This is from his recent interview with Forbes. Part of his answer on class design and why there isn’t any until the next expansion.
Changing something as fundamental as the rotation of specializations or the resource flow, or removing abilities and adding new ones, that’s actually an incredibly jarring experience. It comes with great costs for people who are just coming back, looking to jump into the new content, who find themselves having to relearn the class. That’s the sort of change that is best received, and that we try to couch, within the broader sweeping changes that come with the new expansion – where there’s a gear reset, a whole new progression system coming into play, and so forth.
I mean, is he serious? I can pick up a new class, get it to 120 and within the hour learn how to play it properly. The jarring experience is suffering with boring, non-engaging specs for a whole expansion. That is the real jarring experience Ion!
This isn’t just Ion. Blizzard has basically always refused to make major changes to classes within the scope of a patch. They save the big changes for expansions.
I remember awhile back they said their data showed one of the most common reasons for people leaving was too much change. I can only imagine that would be an even MORE common reason if they were regularly making sweeping changes to classes in the middle of an expansion.
Yeah I understand it is frustrating when it seems like they go back on their word but this policy of theirs has been in place a while. Does anyone remember what they said about demonology in WOD?
I understand their viewpoint from a pvp standpoint. When I stopped playing after wrath, and came back in mop, it was quite a dramatic change. I went from understanding how to track the burst cycles of every class to basically not knowing 90% of my opponents abilities. That being said, they’re sort of changing the abilities every expansion anyways.
My bias says that the pvp gameplay was best in wotlk, but everyone has their own opinion as to what constitutes the most engaging gameplay. It’s up to Blizzards marketing team to figure out what’s the best gameplay for the greatest proportion of the population. And so far it looks like they haven’t done a great job.
Eh… not 100% accurate there… I actually played Demonology on my Warlock, all through WoD… it wasn’t great, but it certainly wasn’t the worst that Demonology had ever been… That horror goes to Legion… Legion was the first and only time the spec had ever been so bad and unplayable that I actually changed spec on my Warlock who had been Demonology since the day she was created…
Going to fully dispute this, because that’s basically all that Vanilla patches were. The reason there were twelve patches is literally almost one for every class in the game. That said they haven’t done it in awhile. But 7.1 stands out as a place they did make major changes to afflock for example.
If only there was mechanism for feedback before an expansion was released that Blizzard could take into account. This would improve the changes based on how people actually play the game. It shouldn’t be based on some algorithm or idea about how people should play.
What I don’t get with the Frost DK stuff is every time they announce changes to BoS they get tons of responses asking for buffs to the underperforming alternatives to that talent, and Blizzard’s response is essentially “ok, here’s more buffs to BoS”. What don’t they understand about the phrase “I do not want to use BoS”??
My comments are accurate, yours are anecdotal. Demonology was nurfed to be 15% less effective on average than the other two specs in WOD. Ion even came out during one of the Q and A’s and said we’d prefer you didnt play it (he hinted ithe spec was being redone for legion). As for demonology in legion, for me the spec has never played so well as it did in legion and now in BFA.
If they pigeonhole Frost DK into 1 viable spec, it’s much easier to keep balancing it, versus having to balance multiple viable specs. Gotta be sure when Jon Hight walks up and down the halls at 5pm, they’re not working late. This type of upkeep gets them home early.
The person typed an odd sentence. He’s saying he’ll get to 120 THEN learn how to play it properly within the hour. He’s not saying leveling to 120 takes an hour.
Thing is, if you’re a returning player, it’s going to be jarring regardless, because Blizzard doesn’t know when to leave well-enough alone and reinvents every class every expansion, even if the class is performing to players’ expectations.
If I had left in Wotlk and came back now, I would have no clue why my Boomie is no longer attuned with nature, uses only sun and moon abilities, and has a completely different play style.