Do you think the game has become too complicated, causing new players to become overwhelmed?
How long do you think it would take for a new player to reach a competitive level where they are viable in both PVP and PVE and do you think that time is acceptable in today’s standards?
Below I have put a real-world example which motivated me to write this post followed by a few recommendations which I believe could improve the game.
I have been playing WoW on and off for past 15 years and recently my girlfriend decided she wanted to play with me. She is a competitive gamer and enjoys playing games like LoL and Counterstrike. She picked up the basic easily. I began teaching her about class abilities, then addons, then macros, then borrowed powers, then DR and then… I lost interests and so did she.
I began wondering if other players experienced this and if so, I thought of some simple changes that could address this problem and potentially attract new players. Let me know what you think.
Reduce Passive abilities : Most passive abilities are boring and underwhelming, making the game unnecessarily complex. Passive abilities are part of each class, spec, talents, PVP talents and borrowed power systems like Soul binds. Passive abilities have their place however most of the current passives today just feel like lazy game design.
Remove the need for Addons : Addons bloat the game and add a further learning curve. Addons should exist but should not be mandatory. Since the addon’s data are saved locally it is far to inconvenient to play on different systems. Every time I return to the game, I spend a couple of hours installing and setting up addons, how boring!
Get rid of borrowed power: The idea of changing powers sounded great but in reality, for most classes, one power outperforms the others. In its place development resources should be focused on the Talent tree system, Tier sets, trinkets, and professions. If this is done right, borrowed powers will be redundant. Anyone who has played an RPG understands these systems. Adding new power systems can make the game feel to complex for new players and even deter returning players.
Bring back talent trees: Allow players to be creative and spec their class for different scenarios and gameplay styles. I am glad to see changes are coming to the next expansion.
Make professions relevant and fun.
PVP halls: Create a social space for PVP players from both factions to gather similar to previous expansions. The area should include PVP vendors, Target dummies, a place to duel and a leader board. This social space will make the game feel more alive and encourage players to meet and play with one another. A great alternative to the PVP LFG UI.
Reduce Random Battle ground queues: Sadly, this is a game breaker for a lot of players and probably the most important change on my list. 10 to 15 minute queues is unacceptable. I don’t have the answer but here are some suggestions I came up without much thought.
Make them X-faction
Have more 8 to 10v10 player RBGs like WSG
Have a 1v1 elimination mode.
Remove epic battlegrounds.
If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read my article. I look forward to reading your thoughts.
To my mind passives do not make the game feel more complex in any negative way because they are passive. Usually it just means you will proc something at some point, and those are fun.
Button bloat on the other hand has been a thing in the past and with the much lauded but really underwhelming “unprune” it could be again if they keep it up. They need to tread carefully there.
Most of the complexity that people hate, in my experience, relates to borrowed power. Last expansion we had neck level, azerite powers, powers screwed into the neck itself, and corruption at one point. That’s a heck of a lot of extra stuff that was never in the game at all back in the day.
This expansion we have soulbinds, covenant abilities, conduits for the soulbinds, etc. My brother is more into classic (or at least he was until they announced group finder will be missing from wrath) so from talking to him, all the borrowed stuff can feel overwhelming, especially when he plays on such a tight schedule that he never really has time to just stare at it and familiarize.
I think I’ve got him talked down into accepting it though, he’s going to faction change his old shaman and come back to retail with me, and next expansion there should be just less of all of it, and he’s happy about that at least theoretically since we don’t know exactly how the next expansion will work.
Depends on how much time, effort and ability to remember counters to each class. Also, it means having all classes at 60 so when one dominates, they can capitalize on that.
It could take years for a brand new player or hours. A lot of it has to do with the ability to remember a lot of details, exceeding muscle memory on rotations, and time. An exceptional amount of time to build RIO as well as CR. Or you pay for someone to train you like any other skill
I may agree that at certain levels the raids have become more and more complex but outside of that, no the game is still rather simple to play. Hell they have dumbed down the classes to such a degree that even addons can effectively tell you an attack rotation that is for the most part pretty good.
The only complexity that isn’t good for the game is how systems and progression are introduced and explained. The only clues they give you is the adventure guide and it’s very very lacking. Players shouldn’t have to try to figure out how dungeons, M+ and raid difficulties are tied to progression. Or how legendaries, conduits, etc. works and are obtainable. It took me a good hour to figure out the right way to get legendaries in 9.2 xd
There’s always the same questions how to progress in wow since they complicated it from leveling into dungeons into raids. And for pvp from bgs to arenas.
There is no “need” for addons, especially if you’re new.
Next XPac
Next XPac
…It’s pretty clear you have no idea what’s coming in the next XPac
7.1 Sure why not
7.2 Sure, all non epic battlegrounds should be 10v10 like they are in rateds, also “RBGs” means Rated Battlegrounds, not random, ever.
7.3 Solo Queue, arenas?
7.4 No? I hate them personally but some people enjoy them, and they aren’t slowing down randoms
How are passives making the game more complex? I think a minimum expectation we can have with players is that they read their spell book.
Do you mean hidden “passives” like the pandemic mechanic? Because that is a source of confusion for new players.
Agree and disagree. I don’t think removing ‘needed’ addons is right but integrating or changes to the game so addons do not feel mandatory is a good thing. Blizzard is updating the UI in dragon flight to address this. But boss fight addons and therefore bosses telegraphing abilities should get a look over.
Talent trees are a leveling feature, not an end-game feature. Everyone is going to use the cookie-cutter talent build for whatever content they’re doing. Add talent trees but let them be simpler than what they’ve released so far.
Again they’re doing this in dragon flight but it certainly adds to the complexity. But you buy a lot of depth for that complexity.
Again great suggestion but this doesn’t have anything to do with complexity.
Blizz could make the classes more “clean” and take away some of the skills, make it more dynamic, you’re absolutely right. It’s a lot of visual pollution. Lots to look at. I could also revise the classes, make things much more objective. Example: Druid attunement, either it’s feral or it’s balance or resto or tank.
It’s complex if you want to do the most complicated and challenging content immediately after starting new, which I think is reasonable. Lots of games have complexities. Have you seen PoE’s talent system!? even their skill gem system is insane without very strong reading skills and comparative math =/ I mean, most will just go to a guide.
I don’t think WoW necessarily suffers from this until you get to highest content like mythic raiding.
Some things I admit are not very clear, like stat priorities. However, at least in my experience, even if you “mess up” stat priorities… you can do pretty much everything, just not optimally.
So yeah, if you want to play 100% optimally at the highest levels of challenge, it can be complex, which I think is acceptable.
Not sure why a new player would need addons at all early on. Heck, I’m not new at all and use only details for my own satisfaction.
weird first post - i don’t see much complexity in the game, would enjoy some more.
the first thing i think about when hearing “complexity” is PoE’s huge skilltree and i like that a lot makes you want to theorycraft when not in the game which is a good thing imo.
You complain about complexity than want passive abilities removed… Personally I want to see the choice between being able to pick passive abilities or add complexity by adding more if you choose. This way players get to decide how complex they wish to play.
No thanks I love addons. They allow for customization with looks, allow you to see whatever kind of information you want, help with guild and community management, and provide alternative alerts for different abilities (they are extremely helpful with people with disabilities.) They also reduce the amount of resources required by the devs to create options in the UI and or update it.
As far as setting addons up most are plug and play for others you often have the ability to import profiles. As a last resort you can always store your WTF folder on a flash drive and copy it to the wow directory on any computer your using.
I think the only thing killing the game is all the borrowed power and stupid story decisions.
Apart from that, I’d argue for more buttons to press and really going deep in class fantasy again to really hash out the differences between some classes and add more pizazz. Most of the time it really feels like rotations are ‘press 1 until 2, then press 3’, while specs like feral druid have to work their @ss off to do something comparable to the 1-2-3’s of the game.
So yeah if the classes were more balanced I think things would be much better.
Some passive abilities are boring, some create more interesting gameplay. I’ll take the good with the boring instead of not at all.
The game would become too easy and boring. Pushing performance requires some addons. If you don’t want to push performance, you don’t actually have to run any addons.
They are.
They are.
They are. You should check out the Dragonflight announcement info.
Lovely idea, I’d also really like either the same for PVE or a guild hall.
They need to make the rewards equal in an Random BG or give it at least some unique rewards. Currently it’s barely rewarding at all for players to queue for them.
No they need to give people a reason to do them in the first place. I prefer epic BG.
Yes, everything players do should be cross faction starting 10.0.
Is there a lot of complexity in the game? Yes, the amount of interactions and weird things that go on is enormous and overwhelming. Guides can streamline that but I think we’ve gotten to a place of WAT!? I see people saying they don’t see it or don’t care and I suspect it’s because they are ignoring it or are used to it. But those complexities are accessibility hurdles players may have to jump to enjoy the game at the fullest depending on what they want to do.
Systems Complexity has been a boondoggle for the last few expacs where we’ve had highly non-intuitive systems that were hard to reason around without using external tools. Hopefully this goes away or becomes less of a thing. Passives aren’t the problem here btw, it’s procs… anything with an RNG proc rate is a major problem not just server side but also reasoning wise. How often is this thing going to happen? Without knowing that it’s hard to reason about something with a proc.
Mechanics complexity has been another sore point I’ve started to discuss elsewhere, but we need to start scoring content based on the maximum simultaneous and sustained complexity of a fight (e.g. number of mechanics + number of possible simultaneous mechanics with computational complexity multiplier) and figure out what a good MSSC is. There seems to have been a lot of creep in this area as late.
makes you want to theorycraft when not in the game which is a good thing imo.