If I am forced to do another Heroic I might go crazy

[alchdemon]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but I felt this must be mentioned.

ADDED: answers to common criticisms.
NOTE: this is a long thread, if you don't want to read it all skip over to solutions sections. Please make all posts constructive.

Dungeon finder was a great idea, being able to que up for dungeons battlegroup wise, joining forces and tackling a heroic as quickly as possible. But, its not as simple as that. It has been mentioned many times that the new system for gearing up is flawed, repetitive and unexciting. Everyone who does heroics now knows how much of a grindfest it is, doing this repetitive, no brainer, tedious dungeons over and over and over again just so you can skip the first three tiers of raid content and jump directly into ICC. Complaints have been made far and wide, but here I will establish my primary criticisms of this system.

1. Takes away from Epic feel of the game. In vanilla, and less so in BC, but still present, the majority of your items came from defeating huge bosses or bosses with otherwise cool mechanics. You'd wipe in Karazahn sometimes cause a hunter couldn't kite the right guy in the Morose fight, or in Vanilla cause no one could properly handle the last boss in UBRS. But, we all persevered and we were rewarded with a pocket watch or mongoose enchant or a dungeon set chest. But now, there is no more real epicness, the items dropped by the bosses are quickly replaced by items you...PURCHASE?? there is no more dynamic fighting or different interesting strategies that one had to come up with, dungeons are just a means to an end, they are spammed, quickly beaten, never though of again, I don't have any memorable moments in Wotlk instances, But i can remember a few from Shadow halls that really tested my skill once i got to 80.

2. It doesn't value skill, it values excessive time and also leaves on unprepared for the real thing (in this case raids). If i were to go out and buy this game now, unbeknown to how the game worked in the past. I'd be pretty much forced to just spam heroics and gear up and go do ICC. What happened to naxx? ulduar? or ToC? how do heroics test my skill? but most importantly, as a designer or artist, i have no idea why you would purposely want someone to skip you're "old" work (when in fact almost all heroics are older than ulduar or ToC) for ICC. and even worst, the game seems designed to encourage this skipping of old content. I don't mind skipping out on old raids from older expansions. But there is no sense of progression, its just heroics>raid>heroic raid.

3. My last complaint with this system, ironically, is how systematic it is. You don't make decisions anymore. Think about it. Back in Vanilla/BC i remeber seeing people with some token gear, some heroic gear, some raid gear, some pvp gear, some crafted gear. It was all dynamic and one was motivated to explore and tackle different objectives and explore new lands for long quest chain rewards or whatnot. Now, almost all you're gear is one place, a little vendor in Dalaran. Reputation rewards are the same.. just buy the tabard and spam instances. No more need to get to know the lore of said reputation. Heck, you don't even have to know who the hell they are, just stop at their village, buy their tabard, spam instances, come back buy your shoulder enchant and you're set. What kind of adventure is that? what kind of roleplaying is that?

Now look I'm not here to say we have to go back to the "good ol' days" but what I am saying is that WoW has become a machine that is no longer experienced, but rather worked on. There is no more " go to this place, do this quest, it will lead you to this dungeon quest, beat the dungeon and get a reward", it is no predictable, uninteresting, and easy.

But, i am not here to solely complain, I have some solutions that I think would help make the process less systematic, and more epic.

1. Make older content have more tires per week, In other words, every time a new raid tier is introduced make the tier before it become available more often. So, for example. Naxx 4 times a week, ulduar 3 times a week, ToC, 2 times a week, ICC once a week. Now yes, this is systematic, you would probably just spam as many as you can or to get the best gear. But I'm talking about cata, and in cata Blizzard has stated there would be more raids and less gear tiers so that the difference between the older tier and the newest tier won't be as profound as in Wotlk. Also in this system people would be forced to learn strategies, become more aware, and actually THINK, where instead of being forced into thoughtless repetitive heroics one would have to take different approaches to reach goals. Also, this would help make the game more epic by instead of just buying the best gear from a vendor, one would actually get rewarded for defeating a boss, tokens would still exist, but they would be supplementary.

2. Create an aura for older raids as new tiers are introduced to encourage doing them. For example, Naxx would have an aura saying "the inhabitants of naxx have become weak after countless assaults, their damage and health has decreased by X% " Not only would this help alleviate the learning curve for people who just dinged 80, it would make completing these raids a bit faster, as to appeal to casuals. So instead of being forced to do tons of heroics, one could start doing these older raids with an instant advantage, but of course would not receive the best rewards, since it is an older tier. This way Heroics won't be weeded out either, but 80 will become a balance between older raid content and heroics.

If you think the system is fine as it is please post why you think so, If you agree please post why. If you think the system is flawed, but don't agree with my solutions, post your possible solutions.

Common criticisms:

1. people shouldn't have to do old content. OR people won't see the newest content, they will be stuck in ulduar.
My response: I DONT WANT PEOPLE TO STAY ON OLD CONTENT!!!!!!!!! I want people to get into naxx with a buff so they can experience it, even if its easier. i want people to go into ulduar next with a buff and experience that too. I want people to experience the whole game, not just the NEWEST content. Right now the number of raids in the game are: ICC Ruby and vualt. thats it , the rest of the raids are unused. What kind of "World" is this? I want people to do older content with a BUFF so its easier, but they still experience it right.

Right now, old content is unused, in fact, we are forced to do even OLDER content (heroics) to get items better than or equal to more than HALF the raids in the current expansion.. WTF?

2. Wotlk is almost over and cataclysm is coming..

My response. This is why im posting this, i hated the wotlk raid system, so far i like the cata one. I dont want it to become like this, I want newer raids to be the main focus, but have older raids become easier through a debuff/ more tries per week. I want to encourage people to actually play the whole game, not just the newest content. I want people to become experienced in a raid environment. I DON'T want a level 80 6k gs paladin doing a naxx run and not knowing what the boss does. I DON'T want older content to offer better or equivalent gear to newer content. I want old content to be there, have a purpose, be experienced, enjoyed, and then people can move on. to newer things. and most of all I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO SPAM OLD, mindless, repetitive, easy content, when I am already two tiers ahead of it , AKA I dont want to spam heroics.

[Holyshnikies]

i agree with you 100%. I miss Kara and the old school stuff. Even Grulz lair. lol. I met some of the best friends that way... good ones.

Maybe wotlk was just to lure people in and Cata will be like BC again. ( i really hope so )

If cata is just another grind fest, Im hanging up my trinkets and calling it quits.

I think Teir gear should be earned with tokens only. And not badges. Lots of changes I could say, but I think blizzard knows and is somehow changing the game play so its challenging again but more fun at the same time.

---------- Post added 2010-11-21 at 08:39 PM ----------

Just the other day I let my account go inactive. I just couldn't stand paying $15 a month to get on both of my toons and make my gems from alchemy. Put them in the AH and log off. I will probably start playing Cata in January IF its like BC again.

[Daedelus]

Great post, especially the bit about the designers actively encouraging people to completely skip previous tiers.
In TBC there were still trinkets and so on from 'old' raids that people would go back for.

I like the idea about increasing the frequency of old raids, and adding a buff (or debuff) to make it easier. They did it for ICC so why not Naxx, Ulduar and TOC?

It would be so much more interesting to be able to ding 80 then join a group and go and do Naxx and Ulduar for the gear and badges instead of spamming the same old heroics.

[RüneRS]

I like this post, don't have time to write my tought on it, but I suggest you post this on the official forums

[wayne62682]

Agree, but the argument is always that nobody will bother to do the older raids because it's preventing them from progressing in the newer raids. Now, I did not play Vanilla or TBC - I only started playing a year ago (the week before ICC first became available). My understanding is that if this was Vanilla or TBC I would have been unable to raid at all, or in a best case scenario be stuck only doing Karazhan in TBC or Molten Core in Vanilla while people who played longer were doing Black Temple/AQ40. A serious guild isn't going to stop running ICC to run Naxx or Ulduar or even TOC again with a new member; they're only going to look for people who are at the level of ICC, so people who aren't are either stuck not raiding at all or raiding with scrub guilds that can only find ungeared people so are perpetually stuck running the entry-level of raids.

I agree 100% with the notion that a new player who has just dinged 80 right now (ignoring Cata in 2 weeks) would have zero idea how to play their class properly in a raid environment, because heroics are so faceroll now due to overgearing there is no "playing your class" or even use of basic tactics. I'll take a favorite example, the last boss of Halls of Stone, Sjonnir the Ironshaper. He does this pulse AOE attack (Lightning Ring, I believe) and you used to have to run away from it or it would decimate you. Now, because chances are people are going to vastly outgear the dungeon, nobody bothers to move for it, they can usually burn the boss down before or just after he does it. It's crazy. It teaches DPS there's no need to move out of the fire because you can be healed through it and win the encounter. It encourages tanks to pull entire rooms at once, because healers and DPS will start that "gogogo" shit if you don't. The faceroll nature of heroics right now are ruining the game, despite the fact they've immensely helped by allowing people like myself, who came to the game late, to still see endgame content.

I wouldn't be able to be 12/12 ICC10 on my Pally if I didn't have the heroic system, because I'd never be able to get into a guild running ICC and would have been stuck raiding Naxx or maybe Ulduar until Cataclysm hits.. IMO the big problem is there's no reason to go back to the old raids, unless you're just farming JPs and even then people want ICC-geared folks to just steamroll it and ignore tactics instead of accepting newbies who want to cut their teeth in a "real" raid before jumping head-first into ICC.

[Loonatek]

The way i see the problem is being able to buy gear ( full tier gear and offpieces ) with "badges" now known as JP. Yes 1-3 pieces with those would be good but not the whole tier.The problem with dungeons is that after few tiers ofc they become faceroll and ppl will start not caring about stuff and the new players don't need to care about stuff bc they didn't die or didn't wipe bc of something they did or not did.I remember when MGT was released and doing on heroic would make even ssc-bt geared players wipe on it bc it was hard and you really had to know what you were doing.Icc dungeons are let's say... a small example of that.When it came out ppl actually wiped from time to time and actually had to move from crap, but again after a while that got facerolled and nobody cares.The way to "fix" this is to remove all tier pieces from vendor and make them like it was in TBC exchange tokens, and the only items you could buy with JP would be few items which won't make you skip to last tier content.That way you just dinged, you're in you're blues, let's say you have JP for 1 epic , you buy it, you craft another epic, you run few heroics, buy another epic and then so on untill you're ready for first tier of raiding. Do that like OP said with some sort of debuff that would make it a bit "easier and faster" without allowing you to stand in fire and stuff. Obvious stuff should still one shot you no matter in what gear lvl you're in... srsly... like 100000k dmg taken from obvious stuff.Anyway, I totally agree with what you're saying, but I don't blame the LFG tool for ruining it bc it was so lame when 2 ppl had to go and summon the rest bc they had hs on cd/ were tanks/ had something to do for 5 min etc.

[Altmania]

The problem is if you do older raids for gear that you have to spend a few weeks on it when most people are doing harder stuff making it nearly impossible to get a group

[Fairelight]

I agree with the basic principals of this post, How ever i think the simplest solution is simply to give another Tier of JP, you obtain the first tier from heroics, this helps you gear up for raids, 2nd tier is from raids, you can buy the latest gear from from these points, the more raids you run the faster you obtain points, even if you sit in the 1st raid available and not progress any further you can still obtain the gear, only its going to take many weeks/ months longer

[kalaven]

I enjoy the THOUGHT of going back to TBC because Wrath turned into a boring AOE fest and epic gear was no longer epic; HOWEVER the problem with TBC is that the overwhelming majority of players never saw end game content. Raids were tough and most pugs didn't even get through Kara. Also, you HAD to be in a 25 man guild that was doing well or you never cleared T5/T6 unless you had friends in high places.

As a game developer I would never design my game so only 2% of its players ever saw the end of the game. If Xbox created a game like that no one would pay for it.

When you look at the initial design for cata it seems like they are trying to take the things that worked in TBC and merge it with the advancements made in Wrath. Hopefully they will find a way to balance it. Putting a cap on JP's and VP's is a start; no more spamming thousands of heroics if you get into a raiding guild, and you can't ding 80 and get all 251 geared in literally 2 days (yes I've seen that happen). Also, with the guild perk system you pretty much NEED a guild to be good so I envision less pugging a few months after launch.

As long as blizzard sticks to their guns and doesn't nerf the hell out of the new heroics to cater to the wrath babies who will QQ "omg heroics are hard I wanna spam blizzard/rain of fire all day" then people will learn how to play all over again and that knowledge can be carried into the new raid boss fights. The new raid mechanics in cata will definitely separate the chaff from the wheat.

[Soldout]

I agree with this post 100% I really like the idea of changing the older raids to be more frequent, and the idea of adding a debuff. It would be pretty cool, but I'm sure you would have large amount of players that would complain about having to go through old content to get to the higher end raids. In the long run I think we would have a much stronger, and a better quality group of players. It's too late to try and fix things in WOTLK, but hopefully things will be different once Cataclysm goes live. I've heard a lot of talk about heroics being "heroic" again, and I have watched a l lot of videos of the BETA, but only time will really tell.

[Phuzzy]

I completely agree. I played through BC from beginning to end, but as a casual gamer, I never got through SSC. Still, by the end of the expansion, I began to feel like I had a strong character because most players were around or below my level. During the entire expansion I was pvping and raiding to get more gear. I could out dps plenty of people even with two merciless swords. That's what made it fun, I could choose what I wanted to use (and it would work) and I wasn't forced into doing something just to progress. Even though I never reached BT until the very end, it was fun knowing there was something more to achieve, or a goal. Now, I've killed the Lich King with a casual group of people. I'm not saying that's bad, but I know for a fact that some of those people were not at all skilled enough for anything past SSC.
All I'm trying to say is that it's more fun to go through the content and gear up as you want, not forced to farm dungeons like it is today. Once I killed LK, there was nothing left except level new characters, which once again gets repetitive. In BC, for most people there was always more to achieve. In Wrath, if you don't have ICC gear, you must be a fresh 80, no in between. It's not fun.
My hope is that designers realize that. People ultimately want to enjoy the game, not just be addicted (which is what this system is designed to do, to give people people instant gratification). It's more fun to finally win something you've been wanting than just farm and farm for days and get something you feel like you need just to continue.

[sicness]

I don't get what is with people who think that blizzard should force players to do old content. Why are some people so into that? It just doesn't make sense. The game is about enjoying what you do in it, not doing something that's required to be done so you can do something that you enjoy doing. Why is that such a bad thing? I mean all your idea implements is even more farming of old content for guilds, that's not fun and wouldn't really accomplish anything.

[Ciah]

Make heroics award gear 2 tiers old. With ICC as the prime raid, heroic JP gives Ulduar level gear, and both Ulduar and ToC have one of these auras in them:

For example, Naxx would have an aura saying "the inhabitants of naxx have become weak after countless assaults, their damage and health has decreased by X% " Not only would this help alleviate the learning curve for people who just dinged 80, it would make completing these raids a bit faster, as to appeal to casuals.

That way people have to raid *just a tiny bit* before they can actually get into the top level raid.

[Deleted]

While I agree, I am just not sure if it's right. I mean, I try to look at the matter globaly, and I see that as gear progresses older content becomes obsolete, and in the end maybe we've just have enough experience in wow to say it's grindy, now that we have geared our mains and our alts, but to a new player it might seem very differently.
I just rest my case in this matter. I can't simply find a solution to this, and I think neither the nerf aura you suggested nor the more times per week will fix it. The only solution I can see to that although it may sound out of reality, is by tuning the bosses dmg/health to the new gear levels, but that would have it's aftereffects.

[Voltair]

At first I thought "Great QQ thread" Then I was like "Constructive Solution's to a problem""

I agree entirely that perhaps some sort of "dumb down buff" should be put into older tier raids. I'm not entirely sure if I'd want to have their HP decreased or how hard they hit, but something of that nature or perhaps a more creative way, that still leaves an emphasis on the fight mechanics and you can't over-ride them. Such as enrage timers. Which Is why I don't entirely want a boss to have less HP.

I disagree that raid locks should be shorter. Blizzard has expressively stated they consolidated to raid lockouts to prevent burnout. Shortening the lock-outs causes burnout. I propose that they should make crafted/reputation/dungeon-quest type gear THAT IS STILL VALUABLE AFTER THE TIER IT IS RELEASED WITH IS OLD. Much like BC. Where the stats did not increase to such an extent that one Ilvl of gear would almost always be flat better than a lower ilvl piece. I mean there were Heroic dungeon epics that were used for a long time. Same with some gear from Kara

Make it more of a toss-up or at least take a little more thought than OHEY ILVL UPGRADE /insert gear to slot

[videotape]

I also expected to see just another run-of-the-mill QQ thread, but I generally agree with the sentiment that character progression past level cap feels very binary and uninteresting. Of course, it's also possible that we've all gone mad from a full year of having no new (real) content to speak of.

I'm not really sure what the solution is, but there may be some merit to the suggestions you provide. I think taking your second suggestion (nerfing old tiers by X%), combined with a significant boost in JP drops from old raids, might incentivise players to run raids rather than heroics. The nerf is necessary to mitigate the increased potential for fail inherent in most PUGs. The increase in JP drop rate is extremely important to mitigate the perceived opportunity cost of raiding instead of engaging in relatively risk-free heroic spam.

[alchdemon]

I don't want people to repeat old content, I want people to experience it. No one starts playing an expansion from the beggining and clears the first tier of content should be forced to do it again. What i am saying is people who start midway through the expansion, or near the end.

I want new 80s to do old raids maybe 3-6 times to gear up for the next raid. so in other words. do naxx 3-6 times, then ulduar 3-6 times then Toc. I want to make heroics supplementary ways to gear up, the gear should never be as good as raids. it makes no sense. Instead old content should be easier. so here are my responses to some criticisms.

1. guild don't want to rerun old content to gear up new players.

My Response: either ways old content, whether it be olders raids or older heroic dungeons( some people fail to realize u could technically class heroics Old content) , need to be reran to gear up a new member. With my solutions the old content the new player would have to go through is more epic, funner, engaging. As for the guild members, a combination of both a debuff on old dungeons+ the gear they have from newer raids would make doing naxx for a couple of new players a breeze in the park. Also this combined with the new raid lockout system and drops in 10 man raids being equal to 25 man raids would make it super easy for new players to farm old raids, and not even for that long.

2. People will always do the fastest way to get geared in order to do the new content.

my response: well, this is OBVIOUS, the thing is, i want the fastest way to be RAIDING not heroics. I want players to be tested, but also have an advantage for doing old content, thats why I'm suggesting the debuff and the multiple times in one week to make it so a previously 4hr raids takes 2 hrs or less. This way players experience old content, get geared and such. For those saying people will skip str8 to Toc and skip ulduar of naxx, u forget these raids will still be difficult if say you jump into ToC with item level 200~ gear.

BTW, i came up with a way to balance heroics and raids. This is tentative, but make it so some enchants/bonuses/whatever requires some heroics. So for example you will need to farm a bit of heroics, a fraction of what it is at the current time, to get an enchant or a relic/wand/idol etc.

Also if you disagree with my solutions please state if you like the current system or not, if you don't, please have something constructive.

[Daedelus]

As it stands, it is quite possible to get full 251 tier pieces in 2 days of heroics, BUT you are still walking round with green trinkets/weapons/neck/bracers etc (not quite, but you get my point) or even heirloom stuff. I know on my lock, I had full 251 gear, some 232 stuff (from the new heroics) and still using Dignified Headmasters Charge!

Naxx/Toc/Ulduar have all these weapons/ trinkets in them that would have been great. Yeah they might be lower level items but some of them are still excellent, or at least good enough for early ICC.

Also, while we're about it, can Blizzard please get rid of ALL BOE gear from raids? Such a joke. Yes, my guild made some nice gold out of them, but it just feels cheap to have them 'on the market'.

[Dezrow]

I like this idea. and to be honest it would be easier to put back in game now because of how things work now. Back then it was a pain in the ass because your first raid was a 10-man and then it jumped up to 25-man so you would have to recruit and all of that nonsense, now you can do both so that having to do the old before the new is not as much of a big deal.

[sicness]

The primary issue with what you propose though is no one would be doing the old content. Forcing guilds to do that old content is bad game design because guilds who aren't at the top will always be behind by losing members the best guilds and have to continuously do the old content. This is exactly what happened in BC and why they changed it so players have control of gearing up themselves for the most current content. You also have to keep in mind that it won't be so easy to out gear content as it was in WotLK, as gear won't scale so ridiculously and heroic modes have a considerable jump in difficult that can't simply be out geared.