Free Suggestions for Blizzard, Part I
Posted 05/21/09 at 2:54 PM by Snowy
It's my birthday today, so in honor of that I'm going to give one suggestion for each of my years on what Blizzard could change/add/remove to make WoW a better game.
Here's the first third.
1. Remove Wintergrasp
I'll be honest here. I actually like Wintergrasp. A lot of people like Wintergrasp. Too many people like Wintergrasp at the same time. That's the problem! Your game cannot handle these amounts of people in relative close proximity. We saw that with the AQ event. We saw that at the start of every arena season at the vendors.
Truth be told, you should just turn Wintergrasp into another BG, and limit the amount of people on each side. I am highly skeptical you'll ever be able to spread people out in the zone. I have some ideas, but I'm not sure it would matter enough.
Great zone. Just not tenable with WoW's infrastructure.
2. Dalaran needs an expansion
This somewhat ties into #1. Too many people, too small a space. It's hell on framerates, and at a certain point saturation is reached and it takes several seconds to mount up, etc. Basically you took all the people in Shattrath who were nicely spread out, and compressed them into half the space, if that.
One possible way to help would be to instance off the Horde/Alliance sections, much like the old PvP vendor areas of Stormwind/Orgrimmar used to be. Maybe that's not practical.
3. Address Horde/Alliance ratios on some servers
Did you know that the ratio of Horde to Alliance on Mal'ganis is something like 5 to 1 now? We're not the only unbalanced server of course. Whenever a server (especially a PvP server) reaches a 2:1 ratio in either direction, there's a problem. I know that you want to put as few restrictions on player choices as possible, but I'm not exaggerating when I say I could envision Mal'Ganis being almost completely Horde. It almost is already! Free transfers for Horde only off the server, Free incoming for Alliance only, disable creation of Horde character -- all possible suggestions. Again, this goes for any server with more than a 2:1 ratio either way.
4. Remove the Ring of Valor arena
Seriously. I can count on one hand the number of people who actually like this arena. At the very least, solicit feedback on what people would like to see changed about it if you're unwilling to remove it.
5. Be more aggressive about queues on major content patch weeks
Release week of Ulduar was an abomination. People hate sitting in queues -- people hate constantly crashing and not being able to do anything while in the game even more.
6. Revamp the BG queuing system
Too many games start off with 13-15 on one side, and 5-7 on the other. I'm sure you can see why this is a problem. Something needs to be tweaked so games can't start this way.
7. Add entry level arena weapons
It's sort of silly that if you want a weapon with resilience, you need to get all the way up to 1850 -- and that's for an ilvl 232 weapon! Why aren't there some entry level ilvl 200 weapons? It's not like you're cheapening the game, since you can pick up ilvl 200 weapons with fairly minimal effort just by doing Argent Tournament dailies. Place them at something like 1300 rating, and make it something reasonable like 1000 points, since a 2v2 would take 4 weeks to earn one at lower levels. You can also get an ilvl 200 weapon by stepping into *any* raid zone currently, so this would hardly be imbalancing.
8. Add Item Levels to your item stats.
You have achievements that reference ilvl. Why is this still hidden from the general populace? You should create an option called "Advanced Item Statistics" and just add in the functionality of RatingBuster. It's long overdue.
9. Create an option to block addon spam from others.
More specifically, addon spam from people outside your group. Gurgthock tells the story of one such issue:
"So dumb" is an elegant summary.
10. Continue to be proactive in your arena changes
This has been a welcome change from s5. I've made a 180 on the issue, and there's no reason why entire arena seasons should be played with no changes. If something is broke, fix it. Disabling Nitro Boosts is one great example of this. There's plenty of time in the first half of arena seasons to observe and make tweaks as necessary.
11. Increase the rate of reputation gains in BGs
This is an old, archaic system, back when it was necessary to delineate rewards. (this is why there's no EotS or Strand rep.) It's not necessary anymore, and you already have a "win 100" achievement for the meta for each battleground. Do you realize it actually takes over 300 consecutive wins to reach exalted in Arathi Basin, for example? Hope you don't lose any games...
12. Add the ability to purchase more specs in the future
This is more of a long term thing, but hybrid classes could definitely utilize more than 2 specs. Additional specs could be more expensive. (Also raise your hand if some of your raiders forget that their other spec is PvP when you ask in the middle of the raid for them to swap)
I understand this one could be a long term project, as I have no idea of the technical difficulty of this.
Here's the first third.
1. Remove Wintergrasp
I'll be honest here. I actually like Wintergrasp. A lot of people like Wintergrasp. Too many people like Wintergrasp at the same time. That's the problem! Your game cannot handle these amounts of people in relative close proximity. We saw that with the AQ event. We saw that at the start of every arena season at the vendors.
Truth be told, you should just turn Wintergrasp into another BG, and limit the amount of people on each side. I am highly skeptical you'll ever be able to spread people out in the zone. I have some ideas, but I'm not sure it would matter enough.
Great zone. Just not tenable with WoW's infrastructure.
2. Dalaran needs an expansion
This somewhat ties into #1. Too many people, too small a space. It's hell on framerates, and at a certain point saturation is reached and it takes several seconds to mount up, etc. Basically you took all the people in Shattrath who were nicely spread out, and compressed them into half the space, if that.
One possible way to help would be to instance off the Horde/Alliance sections, much like the old PvP vendor areas of Stormwind/Orgrimmar used to be. Maybe that's not practical.
3. Address Horde/Alliance ratios on some servers
Did you know that the ratio of Horde to Alliance on Mal'ganis is something like 5 to 1 now? We're not the only unbalanced server of course. Whenever a server (especially a PvP server) reaches a 2:1 ratio in either direction, there's a problem. I know that you want to put as few restrictions on player choices as possible, but I'm not exaggerating when I say I could envision Mal'Ganis being almost completely Horde. It almost is already! Free transfers for Horde only off the server, Free incoming for Alliance only, disable creation of Horde character -- all possible suggestions. Again, this goes for any server with more than a 2:1 ratio either way.
4. Remove the Ring of Valor arena
Seriously. I can count on one hand the number of people who actually like this arena. At the very least, solicit feedback on what people would like to see changed about it if you're unwilling to remove it.
5. Be more aggressive about queues on major content patch weeks
Release week of Ulduar was an abomination. People hate sitting in queues -- people hate constantly crashing and not being able to do anything while in the game even more.
6. Revamp the BG queuing system
Too many games start off with 13-15 on one side, and 5-7 on the other. I'm sure you can see why this is a problem. Something needs to be tweaked so games can't start this way.
7. Add entry level arena weapons
It's sort of silly that if you want a weapon with resilience, you need to get all the way up to 1850 -- and that's for an ilvl 232 weapon! Why aren't there some entry level ilvl 200 weapons? It's not like you're cheapening the game, since you can pick up ilvl 200 weapons with fairly minimal effort just by doing Argent Tournament dailies. Place them at something like 1300 rating, and make it something reasonable like 1000 points, since a 2v2 would take 4 weeks to earn one at lower levels. You can also get an ilvl 200 weapon by stepping into *any* raid zone currently, so this would hardly be imbalancing.
8. Add Item Levels to your item stats.
You have achievements that reference ilvl. Why is this still hidden from the general populace? You should create an option called "Advanced Item Statistics" and just add in the functionality of RatingBuster. It's long overdue.
9. Create an option to block addon spam from others.
More specifically, addon spam from people outside your group. Gurgthock tells the story of one such issue:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gurgthock
Fortunately I generally have a pretty robust connection and don't ever recall being randomly d/c'd due to input flood (except after a major server hiccup and catch-up), but yeah, it's sort of ridiculous. It's a bit better now after the initial leveling craze since most people using Carbonite disabled it once they were done questing, but at the height of it, I'd be getting Crb addon spam from 70-80 people outside my guild/group at times. So dumb.
10. Continue to be proactive in your arena changes
This has been a welcome change from s5. I've made a 180 on the issue, and there's no reason why entire arena seasons should be played with no changes. If something is broke, fix it. Disabling Nitro Boosts is one great example of this. There's plenty of time in the first half of arena seasons to observe and make tweaks as necessary.
11. Increase the rate of reputation gains in BGs
This is an old, archaic system, back when it was necessary to delineate rewards. (this is why there's no EotS or Strand rep.) It's not necessary anymore, and you already have a "win 100" achievement for the meta for each battleground. Do you realize it actually takes over 300 consecutive wins to reach exalted in Arathi Basin, for example? Hope you don't lose any games...
12. Add the ability to purchase more specs in the future
This is more of a long term thing, but hybrid classes could definitely utilize more than 2 specs. Additional specs could be more expensive. (Also raise your hand if some of your raiders forget that their other spec is PvP when you ask in the middle of the raid for them to swap)
I understand this one could be a long term project, as I have no idea of the technical difficulty of this.
Total Comments 12
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More specs shouldn't be purchased. Stop fucking over tanks and healers. Better yet, make them free if you have a tank/healer tree, otherwise they cost 20k. Then you can feel good about yourselves, or something.
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That sounds like someone is annoyed by a social issue, not a mechanics issue.
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I think 4, 6, 7, 10, and 11 are realistic. Everything else is just crazy wishlisting, outside the physical boundaries of what's capable with WoW's server architecture, or not worth the development hours from Blizzard's perspective.
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What would be wrong with number 8?
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Falls under the 'not worth developer time' caveat. There are addons to do it for the people who care.
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If anything, I think 8 is probably the most realistic of them. We have seen a fair number of "required" mods be implemented into the default UI over time, and if they are basing achievements on knowing the ilvl of your gear, then this really is "required".
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#8, if anything, would be one of the realistic ones. I mean, they have *achievements* that explicitly reference ilvl. You think that would be provided in the game somewhere.
Of course it's wishlisting. But at some point, Blizzard needs to get their heads out of the sand and admit that some things just didn't work out. For example, Wintergrasp. I'm certainly never expecting #1 and #2 to happen of course, but I just sincerely hope that Blizzard remembers that for the next expansion and stays away from making the same mistakes. Don't pack a lot of people into a small area. It should be obvious by now. |
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But that's exactly it - that one achievement is the *only* thing in the game that references ilvl. Why spend time to add ilvl to tooltips if the only thing its meaningful for is an achievement that 1) addons already exist to reveal the stat, and 2) you don't explicitly need to know the ilvl of items in order to get the achievement, all you have to do is keep equipping gear in every slot and you'll eventually earn it.
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Herald of the Titans - Achievement - World of Warcraft Is the one that would need an item level display.
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Item levels can, and should, be published, but they won't for two reasons:
1. As stated, not worth the dev cycles; and 2. Item level is not an idiot-friendly concept. Look at the artificial barriers to entry that achievements have imposed on players in-game - every PuG has a 'you must be this tall to ride' bar available in asking whether you have the achievement for something or not. If you give them the option to say, "All your gear must be ilvl 200+", it gets worse. Not to mention that it entirely undoes the notion of looking at stats and/or item quality for upgrades, nor is there any way for someone who doesn't do a _lot_ of outside research to understand the ilvl formula. And no, it's not the same as using Wowhead to look up quests; it's a whole separate ballpark of difficulty. If anything, the achievements that reference ilvl should be changed to reflect a more universal concept. |
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I definitely agree that item levels should be added, but only to items of epic value. Also, why hasn't Blizzard updated their gearing achievements with obtained minimum iLevel 226 and 232 respectively? I would like to see that added as well even though it does create more of a problem when creating a PuG, but for those of us who enjoy doing PuGs, it can be more of a quality control on your attendees.
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I've used several DKP addons that show the ilvl of items and while it would be retarded to have your raid get one addon to make sure they have the ilvl gear for one achievement it's just my 2 cents
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