Game Difficulty

[Khroul-dalaran]

Yeah… the visual cues they give on Rasz are pretty terrible. You basically have to turn your whole camera towards her and look at where she is and what direction she’s facing.

There just should just be a gigantic bright purple box drawn on the floor showing you where the breath is going with clearly defined borders/edges so there isn’t any guess work involved.

I mean, imagine next season when we have to do Halls of Infusion… that last boss is gonna be a nightmare. Blue floor… Blue semi transparent swirly boss… which spawns blue semi transparent swirly, slowly moving orbs that will clip through the swirly boss to hit you… that dungeon is going to be an absolute nightmare on M+.

Blizzard almost always uses attacks that share color pallets with the dungeon aesthetic and it makes things extremely hard to see – especially for people with vision conditions. Like I have Keratoconus, which is an incurable eye disease that is eventually going to cause me to go blind and require a cornea transplant. Blizz doesn’t even remotely care to make content that is easy to see. If they did, they’d outline dangerous abilities with high vis borders like they do in FFXIV.

[Melete-area-52]

@Lexapro-moon-guard

game is not rly that difficult if u do any kind of research whatsoever

which you should be doing in the 1st place if ur attempting “difficult” or challenging content

I think two things are true:

1. The game is more difficult than it has ever been, and certainly more difficult than pre-Legion.

2. Learning optimal methods of gameplay is still very achievable.

[Argorwal-ysera (Argorwal)]

@Yonbi-illidan

I think it was a mistake to increase the level scaling for mythic keystones. That was just increasing difficulty for no real reason. Especially when they also raise the floor to 20 from 15.

Were there that many people really clearing 20s prior to this?

As to the OP - I’d say normals, M+ <10, random bgs, skirmishes are all pretty casual.

They did both because keys were that much of a joke.

[Jakesulli-bronzebeard]

@Twistpriest-area-52

I wish the new player experience and leveling process prepared them better for end game because it seems really overwhelming and feels like they get thrown into the fire.

This. This toon, i made it on last Season of Shadowlands. I leveled up on dungeons becoz that’s my thing. Everything was a faceroll until i did BFA dungeons. I was surprised. The difficulty climbed like 100x harder. I am okay with it becoz i am a veteran player. But i felt that was unfair to new players. They should utilize all the tricks that ther class/specs have to beat it. I was glad though that i was able to use every utility button of this new toon.

I dont know about leveling a new toon on DF. Can you play Shadowlands dungeon with a new toon. If BFA was a bit challenging to me, Shadowlands dungeons must be nightmare for new players. I understand that new players need to experience these cruel dungeons before going to DF’s M+. But i agree that there must be a thorough tutorial first on each of the class/specs. But actually, these tutorials needed are just basics. Blizz has to do it. Not me. I dont feel good sharing my techniques. Yeah, i am selfish. ROFL. Maybe just the basics… interrupt, stun, cc one while killing the other, kite one while killing the other. Maybe, the player has to figure it out. It’s basic.

[Saithis-shandris (Saithis)]

i like that retail WoW is a skill based MMO (as far as end-game progression), which makes it interesting, and stand out from the others.

gives competitive MMO players a great option for fulfillment

[Laugh-kaelthas (Laugh)]

@Twistpriest-area-52

PVP is incredibly bursty rn and makes decision making the match harder for newer players.

You mean getting one-shot by a Ret Paladin casting Radiant Decree entirely because Mass Dispel didn’t finish casting in time is bad game design??

Haha… I hate playing Shadow Priest in Arenas/Solo Shuffle…

[Brewa-hyjal]

@Khroul-dalaran

To further increase difficulty they keep adding more convoluted mechanics that require addons to communicate to the player what needs to be done.

Can you name a single mechanic in Dragonflight (or Shadowlands) that “requires addons to communicate to the player what needs to be done”?

Because I can’t think of any.

@Khroul-dalaran

Yeah… the visual cues they give on Rasz are pretty terrible. You basically have to turn your whole camera towards her and look at where she is and what direction she’s facing.

For her aerial strafe? The whole impact zone is filled with basketball-sized globes of smoke, filling the air.

[Khroul-dalaran]

Sure –

Every time I get into a dungeon and someone isn’t running DBM, and thundering procs, if they don’t have a big chat bubble over their head showing which mark they have the entire dungeon is a nightmare.

Playing without some kind of nameplates is pretty much a nightmare to try and determine who you have threat on if you’re tanking.

Trying to track debuffs/buffs in this game without weakauras would be a nightmare.

Not getting some kind of alert when pretty much any mechanic is about to happen would make most mechanics lethal. Trying to stop and read every cast bar to determine which spells are critical to interrupt/making sure you can even see an important cast bar to make sure you can interrupt it.

I mean if you removed Weak Auras, Plater and DBM from this game, I bet most people would not be able to do most of the content they are currently doing.

Also – those basketball size spheres that shoot across the platform do not clearly show you where not to stand… it’s visual vomit covering the entire field of play. It tells me I know something is coming, but I still can’t tell where it’s coming from exactly until I actually find raz in the sky and see the direction she’s looking. Sometimes those balls seem to go right through the adds and we’re still safe to just stand there and keep DPSing while she breaths across a different part of the platform.

[Brewa-hyjal]

@Khroul-dalaran

Every time I get into a dungeon and someone isn’t running DBM, and thundering procs, if they don’t have a big chat bubble over their head showing which mark they have the entire dungeon is a nightmare.

Thundering puts a storm cloud or a tornado over everybody’s head to show which debuff they have.

I play with chat bubbles turned off and have zero problems with Thundering.

@Khroul-dalaran

Playing without some kind of nameplates is pretty much a nightmare to try and determine who you have threat on if you’re tanking.

There’s no question that WoW’s UI is garbage but that’s a general issue that Blizzard continues to refuse to address. Their “UI revamp” in Dragonflight was a lot of hot air; I didn’t replace a single addon with the “new UI”.

But that’s not an issue of encounter design.

@Khroul-dalaran

Not getting some kind of alert when pretty much any mechanic is about to happen would make most mechanics lethal.

Examples?

@Khroul-dalaran

Also – those basketball size spheres that shoot across the platform do not clearly show you where not to stand… it’s visual vomit covering the entire field of play. It tells me I know something is coming, but I still can’t tell where it’s coming from exactly until I actually find raz in the sky and see the direction she’s looking.

She’s in the sky, targets a player, and strafes a beam centered on their location. Moving to the sides of the beam is safe. You don’t need an addon for this. In fact, lots of guilds (including mine) beat Raz just fine before addons were even out for the boss fight.

[Rayquazá-thrall]

I agree that the game is more difficult. They raised the bar for M+ for each keystone level by a certain percentage.

But LEARNING the game is not hard. Learning how to play at a high level for that end game content is difficult but guess what… IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE.

Even for new players doing like less than a 10 level keystone is completely just face roll so learning in that level is extremely easy until they are ready for that next level is an easy task. Nothing quite like learning tho than being thrown into tje deep end thats for sure lol

And on top of that i LOVE new players and would juat give them all the help and carries i could. Everybody started somewhere i was super new at a time and ended up finding a really fun helpful guild so i always try to pay that forward. And im not the only one who feels that way so jjst keep that in mind.

[Merpish-sargeras]

@Twistpriest-area-52

“the game is too easy now the real challenge was back in the good old days”

no one serious is saying this.

[Xenna-bloodhoof (Xenna)]

The only challenge back in the good old days was scheduling 40 people regularly.

the content itself was laughable compared to VotI

[Falohar-dalaran]

@Lexapro-moon-guard

if u do any kind of research whatsoever

Don’t ya know the first thing I think when I download a game is “Where can I go to get an associates degree in how to play it?!? YEA!!!”

[Brewa-hyjal]

You sound like one of those “but nobody TOLD ME to not stand in the dragon’s lightning breath cone - why doesn’t the game TELL ME not to stand in it” people.

[anon66342225]

honestly, it was easy to get really high in rating for Shadowlands S4, but now that everybody has similar gear, I find my ego being absolutely crippled.

[Khroul-dalaran]

I was in a key the other day with a guy not running DBM and every time thundering went off, that guy would end up getting someone stunned because he wasn’t paying attention to it, and nobody else could find him. The giant chat box with an X or Square is mandatory imo for finding your thundering buddy. I don’t play with friendly nameplates on so I can focus on enemy nameplates. If I had both on I’d be accidentally clicking on them / they’d be cluttering the screen most of the time.

The UI displaying important information to the player is part of encounter design though. Personally I’m highly reliant on GTFO / DBM to make sure I’m not standing in things, because there is so much visual clutter in the game that it’s very easy to be standing in something and not realize it. Floor effects are almost always a very similar color to the ground you’re standing on. Even when they aren’t the edges of the floor effects are frequently a gradient transparency so it’s hard to tell where the edge of the ability really is and where your own hitbox begins. It’s super easy to get clipped by things because it wasn’t clear where you couldn’t stand.

So most of the time it’s manageable right, like… your basic “don’t stand in the fire” “interrupt the spells” and “stand in the soak symbol” is a good chunk of the mechanics. When I say overwhelm players with mechanics-- I mean quantity generally. Like Nokhud is a good example. You’re in a grassy area, mobs are doing big green semi transparent wooshy things on the floor near mobs you need to interrupt – It’s pretty important to get those interrupts you’re not able to get to… while also having to find your friend you need to clear thundering with… and then you have to find your white ghost body, while birds are doing the huge white semi transparent cone attacks, while also having to kill explosives all at the same time, and only having a couple seconds to do all of those mechanics at once.

Or in RLP where there pats everywhere on the upper ring, mobs that have to be interrupted, swirlies not to stand in, you have to find your buddy to clear thundering with and maybe they’ve got the fire bomb on them so you can’t go near them… etc etc.

It’s just an overwhelming number of things that all need to be done simultaneously – while also tracking all of your buffs/debuffs to try and maximize your own damage output. Like trying to do that while looking up at your buff bars and tab targeting through all the mobs to check your dots, checking whats coming off CD for/how many Cps you have… hoping the mob isn’t too tall for you to see their cast bar on their nameplate…

None of those things are hard on their own… it’s only difficult cause they’re trying to overwhelm you – and that’s less difficult and more in the frustrating category… and it’s compounded when you’re getting hit by things that are hard to see.

But they’re okay with making things hard to see, cause most people run addons that tell them when they’re standing in things they can’t see… and they don’t need to read all the tootlips on their buffs / constantly look at their action bars, cause they’ve got a nice weakaura that shows them what they need to know in a very visible spot.

It’s like… not one specific thing… its like death by a thousand cuts from all these little things that are piling up.

[Brewa-hyjal]

@Khroul-dalaran

The giant chat box with an X or Square is mandatory imo for finding your thundering buddy.

No, just look at the graphic over your head and the graphic over the other players’ heads.

@Khroul-dalaran

Personally I’m highly reliant on GTFO / DBM

Maybe this is the problem, if you can’t even see large graphics floating over the players. /shrug

[Khroul-dalaran]

Trying to find a goblin with a lil white tornado flashing around on them in the middle of a pack of mobs is not as it sounds.

They aren’t large graphics, they’re relative to the character size. Chat bubbles are visible through mobs. Encounters should be designed with the understanding that not everyone has eagle vision – and not having eagle vision shouldn’t be a metric that the game punishes you for.

I mean – The trees in Jade Temple and Court of Stars. Raszageths wings covering the swirlies on the floor. Blizzard doesn’t design encounters so that players can clearly see things, and they do it on purpose. Creating difficulty by making things that aren’t high visibility is pretty awful game design no matter how you slice it.

I mean look at Halls of Infusion’s last boss. Blue floor, semi transparent swirly blue boss, semi transparent blue swirlies on the floor, and semi transparent blue swirly balls that slowly expand and float through the boss towards players… and those balls hit SUPER hard when the dungeon was ilvl appropriate. There is nothing redeemable about that fight. The boss even knocks the tank away, and will swap targets to nearby melee.

Everything about that encounter is just horribly designed – and most of it is just hard to see.

[Brewa-hyjal]

@Khroul-dalaran

Trying to find a goblin with a lil white tornado flashing around on them in the middle of a pack of mobs is not as it sounds.

In my experience, the whole group either comes together right as the debuffs are about to explode (in which case everybody clears each other anyway), or the ranged/healers, who will identify if both of the same buff are at ranged, will move in when it’s convenient before the explosion happens.

Or the melee can do that job when it’s better. Like on Hyrja golden phase, I back out a little anyway, so if Thundering goes out, I look left and right “what do I have - what do they have” and will go clear if appropriate since I’m not doing anything for a few seconds anyway.

Anyway, you don’t need chat bubbles or marks or anything of the sort to deal with Thundering. In fact, I think they would be a detriment.

[Xenna-bloodhoof (Xenna)]

Since the thundering nerf to tanks, it’s down to 1 person clearing honestly