I understand that Season of Discovery may be a testing ground to discover what is fun and what works, but I do have a couple major concerns.
I am concerned that being able to swap Runes any time, except during combat, creates some over complex gameplay and limits the impact of choice. Players will be expected to swap runes between every pull to optimize for single target, area damage, or other situational benefits. This can be interesting in that it allows you to customize your character based on the fight, but at some point you are bogged down wanting to swap again and again and it becomes a hassle or annoyance, while also eliminating meaningful choice. I believe that Runes should only be changeable in a rested area or major city. This is because it gives the player a meaningful and impactful choice when they pick a Rune to use before they leave to adventure. Since they cannot easily change it again, they have to really consider their options and those options define their character while on that adventure. I understand the benefits of easily being able to change in order to aid in the testing process to find what works where and best, to ultimately help guide decisions for a Classic +, but ultimately I think this is reducing impactful choices and over complicating a normal adventuring experience.
Perhaps I do not fully understand how the Rune Engraving system works, but based on my understanding, it seems that players could also swap their Runes or gear with different Runes on them when leaving combat. Classes like rogues and hunters could use this to swap out Runes and optimize their gameplay in PvE and even PvP. It also means players who swap gear between pulls will also have to make sure all their Runes are set right on the gear, and players may swap gear to quickly swap Runes. I don’t believe this is the kind of gameplay we should be encouraging. It just adds to complexity and reduces impactful choices.
Small benefits of this that I see are that classes like Rogues, Warlocks, Shamans and Mages with their alternate enhances role options can swap back and forth from Damage to Tank or Healing. This is useful and fills out an interesting role, but I am not sure if this is also the kind of gameplay Runes are looking to achieve.
The next concern that I have is for how Blizzard with be gathering their information on which Runes are positive and which are not. If this is a testing ground for discovery, then they will use this information to guide future Classic endeavors. My main concern is that simply looking at which Runes are popular and used most often, does not directly correlate to the Rune being the best for Classic. Players will choose Runes that are the best numbers wise but not necessarily best for gameplay and fun. They will also choose them regardless if they are a bad fit for classic or not. Simply because a Rune is overpowered or the best choice for numbers, does not mean it is the best Rune for the game. How will Blizzard be looking at the Runes and players choices to determine which abilities are the most fun and fit the best into a classic world, versus which Runes are just the strongest whether or not they are fun and fit the world? I think this is an important part of the testing and hopefully there is a way they will be looking to decide which Runes are the most fun, expand gameplay, and fit the best in classic. Simply looking at what players choose will not give a good idea of which Runes are good ideas for the game and which are not.
Overall, I think they should look into limiting Rune changes in rested areas, to increase the meaningfulness of player choices and reduce the complexity possible when changing Runes and gear with different Runes is available anytime out of combat.
They should also find a way to observe which Runes create the most fun and fitting gameplay as opposed to which Runes are chosen by players most, and correlating that with good Runes.
Thank you for reading. If you agree or disagree please let me know your point of view and possibly include things that I may not have considered.
Those try hards will exist just like the sweats during Classic’s original run, but there will also be more casual players who equally complete content. If people are forcing you to go to that extreme find a different group to hang with.
No one has to do anything and only you can restrict yourself.
With that said, for the love of god break up those paragraphs!
I agree with you that nobody has to do this and if you are forced to then you can find somewhere else if you do not like it. The issue is that this can be solved with game design instead. Design the game in a way that the best way to play is also the funnest way to play.
There’s also the issue of Rune swapping minimizing the impact of meaningful choice.
Experimentation (without target dummies) will be quite hard to do if they tie Rune swaping to rested areas. Maybe a compromise would be to incur a cooldown if you swap runes outside of rested areas? Say 5-10 minutes.
My gut tells me they are not designing this season with min/maxers in mind (not that min/maxers wont exist) but more so just to be fun and experimental in the sense of “Try this for a while then try mixing it up!”
I think that unlike Season of Mastery that they are not intending for people to take it super seriously and more so just throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what people think.
Mind you I am not trying in any capacity to downplay your point as I bet this is 100% feedback they want! Good suggestion for Training Dummies in towns
This is a good point. I think an easy enough solution is like you mention, to have training dummies. That way we can avoid the constant changing of Runes and still give ourselves and Blizzard plenty of testing of different Runes.
I agree that they are just throwing out a bunch of ideas and see what is fun or not. The thing is that players will always optimize the fun out of a game, so it is important for game designers to try to make the most optimal choices the most fun choices as well. In this case you won’t have to ever worry about constantly changing runes if it’s not an option. It’s a simple change which has a huge impact of reducing the complexity of optimizing play.
Oh, that reminds me. I wonder if the world buff thingy is being brought over. That thing that saves your world buffs? Then again didn’t they say world buffs would be disabled while in instanced content in SoD or are the old god whispers getting to me?
I believe that is correct, Cooperbrew. They are from quests, drops, world content, etc IIRC and once learned are added to a list you can access and apply any time.
K so why is the Op complaining about trading swapping runes when this can’t be done… or is the op referring to swapping out one rune for another while in combat etc and not through the AH etc
They don’t have to. We will min/max regardless. However, they haven’t made any seasons with min/maxers in mind. In SoM they just made things more difficult because the player base asked them to.
People who hate min maxing will still do it for some reason. That I never understand. Its like when people lost it over world buffs in classic. Like don’t use them if you dont want to. However, you cant expect to be able to raid with a progression sweat guild if you don’t. Choices have consequences. If you don’t want to min max or use world buffs thats totally fine! People just can’t expect to be carried by those who will though. I just think its dumb to complain about something and ask for something to be removed that is completely optional to begin with.
I mean I wasn’t really thinking of it as a Min/Maxing point of view. I was just saying that swapping runes between pulls or even during combat by some classes is a mechanic that is being put into the game. It seems like a mechanic that will be a big deal in the game that people will worry about. If it wasn’t an option, nobody would worry about it and it would make your choices of Runes when you leave town more important and impactful.
I don’t like the fact that IF I swap a rune within combat it may or may not offer me something I would use often, Thus I would do this swap at one of the testing dummys in SW IF etc. to determine if this is something I wanted to keep.
The way I currently understand the Rune Engraving system to work is like this.
Every character has the Rune Engraving skill and it allows you to engrave runes into your armor. You gain new Runes through discovering them in the world, through quests, hidden items and other ways.
Some Runes are exclusive to specific slots so you can only equip one in your Chest slot for example. The system functions similar to the Glyph system.
The issue I bring up is that the player can engrave a different rune between fights. Since the only requirement to engrave Runes or swap gear is being out of combat. People will feel optimal play is to switch from a Rune that helps AoE for AoE pulls to a Single Target Rune on a small pull. There are different circumstances where swapping would be desirable. Some classes could even do it during a fight if they drop combat to swap to a piece of gear already engraved with a certain Rune or to actively engrave the Rune during the fight.
