Cataclysm

[kildorn]

You can use conditionals? Huh.

Though I wasn't expecting to need my programming skills to play the game.

That's not an ingame script, it's the logical flow used by parsers to determine ideal dps in a patchwerk style stand there and beat on him fight. But it's useful for "what skills should you use/prioritize"

I mean, I could have BoA and BoD on my lock's bars, but why?

[K9]

There's 23 abilities (29 including situational ones) that I use in pretty much every heroic or raid. I'm not sure what this logic has to do with Chakra not working when you have a lot of buttons to push though  

[Sheepherder]

Do you use Clique?

Because that should be an indicator right there.

[Ingmar]

26 is not at all correct. There might be 26 buttons you would think about pushing in some sort of emergency or corner case situation but in reality the number is much smaller.

 

Oh, and that's not counting any specialized stance swap macros you might have.

An arms warrior having to apply sunder, thunder clap, or demo shout are all well into 'corner case' considering how many other sources there are of those debuffs (and how many of those come from tanks). Bladestorm, cleave and sweeping strikes are only in the AE rotation, that's bar 2. Cooldowns don't need to be on a bunch of separate keybinds, just macro them all onto something you can hammer when they come up. You listed victory rush.  

The core arms abilities are: rend, overpower, mortal strike, colossus smash, slam, HS, and add in execute for the end of the fight. It really isn't that complicated, the only thing that is sort of pointless is the slam/HS semi-redundancy.

[Typhon]

[snip]Cooldowns don't need to be on a bunch of separate keybinds, just macro them all onto something you can hammer when they come up.[snip]

(note: I'm not saying that you are saying the design is good.  I am saying that it seems like you don't see the problem).

This statement alone argues that they need to rethink the design.  If the only time that you would use any particular cooldown is in "fire all my guns!!" scenario then what is the benefit of having separate cooldowns?  If there are plenty of times that you would want to use just a specific cooldown, and it's not  the first cooldown on that macro, you will need more buttons on the bar (macro + cooldowns that you need).

If they (or you) expect the player to put planning in ahead of time to figure out which buttons or macro's he would or wouldn't need on his bars then you just lost those people that don't want to have to spend hours fucking around with macros every time they patch and break the old ones.  I guess they cold provide a way to save toolbars (raid, quest, pvp, etc) that you could just bring up later, but I find myself caring even less about their game in that case.

I like guild wars system much more - limited set of buttons that I fill from a large pool of abilities.  NO macros.

[Minvaren]

Any other trolls out there always having to steal Goblin rice for the Org cooking daily and not getting the meta?   

[El Gallo]

Err.. why are you collecting more than 200 frags anyway?  Is there some trick that I'm missing here? That's 6.25 combines without the boosters and ~8 with them. You don't get skillups for surveying after 100 skill, so why carry that many around without combining?

You don't want to spend any troll fragments until you hit 450, so those fragments have a chance of giving you the item as well as a skillup.  More importantly, it means that the thousands of other-race fragments I acquire while flying around the fucking map praying to the RNG god that a goddamn troll site spawns somewhere can't be saved in the off chance they decide to add any other worthwhile toys to this disgraceful shitstain of a minigame at some point in the future.

[Sheepherder]

[snip]

The fact that you need a second bar kind of proves my point, does it not?  Yeah, I question even having Victory Rush on my bar.  No, I don't question Thunderclap, you kind of need it to proc Blood & Thunder.

Agreed on one point: for the most part you don't need to select a specific cooldown or trinket, and it's another feature of their design that draws out my RAEG.  There's no point in making them clicky trinkets if realistically the highest boost you can squeeze out of them is to bind them to Mortal Strike and otherwise ignore them.

[apocrypha]

disgraceful shitstain of a minigame at some point in the future.

Best description of Archaeology ever.

Once I decided that I'd rather just save up 50k gold and buy a Vial of the Sands than grind this shitty, tedious, RNG wankery of a "profession" I felt a lot better.

[Ingmar]

[snip]

The fact that you need a second bar kind of proves my point, does it not?  Yeah, I question even having Victory Rush on my bar.  No, I don't question Thunderclap, you kind of need it to proc Blood & Thunder.

Agreed on one point: for the most part you don't need to select a specific cooldown or trinket, and it's another feature of their design that draws out my RAEG.  There's no point in making them clicky trinkets if realistically the highest boost you can squeeze out of them is to bind them to Mortal Strike and otherwise ignore them.

You shouldn't be just binding them willy-nilly to attack moves, there are better times in most fights to blow cooldowns than right on your first MS so you want more control over that.

And I'm not sure why a separate AE rotation on bar 2 is a big problem, frankly, single target and AE rotations being different is a deliberate bit of design.

[apocrypha]

You have 10 number buttons on a keyboard. With - and = too that's 12. With shift, ctrl and alt that's 48 easy keybinds. 1-5, shift 1-5 and ctrl 1-5 are all easily reachable and usable by even people with the smallest hands and terrible manual dexterity.

Having a bunch of core abilities plus a bigger bunch of situational, less frequently used ones helps create a "simple to learn, harder to master" system. A good indication of if a player is going to be herpderp or not is if they know how to use their situationals well. Does that paladin use Hand of Freedom/Sacrifice? Does the hunter snake trap caster mobs and misdirect and swap growl on & off at the right times? Or is the rogue a 1-button Fan of Knives spammer?

If you homogenize classes down to the core 20 abilities then you remove that ability of people to actually play better beyond "don't stand in the fire".

[Jimbo]

Re-started school, so instead of spending time w/ beer and broads I'm studying and then playing video games (yea! "no-lifeing" is what my kid calls it when he and his friends do that), anyway, it is really good on the leveling now and the pick-up dungeon helps get quests done too!

OMG!  The badlands quest w/ the dwarf, gnome, and orc was awesome!

Why does that damn commercial make so much sense, "just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in."  Can I really make a flying carpet mount earlier now?  Sweeet!

[Hawkbit]

If you homogenize classes down to the core 20 abilities then you remove that ability of people to actually play better beyond "don't stand in the fire".

Just wanted to point out that Guild Wars managed to be fairly successful only allowing 8 abilities on the hotbar and GW2 will allow 10.  Granted, one is allowed to pick from a list, but more bars does not necessarily mean better gameplay. 

[Ratman_tf]

You have 10 number buttons on a keyboard. With - and = too that's 12. With shift, ctrl and alt that's 48 easy keybinds. 1-5, shift 1-5 and ctrl 1-5 are all easily reachable and usable by even people with the smallest hands and terrible manual dexterity.

Having a bunch of core abilities plus a bigger bunch of situational, less frequently used ones helps create a "simple to learn, harder to master" system. A good indication of if a player is going to be herpderp or not is if they know how to use their situationals well. Does that paladin use Hand of Freedom/Sacrifice? Does the hunter snake trap caster mobs and misdirect and swap growl on & off at the right times? Or is the rogue a 1-button Fan of Knives spammer?

If you homogenize classes down to the core 20 abilities then you remove that ability of people to actually play better beyond "don't stand in the fire".

Anything off my 1-10-= (using ctrl,alt,shift) is gonna get mentally moved to the bottom of the list, and when it comes time to use "Situational ability X", I'm not gonna be able to remember if I put it on ctrl-5 or shift-8 or alt-2, until it's too late.

So I never use extended hotbars to hold stuff that is used in a tight spot.

[kildorn]

If you homogenize classes down to the core 20 abilities then you remove that ability of people to actually play better beyond "don't stand in the fire".

Just wanted to point out that Guild Wars managed to be fairly successful only allowing 8 abilities on the hotbar and GW2 will allow 10.  Granted, one is allowed to pick from a list, but more bars does not necessarily mean better gameplay. 

For the most part WoW has the same basic idea (you are not going to use all X abilities at any given point), it's just not as obvious as in GW where you don't HAVE that 30 minute just in case clicky, or that particular situational spell that you didn't need this run.

You can usually fit almost everything you will need to do on 1-2 bars (one for base abilities, one for cooldowns is how I run it) these days.

Now, vanilla was another matter entirely. *stares at old screenshots of his shaman's UI*

[Typhon]

You have 10 number buttons on a keyboard. With - and = too that's 12. With shift, ctrl and alt that's 48 easy keybinds. 1-5, shift 1-5 and ctrl 1-5 are all easily reachable and usable by even people with the smallest hands and terrible manual dexterity.

Having a bunch of core abilities plus a bigger bunch of situational, less frequently used ones helps create a "simple to learn, harder to master" system. A good indication of if a player is going to be herpderp or not is if they know how to use their situationals well. Does that paladin use Hand of Freedom/Sacrifice? Does the hunter snake trap caster mobs and misdirect and swap growl on & off at the right times? Or is the rogue a 1-button Fan of Knives spammer?

If you homogenize classes down to the core 20 abilities then you remove that ability of people to actually play better beyond "don't stand in the fire".

For a new player, the game just drops abilities onto the first bar of the toolbar.  It takes a player who has played before to move his/her abilities to other bars (like the AE bar).  Unfortunately for the new player this often doesn't happen until the player already has some muscle memory, so moving buttons to different bars will result in some missed abilities or mis-pressed abilities (or both).

There are too many situational abilities that only apply to rare situations.  The game boils down to: 1) recognize a less-common situation, 2) decide to use a situational ability, 3) remember where you put the ability button.  I think 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward.  3 involves the skills of deciding how to group less-used abilities on your skill bars and remembering where you put them in time to press the button.  I'd rather see player skill be more related to the game play rather than the interface.

For me simple to learn / hard to master involves a relatively lower number of buttons (6? 8? 10?), but each button is effected by how long you hold it, and what button you follow it up with.  Ideally multiple buttons to be pressed at the same time (chords) to modify what happens.  The game would allow you to start with just the strings (buttons), then learn the chords (multiple buttons simultaneously).

[K9]

In that sense this is why Chakra is a good system. It gives you one ability that morphs three different ways, and emphasizes a bunch of related abilities at the same time. It's a model for fun gameplay that I would love to see extended in other ways.

[proudft]

For me simple to learn / hard to master involves a relatively lower number of buttons (6? 8? 10?), but each button is effected by how long you hold it, and what button you follow it up with.  Ideally multiple buttons to be pressed at the same time (chords) to modify what happens.  The game would allow you to start with just the strings (buttons), then learn the chords (multiple buttons simultaneously).

Maybe YOUR keyboard would work with chord-type abilities.  Mine already squawks at me during pvp when I am doing a turning spinning jump and try to use an ability (W, A or S, spacebar, number key, and maybe a shift/ctrl/alt = BEEP BEEP IM GONNA BLOW).

[Fordel]

Learn to auto run you keyboard turning nub.


Also Iceblock for the love of GOD!

[caladein]

Can I really make a flying carpet mount earlier now?  Sweeet!

Yeah, the green one only requires 300 skill to make.  The Purple and Blue ones are (still?) at 425.

[proudft]

Learn to auto run you keyboard turning nub.


Also Iceblock for the love of GOD!

Fancy words from the fattest target on the battlefield!

[Ingmar]

Big blue post from Cory Stockton on TB:

Now that Cataclysm is out in the wild, more players are getting geared up and checking out Tol Barad, the new outdoor PvP zone. Today, we wanted to address some of the concerns players have expressed about the zone, including how challenging it can be to win as the attacking team, and provide some insight into our design approach. We also wanted to share some of the lessons we learned from Wintergrasp, discuss the difference between the two zones, and touch upon the recent hotfixes made to Honor Point gains and how we plan to improve Tol Barad going forward. We're confident this zone will provide meaningful and fun PvP for some time to come, but we also recognize additional tuning is required to ensure Tol Barad is everything we intend it to be.

As we mentioned earlier, the attacking faction is having a pretty tough time winning control of Tol Barad -- and we're OK with that, at least in theory. Here's why: When we set out to create Wintergrasp, one of the issues we dealt with was that we were never able to ensure the sides were even -- in fact, they rarely were. Because the smaller team would almost always be assured defeat, we attempted to address team-size imbalance by favoring the attacker. Control of Wintergrasp went back and forth, and the result was that battles lost their impact. On most realms the defenders became complacent, knowing they were likely to lose control of the zone, returning to re-take it when it was their turn to attack. The sides swapped back and forth every few hours, and Wintergrasp wasn’t so much about an epic struggle for a meaningful piece of land as it was a complicated game of leapfrog.

Since then we’ve devised mechanics that help ensure equal team sizes, and we took Wintergrasp's lessons to heart when we designed Tol Barad. Tol Barad is intentionally balanced so that it’s a challenge for the attackers, because we want to make sure that control of Tol Barad matters. For the defenders, there’s a sense of urgency that Wintergrasp didn't have -- if you lose it, you’re going to have a hell of a time taking it back. For the attackers, there are a number of rewards at stake -- such as access to the Baradin Hold raid and additional daily quests -- that we hope players feel are worth fighting for. That sort of tension is what we wanted from Wintergrasp, and what we believe Tol Barad can ultimately offer.

With that being said, we want winning Tol Barad to be a challenge for the attacking faction... but we don't want it to be impossible. Taking Tol Barad should be tough -- but right now it’s a little bit too tough, and it’s something we’re actively working to balance. Earlier, we attempted to temporarily address the issue by offering a far better reward to the winning attackers: Honor Points awarded for successfully attacking were increased tenfold, but that was such a great incentive that it ultimately undermined the spirit of competition. Since then, the reward for winning as an attacker has been brought back down to a more reasonable amount.

While we've already made minor adjustments to improve the gameplay and address select exploits, our job in Tol Barad is far from over. We ultimately want to make sure that any changes we make are all steps in the right direction, and we intend to make several updates in the next minor patch to address design and balance issues affecting attackers that we can't address with hotfixes. For example, we plan to alter the battle slightly so that a team with two bases captured can more quickly and easily capture the third, as opposed to a team with one or zero bases. This way, if the defenders turtle up, it'll be a little easier for the attackers to take their last base before the defense can take one of the attackers' other bases.

We've been reading your feedback, watching trends across our global realms, and fighting plenty of battles in Tol Barad ourselves to get a feel for what's working and what isn't, and we're committed to making Tol Barad a fun and engaging zone. We want owning the zone to be meaningful throughout the lifespan of the expansion -- and while the attackers may always face somewhat of an uphill battle, the defenders should feel much more pressure not to lose than they do currently. Just the same, the attacking faction should feel motivated to take Tol Barad back, but they shouldn't feel that the odds are insurmountable. So keep fighting the good fight, and we'll continue watching the battlefield and listening to your feedback.

[Raging Turtle]

How often have they been opening up new servers/realms? Did a quick search on google but it seems like there haven't been any new ones for a while.

[Threash]

How often have they been opening up new servers/realms? Did a quick search on google but it seems like there haven't been any new ones for a while.

They don't open new servers anymore, they have too many underpopulated ones.

[K9]

They've been opening servers in South America and Russia mainly I think.

Big blue post from Cory Stockton on TB:

-snip-

He manages to use an awful lot of words to not say very much, and the suggested change will really do fuckall to balance out the situation since the current norm is where each side has one base and the third is being slowly flipped to the attackers. The most interesting suggestion I heard to fix TB was to make it so that you couldn't recap on defense once all three towers were down.

[Ingmar]

I see the attackers hold 2, but can't cap 3rd before one of their back bases gets ninjaed pretty frequently, if these changes tip that situation enough towards attackers that could do enough to make TB worth doing.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Hell it's still "possible" to win TB. Horde side has won it several times back on my server, mostly because alliance here are worthless. So I don't think they need to change much, especially if they want it favoring defense. Just make it hard to do and not ridiculous.

[Minvaren]

Looks like they hotfixed the Troll Org cooking daily meta - got the achieve when I completed the cactus quest today.

[Threash]

Hell it's still "possible" to win TB. Horde side has won it several times back on my server, mostly because alliance here are worthless. So I don't think they need to change much, especially if they want it favoring defense. Just make it hard to do and not ridiculous.

Yeah on our server alliance holds it most of the time, but whenever we lose it we just capture it back the next time around.  It is not THAT hard, you just have to realize that the attackers have the advantage when taking over a base because they spawn right there and the defenders tend to leave when they die rather than go back.  Just leave substantial defense at the other bases and slowly chip away at the defenders who will slowly trickle away to other bases, which if they have enough of a defense will just keep bouncing them back to the middle for long enough to cap the last base.

[koro]

Downed my first "real" raid boss of the expansion tonight: Halfus in Bastion of Twilight, with the worst possible drake configuration. Three hours of wipes later, we down him with mere seconds on the berserk timer.

What a joyless, frustrating experience.

[Fordel]

Hell it's still "possible" to win TB. Horde side has won it several times back on my server, mostly because alliance here are worthless. So I don't think they need to change much, especially if they want it favoring defense. Just make it hard to do and not ridiculous.

Yeah on our server alliance holds it most of the time, but whenever we lose it we just capture it back the next time around.  It is not THAT hard, you just have to realize that the attackers have the advantage when taking over a base because they spawn right there and the defenders tend to leave when they die rather than go back.  Just leave substantial defense at the other bases and slowly chip away at the defenders who will slowly trickle away to other bases, which if they have enough of a defense will just keep bouncing them back to the middle for long enough to cap the last base.

That still assumes your opponents are retarded and trickle in to all 3 like that.

[kildorn]

Hell it's still "possible" to win TB. Horde side has won it several times back on my server, mostly because alliance here are worthless. So I don't think they need to change much, especially if they want it favoring defense. Just make it hard to do and not ridiculous.

Yeah on our server alliance holds it most of the time, but whenever we lose it we just capture it back the next time around.  It is not THAT hard, you just have to realize that the attackers have the advantage when taking over a base because they spawn right there and the defenders tend to leave when they die rather than go back.  Just leave substantial defense at the other bases and slowly chip away at the defenders who will slowly trickle away to other bases, which if they have enough of a defense will just keep bouncing them back to the middle for long enough to cap the last base.

That still assumes your opponents are retarded and trickle in to all 3 like that.

::albs::

[koro]

Hell it's still "possible" to win TB. Horde side has won it several times back on my server, mostly because alliance here are worthless. So I don't think they need to change much, especially if they want it favoring defense. Just make it hard to do and not ridiculous.

Yeah on our server alliance holds it most of the time, but whenever we lose it we just capture it back the next time around.  It is not THAT hard, you just have to realize that the attackers have the advantage when taking over a base because they spawn right there and the defenders tend to leave when they die rather than go back.  Just leave substantial defense at the other bases and slowly chip away at the defenders who will slowly trickle away to other bases, which if they have enough of a defense will just keep bouncing them back to the middle for long enough to cap the last base.

That still assumes your opponents are retarded and trickle in to all 3 like that.

::albs::

Hey, it's not our fault that -- OH LOOK SHINY HAMMERS, THEY MUST BE LOOT AND TOTALLY NOT MIDGARD COMING TO STOMP US LET'S GO CHECK IT OUT GUYS! 

[Threash]

Hell it's still "possible" to win TB. Horde side has won it several times back on my server, mostly because alliance here are worthless. So I don't think they need to change much, especially if they want it favoring defense. Just make it hard to do and not ridiculous.

Yeah on our server alliance holds it most of the time, but whenever we lose it we just capture it back the next time around.  It is not THAT hard, you just have to realize that the attackers have the advantage when taking over a base because they spawn right there and the defenders tend to leave when they die rather than go back.  Just leave substantial defense at the other bases and slowly chip away at the defenders who will slowly trickle away to other bases, which if they have enough of a defense will just keep bouncing them back to the middle for long enough to cap the last base.

That still assumes your opponents are retarded and trickle in to all 3 like that.

They trickle because they die in a trickle.  If you send an overwhelming force to take their base they die closer together and all go as a group to another node.

[Lantyssa]

Ghostcrawler Doesn't Get It

We've seen and heard a lot of discussion about the challenge presented by the Cataclysm Heroic dungeons, and to a lesser extent the raids. I'm not sure this is the kind of issue where we're going to be able to change anyone’s mind on the subject, but I can try to provide more insight into our point of view as well as offer some suggestions for success.

First, let me state that we do hear you. We understand some of you aren’t having fun and preferred the Lich King paradigm, or at least something closer to the Lich King paradigm. We greatly appreciate the feedback and it always makes us sad when players aren’t having fun. We're not ignoring you. We get it. We may not always agree on every point, but we understand where you’re coming from, and we want to try to help you understand where we're coming from.

The bottom line is that we want Heroics and raids to be challenging, and that is particularly true now while the content is new and characters are still collecting gear. They’re only going to get easier from here on out. We want players to approach an encounter, especially a Heroic encounter, as a puzzle to be solved. We want groups to communicate and strategize. And by extension, we want you to celebrate when you win instead of it being a foregone conclusion.

Nothing really new here, but a confirmation of what we thought.  The WoW devs are designing the game for what they want and are, for now, being steadfast in holding to it.  While it's an admirable position to hold for a game looking to cater to a specific group, I'm not so sure it's a wise position when you're doing everything you can to be the most popular kid around.

It's probably only a stone's throw from the thinking that only raiders deserve the best stuff, too.  Not quite there yet, but there are some strong overtones.