Oh, you’d be wrong.
I’m genuinely not sure how to make every boss intuitive on its face without them quickly becoming reskins with barely differentiable mechanics very quickly. Especially since the way to add difficulty to that scenario is “can you stand on this one pixel within a split second or die.”
Could it be better, sure. Does it have to be radically simplified, no. WoW can be a game where the fights are more complex and require some study as part of the engagement in learning and beating them. If that’s not for you then raid/m+ prog doesn’t have to be for you because that’s kind of what it is on the tin.
You’re also welcome to make friends in a multiplayer game to learn the fights with, together. The idea that a fight should be beatable by a group of people who have never seen it before, skipped its easier difficulties, looked up nothing, and have never played together is kind of outside the pale of what WoW can offer.
And 99% of the people commenting on fight difficulty in the past 50 posts can just do an easier difficulty of the fight. Those exist. You can choose the level of difficulty you enjoy and stick with it. “I zoned into a +7 and died never did the fight before and didn’t read a thing how is that fair.” Come on.
If you jump down the stairs don’t complain about a broken leg when you skipped the steps.
Now where’s another cloud I can yell at.
Overwhelming - no. Learning curve - yes, which requires time and when you think of the average WoW player’s age, they don’t have much time - work, family, etc. We want to go in straight away and kill some bosses but if the fights are just sit and hit, we get bored quickly, so it’s hard to find the balance between complexity and simplicity. Can’t put restrictions and expect something out of those restrictions.
There’s a difference between identifying a mechanic, devising a strategy and executing successfully, and deciphering exactly how a mechanic works by repeated trial and error so you can eventually try and mimic someone else’s convoluted 72-step, weakaura-driven dance routine.
I don’t know exactly what steps lead to their complacency, but it seems their engine limited their ability to match spells to visuals so drastically that they didn’t properly try and have just relied on the journal to tell us the behavior of spells.
Imagine having to tell us if damage is fall off or otherwise. Imagine being incapable of dreaming up a way to relay that information clearly and concisely with visual cues. Worse yet, imagine not even trying, just writing a developer note into the game and calling it a guide. In fairness the guide is very useful and presented well enough, I just wish it wasn’t necessary.
There are pictures in the dungeon journal because some of the mobs and their visuals are so generic or indistinct that players had trouble telling who was who.
In my opinion, if their goal is to remove addons they need to massively overhaul the visual encounter language. Just as they improved the information conveyed by swirly mechanics, by clearly defining soak or avoid spells, they need to improve and unify all forms of spell visuals, including the hard ones like Throw Flesh and Ricochet, because those spells matter just as much as any spell, but are relegated to footnotes of footnotes in 3rd party nerdception content.
Yes I’m sure bosses have made some advancements in 20 years since naxx came out. Guilds also did smolderon without the weakaura and just calling them out, it was easily doable this way after the nerf to 3 orbs (you progged this version so no excuse)
I think a lot of those addons are a thing because it’s easier to read what better players have figured out than it is to figure it out for yourself.
The amount of knowledge checks are insane as if you want to do any mid-high content you really are require to be on pair. You wont be able to know what does what unless it built in the game.
I know people would share anyway its would come form players who learn the content.
I don’t think it’s any different from other MMOs or RPGs.
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: The game is built assuming you will use an external resource to learn how to play your class. The raids/dungeons are tuned assuming you will have dbm/bigwigs and/or weakauras. These things are done because 20 years in we as players normalized this behavior as standard rather than the exception, if they weren’t done the game would be too easy and cause entrenched players to become disenfranchised with it (spamming steady shot for a 3 hour raid will only keep you playing for so long).
If you are interested in what is “best” you aren’t interested in “learning.”
The first step is to learn how the game works, your class work, talents, etc.; which you do by playing with them. Blizzard cannot prevent folks from looking up stuff online, but the level one to max level is more than enough to teach you about reading your talents, abilities, and more.
This is more endgame optimization; either use your eyes, dungeon journal, check the spells that are cast on you, be observant, or look up stuff from outside of the game.
Same as above.
New players don’t install addons or aren’t supposed to. If players choose to then that’s up to them, but when folks are able to raid Mythic without addons (except potentially weakauras because of the bug boss, but that seems more like an oversight issue rather than per intentional design) then… addons aren’t required.
In short, no. None of what you mentioned here matters and the game’s “complexity” is a myth. The only people who find the game complex are players who have never read their spells, buffs, debuffs, ore quest logs. All of which new players are encouraged to do, and as for older players… you should’ve learned this at this point.
No.
The difference between a player in m+ with something like littlewigs+Causese’s weakauras + some sort of targeted spells weakaura vs one without is usually one is a corpse and one isn’t. There’s a fair few mechanics that the in game interface does basically nothing to explain is coming, and without some sort of defensive up before the damage arrives you’re just being hard carried by your healer. After healing an awful lot of dungeons this season I notice immediately the no addons players vs the addons players and I don’t believe it’s the fault of the players. Even in the best circumstances, asking people to pick that debuff icon out of the mix or guess when the mob is going to start it’s aoe blasting is a bit much I think.
People do it, and people do get carried regularly. But there’s stuff in game that starting around the 7 range start to do large chunks of your health meter, and it quickly scales to the point where not having a defensive before the damage starts is fatal. There’s also dots where you have maybe a couple seconds at most to react before it can become fatal (Dawnbreaker, Stonevault, etc) when in combination with other mechanics. They like to throw out a couple dots and then an unavoidable aoe at the same time in a few places.
All of that is a game design issue that really shouldn’t exist but it does.
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Except no. You don’t need any of that stuff. Most of it gets in the way as compared to simply learning the dungeons and what’s important to keep track of. What you are saying here is “use addons and don’t learn the game.” Precisely none of this is needed for M+ nor raiding (outside of the one exception I mentioned).
Regardless of what you are saying here though, it is irrelevant to the larger point I was making in context of the thread. You do not need a single addon to realistically play the game even at a Mythic raiding level.
Learn to play the game. Don’t use addons as a crutch.
Yes but no not everyone has the skill to do any content and it does matter for peeople and a lot of people do use addons as a crutch. A lot of people use addons for everything to help. The extra info missing to let people be the same level with addons is not helping. The game needs to be clear on what you need to do and want.
If blizz remove combat addons and outside resources. The average skill would heavy drop and would fix this problem too but its very low to happen. Addons/website are unhealthy as they allow people to skip to the experience of never doing it the first time without an guide. People need to learn as they go in thier own time not have a addon or an website saying “oh yeah just do this” or “use x than y but only z is at 9 stacks to do max damage”. Just look at sims. Most people do not need to know a item is an 0.27% better. some care but the average joe do not need to worry about that in a 8 or heroic raid.
This why retail got so messy and far form just the RPG game it was. Everything is posted and everywhere, People just think they need it to do anything in 20 year game.
Thats problem most the palyerbase is not interested in “learning”. They want to know whats the best in all times. People would rather ask thier streamer whats is best than learn it. I know they can’t stop it but they can make it clear in game.
yes, but its not optimal to go in there blind. Its not about learning anymore. you need to know a lot before even going into anything now
They are not but make the game much easier for a fact. Bosses in the past like Star Augur Etraeus mythic was insanely hard even for the best with addons. They had addons telling them where to go to match thier colors and dont touch others or its was a wipe. Thats was one bosses out of many that did needed addons to beat so saying you don’t “need” addons to play mythic or high content is saying like gonna lift weights with strips. You don’t really need them but going for heavy stuff they do improve your grip. Its not like i don’t use them but its “needed” to any content you want.
(ttps://raider.io/mythic-plus/cutoffs/season-tww-1/us)
But yet only 56.00% of mythic+ players timed a 2 in the US for season 1. Its not just the newer players. A lot of players are just playing thier way. New players ARE NOT encouraged to read anything. Look at Day9 playing wow he an new to wow retail and classic. He got overwhelm in retail. He is an gamer so he knows how to understand spells and mechs.
The complexity of wow is not an myth and addons supports that. Players are overwhelm by the knowledge checks made by other players and the game. Its shows by any data in mythic+ or raiding. Oh i almost forgot pvp it has the lowers pop out of the 3. Players are done having insane systems , having 15-30 buttons to press with multiple passives or modifiers on each spell. Wow is complex for the majority of players.
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You do need it. Which you’d know if you ever tried it. You’re not raiding mythic or doing high keys without addons. And that’s the royal “you”.
It’s always someone whose seasonal goal is KSM and AotC talking about how they “don’t need addons”. Yeah, you don’t need addons to be carried in trivial content. Get off that high horse and listen to people who’ve been there.
What is even your motivation for posting? You’re trying to argue with someone about their own experience. Did you forget it’s not 2012 anymore?
Oh my sweet summer child. If only that worked.
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It works for me. Which mechanics are you not able to see happening, this tier?
web blades lol. Its the mythic players bane on the last boss.
Web blades? They spawn counter-clockwise. Just stand clockwise of the initial line and you’re safe.
Anything else?
EDIT: And how would an addon help you with web blades, anyway? “Web blades are spawning.”? Yes, thank you, I can see them on the ground, they’re right there.
It’s always people who don’t do the content that are making these absurd claims about addons.
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Thats not even a serious question. I mean there are mechanics that aren’t even ON the boss you have to “see”. Thats not including the ones that are just a debuff you have to be aware of or when a one shot mechanic is coming and you need to prepare for them. And then there are the dozens of puddles of poop on the floor that are in terrain sometimes that makes it difficult to see then add in all the puddles your raid group drops and then the 20 people standing on top of it/etc.
Like I said, not a serious question. It’s a known issue since pretty much day one.
Like what? What’s giving you trouble?
Lower you graphics to hide other peoples’ clutter. A non-issue since day one.
You’re doing LFR and telling everyone it can’t be done without a boss mod telling you everything. I’m working on Mythic Queen and telling you it can.