What makes me wound up is that some previously fun to play classes are now spending way too much time waiting for regen. I don’t know on what planet making something slow and clunky and frustrating is “fun” but it sure as hell isn’t this one. This has nothing to do with gaming houses, that is these devs doing it on purpose for “reasons”. It’s like they hired people who are determined to make it fail given the standard of writing, balance and their idea of “fun”.
If you checked out last weeks Q&A they said class balance/design was hard - so to that should tell you everything you need to know about whether they know how to fix it…
To be at least a little fair though - even if they came up with a great system there would be pleanty of folks complaining. From what I’ve seen dps damage balance is actually closer than its ever been - the problem, at least in my view, is the the game play of many classes has become uninteresting and there isn’t really a fair balance of utility spread across specs. Rogue is part of the meta for m+ not just because they are top damage in many cases, but also have more utility than the specs below them dps wise. Bdk similarly has best tank damage, best survivability, and best dps.
That’s where they need to find balance imo. One spec shouldn’t outclass the others across the board - highest burst shouldn’t also have top 3 sustain, best survivability shouldn’t also have best utility, best aoe shouldn’t also be best single target, etc…
But what do I know, I’m not a game dev, and even Ion said this was “hard”…
Many devs were moved. Many and most have very different meanings and change the context and meaning of the statement they are used in.
WOW has supposedly been dying since the original beta.
Warriors actually have best tank damage. But no denying Blood is OP.
For all the posts that the alliance buff wouldn’t inspire war mode, well Blizzard was right. And this reminds us why they don’t specifically listen to the “forum majority” as they have proof of events like this.
You know what Ion says its hard to balance classes, yet the Devs prior to Ion, did a much better job, even with weekly hotfixes. I dont know maybe the issue is the job is to hard for Ion.
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Bingo, And I am honestly shocked that Ion is still with the company . After the craptastic reception of BFA and all the goof ups, I figured he would have been out the door by now .
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Ok, first and foremost, Activision, Blizzard, and King are three separate companies that are under a single holding company, Activision Blizzard. But let’s follow your logic anyways.
Since you view them all as one giant conglomerate, consider something:
Ever heard of a little game called Candy Crush Saga? It’s currently the third top-grossing game on iTunes right now. Only Fornite and Pokémon Go are beating it. Over on the Android side of things, it’s #2 behind PG. Its sister game, Candy Crush Soda Saga is #7 and #10 on the iTunes and Android top-grossing lists for games respectively.
Second, people moving over to mobile games are doing so by choice because they want to try something new, something risky/experimental, etc. Take Craig Amai for example, the guy behind the Legion Artifact system. He left after Legion’s launch stating on his blog:
If I live a long and healthy life, I would now be looking back to see that I gave maybe 1/8th of it to this single game. A worthy thing, surely, but I was uncertain if it was really something to which I could give more. There’s so much more world I want to take in and so much more creativity I want to exhale out.
http://www.craigmakesgames.com/blog/2016/9/12/departing-from-wow
Lots of others have felt the same way. If they become salves to the game, they’re not going to give it their best effort. It’s no longer a passion for them, it’s a prison.
So let them go to the incubator for a while and try something new. Take some risks, etc. It’s how we got Hearthstone.
And as for the mobile thing overall, Blizzard is stupid to ignore it as a platform. Partnering with a Chinese company allows them to actually release the game in China, the market for which Diablo Immortal is aimed at. Their only screw-ups were a) making DI exclusively mobile and b) not even hinting at a new PC game (keep in mind Diablo III was announced 7 years after development started and 4 years before its release).
And just look at the reaction to the experimental systems Blizzard has put into WoW. People don’t look at them as experiments and seeing if things work in the game. They just rip it apart period because it’s not what they want in the way they want it.
Azerite traits were designed to replace both artifact abilities and Tier bonuses. Look at how many people complained when each new tier resulted in the having bonuses nerfed from the previous tier. That won’t happen under this system. And ultimately Blizzard was not successful in getting the system to work the way they envisioned. They gave it their best and their reward for it is more insults and whining. They’re going to iterate on the system again in 8.2 and I’m sure that even after those changes are made people still will never be satisfied.
That’s a matter of opinion. Having sat through the end of Vanilla, BC, Wrath, Cata, MoP, WoD, and Legion I can tell you that BFA should not have been delayed. Sitting through over 14 months of the same content, as happened with MoP and WoD, is not good.
I don’t think it’s so much that there are so many moving parts, its that Blizzard has lost sight of the fact that some of those parts do not neccessarily need to move together. For example for beta, we do not need the new zones, quests, etc. to be ready in order to test class changes. They can plop us down in the Valley of Trials, Northshire Abbey, Deathknell, Shadowglen, or Camp Narache and just have us use the existing quests/mobs in the game to get things going. And if they want to test for leveling between the previous and next expansion, simply leverage the scaling tech.
To some extent, yes. But in others they’re dependent on data we provide them when we’re on the beta servers or the PTR. If we’re not engaging the stuff, they’re going to have to wait and see it go live. This is why a lot of bugs that crop up in old raids are introduced in new patches. No one tested Patch 8.1 to see if Black Temple was still solo-able and such.
Mists of Pandaria says hi! This is the second time they’ve done this kind of a squish. The reasoning behind it was explained very well by the former Lead Systems Designer as well as the other options they looked into.
The only reason it was so bad/buggy this time around was because the first squish was done by hand. This time around, and for future squishes, they now have a layer above that makes adjustments versus manually changing a spell that does 1,000,000 damage to only do 10,000.
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The ‘class balance’ most player seem to want isn’t really all that balanced nor would it be very good for the game. The balance most players seem to want is whatever makes their character top the damage meter, and everyone elses character be damned.
There will never be ‘perfect’ balance in wow. Not while wow remains a team based game where classes are suppose to work together to overcome their inherent weaknesses. Every number tweaked affects other numbers elsewhere in the code. Every ability added to a class affects the other classes.
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NO I dont want to be top that is not my concern. I would like to at least be competitive as feral, instead of so far on the bottom. No one wants you to play the spec. Can you see the difference?
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I feel that classic is the fix… bfa is just the last in a long line of expansions removing challenging and engaging game design to replace it with simplified grinding.
The damage started at the end of tbc and has just slowly ramped up from there.
I will agree that they have no idea how to fix their product. Look how long the Guild Rank Permissions fiasco has been going on without a peep about if they are going to do something about it.
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They did?
Classic has probably the worst class balancing in WoW’s history.
TBC wasn’t much better.
I prefer 8.0 Ele shams compared to them in WotLK.
Class balance in WoW has always been wonky.
You feel that classic WoW bring back challenging game design, and less simplified grinding?
Really?
Classic WoW probably had the least challenging game design and the most simplified grinding in all of WoW’s history.
Course they don’t. All the smart developers bailed out already while whoevers left is being whipped into making all or nothing cash grabbing mobile tittles.
The holes in this sinking ship just keeps growing wider and wider…
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Feral druids are the best gatherers and flag runners in the game. No they should not have the best dps as well. This is where peoples “class balance” arguements are flawed. As far noone wanting to play a druid, i think your wrong, go talk to the AOE battlechickens that multi box them.
Anything else you need to make druids a hero class? Just asking. Want best healers maybe?.. best tanks too?
actually feral druid has not been the best flag runner in a long time or gatherer. WW, and vengeance DH are the best now. Talking about feral, could care less about moonkin.Heck a WW, or DH can cover the map in half the time a feral can with better lockdowns to keep people from following. Where have you been?
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There isn’t anything wrong with a simple game,easy to learn difficult to master has been the way to go.
While classic isn’t my preferred expansion tbc is I find your statement raises more questions then awnsers.
I would advance through content slowly rather then crush everything instantly then repeat that same content for years as they buff rewards and how high titanforging goes.
I would rather grinds be optional or if not at the very least tied to professions to encourage people to be out in the world.
I would rather I be incentivized to do the hardest content I am able to rather then simply grinding out artifact power.
Classic isn’t perfect and yes it does end as all things must. When I compare classic to bfa though… well there isn’t a bad thing to long for a simple game.
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Blizzard has repeatedly fixed a game that wasn’t broke, obviously fixing isn’t working. Sadly they don’t see how great the original was, instead it is easier for them to just re-release the original, but not before fixing it first.
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If the damage/heal is done by algorithm then it doesn’t matter how many parts there are - it will always be balanced.
The way you describe is what I call Balancing By Guess as they’re always having to guess which figures to put in place, test it and then guess again.