World of Warcraft Arena Balance, and Sirlin…
Here's an amusing post on gameriot by Vir that mentions me. The comments are entertaining too. It's about the balance in World of Warcraft arenas, and making the game into an e-sport.
For the record, I'm available but I don't think Blizzard will call. ;) For one, they might say that fighting game balance doesn't apply to their game, and that I don't know their game. Shrug. The same concepts seem to apply to Puzzle Fighter, Street Fighter, Kongai, Yomi card game, and the other projects I can't tell you about. Balance is balance and the same issues show over and over.
And second, I don't think my article two years ago won me any points there. Even though much of what I complained about has indeed been acknowledged and addressed, I don't think my tone went over well.
Anyway, thanks Vir.
--Sirlin
May 27th, 2008 at 10:15 am
It’s pretty funny to read the comments on that gameriot link. A good majority of the flamers there completely missed the “material advantages”, if not THE most important point, in regards to the game being competitive.
All the can point out is tiers in fighting game, but they don’t seem to understand that fighting games enable the player to pick from the same character selection screen off the bat, instead of having to grind for 100+hours just to -have- the materials to be “competitive.” Competition is to gauge skill, not hours invested…. but as long as the WoW creators have people like those in the comments section on that link, they’ll keep on thinking this WoW e-sport thing is a good idea.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
The comments are indeed kind of funny at points. I especially like the ones that claim that Blizzard has no idea how to balance a game for competitive play. Y’know, restrict that to “how to balance an MMO for competitive play” and you might have something, but the fact that those statements sort of ignore Starcraft are amusing.
May 27th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Nyawu: some people in that thread did point out exactly that, though. So they did bring up that a real competition would not involve grinding up your guy and Blizzard’s tournament system addresses that too these days.
dreamshade: I also laughed at the comment “they’re a bunch of guys from MMO raids, what do they know about competitive balance?” Ha. All should bow down to Starcraft balance, so apparently they do know a thing or two! ;)
May 27th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I thought the e-sports shard gave you the ability to create your characters will full epic kit?
May 27th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Yeah, hence “and Blizzard’s tournament system addresses that too these days.”
May 27th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
[…] Original post by Sirlin.net â?? Your source of shocking insights on game design Need WOW Guide? Click Here […]
May 27th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Where’s the point in making it an E-Sport? I mean, balance aside, FUNDAMENTALLY world of warcraft doesn’t seem to fit the description of “competitive” due to the nature of gear and spec playing the role of who wins rather than any sort of ’skill’.
WoW has like a 1%/99% execution/planning distribution… (numbers may be exaggerated to illustrate a point.) Where there’s not enough depth in the planning area to make up for it. Although THAT is more of a balance issue.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Ok, I was rambling a bit, but I was getting at that the whole game can sort of be nailed down mathmatically, and a probability calculation determines the winner! The variables being critical hits, stuns chances, etc.
May 27th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Very few people still support the wow4esports camp (basically since WSVG died). All major tournaments have been a joke over both major brackets (3v3, 5v5).
It’s an MMORPG, it’ll never be a true competitive game, despite Blizzard’s marketing department’s rambling.
That said, it’s far nearer to the ever-elusive state of balance than any other MMORPG (see: Guild Wars et al).
May 27th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
This statement is interesting: “arena based nerfs breed resentment among the player base that perceives that they’re no longer valued due to their playstyle.”
For comparison purposes, I’ll point to Guildwars and their recent decision to split many skills in PvE and PvP versions. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Developer_Updates#.5BDev_Update.5D_PvP.2FPvE_Skill_Balancing_.E2.80.93_21_May_2008
I don’t know how much resentment there were among the GW players about skills nerfs to address PvP issues, but it seems like it’s something the GW development team have been working on for a while. Their previous answer was PvE-only skills, but now some skills are changed (and then changed back) monthly to accommodate monthly tournaments, and it’s easier to have 2 versions of the same skill.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I liked your attitude in that two year old article and it progressed many discussions in the right way; what gave you the idea that Blizzard would not appreciate it so much that they would not want to hire you?
As for competitive Arena being a joke, tournaments should carry more weight than the rankings.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
“and Blizzard’s tournament system addresses that too these days.”
Too bad I can’t play “real” WoW competitive play unless I sign up for a tournament or grind a potential character. The tournament system is great for players that are good and know that they belong in a tournament, but how do casual players make the transition to competitive play?
May 28th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Robert: just trust me on that. ;)
PoisonDagger: yeah I don’t know either. It does seem like a big chasm to cross, I agree.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:12 am
PoisonDagger: Anybody can join the Tournament Server it just costs $20. Everybody’s on the same playing field. You make the transition the same way you do in any game, practice, practice practice. If you’re casual you can play the grind if you want. If you’re hardcore and want a level playing field, join the TR. If you’re casual and want a level playing field…play the TR until you’re no longer casual. A “casual competitive Tournament player” is sort of something that can’t really exisit.
The problem with balance is that the game is inherently tied into the larger MMO game. You can’t make PvP changes without affect PvE. I’m sure the designers at Blizzard KNOW about the problems in Arena balance, but often you can’t make too radical of a change without totally imabalancing the PvE aspect of the game.
Sirlin I wouldn’t doubt your ability to balance out the PvP game, but I doubt you could balance the PvE aspect at the same time. Remember that Blizzard has already stated they don’t want the skills/classes/weapons to work drastically different in Arena than in Raids, so creating two separate games is already not an option.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Hear my now, believe me later: Diablo III will succeed where WoW “failed” at creating a balanced, competitive arena-type rpg fighting game :D
May 28th, 2008 at 6:52 am
“Anybody can join the Tournament Server it just costs $20.”
That’s the problem. In any *real* competitive game, you don’t have to enter a tournament just to get your first taste of the game. That’s a larger barrier to entry than you’re making it out to be.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
…I can’t visit that page for some reason.
“Fatal error: Unsupported operand types in /home/gameriot/include/Browscap.php on line 269″
May 29th, 2008 at 1:50 am
I liked the title of the article, “Blizzard doesn’t understand balance.”
WoW as an e-Sport is very underwhelming. Watching fighters or Starcraft, for instance… that’s e-Sport. These games are meant to pit people against each other. WoW is a social game, where people play certain roles which eschew combat as a price for performing other tasks. At least, conceptually, that’s what it is supposed to do. But no matter what steps Blizzard takes, the classes will not be balanced for competitive purposes. Group arena might mix it up enough to make things different, but I guess we’ll see. GomTV is currently hosting a mix of 1v1 and group arena tournaments, so the gaming community can judge its efforts.
Starcraft was mentioned as an example of balance. While the races feel more or less balanced, I should point out that maps matter a lot. Mapmakers and progamers probably have a better grasp of SC balance than Blizzard itself does… but unfortunately, Starcraft II is looking like it’ll be imbalanced *despite* the consultation of the progaming community in S.Korea. This brings us back to the very accurate article title. Starcraft is a fluke success until Blizzard proves otherwise by releasing another balanced blockbuster.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Hm…looks interesting…but I’ll gonna stick to Ragnarok and Cabal for a while (mainly because there is no easy acess to WoW servers here in Brazil…^^)
May 29th, 2008 at 3:12 am
Never played World of Warcraft, but even so, it sounds like the big boys in Blizzard are being a bit ignorant with balance and the concept of ‘e-sport’. Or they truly are clueless. They would really do well with somebody like Sirlin, who’s certainly proven here that he knows his stuff.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:56 am
WOW Arena is balanced like a bad Magic metagame, like when Affinity or Psychotog dominated almost half the field. There was no deck that had a good matchup against them that had any chance against anything else.
For WOW, just because a small number of classes are good, doesn’t make it a horrible environment. Good players will find the optimal class combo and win against opponents who are using the same combos via ingame strategy and execution. It means less variety of matches, but it’s still a valid competitive environment, if not a bit stale.
That said, even the pros hated Magic when the environment was that bland. I can’t see any way out of it for Blizzard unless they are willing to go towards the one class, two stat sets approach to PVP, since I believe they have made it clear that PVE “balance” takes precedence.
That said, watching a Arena fight is probably the most boring game to watch, second only by baseball. But hell, at least you can FOLLOW baseball.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I have played WoW Arenas for awhile now, and I agree with alot of what Vir said. One thing that really irritates me about WoW PvP is that next season, to keep the progression of PvPers in line with raiders, they are implementing rating requirements to most of the gear. Rating requirements irritate me, because if someone is able to achieve that rating and then starts competing back in the 1500s, they have a much greater advantage over the players in that bracket. Not only that, but WoW measures more your team skill, less your personal skill, if skill is even tested at all, because as most other people have mentioned, arenas are decided more by your class setup (Warrior/Druid was rather strong most of Season 3), your gear (especially for melee classes), and your talent spec (most people play a standard talent cookie cutter spec).
I personally enjoy Battlegrounds much more, but as most are aware of here, gear is a key factor in success in Battlegrounds or any PvP for that matter. And the only way to get the PvP gear is to PvP for it, meaning you must endure the pain of this system to get anywhere. This isn’t a player with just one 70 in blues speaking. This is a player with pretty much a fully decked out Retribution and Holy Paladin PvP set (currently specced for Retribution), and I also have an Arms warrior mostly epic. I certainly would like to run arenas a bit more, but it is hard to find a team to get some good practice in. My spec would be much better in a 1 vs 1 environment, but of course Blizzard won’t let me get a shot to see if I could hit 1850 or 2000 in a 1 vs 1 environment.
It certainly does not make me feel any better to find out only one paladin managed to make the top 20 teams, and my bet is that paladin is Retribution spec probably running an Arms Warrior, Retribution Paladin, and Resto Shaman team.
Btw Sirlin, I really do appreciate all the time you put into this website. Even though it might be some time before I could pick up ST remixed since I don’t have a PS3, it is entertaining to read up on all the work you are doing to balance things out.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
What annoys me about watching Arena matches (the few I have watched) is that a)player’s can die within a blink of an eye, b)the match is practically decided by who dies first. (mind me, the last videos I watched are now months old, maybe the game has changed for better?)
Do you think the Battlegrounds could be more interesting to watch? (I at least enjoy playing them more)
May 29th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
What I dislike most about WoW is the aspects of the game that I enjoy are not rewarded as well as the aspects of the game that I don’t enjoy. So either I play how I like to with a gimped character (thus making the experience less enjoyable) or I spend more of my time doing something I don’t like in order to be able to have more fun doing what I do like.
This is the kind of setup that I endure every day of my real life. Why must a video game emulate it?
May 29th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Starcraft’s developers understood balance. World of Warcraft’s developers are hazy on the concept. WoW is, in all honesty, not a game ready to be introduced as an e-sport. With a little tweaking and abolishing of random chance, gear differences, and massive time investment required to even START playing the competitive game, the game could be come e-sport material. Of course, even as a veteran WoW player myself, I still have trouble following some replays of arena match. I usually have to watch them twice or more just to establish a timeline of ability usage on the match.
May 30th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Since when is balance aboout equality? What percentage of Street Fighter characters are never seen at the finals level of tournament play? How long has that been the case? The classes are pretty well distributed with the exception of one.
I’m not terribly familiar with the high end play of arenas, but druids and discipline priests are in vogue right now, perhaps they are the counter to paladins and paladins are the counter to an unfavourable makeup, like 3 DPS teams? If 3 dps teams were buffed, that would result in more paladins on teams without a buff to paladins at all. I don’t know, I’m just pointing out the statistics in the article prove absolutely nothing regarding the game’s actual balance.
My main issue with arenas in wow is the gear improvements each new season. I understand why they are there for business reasons, and to prevent top end raiding gear from dominating arena play, but that second problem could be solved by only allowing pvp gear in arenas.
May 30th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I don’t know what people find so balanced in starcraft, there are few sides, only 3, with few usefull units.
When you watch a zerg vs zerg game and see that the only valid strategy is too mass mutas, and you call that balanced?
May 30th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Sirlin, do you realize that the laughable quote you posted:
“they’re a bunch of guys from MMO raids, what do they know about competitive balance?”
… was actually part of the original message (by Vir) and not a comment posted by visitor of the site? It kind of takes away all credibility about this guy’s knowledge on the subject of balancing. Rob Pardo was designer of Starcraft and lead designer of Warcraft 3 and its expansion. I’d reckon he knows a thing or two about balancing.
May 30th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Rob Pardo is a smart guy. Regardless, Blizzard has yet to produce another competitive game as balanced and deep as Brood War. WoW Arena or Battlegrounds could be at least a decent e-sport, but as everyone else has said, LOTS of the MMO crap has to be stripped off before it can be legitimate. The Tourney Server is a good start, I suppose.
May 30th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Don’t underestimate Warcraft 3. It’s a very succesful and living e-sports game. Maybe not on the same level as Starcraft, but certainly not a misser, and still way better than most other competitive games.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I think that MMOs fall into a weird category that can be described in terms of “Sirlin’s musings”; they need to incorporate many varieties on “fun” and they need to keep providing said “fun” to keep the monthly subscribers hooked.
I think it’s pretty obvious why there is a sense of hours played = better character.
Also, I would argue that at least in WoW, it starts off with the pure fun element that is accessible to many non-traditional gamers: a vivid environment with characters who clearly have personalities (whether it be of the players or of the players’ online personas).
I don’t think the competitive fun was ever a serious part of the equation. I recently had the opportunity to talk with some Valve software employees, and I asked them how they balanced their (symmetrical) games. They said through testing. I think Blizzard takes this approach, and may or may not have realized that while WoW is symmetrical on paper, it is actually asymmetrical because of the time element (think about epic rank 1 pvp gear and epic raid gear vs tier x.5 gear). As most asymmetrical game balancing has shown, it usually takes a mind that is dedicated to the issue of balancing in order for asymmetrical games to take on any semblance of balance.
My 2cents, I’m sure posters above have been posting along the same lines as me :)
May 31st, 2008 at 12:02 am
WoW’s skill balance is primarily designed around defeating computer-controlled opponents with retarded AI (oh look a non-threatening tank, I’ll pound on him while he gets healed and I get nuked) instead of around defeating human-controlled players with rapid-fire decisions (like Guild Wars - yeah, its balance is shitty now, but you can learn so much from its core gameplay). That’s the main problem.
WoW will always be a popular game, but its e-sport scene probably won’t amount to much. The developers are too focused on their “real” demographic of casual players, instead of on the insignificant number of players who want to take the game seriously in tournament play. Sure, they’ll add some quick features to please them, but they won’t overhaul the core skill balance just for the competitive players.
It’s Blizzard. They could do it if they wanted to. They just don’t want to.
May 31st, 2008 at 12:39 am
That’s a little presumptuous, PoisonDagger. I heard people say the same thing years ago about the honor system, 40-man raids, etc. It could happen.
May 31st, 2008 at 2:06 am
Oh, they’ll definitely add features to try and get competitive players into the game, just like they added those other features to please other types of players. In fact, I truly believe that at some point, they’ll implement casual tournament servers that don’t cost extra money to enter.
They’re just not going to redesign the skill balance around competitive play, which is what they need to do. The game has never been about high-level competition, and there’s no reason for them to change their focus.
May 31st, 2008 at 9:07 pm
WoW arena has some innate problems with balance. The potential for competitive play is there, but it’s just not quite where it should be.
There are too hard counters in the game, even if the rock/paper/scissors principle works for the game you should still be able to beat rock as scissors through exellent play, that sadly isn’t quite possible in certain matchups.
There is a problem with too much randomized stuff such as lucky crits or lucky resists and so on. You can’t really rely on things to happen when you need them to because of the RNG, while at the same time they just might. Stun resist is a good example of this, maybe you resist, maybe you don’t, but you almost never resist when you really really need to resist. Had it been stun duration reduction rather than chance to fully resist you’d at least know what would happen rather than hoping for something to maybe happen.
Also level 70 suffers from too muh lockouts, by playing well certain classes can completely lock out a player for long periods of time by cycling Crowd Controll effects, and the controlled character can’t do a thing about it if the controlling players knows what they’re doing.
WoW pvp certainly has potential (though I personally prefer the strategy and tactical focus of battlegrounds over arena), but at the moment it suffers from certain problems inhibiting it
June 1st, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I only skimmed the comments, and didn’t read them all, so forgive me if this point of view has already been brought up.
I liked Everquest.
I’m pretty certain that I’m an introvert.
I played Everquest for 5 years. I switched to WoW because it’s clearly a better game on first impression. The game engine and quest system was far beyond anything Everquest was capable of, and had so much more potential than the seemingly dying Everquest.
PvP in Everquest was nothing more than a social event on regular servers, and on PvP servers it seemed a rediculous notion; full of ganking, griefing, and losing money, with nothing to gain.
I had no interest in PvP in WoW. Before the honor system, there was no rewards for PvP, so I could safely ignore it, and only participate if it was fun and if I felt like doing it.
When the honor system came out at first, I knew in advance I couldn’t get the very best items, because I was unwilling and unable to play enough to achieve them. 10 hours of PvP a day would have been torture for me. Even one hour frustrated me to no end. A lot of this is probably because playing a Hunter in PvP just felt awkward. If I could have switched characters just for PvP, I would have, but I wanted the rewards on my Hunter. Feel free to chalk this up to lack of skill if you like. My feelings won’t be hurt, because I didn’t care to BUILD the skill. I never wanted to PvP in the first place.
I was happy raiding with my guild. The rewards were arguably better than the best of the PvP loot (I’m talking about pre-BC era), and we had a few former High Warlords in the guild who were now ready to switch gears and see the PvE endgame. Up until the honor system changes, I felt quite comfortable with my choice of ignoring PvP.
Soon before the release of BC, when my guild was bashing it’s heads against some of the toughest content in AQ40 and Naxx, the honor system was changed, and it allowed the dedicated casual player to rake in some PvP loot by spending some honor. Now I could save up honor and just get the things I really wanted, if only I could tolerate the PvP.
I couldn’t. It was unbearable.
Furthermore, since BC was in beta, many players knew that any further work in Naxx and AQ40 would be pointless, because the new loot in BC would be better. This is truly the day my guild died. There was no point to 5 mans, no point in raiding, so people just stopped showing up. PvP was not somehing our guild (as a whole) was into.
The death of my guild would not ordinarily stop me from playing a game I enjoyed. I’m an introvert, after all, so the loss of social ties didn’t effect me in that manner.
I didn’t enjoy PvP, and therefore I had nothing I could do to improve my main character. So I played alts until BC came out.
Ordinarily, I would have refused to play alts. The reason I play MMORPGs is the for RPG aspect of it, at least in part. What I like to do is improve my character. What I LOVED about Everquest was the Alternate Advancement system. Because it allowed me to do just that. IMPROVE my character! I never liked that the only way to improve in WoW at max level was to get better gear. It can take you weeks and even months to get better gear! Thank god for DKP! At least I could feel like I was making progress that way.
When BC came out, it was a fun bit of extra content, but it had created more problems than it solved. Our guild was planning to cut a lot of people out of the guild because of the reduced raid cap. As it turned out, that was unnessesary because over half of the guild quit from boredom before BC came out. Everyone leveled to 70 all too quickly, but when it came time to try out the new 20 man content, it proved too difficult without the 5 man and 10 man content. This meant that only the most elite crew in our guild was allowed to do Kara. We didn’t have enough good tanks and healers for a 2nd crew. And our main crew had little need for a hunter, even though I was an officer and helped lead raids before BC.
That wasn’t their fault, that was simply the reality of the game and the situation with the guild. It didn’t really matter by that point anyway. I was growing tired of the game. I didn’t want the new loot, I didn’t feel as though I had improved that much by gaining 10 levels, and I just wasn’t having fun anymore. All there was to do was farm money for a flying mount and use the crappy LFG system in hopes of getting a group so that I could farm rep.
This was not my idea of a good time. I quit WoW with no other MMORPG to fill the void in my spare time.
It is my opinion that PvP ruined WoW. It forced them to constantly change the way the game worked. Their futile attempts at PvP balance limited the types of items they could create, and often forced people to change their entire gearset, simply to meet the needs of the new specs, talents, stat system and whatever else they felt like changing.
In a way, this was a good thing. Since they never offered any other way to improve your character besides getting new gear, it’s great that they can force you gather entirely new gear for your character every chance they get. Everyone loved doing that. I personally like having all my accomplishments made obsolete right before my eyes.
I could write a fucking book about how feel about MMORPGs. This is just a small taste of what I feel like writing. If you’re skimming, here’s the basic points of this long rant, minus any backstory, which is only meaningful to WoW players:
- I’m an introvert, yet I still feel there is value in working together in groups and raids.
- I’m not very interested in PvP as a whole, and I expecially hate it in WoW.
- PvP ruined WoW.
- PvP is especially laughable in any MMORPG.
PvP in WoW consists largely of flexing muscles, in terms of gear and time played. Skill is secondary, but that does not bother a lot of people because they like “pwning bitches”.
If Blizzard wants to make PvP in WoW balanced, then they simply need to force your character to wear certain armor. How they do this is up to them. They could, for example, give your character access to all of the equipment in the game, but only as long as you were PvPing. This would allow for intelligent choices based on your talent spec, and let you test out armor that you might want to earn on your character later.
Blizzard would never do that though, because that would allow you to enjoy loot before you’ve earned it. Then you might realize that earning the loot was a rather hollow persuit, and that you should be doing more productive things with your time.
I suppose they could alternately fine tune special armor sets for each class/spec combo, and carefully balance it over the months and years to be more and more even handed. However, if they did that, they might as well just release a different game and then go a different direction with the WoW crew that doesn’t care about PvP.
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:58 am
“When BC came out, it was a fun bit of extra content, but it had created more problems than it solved. Our guild was planning to cut a lot of people out of the guild because of the reduced raid cap. As it turned out, that was unnessesary because over half of the guild quit from boredom before BC came out. Everyone leveled to 70 all too quickly, but when it came time to try out the new 20 man content, it proved too difficult without the 5 man and 10 man content. This meant that only the most elite crew in our guild was allowed to do Kara. We didn’t have enough good tanks and healers for a 2nd crew. And our main crew had little need for a hunter, even though I was an officer and helped lead raids before BC.
That wasn’t their fault, that was simply the reality of the game and the situation with the guild. It didn’t really matter by that point anyway. I was growing tired of the game. I didn’t want the new loot, I didn’t feel as though I had improved that much by gaining 10 levels, and I just wasn’t having fun anymore. All there was to do was farm money for a flying mount and use the crappy LFG system in hopes of getting a group so that I could farm rep.”
From this part of your post, it sounds more like the raid design ruined WoW.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:42 am
The classes in WoW are actually pretty well-balanced in terms of the PvE environment. I agree that there are balance issues in the arenas, but the fact that the game functions at all in a PvP environment with classes that are balanced around such different roles is actually somewhat impressive.
I doubt the arenas will ever be fun to watch, though.
June 4th, 2008 at 6:50 am
The arena is a bt too much clusterfuck (to use the words of Yatzee) to be fun/easy to watch. It is hard to see when things happen and several abilities have similar animations. Battlegrounds probably have a higher potential for viewability as it is not som much focused on killing/gibbing rather than strategic goals (such as ninjaing a node in AB or solo grabbing a flag in wsg), BGs however suffer from the lack of organisation from blizzard’s side.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:41 am
With the WotLK expansion they’ve got a nice reset button on the balance. They’re adding pushing/pulling mechanics to PC’s also, so that should add some depth.
The barrier to entry in WoW is fairly enormous compared to any other competitive game (level, gear, and the inability to change classes). I think that alone will stop it from becoming a worthwhile e-sport.
June 4th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I think maybe WSG would have potential for a good competetive setting, of course with set rules for the gears/items the players could use. Certain items should be allowed, while other should not. (PVE tanking gear should be banned, most pots should not etc.)
AB, on the other hand, would be incredibly boring to watch at high level play. When two top teams play, the game is basically over when BS is won or lost. Too much turtling.
June 4th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Namingway, I enjoyed your long post, although it scared me a bit. You complain you cannot improve your character without getting new gear. What about improving your skills? If you feel that the game doesn’t acknoweldge your progress, why not focus on more challenging aspects of the game? (and WoW is full of places you can create your own challenges). Once you achieve competitive gear (although I will admit this takes a very long time), PvP is more about skill, and it can be very challenging.
I’m sorry to hear you don’t enjoy WoW anymore, but I believe you can if you interpret “progress” more as a intellectual matter and less a materialistic one.
June 6th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Forty-
“From this part of your post, it sounds more like the raid design ruined WoW.”
Yeah, you’re right. I had a lot of problems with that too. I also feel that the challenge of raids is a bit of a double edged sword. It’s hard to get your entire guild at the level of skill and competance that you need. The fact that you can solo your way up to 70 only decreases the average player’s overall ability. You need the absolute cream of the crop for some encounters, but it can be very difficult to find it. People are understandably unwilling to work hard at a game. Especially when you have to farm so much in preparation for a raid. In Everquest, all you had to do was be fast, because most of the raids were like Kazzak. First come, first serve.
I guess more to the point though: I contradicted my point because I’m not a very focused writer. There’s very rarely ONE reason you quit something you used to enjoy. The raiding scene fell apart, and all there was left (in my opinion) was PvP. PvP seemed to be the direction that WoW was going. It was the PvP crowd that I felt WoW was trying to cater to.
Robert August de Meijer-
You actually LIKED my writing? You’re perhaps the first person ever. The only other person is, well… me. That’s why I don’t edit, revise, or rethink as much as I should.
I like your argument. I’ve thought about it before, but I’ve never really discussed it.
I never play games without in some way trying to improve my skills. It’s not the foremost thing in my mind, but I’m always looking to get better at games. It’s just that I should I should have something else that I want to do WHILE I improve those skills.
To put it another way, I would like the game to entertain me, instead of me entertaining myself using the game as a medium.
As an example, when I played Everquest, there was always more Alternate Advancement (AA) points to earn. I couldn’t hope to keep up. I would often think to myself, “It would be nice to be finished with AA, so that I that could do some other things I want to do, and just screw around and help people, and have fun.”
Well, in WoW, I got to do that. I got to do… lots of that. I helped lots of people, just for something to do. I invented my own fun. I played lots of alts. And what I learned was… I was wrong to want such a thing in EQ. I don’t like just dicking around and not accomplishing anything. If I wanted to do that, I should play a console game and at least have more fun.
In Everquest, even when you were just helping your friends or guildmates do a quest or dungeon you’ve done 100 times, at least you ACCOMPLISHED something. You got exp. Now, I know that you get money and you get the satisfaction of helping people, but that’s all chump change in the face of exp you could use to learn a new talent, or improve skills and attack rolls, and the myriad of other things you could do with AA.
I guess a lot of it is getting MORE for your time. Often times, in WoW, people are unwilling to help others because there’s nothing of value in it for them. Wouldn’t you be more willing to help your guildmates and friends do that dungeon that you’re REALLY sick of if you also got exp that could spend on another talent point? What if you could do all of that WHILE you were honing your skills and understanding of game mechanics? What if you could use those skills in the spirit of cooperation rather than dominate the other faction in PvP?
I realize that I’m missing out on a lot by not caring about PvP. In fact, I’m the type of person who probably has no buisness on this forum because I’m not all that competetive minded. I don’t even compete against my friends very seriously, let alone strangers across the internet. I understand the value in it, it’s just not my cup of tea. In any medium.
On another note, I think that player base in WoW is really missing out. I can discuss the merits of AA until I’m blue in the face, but it’s hard to fully appreciate because you’ve been deprived of it. Remember how much fun it was to level to 60? What if that fun didn’t have to stop? What if you could always learn new tricks, always improve while you also sought other improvements, like gear and skill.
What AA was in EQ would basically be like earning exp to buy more talent points. When you learned all of them, there would be more. Some would be minor improvements, and the more expensive ones, or the ones with prerequisites would be major improvements and tools to help your class. Every so often, they could add more AA that you could get. There would always be more ways to expand on your class, and be the best that you could be.
If WoW decided to implement an AA system, I would come back. It doesn’t matter what other problems the game has. The game engine is great, and fun, and there would be a feeling of progress again. As the game stands now, there’s only a limited amount of entertainment between me and my eventual boredom with the game. The new content is just not created fast enough, and is not enduring enough for my liking.
The reason I have these complaints is because I saw Everquest’s way of doing things. They would always churn out things for you to do, much faster than the public could consume it. It wasn’t GOOD content, certainly not by the standards of WoW, but it was entertaining, and it kept you busy, like a good hobby should.
For Everquest to be as good as WoW, it would have to completely reinvent itself. For WoW to capture that one essential element of EQ, it would just have to make some relatively minor changes.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
It’s funny reading that, and then also reading that many PvP minded players are quitting the game for GW, AoC, etc. because they feel the game focuses too much on raiding.
If WoW implemented an AA system, I would quit playing it. So it’s definitely not a “this will make the game better for everyone” decision.
June 6th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
It takes a deft touch to make AA systems work. FFXI had that (”limit points”? or something). The problem was it took sooooo much time to max out your limit points, that the primary purpose of end-game players became to earn exp as efficiently as possible, by upgrading gear, and spending time killing insanely hard monsters that low players couldn’t even touch at a ridiculously fast pace. So, it actually ended up completely excluding the high level players from wanting to spend any time helping lower level players at all.
I mean, even I thought limit points were fun for a while, it was really nice to have an express benefit from gear upgrades, outside of actual end-game boss fights, which WoW kind of lacks. But, limit points were actively designed to be nearly impossible to max out, so players never ran out of things to do. Anyone who thinks WoW is a time sink doesn’t even know how much better they have it than most other MMOs.
June 7th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Forty-
“It’s funny reading that, and then also reading that many PvP minded players are quitting the game for GW, AoC, etc. because they feel the game focuses too much on raiding.
If WoW implemented an AA system, I would quit playing it. So it’s definitely not a “this will make the game better for everyone” decision.”
I might have been more inclined to enjoy PvP had I played DAoC instead of EQ. From what I understand about DAoC, it was based around PvP, and had a balanced skill system for different strategies. DAoC was “ruined” when it tried to bring more raids into the game, because at that point, it was harder for everyone to even the playing field. Or so I hear, this is just second hand information from a person who played the game for years.
It just goes to show that you can’t please everyone. Balance is very difficult to achieve, and once it’s gone, so is the “magic” that made the game great.
If WoW implemented AA, you wouldn’t be the only one to quit. Blizzard knows that. A lot of people hated AA because it meant that you were always going to be less powerful that people who have no life, and just grind AAs. It meant that you were almost forced to play your main, because playing another character meant that it would be hell to catch back up.
Here’s my take on it though:
People who have no lives will always best those that do.
If if there no AA to work on, people who focus all of their ample free time on just one task will always be better at it. That average person can’t compete. The average person shouldn’t WANT to compete.
Take what Claytus is saying, for example:
“It takes a deft touch to make AA systems work. FFXI had that (”limit points”? or something). The problem was it took sooooo much time to max out your limit points, that the primary purpose of end-game players became to earn exp as efficiently as possible, by upgrading gear, and spending time killing insanely hard monsters that low players couldn’t even touch at a ridiculously fast pace. So, it actually ended up completely excluding the high level players from wanting to spend any time helping lower level players at all.”
That’s partly faulty game design, and partly a mindset of the player base. There will always be a certain “hardcore” mindset that believes that things should done in the most efficient manner in terms of exp gain. A more balanced high end player will do some the hardcore set, until they get bored or tired of it, and then they will help others, or take a break from the game.
Just because there’s 300 AA points or whatever to get, doesn’t mean that you have to rush to get them. It’s not feasible, and moreover, it’s boring and it sucks the fun out of the game. Even so, it is in my opinion, far better than having nothing to do.
Claytus-
“Anyone who thinks WoW is a time sink doesn’t even know how much better they have it than most other MMOs.”
This kind of depends on how you think of time sinks. Really, any form of entertainment is some manner of time sink. It doesn’t accomplish anything. You could be doing more productive things with your time. What most people mean by time sink is doing things like farming money, rep, or pots in preparation for a raid. Being “forced” to do unfun things in a video game isn’t just a time sink, it’s poor design.
In EQ, AA was a timesink, but it wasn’t one you were forced to do. Earning exp is one of the basic things you do in a RPG. Online or not. If you don’t like killing things and grouping, then you probably wouldn’t be playing the game. The problem comes when you’re forced to do more of it than you’d like to do, in order to do more fun things.
But there HAS to be more fun things to do. How many console RPG’s have you played where you ground your way to the max level, just because you could? It would have to be pretty god damned fun! There would have to be some kind of point to it, or at least a way to flex your newfound muscles in an enjoyable way.
All of this fun is purely subjective though. Farming exp might bother you just as much as farming rep, money, or potions. Another way to look at is to ask yourself, “What do I look forward to?”
Do you look forward to the new expansion? To getting a new peice of equipment? To becoming more powerful?
If you look forward to PvP, or to grouping with friends, that doesn’t really count, because you can do that on a daily basis. It’s nice to have something other than the present to look forward to. Something to build towards.
My favorite thing to build towards is becoming more powerful. Leveling from 1-70 is most enjoyable because you can see new things, and become more powerful on a daily basis! Is in my opinion that that fun stops when you hit 70. At 70, your main goal, if not PvP oriented, will be to see all of the sights. You’ll want to experience all the game has to offer.
WoW falls a bit short in this area. You have to see the same content, over and over again, to get access to new content, and that new content is generally raid content. This means that not just you, but a whole group of other people with varying play styles, will also have to get up to speed. Meanwhile, you just have to same old content to look at, with no way to meet your other goal of becoming more powerful. You can farm some rep, and you can hope for a good drop, but those don’t make you more powerful. It’s just a peice of equipment that you’ll have to replace at the whim of the creators. Will they change how your class works? Will they come out with a new and better peice of equipment? It’s temporary, either way. And it’s a very minor improvement, unless it’s a weapon or other key peice of equipment.
Again, it’s subjective. You have to care, and you have to buy into it.
If you have this above problem with WoW, that problem is only compounded by how quickly you can reach this problem. If you started playing WoW 1.5 or 2 years ago, and only played 4 hours on each weekend day, you’re there. Your progress is halted. Not brickwall, but slowed to a fucking crawl. Meanwhile, most people play more than that. Most people play WoW like it’s a (god forbid) hobby. Hope you enjoy PvP or screwing around randomly! Otherwise, do what so many others have done. Take a break. Just try not to pay for the game while you’re doing so.
June 7th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I once saw a vid on youtube where a warlock player fought against a boss. He had a 40 man group and all you saw is he using the same skill every time, and the other dudes hopping around like bunnies. So I totally agree to Vir’s first point. To balancing: I played WoW once, and noticed that a enemy doesnt block your path, so you could just go through the warrior who tanks and just kill all “clothies”. The most sucky part is that like from 10000000 skills are 5 frequently used and 4-10 for special cases, the rest just rots on the interface. Im stopping complaining about WoW now, and only add that I completly agree with Vir. I only have 1 question: Do anyone think it is possible to arena balance that kinda game? (An Assassian for example would be much tougher than a fragile priest)
June 8th, 2008 at 1:23 am
Namingway:
I’m not sure how raid content is such a bad thing. There are guilds all over the place that aim to be hardcore or casual, and I’m sure one of those guilds fit your style of progression. With the right guild, they’re right alongside you as you get up to speed. Really, the only part where you could speed ahead of others is during the initial rush to max level, and even then, I don’t believe you would be unique in this regard. There’s plenty of content to do, no matter what speed you’re at, unless you’re at the level of top guilds who will down a boss in one-night, and I highly doubt you’re one of those people.
With regards to raids requiring skill: Although I dont’ have much experience with raids in EQ and its difficulty level, it seems to me that you were too babied during your time there. You said that “In Everquest, all you had to do was be fast, because most of the raids were like Kazzak. First come, first serve.” That doesn’t seem very fun, just straight up tank and spank. Your contentions seem to lie with the fact that you need people with skill to beat bosses. How fun can a game be if all you have to do is gather enough people to show up and down a boss?
June 11th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I never said raid content was a bad thing, and I never said I disliked the raids in WoW. Nor did I ever say that the raids in EQ were superior.
The problem is, that I wrote a lot of stuff and didn’t focus very clearly. I guess what you’re referring to is what I wrote in responce to Forty in post #43.
The difficulty itself isn’t a problem, the problem is the jump in difficulty. Anyone can solo to 70, no matter what your intelligence, skill, or play time situation is. There is a large leap in difficulty after that, in doing the level 70 instances. Now, they’re not that hard, but there will always exist some people who never even worked in a team in WoW, who just soloed to 70, and now are mixed with veterans who will be very angry with them for repeatedly getting the group killed.
The stepping stones for learning group and instance mechanics exist, of course, but the players are not forced to take them. After (perhaps mindlessly) getting to 70, they’re thrust into a whole different dimention of complexity. You’ve grouped with people like this. If you played EQ, you didn’t. People like this never MADE IT to 70 in EQ. The leveling up process weeded out the major bozos.
Now, moving on to the complexity of raids. I don’t have much experience with BC raids. I quit before I really got to do any of them. However, I know that it’s still the case that one person who is dead weight will bring down the whole raid. This is more or less to be expected in a 10 man raid. The problems for my guild started back when one person could ruin it for a 40 man raid.
Now, in order to ruin the raid, at the Naxx level, all one had to do is not be 100% focused. All it took is for ONE guy to not know exactly what he or she was doing. All it took was for ONE person to not be commited to victory, to just be there for the loot and DKP, to not bring enough pots or supplies.
This sort of thing is what became the hardship of our guild. The other problem was: where do we find people THIS good at the game? We need 40 of em! To all show up at the same time! On a game where people can level to 60 or 70 with the same kind of attention span they watch saturday morning cartoons with!
Now, I’m not going to put this blame on Blizzard with this one. They want to be all things to all people. But the reality is, there’s a very sharp difficulty curve in this game, and everyone’s going to feel it, because grouping and raiding is a team effort.
That first paragraph I wrote in post #43 is a pretty bad one, upon rereading it. All sorts of assumptions about me as a player can be made by reading it. I must not like challenge and EQ must have been a very easy game.
It’s not so much that I don’t like challenge. Challenge to me to fun and enjoyable. However, that challenge not just for me. It’s for 9, or 24, or 39 other people, who might not even give a damn. Maybe they didn’t do the research. Maybe they didn’t listen well. Maybe they don’t have the correct UI mod that gives them the information they need. Maybe they’re lazy, or slow, or tired. Maybe challenge is something personal, and not just waiting for stars to align so that all your people are paying attention and doing what they’re supposed to be doing!
Now, in EQ, the GAME was harder. Morons didn’t it to 70, nor did people with low attention spans. This increased your odds of success dramatically! Before the Gates of Discord expansion, you could pretty much bring however many people you wanted to a raid. The soft cap was 72 people, but you could always start a 2nd raid. Even with this, you had to know the strat, at the very least. You had to have some good tanks, and some good healers. This meant that about 25% or so of your raid had to be competant. This was easy, as the average EQ player was much smarter than the average WoW player. I realize this is an easy standard to meet.
All that said, were the raids in EQ easier than WoW? YES! The programmers weren’t as creative, and the lack of raid caps until later meant that all you needed was about three successful kills, and you had the boss down, much like WoW. Except that you weren’t guaranteed the attempt in the first place, but if you won the race, then the odds were very low that you’d screw it up, because it was less challenging.
Ok, so, yeah, I guess I could agree that I was babied a bit by EQ raids. They were much easier than WoW raids. But I was more than ready to take on challenging raids in WoW, even if my prior experience had been a cake walk. But alas, it’s not 10, or 25, or 40 of me; it’s that many different people that all I can do is beg that they pay enough attention and not make any mistakes.
Raid challenge is great in theory, frustrating in practice. Raid content is good, but be careful not to make it ALL extremely challenging. Give people a bit of a ladder, since people will continue to solo to 70. Let people taste a bit of success, before you dish out their utter failure. Tone down the amount of potions/reagents needed a bit, no one likes to farm mass quantities of those. Tone down the split second reaction times a bit, sometimes people sneeze, or have a laggy computer. Don’t make it so that the same encounter is so difficult that you never truly master it, and up failing it a large portion of the time even with a top notch crew. That just pisses everyone off.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Namingway, I think you quantified your issues with the game very well in this last post. I more or less agree with everything you wrote.
“Raid challenge is great in theory, frustrating in practice.”
Indeed.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I would have to disagree with you there. A lot of boss mechanics aren’t so hard in raids so that if one person fails, everyone fails. This sort of difficulty is mainly reserved for the highest echelons of raids (BT/Hyjal/Sunwell), although it does exist (albeit rarely) in lower raids. The fact of the matter is, there is a definite ladder system in place, and people aren’t being overwhelmed by the jump in difficulty from 5-mans to raiding. Using wowjutsu.com, you can see that there’s a definite curve: Karazhan’s been cleared by almost 90% of people, Zul’aman at 70%, and 25-mans sit at 50% and lower. If raiding was truly so hard, I would think that less than half of the people who do 10-mans would ever get anywhere. But it’s not that hard as you make it out to be. Even if you don’t know the abilities of what your raiders can or cannot do, the difficulty level of encounters is not impossible such that “the same encounter is so difficult that you never truly master it, and up failing it a large portion of the time even with a top notch crew”.
With a statement like that, I can’t even say you made it past Kara.
I feel that the failing here was in your guild’s recruitment policies. Did you screen applicants with a high baseline? Did you make sure that they seemed mature enough to handle raiding? If you’re serious about raiding, you should be actively trimming the fat from your guild. I doubt there are less than 24 people on your server with the ability to handle raids, and you should be actively recruiting good people.
If all else fails, you could just try to join your server’s local hardcore guild. You know, that guild on your server who’s #1 at everything. They’ve probably gotten it right, and you can just tag along if you feel that you can’t handle recruiting solid players.
Oh and 40-mans had the ability to have SO much fat in a raid that it’s not even funny. Half the raid could literally sleep, and as long as your core knew what they were doing, you’d win. Maybe less so at Naxx-level, but being that it was the highest raid pre-BC, that still meant that half the raids available were prime pickings.
June 13th, 2008 at 2:18 am
“Oh and 40-mans had the ability to have SO much fat in a raid that it’s not even funny. Half the raid could literally sleep, and as long as your core knew what they were doing, you’d win.”
That’s the other half of the problem. Raid content that is not interactive is going to be intrinsically boring and players feel like they’re not contributing. As raids get larger, it gets harder to find a good spot between “screw up and everyone dies”, and “you can’t screw up bad enough that anyone dies.”
Anything that involves lots of players against a single obstacle is basically guaranteed to reduce player autonomy and game interactivity. People work out raid strategies, and then they need a bunch of trained monkeys to execute them. It really doesn’t seem like having 10 people really adds anything to a game.
When was the last time you saw 50 (or more) people get together in real life that wasn’t an event where (a) people were primarily interacting with each other in small groups, (b) most of the people involved were watching a small number that actually did something, or (c) it was considered work?
June 13th, 2008 at 2:32 am
Nate: Regarding why 10 players works… I think your (b) is fine, as long as everyone gets a turn to “actually do something”, and you can cycle them fast enough. Karazhan, in my opinion, actually is one of the best dungeons blizzard has produced. Think of, say, the Big Bad Wolf fight, where people who aren’t normally tanks get cycled into the tanking position. It’s not a hard dungeon, but it has a huge assortment of interesting mechanics, no real gear checks, and a difficulty level low enough that people can actually recover from simple mistakes (like someone disconnecting… it really sucks when a 25-man group wipes to that;;)
June 13th, 2008 at 3:00 am
People do plenty of watching movies or plays, or going to ballgames. As long as the stuff that’s being watched is entertaining, cycling really isn’t necessary. I haven’t played WoW, but typically mechanic-enforced cycling sticks out as an arbitrary method inserted into the system to provide a group composition requirement. (An example that I’m more familiar with is CoH’s Hammidon raid.)
Part of the problem is that MMO environments are typically spectacularly predicable (have tried watching someone else play?), so most of the time, raids in the (b) format become 80% dead time the second time around which basically means that in-game rewards become the only motivation for repeat play.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:20 am
I’m glad you disagree with me on this one, Pzychotix! It’s always fun to have a civil and intelligent argument.
Again, you make some very good points here.
“With a statement like that, I can’t even say you made it past Kara.”
You’re right, I didn’t. I had quit the game before that, about two months after BC came out.
Also, I would like to further elaborate on the quote above that statement: “the same encounter is so difficult that you never truly master it, and up failing it a large portion of the time even with a top notch crew”
NEVER truly master it? I exaggerate. Let’s take Vael in BWL for example. Let’s say your guild beats him on the 15th try, for example. Now, after this point, it’s not unusual for your guild to have a 30% success rate on him, even after you already know the strat and have the right people and resists. All you can do after this point, is improve your success rate to make BWL go faster and more smoothly each time. The unreasonable part, in my opinion, is that it would not be abnormal to not have him “mastered” until after 100 tries. You have to GREATLY outgear the encounter to improve your odds to success. I’m talking about Pre-BC here, because that is my raiding experience. You would not realistically MASTER Vael until had some Naxx gear, even if you were in a great guild. And by master I mean at least a 95% success rate. Mistakes in that fight were simply too easy to make, and too hard to recover from. He breathed on the raid! You lose.
That is what I refer to. People don’t like that. I know I didn’t enjoy waiting for my slowest guildmates every wipe.
Now, my raiding knowledge is too stale to make an argument about current and future raids. Things have changed, things have gotten better.
“Using wowjutsu.com, you can see that there’s a definite curve: Karazhan’s been cleared by almost 90% of people, Zul’aman at 70%, and 25-mans sit at 50% and lower. If raiding was truly so hard, I would think that less than half of the people who do 10-mans would ever get anywhere. But it’s not that hard as you make it out to be.”
I was going to say something else, but I just looked at the WowJutsu site.
99.62% of all guilds have beaten at least one boss in Karazhan. That information is a bit suspect. I would almost believe the figure, if it counted any individual in any guild that killed a boss in a pickup raid. Almost. However, i would wager that more than .38% of guilds are full of mules from other guilds that do low level PvP, or guilds that just screw around, or bank mule guilds.
Just looking at the site, I would wager that guilds ask to be scanned, so these are not fully accurate numbers.
However, I’m not just going to use that to throw out your whole argument. The fact is, you’re right. The instances are easier now. The raids are easier now, at least a lot of them are. There IS a ladder. A friend of mine told me about a site where you could judge, based on your equipment, what raids your character was ready for. You can use this site to scan your whole guild. In fact, that site might even be WowJutsu. I can’t tell for sure just by poking around.
However, eventually you will get to the high level stuff, if for no other reason than that there’s very little else to do. You WILL become frustrated. You WILL see the problems that I was talking about. I’m amazed that you haven’t seen it yet.
Perhaps you’re in an incredibly good guild, and have had nothing but positive experiences with raiding. If that’s the case, then you are not in the majority. Besides that, even the top guild on the server will be bashing their heads against some seemingly hopeless encounter. The question might come to mind: is it hard for the right reasons?
Is the encounter your guild stuck on hard because people need better gear?
This is a common problem, but a difficult one to identify. All you can do is continue to fail, until one day you succeed with the same strat but better gear. Nowadays, you can find out in advance if you’re going to run into this problem. This is good, but is a gear check really a challenge? Isn’t it more of a blockade against further progress? Maybe it doesn’t have to be! Maybe your guild can compensate with their skill! There’s only one way to find out!
Is the encounter your guild stuck on hard because of split second timing issues?
Requiring good timing is a pretty standard practice for making something more difficult. The problem is that every time you fail this timing, your guild dies, and has to run back, rebuff, explain what went wrong, and try again. Let’s say your guild is fast and can do this in 15 minutes. That’s still gonna be pretty ball breaking, because it might take you a hundred tries if the timing is hard, or if EVERYONE has to get the timing down. Meanwhile, it’s an excellent money sink, which will force everyone to spend more time playing to farm more money and pots. Is that an acceptable type of challenge?
Is your guild stuck on an encounter because it requires massive amounts of supplies and preperation for each attempt?
I hope to god Blizzard stopped doing this with the difficult BC raids, but I doubt it. At least they probably don’t require Dire Maul, Hakkar and Onyxia/Nefarion buffs. Is it possible to get those buffs at 70? If it is, then people will do it, for any edge they can get. I shudder to think. “Quick, lets head to LBRS to get the MC fire resist buff!” Raids don’t HAVE to require you to farm obscene amounts of pots, or go out of your way for uber buffs. Yet in the past, many high end raid bosses were designed that way. Your guild would have to work hard to slowly wean their dependancy on such buffs. This is not an enjoyable way to add challenge.
“Oh and 40-mans had the ability to have SO much fat in a raid that it’s not even funny. Half the raid could literally sleep, and as long as your core knew what they were doing, you’d win. Maybe less so at Naxx-level, but being that it was the highest raid pre-BC, that still meant that half the raids available were prime pickings.”
Also true. In MC, 25-30 people could be fat. In BWL, 15-20, assuming that the “fat” is more competant than the MC fat. In AQ40, you could have maybe 5-10, until the hard bosses. This “fat” again had to more competant than the BWL fat. In Naxx, no fat whatsoever. You could only afford to have competant people, and SUPER competant people. There is a ladder though.
Problem is, eventually you’ll get to the no fat parts. This is because content comes out extremely slowly. You too will feel the pain, and you might perhaps wonder if it has to be this way.
It doesn’t. Blizzard will eventually get around to fixing these problems. Just as soon as they finish working on PvP. Which will totally be any day now. I’m sure it’s right around the corner. They’ve worked on it so long, they’ve gotta be almost done. Definately.
When they do fix it, I sure hope they do it right! I have plenty of suggestions that I’m sure they would never listen to!
June 13th, 2008 at 4:39 am
Nate: Good point about watching being enjoyable. For the repeat play issue… I think it’s fine as long as there’s room for improvement. The goal the second time isn’t to just win… it’s to win faster, with fewer consumables, and so on. Yeah, by the hundredth time, even that falls apart, but I think blizzard has at least tried to strike a balance with “get X amount of gear, and then you can try the next instance”, where X isn’t too high.
Namingway: Some good points in there, but good lord, man… next time you want to post, paraphrase your post, and then summarize the paraphrase, and then post that;; Also, you’re right, your info is very outdated… Blizzard has nerfed all the pre-60 raiding buffs to make them not proc on level70 players, and redone the entire potion system to ensure fewer consumables than ever before can be used. Honestly, they already fixed a vast majority of the stuff you’re bringing up.
June 13th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
“I feel that the failing here was in your guild’s recruitment policies. Did you screen applicants with a high baseline? Did you make sure that they seemed mature enough to handle raiding? If you’re serious about raiding, you should be actively trimming the fat from your guild.”
This sounds suspiciously like work.
I would also point out that failing because you sucked is challenge; failing because some guy you barely know sucked is frustration.
Few people enjoy being held hostage by circumstances outside of their control, and “round up smarter more competent people” is not a fun game.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Claytus:
Let me sure I understand this correctly: in WoW players are expected to repeatedly do the same raid over and over before moving on to the next one? …
James M:
The problem isn’t that it’s work. There are plenty of people doing plenty of things that others consider work for fun. The problem is that it’s un-fun. Honestly, telling someone they’re not good enough is one of the least fun things you’ll ever do in your life. (This is very different than telling people how to improve.)
June 13th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Nate: Well, it’s actually a little more complicated than that. First off, the bosses in a single raid get progressively harder, and the bosses repop every week. So, it’s not uncommon for a single guild to spend many, many weeks killing early bosses over and over, while they slowly progress through, and finally succeed in killing each of the later bosses in turn. And, there’s always at least two raids of the appropriate difficulty available, so it’s not like you’re actively being locked into just doing one thing by blizzard. That said, yes, gear requirements are such that being able to get a full 25 people ready to move onto the next difficulty tier of raids usually requires a month or two of just collecting loot, even after you’ve successfully killed every single boss in an instance.
Remember there’s basically only 5 25-man instances total, and that much content was supposed to keep end-game raiders busy for almost two years… There’s a lot in each of those instances, but it’s the nature of an MMO that requires there also be a reason to do it a second time.
June 14th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Claytus-
Namingway: Some good points in there, but good lord, man… next time you want to post, paraphrase your post, and then summarize the paraphrase, and then post that;; Also, you’re right, your info is very outdated… Blizzard has nerfed all the pre-60 raiding buffs to make them not proc on level70 players, and redone the entire potion system to ensure fewer consumables than ever before can be used. Honestly, they already fixed a vast majority of the stuff you’re bringing up.
Glad to hear that! A step in the right direction that I didn’t expect!
Not enough to make me go back to WoW though. I’ll be interested to see how long the upcoming expansion can entertain players. I really would like to go back to the game. I just need enough reasons to come back.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
There really aren’t even any gear checks any more. The only gear check fights pre-Sunwell are two resistance fights (Mother Shazraz and Hydross), and they can be mostly done with a ragtag set of greens. All the instances up to BT/Hyjal was cleared in China with undergeared characters (anywhere from T3 to stuff they picked up along the way).
The only fight I can see requiring a solid set of gear is Brutallus, which is both a tank/healer test, as well as a DPS test. The rest of the fights hinge more on the individual ability to deal with that boss’ mechanics. If everyone in the raid can execute their job perfectly, you’re more than likely able to pass even with horrible gear.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:22 am
@ Kirandio (post 24): yes, the one paladin was a retribution, in an ms warrior/resto shaman setup.
July 12th, 2008 at 5:26 am
People who are still complaining about arena balance have failed to realize that blizzard shifted their primary focus to 3v3, and that balance at this point is better than it ever has been. Every class has at least one viable spec and comp to play. Some classes have like, 8, but that’s not quite as big of a deal. The “no-skill, just gear and counter-comp!” is the classic cop-out for people who don’t want to admit that they might not be as good as they think they are.
Basically what I’m saying is, the comment section of that blog is a waste of space. There are many things that blizzard does not understand, but arena balance is not one of them.
July 26th, 2008 at 3:10 am
Namingway: Wonderful and spot on analysis of the game, and I agree with pretty much everything you mentioned and second you on all of it. I too had zero interest in PvP and wasn’t even that keen on large-team instances, let alone raids.
I loved levelling my characters (main and alts) up most of the time in solo, occasionaly with one or two friends. Pickup groups or playing temporarily with strangers (particularly those just trying to power level) wasn’t in any way enjoyable either and took the aesthetics away and exposed the more mathematically calculated underbelly.
Initially I played back in the UK (3 years ago now, so a long time before BC) and it was great fun advancing through, slowly building up talents and gaining new skills and abilities and occasionally acquiring a nice and shiny piece of equipment to enhance my character a bit more. I was (even though at the time I would often spend a lot of time in-game) only really a casual player. Part enjoying an adventurer lifestyle, and part enjoying a more business orientated lifestyle; making good money by snagging bargains at the auction house. If I recall I got to level 57 before I moved to China, so never quite made it to lvl 60 at that point.
About a year or so later I returned to WoW (much to the angst of my girlfriend at the time who couldn’t understand the enjoyment of the game at all hehe), although this time playing in on the Chinese client on Chinese servers. This of course made questing all the more difficult, but I could still remember a good amount of the quests and with the help of Thottbot for quest translations and item descriptions it was all perfectly playable. Raids / Instances / Groups however, were now almost definately out of the question due to commuication difficulties.. my knowledge of Chinese is only elementary. However, I built up a new character - orc hunter (probably the easiest character to take through the game playing solo in my opinion especially instances being able to feign death and with a pet as a tank) and before I stopped playing, I got him to about level 62, and most alts on various servers to about level 30.
Its very interesting to read your take on raids and the comments from others having never really expereinced them in any full way, and I would have certainly have counted as one of the inexperienced morons that EQ would have weeded out.
For me, it just became too slow. Too spread out, too much required repetetive grinding to try and earn experience to get to the next level. (Probably would have been a darn sight quicker to get from 60 to 70 by doing high end instances in groups etc) I spent a whole day (10hours) felling beasts a level or two higher than myself in outland one after the other, and even on full rested bonus I barely notched up 15-20% of a level. Sure.. loads of gold earned, loads of materials gained, but no new skills, no really useful gear found, and still such a long way of the next milestone of being able to get a new leatherworking recipe from one of the factions requiring a daunting amount of grinding. Collecting patterns and recipes was fun too. But that too had dropped off by this point. The only ones left required so much grinding I lost interest. Sure I could invest every spare moment into grinding for the best gear, but hey I have other things I’d rather do, and even if I did, by the time I got that gear it would be outdated by the next tier of content added anyway. Outland I found dreadfully droll - despite the possibility of owning a flying mount or whatever, it just felt bland and like I’d landed on some neverending staircase down into purgatory.
So time for a new character.. go back for some of the initial fun.. the quick advancement, the fun of discovering new talents with a new class and trying them out. I still think levels 5-30 are the most enjoyable in the game. Then theres a bit of a lull until you get to 40 and have a mount to speed up your distance travelling, and then again, a lull (more so depending on class) and then a slow drop off. I have countless characters I enjoyed taking to around the level 30 mark and then left them in limbo in favour of a new one.
As a solo player, a lot of game content is lost and all the nicer quest rewards tend to be worthless because by the time you are geared up or levelled up enough to be able to complete the quest solo, the reward is far less useful than what you now already have. Especially true of instance based quests… when you finally get round to soloing the instances 10+ levels higher than the item rewards or drops. Still, I don’t complain about that, I don’t think it should be any easier.. only a handful of people play the game completely solo (for varying reasons). Its an MMO and meant to be played with groups of players. It would however be nice if there was a difficulty scaling of instances etc that compensated for the size of the group entering. I had fun poking my head into unexplored instances to see just how far I could get on my own - most of the time getting part way in and then deciding to return later. Hehe I made the mistake of venturing into one instance and finding out that the only way out was either at the other end of it - or hearth-stoning out. Most instances and bosses however I happily did without there’s not a huge amount of intelligent strategy involved in my opinion, its more about the group combination and a basic strategy of killing-order, standing in the right places and being able to pack a heavy punch with whatever spell or weapon. Might sound like a lot when listed, but doesn’t require a great deal of brainpower. I would however have liked to have see the Caverns of Time, that one did sound particularly interesting to me, and I still enjoy watching various videos of more unique strategies employed by various players (e.g. Hobbs’ way of pulling etc) and the videos allow me to experience some of the extra content. Many videos are sadly very uninteresting to watch and have dreadful music overlaid.
It is still in my opinion a truly excellent game, a richly filled world, a huge amount of different things to do, and provides players with a very wide variety of ways in which to enjoy themselves: early on. Trading in the AH, boosting professions and crafting items, seeking new items, improving your weapon skills or talents, collecting pet skills, PvPing, group instances and raids, solo PvE, or simply wandering around roleplaying as I often did in UK. My only complaint is that for the casual player the game starts off great and then thins out to a whimper unless you crossover to being more of a hardcore player (but I guess then you would hit that huge learning curve gap that you mentioned previously). The satisfaction just slowly fades away, like a film with a disappointing or bad ending or book two of a trilogy that never got completed.
One thought here, is that it would perhaps of been nice to have had some kind of optional ending. Something that could give some sense of completion to a character. You could argue that Blizzard wouldn’t want to do that because they want people to keep playing, but that never stopped me replaying other games, but with a different character or class. DiabloII for instance - there is a sense of completion when you kill Baal the last main boss, then the game moves up a notch if you want to continue - if not and you’ld rather try a new character, you at have some sense of victory. Perhaps even if it was just a 3D cutsceen like at the start of the game that occured once you returned to the city at level 60, congratulating you on your accomplishment thus far and proposing the challenge of going further in the game or to just take it easy and retire to civilian life for a while.
I will possibly return to it at some point and re-roll a new character and take him to around level 30-40 again at some point just for fun, but it will probably be a long way off, and no doubt I shall just end up playing DiabloIII instead by that point. Luckily here its pay-as-you-play on pre-paid game cards not a monthly subscription or anything. So theres no real issue of dropping it and later returning. :)
Yeah I know.. I’ve rambled on way too much and completely avoided the main theme of the thread. Just thought I’d throw my opinions into the thread because it was interesting to read everyone elses.
-Z-
October 10th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
<strong>infant palsy</strong>
Unfortunately, many people are not eating this much fiber, which is causing serious cardio- vascular health concerns. Recently the AHA and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) confirmed that coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death in the…