Originally Posted by
Toypop
I suspect that you, like Ghostcrawler and many posters on the official forums made the failed assumption that "players will improve and adapt if you make the content harder".
Hm. I think you must be thinking of someone else. You might be thinking of Lore or someone else who is warm and fuzzy. Ion perhaps? I'm not a big believer in the concept that, if you make it harder, the "lowest common denominator" shall rise. A fair example of this is my view on LFR/Normal/Heroic raids. LFR should be the "come see content" version and drop loot that is on par with heroics and not identical in appearance to raid drops. Normal should be the everyman "challenge" that will be a pretty rigorous test of 80% of the population. Heroics.... should be unabashedly difficult, unforgiving, and never be nerfed, no compromises.... a true "competitive mode" for the truly hardcore to test themselves against.
@ Mwaka
I'll agree with you on some of this. It's pretty retarded when you have the water dungeon which has a grand whopping 3... maybe 4 bosses..... and then you have HoO..... with what.... 7 bosses and 4 "mini" bosses. Grim Batol.... mixed feelings. I usually smoke the mobs with the drakes pretty well with my groups, though, I have seen some runs/pulls there that kinda suck. I actually like 3 of the 4 bosses there because, to me, they are almost like 5-man "raid" bosses in difficulty (or were anyway). That was part of why I liked the troll dungeons.
I agree with some points. If trash is going to be "meaningful".... difficult to take down..... then you need to scale the quantity down. If the trash will not require a ton of brainpower to tackle, then kick up the numbers (as far as amounts) some. Some trash pulls are honestly harder than some bosses. I'm "almost" ok with that. I don't like mindless heroics. Again.... I LIKE heroics that are kind of like "mini-raids" in difficulty. There are honestly times when I'd rather gouge out an eye than raid. Getting the group of 10 of us to just throw ourselves against chain bosses (Dragonsoul anyone?),,,,,, meh. The "trash adds" in DS are total fluff, for example. That whole raid is really just chain boss pulls, as opposed to Firelands where, say, with Shannox..... you actually cleared out your battlespace.
By the way, I have a love/hate relationship with Halls of Reflection. The gauntlet at the end is one of my favorite 'encounters' in that it's somewhat dynamic compared to a lot of other encounters...... but I have run with some HORRIBLE groups in there. My worst run was a 4 hour trip.... and that was because I was chewing my guildmates' butts telling them I'm not quitting until they unf**k themselves and do things right.
I like some of your ideas though (particularly a challenging 7-8 man boss run for a 5 man....... tasty!)
@ Toypop
You did miss my point. At the start.... Wrath heroics were NOT faceroll. They only became that way around t9/t10..... when the gear from those tiers, so readily available.... made those early heroics a bit of a joke. By that point, the only ones that WERE meaningful were the ICC ones. We found ourselves in the same boat in Cata.
Original Wrath Heroics = Original Cata Heroics
Ulduar Heroics = Cata Old-School Revamp Heroics
Tourney Heroic = Troll Heroics (kinda.... troll ones much better)
ICC Heroics = Dragonsoul Heroics
As each new set got released.... the older set became "jokes". The difference now being, you get more valor points for the DS heroics in comparison to the original Cata heroics...... and in Wrath.... you got the same amount of frost emblems for just running your daily heroic.... regardless of what it was.
As for your assessment of the LFG tool.... the problem you saw there was largely because it was the first time that we had the LFG tool employed at the start of an expansion. If you remember, LFG wasn't employed at the start of Wrath. There was no historic experience to go by. At Wrath's release.... you ran heroics with people you knew or you went and sat outside the dungeon and HOPED you could pug with a group going in. The experience with LFG was really once people had largely acquired gear in Wrath.
Blizzard simply went and tried to do what they did before..... gear starting expac heroic to the current gear..... and had the LFG in place from the get-go.... and voila!!!! .... You have a cluster because PLAYERS WERE STUCK IN A ROTFLSTOMP mindset.
People were arrogant/ignorant by and large and didn't think it would be a challenge, and thus.... were sadly and painfully mistaken.
So if the players don't adapt what do you do? Blizzard had a choice - adapt the content to the customers or lose the customers. They chose the former. Ah well QQ, I'd rather they fixed the DF tool to somehow filter out bad players so the content could be more challenging but I am realistic enough to know that won't happen as Blizzard want those bad players to pay them subs each month. Also QQ from Blizzard as they lost 2 millions subs each month due to something that many observers such as myself predicted.
They did eventually nerf the t11 heroics. Yes. But you want to know what the real adaptation was?...... BETTER GEAR. Once people started "out-gearing" those dungeons.... people started rolling them.
As for your idea of fixing the DF tool to "filter out bad players"..... how the heck do you propose to do that? Gear score?... Oh wait. They did that with trolls and STILL you had problem players land in there. And the way you talk about "these people".... hold on.... let me fetch it from your earlier post....
Crucial point: the people that run this content don’t have the same tolerance level, commitment level or free time levels for WoW as HC raiders. You must stop assuming that the majority have the same preferences and lifestyle choices as you. The majority don’t enjoy spending entire evenings dying without succeeding when they could have been playing another game or in a bar.
So..... let me get this straight. You want Blizzard to filter out the "bad players", that by your own admission.... maybe aren't as dedicated as you? Hypocrisy much? You're claiming that you "were a HC mode ICC raider", yet, you're having problems with running content that you say is aimed at people NOT of "your skill level"? You want to keep these people out of their content? You were just saying that you wanted stuff to "be more challenging," but you're on the other hand, crying foul that it was "broken"? Call me a little confused.
...... Here's a better idea. Filter out your own players. Queue up with a group of players you know and trust. You know.... that whole crazy "community" thing people whine and cry about? Which is worth more to you.... insta-queue to run in a dungeon.... or maybe waiting 30 minutes for your buddy to get on so you can run together? Wait and run the heroics with mostly members from your heroic mode guild, and maybe drag along one or two random scrubs from LFG. But then, don't complain about them, because you're obviously at a higher skill level than they are. Or better yet.... maybe take a few moments to try and TEACH some of these other players how to do things better.
Hell..... I know that I would hold off on queueing a lot of times and wait the extra 15-30 minute for a buddy to log on, rather than run a true random and spend an extra 30 minutes on wipes. And if someone really was that abyssmal, shit, I tried to either help them, or if they were "unhelp-able", we parted ways. If I was honestly the cause of the problem (which happened a few times), I'd kindly apologize, thank them for having me along as far as they did, and step out.
Again.... the healing model WASN'T broken. It worked. Yes, it was a bit difficult at the start because no one was really "well-geared" and the content was made to be a HEROIC DUNGEON aimed at players using gear in that tier content. Once people acquired better gear, a LOT of the problems dissipated. You still had to contend with the occasional DB that just did dumb stuff but, lo' and behold..... your gear was to the point where you could overlook some of that stupidity.
This happens EVERY TIME there is new content. It happened in Wrath in t7, t8, t9/10. It happened in Cata in t11, t12, and t13. Heck.... maybe some of the older crowd can tell you.... it probably happened with Mag Terrace and the rest of TBC. In any case.... things got better when players caught up.
Player A (G (Gear) + S (Skill)) + Player B (G+S) + Player C (G+S).... etc = C (Competence in Content)
As gear improves competence in content will generally improve.
As skill improves, competence in content will generally improve.
If one or both are low.... things are gonna suck. If one piece of the sum of the parts is low.... guess what? That group will "not be as competent".
Or, if you want to know my TL;DR view..... you can just look at my sig line.
No one tanks in a void.........
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks