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INCOMING! Arcane buffed sooner than first thought!
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Post by
382918
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
nickseng
Ok, first off I will, say I'm sorry for the rant. I can see more people think less of my posts, instead trying to show a differant point of view for the changes the game has gone over. Second, I will say who cares if you have a full time job, and go to school full time? I guess I just see that as asking blizz to give you the same rewards for doing less. Do you say "hey teach, Im really busy this weekend, I dont think Ill have time to study do you think you can still hook me up with an A?" but thats a differant topic.
It's probably not a good idea to equate a
game
with school grades :)
Post by
nickseng
Just read this over at CriticalQQ. A commenter responded over the assumption of dumbing down that many people seem to be expressing concern over.
It's very well said, and expresses pretty much how I feel.
Whenever Blizzard changing something in WoW, trying to make something that they see as needlessly annoying, time-consuming, and hampering fun for their playerbase less of a problem, inevitably this particular form of criticism shows up.
Essentially, it boils down to this:
“I did that when it was hard. Really hard. Stupefyingly hard. I felt really good about getting that done. Now, my achievement feels cheapened and worthless because someone else can get it done for much less effort.”
I understand this feeling, and I’ve felt it, since they’ve changed a whole lot of things since 2006. But I think it is important to look at the overall game.
As much as we wouldn’t like to admit it, part of the reward of getting gear, mounts, titles, and whatnot, is sitting around in Dalaran, wearing our cool stuff, and /lol-ing at scrubs who just hit 80 and are in blues. It may be subconscious, but its there. But consider a new player’s point of view.
There are some challenges in this game that need to stay challenges, and there are some challenges in this game that are just annoying and should be removed. The development team is constantly looking at challenges in the game and deciding which of these two categories they fit in. Since this is an MMO, that formula is constantly changing.
Take conquest badges. At the start of wrath, the tiered badge system worked well, because you could gear up for Naxx by doing content that was accessible, namely heroics. Challenge: Heroics+Badge farming = good.
Now with the introduction of higher tier content, players on the cutting edge have no reason to run 5-mans, an integral part of the game. If you are in a 25 man guild, running top content then “graduating from heroics” isn’t a problem. However, if you’re a new 80, with no guild or a small guild, you can’t gear up because you can’t find a group for Naxxramas (no one runs it because they’re all running Ulduar) or even heroics. That player is left with no options, and might as well quit playing. The challenge of badge farming doesn’t work when you have no one to farm badges with. Blizzard see this, and decides to fix this.
They recognize that top players deserve top rewards: hard mode loot, achievement mounts and titles, BIS gear. None of that is going away. What changed with the badges is that even a new 80 (or a new 80 alt) has a fighting chance to gear up without /praying against hope that they can find a group for raids and dungeons no one runs. I ran into this on my alts: I was basically never going to get any gear at all beyond the heroic gear because I was not going to get invites to guild raids on my alt. eventually that toon’s gear wouldn’t even be good enough to enter top content with. Why play that toon?
Everyone needs a path to advance. It shouldn’t and won’t be easy, but it is reliable and doable. The devs made a judgement call as to how hard they wanted that to be.
This is the same deal with the stat consolidation. I LOVE figuring out how all the abilities work and what gear is going to be an upgrade. However, if they make that such a hard decision that you need a spreadsheet – you won’t see anymore of the fun guides on EJ, you’ll just see – spreadsheets. Blizzard looked at the way things were going, and decided that it was just too much. However, they aren’t completely gutting it, and never will. They recognize that people really like figuring out their character, and being rewarded for that understanding by getting better performance from the character. They have to balance it. And the pendulum is swinging the other way in Cataclysm.
to put it another way – if stats and complexity were a Rosebush:
They’re just pruning away the sick/dead parts, they aren’t cutting down the whole bush. Same with talent trees. There will still be a lot of BEST answers in there for specific situations. People will not be able to be unique snowflakes and perform well. You just won’t pick up boring spreadsheet talents anymore.
Post by
79146
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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