World of Warcraft: Current Year

So after a couple weeks back this game seems to have some serious feature bloat and ability bloat at this point. Kinda surprised since I played wrath and a little bit of cata and blizz seemed atleast kinda aware of those issues and would cut abilities and features often but now there seems like there are 20 different cooldowns to use and 4 different currencies for bonus rolls that are all acquired in different ways. That and every boss being an orgy of particle effects make me wish for the days back in wotlk when we started to complain about too many particles because we thought it was getting out of hand. Feels like I am playing EQ2 at times.

Flex atleast sounds cool so I plan to atleast play long enough to check that out, I always thought they should just have replaced 40 mans with adjustable size raids and never bothered with all the other difficulties.

Ability bloat is bad enough in PVE but in PVP it's absurd. And we've asked for the option to disable/lower other player's particle effects since beta. They just won't do it.

double post

Creslin_sl said:

So after a couple weeks back this game seems to have some serious feature bloat and ability bloat at this point.

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Yeah, I feel the same way when coming back after an extended break. As my interest in the game has waned over the years and the amount of abilities has increased it has started to feel like a chore to get all the abilities mapped to some reasonable set of keys, set up the UI and learn how to play in the current iteration of the game. And if it feels like a pain in the ass to me that has played the game on and off since launch, I can only imagine how it must feel to a new player.

Couldnt agree more on particles. Shit got out of hand bad lol. Its so bad, even in 5 man its hard to see wtf is happening.

fyi The Oculus is still as terrible in a random group today as it was 4 years ago.

Asherah_sl said:

Yeah, I feel the same way when coming back after an extended break. As my interest in the game has waned over the years and the amount of abilities has increased it has started to feel like a chore to get all the abilities mapped to some reasonable set of keys, set up the UI and learn how to play in the current iteration of the game. And if it feels like a pain in the ass to me that has played the game on and off since launch, I can only imagine how it must feel to a new player.

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I'd actually say for a new player it's not so bad because you don't start out with the whole array of abilities so as you level you get exposed to them gradually. Coming back at say the previous expansions level cap when the current expansion is end of life however does completely suck.

I just started playing again after about a 6 year break because a buddy used the Resurrection scroll on my account. The last time I played was around the Burning Crusade. Started a level 1 mage around a week ago and I am now level 63. The res scrolls provide silly experience when you are grouped with your friends. Couple that with getting guild achievements, we were raking in XP by just running random dungeons over and over.

The new talent / skill system definitely threw me off to start with. It was confusing and overwhelming to begin with. That goes away after some light reading and just playing around a bit with how things work. The skill / talent system is almost boring though. There isn't a whole lot of interaction with it. Gain 15 levels, choose behind door number 3, move on. With the previous system it was a bit more engaging. This hasn't turned out to be a huge issue though.

Not really sure what the endgame of this stint is going to be. We are playing more casually now than we used to, but we will eventually hit 90 or 100 or whatever the cap will be and will need to see if it sticks. I have mainly been enjoying tradeskills and pet battles. A good deal of my leveling XP came from pet battles and running through the master fights up to the end of the Outlands. Northrend is next, but I will need some actual character levels first.

JTheRuler_sl said:

I'd actually say for a new player it's not so bad because you don't start out with the whole array of abilities so as you level you get exposed to them gradually. Coming back at say the previous expansions level cap when the current expansion is end of life however does completely suck.

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Good point! On the other hand, after a nice relaxed leveling experience, they might be traumatized by the horrors of LFR. Doubt people will be very civil to them when if they output 25k dps because they don't know what a rotation is and didn't enchant/gem/reforge their gear.

LFR is great. It teaches people to appreciate their actual raid groups more, because dear god you don't want to be stuck doing THAT.

LFR is truly one of the worst things to happen to an online game ever. Is there anyone who actually thinks its a fun activity? It is really a feature that if it wasn't raining down free epics on peoples heads no one would ever do because it is profoundly unenjoyable. Blizzard adds shit like that to the game and then wonders why they bleed subs. The first question every dev should ask about a feature is whether it is fun at any point for anyone, if the answer is pretty much a no then that feature needs to get cut.

LFD atleast had its moments of fun.

I see that they wanted to add tourism mode to the raids and a way for people to gear up a bit on alts but shit like timeless isle and lfr are just so horrible.

LFR shouldnt exist, it should be a true tourism mode for raids with a flex 1-5 man group with npcs fleshing out the rest, kind of like the solo trials they put in. And shit like timeless isle that pulls people out of the world to do dailies on some retarded island is nearly as bad. Some of these features are just so bad and it seems so easy and obvious how to hugely improve them that I wonder if there is any talent left at blizz.

The problem isn't as much LFR as it is the restrictions they put in on vote kicking coupled with a bug that makes the timer never fucking reset. The idea is to prevent griefers from kicking people for laughs (or for a better chance at loot - which of course is long gone) Instead it just makes you completely powerless to stop shitheads. If you wipe to a boss all kick restrictions should be lifted.

The only thing that Rustled my Jimmies a bit about LFR is when I started raiding Normal mode. Abilities in LFR are like G rated kiss scene compared to Normal modes which are Rated R fucking. I think it was Nazgrim? Was my my third time trying to kill him, this time on normal and I never even realized I was standing in shit because it hit for so little in LFR. Think it ticks once for 200k in LFR. Where as, I think it hits for 400k twice in Normal? I know now obviously, but abilities in LFR should still teach the same concept. For instance, I would have just made the charge up Nazgrims Ground shit take longer, instead of just ticking for less. The player dies once, but can easily notice it the next time.

Is lfr ever fun tho? Even at it's best with no retards and no wipes you can say it didn't waste any more of your time than it had to. But is that really the bar now for blizz? To make shit that isn't ever fun but isn't any more tedious than it has to be? Like I said no wonder they are bleeding subs.

There is flat out no way to turn a 25 man anonymous zerg into a fun experience imo. At best you can make it less awful with lots of vote kicks and shit that cause their own problems. That's why it needs to be scaled down to a flex type solo to 5 man imo. So you can log in do the raid at your own pace with or without some friends. Enjoy the story and the cut scenes. It's not any more free epics than what we have currently but at least maybe it's kind of fun. Especially if they add tracking to it and give you some bonus for performing well or beating an old best time by x amount. Warforged is a stupid way to reward bonus in lfr anyway since it shares tokens with all the much higher tiers.

I guess at the end of the day my problem is I don't really find the ddr boss mechanics with 60apm ability spam that wow evolved into all that engaging. Give me strategic dota combat any day. So that might color my impression of lfr too much since I find little enjoyment in the mechanics of the combat itself all that's left is social interaction and working towards a goal, two things lfr totally lacks. I suppose I can see how someone who likes wows combat might enjoy lfr a bit.

Hi, i like lfr and its one of the key features that made me come back. Oh shit, i can see the content, so yea its fun. And am guilded with dudes running heroic SoO. Yet i still do lfr. Madness!
Fuck me if i ever commit ot a raiding schedual again. If am on and i can raid, sweet beans. If not, i have lfr. Everyone wins, stop the qqing.

Personally this is why in my mind there should really only be one or two levels tops of difficulty for raids, and they should be the hardest content in the game hands down. Yes, that means I would never see raid content, but that's ok. I think you give the hardest of the hardcore their game play in raids. The rest should be funneled into the dungeons and tier that difficulty. "Normal" mode and then Heroic for the single group folks who want a real challenge. I am totally ok with running "normal" dungeons, and I don't need Raid level gear. As long as they have loot tiers for dungeons, and a progression path that is added to a couple times through patches I would be good. I really don't like the timeless isle idea at all, and am not sure why they put it in. Why not just throw last season's raid gear on the VP vendors and call it a day? Catch up won't be any worse then Timeless isle for someone getting up to speed, but a lot more interesting. I feel like as a non raider once I get carried through Timeless isle for a couple weeks, I'm at my peak. I'd rather work my way through the points system building my gear.

The thing that really pissed me off about LFR was Blizzard spouting they wanted everyone to see the story. Then doing ToT LFR then normal we hit before Tortos and I was like "Whoa, there is a cutscene here?"
LFR doesn't show any of the storyline stuff so it was essentially a load of bull from Blizzard.