Cataclysm

[Setanta]

DPS can get away with being PVP geared, especially in normals.  If you're wearing the newest honor point gear it is probably just fine for non troll heroics too.  Only healers and especially tanks should get yelled at for wearing PVP gear in dungeons really.

Healers in (the most recent) PvP gear could heal the normal heroics just fine, I am willing to bet. I'm positive my paladin could.

Tanks though, yeah, they need PvE gear.

Except druid tanks. My Druid is using the latest honor shoulders - I probably lose a little bit of threat due to the resilience being a worthless stat for PvE but I haven't had an issue yet (tanked ZG/ZA last night with 2 23-25K DPS mages). I hate it when DPS/heals rocks up in resil gear though - usually we boot them.

[Ashamanchill]

In some cases PvP gear is BiS for Druid tanks.

[SurfD]

In some cases PvP gear is BiS for Druid tanks.

Pretty sure those cases would be very few and far between, unless said Druid was foolishly stam stacking.  You cant reforge resilience, and a large chunk of Druid avoidance comes from reforging pretty much EVERY "least valueable" stat on every piece of gear to dodge.

[Miasma]

Head and shoulder pieces will be interesting moving forward since, other than raiding the toughest bosses, I don't think there are any PvE upgrades from 359 (and you would only be at 359 if you were raiding the toughest bosses from t11).  So a conquest or even honor upgrade from 353 would probably be legit since they are that much better.

[Shrike]

There are alternate pieces scattered through the FL bosses to cover head and shoulders. Some of them are even fairly well itemized (for someone).

Ferinstance, the mail cover that drops from Shannox. Essentially a hunter piece, it also works well enough for enhance. Not sure I'd swap the T11 hat out for it, but it's definately an upgrade from the 353 piece from ZA and far and away better than that stupid fish head that drops from the Council.

[Sjofn]

DPS can get away with being PVP geared, especially in normals.  If you're wearing the newest honor point gear it is probably just fine for non troll heroics too.  Only healers and especially tanks should get yelled at for wearing PVP gear in dungeons really.

Healers in (the most recent) PvP gear could heal the normal heroics just fine, I am willing to bet. I'm positive my paladin could.

Tanks though, yeah, they need PvE gear.

Except druid tanks. My Druid is using the latest honor shoulders - I probably lose a little bit of threat due to the resilience being a worthless stat for PvE but I haven't had an issue yet (tanked ZG/ZA last night with 2 23-25K DPS mages). I hate it when DPS/heals rocks up in resil gear though - usually we boot them.

Ahh, I wasn't thinking of druid tanks. I never actually look to see what people are wearing unless I'm having trouble keeping them alive (and again, I am positive I could heal regular heroics in my PvP suit and not think twice about it ... I just don't because I know people would fuss), and druids are always already a bear when I zone in. :P

[Ashamanchill]

In some cases PvP gear is BiS for Druid tanks.

Pretty sure those cases would be very few and far between, unless said Druid was foolishly stam stacking.  You cant reforge resilience, and a large chunk of Druid avoidance comes from reforging pretty much EVERY "least valueable" stat on every piece of gear to dodge.

If your not raiding, honor gear outweighs anything in a dungeon because of the extra agility you get. If you are raiding, but only tier 11, the arena gear is superior, so not that few and far between. Don't forget, most of the time all you are getting on an item is haste (shit for bears), expertise (not great for bears), of hit (meh for bears). If you have a choice between more agility, and more of any of the other stats, more agility is better.

[apocrypha]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2842565136?page=1#13

Why is Ghostcrawler no longer on the forums?
Where did he go? I am not aware of what exactly happened. Did he get a lot of trolls attacking him than decide to lay low after that?
No, it didn't really have anything to do with that. We (community managers) had several discussions with Ghostcrawler and the other lead developers about how we'd be approaching communication on the new community site when it launched. Ultimately, we all agreed it'd be better for the company and the community to have the community managers be the primary source of forum communication. He still reads the forums every day for feedback. Likewise, we stay in touch with him every day, often relaying information he provides us to you all. So his thoughts on any given subject are still very often shared on the forums. The only difference is we, as community managers, take the time to relay his thoughts to you so he can focus more on considering the feedback we collect and provide from the forums, affording him more time to focus on development.

That said, he's always looking for new subjects to tackle for our blogs, so you still get a direct link to his (and the rest of the development team's) thought process. As we've stated before, we also plan on completely revamping the concept of Ask the Devs. The goal is to make sure the new Ask the Devs format allows for more interaction between devs and players, and has a quicker turnaround time on answers provided.

He may not be in the trenches interacting with players on the forums daily anymore, but he's still watching. Reading. Contemplating. Waiting to strike. And when he does, we'll be there to share his words of wisdom.

I'm sure you can all provide your own translations of that nice paragraph of mod-speak. 

[Fordel]

That's old news, as in, he said that would happen once they went over to the new site/forums, how ever many months ago it was.

[Lantyssa]

Why do you take the fun out of Ghostcrawler hate?

[Lakov_Sanite]

The whole healing Q/A they did last week was much more worthy of bile. The thing read like the developers had their fingers in their ears going "la la la la la" the whole time.

[Soulflame]

Requiring one of the most hated jobs in raiding to be relegated to people who like healing, have excellent situational awareness, good reflexes, and an avidness for resource management hasn't made the game much better?

 

[Lakov_Sanite]

The philosophy is supposed to be "is it fun?" but I think they are confusing fun as being the opposite of boring. They seem to be tuning everything to 'not be boring' but not boring doesn't auto-magically make something fun.

[Sjofn]

Paladin healing is fun. God, it still feels so good to say that. 

[Ingmar]

"Not boring" pretty much by definition means it will be fun for *someone*. The rest is just tweaking. They'll probably never get it so all 5 specs are happy at the same time, just due to the 'those other guys are happy, they must be more powerful than me' syndrome.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Hammering nails into your dick is fun for *someone*

[Ashamanchill]

The philosophy is supposed to be "is it fun?" but I think they are confusing fun as being the opposite of boring. They seem to be tuning everything to 'not be boring' but not boring doesn't auto-magically make something fun.

I think rated BGs suffer from this design doctrine heavily. Sometimes I wonder if any Blizzard employees have actually done them at all. I mean, logged on alone, then spammed trade for an hour til a group was found (all the while being able to do nothing else except farm), then sat through the long ass queue just to play one.

[Malakili]

The philosophy is supposed to be "is it fun?" but I think they are confusing fun as being the opposite of boring. They seem to be tuning everything to 'not be boring' but not boring doesn't auto-magically make something fun.

Its kind of an odd philosophy seeing as fun is basically meaningless.  I love blowing the fuck out of hordes of monsters in Diablo 2 - thats fun.  I also like being part of a group in EVE that needs to spend 2-3 hours carefully positioning ships and resources to refuel POSs in contested space - thats fun.   In one instance I'm going "Fuck yea!" in the other I'm probably doing almost *nothing* if everything goes to plan. 

I also find it fun when I have the time to analyze Starcraft 2 builds really closely.  But I find it boring to play a 20 minute no rush everyone techs up to whatever unit they want and then mass battle to see who wins.  I'd say thats switched for a huge majority of people.

I think the only option is to do precisely what you've said - rule out the stuff that is patently unfun/crappy to most of your player base and hope for the best. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

Yes, tacking down what is fun is hard but you know what? With some hard work you can usually get it mostly right. 

I think the only option is to do precisely what you've said - rule out the stuff that is patently unfun/crappy to most of your player base and hope for the best.

This quote and the laziness it implies is very much what's going wrong with the game.

[Paelos]

Fun in WoW for me was blasting through hordes of monsters with my friends, doing wings of raids, or fishing for rare stuff.

[Ashamanchill]

Its kind of an odd philosophy seeing as fun is basically meaningless. 

No it really isn't. That is sort of an ivory tower sentiment. If you play test the game, and something is declared not fun by most of your audience, then yeah, there it is. Then again, I'm becoming more and more convinced that less game developers playtest a game with fun in mind any more.

[Paelos]

I'm convinced more developers are too involved in the business of games when they have no business acumen.

[Ingmar]

fishing for rare stuff.

The fact that you find fishing in WoW fun should be proof enough that we're dealing with an art here, not a science.

[Paelos]

fishing for rare stuff.

The fact that you find fishing in WoW fun should be proof enough that we're dealing with an art here, not a science.

I think more, not less is usually a good combination of the answers to the fun question. We have to ask the questions: Am I capable of doing it? Am I incentivized by the game to do it? Do I get a sense of accomplishment from doing it? Does it make me want to log in more?

If the activity doesn't meet those requirements, it most likely won't be fun to that player.

[Fordel]

Why do you take the fun out of Ghostcrawler hate?

Because most of it is misdirected and misinformed?



Hate The Evil Kalgan, he is your true enemy.

[Rokal]

fishing for rare stuff.

The fact that you find fishing in WoW fun should be proof enough that we're dealing with an art here, not a science.

I think more, not less is usually a good combination of the answers to the fun question. We have to ask the questions: Am I capable of doing it? Am I incentivized by the game to do it? Do I get a sense of accomplishment from doing it? Does it make me want to log in more?

If the activity doesn't meet those requirements, it most likely won't be fun to that player.

Fishing does not meet 3 out of those 4 criteria :p

[Sheepherder]

Hate The Evil Kalgan, he is your true enemy.

Is it alright if I hate Ghostcrawler because constant button mashing is a retarded game mechanic?

[Ingmar]

Hate The Evil Kalgan, he is your true enemy.

Is it alright if I hate Ghostcrawler because constant button mashing is a retarded game mechanic?

Which class are you talking about here?

[Malakili]

Its kind of an odd philosophy seeing as fun is basically meaningless. 

No it really isn't. That is sort of an ivory tower sentiment. If you play test the game, and something is declared not fun by most of your audience, then yeah, there it is. Then again, I'm becoming more and more convinced that less game developers playtest a game with fun in mind any more.

But thats exactly what I said - rule out things that aren't fun.   In fact I don't disagree with anything you've said - but I would also say that when you are a behemoth like WoW, its damned hard to hit on anything thats going to appeal to all 10 million people or whatever.  The best you can do is hope the audience you are aiming at likes it, and it doesn't get too negative a reaction from the others.

You can certainly argue that the general population thought Wrath was more fun than Cata, but you make it sound like with Wrath they said "Ok, lets make a fun game" and with Cata they were just like "eh, fuck it, whatever"   I mean, come on.

[Fordel]

No, they went into Cata saying "we need to make stuff more meaningful", if they just went "fuck it" we would still have Wrath's systems. 

[Paelos]

"Meaningful" is almost never a good thing to hear from a game designer. It implies that players don't care. It also implies that your players are playing incorrectly.

It could be that your players don't want meaning in the way the developers want it. It's like "taste." You can argue that something needs more taste, but what if that taste is shitty? What if you're eating shit? I don't want more taste in that case.

The contridiction of making things more "meaningful" could not be more apparent than in a game where your actions have no effect on a static world. An MMO world does not evolve in any real sense. Players do not affect their environment at all. Rather, they ride through it like a rollercoaster on the way to their next fix. It's entertaining, but they do nothing to change it. And, yet the developers want their choices to have meaning??? I submit that the developers are trying to shoehorn meaning into a meaningless world. At it's very core, it's a ridiculous endeavor.

[Merusk]

If you accept that the world is meaningless, then you accept that your endeavors are equally so and everything is actually just a gigantic waste of time that could be put to better use.   I've always attributed the need to inject meaning is the subliminal fear of the claimant that the illusion is about to be shattered.

[Paelos]

If you accept that the world is meaningless, then you accept that your endeavors are equally so and everything is actually just a gigantic waste of time that could be put to better use.   I've always attributed the need to inject meaning is the subliminal fear of the claimant that the illusion is about to be shattered.

You mean that the developers are terrified that the customers are about to figure out they have been running in a purple-lined Skinner box? I've grouped with plenty of them. They won't.

[Merusk]

I agree they won't, but time and again you see Devs posit the same thing. Raph predicted what, 7 years ago now that People would tire of DIKU and move on to 'real' games like his?  I recall Bartle did something similar.

There seems to be a point at which the devs themselves get bored of the idea and think the players are, too. 

[Lantyssa]

Individual players do move on.  At least try to as best the market allows.  But new people come along and mess everything up.