PST - Episode 87

[Lore]

This week:
0:37 - Would a sliding scale of difficulty work better?
4:53 - Should raiders be able to set the debuff at different points, instead of just active or inactive?
7:27 - With the 0% clear Feat of Strength, is there too much repeating the same content?
13:37 - Does the additional gear you earn over time invalidate a 0% kill after the debuff is available?
18:01 - Are raiders just going to wait for nerfs to hit now?
20:55 - Should PvP queues be separated out into different gear brackets?
26:53 - Should there be specific class-focused achievements?
30:24 - Should there have been another raid between Dragon Soul and MoP?

[Marco]

I don't think base PvP defense is so much about addressing the gear gap as it is about giving Blizzard better knobs to control the speed of PvP combat. Right now, players in full PvE gear kill each other very quickly and players in full PvP gear kill each other more slowly. In Mists, those speeds should be closer together, since the system is no longer relying on resilience to slow down PvP to the intended speed. Instead, PvP gear is mostly just about being better for PvP than PvE gear at the same ilvl (for both offense and defense).

(I say "mostly" because DPS goes up faster than stamina as gear ilvl increases, and they'll need something to compensate for that. So I'm guessing that PvP defense will be weighted heavier than PvP power. For the same reason, two players in T16 PvE gear will probably still kill each other pretty quickly, since base PvP defense will probably be aimed at fresh 90s.)

[Spotnick]

There would be a learning curve from 15 to 0 for sure, like we 2 tanked Madness which is impossible at 0% in 10 man unless you have a feral druid tank.

But this would be stuff to do instead of not raiding anymore.. and some pride factor "I could have done it if they didn't nerf it so fast"... ;-)

[Aggathon]

Okay, re: the 13:37 question: I think this guy worded this question very poorly, because for me it's not about whether paragon did it without the debuff, it's if I got it without the debuff before blizzard blanket nerfed everything. The problem becomes I can't raid 40 hours a week for the first 3 weeks like they do. So it takes me longer weeks wise, but not necessarily total hours in the instance. Now when I finally do kill those bosses, I will probably have a higher item level anyone from the first N bosses that we've HAD to re-farm (though I guess with instance extended lockouts not necessarily) and especially with how crazy well ilevel is going to scale... If we're still progressing and pushing to clear the content as fast as possible (be it for recruitment reasons or competition reasons, etc.) then we're still not going to turn the debuff off until we got the kill. Then if we DO go back and get the achievement, we could just farm the bosses until we outgear it and then the gear we got might even be BETTER than the 5% or 10% nerfs...

Killing the bosses at a 0% nerf but with better gear is technically LESS prestigious than killing a boss at 5% but with worse gear. But there's no achievement for the 5% buff, even if we were maybe 1 or 2 weeks off and blizz dropped the arbitrary blanket nerf bat on us.

This is why I feel like the achievement is simply vacuous nerd points unless you manage to do it pre-nerf, in which case you're just giving nerd points to the people who would have gotten it anyways. And sure it gives you something to do, okay fine so you farm up gear, decide to do it without the nerf 1 week and it's sorta hard again because it's like the 10% nerf instead of a 30% nerf... you finish it up in that week, MAYBE 2, then what do you do?

This is a patch, not a solution, imo. It feels like bad and more specific LAZY game design. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If we're stuck with it we're stuck with it, but I am just FIRMLY against blanket instance wide nerfs to heroic content.

Here's another thing: If there's a specific nerf to a boss, it honestly feels less like failure than a blanket zone-wide buff. The zone-wide buff feels like blizzard is playing to the least common denominator and we just got caught in the cross fire, targeted boss-specific nerfs feel more like "okay, so... apparently that WAS a really hard part that we got stuck on, now it will be less of a pain." Like... it feels good to know that you weren't just derping on something, that it really WAS hard, so hard it needed a specific nerf for more than just the few elite guilds to kill it. Targeted nerfs just FEEL like they hurt the ego less.

[shoesmccoat]

My guess as to why there will not be another raid to hold us over 'til Mists is: Annual Pass! With so many people locked into their contracts, Blizzard didn't need to put out another tier to hold us over. If there was not an AP, I'm sure WoW numbers would die off a bit as people are getting tired of Cata.

[tawnos]

It annoys the crap out of me but people definitely do wait on the debuff. Maybe not at a Months Behind level, but at a months behind months behind Months Behind level they do. In one of the guilds I run with we are making what I feel to be steady or even fast progress on Spine but because it entails actually wiping other people keep saying 'well we just need more gear' and 'next week the debuff goes to 30'. Its not like people ignore attempts on the fight entirely, but they just aren't willing to grind out 30,50,100 attempts on it when they have a convenient excuse like gear and a debuff. The 'switch it to normal' impulse is just that much stronger when there are future nerfs available.

I like the rogue quests too and am just annoyed that I kinda cheesed the first one in my rush to be able to start collecting the clusters (teamed up with a horde rogue on the last quest guy cause apparently multiple people can kill it even if they aren't in a group or even of the same faction). However, can you imagine the amount of work that went into those quests? Multiply that by 10 and it would just be impossible to put something like that out with any great frequency. Given the amount of design/coding that had to go into those quests I'm pretty sure you could have made 2 or even 3 more DS raid bosses and how much better would that have made DS for the other 9 classes?

[Aggathon]

Everquest had just as much raiding content and class epic quests that were significantly longer than either of the legendary chains. Don't tell me it can't be done because that's a lie and the EQ class epic quests were phenomenal

[Bovinity]

Everquest had just as much raiding content and class epic quests that were significantly longer than either of the legendary chains. Don't tell me it can't be done because that's a lie and the EQ class epic quests were phenomenal

Yeah...this goes back to the shoutbox topic the other day, but Blizzards' constant excuses as to why they can't put out more content or have more class quests or wider array of legendaries or whatever is just old and tiring.

It's especially bad in light of the profits they must be pulling in relative to a game like EverQuest, which still managed to put out content at a pretty good pace AND implement Epic Weapon or other class-specific content and quests for each of EQ's 14 (later 16) classes.

Hell, after Kunark - which was the first expansion to the game - added a new race, entirely new continent with a new city, a lot of dungeons, several raids or raid bosses, leveling content from 1-60, epic quests for each individual class, and whatever content I'm forgetting...it was only about 8.5 months to the next expansion that added even more.

So yeah, Blizzard, stop feeding us this crap about how there's too much development time involved and blah blah. The amount of cash you must make off this game is insane, how about some respect toward the players.

[Ion]

Okay, re: the 13:37 question: I think this guy worded this question very poorly, because for me it's not about whether paragon did it without the debuff, it's if I got it without the debuff before blizzard blanket nerfed everything. The problem becomes I can't raid 40 hours a week for the first 3 weeks like they do. So it takes me longer weeks wise, but not necessarily total hours in the instance. Now when I finally do kill those bosses, I will probably have a higher item level anyone from the first N bosses that we've HAD to re-farm (though I guess with instance extended lockouts not necessarily) and especially with how crazy well ilevel is going to scale... If we're still progressing and pushing to clear the content as fast as possible (be it for recruitment reasons or competition reasons, etc.) then we're still not going to turn the debuff off until we got the kill. Then if we DO go back and get the achievement, we could just farm the bosses until we outgear it and then the gear we got might even be BETTER than the 5% or 10% nerfs...

Killing the bosses at a 0% nerf but with better gear is technically LESS prestigious than killing a boss at 5% but with worse gear. But there's no achievement for the 5% buff, even if we were maybe 1 or 2 weeks off and blizz dropped the arbitrary blanket nerf bat on us.

This is why I feel like the achievement is simply vacuous nerd points unless you manage to do it pre-nerf, in which case you're just giving nerd points to the people who would have gotten it anyways. And sure it gives you something to do, okay fine so you farm up gear, decide to do it without the nerf 1 week and it's sorta hard again because it's like the 10% nerf instead of a 30% nerf... you finish it up in that week, MAYBE 2, then what do you do?

This is a patch, not a solution, imo. It feels like bad and more specific LAZY game design. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If we're stuck with it we're stuck with it, but I am just FIRMLY against blanket instance wide nerfs to heroic content.

Here's another thing: If there's a specific nerf to a boss, it honestly feels less like failure than a blanket zone-wide buff. The zone-wide buff feels like blizzard is playing to the least common denominator and we just got caught in the cross fire, targeted boss-specific nerfs feel more like "okay, so... apparently that WAS a really hard part that we got stuck on, now it will be less of a pain." Like... it feels good to know that you weren't just derping on something, that it really WAS hard, so hard it needed a specific nerf for more than just the few elite guilds to kill it. Targeted nerfs just FEEL like they hurt the ego less.

Just wanted to quote this for truth.

Then if we DO go back and get the achievement, we could just farm the bosses until we outgear it and then the gear we got might even be BETTER than the 5% or 10% nerfs...

This is why I feel like the achievement is simply vacuous nerd points unless you manage to do it pre-nerf, in which case you're just giving nerd points to the people who would have gotten it anyways. And sure it gives you something to do, okay fine so you farm up gear, decide to do it without the nerf 1 week and it's sorta hard again because it's like the 10% nerf instead of a 30% nerf... you finish it up in that week, MAYBE 2, then what do you do?

This is a patch, not a solution, imo. It feels like bad and more specific LAZY game design. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If we're stuck with it we're stuck with it, but I am just FIRMLY against blanket instance wide nerfs to heroic content.

Just wanted to quote that TWICE for emphasis on all the truth.

[Tengenstein]

I assume that the reasons for blizzard being slow on content comes down to two things: Bureaucratic bullshitgetting in the way, and because they don't have to.

[Mad_Murdock]

My guess as to why there will not be another raid to hold us over 'til Mists is: Annual Pass! With so many people locked into their contracts, Blizzard didn't need to put out another tier to hold us over. If there was not an AP, I'm sure WoW numbers would die off a bit as people are getting tired of Cata.

There was no AP at the end of wrath and numbers didn't die off, if fact you can probably find a Blue post that said there was a small bump, around 100K near the end of Wrath.

From the numbers given, 1 million people signed up for the AP. So that means blizzard doesn't care about the other 9 million ? I see everyone claiming the AP is the reason for everything. But the AP is only 1/10 of the subscriptions, so I'm not sure how it's viewed has Blizzard's crutch for doing nothing.

I believe it is just a simple case that Blizzard thought they could do it faster and then they ran into more problems then they expected. It happens in all companies.

[ChairmanHez]

From the numbers given, 1 million people signed up for the AP. So that means blizzard doesn't care about the other 9 million ? I see everyone claiming the AP is the reason for everything. But the AP is only 1/10 of the subscriptions, so I'm not sure how it's viewed has Blizzard's crutch for doing nothing.

I agree with your take on the Annual Pass' effects (or lack thereof) on the "lateness" of MoP, but being someone that works with numbers everyday, I feel its important that only proper numbers get quoted, to avoid perpetuating inaccuracies.

As far as I know, Blizzard has stated that about 1.2 million people signed up for the AP. However, a significant number of WoW players are in the Asian market (specifically China). I know that WoW players in China do not subscribe, I'm not sure about the rest of the Asian countries. Therefore, the percentage of WoW-subscribers that opted into the annual pass is higher, potentially much higher, than the ~10% that you often see quoted on the forums. We have no way of knowing exactly because Blizzard hasn't given the public an official breakdown of subscribers by region in years. When the numbers were last stated, roughly 50% of the playerbase was classified as "WoW-East" and the other half "WoW-West." Making assumptions now: If only half of the playerbase is even eligible for the AP, then the share of subscribers opting in is closer to 25%.

Anyway, just thought I'd share that tidbit. Again, I agree with your point that it's more likely a case that Blizzard bit off more than they can chew as far as the release date is concerned. Personally, I have long since given up believing anything they say about "accelerated production" or "faster content patch releases." Until significant competition arrives to push them to speed it up, they won't feel a need to, and anything they say about that is simply rhetoric.

[Tipton]

30.24. Yup, totally agree.

ICC went on for a bit, but it was not only was a more substantial raid but was also gated, effectively it was out for 10 months after the gating finished. DragonSoul will probably exceed or equal this timescale.

[doom1992]

I am just wondering, does Lore have the first few lines of PST scripted? He says the same exact words everytime lol

[Valaras]

Lol @ the people who think that for example clearing DS at 0% now when they are all fully BiS is even remotely close to progressing with half your raiding team still on Firelands heroic gear.

That extra achie will mean NOTHING. The only important criterion that will always be the initial achievement date.

[Leucifer]

Okay, re: the 13:37 question: I think this guy worded this question very poorly, because for me it's not about whether paragon did it without the debuff, it's if I got it without the debuff before blizzard blanket nerfed everything. The problem becomes I can't raid 40 hours a week for the first 3 weeks like they do. So it takes me longer weeks wise, but not necessarily total hours in the instance. Now when I finally do kill those bosses, I will probably have a higher item level anyone from the first N bosses that we've HAD to re-farm (though I guess with instance extended lockouts not necessarily) and especially with how crazy well ilevel is going to scale... If we're still progressing and pushing to clear the content as fast as possible (be it for recruitment reasons or competition reasons, etc.) then we're still not going to turn the debuff off until we got the kill. Then if we DO go back and get the achievement, we could just farm the bosses until we outgear it and then the gear we got might even be BETTER than the 5% or 10% nerfs...

Killing the bosses at a 0% nerf but with better gear is technically LESS prestigious than killing a boss at 5% but with worse gear. But there's no achievement for the 5% buff, even if we were maybe 1 or 2 weeks off and blizz dropped the arbitrary blanket nerf bat on us.

This is why I feel like the achievement is simply vacuous nerd points unless you manage to do it pre-nerf, in which case you're just giving nerd points to the people who would have gotten it anyways. And sure it gives you something to do, okay fine so you farm up gear, decide to do it without the nerf 1 week and it's sorta hard again because it's like the 10% nerf instead of a 30% nerf... you finish it up in that week, MAYBE 2, then what do you do?

This is a patch, not a solution, imo. It feels like bad and more specific LAZY game design. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If we're stuck with it we're stuck with it, but I am just FIRMLY against blanket instance wide nerfs to heroic content.

Here's another thing: If there's a specific nerf to a boss, it honestly feels less like failure than a blanket zone-wide buff. The zone-wide buff feels like blizzard is playing to the least common denominator and we just got caught in the cross fire, targeted boss-specific nerfs feel more like "okay, so... apparently that WAS a really hard part that we got stuck on, now it will be less of a pain." Like... it feels good to know that you weren't just derping on something, that it really WAS hard, so hard it needed a specific nerf for more than just the few elite guilds to kill it. Targeted nerfs just FEEL like they hurt the ego less.

All of this. With the bold stuff especially important. In the end..... all of it is ego. But, we as people HAVE ego. It's not going to go away.

Blanket nerfs just kind of suck. Sorry, but they really are just a "Lower-the-BarCraft" type of move. They are a bone tossed to the community at-large to stroke the ego. I really don't care...... going 8/8H 6 months ago was a feat compared to 8/8H presently. There's nothing you can do to convince me they are the same..... but to many players.... getting to that point means something to them, even if it really doesn't equate to what it was 6 months ago. The sad truth is there are players who will flaunt their July 2012 Heroic Dragon Soul kills to others despite the massive change in difficulty.

COMPLETELY AGREE with specific nerfs. There are just sometimes that boss mechanics "don't work" for the population. A great example was Heroic Spine. For quite a while.... it just flat out SUCKED. Same with with Heroic Ragnaros. Until he was specifically nerfed..... it had to be giving guilds fits (it still did even after the first set of nerfs).

Again... I never really have an issue with Blizzard "correcting" specific encounters. That is how I really look at it. It's not specifically a "nerf" as it is more fixing the encounter to make it play better. Blanket nerfs though.... specifically with heroic content.... cheapen the achievement.

As for this....... "30:24 - Should there have been another raid between Dragon Soul and MoP?"

Um. It's a bit late now, eh? Frankly.... no. There shouldn't be. WoW doesn't need another Ruby Sanctum. Here's a better idea.... focus on making MoP better. Spend the time and energy making MoP truly kick-ass. At the rate things are going.... you're going to need it to be.

[Ion]

Um. It's a bit late now, eh? Frankly.... no. There shouldn't be. WoW doesn't need another Ruby Sanctum. Here's a better idea.... focus on making MoP better. Spend the time and energy making MoP truly kick-ass. At the rate things are going.... you're going to need it to be.

If there was any indication that "time spent" equalled "making [anything] better", I'd agree.

But clearly that's not the case lately. They spent more time getting out less, worse content in Cataclysm than they ever have in the past.

There were 44 bosses in TBC...38 of which were out within 6 months of launch.

There were 49 bosses in WotLK...it took them 14 months to put them all out (though, 15 of them were rehashed toned down versions of previously existing encounters).

There were TWENTY EIGHT bosses in Cataclysm and it took them almost 14 months to put THOSE out. And the last 8 SUCKED (well, blackhorn was an ok encounter).

Clearly time spent is NOT an indicator of polish now, if it ever was.

[Leucifer]

If there was any indication that "time spent" equalled "making [anything] better", I'd agree.

But clearly that's not the case lately. They spent more time getting out less, worse content in Cataclysm than they ever have in the past.

There were 44 bosses in TBC...38 of which were out within 6 months of launch.

There were 49 bosses in WotLK...it took them 14 months to put them all out (though, 15 of them were rehashed toned down versions of previously existing encounters).

There were TWENTY EIGHT bosses in Cataclysm and it took them almost 14 months to put THOSE out. And the last 8 SUCKED (well, blackhorn was an ok encounter).

Clearly time spent is NOT an indicator of polish now, if it ever was.

Agree. History is not in their favor at the moment. Which is why I said, "At the rate things are going.... you're going to need it to be"
Cata.... to me.... came across as the "lazy way" to do an expansion. As it stands right now.... MoP really needs to come out and shine.

Edit: And as it stands at the moment.... MoP? New continent/zones with whole new "style".... excellent. Some of the models though are re-skins of current models. That's not so good. Talent trees are being "simplified".... which could work out well if they actually make those talents meaningful. SOME.... look great (some of the DK ones)... while others, make me feel like a class is getting ripped-off (rogue talents are looking lame at the moment). Raids. dungeons, and bosses..... at the moment don't look promising.

[Mwawka]

I haven't really been paying attention to beta news lately... has Blizz actually announced a FoS for clearing MoP raids without a debuff? I was under the impression that this was a hypothetical thing.

[Aggathon]

Pretty sure I saw a most on MMO-C where they had data mined those feats of strength.

Makes me angry enough to consider not getting MoP again...