Support NeoGAF

[TheYanger]

My apologizes if I misunderstood. I thought you wanted to slow the progression on LFR as much as non-LFR in order to stretch content out, though I'd disagree with the notion that stretching the content out as you've described is substantially different than having a place on farm for the same duration of time. Making tiers last longer than that hardly seems to be an ideal solution, or a solution at all, for Blizzard failing to put out content in a timely manner. In fact, cancelling between tiers seems like a good way to send a message to Blizz to ramp up content production, as opposed to asking for a better treadmill.

That also said, you don't know me or my situation, or anyone else who has been in that specific situation. It's unfair of you to make such assumptions, which in turn invite people to make assumptions about you. This isn't FoH, being "hard" here doesn't impress the 02'ers.

Sorry about the douchey first part ;p Your post made me annoyed and I edited in the more rational second part later without deleting the first.

I think it's especially important for an MMO which is always supposed to have content to do. Your're never supposed to finish everything unless you're ultra elite. Now this goes against normal game design and the typical human completionist mindset, but for MMOs, it's necessary to keep people hooked.

LFR is fine, but I think for regular raiding going (back) to a sort of tough love mindset is better for the health of the game. Who knows what's more profitable, but having it be too easy is a compromise of game design. (Albeit, this is tricky to balance now compared to when WoW was younger and had a smaller community, fewer resources, and a less-skilled/familiar with boss mechanics player base.)

You either make fights very gear dependent (which Blizzard would regard as not fun, and most people would agree), or you have to invent novel mechanics, which is hard at this point. Almost any given new boss you'll see now is a rehash of mechanics you've seen elsewhere. It's difficult when you realize there are surprisingly few base mechanics in the combat sandbox - making something truly "new" would require a large degree of complexity. The simplification of stats/talents/buffs/etc. since Cataclysm doesn't help in this regard (though the changes are mostly good for other reasons.)

I think fights SHOULD be somewhat gear dependent. Not to the point that that is the only difficulty, but to give you a sense of progression.

While I would hardly say WoW is better off to copy EQ in all regards, raiding progression with LFR as a sidenote for 'content completionists' seems the way to go for the health of the game like you say. The reason all of the hardcore guilds quit EQ when wow came out had NOTHING to do with the raiding system, and had everything to do with all of the other bullshit SoE pulled constantly and how broken their game could tend to be. It's why lots of early wow raiding strats (like the famous conquest ban and strat leak that busted MC wide open) were so cheesy and borderline exploit in terms of how we'd see them today: Because in EQ that was par for the course and it's how we were wired to approach encounters. Blizz has fixed that part of course by now.

Maybe I'm just an old grump at this point talking about 'back in my day' type shit 13 years after the fact, but I just literally cannot fathom not wanting to have something to look forward to when I log in to my game of choice. If there is nothing in front of me, what is the point of it all? Current wow, no matter how bad you are, there is nothing in front of you within a couple months of a patch release. The knowledge of nerfs incoming takes away from that which is in front of you (to the point that many people in mid-tier guilds don't even try on hard fights until they are nerfed). Heck, my guild didn't even finish Madness before the first nerf this tier, we BARELY got spine, and we were top 20 US. It doesn't mean the fights are too hard, spine was a BIT too hard but you could always make solid progression on this fight, whichis what a fight should be like. Same with Rag. It means we simply did not have enough time to even get the tier done before they start doling out the nerfs. Unless you were bleeding edge, you had literally less than a month to 'catch up' before the nerfs hit. That's fucking RIDICULOUS to me. I don't want to see the game continue in this vein by any stretch, but I know it will

I wish I had a direct line to the devs at times like this to truly pick their mind, because I genuinely cannot fathom a single argument against what I (and many others) have proposed as a progression model. I cannot see how it makes less sense in either business terms OR gameplay design terms.

 

[Johnlenham]

Yeah I think its abit fucked when I would login and think well ive seen everything, yeah I can go join a guild and bang my head against a wall to do Normal>Heroic but the gear looks the same, the stat upgrades are minimal and you dont see anything new.
Whats the point in having the badass heroic gear if its useless in PVP and it only makes PVE easier but stuff you have allready done.

When you used to have to do MC/ZG to got to BWl to go to Aq40 you had something to aim for
"Oh shit im nearly 6/6 giant stalkers but omg look at the dude in 6/6 Dragon stalker!"

Now everyone has the same raid gear, running the same raids to see the same content then you just sit in Org doing transmog runs or PVP which your gear is useless for.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

I think fights SHOULD be somewhat gear dependent. Not to the point that that is the only difficulty, but to give you a sense of progression.

"Very" was the key word there in front of gear dependent (probably could have worded it stronger to better convey my intent), but yeah. I don't mind when there's tough fights that you really need to gear up a couple weeks for, even if you could mechanically execute it now. Three weeks is probably the high-end limit I would put for pure gearing for a single (non-end) boss before it starts to edge from necessity to advantage though. Even then, it shouldn't be on every fight in a tier, but certain "steps".

There are always fringe cases of extreme skill besting bosses even with minimal gear (see: almost all world firsts, but also things like the Yogg-Saron all blues run if you read about that a few years back). Again though, those are fringe cases and well outside the normal curve, even for mid-high tier guilds.

They could do interesting things with resistance gear - and have that drop in the raid, with raid rep/currency, or in accompanying dungeons, rather than just boring crafting as it was the couple times it was needed in Wrath through Ulduar. Magic resistances are cut though and are unlikely to make a return. You could do the same sort of thing with another custom mechanic though, so it's not completely out of the question.

 

[Entropia]

My casual 10 man guild finally killed H Spine last night, what a stupid fight. I don't know how people did that before the nerf. :\

 

[falastini]

Whats even more perplexing is that SWTOR decided to copy WoWs progression model of all things... a worse version even. People had their PvE content cleared in weeks.

I'm worried that this is the future of MMOs now, and that makes me sad. The only way we're gonna see what we want is to become millionaires and make our own MMO

Spoiler

then lose it months before release because of a bad govt loan :0

.

 

[Draxal]

Whats even more perplexing is that SWTOR decided to copy WoWs progression model of all things... a worse version even. People had their PvE content cleared in weeks.

I'm worried that this is the future of MMOs now, and that makes me sad. The only way we're gonna see what we want is to become millionaires and make our own MMO

Spoiler

then lose it months before release because of a bad govt loan :0

.

They really didn't though, the progression model for TOR was completely out of sync at launch (like pretty much the rest of the game), with the initial raid being too easy. They increased the difficulty of the next raid (Denove) significantly and the only way to gear up to do that raid is to have gear from the first raid's hard modes.

And people want different things, I think the raiding mmo genre is eventually going to die out, as the opportunity cost of doing them is just too much with all the other competition (not in the mmo genre but in online gaming itself), I mean who seriously wants to farm raid instances for months of a times these days, it's not 2004 anymore, it just does not have the mass appeal as it used to.

 

[falastini]

Well I don't know about the current state of the game, I meant the initial raids. They went with the whole "multi-difficulty" setup and made them all entirely too easy. It was apparent before release and they never adjusted it.

 

[Fularu]

TBC content was completely doable on a casual/normal schedule.

No, none of the content was doable pre nerf on a "casual/normal schedule", unless you meant post nerfs, after the next tier had been released.

Nightbane? Gruul? Magtheridon? Vashj? Kael'Thas? Tank teleporting happy Mother Shahraz? Fucking M'uru?

Yeah, no. And yes, I killed those pre-nerf when I was raiding 5 nights a week for 5 hours.

 

[Bisnic]

No, none of the content was doable pre nerf on a "casual/normal schedule", unless you meant post nerfs, after the next tier had been released.

Nightbane? Gruul? Magtheridon? Vashj? Kael'Thas? Tank teleporting happy Mother Shahraz? Fucking M'uru?

Yeah, no. And yes, I killed those pre-nerf when I was raiding 5 nights a week for 5 hours.

Eh... yeah, TBC was definitely not casual friendly for raids. I was always the kind of "casual" player, despite playing this game since 2006, and didnt bother raiding until they released WOTLK and even then i grew tired of doing Naxx and ICC raid schedules pretty fast.

 

[FLEABttn]

Sorry about the douchey first part ;p Your post made me annoyed and I edited in the more rational second part later without deleting the first.

I guess to be fair as well, my raiding experience in Cata has been incredibly limited (medical shit) so I'm not sure what all went on there outside of LFR. My perspective comes from being fairly hardcore in vanilla (until I burnt out) and not liking it, being casual in TBC because of scheduling issues and not liking it, to being a 10 strict guild in WotLK and having a blast even though we never killed Yogg or LK, but having a really good time.

Like if you take WotLK endgame and it's structure, marry it up with LFR, I think you have wins all around to a good extent.

 

[TheYanger]

No, none of the content was doable pre nerf on a "casual/normal schedule", unless you meant post nerfs, after the next tier had been released.

Nightbane? Gruul? Magtheridon? Vashj? Kael'Thas? Tank teleporting happy Mother Shahraz? Fucking M'uru?

Yeah, no. And yes, I killed those pre-nerf when I was raiding 5 nights a week for 5 hours.

Doing it at the bleeding edge? Obviously not possible. Finishing the content, or at least the majority of it, on a 3 night a week schedule over the course of the xpac? completely possible. I've been in all manner of guilds with all manner of schedule. 6 nights a week 5 nights a week 4 nights a week and 3 nights a week. Obviously not everyone is going to finish everything on the same kind of playtimes, but that's fine. The point is you can make plenty of progress and not feel stymied. Seeing as the only 'released' tier for all intents and purposes was Sunwell, and I knew PLENTY of people on light schedules that were farming BT before that hit, I'm not sure where you're getting your facts. Unless you count the bugfixes to a lot of the fights as nerfs. I think typically when people discuss nerfs now they mean the wholesale TRUE nerfs we get since ICC. (And before it gets brought up, yes T6 was patched into the game, but it was patched in at the same time as the previous fights were actually beaten, since they were bugged to shit and insanely hard. If you want to call those nerfs be my guest but realistically T6 was available the minute anyone was actually capable of zoning in).

There are plenty of people that don't want to commit any time to raiding, and that's fine, that's what LFR is for. I don't think anyone thinks LFR should go away, but it should have minimal impact on people that genuinely want to play the game and have a purpose as well. If you can commit 2-3 nights a week and have A) content in front of you to do at all times and B) a reasonable challenge at various skill levels (Normal mode progression, heroic mode progression) without being shuttled through content, then what's the problem?

The only issue with BC compared to now was that it, for all intents and purposes, ONLY had heroic progression. If you threw in normal modes and LFR and balanced the loot correctly there's no reason someone couldn't go through the entire xpac at their appropriate skill level/commitment level and have a good time doing it.

Imagine: Normal mode Sunwell, normal mode Kael'thas. roadblocks are out the window with these concepts, that we DO have in modern wow, but they're marginalized by the giant stampeding nerf juggernaut that nips at your heels constantly and invalidates all prior tiers of content in the name of 'fairness' and 'letting everyone see everything' (even though LFR does that plenty fine on its own).

 

[Liferebooted]

Is it just me or is druids damage horrible in the mop beta?

 

[The Lamonster]

Artisan riding. Is the only way to get it down to 4k by being exhalted with Stormwind? Or would any Alliance faction work?

If the former, any tips for quickly getting SW rep?

 

[ampere]

Artisan riding. Is the only way to get it down to 4k by being exhalted with Stormwind? Or would any Alliance faction work?

If the former, any tips for quickly getting SW rep?

I'm pretty sure that 4K is the cheapest you can get it for.

Buy a Stormwind tabard (vendor is near the Stormwind flight path, at the bottom of the ramp) and you can do random dungeons for Stormwind rep. It's a pretty fast way to get rep.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

I'm pretty sure that 4K is the cheapest you can get it for.

Buy a Stormwind tabard (vendor is near the Stormwind flight path, at the bottom of the ramp) and you can do random dungeons for Stormwind rep. It's a pretty fast way to get rep.

Yeah, I was gonna respond to this, but if you don't already have Stormwind rep maxed for the discount, you're not likely to have the other 2 (3?) reps that can provide a discount.

Tabard and dungeons is the fastest way, though doing starter zone quests also rewards a ton of rep if you weren't human and haven't done them all already. Other low level zones also reward rep at a good pace, but chain running dungeons will be faster after finishing the starter zone.

 

[The Lamonster]

So that's Elwynn Forest, right?

 

[Manus]

So that's Elwynn Forest, right?

Yup and any quests in Stormwind.

 

[The Lamonster]

Thanks dudes!

 

[Tamanon]

Then Westfall has a ton of easy quick quests to get rep in.

 

[Rokal]

I'm worried that this is the future of MMOs now, and that makes me sad. The only way we're gonna see what we want is to become millionaires and make our own MMO

Spoiler

then lose it months before release because of a bad govt loan :0

.

Rift currently has a linear gear progression. You can clearly see the good & bad in it: people still run the early raids every week and there is plenty of content to do, plenty left to strive for. With the Planar Attunement system (exp past level cap) and weekly bonuses for raids, players who over-gear past the content still have a reason to go back and do the old stuff too. Everyone wins and groups are easy to find. However, nobody really runs the 'middle tier' raids which means that it's not realistic to gear up for the current raid tier unless you join a stepping-stone guild like those that existed in TBC.

Ultimately I prefer linear gear progression but it's not perfect.

 

[Nelo Ice]

edit:wrong thread

 

[Angry Grimace]

I remember when I used to get in complicated arguments about this, but then I realized it doesn't matter because Blizzard almost always adds more shit that I like and never does anything that pleases super elite hardcores.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

I'm over 10-25-40 man weekly raid progression.

I want to do shit by myself or with 100 people if I want to. I don't want to be at a brick wall cause the other 9-24 people suck, or be benched, or have loot politics, or miss out because people don't log on.

The MMO genre needs to innovate. Not interested in what was done in the past.

 

[TheYanger]

I'm over 10-25-40 man weekly raid progression.

I want to do shit by myself or with 100 people if I want to. I don't want to be at a brick wall cause the other 9-24 people suck, or be benched, or have loot politics, or miss out because people don't log on.

The MMO genre needs to innovate. Not interested in what was done in the past.

So do LFR or the other stuff there is to do.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

So do LFR or the other stuff there is to do.

No, that's not fun currently mainly because of the current loot system and mindless gameplay.

I'm not playing now or using my beta access. My friends have been on hiatus since our Rag kill.

There's ways to improve wow, and having a next tier lined up is obviously better than waiting.

But as far as the future of the mmo genre go, fuck tier raiding. I want innovation. I don't want something casual. If you play for 2 years longer than someone else, I want you to have built an empire literally or figuratively that matters presently, but I want a new person to be able to join you right away and not necessarily need to go down the path you went. I want dynamic content.

I can't accurately describe anything, because the innovation I want isn't clear to me really.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

No, that's not fun currently mainly because of the current loot system and mindless gameplay.

I'm not playing now or using my beta access. My friends have been on hiatus since our Rag kill.

There's ways to improve wow, and having a next tier lined up is obviously better than waiting.

But as far as the future of the mmo genre go, fuck tier raiding. I want innovation. I don't want something casual. If you play for 2 years longer than someone else, I want you to have built an empire literally or figuratively that matters presently, but I want a new person to be able to join you right away and not necessarily need to go down the path you went. I want dynamic content.

I can't accurately describe anything, because the innovation I want isn't clear to me really.

You're sort of describing EVE, which is great on a sandbox level, but the actual gameplay (at least combat) loops are pretty bad, especially compared to the feedback you get from using abilities in WoW.

While the passive skill training stuff in EVE is innovative, and is such a relief compared to other MMOs because you don't feel like you absolutely have to log in every day to keep up with the Joneses, it's also a negative in that there is no way at all to catch up to people who have been playing longer. New players will always be behind older ones. There should always be at least some sort of grinding mechanism for progression in an MMO if a player wants to devote the time into it, but it shouldn't be mandatory by any means.

The thing that makes EVE work (though not as well as I would like) is that while older players will always be better generalists, newer players can specialize in areas that not all older ones have, and thus make themselves useful. Beyond the base set of skills everyone should have (which don't take that much time to reach competency or perfection), it's just a matter of how many things you've specialized in.

To clarify further my point about the EVE skill system - it works asymptotically. Power boosts come quick and make greater leaps the younger a player is, while older players with more developed skills spend increasingly longer periods of time for marginal improvements.

The way sovereignty (player controlled space/areas) works in EVE is also something I think could be iterated upon in another MMO. Personally I'd really like to see a sort of cyberpunk world ala Snow Crash with various groups of players building up and controlling parts of a city for economic, political, or other reasons. PvE content could be scattered throughout the swathes of player run sections.

I agree that "empire building" can be a very interesting aspect to MMOs, but you also have to create safeguards so that new players aren't shut out completely and alienated to the game by the veterans (or even just the stigma of starting). Yes older players should always have at least a slight edge, but only so long as they remain on top of their game.

Even if new players can't ever fully catch up, with enough time the difference should hardly be noticeable if it's in terms of raw power, or if a larger gap, at least be counterable by more basic gear/tech/strategy/etc. (though cosmetics are completely fair game.) Older players are always going to have the edge in experience and resources anyway which will have a (possibly very strong) indirect effect on capability, so for the game's integrity, it's best if the rest of the sandbox is balanced.

 

[JORMBO]

Resubbed. Gonna get my free 80 mage to 85. Just hit 82 so I can leave that stupid water zone now.

Also have an 85 Paladin in leveling blues. I'm working on getting the purple judgement set. Can I transmorg weapons? What is a cool 1h, 2h and shield I can farm solo?

 

[Ultratech]

Also have an 85 Paladin in leveling blues. I'm working on getting the purple judgement set. Can I transmorg weapons? What is a cool 1h, 2h and shield I can farm solo?

You can transmog like 90% of all weapons (the exception being very specific equipment and Legendaries).

Luckily, you're a Pally, so you shouldn't have too much trouble having to solo to find something.

As per what you'd like...I'd find a transmog site and look at the models available.

 

[Angry Grimace]

No, that's not fun currently mainly because of the current loot system and mindless gameplay.

I'm not playing now or using my beta access. My friends have been on hiatus since our Rag kill.

There's ways to improve wow, and having a next tier lined up is obviously better than waiting.

But as far as the future of the mmo genre go, fuck tier raiding. I want innovation. I don't want something casual. If you play for 2 years longer than someone else, I want you to have built an empire literally or figuratively that matters presently, but I want a new person to be able to join you right away and not necessarily need to go down the path you went. I want dynamic content.

I can't accurately describe anything, because the innovation I want isn't clear to me really.

As I said, though: Blizzard invents shit I didn't know I needed all the time. The chance that they're going to make the game generally more annoying is very low. EQ or even TBC type raiding is archaic in general at this point. It's never coming back in any mainstream product.

There isn't any point from Blizzard's perspective to cater to people who don't do anything but play WoW.

 

[JORMBO]

Luckily, you're a Pally

That's the first time I've heard someone say that!

 

[C.Dark.DN]

You're sort of describing EVE, which is great on a sandbox level, but the actual gameplay (at least combat) loops are pretty bad, especially compared to the feedback you get from using abilities in WoW.

While the passive skill training stuff in EVE is innovative, and is such a relief compared to other MMOs because you don't feel like you absolutely have to log in every day to keep up with the Joneses, it's also a negative in that there is no way at all to catch up to people who have been playing longer. New players will always be behind older ones. There should always be at least some sort of grinding mechanism for progression in an MMO if a player wants to devote the time into it, but it shouldn't be mandatory by any means.

The thing that makes EVE work (though not as well as I would like) is that while older players will always be better generalists, newer players can specialize in areas that not all older ones have, and thus make themselves useful. Beyond the base set of skills everyone should have (which don't take that much time to reach competency or perfection), it's just a matter of how many things you've specialized in.

To clarify further my point about the EVE skill system - it works asymptotically. Power boosts come quick and make greater leaps the younger a player is, while older players with more developed skills spend increasingly longer periods of time for marginal improvements.

The way sovereignty (player controlled space/areas) works in EVE is also something I think could be iterated upon in another MMO. Personally I'd really like to see a sort of cyberpunk world ala Snow Crash with various groups of players building up and controlling parts of a city for economic, political, or other reasons. PvE content could be scattered throughout the swathes of player run sections.

I agree that "empire building" can be a very interesting aspect to MMOs, but you also have to create safeguards so that new players aren't shut out completely and alienated to the game by the veterans (or even just the stigma of starting). Yes older players should always have at least a slight edge, but only so long as they remain on top of their game.

Even if new players can't ever fully catch up, with enough time the difference should hardly be noticeable if it's in terms of raw power, or if a larger gap, at least be counterable by more basic gear/tech/strategy/etc. (though cosmetics are completely fair game.) Older players are always going to have the edge in experience and resources anyway which will have a (possibly very strong) indirect effect on capability, so for the game's integrity, it's best if the rest of the sandbox is balanced.

Yeah a Snow Crash world would be cool.

I could see something like this being cool: People have built a huge space port you would have to spend 2 years doing, but you could steal one of their ships that would take you a long time to get for bounty hunting or something and then go into deep space where they either go looking for you or let you go.

Then in a few months when you're stronger or something, you could troll them and steal more ships. They would have like a security alert about you.

 

[Manus]

Got Bone-Link Fetish tonight while downing DS with the guild!

 

[TheYanger]

http://youtu.be/h2cZVABtSp0

Good stuff.

 

[Rokam]

http://youtu.be/h2cZVABtSp0

Good stuff.

Yoshi can get that for when his guild pisses him off.

 

[Einchy]

Yoshi can get that for when his guild pisses him off.

5 minute CD, though. He's going to be waiting on that a lot.

 

[ampere]

More fun items from cooking, eh? Sounds good!

 

[strafer]

 

[eudaemonic]

*right click - save table.gif*

I wonder if that's gonna make people favor that particular cooking tree first over what they actually need for stats. Haha

 

[HarryDemeanor]

First time taking on Anzu on my Death Knight and the mount drops. So awesome.

 

[Ultratech]

First time taking on Anzu on my Death Knight and the mount drops. So awesome.

Lucky. Still, congrats on the bird!

So awesome to ride around on.

 

[ShadyMilkman]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucking Finalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllly

And the Eye dropped. First time I've seen it and this was Rag #24.

 

[Ningo]

So I quit Swtor late march/early april. I have been playing diablo 3 and getting bored of that.

I feel like taking a nostalgia trip and also seeing what has changed since a month after cata.

Would anyone be able to kindly send me a scroll of resurrection? PM me and I will give my email, many thanks.

(I won't be able to accept straight away as I need to call customer service as I formatted my ipod before removing the authenticator from my account ages ago, they are currently closed)

Time to begin downloading the client.

What server should I join? I previously played on frostmourne because I'm aussie, but with no local servers im open to suggestions. I have no real ties to the old server because I gave everything I had away when I left.

 

[Dresden]

Do they still give out free 80's for resubbing via scroll?

 

[Westlo]

Do they still give out free 80's for resubbing via scroll?

Just came to this thread to post that exact same question!

 

[Istaerion]

Do they still give out free 80's for resubbing via scroll?

Seems like it according to their website's information.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/services/scroll-of-resurrection/

I imagine Blizzard will update folks as to when the promotion is wearing thin like they usually do.

 

[Westlo]

Nice, in that case if anyone wants to send a scroll my way can someone PM me so I can give them my email. High chance of subbing for at least a month, haven't played since the first month of Cata, kinda curious to check things out for at least a few months.

Edit - Scroll situation taken care of, cheers.

 

[Touch]

why cant my egg hatch into a pretty green proto for once? smh

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

why cant my egg hatch into a pretty green proto for once? smh

I had the green first (got it way back in Wrath) before I finished up the red one (Damn you Less-Rabi!)

Red one is better.

 

[Sethos]

Crap, noticed that my CC expired which made my annual sub lapse and they removed D3. Think they'd let you add a CC, write support, resume the subscription and "lock" you in for the remaining time + the time lost and get it back, with a sob story included or am I screwed?

 

[Touch]

I had the green first (got it way back in Wrath) before I finished up the red one (Damn you Less-Rabi!)

Red one is better.

i have bought so many damn eggs its insane. the green one matches my get up for my rogue though!
damn damn damn