Avec les tests de raid qui ont commencé sur la Bêta, les joueurs commencent à se faire une idée de ce à quoi ressemblera le PvE HL sur Mists of Pandaria. Draztal répond ici à leurs très nombreuses questions sur le désign des raids et sur le contenu de l'extension. Beaucoup de ses réponses n'apportent rien de neuf par rapport a ce qui a déjà été dit par le passé, mais certains points sont néanmoins intéressants.
Le texte étant particulièrement long, en voici un résumé pour les non anglophones :
- La difficulté des donjons héroïques et des raids de MoP sera du même niveau que celle du patch 4.3 de WoW (Âme des Dragons).
- La Recherche de Raid sera évidemment toujours présente à MoP.
- Il y aura toujours des nerfs des raids après un certain temps, la méthode sera la même que pour l'Âme du Dragon avec un buff de zone qui montera en puissance.
- Les modes défis offriront un autre type de difficulté : La course contre la montre.
- Pour l'équipe de développement la difficulté des raids n'est pas allé en diminuant à Cataclysm au contraire.
- L'objectif du nerf des instances après quelques mois est de permettre à la majorité des raiders d'explorer le contenu y compris héroïque.
- Les accès de raid et d'instance ne feront pas leur retour car ils bloquaient injustement la progression de joueurs n'ayant pas participé au contenu depuis le début.
Draztal sur Équipement en mode Défi (Traduction - Source)
Tell me. Compared to now, will the raid content be harder or easier?
The 4.3 heroic dungeons and Dragon Soul when the patch was released are a good measure to get an impression on how the content will look difficulty wise.
And over 3 years more than 75% of the EU playerbase have left the EU servers..
And 97% of the Internet knows that 99% of statistics are made up on the spot!
Is any chances to see Raids that would bring back people to raid them? And I simply put off LFR.
LFR is not going away, if that's what you're asking for, it's actually useful for players that can't be part of a raiding guild (or don't want, for whatever reason) to experience the content.
And new raid content will be appealing to raiders, surely. Will it be appealing to your friends/guildmates? Well, that's really up to them. There's a number of (personal) factors that no amount of raid content will change.
If the nerfs are "so that everyone gets to experience the instance", wasn't LFR for those purposes and normal mode?
Not really. Nerfing content doesn't help the same spectrum of players. Players that are struggling on, let's say, Heroic Hagara, will eventually give up if they can't progress further. The only question in that case is, how long before they stop? Might be a month, or six, but if they can't progress, they'll stop. That's the crowd that those nerfs are aimed at.
Moving forward, the dev team is thinking about using a similar system as the one currently in place for Dragon Soul. A single debuff on monsters for a raid tier that's been out for several months.
Take it as you like, I'm not attacking you, just strongly expressing my personal experiences versus my worries in the chosen path. I would like to enjoy the game I like. I really would, but you're making it hard for me. Currently the only thing keeping me here are the social bonds, but guess what, they feel the same and are leaving one by one too, effectively eliminating my need to log.
I'm not taking it as an attack, no worries. I understand you're trying to express yourself. Honestly, I'm unsure what's the message you're trying to give, though. You become bored of the content because it's not hard enough for you? (seeing that you've progressed nicely on Heroic DS). If that's the case, I can tell you that the devs are hard at work to roll patches faster than we've done in the past.
I also have the feeling (though I'm probably wrong) that some players are underestimating the true value of challenge modes (not necessarily your case). In those modes you're fighting against the clock, so that will always be challenging (you can always try to do it faster).
But the issue is not exactly the lack of content, but the increasingly lower difficulty of it.
Ever since WotLK raids get nerfed to the ground so that a very large part of the raiders, skilled or not so, can kill the what should be hardest boss of an expansion. wowprogress.com reports that as of today over 10% of all raid guilds have downed heroic Madness.
I'm pretty sure at least several hardcore guilds kinda agreed that Sinestra was as difficulty as HC LK, and Ragnaros was harder, so I wouldn't call that an "increasingly lower difficulty".
You mention 10% of all raid guilds have downed Heroic Madness. There's no reasonable argument to call that a "very large" number.
So the developers want the game really to become a "wait and you will breath on the heroic boss and he'll be dead" kind of game.
If that's how you want to play the game, sure. If it's not, but someone else wants to, how does it affect you? How exactly does what others do in this game impact you?
LFR should be, the place for the easy kills, and it is. Normal should be place for the top 90%+ of the community, and it is. Hardmode should be the place for the top 10%, which isn't anymore so and gets so less and less.
So, basically, you're saying that rather than providing an ongoing challenge that you can slowly overcome (or rapidly, depending on your skill), the devs should rather focus on preventing 90% of the players from seeing a difficulty mode. That's one of the best ways I can think of to frustrate a lot of people.
So in the end, making the game to easy, will achieve the oposite; less people will see the content, becuase there will simply be less people playing the game.
This is an argument I've seen thrown around plenty of times. Yet, Wrath of the Lich King, which seems to be considered by many hardcore players as the easiest expansion ever, had some of the highest participation rates in dungeons and raids we've ever seen. And, ironically enough, also had some of the hardest encounters to date (I remember the threads and headaches that some hardcore guilds were having at the time with Lich King and Putricide Heroic, as well as Yogg-Saron +0, Sarth 3D, just to name a few).
Then explain to me why LFR drops epics, when it is for players "to experience the content", specificly better than Firelands-epics as well as the first raids in MoP (yes, that has been datamined).
LFR was meant for players that can't participate in raiding guilds either because they don't have the chunks of time required for that, or don't enjoy (for whatever reason) being part of those guilds. Let's not mix that with "experiencing the content". Experiencing the content doesn't mean getting a tourist visit around the place.
I was happy when Blizzard announced LFR, because people finally could be able to experience the content without getting loot they clearly don't deserve. However, as it is now, they DO get loot they don't deserve.
If they can clear LFR they do. They're already getting lower ilvl gear compared to normal and Heroic.
You can also ask yourself how long the game will remain interesting when you can do everything with your eyes closed.
Feel free to go and show us how you and your guildmates kill Spine Heroic with your eyes closed, please
You wouldn't be able to. Even if the content is easy for you at a given point, it was challenging before, and it's just natural that it becomes even easier over time once you've mastered it. But there are players that are still progressing through Dragon Soul and, believe it or not, are actually being challenged by the content in its current form.
1. Why are you replacing content instead of adding content?
2. Why do you believe 3 difficulties of a same raid (a final one at that!) provide people with ample opportunities? I am a casual 6/8 heroic raider and, sorry, I srsly cba to enter DS again unless someone puts a gun to my head
in before: "Go heroic". For those ... oh .. two extra abilities in the same fight? sorry, that's not right.
in before: "but, but, but try Spine hc!" sorry, I would be ashamed to have spine heroic achieve when someone cares to check what date I did it and sees the resounding 25% nerf. I'd rather feel good about 5/8 hc at 0% debuff. and 6/8 hc at 5% debuff.
3. Why are you nerfing heroic content thereby stripping it of any and all sense of achievement?
4. how do you believe leaving people to dwell on the final fight with DW's fingernails for entire 6 months is right or even remotely fair?
1. No content is being replaced. Giving players a mean to gear up through alternate means to get up to speed is something we've been doing since the TBC days. If you want to go and finish Firelands, you can go and do it (and completing Glory of the Firelands Raider is no easy task, even if it doesn't require you to kill Heroic Ragnaros).
2. You mention you would be "ashamed" if someone sees you killed Spine Heroic at the 25% nerf. First, why do you care what some random person on the internet thinks about you? I'd rather put at the front my own enjoyment. And if, for one reason or another, I can't kill Spine before the 25% debuff, well, big deal (as long as I'm having fun).
3. I've explained that here.
4. Actually, the developers agree that Spine is harder than Madness in most aspects. In theory, the concept of the encounter was great, but in practice it's kind of just a tentacle fight. They're trying to deliver an awesome encounter with the Sha of Fear at the Terrace of Endless Spring.
As for the time itself, it's not different than how long other end-of-expansion bosses have been available for.
Again, dishing indirectly on disabled people isn't cool. And if you want to make such statements (yes, I'm annoyed) then feel free to first youtube/google and see there's actually quite a few doing this. And no, we're not special little snowflakes...
I'm not dishing on disabled people (that'd be quite inappropriate), and I believe you're reading too much into the piece you've quoted. If you've felt offended, my sincere apologies. At no point I've meant to be offensive to anyone.
Have some faith in the playerbase instead of just brushing us off as violent trolls who don't come here to make change.
I don't need to have faith in the playerbase because they've shown me time and time again that they can do amazing things. And if I had the feeling the people posting here are violent trolls I wouldn't bother posting. I can assure you that.
8 months is not how long content lasts. Content lasts approximately 5 months, i assure you. Noone wants to play in the same 8 boss nerfed raid instance for more than 5 months, And since you don't expect us to run through BWD or BOT anymore, the content lasts even less. Nobody goes BWD or BOT to gear up anymore. Barely anyone goes FL to gear up anymore. The way you are designing content to last is atrocious!
You may say that we are still having a challenge to defeat all the bosses in the DS on HC, Well newsflash for you blizzard, not every guild is interested in pushing every single heroic boss. Alot of players just want to experience the content on a normal difficulty.
But the fact is that there's content to be run if you've not killed Madness Heroic. If you're voluntarily stopping because of whatever reason, there isn't much I can do to help fight that feeling. As I've said, the dev team is hard at work trying to put out patches faster, but that doesn't fix current issues. It's a situation that's always happened at the end of expansions so far.
I know many of you want purple ribbons for 16th place, but that is not how it works. This game is about progression and epeen, not pet battles and LFR
It is for you, sure. You can't pretend it is the same for other players. There'll surely be players that will get immense fun of pet battles, and there are players out there enjoying the LFR system.
Why should players who just do LFR have better gear than those that cleared 7/7 normal Firelands
Why not? At some point you just need to move on. By that reasoning, we could go extreme and ask, well, why should players who just buy a new expansion have better gear than those that completed Thunderfury in Molten Core 7 years ago?
I'd like to ask, aren't normal modes (yes I'm leaving LFR out of this) supposed to be there to experience the content? Aren't they aimed at those raids who don't have the means to do heroics?
Does every raid that can down a few heroic bosses have to reach and kill Madness heroic?
Doesn't the content nerf itself slightly already due to the increasing average ilvl of a raid every week?
Why, in the first place, did you implement the nerfs that early if there hasn't been any content for months, and won't be until MoP?
if you'd like to achieve that as many raids as possible get to see the endgame content, why isn't there more incentive to do lower tiers? While outdated, they're still part of the endgame and harder than LFR, so shouldn't they be more rewarding than LFR and just farming VP/JP?
There's something about "experiencing the content" that doesn't feel right. The idea behind the different difficulties is not to let people that want a challenge to go straight to Heroic and have everyone else chilling in Normal (or LFR). The reason there's normal and Heroic is as simple as the fact the playerbase skills are hugely different between the most hardcore players and new fresh raiders. By having normal and Heroic you can progress through the raid tier until you get to that point where you actually start struggling. For you that might be Heroic Blackhorn, for another player, it might be normal Spine.
As for the other points, if players want to experience lower tiers, they can do at any point.
That then what should be the very hardest boss of the expasion, Heroic Madness, is killed by 10%+ of all guilds, is just to much. It should be 5%, or even less. Just like Naxx was back in Vanilla, and HC Lich King during WotLK. Don't forget, the whole deal with the end boss on hardmode is that beyond that you can not progress, and not being able to progress for many months makes the game a bore
So, 5% of the players (in your opinion) should be able to kill the last end boss on Heroic, yet, at the same time, you also say that not being able to progress for many months make the game boring. Do you realize that that's basically what would happen to that 95% of players when, eventually, get to the end boss?
HC LK was one of if not the hardest bosses out there. Only a few people downed him without the debuff. So basicly the whole dungeon was balanced around the fact that that debuff was there....
Not at all. And in fact, HC LK was defeated without the debuff not much longer after the initial kill. If memory serves me right, by Ensidia.
If I don't get any response (which is fine), I suppose this still can be used as some sort of feedback and reflection on my part on Cataclysm
There's too much too answer there (and some things I can't answer) but it's a very useful post, thanks for putting the time into writing it.
Yes, sadly this thread was turned in to a Q&A session and people were venting out their frustration on Draztal.
I'm more than happy to provide answers where I can. Some things can only be answered by the devs though, but we also take care of getting those questions their way so we can get the answers you asked for (even if at times they're not what you'd like to read).
The artificial 3 tiered approach to raiding was already made to let everyone have a go at their respective tier (and to cut production costs of having to cater for 3 different dungeons for the same purpose). Why blend it further and force the way of thinking in that many more should do HC? What is the reasoning behind this?
As I said before, people stop playing when they can't progress, with the exception of the truly hardcore and dedicated raiders, that will keep pushing until the brick wall has been destroyed. So, the best guilds out there will get first to the end and finish it, but a progressive debuff system also allows everyone a chance at getting through the content at the pace they can (putting a side example, if someone likes football, would that person enjoy it if he were allowed to play only at the same level of performance that Rooney, Ronaldo, Messi, etc do?, probably not, however he'd surely have plenty of fun playing with his local team, or just with his friends, this is kind of the same, not everyone can perform at the absolute maximum level).
Keep in mind that there're plenty of players that love raiding and start on normal hoping to eventually get to Heroic and keep progressing. Since we've already said that these players will stop playing when they get stuck, the developers don't feel it's right to tell them that they should just be happy to have made it that far and stay in the LFR, or normal just because they get to see the content.
We've got from world first guilds that can pull amazing strategies to players that don't have the time for more than LFR with everyone else in between them. That people needs something to keep them willing to progress.
This is also the case for me, I don't like it when my hard work gets nullified because some random gets the same rewards for doing nerfed content because he waited for a few months to get a higher debuff.
Someone else getting the same piece of gear you have hardly nullifies your work. It really makes as much sense as feeling offended because other players are getting to level 85 after you did, and with heirlooms, and with guildies helping that person reach level 85 (see where I'm going?).
The important question (at least in my opinion) should be, did you have fun working to get that piece of gear? If that's a yes, it'd expect then that the experience getting there was worth it .
The only thing we don't have is Pet battles ... and wow is boring as hell for last 4-5 months. You think Pet battles will bring that FUN you are talking about?
Scenarios and Challenge modes are brand new as well. And LFR will be available on every raid at the release of Mists of Pandaria. So it's not exactly the same scene we have currently.
No sorry, playing your class well can be easily outlined
- timings
- group awareness
- boss awareness
- using all your tools
- positioning
- maximising your roles...role!
Any other 'interpretation' is a lazy one, as missing any of those out is not playing your class well. You bring up PVP, this is where it shines the most, someone isn't aware of abilities? They stick at 1500, they learn or they stay they, they do not get boosted to the same level of gladiators simply because they pay a sub.
That's your perception. A PVP player doesn't care about either boss awareness or positioning (not in the same way a PVE player does, at least); and how well you execute your rotation is probably secondary to them as compared to being able to adapt quickly to what your opponent is doing.
How exactly are Dailies and multiple versions of the exact same Instance not repetitive?
If you do just one of those, sure, it'll get repetitive eventually. But if you consider every option, I'd argue there's much more room before you feel you're being repetitive in what you do in-game.
If blizzard brings back attunements for normal/heroic mode will be fun again i want attunement back again really was fun!
I doubt it was very fun for the players that were being told "no, sorry, you need to get these attunements to join our guild" and was being rejected when he said "but no one is running these right now because it's not current content anymore".
Was it fun when it was current content? For some. For some others it was just another unnecesary wall preventing them from getting to the content they really wanted to do (raiding).
