EPT[wow] Mists of pandaria - Page 31
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The NA-based TL WoW guild has been set: it is being formed on Cenarius as alliance. Talk to farvacola if you want more info! Add yourself to the player list! Use this thread http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=434775 for Warlord of Draenor discussion please! | ||
Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
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Maynarde
Australia1286 Posts
 Don't get me wrong, WoW is a brilliant game but 6+ years of it and I really couldn't play much more in Cata. Even with all the zone changes everything felt the same, don't think I'll be gettin this expo. | ||
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Teence
Canada157 Posts
On August 07 2012 23:58 Whitewing wrote: Hardly anything in this game is hard anymore, probably why I quit. Ever since I raided M'uru back at 70, very few fights, even on hardmode, seem all that interesting in terms of how hard they are. After BC, Ulduar hard modes were the best bosses they had, plus lich king, sinestra, and a couple of others. The game just got way easier. This is the crux of my sentiment as well. Many arguments that claim the game is still hard point to certain bosses (Heroic Ragnaros, Heroic LK) being the most difficult bosses ever implemented in the game, and therefore, proclaim the game itself is still challenging. To me, the problem is that outside of Heroic raids there is literally almost zero challenge available unless it is self-imposed through frankly silly mechanics. There are few available options for even moderately-experienced players to experience challenge now. We aren't able to accept quests that would have been previously classified as orange and red. Player damage from 1-80 is grossly overinflated compared to mob HP. Leveling dungeons are, in fact, soloable by more than a few specs and classes. It's as if the devs have doubled back on their previous game design philosophy. I'll use questing as an example to illustrate this point. Previously, if newer players found quests of their level range too challenging, they had the option of reducing difficulty by doing green-level quests instead. These would give less experience than standard yellow-level quests, but they allowed a path of advancement for newer or less experienced players. Now, Blizzard appears to have lowered the bar on difficulty significantly, however now experienced players have no way of ramping up their level of challenge except through artificial means. We can't accept higher-level quests in higher-level areas. Whereas previously the level of challenge outside of raiding was set at a particular level and could be lowered if needed, the difficulty in current content is already set so low with no means of increasing it. I know this point can be debated, but it's as if the present state of content from 1-60 is tuned around a demographic that has, quite simply, never played a video game before. I have no problems with giving these players an introduction to gaming, but to continue to do so for such a huge length of content is, for lack of a better term, insulting. | ||
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Judicator
United States7270 Posts
On August 08 2012 01:09 Teence wrote: This is the crux of my sentiment as well. Many arguments that claim the game is still hard point to certain bosses (Heroic Ragnaros, Heroic LK) being the most difficult bosses ever implemented in the game, and therefore, proclaim the game itself is still challenging. To me, the problem is that outside of Heroic raids there is literally almost zero challenge available unless it is self-imposed through frankly silly mechanics. There are few available options for even moderately-experienced players to experience challenge now. We aren't able to accept quests that would have been previously classified as orange and red. Player damage from 1-80 is grossly overinflated compared to mob HP. Leveling dungeons are, in fact, soloable by more than a few specs and classes. It's as if the devs have doubled back on their previous game design philosophy. I'll use questing as an example to illustrate this point. Previously, if newer players found quests of their level range too challenging, they had the option of reducing difficulty by doing green-level quests instead. These would give less experience than standard yellow-level quests, but they allowed a path of advancement for newer or less experienced players. Now, Blizzard appears to have lowered the bar on difficulty significantly, however now experienced players have no way of ramping up their level of challenge except through artificial means. We can't accept higher-level quests in higher-level areas. Whereas previously the level of challenge outside of raiding was set at a particular level and could be lowered if needed, the difficulty in current content is already set so low with no means of increasing it. I know this point can be debated, but it's as if the present state of content from 1-60 is tuned around a demographic that has, quite simply, never played a video game before. I have no problems with giving these players an introduction to gaming, but to continue to do so for such a huge length of content is, for lack of a better term, insulting. Well, that's more of a WoW specific "flaw" since the game has historically been end-game based. I think the better term is troubling rather than insulting since you learned basics from the 1-60 content especially in the longer dungeons as a player. The bigger issue I had when I went back for Cataclysm is the easier gearing IN ADDITION to the easier 1-60 content. There was never anything wrong with easier leveling but to do it on both fronts create a dumpster player base where standing in the fire is fun. | ||
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Mephyss
Brazil128 Posts
I ve read some articles of old players saying during vanilla their raids had 10 awesome players, some good and some really bad players and they still killed bosses. Nowadays given the complexity of fights you cant afford bad players if you want to kill stuff fast and its much easier to find good players around since the raiding playerbase is just much bigger now and most of raiding guys have alts which makes easier on compositions | ||
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Andre
Slovenia3515 Posts
On August 08 2012 01:49 Mephyss wrote: I dont think game got easier. I think players got better I ve read some articles of old players saying during vanilla their raids had 10 awesome players, some good and some really bad players and they still killed bosses. Nowadays given the complexity of fights you cant afford bad players if you want to kill stuff fast and its much easier to find good players around since the raiding playerbase is just much bigger now and most of raiding guys have alts which makes easier on compositions This is kinda true. Most people are blinded by nostalgia, I loved vanilla/tbc as plenty of people but it had it's shortcomings as well. If you compare the old raids to the ones in wotlk/cata you see that most of the old stuff is quite simple(not easier!). I really liked how wotlk/cata tried to implement new mechanics in boss fights. In regards to talents and viability of builds I think end of WOTLK and Cata were good. What most people dislike is how gearing and farming got easier(less time consuming). It was a lot more work in vanilla to get ready for raids and even the attunements in TBC were quite time-straining. There's not much of this in cata/wotlk. What's the worst thing IMO are the flying mounts, there was way less pvp even starting in TBC..and not much incentive to do world PVP as well. Getting rid of world bosses hurt world pvp too. I hope MoP brings back good old pvp, more time consuming grinding(srsly spending 2-3 weeks and you're ready for wotlk/cata is a bit silly) and the new mechanics of cata. | ||
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Teence
Canada157 Posts
On August 08 2012 02:03 Andr3 wrote: This is kinda true. Most people are blinded by nostalgia, I loved vanilla/tbc as plenty of people but it had it's shortcomings as well. If you compare the old raids to the ones in wotlk/cata you see that most of the old stuff is quite simple(not easier!). I really liked how wotlk/cata tried to implement new mechanics in boss fights. You have to be careful when you use this argument because you're looking at Vanilla/TBC raids from a Cataclysm perspective, so yes, the encounters have definitely gotten more complex. The issue is that, at the time, fights like Razorgore, Vael, and the Twin Emperors were considered challenging because of general inexperience both for players and for the raid design team. Yes, boss fights now have more mechanics, but I believe the general perception is that boss fights still haven't innovated to counteract the vast wealth of knowledge that the average raider now has access to. In Vanilla and to a lesser extent TBC, encounters were difficult because of certain limitations on player mechanics and lack of experience. Relatively speaking, encounters in Cataclysm have gained more mechanics, but in my opinion have not sufficiently compensated for increased familiarity with the game. I believe this is why so many claim that raiding has gotten "easier" since mid-WotLK. Vanilla and TBC may have been challenging for a few of the wrong reasons, yet the perception that they were challenging in their own particular timeline is still a factor. Whether or not Blizzard can develop mechanics that mirror the depth to which raiders have access to information is another discussion entirely. | ||
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Pibacc
Canada545 Posts
On August 08 2012 02:34 Teence wrote: You have to be careful when you use this argument because you're looking at Vanilla/TBC raids from a Cataclysm perspective, so yes, the encounters have definitely gotten more complex. The issue is that, at the time, fights like Razorgore, Vael, and the Twin Emperors were considered challenging because of general inexperience both for players and for the raid design team. Yes, boss fights now have more mechanics, but I believe the general perception is that boss fights still haven't innovated to counteract the vast wealth of knowledge that the average raider now has access to. In Vanilla and to a lesser extent TBC, encounters were difficult because of certain limitations on player mechanics and lack of experience. Relatively speaking, encounters in Cataclysm have gained more mechanics, but in my opinion have not sufficiently compensated for increased familiarity with the game. I believe this is why so many claim that raiding has gotten "easier" since mid-WotLK. Vanilla and TBC may have been challenging for a few of the wrong reasons, yet the perception that they were challenging in their own particular timeline is still a factor. Whether or not Blizzard can develop mechanics that mirror the depth to which raiders have access to information is another discussion entirely. The funniest thing is the only people i see complaining that the game is too easy are the ones who haven't finished a tier on Heroic. | ||
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Had88
2 Posts
I dont think game got easier. I think players got better Bullshit! All the good players quit at least after Ulduar. Since Blizzard made "Hardmode" into "+HP/+DMG-Mode" the Raids are a Joke. Ulduar was the last good Raid in WoW, since then the Game is just dead for competetive Players. I can't believe that there are Players on Teamliquid who still play this terrible Casualgame. WoW is in the same league as "The Sims" or "Hello Kitty Online", especially with the Pokemon&Panda Expansion released. | ||
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hzflank
United Kingdom2991 Posts
On August 08 2012 01:49 Mephyss wrote: I dont think game got easier. I think players got better I ve read some articles of old players saying during vanilla their raids had 10 awesome players, some good and some really bad players and they still killed bosses. Nowadays given the complexity of fights you cant afford bad players if you want to kill stuff fast and its much easier to find good players around since the raiding playerbase is just much bigger now and most of raiding guys have alts which makes easier on compositions I disagree: my guild had at least 12 good players  Vanilla was more about knowledge than execution. Simple example: my guild killed Onyxia late. We had problems with threat so we told damage dealers to reduce their dps output. As soon as we learnt that Onyxia's knockback was a 10% threat reduction then we understood how to fix our error and killed it that day. nowdays you do not need to understand the game mechanics as addons can do it all for you. I considered myself to be a very good healer in early vanilla because I figured out downranking and the 5 second rule long before it was public knowledge. Basically: the skill in vanilla was the preparation and not the actual fight. Vanilla was also about strategy. There were no onlne guides and DBM was very basic. Every guild had there own strategies and sometimes they could be extremely different. But you are correct that in terms of output (dps) vanilla was extremely forgiving. There were also less one-shot mechanics, but positioning was sometimes punished in other ways. The problem was that since the dps tuning was so easy you could make mistakes, lose 5 people, and still win. I always thought that Molten Core was designed for 30 players. When wow launched you could take 40 into any dungeon (even a 5 man) so people assumed you should take a maximum of 30 to MC, but it never felt like it was tuned for a full 40 man. Same with Azuregos and kazzak (outdoor bosses). ---- Anyway I have already stated my opinion. I would like enough content to keep people busy. I do not care how difficult it is I just do not want to be waiting for new content with all current content on farm. | ||
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TanKLoveR
Venezuela838 Posts
There is nothing wrong with making raiding easier for most players, the way it was before very few people got to see Sunwell or other raids that deserved to be seen by the more casual population. The fact that more casual players get to see the previously "hardcore" raiding content does not take away from you doing it and accomplishing things in there, I've come to peace with this idea and all you have to do is do Heroic mode. If you want to do the harder content then do HM, they were plenty difficult in LK and in Cata, HM Anub 25m was a HARD boss very few people on my server downed him, same goes for HM's in Ulduar and ICC specially LK and PP. I'll admit if you cant do HM's and you want a challenge then you wont get it from raiding, everything but HM's is pretty simple and relatively easy to complete. But if you haven't done HM's and got every achievement then i dont see how you can claim the content is too easy, I stopped playing because the pvp wasnt fun for me any more and wpvp was pretty much gone so i had nothing to do when we werent raiding that night. With the changes to pvp I plan on giving it another try and the first tier of every new expansion is usually decently difficult because most players are under geared so pve should be ok until i get to do HM's. If you want a challenge join a 25m guild and do HM's that is the only way you'll get it I think, the rest of the content is casual and I can see how thats a turn off but you can't really blame blizzard for wanting the whole player base to actually see the raids instead of only the top 10%. | ||
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On August 08 2012 02:50 Pibacc wrote: The funniest thing is the only people i see complaining that the game is too easy are the ones who haven't finished a tier on Heroic. I quit shortly after we downed Sinestra, before firelands came out, so I can't comment on any of the later content, but I assure you, the game most certainly did get easier and easier in almost all respects since BC ended. And anyone who thinks any of the WotLK or Cata bosses are tougher than Sunwell pre-nerfs is out of their mind, particularly M'uru. You could go in there with a fully t6 geared out, mostly bis group of excellent raiders and wipe repeatedly due to just how tight everything was. If you weren't fully on top of your game, with every raid member executing everything near perfectly, you lost. The DPS requirements were ridiculous, and you had to fully stack your raid out to maximize buffs and damage output. | ||
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Gescom
Canada3309 Posts
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Bleak
Turkey3059 Posts
They make less raids, and to make it even worse, they have a bazillion difficulty mods. Where is the fun in raiding the same place for 6 months? I remember my guild in Vanilla used to farm MC for some of our players who needed to be geared for BWL, but by doing that we were setting ourselves ready for the next content, a chance to see a different place, fight different bosses. In normal/heroic mode bullshit, almost everything is same, aside from they have more health, hit harder, and have a few different abilities. You wanna make hardmodes Blizzard? Then go back to fucking Ulduar and see how much of a fucking amazing job you've done there. Every fight in Hardmode had some interesting mechanic which you had to interact with WHILE fighting the boss, like pushing the Mimiron's red button or leaving the Keepers alive so Yogg-Saron fight changed. THAT is hard mode, not what is currently in the game, which is selecting "Heroic" from a fucking drop down menu before entering the raid. Ulduar harmodes were exciting, challenging, and interesting, which provided the better players to differentiate themselves from other players, by seeing a new, different fight in the form of difficulty and mechanics. Not to mention Algalon, which was available only to those who had the skill and dedication. Right now, it is one raid per tier, with 4 difficulty mods, and for 6 fucking months. That is so damn boring. That is atrocious, unacceptable, that is just terrible design choice from Blizzard. They give you the illusion of choice, saying that there are FOUR difficulty mods, while omitting out the fact that they are all in the same damn raid, with no chance to do anything else besides that. You don't even have to farm previous raids, hit 85, go heroics for a week, skip to last tier. Absolutely ridiculous. World of Warcraft, at least in terms of PvE has been dying ever since WOTLK's beginning, was returned back to life with Ulduar, but put on life support with the Trial of the Crusader. Cataclysm was the final blow, and not only it's dead, but it's rotting. | ||
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On August 08 2012 04:17 Gescom wrote: ^ The same is true of many of the WotLK hard modes. 0 Lights Yogg, Algalon, Lich King, etc, were insanely hard. Never did any serious raiding in Cata, so can't comment. No they weren't, 0 lights Yogg didn't require anywhere near the level of execution from most of your raid members, you simply had to stack affliction warlocks. Sure, you had to be good and know what you were doing, but it wasn't nearly as hard as M'uru. Algalon was a cinch to be quite frank, compared to some of the other fights. Lich King wasn't nearly as tightly tuned, it was almost entirely a question of handling of the defiles (I think it was defiles, the spreading goop on the ground? it's been a while). If you handled them well and got into position for valk's in time, it really wasn't that bad. | ||
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andrewlt
United States7702 Posts
I disagree with saying M'uru was harder than everything else. Out of all the fights listed, he was the only one my guild actually beat a few weeks before 3.0 came out. We didn't even get to Yogg when Ulduar was endgame. I don't remember even getting a clean Valk phase on Arthas and that's with the 30% buff. We gave up after months of having no progress on that phase. We had more weaker players during the Sunwell era compared to WotLK as well. In fact, I'd say the strongest raid group my guild ever had was when we switched to 10-man before we disbanded. We cleared DS as our last hurrah, after missing out on the last kill on almost every instance after Illidan. | ||
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snarl
Canada812 Posts
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On August 08 2012 05:30 andrewlt wrote: I raided 20+ hours a week back in vanilla and it slowly went down to less than 9 before my guild decided to call it quits after beating DS heroic. We were still somewhat hardcore, though a lot more casual than we were, but we welcomed the stacking buff to make things easier on us eventually. In the end, we didn't want to bang our heads hundreds of times against the same encounter any more like we used to. The game's been out close to 8 years now and life's too short to waste too much time on very tightly tuned brick wall encounters. Cutting raiding hours helped the game retain some fun instead of feeling like a complete chore. I disagree with saying M'uru was harder than everything else. Out of all the fights listed, he was the only one my guild actually beat a few weeks before 3.0 came out. We didn't even get to Yogg when Ulduar was endgame. I don't remember even getting a clean Valk phase on Arthas and that's with the 30% buff. We gave up after months of having no progress on that phase. We had more weaker players during the Sunwell era compared to WotLK as well. In fact, I'd say the strongest raid group my guild ever had was when we switched to 10-man before we disbanded. We cleared DS as our last hurrah, after missing out on the last kill on almost every instance after Illidan. I said M'uru pre-nerf. He got a 10% nerf to pretty much everything after a while (we killed him before that), and then got the same 30% hp nerf every boss got. The 10% nerf made him much easier. Getting clean Valk phases on Lich king was entirely about having a competent raid group who knew their positioning and could pay attention, but had very little to do with being able to do that while also being able to put out absurd damage. If your positioning was good and you had maximum dps uptime on the valkyries, you could actually slack a bit on DPS and down them on heroic. I'm not sure how you didn't get to Yogg unless your guild wasn't very good, we cleared Ulduar normal modes the first week it was out and had most of the heroics down within the first month. Mimiron heroic was the best fight in there, and easily the toughest. Vezax was just a dps check and a "are your healers retarded, yes/no?" Freya was easy, Hodir we got stalled on for a while due to the bug fix and boss buff then later nerfed. Thorim was pretty easy, as was XT. | ||
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deth2munkies
United States4051 Posts
On August 08 2012 02:50 Pibacc wrote: The funniest thing is the only people i see complaining that the game is too easy are the ones who haven't finished a tier on Heroic. And it's still a valid criticism. Heroic modes for raids were probably the worst thing Blizzard did, because all it did was reset a tier you just finished with a couple of arbitrary, tacked on objectives and more health/damage. Speaking as someone who only did a couple of heroic bosses in Cata but was top/mid tier in Vanilla and TBC, I didn't feel nearly as excited or happy about a heroic kill as I did the first time we downed them in normal. From an immersion standpoint, it was goddamned awful. I'm not a super nostalgic fanboy, though. I think that vanilla and parts of TBC were too high barrier to entry for people to adequately enjoy them. I was not a fan of pre-raid attunements and gear check bosses at the very beginning of each dungeon. I was not a fan of ridiculous gear specific fights (Huhuran, Ragnaros, etc.), nor a fan of how restricted the class roles were back in the day (Warrior tank only). What I was a fan of was raid continuity (the Vashj/Kael vials for Hyjal for instance), and the overall difficulty levels available. Kharazan was one of my favorite raids of all time, because you could down multiple bosses at any skill level and still feel challenged until you'd beaten it a million times. I loved the idea that the difficulty ramped up as the expansion went on, instead of plateauing with heroic modes. Even as someone who doesn't touch heroic modes, you should be able to feel like you're accomplishing something when you kill a boss. It should feel like you worked for it and overcame adversity. Once the game stops feeling like that, it's time to pack it in. What really killed it for me was the death of the project I had worked on the last 4 months of my WoW career. I had rerolled on a different server and a new faction to just try and have some fun in a new environment. Eventually, I ended up joining a PUG raid and ended up in a leadership capacity. I started forming raids every weekend out of tradechat and eventually we got most of the bosses in the first tier down (Nefarian, and Cho were the only 2 we didn't get). Despite the fact I had downed several bosses on heroic when I was in a more hardcore guild, I felt more of a sense of accomplishment getting random people to work together and actually have to learn things. The fact that some raids we only got 2-3 bosses down because we had a lot of new people in wasn't even discouraging, because people were improving and that was all I cared about. Then the Firelands patch hit. That weekend we one shot every boss in the tier, including ones we had never faced before. People that were geared enough for the Firelands were impossible to come by in tradechat, so I saw that I would be stuck doing content of no value that had been nerfed into oblivion all due to the sliding scale. That's what killed it for me. tl;dr: Heroics aren't the measure of whether or not the difficulty is right for everyone, because people have very valid reasons for not giving a shit about them, yet they deserve a challenge. All that and a bunch of different anecdotes and rants stapled on. | ||
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Barbiero
Brazil5259 Posts
I think BoP is too much, but I'm fine with materials being BoA since you usually have crafting alts. I like the idea of having to grind for you materials rather than to just play with the AH; Besides, you can still play with the AH with most materials(herbs, ores, etc). thoughts? | ||
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