Cataclysm

[Lantyssa]

Or hold down shift if you do.

[caladein]

You're still better off sending them to an alt for the look-in as well if the mounts work like the Find Fish book.

[apocrypha]

So, like I thought, goodies with added Blizzard Retardosauce.

I like the way their clarification actually fails to clarify the things I actually want clarifying.

[Paelos]

So, like I thought, goodies with added Blizzard Retardosauce.

I like the way their clarification actually fails to clarify the things I actually want clarifying.

Like what?

[Lakov_Sanite]

What is this, I don't even...

Making WoW Easier
I understand and respect gaming masochism. But, I think that changing mechanics to be more reasonable and less punishing is an improvement, not a detriment, to games in general. Many of us Original Gamers pine for the days of D&D-based yore when games were seemingly intended to break us down into sobbing masses created by an uncaring necromancer of pain and suffering, or at least didn't try to avoid it. Overcoming all of the obstacles (I CHOOSE NOT TO SHOOT HER WITH THE SILVER ARROW... NOOOOO) was a big part of what gaming (I HAVE 1 LIFE!?), and especially PC gaming (HOW DO I LOAD MOUSE DRIVERS?), were about. But, I feel we're lucky to now be in an age where those ideals (intended or not) are giving way to actual fun, actual challenge, and not fabricating it through high-reach requirements (I NEED A FAIRY MONK WITH A MAGIC LOCKPICK?).

What we've always been trying to do, what WoW has always been about (and to which much of its success is due) is to make an accessible MMO. Anyone that looks back at the game at launch and wishes it was as challenging now as it was then is not aware of the painstaking effort put into making this game accessible as compared to its predecessors. Since release we've refined that intent, eventually evolving the very few masochistic designs WoW actually ever started with, but ideally still offering those same prestige goals that give that feeling of achieving something great if you're able to pull it off. We've made a lot of progress toward striking that balance and continuing to evolve the game, but it's not something we're ever likely to perfect, and we'll be constantly working to hit that elusive goal. Hopefully it's to the benefit of everyone playing and enjoying the game, and they'll continue to enjoy the journey that a living, breathing, persistent universe will take us on. (Source)

They are responding as though there is some great mob of people complaining that wow is too easy and all I can wonder is what game they've been playing.

[apocrypha]

Like what?

Like exactly which mounts are included, what the droprates will be and are the mounts/pets themselves BoA or just the satchel.

Regarding droprates, I know they said "mounts that have a possibility to be found in a Satchel of Exotic Mysteries are found with the same rarity as if you had slain the dungeon boss that normally drops them" but does that mean that there's a (for instance) 0.1% chance for a mount and it then rolls to see which mount, or is it 0.1% chance for each mount seperately (i.e. you could potentially get multiple mounts in a satchel)?

[apocrypha]

They are responding as though there is some great mob of people complaining that wow is too easy and all I can wonder is what game they've been playing.

I haven't looked at the US forums, but the EU forums have a lot of exactly that. The catasses dominate EU forums and are highly vocal. There's a lot of posts, and have been for a long time, going "Waaa waaa waaa WoW is too easy, I don't want other people to have the things I can get by raiding 6 nights a week, I need to be leeter than all the scrubs".

Of course, I'd guess that <1% of the actual playerbase posts on the forums, but I think it's become fairly clear that Blizzard lost that perspective when they decided on the difficulty level of Cata heroics & raids.

[caladein]

They are responding as though there is some great mob of people complaining that wow is too easy and all I can wonder is what game they've been playing.

Well, the post that's in reply to was basically someone "complaining that wow is too easy".

Edit: I agree with Bashiok in that I much prefer a game's challenging bits to be playing the game itself and not the crapshoot at character creation or needing to do a ton of logistical work.  Which pretty firmly puts us both in the hardcore camp by what Nebu said about a month ago.

[Paelos]

I have no doubts you are a hardcore player, caladein, but not for that reason.

Blizzard encounters boil down to 2 things that make them difficult: Can you deal with the adds? Can you not stand in that?

If your group can do those things, you will never lose at this game. If you have people that can't handle it, you will forever be frustrated. The only thing that seperates the hard content from the easy content is how many people who can't do those two things that you're allowed to take with you before you fail.

In Cata, the answer is zero.

[Ingmar]

They are responding as though there is some great mob of people complaining that wow is too easy and all I can wonder is what game they've been playing.

Uh... the thread they were replying to was exactly that?

[Lakov_Sanite]

great mob

For the reading impaired, one thread on the forums does not 12 million people make. The overwhelming cry of people with cataclysm was how hard it was not how easy.

[Ingmar]

Sure, but pulling that out of the context they're actually replying to at that moment, and then saying they're out of touch because "everyone" thinks it is too hard is a little bit retarded itself.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I never said everyone. 1% of the human population likes having their dick slammed in a window, incidentally this 1% is also the most vocal on web forums, go figure. My point is them addressing it as though it were an issue is part of the problem and what happened with cataclysm. They started listening to that vocal minority and fucked their game over trying to cater to it.

[Ingmar]

That's a lot to read in to one random reply to a thread.

[Paelos]

That's a lot to read in to one random reply to a thread.

You need to make this your sig. It would save time. 

[sinij]

So it appears that Blizzard, in their grief that players haven't embraced their changes to the game, has moved past denial and anger and is now officially bargaining with the playerbase.

Next, Depression!

   1. Denial
   2. Anger
   3. Bargaining
   4. Depression
   5. Acceptance

Big question is - is Acceptance means they going to fix difficulty and is it too late for this expansion? Last but not least, why the fuck nobody (that I heard of) is fired over this?

[Paelos]

To me, I think Blizzard will eventually accept that their overall playerbase is actually terrible at their game, and that to be continually successful they have to design for the player they have, and not the one they want. And no, it's by no means too late. If they turned things around this fall and launched a badass new set of dungeons and raids with relaxed rules and whatever. The fact is, it's the summer, and raiding/mmoging always suffers when the weather's nice. Grab em when they are bored and ready to come back inside from the cold.

Also, they need to understand better the difference between what people say they want, and what will actually keep them engaged with their product. Here's a hint: a system that makes it harder to play with people you like doesn't work.

[Fabricated]

The best thing that could happen to WoW as a game right now would be a "hardcore" MMO that isn't complete dogshit coming out and skimming the poopsockers off the top of the userbase. However literally no one else has produced a a playable MMO in the last 8 years or so this is unlikely to happen.

That being said, if you're still playing just try out the new 5-mans when they drop and if they don't grab you just let your subscription lapse. If Firelands continues Tier 11's design philosophy in terms of difficulty never resub.

[sinij]

To me, I think Blizzard will eventually accept that their overall playerbase is actually terrible at their game

I played games for decades, no matter what game it is I usually end up in top 25% of it (ladders, ranking). I had no problems succeeding in WoW. My ability to compensate for other people's mistakes nearly disappeared in Cata. My friends couldn't cut it, so I gladly quit the game I wouldn't enjoy if not for the company. I am now gleefully assraping people in a niche title.

With this said, WoW is absolutely horrid at testing people in any meaningful way, and Blizzard probably should reconsider approach to encounter and ability design. For some reason doing well does not correlate with intelligence, regardless of how you define it. I knew PhDs who were fire-standers, and 200-word-vocab, including "fuck", high school dropouts who were raiding aces. You can compensate, to some degree, by putting time in, but people generally do not improve as players. You can train them for any given encounter, but overall there is very little progress and they will not be any better at the next encounter, regardless of how similar it is.

If I were to guess what WoW Raiding tests - it would be a) ability to multitask b) procedural memory c) reaction time d) be good at visualizing virtual environments (know where your avatar is at any given time with relation to everybody else without seeing them) e) rapid prioritization . All of this is virtually unteachable.

As a result of Cata, Blizzard tuned content permanently out of reach for some people. People are not getting better because WoW tests things that are very difficult to get better at.

[Simond]

However literally no one else has produced a a playable MMO in the last 8 years...

what

[ajax34i]

If they turned things around this fall and launched a badass new set of dungeons and raids with relaxed rules and whatever.

How long do you think it takes them to code said dungeons and raids?  My guess is it's too late, esp. if they wait until they get past "acceptance" to decide to start.

[Tannhauser]

So is there a deliberate strategy here?  Put out content which only the 1% hardcore can conquer, then nerf it down so the casuals can do it?  ICC was the same way wasn't it?  If so, that's fine, sorta.  At least I get to eventually see the content the hardcore are already tired of.  

Also, as a mage I'm glad CC matters again.  I actually like keeping a mob out of the fight.  I don't blame Blizzard for wanting to make their game more than an AoE fest but I do blame them for the implementation.  There has to be a sweet spot between facerolling AoE and punch the monitor hardcore.  They just haven't found it yet and quite frankly I wonder if they will.

But the true hell is the other players.  My guild disbanded due to the hardcore raid bs, so now I pug.  And let me tell you half the time I'll group with some ass who has a meter which says I am not doing enough dps.  Sorry dude, I was CCing (got a meter for that asshole?) or I was not standing in stuff.  Most of the catasses have several
max toons and they have no trouble telling you how to play your class.  
  OK, I'm dps, I'm a dime a dozen, but tanks and healers get the same grief.  Healing is a shit job in WoW, but I do it because I like to sit back, manage health, get groups fast and watch the overall action.  Hell, healing with my pally was actually fun because I could throw in a dps here and there and if I drew aggro I had plate armor to protect me.
  
  This rambling has gone on way too long.  Blizzard can't do anything about their players, but they can do something about their game.  

[Simond]

So is there a deliberate strategy here?  Put out content which only the 1% hardcore can conquer, then nerf it down so the casuals can do it?  ICC was the same way wasn't it?  If so, that's fine, sorta.  At least I get to eventually see the content the hardcore are already tired of.  

There's one massive, glaringly obvious, risk with this plan which means any sane dev team should avoid it like the plague. That strategy relies on the majority of the playerbase toughing it out while the content is balanced for the poopsockers, and then feeling grateful when Blizzard deigns to tune it downwards so PUGs can run it reliably.

What if they cancel until the nerfs and fixes hit (which, bearing in mind Blizzard patch schedule, is going to be months)? Even worse (for Blizzard) what if they cancel and don't come back even after the nerfs hit?

Congratulations Ghostcrawler & co, you just rediscovered why Gates of Discord killed Everquest.

[Merusk]

So is there a deliberate strategy here?  Put out content which only the 1% hardcore can conquer, then nerf it down so the casuals can do it?  ICC was the same way wasn't it?  If so, that's fine, sorta.  At least I get to eventually see the content the hardcore are already tired of.  

That's been their content strategy for a long while now. They've even public cop'd to it so it's not just player base guesswork.  However, what top % the game is accessible to is what has changed.  In BC is was the top 1/2 to 3%, depending on where it was in the cycle past Karazahn.  Kara was NOT simple if you did it early on, and it eventually got nerfed down via game adjustments and the usual mudflation.  By 6 months past BC's release you were seeing average groups and PUGs running it regularly and the popularity of Kara is one reason they implemented 10-mans.  The Magtheridon starter 25-man raid they did later acknowledge was too difficult at the beginning, with all the crazy coordination, one person fucks up/ lags/ gets killed and all 25 of you are dead nonsense.  They did this by looking at the % of players who'd killed him or just skipped him and came back later in the cycle.

WOTLK really lowered that bar because they weren't happy with how few people got to see the content.  I think at one point (prior to the weekly raid quest) they said around 50% of characters had at least been inside of Naxx and killed a boss, which was comparable to the numbers in Kara.  The PUGs and smaller guilds were in there within a month of release, which considering the difference in heroics and excitement behind 10mans was probably destined to happen.

However, there was also a different mindset and philosophy from the dev team.   Hardcore players complained it was all "too easy" and Tigole responded with a It'll get harder, quiet, you.  Quite different from today's responses, particularly when 25-LK groups were repeatedly wiping early on.  The big question is what percentage of players are they wanting to complete content now and what percentage are they at.  Only they know the first and the second we can get only via guesswork with the issue of mains vs alts.

Now Naxx probably was a twitch too easy, as even "casual hardcore" folks seem to have gotten bored with it by the end of it's cycle. Still, I don't think that's a bad thing, so long as they remembered "oh right, we can still try Hardmodes."  After all that's what they were intended for initially.  However, this Dev team seems to either have forgotten that or feels differently, falling into the DM trap of not wanting players to be TOO successful at the stuff they've put all their hard work into creating to crush/ challenge players.

[Paelos]

I agree with Sinij that WoW is now "testing" players in a binary way. People don't learn how to be situationally aware or multitask because of the challenges presented. They either succeed or fail. They've taken your friends and turned them into potential liabilities. It's not a shock that so many guilds simply gave up given the haves and have-nots.

[Fabricated]

However literally no one else has produced a a playable MMO in the last 8 years...

what

All MMOs are garbage and WoW was just my particular brand of garbage.

[Malakili]

However literally no one else has produced a a playable MMO in the last 8 years...

what

Its pretty true realistically speaking, what besides WoW or EVE matters at all, at least as far as the west goes?

[Shrike]

Congratulations Ghostcrawler & co, you just rediscovered why Gates of Discord killed Everquest.

This.

I remember exactly how that went. EQ had been under steady improvements to gameplay and accessability with PoP and LDoN, but then the dev team dropped the turd of GoD into the EQ punchbowl. I think I lasted about two months after release before I quit for good. I still remember getting into a fight with a guild ranger, getting chewed out by the guild leadership for being argumentative, telling them to pound sand, and parking my SK outside of PoI and cancelling. I recall it was all over some dumbass decision (there were so many...) over post-xp advancement of SKs and the continuing stupidity of defensive. Never been back since.

I was feeling a pretty similar vibe in WoW up until last week. I guess we'll see what writing crops up on the wall with Firelands and the assorted adjustments of 4.1 and 4.2.

[apocrypha]

I totally disagree with the "people can't get better at raiding" sentiments.

I've seen 3 people learn how to do raids over the course of 18 months. They were all new to raiding and even dungeons, one of them was completely new to MMOs in general - he'd only ever played 1st person shooters. When they started playing WoW with me mid-WOTLK they stood in fire, they targetted wrong mobs (if they targetted anything at all), they were completely overwhelmed by the pace of 5-mans let alone anything bigger.

Now, after 18 months of LK pugs up-to and including ICC25, some months of Cata 5-mans and heroics and now into the early parts of Cata raiding they're pretty competent. Ade, who'd never played an MMO before and who spent 3 weeks hitting mobs with his stick (as a balance druid) is now main tanking BWD on his DK. Charlotte is enhance shaman DPSing quite comfortably and off-spec healing when required and Mike regularly manages not to ninja-pull with his hunter and rarely falls off walls these days.

[Fabricated]

In my guild I'd say the vast majority of our raiders tried to constantly improve by getting better gear, researching rotations/specs, and by improving their general quality of play but there definitely seemed to be a wall. Some people just don't have the ability to keep their plates spinning while dodging fire/dealing with specific boss gimmicks.

[Rendakor]

I wouldn't say that Naxx 3.0 was too easy; it simply had a lot of easy fights and most of the mechanically-challenging ones were end wing bosses. Even if you went in there with a lot of PUGs you could easily clear one wing and 2 half wings. I know on my server when Ulduar hit, the average PUG didn't clear Naxx. If it wasn't lead by an experienced leader or guild, don't count on killing Thaddeus; 4H and Heigan were the other two raid-breakers, as well as KT, but Thaddeus was the worst because it wasn't easy to teach (4h, KT) nor could you power through it with half the raid (Heigan) due to his short enrage timer.

As for people learning to raid, we have a guildie who just started playing WoW in Cata, and now he's one of our better raiders; on the contrary we have people who have raided since BC or Vanilla and are still mediocre at best. I think there's an initial learning phase, where you can obviously get better at learning HOW wow raiding works (see, all the things sinij said); past that you're limited by things that aren't easy to improve like reaction time, awareness, reflexes, etc.

[Malakili]

past that you're limited by things that aren't easy to improve like reaction time, awareness, reflexes, etc.

Get people to play the multitask flash game for practice. http://www.kongregate.com/games/IcyLime/multitask

[Merusk]

Funny, I dropped the, "feels like GoD," thing a dozen or so pages back and was pilloried for it.  I still stand by it, though.

Some people just don't have the ability to keep their plates spinning while dodging fire/dealing with specific boss gimmicks.

IMO it's always been less about ability and more about the drive.  It's not hard to learn, but you have to want to.  There's definitely a mental block with some people in regards to caring about 'doing it right.'    I know I'm certainly past the point of caring enough to be researching rotations and doing spreadsheets for it all my self, so I can relate to them now.   I figure if I'm going to put this much work into a hobby in my late 30's it better be producing something tangible.

[sinij]

I totally disagree with the "people can't get better at raiding" sentiments.

Now, after 18 months of LK pugs up-to and including ICC25, some months of Cata 5-mans and heroics and now into the early parts of Cata raiding they're pretty competent.

I am not talking about "never played WoW before" situation. You can and should learn WoW before attempting end-game content. New players not being able to raid is clearly not underlying problem of Cata. Real problem is that many veteran players are unable to compete.

When I say "people can't get better at raiding" I am talking from first-hand experience as a raid leader. You can fix someone's gear, spec, teach them correct rotation and make them drill it until they are comfortable doing it. You can force them to download mods that nag at them to move out of fire and help with multitasking. You can nag "move now" in vent... BUT YOU CANNOT MAKE THEM PLAY BETTER and moment you stop doing all of that they will revert to their baseline performance.

[Lightstalker]

Some people cannot improve, some people don't care to improve, some people haven't yet improved, and then the rest are bored already.

That's pretty much the split out.  WoW isn't that hard, we've been avoiding ground fire for 6 years now.  If you aren't "good" at raiding by now you are either in the cannot improve or don't care to improve camp and those are functionally equivalent.  Folks who describe "... and then I just freak out" as an event in a typical progression kill won't ever be excellent raiders but may over time be adequate.  The freak outs and the real new players will be in your haven't yet improved group and they just need time to become either adequate (via repetition and familiarity) or if you are lucky with a new player a decent contributor.

The encounters in WoW are meant to be defeated, the player should never be at a loss of what to do next.  Those who "cannot improve" are always wondering what button to press next and seriously puzzled by it.  Those who don't care to imrpove are content to be carried and wipe regularly.  Those who haven't yet improved know they need to do something, but can't find that thing in time.  Sure, one might be able to squeeze a few hundred dps out of a bad player, but that same effort will yield thousands of dps from a good player who happens to be new.  Where do you want to spend your coaching budget, especially considering the new-good will coach himself in the next tier while the old-limited will never know how to crack the next level.

It is delightful to believe that people can be improved, but they need both the capacity and the desire for that improvement.  No amount of wishing on the part of the coach can overcome these if they do not exist.  It doesn't matter how technically sound and well geared their character is, overcoming a freak out mentality is the real challenge.  If they tend to freak out you are looking at someone who might not wipe the raid in time instead of someone who can lead by example.  It has nothing to do with WoW and everything to do with people management, and unfortunately as a guild or raid leader that's what you have to concern yourself with in these games.