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[Bal]

I was just saying it didn't take very long using BRS as an example of something that did, not making a total comparison, but I think the main issue is that I just don't think your problem is a problem for anyone but you, and if you only have half an hour to play, maybe play something other than an MMO.

[Pacobird]

have you seen the forums

If I may repost something I posted there...

People arrange themselves in guilds because they find other people they like. Some of those people play a lot. Some do not.

Wrath afforded the people who could not play a lot bite-size heroics as a mechanism of keeping pace with their friends who could. Cata has removed that, and now the people who cannot play as much are being left in the dust very quickly.

This almost necessarily changes the dynamic of the relationship from "hey,let's do X together" to "hey, could you help me finish X". This shift is vastly more painful than any wipe, and WILL result in people quitting the game.


WoW is not successful because it is good at attracting new players to the game; it is successful because it is good at keeping old ones. The second it becomes a game where you have to primarily associate with people who play the same way you do rather than the people you actually decide you like is the second that success evaporates.

[Doom]

Content has a history of being nerfed to fit the player-base, within reason. Definitely enough so that 3,000 DPS the Death Knight will start his "Deathbringer's Will on reserve" ICC 6/12 raid every week.

Cataclysm has been out for almost ten days. That people are getting to the cap in 12 hours is unprecedented(if you can believe it, they made questing TOO GOOD hahaha.) I'd be more worried about the hardcore crowd losing interest. Maybe their patch cycles will come out faster and furiouser.

I can appreciate what P. Bird says about Heroic Length. Seven bosses could and should split into 3/4. Bite-sized heroics are a smart design decision: If I want more, I hit the random button again. And the dudes who want their hour a day get it.

But really. Ten days. Unless Blizzard wants to take an unusual stance change, everything will be tuned, poked and prodded. Knowledge will spread by word of mouth. People will acquire gear by sheer inertia. This seems to be the truly puzzling crux of every complaint leveled since 12/7: why aren't I in my comfortable Wrath bubble?

[Pacobird]

People were kicking tanks with an entirely appropriate 20k health in the universally-derided-as-too-easy Wrath heroics with nary a blink once LFD came out, and you think the solution is to just sit tight?

I'm sure having 135k health with properly enchanted rep and crafted blues will ensure a secure spot once T12 is out!

Also, on the flipside, I'm sure three months from now absolutely no one will have alts with bad-as-right-now gear they will have to bring through heroics as well, starting the cycle all over again!

[Doom]

I think that the adjustable parts of the machine(The Heroics) will be adjusted, yes.

I have no prophetic insight into the future of the people. Even if everything was released in a perfectly balanced state(not too easy, not too hard), well, people wipe to Krick and Ick's mechanics. People auto-attack while watching TV. People kick you before the trinket they want drops.

I do think that given the nature of the MMO beast, the 10 days point stands. Egg on my face at the first patch or not, a bit of time is needed. And this isn't to suggest you continue playing or wait for that or anything: when it's not fun, drop it.

[Doom]

You edited in a valid new point about "Catching Up", but that's what I'm suggesting will be addressed. When T12 hits, T11 will be(have been) nerfed and you'll get T11 drops for the Blue Professorland Funbucks instead of the Purple Raid Professorland Funbucks.

It's yet to be seen what Blizzard really wants here. They've seen the endless complaints about Wrath easiness and have overcompensated: at the end of the day, they'll keep the most players and address the problems.

Or they'll surprise everybody by saying "Learn to Play." That'd be a hoot. I'd consider it an unlikely outcome.

[Bal]

I'm not trying to be some kind of epic covered elitist with no regard for the filthy casual proletariat, but Wrath heroics were always easy, however they didn't take half an hour until the dungeon finder went in and everyone was in tier 9 or better, and I still propose that if you only have half an hour to forty-five minutes to play, MMOs are not the genre for you.

[Pacobird]

Nothing will change if people don't complain about the fun they are not having.

Potential solutions are pretty simple.  One, they could remove half the trash in all of these instances and leave everything else untouched.  The new bosses are great and, I think, appropriately difficult; that a wipe makes things longer is certainly inconvenient to me but is a totally fair conceit.  I quit because it took an hour and a half to finish an easy heroic in which I did not wipe.

Alternately (and this would take a bit more work but would be I think the more elegant solution), they could leave the dungeons as they are but implement the new raid-locking mechanics to heroics.  Kill a boss in a given random, get saved to it.  If you have to leave/get kicked, you can start a new run of that instance and start after the boss to which you were saved.  If/when you finally finish it, you get the VP as if it were your random.  Two 45-minute sessions in a day is INFINITELY easier than one hour-and-fifteen.

I'm not trying to be some kind of epic covered elitist with no regard for the filthy casual proletariat, but Wrath heroics were always easy, however they didn't take half an hour until the dungeon finder went in and everyone was in tier 9 or better, and I still propose that if you only have half an hour to forty-five minutes to play, MMOs are not the genre for you.

Every change WoW has ever implemented has been to avoid forcing people like me to make such an absurdly false choice as "progress in WoW vs. piss off the RL people who rely on you for things".

Every MMO to come after WoW has taken note of this.  FFXI is currently more casual-friendly than Cataclysm and that is fucked. up.

[Doom]

The MMO wants to be the genre for them. That is why you have five flight masters in every zone to ferry you back to an inn. Why your hearth cooldown was halved. Why second-year Wrath was so comfortable. Etc. The "get off work and play games for an hour or two before all my real life crap" market drives video games and their design. Any game worth it's salt these days better have a save point every 15-30 minutes, at least. Even Mario Galaxy hard-saves the game after every single star.

There's also no real benefit to a small heroic dungeon being an hour long as opposed to thirty minutes long, unless you want to quantify "epicness", such as with Black Rock Depths. If you want more, you hit the LFD button again.

[Mothra]

What Convinced Me to Quit Cataclysm:

I got into a Heroic Vortex Pinnacle as a tank.  A DPS warrior in the group looked at my gear, asked if I had a DPS set, and when I said I (sort of) do, he offered to take it.  He had 170k health unbuffed as a tank.  The game has been out for 8 days.

Good healer, decent group dps (all three dps + tank between 6 and 9k), no deaths the entire run.  We get to about two pulls before Assad and it has already been an hour and fifteen minutes regardless.  Kristine comes home with groceries and needs my help, I say I need to AFK a few minutes and help with it.  I come back 3 minutes later to find myself votekicked.  That I was votekicked strikes me as completely reasonable.


Halls of Origination has seven bosses.

P. Birdy as someone who only played WoW at launch up to 23 (then was lost to the barrens) is there any hypothetical you could liken this story to outside of the context of the game?

I wish to understand this new breed of absurdity

[Pacobird]

The last half hour of Parenthood is a pretty good metaphor, I think.

"hey, family is more important than anything else in your life, so you should feel guilty for even THINKING it is kind of shitty that some things in life refuse to be compromised just because you have one and your competition does not.

Get used to people taking advantage of your guilt over such divided loyalties."

[Rico]

See, the thing here is that 6-9k DPS is bad.  There is no judgement inherent in this—I'm 9k DPS on a good boss fight.  Ghaz, for instance, is 14k sustained in most circumstances.  That is two of the DPS you had in your long heroic run.  He has 0 raid gear.  Going from, say, 33k from 9x3+6 for the tank to 48 from 14x3+6 is a HUGE boost in and of itself, let alone perks like more consecutive pulls before drinktime wimps.

Drinktime, wimps, in my experience, being the single biggest factor in how fast a Cataclysm heroic actually goes.  Even with the same group DPS, the difference in speed between norn generally not needing any drinktime for trash and me having to drink every third pull or so was pretty marked.

The problem here is that the LFD gate is very easily cheesed.  If everyone were actually in 329 instead of 300-318 with offspec pieces in their bags this would be so much less of an issue.  Remember that tiers are ~13 ilevels, and, well, you are trying to do ICC semi-heroic with no baddy buff in Ulduar gear.

[Pacobird]

6-9k sustained tracked across all fights.  People probably spiked on boss fights, but I don't check that because as long as people aren't dying because the bosses are taking too long, I honestly don't care.

The healer in this particular case was a decent paladin, and I didn't particularly notice him stopping to drink very much.

I have yet to be in an instance where anyone tracked higher than 9k overall.  If, again, 20k health tanks in 3.3 were summarily kicked from those oh-so-easy Wrath heroics, I am not seeing a mechanism by which people will have the opportunity to catch up later on when faced with a mechanism so much more demanding.

At the heart of it is, I guess, the creamy nougat center of the "it's just a game" canard: if you are expecting underperforming people to improve by spending an hour or two a day suffering abuse at the hands of other players and being denied any sort of meaningful, tangible demarcation of progress, the question of whether or not to continue is pretty obvious.

[Bal]

By getting full 333 gear in normals.

[Pacobird]

all three of them?

one of which, again, has seven bosses?

all seven of which you would presumably want to kill if you actually need those 333s?


sign me up!


ps that 20k was from the wrath equivalent 333s, if not more

[Rico]

Rep dawg

(Specifically, questing through a zone gets you honored if not revered with its faction, giving you easy, completely single player access to 333 and 346 blues)

Once a patch hits, not only does lfd's ability to match undergeared people to raiders function, but there will also be more than a handful of 525 crafters.

Also you are referring to 3.3 instead of the more relevant 3.1, and even the two tanks I geared in 3.3 didn't really get anything beyond sub 4chan literacy meme trashtalk.

[Pacobird]

If dungeon finder were not in the game I'd gladly concede that.

[Norondor]

ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE TO SUGGEST THAT PACO HAS A POINT ABOUT CATA:

I have done... i don't know, around a dozen random queues since i hit 85? At all hours of the day and night, and in all the available non-heroic dungeons.

I have yet to do a full-clear of any of them; whether queuing as tank or healer, in VP, HoO, Stonecore, Grim Batol, or whatever, i am quite figuratively always replacing someone who left midway through.

[Norondor]

Admittedly, i kinda have a dog in this fight since, as i said to norn yesterday, as a paladin player, a scribe, and someone who seems to have poor luck with phasing bugs, i couldn't be enjoying Cataclysm less if it came to my house and beat me up.

[Rico]

To be fair, now is the worst time you will ever, ever have using dungeon finder in this expansion, as almost all decent players will be running guild groups for the first few weeks.