Dear Ghostcrawler - YOU Are The Problem

[mistahwilshire]

So in your opinion no one should state their opinions and no one should come with a fix for the problem..because that means they are the problem..intresting

Get out of here with this "come with a fix for the problem" nonsense as if anything posted here or even on the official forums is going to magically "fix" what is only broken by opinion to begin with.

Every single one of these threads is just selfish rambling conjecture.

[Reyzzz]

So in your opinion no one should state their opinions and no one should come with a fix for the problem..because that means they are the problem..intresting

It's because most players who give feedback, do it behalf of their own wants/needs absent vision the developers have.

[Deleted]

I like LFR it means that Blizzard spends more time developing raids so raiders get better raids.

I did hate the heroics in MoP. The heroics in MoP felt like they were just normal level 90 dungeons that were in previous expansions. Blizz removed the level 90 normal tier of dungeons this expansion probably because they could not make the heroics any easier.

And they "added" challenge modes.

If you like the difficulty they are still there.

Cata start difficulty heroics where a CLUSTER FUCK in pugs, they where really good fun in a guild group.

L90 Heroics (or whatever you want to call them) = Good for PuGs

Challenge Modes = Good for guild groups.

Really not sure what is complicated about that.

[Oxyra]

I'd like to say, I came here expecting someone bitching about everything.
I read through the whole thing.
And everything you said is precisely my opinion on the subject.

Well done good sir. Well done.

See: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...8#post21013008 for more details specifically on the detrimental effects of joining lockouts.

[McNeil]

Your going to get flamed to hell because its MMOC, but I do agree on some of your points. Good luck with the rediculous arguments and hatred that will follow.

People always get flamed on this site when they look like they are ''attacking'' WoW, even if they have some realy good points

[Oxyra]

And they "added" challenge modes.

If you like the difficulty they are still there.

Cata start difficulty heroics where a CLUSTER FUCK in pugs, they where really good fun in a guild group.

L90 Heroics (or whatever you want to call them) = Good for PuGs

Challenge Modes = Good for guild groups.

Really not sure what is complicated about that.

Challenge Modes are great fun, but after you clear them once on Gold, and then maybe on an alt or two to get the other mounts. What point is there to them?
You cap VP by running a raid every week and doing 1-2 daily dungeons to get some free rep with some faction somewhere. Or doing dailies to get coins.
CMs are faster if you have a perfect group comp ready to go at any given time, but to find people to run them, and then actually run them, then spend 60 minutes for not even bronze because you're just doing "CMs". Heroics are faster VP.

CMs are a great idea in theory, but in practise they don't work, as once this expansion finishes, it's more worthless content unless they implement level scaling into them. If they add more CMs and implement a formula based level/gear scaling to them to bring them up to 95 or whatever the next expansion is, so we're constantly lugging them along. Give people opportunity to queue into them on the basis of Heroic Scenarios where you need a group of 5 premade to queue in. Expand the number of them, and give more rewards for actually doing them beyond the first time.

I mean w0w, a mount, a title, a gear set that looks amazing sure, but then what, you're done with them and you never go back. Cool, a chance to get iLvl 516 gear from a chest for doing them. Big. Deal.

Add a Glory to the CM Hero. Same achievements as Glory to the Hero, make completing the requirements for some achievements reduce the timer on your CM, but the requirement to be rewarded the achievement is to fulfill its' requirements and complete Gold at the same time, have multiple levels of Gold/Silver/Bronze.

Throw in some token mounts.

Add on with the Gear/Level formula based system, you can easily set up formulas based on old content and their levels to allow people to run old raids even in CM format, add new things to do with them. This new 516 gear is great for getting people into CMs, but you're getting people into a great idea that's also stale and old already because it had no future value added to it.

[willowe]

It would be nice to come on here someday and see some actual new insight on really anything at all.

Sadly today is not that day.

It's like that movie, you know, Groundhog Day.

[Kronik85]

OP entirely misses the point that the community has consistently it has no interest in self moderation. We have all this gating because WoW players can't handle the idea that they might have to moderate their behaviour so they don't burn out or kill themselves. You didn't have to grind the dailies at all, the VP in T14 was a complete red herring anyway yet people went ape shit on them....albeit there was very little else to do in 5.0 beyond hitting 90 and starting a grind. I don't mind that really, I don't Alt and the release patch can't be Alt friendly because it has to provide the content for you main, enough to stop you hitting 90 and getting bored.

LFD/LFR has to have a high rate of success. All content that's meant to be available for everyone NEEDS to have a high rate of success or people won't bother which was exactly what happened when Cata hit, the casual's hit the HCs and quit....en masse. Using LFD in the first few weeks on Cata was a nightmare to the point where I didn't, that was fine for me with a guild and friends and we had a blast running em the first few times pretending it was the old days where you needed a Mage for every HC ever (although Shammies were the star of Cata with both Hex and Bind) but the fun would of ended as soon as I had to take an Alt (if I had an Alt) to get ready for raiding.

LFR doesn't teach you any mechanics unless you don't want to learn any mechanics. Normal and LFR are normally the same mechanically only you won't die if you fail em. If said LFR player wanted to learn the fight, they really could if they were so inclined.

I don't really think we would be seeing half this QQ at this stage if ToT had sensible difficulty progression on 10 man to require an actual set up if you want to have much success if your undergeared, if you can't remove Diseases on door 3 you will be fucked if your a "Friends and Family" raider which have been the main casualties of 10/25 lock out change.

To put that into context I sight my first night in ToT on release week. Walk up to Jin'rokh and one shot him nps, ilvl low 490ish average. Come to Horridon and spend the rest of the evening wiping because we can neither remove poison (which you can't interupt every single one because of Effusions and low DPS) followed by a Disease that you can't control nor could we remove. Get it down either at the end of the night or start of next raid then go to Council which was actually over tuned on 10 with each member having 33% more health than they are meant to.....well gl getting Sul down before he kills everyone.

If the first wing of ToT didn't ramp up so quickly then the raiders who can't meet a schedule but want something a little more challenging than LFR could be clearing up to Ji'kun now with no problem.

GC isn't the problem, having millions of players and a vocal minority which don't actually know what they want (no matter how much they think they do) however is.

[madethisfor1post]

Ghostcrawler listens to the people that pay to play the game and gives them what they want. Those same players complain about the change.

Ghostcrawler listens to the people that pay to play the game and changes it back. Those same players complain about the change.

The guy is fucked no matter what he does because the fickle player-base will ALWAYS complain about what he does.

His constituents are a bunch of petulant children who know about as much about programming, balancing and game design as your average orangutan.

It time to stop blaming the guy you pay to do exactly what you ask and point that finger inwards.

[Oxyra]

People always get flamed on this site when they look like they are ''attacking'' WoW, even if they have some realy good points

I love WoW more than 99% of this website I'd say, but I agree with nearly all his points (or maybe 100% of them, just don't wanna say 100% o.o).

He raises the points in a way to convince people of his viewpoint.

Personally, my favourite excuses about 25mans though, is how some peoples' computers cannot run them properly. How is that an excuse to restrict the vast majority of the player base from doing them? I can almost guarantee that if you spend $200 on a new computer (Peripherals not included), you can find a desktop, new or second hand, that can run 25mans on settings high enough to be 100% playable, and at an FPS high enough to be playable.

If you can't play 25mans, reduce your resolution (tl;dr your monitor is too big for your computer, if you're playing on a 24 inch screen with a 7 year old computer, I've got bad news for you), reduce your graphics settings, tone back outside programs, read guides on how to optimise FPS in WoW.

Please note: I said desktop.

WoW is a game designed to be played on a desktop. Not a laptop. Laptops are by definition, awful, cut down versions of a desktop at a more expensive price, because they have portability. If you're having trouble playing WoW on a laptop, stop. I don't care how poor you are, as I said, second hand or new, you can find desktops that are cheap as chips and will run WoW perfectly fine. Maybe you'll only get 15 FPS and it'll be on a resolution of say... 1440 x 900 or similar (Corresponds to a 22 inch monitor I believe? Unsure.) But I can guarantee you'll play the game well enough to enjoy yourself and stop having to worry because your computer can't run it.

This isn't Crysis. This isn't a game that will blow your mind with graphics and shit all over your computers' performance. WoW was designed to run on the simplest of systems with decent performance as long as you're not too greedy with your settings. I started playing WoW on a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6_Series GeForce 6800GT. It ran the game near flawlessly. It could run 25man raids or 40man raids. Your choice, it wasn't a beast of a computer, but it could do it. It's a card from 2004. Blowing your mind here, but that's 9 years ago. (Blows my mind as well). You can pick up a new card for $50 bucks that is way over double the performance of that card. Or less for second hand.

---------- Post added 2013-05-25 at 11:59 PM ----------

GC isn't the problem, having millions of players and a vocal minority which don't actually know what they want (no matter how much they think they do) however is.

Wrath model did this perfectly. Hard challenging bosses? Run it on 10man, learn mechanics, get a bit of free gear. Easier tuned difficulty.
Run it on 25man, get a bit of free gear, harder tuned but you know mechanics and players can get carried by those with more gear.
Go back to 10man with 25man gear, rinse repeat, except you have more gear, so you can go further.

tl;dr you're going in once, then twice, then once, then twice, rinse repeat and back and forth pushing through the content with more gear and learning it on an easier, but still not derp level difficulty, with gear that overgears the easier content.

[Kronik85]

Challenge Modes are great fun, but after you clear them once on Gold, and then maybe on an alt or two to get the other mounts. What point is there to them?

But if you've got the Gold on several chars have you not already spent enough time in them?

CMs are a great idea in theory, but in practise they don't work, as once this expansion finishes, it's more worthless content unless they implement level scaling into them. If they add more CMs and implement a formula based level/gear scaling to them to bring them up to 95 or whatever the next expansion is, so we're constantly lugging them along. Give people opportunity to queue into them on the basis of Heroic Scenarios where you need a group of 5 premade to queue in. Expand the number of them, and give more rewards for actually doing them beyond the first time.

What? Everything in this expansion that is content and not a feature will be irrelevant when the next expansion hits. That's always the case, why is it an issue now? When the next expansions comes out there will be new dungeons to turn into challenge modes and we might get a few of the vanilla dungeons that we didn't get this time. Challenge modes are very rewarding, you get achi's, you get a lovingly made xmog and you get mount, the only thing it doesn't reward is power progression but it does the job of saying your a nerd baller. If you tie gear progression to it then the people who can't do them will want to do them and the whole thing will be fucked because it's actually very accessible content.

I mean w0w, a mount, a title, a gear set that looks amazing sure, but then what, you're done with them and you never go back. Cool, a chance to get iLvl 516 gear from a chest for doing them. Big. Deal.

So you don't like you own idea? I dun get it.

Add a Glory to the CM Hero. Same achievements as Glory to the Hero, make completing the requirements for some achievements reduce the timer on your CM, but the requirement to be rewarded the achievement is to fulfill its' requirements and complete Gold at the same time, have multiple levels of Gold/Silver/Bronze.

Throw in some token mounts.

Now this is some quality thinking, challenge mode achi's? Sure ting, tie even more cool cosmetic stuff into em such as Xmog palette swaps so it doesn't eat into the art departments time too much but still look cool and further demonstrate your nerd ballerness. +1 for you, that's a pretty solid idea.

Add on with the Gear/Level formula based system, you can easily set up formulas based on old content and their levels to allow people to run old raids even in CM format, add new things to do with them. This new 516 gear is great for getting people into CMs, but you're getting people into a great idea that's also stale and old already because it had no future value added to it.

Too much development time and the community does not respond well the any reuse of art assets, see any post regarding ZA/ZG....ZG especially since it's a completely new dungeon with re used art assets.

[Metallikiddd]

OMG when are you people gonna learn. GC isnt the problem, KALGAN IS!!!!

[Deleted]

random heroic scenarios are a good step in the right direction.
add a beer league 10 men difficulty and you're set, raid pugs and social interaction are back.

[Cocobutters]

Blame for what?

[Doombringer]

Ghostcrawler = Blizzard?

Since when did he have absolute control over WoW?

Well, he is Lead Systems Designer. He has a lot of control over gameplay (which is made up entirely of systems) -- this includes loot types and itemization, buffs, debuffs, stats in general, abilities, Auction House, travel systems, etc., etc.

[Oxyra]

But if you've got the Gold on several chars have you not already spent enough time in them?



What? Everything in this expansion that is content and not a feature will be irrelevant when the next expansion hits. That's always the case, why is it an issue now? When the next expansions comes out there will be new dungeons to turn into challenge modes and we might get a few of the vanilla dungeons that we didn't get this time. Challenge modes are very rewarding, you get achi's, you get a lovingly made xmog and you get mount, the only thing it doesn't reward is power progression but it does the job of saying your a nerd baller. If you tie gear progression to it then the people who can't do them will want to do them and the whole thing will be fucked because it's actually very accessible content.



So you don't like you own idea? I dun get it.



Now this is some quality thinking, challenge mode achi's? Sure ting, tie even more cool cosmetic stuff into em such as Xmog palette swaps so it doesn't eat into the art departments time too much but still look cool and further demonstrate your nerd ballerness. +1 for you, that's a pretty solid idea.



Too much development time and the community does not respond well the any reuse of art assets, see any post regarding ZA/ZG....ZG especially since it's a completely new dungeon with re used art assets.

I humbly request you also take the time to read my other super long posts in this thread.

Allow me a rebuttal though, I may enjoy CMs, but to me, that there's no purpose to do them more than once per toon in an MMO is a disappointment. I often thought that a good idea is also to add in vanity items at the end of each of them, a 5% drop chance from the last boss for a chest that contains a weapon or a pet or a mount or something equally interesting, or maybe only one piece of gear of a full set. And only one drops per group. Maybe 5% is too harsh, point is, there's no reason to grind them.

As for development time on Gear/Level formula. It's already in place in low level BGs, and in CMs, the coding is all there. If they expand on it and replace static boss health values with scaling based on Gear/Level, then at the start of the next expac, for all this content that they don't want to be outdated, that they want to keep up to date and grow, they simply say. DPS level for group @ X iLvl should be Y. HPS level should be Z. Health level should be N. Then the formulas for all the bosses can simply scale around those, so the required DPS is essentially the same as expansions move on, the damage taken is the same. They're static values of damage in a sense, rather than a % of your HP, but they are able to be easily scaled dynamically based on some set values.

[The Ogdru Jahad]

I agree on a lot of your points. But at the same time I like GC. It's not in his interest to make decisions that hurt the game guys? Why do people blame the decline of WoW on him? The game is like 8 years old, of course it's going to lose subs and start to get stale. Get over it people. GC is a good guy, he knows his stuff. It's just time thats hurting WoW. No king rules forever.

[Kronik85]

Wrath model did this perfectly. Hard challenging bosses? Run it on 10man, learn mechanics, get a bit of free gear. Easier tuned difficulty.
Run it on 25man, get a bit of free gear, harder tuned but you know mechanics and players can get carried by those with more gear.
Go back to 10man with 25man gear, rinse repeat, except you have more gear, so you can go further.

tl;dr you're going in once, then twice, then once, then twice, rinse repeat and back and forth pushing through the content with more gear and learning it on an easier, but still not derp level difficulty, with gear that overgears the easier content.

The people that do that sort of thing are the players that feel they need to do everything they can do to play WoW. It's almost like you completely ignored my post when I spend most of it discussing how historically we can't handle this many options as a community. People favourite complaint about 25 man's is they are impossible to run on low pop servers to which there are too many of atm.

Ghostlands Horde EU, 0 raiding 25 man guilds has been that way since ICC. Turn over's a bitch.

[Oxyra]

Too much development time and the community does not respond well the any reuse of art assets, see any post regarding ZA/ZG....ZG especially since it's a completely new dungeon with re used art assets.

Also, there's so many gear sets in the game that people would love to obtain but could never obtain, see: The 3rd/4th colourations of gear on every tier set ever made pretty much. (Green DK Tier 11 springs to mind).

Development time is actually low, because once the basic system is in place, it's like loading something onto a trailer. Once it's on there, the workload to move it along is minimal compared to putting it in place in the first place. Then you have capabilities of random queues for premade groups with a large variety, as opposed to just the same ol' dungeons. This doesn't have to apply to just CMs, but also LFD dungeons, as you could use the similar scaling system to up older dungeons to max level, without ever having to worry about re-doing all the fine tuning elements.

---------- Post added 2013-05-26 at 12:28 AM ----------

The people that do that sort of thing are the players that feel they need to do everything they can do to play WoW. It's almost like you completely ignored my post when I spend most of it discussing how historically we can't handle this many options as a community. People favourite complaint about 25 man's is they are impossible to run on low pop servers to which there are too many of atm.

Ghostlands Horde EU, 0 raiding 25 man guilds has been that way since ICC. Turn over's a bitch.

They are two separate issues completely. Dead servers are not the fault of 25mans. Nor are 25mans the fault of dead servers. Keep the issues apart.

The community has been able to handle having all those options for the first three expansions, hell we have more options now than ever, but apparently we should restrict the options to 15 instead of 16, where in say... Vanilla we had the option of doing 3 things but it seemed like a lot more as they took longer than things these days (Hypothetical values).

I 100% agree on dead servers though, and splitting factions in terms of PvE gameplay should be removed (and possibly will be at the end of this expansion given current storyline tbqh). Merging servers is not necessary, but more in game conduits of the like of OpenRaid.US should be explored.

One idea I once had, was to add a fracturing channel system that priorities players on your own realm, but is also cross realm. Caps at say 1000 players, and then when it hits 1000, it spawns a new one (If there's only 1600 people, mathematically split into 800/800, but back on topic). This chat channel acts like a cross server LFG Channel from old WoW, players can then find groups because the game seems a lot more alive when no matter where you go in the world, you can VOLUNTARILY (Don't force it on players like General chat channel at the release of D3), join this channel and raid XRealm/XFaction or do RBGs (Which are already XRealm). Even when it's 1AM in the US and your server is dead, you're online and you can get grouped into a channel with all the other players who only have 5-10 people online on their realms, and it makes a community as one again without the need for server merging. It also removes the need to add/remove players on Real ID or BTag to do XRealm content as you can right click their name and interact.

Once this kind of backbone is in place, you can further work on keeping up to date, the amount of content available for XRealm/XFaction, limited possibly to the current tier if they wish to keep it that way, but it's a real simple amount of coding to make a chat channel (Channel function is in place already via CRZ zones in General chat and LFR/Other XRealm features) and expands a server's theoretical size instantly.

[Deleted]

This might be the worst criticism I've ever read about how "bad" this game apparently is. Ghostcrawler is not the boss behind every decision how things should be designed. I hope to god that you don't think that. There are a number of teams working on different things, for example one team working on quests, tome team working on dungeons and another team working on dungeons. Ghostcrawler is kind of the spokesman of every team. I get it, he might have some influences here and there and get to decide alot, but FAR FROM EVERYTHING.

The thing about LFR is that there are more people than you know that can't play more than 3-5 hours a week and they want them to be able to experience the content aswell, without forcing them to play more than they are able to play. Yes, people stand in fire and might be afk for a fight or two. But how does that make you so angry? You can kill the boss without those 4-5 people who does that every fight. That is how LFR is designed, they don't want us to wipe 10 times on every boss because some players don't know the tactics. If they made it harder, people wouldn't do LFR.

You are speaking for youself and WoW is not designed to fulfill one persons dream about how the game should be like, it is designed to satisfy the playerbase as a whole. If you're not having fun playing this game, feel free to unsubscribe and find another game and design team to throw shit at.

You're absolutely free to tell your opinion on the game. But please don't point fingers at one person, Ghostcrawler is NOT the man behind every final decision. See him more like a spokesman for all the design teams.

Oh and I forgot.. If you're seriously that angry AT A GAME as your first post shows, seek help.