As a casual player, I would rather see more five and ten man content introduced than have a "heroic" and "easy mode" 25 man system introduced.
Hardcore/Casual does not quickly determine someone's skill level. Although playing a ton means someone will eventually get better, there are other factors in skill level. I used to play "hardcore" before the expansion, and when the expansion came out I cut my playtime in half at least. After learning the new class (Paladin), everything became easy. Heroics are easy for me, I understand the concept of agro generation. I played a rogue for long enough to have a "feeling" for how much agro a competent tank is putting out. I've seen health spike in pre-TBC dungeons and raids and I understand how to react to boss abilities after I see them for the first time.
With all that said, I think I am a good player. I don't want a cheese-ball 25 man raid. I would continue to like "difficult" content provided to me in the form of smaller instances. The main issue with being a casual player is that you have to work with the schedule of other casual players. It's difficult for me to find nine other people to play with at a given time due to schedule conflicts, and I certainly don't want to engage in the struggle that would be 25-man instances.
It'll be interesting to see how Blizzard mgmt reacts to what appear to be flattening subscription numbers (at least according to warcraftrealms.com census and mmogdata.com) - more casual content, more raiding content, more races/classes, or ?. Blizzcon should be interesting if they reveal details of the next expansion there.
It'll be interesting to see how Blizzard mgmt reacts to what appear to be flattening subscription numbers (at least according to warcraftrealms.com census and mmogdata.com) - more casual content, more raiding content, more races/classes, or ?. Blizzcon should be interesting if they reveal details of the next expansion there.
Its the summer in the past the had increasing subs around the holiday season and TBC wasnt released in China yet, once it does the subscription will raise again.
Rather than heroic level raids, I think the Nihilums and DNTs and Methods of the world would be better served by optional bosses in high level places, sort of in the same vein as Emerald and Ruby Weapon in FFVII or Yiazmat in FFXII.
Say, once you beat Illidan (or whatever big lore related boss there is down the line), you can attune to some new instance, or a locked door within BT, or something along that line. Within this locked door, there is another wing with maybe 2-3 bosses that are REALLY tough. Full raid-wide T6, full buffs, and God as your 26th raider are required for victory.
Since these guys are completely optional, and non lore related, people can't cry that they're not seeing the lore bosses like Illidan (or whoever else is next for us to kill). For drops, it could be stuff that's really cool to have, like a unique kind of mount (past history has shown people will go to great lengths for something like a phoenix mount), a trinket of some kind like the C'thun tentacle trinket, or maybe armor pieces with really unique "on Use" effects. Overpowered weapons and armor might be a bit much, since these guys would have to drop the best of the best in the weapons and armor category to justify beating them.
Only problem I could see with this is one of logic, "If these guys are so much tougher than Ol' Illy, then why aren't THEY in charge of Outland?!?" Best to put thoughts like that aside :P
Optional bosses are generally not considered optional by the public though. Viscidus is the only optional boss in this game's history that most guilds never looked at... and even then his loot table was fairly terrible, especially once naxx hit.
Optional bosses are generally not considered optional by the public though. Viscidus is the only optional boss in this game's history that most guilds never looked at... and even then his loot table was fairly terrible, especially once naxx hit.
Other then Visc and Ouro what optional bosses has there been? Wouldn't say they weren't considered Optional as I know alot of guilds that said they cleared AQ40 by killing C'thun first and largely skipping Ouro.
Ouro you could argue wasn't optional though, because he dropped the leg token, if he didn't I think he would be skipped just as much as Viscidus.
In Karazhan Illhoof and I guess Aran (and Netherspite) could be considered Optional, and I know that once we had our capacitors and feral staves that we just skipped him.
Other then Visc and Ouro what optional bosses has there been? Wouldn't say they weren't considered Optional as I know alot of guilds that said they cleared AQ40 by killing C'thun first and largely skipping Ouro.
Ouro you could argue wasn't optional though, because he dropped the leg token, if he didn't I think he would be skipped just as much as Viscidus.
In Karazhan Illhoof and I guess Aran (and Netherspite) could be considered Optional, and I know that once we had our capacitors and feral staves that we just skipped him.
I guess, but by your logic a bunch of Kara is optional:
Attumen - only unlocks the repair guy trash
Servents Quarters
Nightbane - doesn't unlock anything else in Kara
Maiden - Same? To unlock Opera, do you need to kill Maiden?, not sure.
To get the back door unlocked, you need to do Opera House. After Curator, none of the bosses unlock anything further.
Not sure I understand the point of this exercise anyways.
Other then Visc and Ouro what optional bosses has there been? Wouldn't say they weren't considered Optional as I know alot of guilds that said they cleared AQ40 by killing C'thun first and largely skipping Ouro.
Ouro you could argue wasn't optional though, because he dropped the leg token, if he didn't I think he would be skipped just as much as Viscidus.
Eh, Ouro was very easy once learned, Viscidus was a massively retarded fight (for Alliance). At any rate, optional bosses are a good mechanic, and they're not something Blizzard has given up on. Karazhan has plenty of them, and they work well in the instance. The basement is so very optional, that I've never been there. AQ20's design was also excellent, minus that 2nd boss and its many waves of crap.
Originally Posted by spronk
It'll be interesting to see how Blizzard mgmt reacts to what appear to be flattening subscription numbers (at least according to warcraftrealms.com census and mmogdata.com) - more casual content, more raiding content, more races/classes, or ?. Blizzcon should be interesting if they reveal details of the next expansion there.
Did you expect subscription numbers to climb forever, until every living being was subscribed to WoW?
Other then Visc and Ouro what optional bosses has there been? Wouldn't say they weren't considered Optional as I know alot of guilds that said they cleared AQ40 by killing C'thun first and largely skipping Ouro.
Ouro you could argue wasn't optional though, because he dropped the leg token, if he didn't I think he would be skipped just as much as Viscidus.
In Karazhan Illhoof and I guess Aran (and Netherspite) could be considered Optional, and I know that once we had our capacitors and feral staves that we just skipped him.
Attuman, Maiden, Illhoof, Netherspite and Nightbane are optional, and there are enough people skipping at least some of those either due to useless loot or making more time for prince when they are still progressing in Karazhan.
Attuman, Maiden, Illhoof, Netherspite and Nightbane are optional, and there are enough people skipping at least some of those either due to useless loot or making more time for prince when they are still progressing in Karazhan.
You're pretty much right, but Nightbane can't really be considered optional by raid groups who want to continue past Magtheridon.
Remember the whole "multiple path" thing in Black Temple Blizzard said they would implement, where if you kill certain bosses others are locked out for you? Its sad no one ever calls Blizzard on these things - BT is extremely linear, there are 2-3 bosses that I suppose are optional (not on the main path to Illidan) but definitely no winged design like Blizzard said BT would be.
I'd say we're probably a few months off from anything new.
I'd say that's a very liberal estimate, seeing how slow Blizzard's content cycle has been lately (although 2.1 was a rather large patch.) Next up is almost surely Zul'Aman, and that's probably at least 2 months off.
I found this strangely amusing, "We're not in [previous zone] anymore, everyone is important in [new zone]" has been repeated in every guild I've been in for every raid zone since BWL!
Exactly, in Nax this was true for the very first time. You could NOT lose anyone on Thaddius, every time we lost 2-3 DPS during the fight, we hit enrage and wiped.
You couldn't lose people on Gluth either, at least as Alliance. Once Gluth feeds, you're in trouble. Losing some of the very few DPS players your raid could afford on 4H was a guaranteed timeout wipe, losing a tank a disaster.
We've also never killed Gothik when anyone died before he came down.
In BWL this was not true, you could pull at least a dozen slackers through the raid, on C'Thun 5 people could eat death ray and you'd still win.
Using C'thun as an example is a poor choice for AQ40. Use Twin Emps instead, in pre-TE gear, and don't stack the raid.
And also consider Huhuran, a fight where the dps requirements meant losing people really really hurt.
Huhu & Twin Emps introduced the "ideas" of raiding that Blizzard continues to use.
-> Enrage timer where the boss goes ape-shit and starts nuking the raid with <ability X> that you can *deal* with ... for a limited time.
-> Enrage timer where you know the boss is going to 1-shot your tank, and you must kill him before it happens.
I'd like to see some new mechanics, and the complete removal of the enrage timer. While this does allow for "cheese", it removes the entirely artificial "oh, you've been here for 10 minutes, I'm late for tea - OMG WHUP ASS" effect that makes no sense whatsoever.
Last edited by constantius : 06/10/07 at 10:25 AM.
I'd like to see some new mechanics, and the complete removal of the enrage timer. While this does allow for "cheese", it removes the entirely artificial "oh, you've been here for 10 minutes, I'm late for tea - OMG WHUP ASS" effect that makes no sense whatsoever.
I really don't agree with this.
Before they implemented something like enrage timers you could easily create succesful raids with "good" tanks and healers and crappy "afking" DPS and still get the job done.
The devs realized this too so they had to implement the enrage timers to make raiding a bit more intensive for DPSers in raids.
Before it really didn't matter if you had your mages do averagely 400 DPS or averagely do 800 DPS.
"Oh the dragon is gonna use his AoE effect again, i'm just gonna go hide behind the wall 10 seconds too early to make sure I won't take too much damage." , "Oh the adds are going down really slow... nvm our healers can keep up the tanks anyway." etc.
I for one think adding the enrage timers was a good idea and it made people playing a DPS class require some skill, and it also actually gave some meaning to the DPS-meters in general.
I for one think adding the enrage timers was a good idea and it made people playing a DPS class require some skill, and it also actually gave some meaning to the DPS-meters in general.
Yes, but there are better ways to do it that don't feel so nakedly mechanical. Nefarian phase 1, for example - you have to have enough DPS and coordination to kill adds fast enough that you don't get overrun. Same with Magtheridon phase 1, or so I hear (not been there myself, probably never will). Any boss with healing abilities where you have to outdamage the healing. And so on.
Heck, even soft enrages (boss hits harder sub 20%, say) feel more "natural", and can provide just as stringent a DPS check. Or you can invert it, and have a raid-wide buff that wears off, like Essence of the Red. It makes organic sense - Vael gave the last of his power while sane to buff us as much as he could, but that was all he had left.
All the above are preferable to a hard enrage (timer hits 10 minutes and everybody dies). You just end up feeling "If $boss can kill us all without trying, why the heck doesn't he do it at the start of the fight".
If you want a hard enrage, there could be ways to do it - when you engage the boss, he sends a signal to summon his armies from the barracks. At 5 mins, you get yells that the reinforcements are on their way. At 8 minutes, you get the army commander yelling at the troops to buff up and get ready. At 10 minutes, you get zerged by 100 adds. If you kill him in time, you hear a yell telling the army to fall back to their next line of defence (and presumably these then form the trash mobs en route to the next boss).
TK instances would be the perfect place for this - it makes sense that Botanica would have some kind of inbuilt sterilisation system to cleanse it in case of infestation by dangerous organisms. So when you engage Warp Splinter, you get system messages to say something like "Failure of primary containment seal detected", followed by various status messages over the next couple of minutes, and finally the area gets flooded with poison gas after 5 minutes. Pathaleon could activate some kind of self-destruct on the Mechanar to prevent us getting our hands on the ship's weapon systems, and so on.
I'm only using these as examples because that's the instances I'm doing. I'm sure witha little thought you can find ways of applying the concept to raid bosses too. I don't know if there's a hard enrage timer on Magtheridon, but you could for example say that the boxes are damaged and run out of power after 10 minutes. There's yoru enrage timer, in a way that makes sense.
In summary - Timers: OK in moderation. Bosses suddenly wiping you when they've been fighting you for 10 minutes without using their uber powers: makes no sense.
Yes, but there are better ways to do it that don't feel so nakedly mechanical. Nefarian phase 1, for example - you have to have enough DPS and coordination to kill adds fast enough that you don't get overrun. Same with Magtheridon phase 1, or so I hear (not been there myself, probably never will). Any boss with healing abilities where you have to outdamage the healing. And so on.
The DPS check should more be focused on the inividual DPS'er though. Its quite annoying currently how the game place very strict gear requirements on tanks, who also usually need to farm for resist gear and such, while other classes get away with much less work.
Ideas would be trash/bosses with:
Back clash damage: Everytime someone does damage the mob does 4k Fire damage to the attacker. Possibly enough to force a major grind effort so anyone who wants to DPS the mob better have 350 resist. Well other option is to stop forcing resist checks on tanks but if there is a Resist check at all its very unfair to only require that some members of the raid grind for the stuff.
Vampiric regen: When a player does damage to a mob, said mob gains a buff that grants for instance +350 health/second and lasts 60 seconds. Stacks for different players and refresh when additional damage is dealt. Would be a nice mechanic to force individual DPS'ers to meet a minimum; or be totally useless for an encounter. Just like tanks have to meet a minimum gear check or they are totally useless.
Think its needed to have mechanics that make the gear checks more equal anyway.
Back clash damage: Everytime someone does damage the mob does 4k Fire damage to the attacker. Possibly enough to force a major grind effort so anyone who wants to DPS the mob better have 350 resist. Well other option is to stop forcing resist checks on tanks but if there is a Resist check at all its very unfair to only require that some members of the raid grind for the stuff.
The DPS check should more be focused on the inividual DPS'er though. Its quite annoying currently how the game place very strict gear requirements on tanks, who also usually need to farm for resist gear and such, while other classes get away with much less work.
Well, there was Jin'do, where only the that were cursed had to kill shades. Maybe you could use some way of personalising that, so you get your *own* shade to kill? Isn't that what happens with Leotheras?
Of course, you're then left with the situation where if a healer gets the curse, you're in trouble. Perhaps they could make it so that tanks "tank" their shade to death, DPSers DPS it, and healers heal them to death?
Have a "Morpheus moment", where the boss turns to a random DPSer and says "Stop trying to hit me, and HIT ME!". Said person then has to do a certain amount damage within a given time period, or get an enfeeble debuff. I guess that to ensure he chooses a DPSer, you'd make it the 4th or 5th person on the aggro list, and exempt healing aggro from the calculation.
06/08/07, 4:52 PM
Similar Threads
