• Wodin

Blizzard's reaction to the MSD spec isn't unique, though. In fact, it's characteristic with previous nerfs of "unintended" specs back in the day. Two examples I can think of off the top of my head were Caen's nature-damage Thunderfury spec, and the rogue "chain-proc" spec that utilized Vis'kag, Hand of Justice, Windfury, Sword Spec, the lightning ZG card, Instant Poison, and Lifestealing or Fiery Weapon to create giant strings of damaging effects off of each swing.

I'm pretty sure that the decision when to swing the nerfbat tends to be linked mostly to whether or not it's talents and skills that form the core of the synergy, or items. Items get nerfed, skills and talents tend to avoid it.

 

Redux

This specific checklist wouldn't function as a quest, but rather an "on person" type checklist. You don't have to accept a quest or anything, you just have to go do it. You can do any of them, at any time, in any order. No reputation requirements... hell, I don't like the idea of repping up a faction... I just meant a faction of vendors, similar to darkmoon. No tokens, just have to have completed x number or x% of objectives to purchase. Maybe could tie a daily quest into it somehow to obtain "tickets" to purchase items, or maybe only allow x number of items from each tier to be purchased, ensuring character customization.

The badge thing is just an example of something that COULD be included, not something I'd add myself.

 

◊ Praetorian

Well the item itself escaped notice entirely until they changed Arcane Missiles such that each separate bolt counted as its own spell (and thus had a chance to proc effects). Clever players looking for synergies saw this and immediately looked at possible items with procs that might take advantage of this sort of unique spell (where you're getting off six "casts" in under 5 seconds with haste, effectively). They found a good one, and it worked, though it wasn't completely broken. Rogues still top DMs, and arcane mages are second now (which is actually, as an aside, what I think DMs should look like, since unlike warlocks, hunters, and DPS hybrids, mages don't have any external contribution to raid DPS).

The analogies to M:tG earlier in the thread strike me as apt. A large portion of the fun of design and gameplay there is finding combinations and synergies that work. You hear about a new card in an upcoming release set with an unusual mechanic, and you immediately begin combing your memory for other cards/mechanics that might interact particularly well with this new development. You probably have a bunch of ideas, and most of them don't work, but maybe one or two do, and now you feel like you've accomplished something as you put your clever idea into practice. Maybe a thousand people across the world independently came up with the same combo, but that doesn't diminish the individual sense of "cool, my idea works!" WoW needs more of that.

 

Lodekim

Of course if they did it wrong it wouldn't be a good idea, but why should we cling to saying "Well they'll probably do it wrong, so fuck it, lets have a boring game."

Personally, I'm one who's unlikely to quit because of stuff like this, because I'm more into raid content anyway, but it sure as hell was more fun when you had random items you'd use for their amazing abilities rather than just "need X more of this stat"

Yeah, if we want to make up reasons for why they shouldn't do it we can talk about the negatives for if they did it wrong, but I don't see any reason why the possible bad makes it worth it for us to say "Let's not suggest it" when the possible good could lead to a much better game. Given that they're building this game to make money, it makes sense to look at this kind of thread and come up with good ideas for what to do, then actually balance them properly.

 

Mearis

That makes it an absolute nightmare to balance MMORPG's around though Gurg, because encounters have to be balanced around an expected raid DPS output, and if you can find creative ways to break that, then you either need to nerf the creative ways or redesign the encounter to take into account the extra damage people are putting out.

For example, in EverQuest, in the first expansion, you could give the various pets shitty weapons, and that didn't affect their damage output, but it change their delay and made them dual wield. The effect was that pets went from attacking for 68 every 3 seconds to quadding for 68 every 1.9 seconds. In SW:G people used armor sets that made them absolutely immune to everything. Conquest got all mass banned from EverQuest for abusing buff stacking mechanisms and using a debuff to block a particular boss extremly nasty AoE.

Was this creative mechanics? Yeah, but it made necromancers absolute gods. There are tons of other really creative builds, and the freedom in WoW is much smaller compared to the freedom you have in EverQuest. Tigole became famous because he got the world first kill of a famous world boss by abusing bugged pet aggro introduced in a famous patch and using pets to tank a mob that used to one shot tanks.

MMORPG's are very very easy to break.

 

songster

What are tokens except a way of keeping score how many objectives you've completed? As far as I can see, all you're proposing is quests that don't appear in your quest log, rep that doesn't show in your rep list, and tokens that don't take up a bag slot.

And that's another rub. In WoW you don't have to independently come up with the same combo. The information gets shared that XXX combo is unexpectedly powerful, and two weeks later there are twenty thousand people using that combo. That's because WoW is inherently a cooperative rather than a competitive game, and it is in people's interests to share strategies. In M:tG, if you come up with an uber combo, you keep it to yourself and try to nail your opponents with it. In WoW, even though arena PvP is competitive, raiding isn't, so the information gets shared.

In any case, M:tG is inherently more variable than WoW. You can choose your deck, but you shuffle it before every game. You may have the most powerful combo in the world in there, but if the deals come up in the wrong order, it doesn't get used. WoW has sixteen item slots, and any item you wear affects you all the time. It's just so different mechanically as to make the comparison meaningless.

 

Davidson

Tokens take up inventory space, which is one thing he's trying to get rid of.

 

◊ Praetorian

Playing devil's advocate here to an extent, but has anyone ever become famous for tanking a boss by having good gear with a lot of armor and hp?

Obviously it's a fine line, and you don't want people using a "loophole" to walk around one-shotting other players or soloing raid bosses or something. "Unintended" mechanics can be quite bad, but they don't have to be. I swear I once read a quote from someone at Blizzard (was it Tom Chilton maybe? -- or maybe I'm thinking of someone else entirely) that said something to the effect of "You want players to feel at times like they're cheating just a little bit, without it getting out of hand." And I think there's very little of that in the game today.

 

◊ Zerchi

This thread is full of great feedback... here's hoping Blizzard pays a little attention...

I don't really have anything new to add but feel a little compelled to add my own bit of grousing....At the very least, they shouldn't be so cheap with the visuals... they just make themselves look miserly when they cut corners like they've done with this philosophy of reusing raid sets for pvp. I understand the need to reuse art. But why not be a bit more forward thinking and make today's edge raiding gear tomorrow's "Kara/Mag/Gruul" type loot in the next expack rather than punishing both raiders and PvPers with the same look?

They are basically devaluing their own game... Raiders feel let down because they end up looking the same as PvPers. PvP'ers feel let down because they're effectively just getting recolored cast offs. Obtaining either set is an accomplishment and the reward should match the method.

Buffing up the art team, if that's what it takes, for stuff like this (plus all the other perks people here have suggested such as limited edition items or accomplishment related pets/mounts/whatever or hell, maybe even vet rewards for people keeping their accounts active) would certainly pay off in retention down the road.

 

Sillia

See, you're automatically assuming it is a boring game. Do you really think it is for the majority of the player base? I know that a ton of people are pretty excited about the changes 2.3 is bringing, and the badge/ZA items, despite them not being really that different from other items.

They are being conservative. They aren't adding nothing new to the game; there are still many new things they are exploring. This whole 'timed' instance thing is pretty significantly new. The idea of badges-for-raid gear idea is new. They are allowing players who don't raid to get some pretty hefty raid-level upgrades, and up till now, that's never been done before in wow.

They are playing it safe, by adding in new things piecemeal. As they said, the effect is supposed to be 'concentrated coolness', but it has to be built with an eye for the future. They experiment with mechanics, not specifics, because mechanics will live on even after an item is sharded or sold to a vendor.

I never said not to suggest things, but you cannot fault them for being cautious. They can do it. I've agreed with you that they can. However, given the myriad results that they've had in the past, I find it hard to encourage large, sweeping item changes. What makes you think that they'd do it right *this* time? Even they are being cautious about it.

Wodin pretty much has my thinking pegged on this matter. When it comes to being experimental, they want stuff that hinges on skills and talents, not on items. Items eventually get vended, sharded or go away. Talents and skills don't. Blizzard clearly doesn't want items to ever become inviolate (with certain exceptions like the [Hearthstone]). They want the items to feel like 'hey, this was cool for a while, but now I've found something better'. Things like the MSD, Thunderfury, Green Whelp armor, etc. were cool, but they were so cool that the only way to top them was to make even more ridiculous stuff, and that could easily spiral out of control.

 

Sillia

Something about that quote makes me want to say Bill Roper. It sounds like something he'd say. And given the projects he worked on in the past, and the one he's just shipped, the quote applies perfectly - the Diablo games, Blizzard RTS games, and Hellgate: London. However, in those games, it's perfectly fine to wank up the balance issues, because it isn't a MMORPG. You don't need to worry about the economy, or about players screwing with other players. There are no raids, there's no need to stymie any players from feeling like gods, or to introduce ridiculous super monsters that only large numbers of players can play with. The world isn't persistent, the levels are randomly generated, and your primary goal is to kill huge numbers of monsters and collect large amounts of loot, most of which is randomly generated and can be really cool.

I'm not sure that a MMOG as a genre can foster the same feeling properly, especially one as static as wow is, without some really tight control.

 

Angeron

I think a lot of people would kill for engineering devices that functioned as nogginfogger elixir dispensers (gnomish shrinking machine from EQ), tiny cloaks of darkest nice (instant cast self-invis), silly self-buff items that provide little/no usefulness (TCOD was good for bard kiting, that's about it), and don't have to be purchased via a card game. Pet's are cool, but maybe having ultra-rare spawns (that don't spawn in only one place/zone) that drop other unique(but generally not useable for improving your pvp game/raiding dps) items would really help. I know that I absolutely loved being able to customize my Bard in EQ with those little clicky items that really didn't do anything (ILLUSION MASKS!!!!!!!!! Permanent Halloween wands would rule, make them harder to obtain than just killing the Headless Horseman, but not as hard as killing say Terokk).

Additionally, not being able to alternatively advance your character after hitting the level cap really hurts everyone, even if you introduce AAs that do NOTHING to improve the PVE/PVP functionality of a character (say, improved alchemy, costs 4 levels worth of xp to gain 1 AA, improves chance to proc your mastery by 10%, or an engineering AA that has a chance to proc a double/triple item manufacture, or an AA that occasionally transforms your character into a pirate (this would be popular), etc.) that would help enormously, not only with high-end people, but everyone at all levels. Think of all the non-raiders who would suddenly be more interested in playing more often? How many people would reactivate/renew their accounts due to being able to transform into mini-diablo outside of the halloween event?

I agree with a lot of the other posters about how not being able to be creative and original is a problem, and how there is a lack of flavor, and I also agree that introducing too much creates and EQ-style issue where reaching end-progression tiers is literally impossible for new players in any reasonable amount of time. I can't offer a reconciliation between those two, as that's the sort of balance I can't really wrap my head around, but I think that we can all agree that adding attributes to this game that go beyond killing monsters/other players need to be implemented quickly and well in order to keep it as lively as it is.

Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.

 

songster

So let's have a more general solution. It's ludicrous that gold shows in your inventory (but doesn't take space), honor and arena points show on your PvP pane, and battleground/other tokens take up inventory space. Have a general interface caller "Currencies" which logs all the above and tells you what faction is associated. Select the "Currency" tab and see a rundown like the following:

For tradeable currencies, you click on the button that says <Tradeable> and can transfer some to your inventory, which you can then put on the AH or in a trade window. Right click items in your inventory to destroy the stack and add them to your Currency pane. For anything you're done with, click <Hide> to hide it from view, or <Delete> to clear out the cruft.

A system like this would even allow them to implement different currencies for different countries or different races - which would be a nice flavour touch even if they were freely interconvertible.

 

Ghando

I agree with Angeron...just think of how many people, casual and hardcore alike, are willing to sink tons of time into getting a new cool mount, or a new cool title. A different mount does nothing substantial for your character and neither does a title, but it's a way to set yourself apart from the crowd. I remember the EJ news post of Stion's phoenix mount, and he was MOBBED in Shattrath by people wanting to see it. That's what people want and really respond to, that's what they're willing to bust their asses for.

I'm all for diversity in specs/playstyles and I wish there were more of that, but failing that I'm content to have options to make my character unique and really stand out from the crowd. That's been one of the frustrations a lot of high-end raiders express with the arena gear...they're okay with their PvE gear not making them PvP gods, but they at least want to look cool and have the recognition that comes from that. Hence the stupid shoulders-will-be-special change. That really made me roll my eyes, because Blizzard obviously understands player motivations and is designing around them...but it's out of the question to get the artists to come up with unique sets.

 

Kardinalen

Well I wouldn't call the gap between BRD/Onyxia attunement chain and BWL an "itemisation hole". Looting a powerful item always gave me a special feeling, it's just not the same looting a trinket with +n AP and knowing a trinket with +n+5 AP will drop in the next instance.

Your examples are all gamebreaking. Making arcane mages doing a bit more DPS than what was intended, but still lower than rogues, is not at all gamebreaking. It is creative thinking and theorycrafting at its best and it should be encouraged by Blizzard, not surpressed.

 

Buiden

The whole issue boils down to game balance and what I would consider the single biggest game design error they made with WoW -- balancing PvE around PvP and vice versa. The two systems need to be different enough on their own as to discourage someone who excels in one to automatically excel in the other without additional time investment.

Resillience was a good start to this and I hope that it is only the beginning. I agree Blizzard has been too cautious for my liking, too slow moving with too small of improvements at any one time to really take notice. If they can manage to drive PvP and PvE in opposite directions a little further then I think we'll be able to see a lot better PvE upgrades, challenge in PvP to get the best rewards, and so on.

I know there's been talk of making items flagged for PvP only or PvE only, I really don't think that is a bad idea overall. The main reason PvE items scale slowly is for PvP and that is just stupid! No I don't think PvErs should dominate PvP. I see so many guilds out there struggling because the gear they are gaining from their 4/5 SSC 3/4 TK clears is literally doing NOTHING to help their progression. They will only progress by their limits of execution and really nothing else. To think that their item progression is being heald back by PvP infuriates me since they should be completely unrelated. Likewise I am sure there are hardcore PvPers out there who feel that their rating is being heald back by top tier PvErs and that is equally as dissapointing.

Would it be so bad to increase legendary drops for PvE? Lets say over an average of 1 year a top tier PvEr will get 1-2 legendary items. As a caveat Legendary items can no longer be used in Rated PvP arenas. Likewise, make a legendary reward for PvPers that is completely PvP oriented, and cannot be used in PvE. Would that really cheapen anything? Now everyone who puts 100% into either PvE or PvP (or both) will have an item to show for it, something to be proud of and show off.

 

ANSeranov

The problem is that EVERYONE wants to be "a unique snowflake," (pardon the phrase, it just seems like it's relevant) and you really just can't be.

Honestly, even if they did change the look of the arena gear, people in the top arena groups would complain, because they look just like each other. While things like the Phoenix mount are rare and awesome, how rare and awesome would it be if everyone had one? It's like Netherdrakes. They were so unique and awesome the first few weeks after you could start grinding Netherwing rep. Now the skies are crowded with them. My alt almost has one. If the Phoenix were like that, it would lose the lustre of being so unique.

Blizzard is apparently trying to make people feel this way, but the fact remains that they can't really do it through gear. If they do, the "rare and unique" will certainly translate to "omg super powerful" and unless you have that certain piece(s) of gear, you'll be SOL when compared to someone who does. Things like non-combat pets, silly masks and the like lose their novelty soon enough because they don't really DO anything beyond look cool. And therein lies the biggest problem: People want things (armor, weapons, etc) that are powerful and uncommon, but EVERYONE wants them.

Sillia said it best. Blizz is playing it safe, and in their position, I would, too.

[Yuuzu] [80 Draenei Shaman][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Draenei Death Knight][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Human Warrior][Durotan]
[Karina] [77 Draenei Paladin][Durotan]
[Ikarii] [70 Dwarven Rabbi][Durotan]

 

Zifna

Seriously... have them create Arena Gear which you can use only in arenas (though you could use it elsewhere if you wanted). They're supposed to be contests of pure skill and skill alone. Make gear a non-factor there... Award them with gear usable (and decent) anywhere.


--this is good for arenas. It's all about skill and not gear etc
--this is good for arenas. They could change the arena gear from season to season to keep it fresh with different set bonuses that alter the basic paradigms of what you can and cannot count on (i.e. maybe range changes, ++ or -- duration to CC etc, work it out)
--this is good for all other gear because you can have arena gear be ridiculously powerful or ridiculously weak and not need to balance raids around arenas. Seriously. You could make arena gear have 0 + stamina on it or 10,000 on it. You could make arena players do normal dps, less dps, or substantially more dps than other players. You can award whatever you want from different PvE tiers.

 

ANSeranov

That'd be kinda nice, actually. I'd like to see what it's like to PvP as a Holy priest w/ 10k hp and 400 resil, as opposed to my measley 9k and 225. (Yes, make fun of me for my squishiness, I know I'm bad at PvP. D: )

It would let people learn how well their class can perform in a survival role, while additionally making them learn how to play in arena. I can sure as hell attest to how the role of a Holy Priest is not the same in Arena as it is in 5/10/25 mans. D:

[Yuuzu] [80 Draenei Shaman][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Draenei Death Knight][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Human Warrior][Durotan]
[Karina] [77 Draenei Paladin][Durotan]
[Ikarii] [70 Dwarven Rabbi][Durotan]

 

Vandermonde

I think one thing standing in the way of a more ccg-like system where they just print a lot of effects that might have unintended consequences, do some in-house testing, and then fix it later if it's broken is how much inertia you have as a wow player. If you have an idea for a magic deck, you can proxy it up immediately to test and then pick up the real cards fairly quickly [granted, at non-trivial expense] for tournament play. If the deck turns out to be not quite good enough, or stops being good because people find a counter to it, or in rare cases something gets banned, you can turn it around with fairly little loss.

If you have a gear/spec setup idea, you're probably at the mercy of the rng for the gear half of it. Then if something gets nerfed, or it just doesn't work out like the spreadsheet suggested, you cannot flip that gear into other gear at all.

This is an even bigger issue with the analogy for making any change that potentially unbalances a class for pvp. In magic, if none of the best decks involve white at some point in time, that's an issue, but it's not the end of the world; just don't play white. If none of the best arena options involve mages, and your main (or only) character is a mage, you are seriously boned. I think the fact that players don't have very fast options for changing with the tide is part of why they seem afraid of making harder-to-balance, outside-the-box things.

 

Myonax

You assume that the inventory sub-game is something they want to fix.. Way off topic for this thread, but I do think the Blizzard intends inventory to be a limiting factor.

 

Maczor

I think its more like everyone wants someone to have a chance at being "a unique snowflake". And that someone could be you if you do what is required. The problem is that basically no one is a "a unique snowflake" anymore.

For example in mid/late 2005 very few people had a Thunderfury. The people that did were unique and when you saw one it was rare and stopped to inspect him. By late 2006 a lot more people had them... something like 40-50 on Blackrock. They were more common... but still extremely rare when compared to something like The Unstoppable Force. There is nothing like that now and that is my problem with WoW. There isn't that weapon, that piece of armor, or that Title that is rare anymore.

Another thing that use to be very rare was someone riding a [Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber]. When I saw a person ranked Field Marshall, wielding a Hand of Rag, riding a Winterspring Frostsaber... I knew that guy was awesome and I wanted to have what he had. Now I see Draenei using [Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber] all the time.

It's not that I want to be unique but I want to see people that are unique and know that if I play as much or work as hard as they do that I can eventually be unique also.


A real life example is when your driving home from work (at least in my area). Most people have the same basic cars. A 4 or 2 door honda, nissan, ford, chevy, etc. Most of what people drive are 5-15 year old standard cars. But then you see some brand new 2008 Luxury car pull up next to your Honda and your like "Man that car is awesome! I hope I can afford one of those some day ".

I believe that is what people want. If everyone drove around in $100,000 cars and wore $2000 suits life would be pretty boring. And that is how WoW feels right now when you stop and look around and everyone has 5 or 6 different mounts and gear that all looks the same and is just as good as everyone elses.

 

Nezralix

There are tons of unique mounts available now, but the problem is that (a) the default flying mount is boring, and (b) there's a competition of sorts being riding and flying mounts.

 

JamesVZ

To play the devil's devil's advocate, Furor? :p.

EverQuest was a lot like what you're describing, if a little out of hand at times, and honestly I have to say I prefer WoW's method. They watch their game very, very closely and crack down on mechanics that don't fit into their Vision(tm) of what the game should be. Conquest's rogue/warlock split pull, flipping raid instances, stuff like that was fixed immediately and without remorse. You can tell they want certain content beat in certain ways, and the game has become more of a question of who is more organized to get there. EverQuest was about who knew the l33t sploitz and who had the time. Given one option of cracking down on the unintended mechanics or letting them slide and building the game around the slides, I'd go for the former in a heartbeat.

 

Sillia

Isn't this a contradiction? Did someone change the definition of "unique" without telling me?

They aren't unique. They are just rare. People who were exalted with the Timbermaw Furbolgs got a [Defender of the Timbermaw] trinket, and that was pretty darn cool. People who got [Thekal's Grasp] and [Arlokk's Grasp] together had a proc to turn them into a tiger. That was cool. Then there was [Eskhandar's Collar], [Eskhandar's Pelt], [Eskhandar's Right Claw] and [Eskhandar's Left Claw]. Putting all four together was pretty neat too.

Adding in more (mostly) cosmetic things like this would be fun and interesting. Perhaps more set items that don't really provide an effective 'set' bonus, but provide a cool aura.