Community: Less about Fantasy more about numbers and performance

[Sanguinerd]

It became way too important how good you are instead of how much fun you're having.

Having a game director who enforces that mindset isn't helping either imo.

I'd rather do a raid with simple straight forward yet punishing mechanics instead of the ridiculous crap we get nowadays when encounters are clearly designed with the assumption everyone has addons to tell them shit that should be obvious to begin with.

Next to that I just don't give a shit if I'm good at the game anymore.. I just want to have fun playing it ;/

[kaminaris]

That doesn't work in WoW, mechanics that require very quick reaction times fall apart once you realize that some classes are infinitely better at dealing with them and that the game just isn't built to update player positions etc as quickly as would be required. And the entire point of WoW raids is that you eventually learn the patterns. Even Hans & Franz in BRF wasn't a quick reaction time boss, it was learning the "dance" and doing it correctly. The mythic mechanic was literally the opposite of a reaction time mechanic, it was a planned, methodical dance.

And again, you claimed you want to be able to kill those bosses with people dead. So not only do you want DPS checks gone, you want people to be allowed to fuck up the one thing that remains (mechanics) and still kill the boss. It's absurd.

You really have limited imagination. First of all no class is better than others at turning (multi sided strike), now make it go off even faster.

Second of all its ok to have classes with blink, rush etc. That absolutely do not prevent to make mechanics like that. Third you absolutely can make it hard for every class ex by making you move in 4-5 times in short amount of time with very limited safe zone. It worked, works and can work. There is no doubt about it.

Guess thats why we have boring training dummies with artificial difficulty, because either designers dont have imagination or they dont get paid enough.

[exochaft]

FFXIV's fights require alot preperation at the top end as well, some would even go as far as calling it a dance that needs to be memorized to a T. I think the biggest difference is that FFXIV has no addons, hence the telegraphs are better and more predictable, where WoW is in a constant arms race with addons by throwing more and more overlapping random stuff at you, that can only be handled by addons.

I think this is one of the driving factors in diminishing the amount of players who actually want to raid. Any aspect of the game should be easily doable without addons, but for the vast majority of players it's not. Designing raid encounters specifically under the assumption that you have and will use addons like DBM, Bigwigs, Weakauras, etc. is a terrible move, and I've always thought this ever since there was a blue post mentioning this. I will say Blizz has gotten better at telegraphing mechanics with more defined visuals and audio cues, but it's still a far cry from the average person being able to complete the content without addons. Part of the problem is that Blizz has been trending towards making fights more and more complex, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if executed properly as I've lost count of how many times on mythic progression where the raid has had to sit idle to avoid timers being an issue with mechanics/transitions. The problem comes in with how tightly tuned you make encounters with an increasingly complex system (which may not even be intuitive).

Nowadays, it's commonplace that Blizz implements tons of hotfixes over the life of a raid tier which tend to combat this issue we're talking about, and I feel that's the wrong mindset. The practice is born from the "issue" of wanting to make content that the hardcore min/maxing community to not complete a raid tier quickly, but scaling things back over time because the vast majority of the playerbase that wants to raid doesn't share the same values, time commitment, or skill do even access the content at that level of tuning. Again, I think this is the wrong mindset for designing raid content, as the content has lost a lot of the fun factors that people enjoyed from raiding in the past.

I believe the best iteration of addressing this difficulty curve issue was with WotLK, and there were two ways this was done:

The first was having a fights within one raid difficulty have multiple ways of doing the fight to change how hard or easy it was. This was referred to as Hard Modes, and its activation varied from killing bosses in certain orders within an encounter, leaving certain bosses/objects alive before engaging a boss, or just pushing the Big Red Button that says Do Not Push in the back of the room. This allowed players to have a method to challenge themselves if they so desired without gatekeeping the entire raid difficulty to those only capable of of doing HM encounters. The stated reason for not continuing this trend into future tiers was that it was difficult to come up with new ideas, but I'll address that in a minute.

The second was having an optional raid-wide aura that progressively made the raid easier over time. This accomplishes several things: all the fights can be balanced with level of difficulty to maintain the population progression curve without having to constantly hotfix difficulty, this allows more guilds to experience progression over time with some regularity instead of waiting for hotfixes, and it provides some e-peen fun for people who like seeing the big numbers and reclearing faster as the tier gets older. Honestly don't remember why they stopped doing this, as they had done it several times.

I feel the current trend towards numbers and performance is a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point, as it's a cycle that is perpetuated by the relationship between Blizz and the players. Who tends to test raid content and provides the most feedback nowadays before it hits live servers? It's generally the people who heavily focus on numbers/performance, and they give their feedback to Blizz... and it probably makes up the vast majority of their feedback. Your average raider isn't going to be on the beta/PTR with all addons ready and multiple chars ready to sit around through lags/DCs to test encounters that are probably buggy as hell. Now that isn't to say the feedback provided isn't useful, but I can easily tell you that the feedback tends to lack the perspective of the average player. When you've been playing at the top level of WoW raiding for so long, it's fairly easy to lose perspective in your feedback, and while you may think it's helpful from your perspective, it may be damaging overall. Ironically enough, feedback has been going down even from PTRs concerning the raids, which is a whole other issue for another thread... however, the main point is that the player feedback Blizz tends to use is from an extremely small niche of the player population that doesn't necessarily reflect nor benefit the majority of players.

I want to avoid this getting to long, but I'll address one last point that's on Blizz. Earlier I alluded to Blizz not doing Hard Modes anymore because it was getting harder for them to implement. Alright, why is that? One of the issues is that Blizz has tried to stick to the "xpac every 2 years" model, and frankly that's probably one of the largest sources of quality decline in the game. There was talk of abandoning this model to put quality first, but that talk has disappeared a long time ago. I'm not going to say it was Activision influence, but I would be comfortable saying that it was a corporate atmosphere influence in general that has take over. From the player side of things, it was pretty evident that things had changed because the amount of communication between the devs and the players had decreased over time. I remember back in MoP where Blizz had Watercooler blue posts describing current/upcoming systems in detail, explaining how things worked, what their goals were, and even got into the math behind things. Heck, even the game had the most descriptive trinkets tooltips that gave you exact information compared to vague crap we get now, which reflected that the devs realized that the players should have more information if they want it. Now it feels like the devs are only concerned with the feedback they want to hear, their goals and systems are not really known because there's barely any communication to the players, and frankly everything feels rushed to meet a deadline instead of waiting for the content to be good.

As as summation, that's the whole problem: the game is being developed from a mindset of numbers and performance (whether the content or the game development), not about fun and fantasy. Most of their feedback comes from players that only care about numbers and performance, and the development atmosphere is increasingly just about numbers and performance. As I stated earlier, it's just a self-fulfilling prophecy that will have no end in sight until either the vocal playerbase changes or Blizz changes.

Sorry about the length, but the topic itself isn't something that can be done justice (and I feel my post has still only scratched the surface).

[Tradu]

You really have limited imagination. First of all no class is better than others at turning (multi sided strike), now make it go off even faster.

Second of all its ok to have classes with blink, rush etc. That absolutely do not prevent to make mechanics like that. Third you absolutely can make it hard for every class ex by making you move in 4-5 times in short amount of time with very limited safe zone. It worked, works and can work. There is no doubt about it.

Guess thats why we have boring training dummies with artificial difficulty, because either designers dont have imagination or they dont get paid enough.

No. It already barely worked with the timing in BoD. Not because of player skill, but because the game is horribly slow at updating/detecting facing (and position, which is why your ideas just don't work in WoW). It's not a lack of imagination, it's knowing that the game is extremely limited in what kinds of mechanics you can do, and not being obsessed with removing checks on players' ability to play their spec.

This is not the game for those kinds of mechanics. It's that simple. It's a game where you need to be tested on both playing your spec (that means DPS, or healing, or positioning/staying alive) and on your ability to deal with mechanics.

You've still not managed to come up with a justification for why your "mechanics only" version of WoW should let you kill bosses with people dead (read: failing to do the one thing you've got left to do in the game).

[intenz]

WoW has never been a particularly great roleplay game. It was a big step backward from MMOs that were out in 2004 in terms of RPG.

[Echo of Soul]

But FFXIV is far better at being very clear and telegraphing mechanics.

Yeah this is true all the way from lvl 1 to 80. Granted it's much easier if you've played MMORPGs in the past, coming over as a WoW veteran I could figure out 9/10 boss mechanics from the information presented to me. There's always one or two at the casual level every expansion that is difficult to figure out intuitively.

[kaminaris]

No. It already barely worked with the timing in BoD. Not because of player skill, but because the game is horribly slow at updating/detecting facing (and position, which is why your ideas just don't work in WoW). It's not a lack of imagination, it's knowing that the game is extremely limited in what kinds of mechanics you can do, and not being obsessed with removing checks on players' ability to play their spec.

This is not the game for those kinds of mechanics. It's that simple. It's a game where you need to be tested on both playing your spec (that means DPS, or healing, or positioning/staying alive) and on your ability to deal with mechanics.

You've still not managed to come up with a justification for why your "mechanics only" version of WoW should let you kill bosses with people dead (read: failing to do the one thing you've got left to do in the game).

It is simply lack of imagination. We did not have issues with multi sided strike. No matter how you spin all evidence points that since it was implemented in the past, is doable.

And actually you are wrong about about game being slow at updating facing position. WoW has zero problems with it. If you happened to have such issues then your internet connection is to blame. What wow is bad at is Z-Axis detection (desynced elevators are example of that). But rotation angle and X/Y axis? No problem.

It is game for such mechanics, we had bosses like this. What are you even on about? Are you suggesting that H&F, Operator and many different bosses last 10 years are mirage and did not happen?

[Tradu]

It is simply lack of imagination. We did not have issues with multi sided strike. No matter how you spin all evidence points that since it was implemented in the past, is doable.

And actually you are wrong about about game being slow at updating facing position. WoW has zero problems with it. If you happened to have such issues then your internet connection is to blame. What wow is bad at is Z-Axis detection (desynced elevators are example of that). But rotation angle and X/Y axis? No problem.

It is game for such mechanics, we had bosses like this. What are you even on about? Are you suggesting that H&F, Operator and many different bosses last 10 years are mirage and did not happen?

No, it's absolutely atrocious at it. The only way as a player to force it to update is to let go of your mouse button used for turning, which adds a significant amount of delay to multiple sequential turns. If you just turn around a bunch without letting go it's a complete gamble whether or not the game decides to update your facing in time. Connection was not the problem on that boss (although it can obviously add to those kinds of issues, which is another reason why it's a bad idea to make very reaction-heavy mechanics).
Z-axis is also a big problem, as you mention.

Neither H&F nor Thogar were bosses like what you're describing at all. Both are extremely good examples of what WoW does do well: highly predictable dance bosses. Not reaction time tests. And both of those bosses also required you to do damage while handling those mechanics, and if you were bad at either mechanics or DPS you didn't kill those bosses (and more DPS meant you got to skip mechanics, as it should be). That's how it should be. Bosses need both boss mechanics that you need to handle and there needs to be a DPS requirement to show that you can also play your spec.

And again, you've still not explained how a game which is purely based on mechanics would work if you're even allowed to fuck those up past the combat rez limit and kill the boss.

[rhorle]

No, it's absolutely atrocious at it. The only way as a player to force it to update is to let go of your mouse button used for turning, which adds a significant amount of delay to multiple sequential turns.

That isn't true and is easily tested with a cast time spell that requires you to be facing the target. The model doesn't fully turn until you release the button but the game registers your turn. I just tested it and in all cases where I wasn't with in the "line of sight" cone my spell failed. There may be cases of lag but it is usually that you were still with in that cone when the line of sight check happened.

These were all done with the mouse button held down and spinning it in circles and the half circle that wasn't part of the line sight.

[Boricha]

I agree, but I don't think it's the numbers themselves that caused the shift. I will say I felt much more immersed in the story of WoW and the fantasy of my character when I was younger, back in TBC and Wrath. But I don't think it's performance that changed that. I was already very into min-maxing by Wrath. I think it was more to do with server community falling apart and myself generally not caring for the story direction of the game after Wrath, except for parts of MoP. With those elements being diminished, I became more removed from the fantasy of the game and just care about the gameplay mechanics and numbers.

[Tradu]

That isn't true and is easily tested with a cast time spell that requires you to be facing the target. The model doesn't fully turn until you release the button but the game registers your turn. I just tested it and in all cases where I wasn't with in the "line of sight" cone my spell failed. There may be cases of lag but it is usually that you were still with in that cone when the line of sight check happened.

These were all done with the mouse button held down and spinning it in circles and the half circle that wasn't part of the line sight.

It happened with the Jadefire Masters mechanic very consistently for me. Turning with the mouse button held down resulted in getting hit, turning and then letting go until the spirit hit me (adding delay to turning towards the next one) resulted in not getting hit. Maybe it's the same issue as ground effects not always properly updating your position while airborne (or moving in general), seeing as the Jadefire Masters mechanic happened in the air?

Either way, the point still stands: reaction time mechanics are not good in WoW (which is why when they do use them, it's usually on early bosses where being experimental doesn't really matter because they're easy anyway). The best fights the game has had (including examples like the ones kaminaris uses as reaction time bosses for some reason) are ones that are more of a predictable dance, where you learn one step at a time as you progress the fight.

[kaminaris]

No, it's absolutely atrocious at it. The only way as a player to force it to update is to let go of your mouse button used for turning, which adds a significant amount of delay to multiple sequential turns. If you just turn around a bunch without letting go it's a complete gamble whether or not the game decides to update your facing in time. Connection was not the problem on that boss (although it can obviously add to those kinds of issues, which is another reason why it's a bad idea to make very reaction-heavy mechanics).
Z-axis is also a big problem, as you mention.

Neither H&F nor Thogar were bosses like what you're describing at all. Both are extremely good examples of what WoW does do well: highly predictable dance bosses. Not reaction time tests. And both of those bosses also required you to do damage while handling those mechanics, and if you were bad at either mechanics or DPS you didn't kill those bosses (and more DPS meant you got to skip mechanics, as it should be). That's how it should be. Bosses need both boss mechanics that you need to handle and there needs to be a DPS requirement to show that you can also play your spec.

And again, you've still not explained how a game which is purely based on mechanics would work if you're even allowed to fuck those up past the combat rez limit and kill the boss.

No, WoW has no issues with X/Y and angle rotations. Absolutely no issues whatsoever. You are wrong. You are talking about internet connection issues.
WoW only have issues with Z-axis and jumps.

H&F and Operator are EXACTLY the bosses I was describing. I want more bosses be like that. With less reaction time allowed.

[rhorle]

It happened with the Jadefire Masters mechanic very consistently for me. Turning with the mouse button held down resulted in getting hit, turning and then letting go until the spirit hit me (adding delay to turning towards the next one) resulted in not getting hit. Maybe it's the same issue as ground effects not always properly updating your position while airborne (or moving in general), seeing as the Jadefire Masters mechanic happened in the air?

If you are jumping or in the air WoW does have a delay in updating player position. It is why you are advised not to jump out of ground effects because there could be some delay in position updating.

[Tradu]

No, WoW has no issues with X/Y and angle rotations. Absolutely no issues whatsoever. You are wrong. You are talking about internet connection issues.
WoW only have issues with Z-axis and jumps.

H&F and Operator are EXACTLY the bosses I was describing. I want more bosses be like that. With less reaction time allowed.

So you want more bosses that are highly predictable dances rather than reaction time tests? And which require DPS?

[kaminaris]

So you want more bosses that are highly predictable dances rather than reaction time tests? And which require DPS?

I want you to read my posts fully before replying. It's clear that we are going nowhere since you don't give any effort to even fully read my posts:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post53206108

Could be made even tighter (less reaction time).

And quite possibly without patterns you can learn so every fight requires you to use your eyes.

H&F was no dps check at all. Even on early stages of progression.

> Highly predictable
> Without patterns
> Pick one.

[Tradu]

I want you to read my posts fully before replying. It's clear that we are going nowhere since you don't give any effort to even fully read my posts:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post53206108




H&F was no dps check at all. Even on early stages of progression.

> Highly predictable
> Without patterns
> Pick one.

H&F had patterns (and players literally decided parts of the pattern on mythic). Not sure where you got the idea that it didn't. Same thing for Thogar. Both fights allowed you to skip mechanics by having good DPS.

[kaminaris]

H&F had patterns (and players literally decided parts of the pattern on mythic). Not sure where you got the idea that it didn't. Same thing for Thogar. Both fights allowed you to skip mechanics by having good DPS.

We are done here, no point in discussing if you dont understand what I wrote.

[Tradu]

We are done here, no point in discussing if you dont understand what I wrote.

You're the one describing bosses as something they aren't. You claim H&F and Thogar are examples of reaction time fights or fights without patterns when that's not true for either of them. The problem isn't that I can't read, it's that what you're writing makes no sense and/or shows a complete lack of understanding of the fights you're describing.

[justandulas]

I do believe addons are to blame for much of the playerbases obsession with numbers.

They absolutely are but Blizz will never have the testicular fortitude to remove them, also, the damage is done.

Whatever rpg elements WoW had long ago, are now gone. The game resembles a arpg like d3 more than it does vanilla WoW

Talent systems? Diablo 3 inspired
Mythic+? Diablo 3 rifts reinvisioned
Multiple different levels of the same gear? D3
Seasonal gameplay that erases the other patch? You guessed it, d3

Almost all the core systems have more in common with d3 than everquest or even vanilla WoW. That’s why classic felt so good to play for old school mmo rpg fans, because WoW has devolved from that into Diablo 3 the mmo arpg wearing wows skin.

How can they even bring the rpg back when every system they’ve put into the game is counter to everything an rpg stands for?

[kaminaris]

You're the one describing bosses as something they aren't.

You do have issues with reading comprehension so let me, one last time, explain. I won't reply after that:

H&F fight + completely random "patterns" every time (not possible to predict or learn) + less reaction time = bosses I want.