Where do you think you’re seeing a discrepancy that big?
This isn’t “the lower end being brought up,” it’s dropping the ceiling.
12 Likes
Maybe they should do something other than autoattack.
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Microsoft demanded their pound of flesh and they got it. This article reads like it was written by 3 AIs in a trenchcoat. Go look at the class changes and tell me this game isn’t a dead letter for raid/mplus.
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Seems like a pretty bad direction
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For me, it’s fantastic.
The complexity should come from the GAME/CONTENT, not from pressing buttons like it’s a Beethoven symphony.
There are plenty of examples of games with a reduced number of buttons that are still complex.
The most recent one? Elden Ring.
28 Likes
Except the complexity of the content will be taking a hit too with the addon changes lol.
8 Likes
Never mind, rant moved to the talents thread.
Seems like a good excuse to save $20 a month. Thanks Blizz!
10 Likes
Outlaw mentioned, I might cry tears of joy
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All good news to me. The arms race between content design and add-ons wasn’t going to end.
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You added 1 button rotation and skill assist highlight… And why are we dumbing down even more?
28 Likes
But…
Genuine question.
People say the game is mechanically difficult, that’s why addons get created and people use them.
After several years, Blizzard implements these addons directly into the game.
Doesn’t that mean the relative difficulty stays the same?
Not only that—new players will have access to those addons from day one.
I assume the average skill level of the casual player will go up a bit.
3 Likes
It’s possible but it’s also under the assumption that what they add to the base game is similar. Precedent says that this won’t be the case lol.
3 Likes
Been playing since cata and despite not totally being in love with the writing or story anymore the game still feels great. But the slow homogenization of every dps becoming 3-5 buttons with a resource you build up and spend feels terrible to watch. Full sending the dumb down everything plan would probably be the end of my time with WoW.
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Instead of being excited to play my class and spec, now Im dreading playing half of my class and spec.
I don’t think I’ve been this disappointed since going from Legion to BFA. Absolutely gutted.
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Or, hear me out, yes they should. Good players should be burying bad players, and that should make bad players want to improve.
If your first reaction to seeing someone doing mountains more dps than you is to pout in a corner and blame Blizzard, then you are the problem.
This game has limitless resources made available to players, by players. Make use of them.
You’re going to be in for a rude awakening when you realize that players will gatekeep even harder than they do now. The delta between the low end and the high end enables Blizzard to develop their Heroic raid content to be approachable by anyone who wants to complete it, because the high end only engages with that content for a week or two.
So either that content is going to be made too difficult for the people it was initially intended for, or it will be made substantially easier. Realistically, low end players will see practically no change to their experience, while high end players will have a substantially worse time.
19 Likes
Yeah, I guess.
There are a lot of precedents.
But…
Well, if it’s not equally effective, that makes combat harder. I guess that’s a good thing.
At the same time, you can already do that right now just by not using addons.
I just read the WoW combat system changes and I gotta say this is a frightening read.
The changes they want to do for Combat to make it more accessible is EXTEREMLY concerning, specifically reading this one part
“Abilities that are very complex, such as Adaptive Swarm, Surge of Power, or Blackout Combo.”
In what word is Blackout complicated? This really sounds like a WoD 2.0 pruning of spells, and what YOU Blizzard have to understand is that for as many people that complained about how “Complex” the combat is, 4 times more enjoy the combat and it’s complexity. It’s one of the main reason your longest term subscribers are still sub to the game. Your running the risk of aliening long term fans for new short term fans that aren’t as likely to stay around.
WoW fundamentally requires complexity for it’s gameplay loop to function and succeed, I deeply urge Blizzard to reconsider their decision making and not to listen to vocal streamers that don’t even play the game anymore
As many have stated you have address this situation by adding a 1 button rotation and a skill assist Highlight.
13 Likes
Killing combat addons at all is shooting yourself in the foot.
Killing them before your own in-house addons are even REMOTELY ready to replace them is shooting both feet and burying them in salt. Might as well bury your head in the salt for good measure.
This game isn’t successful DESPITE addons, it is mostly successful BECAUSE anywhere problems come up, player-created addons are there to fix the problems in the game (abilities that don’t give the player enough information, debuffs that are easily missed, TARGETED SPELLS, and so many other things).
At the most basic level, killing combat addons is going to make playing multi-dotting specs like Affliction a nightmare. Seeing your debuffs on your TARGET are only part of the equation, you also need to see your debuffs on EVERY OTHER ENEMY. And addons like Plater were there for every player that needed to fine-tune how they see their dots across multiple targets.
On a slightly more advanced level but still pretty accessible to most players: many of us choose to get a simple WeakAura pack for a class that keeps track of some basic rotational things, like procs that reset an ability (think like Art of War), the remaining cooldown on important spells that can be variable (like Combustion), or stacking buffs to get the most out of an ability (like Demolish). I still see Colossal Might in the hero tree, so we’re still going to need to track that. And because your Cooldown Manager is still lacking a lot of important features, I need WeakAuras for that. But if WeakAuras can’t see my buffs in dungeons, that won’t work, so my only option is the Cooldown Manager, that as I just said is inadequate.
Getting slightly more advanced than that, I also use WeakAuras a lot for keeping track of things that should be significantly easier to see in combat. Things like:
- TARGETED SPELLS (extremely important, borderline required to be effective as a healer, but also just to know when you are about to take damage from bolt-type spells). A frequent painful example is something like Flood Gate, where you can clearly tell who does or does not have Targeted Spells tracked somehow when someone ends up being very slow to react to the Kinetic Explosive Gel, an extremely dangerous thing to be slow about reacting to.
- Debuffs that are easy to miss, or often look like they are on a different player (this happens all the time in raids, where a lot of players are standing in a tight stack, but it’s hard to see which player has the debuff), or only become important/dangerous once you have a certain number of stacks (which are often hard to see in the debuff list)
- Keeping track of trinkets, that may not sync up nicely with spec cooldowns (pretty sure these are STILL not on the Cooldown Manager)
And then if you want to get right down to it, the people you are hurting the most with this asinine, literally objectively backwards decision, are the people you seem to WANT to help to the most: Players with disabilities. Blind and deaf players lean pretty hard on things like WeakAuras and the parts of the code that closely relate to COMBAT to even be able to play this game. I play with a blind player who makes his own addon for essentially echo location to be able to raid and do dungeons. Killing all of these combat addons will inconvenience other players, but this guy will basically be unable to interact with the game beyond world quests. Accessibility concerns alone should be reason enough to not even CONSIDER breaking these addons.
PLEASE reconsider before it is too late. You have no comprehension of how much damage you are about to do to your own game, and how many customers you are going to drive away.
28 Likes
The average wow player is totally disconnected from reality. This game has a massive barrier to entry for anyone who hasn’t been playing it for 20 years. Making the game more accessible for more players is categorically a good thing. I have never successfully gotten anyone to start playing this game and actually stick with it other than my wife and that’s because I was there to hand hold her every step of the way.
These changes are good.
You will be fine.
You can find another way to give yourself early onset arthritis.
25 Likes