Punch card nerf?

Community General Discussion
43

You convinced me.

Okay. So lets take a look at the very, very most basic mathmatics behind QA testing.

First, we will assume that WoW is big enough to have the largest QA division in the history of software with 10,000 full-time QA testers working around the clock in wall-to-wall, crunch-time, 24-hour shifts. These people are immortal robots with zero need to ever eat or sleep, and they never, ever goof off.

Assuming RoA took six full months to develop with the last 4 months devoted to QA testing it and nothing else (also would never happen).

10,000 testers x 4 months x 30 days (average) x 24 hours = 28,800,000 hours of testing.

Now, to support this kind of a QA department we’ve got the WoW playerbase. We’ll call us 4-6 million strong, all putting in a “modest” 10-16 hours per week of play-time (that’s 2 hours a day, 4 days a week M-F + 4 hours of raid/M+/PvP Sat, Sun, or both. Not an out of the question schedule). Players who fall short of that playtime are made up for by players who basically play the game like it’s a part or full-time job. To compensate down, we’ll calculate based on the minimum of 4-mill which is, honestly, probably less players than what WoW currently has.

In one day the player base will put in 4,000,000 x 16/7 (16 hours a week / 7 days) = 9.15 million hours of play-time.

By Thursday (Tuesday release), the playerbase will be nearly even with our fictional division of super-human QA testers who have had a four month head start, not taking any kind of play-time spike for new release hype into account.

By EoB Friday, the player base has beat QA’s man-hours away by over 20%, and remember that no QA department is that large, or staffed by robots that never eat, sleep, take breaks, or ever sees the quality of their work decrease due to things like stress, or simple fatigue.

“Don’t they even QA this stuff?”

Yeah. They do. They QA the hell out of it. Problem is that the playerbase is going to find things simply due to scale of manpower.

QA cannot compete with the playerbase unless they equal or outnumber them. And if that’s happening, your game is an abject failure of monumental proportions.

No. You get out of here with your ignorance of how reality works.

7 Likes
44

Ya know, we use to do this thing called gearing where for some classes, items were way better for some than others. Unless it was breaking the game why did they need to make this change?

45

So a blanket “soon” statement means it used to be much better?

Blizzard has never been good at communication, and to be honest ive never thought it was a big deal.

Its a video game. Youre not in a deep meaningful relationship here.

Play game.

If not having fun, dont play game.

The end.

3 Likes
46

The problem isn’t just one or two guys in there. It’s the whole lot. There is a culture problem in Blizzard and it needs to change for the health of the game.

3 Likes
47

Punchcard? Off-topic This reminds me of the good old days of playing Pokemon on my Gameboy and in one of the buildings you had to collect a Punchcard to get thru doors to the Team Rocket boss lol.

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48

I know it’s only been 40 minutes since that post, too early to complain…but why even say the hotfix notes are coming “in a few minutes” if they aren’t?

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49

I’m not raging, I don’t need to take a walk, also I am very calm. Perhaps you should take your own advice if you think this is out of control rage. I think most people are just tired of nerfing stats for more RNG they can’t control. That is why we know this is not better. These proc’s are on every damn thing to throttle and control the player, and you’re defending it.

It’s simple, the stats were more fun than the proc, people are tired of all the RNG proc’s.

3 Likes
50

They workin on it bro give them time to have dinner first then they’ll wash their hands and get at it

51

I know, I’m just pointing out that they didn’t have to say the Hotfix notes are coming “in a few minutes”.

Why even say that if it isn’t true?

52

Have you not watched the ‘Streamers’ testing classic? They are pure bug testers amirite!!

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53

Mind having the notes ready before making such changes next time? You only vowed to improve communication eighty times, yet it’s been bad for the last few years.

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54

Remember Kaivax is just the messenger. Probably was told the hotfixes were being written up, so passed it along. Turns out the developers don’t write them up for 3 hours – that’s not on Kaivax.

55

Ah cool I was wondering why my 424 titanforged yellow card is suddenly worse than anything else in the game ever.

Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool.

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56

The first thing I did when I got home was look for the list of hotfixes but the pinned post hasn’t been updated yet. I’m really disappointed that these changes weren’t communicated sooner.

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57

And that part is valid. But I was arguing the outrage over the PTR bs, while agreeing with the craptastic communication. That’s all.

But you didn’t have to get nasty over it the way you did towards me with such insults-- especially when we weren’t apparently even talking about the same stuff. Next time, try being a bit less hostile.

The lack of communication beforehand and more RNG are crap. I agree.

This whole game is nothing but an RNG fest now with no one telling us anything that happens before they do it.

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58

Nah, people would still qq about it, or the outrage would be shifted to something else.

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59

How do you know that it wasn’t?
Blizzard obviously decided that the itemization was too heavily favoured on the yellow punch card compared to the red, I’d imagine as more players on Live would potentially be running around with a card with only one or the other for a little if they weren’t as well geared it would be more noticeable.

If the trinket was giving 80% benefit from the yellow and only 20% from the red would you not think that was an issue worth addressing?

60

I’m just speculating here as I haven’t tested it, but they said they buffed the red ones and nerfed the yellow ones. I know when the red one triggered it gives an amount of stats too. Something like 220 to the two stats that are on your logic board when it redistributes the rest. Maybe they buffed the base amount up some. That’s how it could be a net neutral change if your cards were the same ilvl.

61

The problem there means that some red cards will have a greater overall impact than others making the change have the unintended consequence of negatively impacting some and not others.

Say I had a 404ilvl haste red proc card and a 424 yellow card as a tank I would much rather have a static bonus of 354 versatility than the unreliable proc for a haste bonus.

62

Adjusting the proc stats doesn’t improve the trinket or even make the nerf neutral unless you are talking about PvE boss fights. That’s only if their calculations are correct(considering it slipped through anyways makes that doubtful). In any other situation, the trinket is now trash.