Blizzard needs to realize its strength isn't balancing

[Darsithis]

They have, what, like 40+ specs to balance?

Yeah I'd say they do a really good job of getting them all fairly close depending on role and intention.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I am very happy they realized listening to posts and discussions like this is best left in the wind. Maybe it will get it's highest recognition will be a q&a question where they say, "we are looking into it".

[elaina]

They should keep it simple? Uhhhh by the contrary: some of the biggest gripes about BFA right now are that the game IS too simple (re: overly stripped down class design)

[Deleted]

The lack of comunication by their part and the usage of the Alpha phase as a marketing strategy to get streamers to feature the game isn't helping. They shouldn't have open Alpha to public access in the first place. They're just showcasting their impotence to search and evaluate feedback in mid stages of development, where changes are most likely to happen. Their intent to open Beta access merely to polish the game is in both parts arrogant and ignorant.

[Deleted]

Bringing up Vanilla in a thread about balance. Good Joke. You mean the era where Blizzard straight admitted they let Warriors dominate the game? Sounds awesome. Vanilla was a shit show of every proportion balance wise, and it's only feelings that make you think it was better.

Thanks for letting everyone know you didn't play it, so they know your opinion on Vanilla balance is invalid.

[Atreyes]

Considering how many things they have to balance and that the balance isn't THAT bad in most areas i'd argue that they are actually pretty damn good at it.
However if you demand perfect balance then good luck finding any game developer that is good at balance, because i have yet to find a game i'd describe as perfectly balanced.

Id have to disagree with this, there has barely been any small number tweaks to keep the classes fairly in line at all, if we look at 75%ile logs theres as much as an 800k dps difference between the best and worst spec, with an average difference of 500k+ between highest and lowest and some specs that have just been in the dumpster for the whole tier without being buffed, causing people who play those specs to either quit or reroll, or just be super unhappy.

Healer balance has actually been fairly ok this expansion raid wise though, only real exception being that having a holy pally/resto shammy is almost needed, where the rest are pretty interchangeable.

[Alydael]

This is the one thing that comes to my mind when I hear people have all the tanks at max level. I'm just like... Why?? They all are so retardedly similar it's silly. The only tank that is somewhat deviant from the others is Bear druid, but druids have always had that shapeshift hybrid thing going for them and that's what I like about them. They're the last "stance dance" derivative you can get now.

Same with healers kinda. The "dps as you heal" thing is cool if it's optional, I think requiring it is a bust. But other than cooldowns, the healers basically play the same. Paladins are just gimped with AOE and druids you have to spec to not be gimped in single target.

Specializations don't feel specialized, it's weird. My best example would be Lucio from Hots: he's a healer, but he doesn't have a single direct target heal and he can completely forgo healing for extreme party wide mobility. Now THAT is specializing in something. I would use Brightwing as an example also.
They don't just heal, they specialize in support. It's really hard to replicate that in WoW when they keep pruning and simplifying and homogenizing.

I think the real problem with all this comes from competition. If they design raid bosses (or any sort of challenging content) with the idea that you can just bring "any class"- then it will not be as "challenging," and people will get bored. If you make it super challenging- then people will parse classes to decide which class is the best and then most people will bring that class.

It is a "lose-lose" situation so to speak.

I think they should just go back to the old way (certain classes were raid spec, certain were pvp, some were all around). I think it is perfectly fair to say "that spec isn't really designed for raids."

When I started playing, (near the end of Vanilla right before BC launched)- I decided I wanted to raid. I didn't want to wait long to find a group either. So (surprisingly) I rolled a prot war. I really wanted to play a mage or hunter but it took dps forever to find a group or team on my realm (I didn't have that kind of time). I rolled the prot war and was happy with it. I didn't complain that Blizz forced me to roll it or that the other tanks weren't "balanced enough to be competitive." I just figured that if I liked the game I would play and if not- I'll just play something else.....

Blizz needs to stop letting the fact that people are crying actually affect the game design decisions- the homogenization of classes and the "bring the player not the class" philosophy was terrible for the game really.

[Sarkol]

Legion is as well shit show in every aspect. No respect for elders, no respect for youngsters.

But it objectively isn't. Basically every spec can participate in all PVE content with not too much of a massive swing in performance. At a level below the very top players, even more so. In vanilla you were hugely behind if you didn't play certain specs. Lots of specs barely even functioned.

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Thanks for letting everyone know you didn't play it, so they know your opinion on Vanilla balance is invalid.

Thanks for the utterly worthless comment.

[Heladys]

And that they need to do away with systems which require delicate balancing.

Talent trees, recipe for disaster. There will always be a cookie cutter build with one talent outperforming the others. I'm not sure why they continue with the talent tree concept expansion after expansion. It is a big resource drainer.

Azerite, effectively talent tree-lite. Exposing themselves to many combinations of traits, but at the end of the day again it will boil down to the numbers.

PvP, all these bizarre and convoluted systems have forced them to separate PvP from PvE. At the cost of even more development resources. Had they kept things simple there wouldn't be a need to separate the two.

WoW is in maintenance mode now and Blizzard should be focusing on making their lives easier in an area that they struggle with a lot so they have time to refine balance.

You should realize your strength isn't in critical thought or quality writing, and leave the posting to others while you're in maintenance mode.

[Soon-TM]

You know so very much about game design, I wonder, which of the gaming companies has the pleasure of paying you for this wisdom of yours?

So you can't provide feedback unless you are a consummate game developer. Got it.

[BuckSparkles]

Bringing up Vanilla in a thread about balance. Good Joke. You mean the era where Blizzard straight admitted they let Warriors dominate the game? Sounds awesome. Vanilla was a shit show of every proportion balance wise, and it's only feelings that make you think it was better.

Would rather take vanilla than this boring ass game. PVP is not fun right now because every class feels exactly the same. Balance brought blandness.

Again, in vanilla every class had stupid gimmicks, because classes were far more unique. When everybody is overpowered, nobody is.

[Trend]

WoW is in maintenance mode now

In the software world, "maintenance mode" means that all active development has been ceased and no new features are being developed and generally only the most critical bugs are even looked at. Thus, it would be immensely stupid to say that WoW is in maintenance mode ... you know ... with a whole fucking expansion about to come out.

By this statement I know with absolute certainty that you're either dumb or a troll (or both) and I couldn't care any less what you think about any topic.

[sister]

Oh wow, someone demanding that Blizzard do less work for a change. What a refreshing viewpoint.

[yjmark]

Bringing up Vanilla in a thread about balance. Good Joke. You mean the era where Blizzard straight admitted they let Warriors dominate the game? Sounds awesome. Vanilla was a shit show of every proportion balance wise

lol - I totally agree. Vanilla and TBC were the reasons that Blizz has been trying so hard to fix class balance. They were so out of whack back then. Most people who make claims about balance being good back then have either completely forgotten what it was like, or didn't really play back then.

[Sparklelord]

They need to bring back old talent trees :< I miss having choices

[Pull My Finger]

And that they need to do away with systems which require delicate balancing.

Talent trees, recipe for disaster. There will always be a cookie cutter build with one talent outperforming the others. I'm not sure why they continue with the talent tree concept expansion after expansion. It is a big resource drainer.

Azerite, effectively talent tree-lite. Exposing themselves to many combinations of traits, but at the end of the day again it will boil down to the numbers.

PvP, all these bizarre and convoluted systems have forced them to separate PvP from PvE. At the cost of even more development resources. Had they kept things simple there wouldn't be a need to separate the two.

WoW is in maintenance mode now and Blizzard should be focusing on making their lives easier in an area that they struggle with a lot so they have time to refine balance.

You need to realize that you're talking out your you-know-what. Seriously, you're incompetent. You're just some jaded gamer dude. You know nothing of the tech or the craft.

If you had any grasp at all, it'd be clear to you that they're actually doing quite a good job.

[FAILoZOFF]

As far as I'm concerned, they could remove talents and I don't think anybody would complain.

that's where you'd be wrong, oh so wrong, in fact most would "complain"; even tho you are correct about everything else you just said.
customization is cool when (and only then) it means something and you can indeed express your creativity
not defending or praising old talent trees in any way (as they were neither good and certainly perfect)... but I had so much more fun with them than I do with current "tiered" ones, even tho on paper new ones bear sooo much more meaning to them than vast majority of what you could find in "old talent trees" esp when it comes down to raw output ones, utility talents you can still more or less evaluate by yourself the more experienced you are the better but raw output ones are total crap and are pretty awful and you are pretty much forced to some kind of simulation-craft

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If you had any grasp at all, it'd be clear to you that they're actually doing quite a good job.

yes and no
while yes, they deal surprisingly good with crap they have created, but they could very well avoid most if not all of that for little to no loss in gameplay itself
so, yeah- take it as you will

[kail]

Balance or unique class/specs. Pick one.

[yjmark]

Balance or unique class/specs. Pick one.

Personally, I think there is pretty good balance now, and all class/specs feel very different to me. So....I pick both

[Wondercrab]

WoW is incredibly well balanced compared to most games. The illusion of "poor" balance merely comes from a dedicated subsection of the community that has very little tolerance for anything that falls even slightly behind the curve. Balance discrepancies in general are pretty narrow in WoW, especially at the level that the vast majority of people are playing at.