Originally Posted by Nezralix
A higher chance that they'll implement spectator mode for Arenas, because that's less prone to abuse and loopholes. But not totally implausible either way.
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I find this to be completely backwards, actually. There's a reason most of the more-competitive FPS servers (see: Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, and other similar games) don't even have a 'ghost' mode for after death. And more often than not, they don't have spectators set up - though admittedly I've seen more of the spectator servers recently than I have in some time. Anyway, the point being that spectator mode - especially in a non-controlled environment (i.e.
anywhere except for in some sort of Tournament with judges looking over your shoulder) - is just begging people to cheat in arenas. Yes, it's the sort of methods that are already used with auto-ignore mods and the like, but these are things Blizzard is actively trying to prevent.
Originally Posted by Nezralix
You might as well come to grips with the fact that they're never going to implement a playback feature. Any way they do this would just be totally unnatural in the context of WoW's interface. They probably could do it, as it's been done in plenty of RTS and FPS games, but they still won't. It would be a hassle to implement for them, and for what benefit? Letting people figure out who to blame when something goes wrong? To let strategists pore over playbacks until they figure out every nuance of every monster ability? I'm willing to bet that they have an interest in actively discouraging both of these. So they're definitely not going to (1) spend a lot of time to (2) kludge an awkward interface into an interface design that prides itself on cleanness to (3) give people a functionality that they'd rather not expose anyway. As far as they're concerned, FRAPS has it covered.
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I'd actually love to see a Spectator mode for PVE. If you don't think that strategists already pour over FRAPS/WWS/any-other-log-they-can-get-their-hands-on to figure out every nuance of every ability, then you're delusional. It doesn't have to be a standard part of the UI. Hell, it could be a viewer wholly seperate from the actual WoW client. You could trade/host csq files (csq: combat sequence - just made that up.) that would replace instructional videos (in depth ones, at least). And back on the Spectator mode - it would be a truly eye-opening sight for a guild of average/below average players see the absolutely withering DPS of higher end guilds IN ACTION. Hearing 1000+ DPS is quite different from watching Curator die before he finishes the first evocation (whereas this group takes 3-4, or more). Or, even better, seeing a guild of good players who are near this group in progression - not even as geared - obliterate mobs and bosses like this group never imagined.
It's one thing to see numbers on a website (lord knows the internets are always to be trusted), see the spreadsheets and see the timelines of DPS rotations. It's quite another to see it all in action. It's also a wholly different experience to see a party/raid function like a well-oiled machine as oppsed to 25 people in a raid split into 5-15 seperate semi-cohesive lumps.
Originally Posted by Whiteknight
Similarly, I don't think anyone will argue that TBC encounters are an entirely higher level of complexity compared to pre-TBC. When there are adds in an encounter, there are more of them, and they have different abilities (contrast Akama to Gehennas or Sulfuron for example). Even the simplest bosses have multiple phases (Supremus/Naj'entus), etc. Kaelthas and Vashj are leagues more complex than anything prior to BC with perhaps the exception of 4h.
And yet. Folk describe 25man TBC raiding as easier.
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I think the answer to that is actually fairly simple - Anias already hit on it.
Originally Posted by Anias
Finding 24+ other good players to play with is by far the hardest part of the game
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And this also goes into why 40-man groups were generally harder to get into, and why Karazhan/ZA are infinitely more accessible. There are of course other reasons, but the logistics of getting a raid with perfect composition get utterly more complicated as you increase the size of said raid.
It was also mentioned earlier (I believe by Anias as well) that being a bit more lax on necessary raid composition would help tremendously. I agree with this, and put forth that they've tried this route already. But somewhere between initial execution and final product, they still want every class to retain some unique quality that others don't have. Therefore a tank is not a tank is not a tank. Warrior, Paladin and Druid are very different beasts when it comes to tanking. And while the tanking specs are all infinitely more viable than they were at the inception of WoW, they've still yet to become interchangeable on all levels. The mechanics of each factor in, of course, but the main problem of all of this is the fact that they must make encounters very demanding in order to make them feel like an accomplishment. And because of synergies, mixed with class differences, the raid makeup writes itself indelibly in the minds of raid leaders, and those who generally care. And there is very little variation from this to be had without out-gearing the content and/or making it up with elbow grease and brute force consumables (though, yes, this is decidedly less than it used to be - very much a step in the right direction).
e: didn't complete my point. The main problem is that each tank has a niche, and rather than make the bosses more generic, thus more boring, and letting the raid composition hinge around what sort of tank you've brought, they introduced gimmicks that are tailored to a certain class' role. Therefore, the Paladin has a chance to shine on AoE pulls, bosses that hit fast (thus require alot of shield blocks) and/or Demons/Undead. Bears have the advantage where high TPS is required alongside very steady heavy physical mitigation. And warriors just generally being the sort of jack-of-all-trades, with quite a few 'oh shit' buttons. Not to mention keeping up sunder for all those melee
Originally Posted by Katria
Putting in some kind of training ground would help a lot. NPCs that teach people some of the basics. The addition of threat and damage meters to the game help a lot in this regard...put in a quest where you can see your DPS or TPS while you beat on a target dummy, and you have to reach a certain amount to finish the quest. When you fail, have the NPC give you tips for what you could do differently. Now Blizzard has shown they do not know their own game as well as posters here, but they can guide people away from big mistakes (hunter shot rotations? How is a hunter supposed to know about that from within the game?). Actually...I don't know how feasible this is, but Blizzard could spawn an NPC with identical class/spec/race/gear and you compete against it. It uses a semi-optimal script (something generic, good enough but not optimal) to generate threat or dps while you do the same. The objective being to come close to or beat your opponent. And at the end you get a screen that looks like a WWS parse, showing what abilities you and your opponent used and such...helps a lot if you failed to see what you did wrong.
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I'd love this idea if they simply made it a self-training-ground. Dummies which you could simply practice on. Have a dummy set up that will actually hit you, you have an NPC healing you, and your only job is to stay alive (thus your mitigation abilities come into play) and generate as much TPS as possible - with the final test requiring something like 70% demo/TC uptime, always have SB up, etc, etc. There are tons of scenarios that come to mind - Teach warlocks how to seed 4+ targets so the it actually functions as a chain-reaction mass explosion. Set up a dummy with normal mob (of the +1/+2/+3 of player's level variety) ac/dodge/parry/resist rates to let people test their sustained DPS. Even potentially add a party function so you could test a 5 person group's DPS (think melee group) - set the time limit, and possibly even mob debuffs (CoE, Sunder, FF, anything else you could think of), then let the DPS fly. Set a TPS for your simulated tank and add the challenge of not pulling agro if need be!
I suppose toward the end I was just thinking aloud, and the ease of implementation might not be quite as simple as my mind makes it out to be. Even a practice dummy which a single player can use to practice and get a very accurate in-game summary of DPS for benchmarking himself would be a huge step toward making difficulty curves (and resetting them) less necessary.
However, they will always be necessary for the reason Xi and Anias mentioned - you don't want a steady increase of difficulty. It very quickly leads to frustration and burnout if you don't have a couple of encounters to slide through after pounding your head against the wall for weeks on the same boss. But for 'training' people - there are far far better ways.
That feels like a paper I wrote for class and suddenly remembered the topic in the last 4 sentences.
