World of Warcraft: Current Year

Foggy

Foggy

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I’ve killed it several times. It’s a very scripted and precise fight. It’s just a long dance. You memorize the steps; very few variables change from pull to pull. It is one of the best bosses ever designed in the game’s history.

Everybody is going to have the WA packs and timers but they aren’t doing anything. All positions are set in raid planner and memorized. They are not assigned in real time.
 
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Brodhi

Brodhi

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I'm not defending blizzard or any of their devs compentency at this point. But all the doom and gloomers acting like they won't be able to raid or do high M+ without 3rd party addons do realize the company who is making the content is also controlling the tools that allow the content to be completed right? It doesn't really matter if their raid frames or nameplates or cooldown trackers all blow, as long as they still design the content to be completed with the tools they give you. If anything this might create more of a skill expression that will allow for more challenging content which you need half a brain to complete instead of relying on helpers to keep track of shit for you.
 
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Brodhi

Brodhi

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Foggy said:
I’ve killed it several times. It’s a very scripted and precise fight. It’s just a long dance. You memorize the steps; very few variables change from pull to pull. It is one of the best bosses ever designed in the game’s history.

Everybody is going to have the WA packs and timers but they aren’t doing anything. All positions are set in raid planner and memorized. They are not assigned in real time.
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Yes, for better or worse it reminds me of FFXIV fights. You move to where you need to move, you do you rotation and mechanics. Mechanics are all easily identifiable and memorized for the sequence of the fight, no addons needed. This is the direction they are moving to with raids. Easier entry level, potentially higher ceiling.
 
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Neranja

Neranja

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Brodhi said:
But all the doom and gloomers acting like they won't be able to raid or do high M+ without 3rd party addons do realize the company who is making the content is also controlling the tools that allow the content to be completed right?
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Can you blame them? The community doesn't trust Blizzard, because Blizzard has proven time and time again that it does either panic hotfixes when something is in favor of players, and then let the game sit in an unbalanced state for months without even acknowledging community sentiment.

The WoW player base is way too good at pattern recognition. This made the retail crowd doomers, and the classic players rabid dogs that scream "no changes!" It'll take multiple expansions to win trust back.
 
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A

Ashin

Silver Knight of the Realm
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Brodhi said:
I'm not defending blizzard or any of their devs compentency at this point. But all the doom and gloomers acting like they won't be able to raid or do high M+ without 3rd party addons do realize the company who is making the content is also controlling the tools that allow the content to be completed right? It doesn't really matter if their raid frames or nameplates or cooldown trackers all blow, as long as they still design the content to be completed with the tools they give you. If anything this might create more of a skill expression that will allow for more challenging content which you need half a brain to complete instead of relying on helpers to keep track of shit for you.
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Similar to above - Blizz have a long record of saying they are going to make X change to the player experience, as it'll enable them to make Y change. They then do X, but don't do Y.

E.g. Last expansion they severely reduced Tank's self sufficiency (healing/mitigation etc) and Healer's healing output, saying that it was too strong in m+. Same with making stops not put mob casts on cds. They then didn't nerf trash's burst damage, or reduce number of boltcasters in dungeons - meaning the only way groups could push high was pull smaller, and optimise for classes that had max stops, and then hope they killed enough trash before they ran out of cds..
 
Neranja

Neranja

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Valorath said:
maybe XIV style UI and raid fights is what can turn it around for WoW.
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They certainly turned it around for XIV. But at the same time encounter philosophies differ between WoW and XIV, and XIV is also missing an endless scaling dungeon system like M+.

The big issue here is that Ion promised that without combat addons they could make simpler boss fights, because they don't have to factor in WeakAuras auto-solving some mechanics. We have to still see if that check bounces. But at the same time Ion doesn't seem to really care about M+, and some seasons just have been a shitshow.

Also, Blizzard woke the fuck up and finally improved their encounter visual language for standard mechanics, something XIV had basically since their reboot. It still sucks, it's still color-on-same-color, and you still can't easily differentiate between "avoid" and "soak" circles in hectic fights, but it is an improvement over the "look at those swirlies with blurry edges" bullshit they insisted on for years.

It's the same with class complexity: Some idiot elitist jerk devs couldn't handle that there were other smart people out there which figured out their designs, and made systems and class designs more complex and convoluted with each addon. Which lead to people developing and using WeakAuras and addons just to play their class. But at the same time Blizzard can't properly balance classes anymore themselves in the design process, and now just balances them according to the internal logs they gather.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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Neranja said:
Also, Blizzard woke the fuck up and finally improved their encounter visual language for standard mechanics, something XIV had basically since their reboot. It still sucks, it's still color-on-same-color, and you still can't easily differentiate between "avoid" and "soak" circles in hectic fights, but it is an improvement over the "look at those swirlies with blurry edges" bullshit they insisted on for years.
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That is one thing FF14 did well - the game teaches you the mechanics language as you level up. This means stack, this means spread, etc. Whenever the game throws a completely new mechanic at you, it typically does it towards the start of the fight or midway through it (ultimates/savages being exceptions) or it introduces a softer version in the dungeon for that patch series so you at least begin to learn what the tell means.
 
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jayrebb

jayrebb

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Neranja said:
They certainly turned it around for XIV. But at the same time encounter philosophies differ between WoW and XIV, and XIV is also missing an endless scaling dungeon system like M+.

The big issue here is that Ion promised that without combat addons they could make simpler boss fights, because they don't have to factor in WeakAuras auto-solving some mechanics. We have to still see if that check bounces. But at the same time Ion doesn't seem to really care about M+, and some seasons just have been a shitshow.
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The gist I got is the M+ team is deeply entrenched (via eSports elitistjerks culture that's run the design the past decade) Ion has little authority to change anything without them agreeing. He can kick the tires and hold meetings with them, but when the entire team tells him to shut the fuck up, he shuts the fuck up. He had 10 different changes he discussed at length in various sit down interviews for M+ and not even 1 change went through, AND this was after Blizzard launching an official survey of M+ players which is usually the precursor to major changes occurring. Blizzard had to run a PR campaign after Season 1 of War Within practically. The only way to explain that is the M+ team call the shots, not Ion.
 
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Foggy

Foggy

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M+ in TWW saw the biggest changes to the content since it was created. Unclear what you are on about.
 
jayrebb

jayrebb

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Ironic out of all these "changes", they were all balancing changes and none of the overhaul Ion promised.

Stop-casts weren't changed for PUGs. Timers weren't changed-- in fact, the "change" ended up being adding time to timers. Etc. I could go on with several more changes Ion said were in the works last year at the end of Season 1.

Certainly tracks with the big changes Ion said he had coming.

Balancing doesn't register at this point as "biggest changes". That's compromising, not overhauling. Get the fuck out of here.
 
Folanlron

Folanlron

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I don't know much about the whole Mythic system and everything,

but as a 14 player have they gone back and adjusted a lot of the "older" fights to present the new way things are gonna work? Or are they just throwing the kitchen sink at the problem and seeing what works?
 
Neranja

Neranja

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Cybsled said:
That is one thing FF14 did well - the game teaches you the mechanics language as you level up. Whenever the game throws a completely new mechanic at you, it typically does it towards the start of the fight or midway through it (ultimates/savages being exceptions) or it introduces a softer version in the dungeon for that patch series so you at least begin to learn what the tell means.
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The updated 7.1 Hall of the Novice teaches you now all basic telegraphs. It also gives an updated +30% XP ring up to level 60.

For years Blizzard insisted on the "every boss is unique" idea. If you pay attention in dungeons, you'll notice that the trash mobs leading up to the boss have simplified and softer versions of the mechanics. However, this does not work for some bosses, and in most cases players just don't pay attention to trash mechanics in Normal/Heroic/M0, and only start to manage them in higher M+ keys.




jayrebb said:
The gist I got is the M+ team is deeply entrenched (via eSports elitistjerks culture that's run the design the past decade) Ion has little authority to change anything without them agreeing. He can kick the tires and hold meetings with them, but when the entire team tells him to shut the fuck up, he shuts the fuck up.
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According to Occam's Razor, my personal theory is: Ion got Peter Principle'd into his current position as a game director. Either because he is most senior from the ones left, or he lawyer talked himself into it with management. Now that he is responsible for the game as a whole he is overwhelmed by all the spinning plates and just barks commands to his underlings. There is a high chance that all those promises he gave in interviews never made it into "official" requirements and requests to the teams that had to implement them, and the team learned of those promises from the interviews, if at all.

For example, the "reduce healer healing" + "reduce tank self-healing and sustain" came into the equation because healers complained that they a) had nothing to do with the tank, and b) that damage is very spiky and quick, and healing is more like playing whack-a-mole trying to keep everyone up without any of their oh-shit-buttons being able to save players from mistakes. However the memo WHY those changes were implemented on the combat side never made it to the encounter designers and the M+ team.

The core issue at Blizzard seems to be that no one has a coherent vision for the game as a whole and where it is going. Ion, coming from a raider and raid encounter designer background, just seems to care about funneling players into his raids so he can congratulate the top 0.1% players who win raid world first. He doesn't seem to care about the health of the game as a whole, as Ions goal are raids, and he ignores the other parts as much as possible. Well, except when he needs a pull to up those casual end subscriber numbers, because somehow those people finance all this stuff. This seems to be "housing" at the moment.
 
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Neranja

Neranja

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Folanlron said:
but as a 14 player have they gone back and adjusted a lot of the "older" fights to present the new way things are gonna work? Or are they just throwing the kitchen sink at the problem and seeing what works?
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No, and it's far worse than that.

Blizzard doesn't balance anything except max level, and only cares about the latest raid (and this seasons M+ dungeons). And has to rebalance continuously with every season, because every season is basically a gear reset with higher itemlevels. Old content is presented as timewalking dungeons + raids, but balancing those is a joke and groups blast through it with DPS.

How scaling in FFXIV works: Every Action has a power/potency assigned to it, and that multiplies with the gear you wear, plus the passive traits you get up to your current level. When you scale down for older content, you lose access to those actions + passive traits, as rotations are balanced around the same potency. Gear is also scaled according to what players have access to at their level.

How scaling in WoW works for old content: Your itemlevel is the only basis for how powerful you are in scaled down dungeons, because it determines your position in a static, pre-determined table that has no resemblance with your actual stats from the items (except for procs and gems/enchants, as they don't influence itemlevel itself). For example, if you have 50% crit chance, and your build is optimized for crit, when you are scaled down you no longer have that much crit chance, but have standardized stats according to your itemlevel.

This has lead to level 10-12 twinks being overpowered in timewalking, because they can push their itemlevel with the shittiest stats to around 60-80, and just steamroll a whole dungeon solo.
 
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Foggy

Foggy

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Nobody gives a shit about timewalking balance. It’s a cake walk no matter what. In old content (not timewalking), your character level is the primary driving factor for power.

Claiming they didn’t do anything for M+ is a wild take with TWW implementing the largest changes to the content since its creation. Completely overhauled affixes, gearing, rewards, and key depletion.

They did slow down being able to heal up a party somewhat but were ultimately hamstrung by how may defensives most classes have. They are addressing that in midnight with heavy defensive pruning.

A huge issue with the game is the discourse is all created by and flows down to the player base from content creators. The discourse is around concerns the highest level players have instead of what actually impacts most players. The healing comment is directly from mythic raiders and key pushers. It doesn’t affect the larger player base at all.
 
Neranja

Neranja

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Foggy said:
Completely overhauled affixes, gearing, rewards, and key depletion.
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Personally, I wouldn't claim that they haven't done anything to the M+ system. But what they have done doesn't fix the problems people have with the system:

They have overhauled affixes multiple times since Legion, and phased seasonal affixed in and out.
Gearing is still not intuitive, and the upgrade system overhauls haven't helped much. Most players resent this currency A + currency B bullshit. Also, for optimal trinkets you're forced to raid, so M+ is not a complete gearing solution, because Ion needs his raiders.
And third, the key depletion "fix" was purely aimed at the high end pushers (less than 5% of the M+ playerbase, which is a fraction of the playerbase), and has deteriorated into somewhat of a shitshow when players started selling their resilient keys.

To this day I don't understand why keys at any level don't have at least three charges, and that timing a key at a higher level improves the keys for everyone in the party that has a lower key +1.
While we're at it, Blizzard could improve the group finder system for M+ dungeons.

The optimal solution of course would be to make it more like the Fractals in GW2, but I guess they decided to only steal dragon flying from GW2 instead.

Foggy said:
The discourse is around concerns the highest level players have instead of what actually impacts most players. The healing comment is directly from mythic raiders and key pushers.
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Yeah, because the larger playerbase doesn't engage in high end content. At all. But for the players enjoying that content without pushing high keys: I can assure you the groups I was in felt it very much. I have never hated healing more than in TWW, and couldn't even be bothered to make 3k RIO this season.

Also, If this was true, then M+ numbers for season 1 of TWW would've been better, but instead they were steadily below DF season 3. Most infographics compare it to DF season 4, but that was basically an extra season when the expansion was already over, and at least half the people already had checked out.
 
Folanlron

Folanlron

Trakanon Raider
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Neranja said:
How scaling in WoW works for old content: Your itemlevel is the only basis for how powerful you are in scaled down dungeons, because it determines your position in a static, pre-determined table that has no resemblance with your actual stats from the items (except for procs and gems/enchants, as they don't influence itemlevel itself). For example, if you have 50% crit chance, and your build is optimized for crit, when you are scaled down you no longer have that much crit chance, but have standardized stats according to your itemlevel.

This has lead to level 10-12 twinks being overpowered in timewalking, because they can push their itemlevel with the shittiest stats to around 60-80, and just steamroll a whole dungeon solo.
Click to expand...

So it's a hacked in sync system, I guess if the game was never really designed for it *shrug* sounds like they have a lot of work to do..
 
Neranja

Neranja

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Folanlron said:
So it's a hacked in sync system, I guess if the game was never really designed for it *shrug* sounds like they have a lot of work to do..
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Probably a relic of the PvP balance system for lower levels. But PvP in itself has become the stepchild of WoW content. So they won't do shit.

As Foggy so pointedly explained: "Nobody gives a shit about timewalking balance." ... except for the people that wanted to experience old content, and repeatedly petitioned Blizzard for it. And most of them either fucked off to the classic servers, or quit the game altogether.
 
Araxen

Araxen

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Normally, I don't care for Bellular video's(they are too long winded), but if this is what Blizzard actually thinks will stop the spam in the group finder they are retarded.

 
Juvarisx

Juvarisx

Florida
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Araxen said:
Normally, I don't care for Bellular video's(they are too long winded), but if this is what Blizzard actually thinks will stop the spam in the group finder they are retarded.

Click to expand...


there’s a group finder addon where if you uncheck voice those all go away as that voice option is required to add a url
 
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