with them. You're giving me time right now by ready this lol. I'm giving you time by posting it. /shrug
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Last edited by Alkizon; 2020-03-02 at 11:20 AM.
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My point is that it would not function. Just like Mythic or even Heroic raiding wouldn't function with Vanilla balancing.
All you'd be doing with "Mythic+" on Vanilla-style balancing is sticking the label on dungeons (which couldn't actually be significantly harder than the normal Vanilla dungeons, because of the lack of balance), and then maybe rewarding people based on a timer. You could not add in the Affixes, you definitely super-could-not have the increasing difficulty levels, and it couldn't even be called Mythic+, because you couldn't have Heroic or Mythic dungeons to start with, with Vanilla-style balancing.
Given that you couldn't have most of the key elements of Mythic+ (including the name!) with Vanilla-style balancing, which entails more than just "Sum classes r better than others" - it also entails classes being poorly-designed because it's "fun" and not actually good at their jobs - and this includes Warrior, Mages, Priests, etc., it's just not true to say that you could meaningfully have it.
Raiding worked because it was so piss-easy. That's the only way they could get it to work. You only needed about 25 people actually playing, and whilst you needed a Warrior tank that was about the limit of what you hard-needed (certain encounters massively benefited from certain classes or even races, Fear Ward on Nef for example).
Last edited by Eurhetemec; 2020-03-02 at 11:27 AM.
Spot on.
Although, there is some credence in what the dude you quoted was saying as well. Imbalance is what causes variety to exist. Chaos that is born out of imbalance also leads to fun upto a certain extent, as long as it's not going overboard.
In an effort to please everybody, you please nobody - this is the situation blizzard is currently facing.
Wrath was an example of an expansion where imbalance was prevalent in all aspects of the game, with big outlier specs in every aspect that left others in their wake. But I still remember seeing a healthy enough representation of said specs all over the game despite all that, and more importantly, the "fun" aspect was still there despite the imbalance.
Take wrath ele sham for example - mid-tier in Raids but top-tier in instanced PvP. Ele gameplay was so apt and fitting for PvP, almost like they were meant to be naturally good at that part of the game. Same for Enh shamans.
I think wrath warrior was the only outlier, where it shone on all specs, in all aspects of the game. ( On second thought, I maybe mis-remembering the effectiveness of prot in Raids and Dungeons)
In the modern game, there's very few "fun" specs, even though many other specs perform the same numbers wise as those "fun" ones.
No one's gonna tell me Frost DK is as fun as Havoc DH / Fury Warr / Fire Mage in their cooldown windows, even though the dk maybe doing the same damage output as all of them, if not more than them. That's just wrong, fundamentally.
Last edited by Zarvel; 2020-03-02 at 11:41 AM.
Yes and no.
Laziness is what has made the gameplay sterile and stale. Balancing was simply one of those lazy approaches.
Pruning was done to cut costs. Homogenization was done also to cut costs. It is cheaper to figure out appropriate balancing when you have fewer abilities and most of your classes and specs do the same thing (but with different graphics).
Here is the corporate greed conundrum. They invest a huge amount of money into a product called WoW...and it pays off even better than expected. But no matter how well anything pays off, you need to show even better profits the next quarter and next year.
So they were looking to spend a great deal with BC, but started cutting a few corners with a handful of ideas. They spent a bit less than originally planned to improve profits even better, and BC was an even bigger hit...continuing to drive up subscriptions and the associated profits. But the drive towards even better profits continue to make its call.
So they cut back a bit further with Wrath. Death Knights were supposed to be a true hero class, requiring better skills to play, but it gets dumbed down to reduce effort. Wrath was solid, but subscriptions only hold steady, and the demands for better profits causes issues.
So they start spending less on the game overall (yes, you can see this in the financial statements, go look yourself - https://investor.activision.com/annual-reports - not in the pretty colored pages, but in the actual financials and compare year to year). Cata has fewer dungeons and fewer raids than Wrath. Subscriptions go down, but they spent less, so then rationalization kicks in...maybe it wasn't because Blizz got cheap, just that people were looking for something different.
And that cycle hasn't ended except maybe for Legion where they spent a bit more (no, not even close to what they spent on BC or Wrath or even Cata) for one expansion.
It was those cuts that leaves the game in the state it is today with likely only around 10% of peak subscriptions in Retail anymore.