SV in Shadowlands

Classes Hunter
83

They’ve had years of meaningful input, including tons of it that they were given in the Legion Alpha and Beta back when they could have changed something to avoid this whole mess. Unless of course by ‘meaningful input’ you only mean input that is given alongside liberal amounts of praise to Blizzard on how great they have done and how much you love them.

How is “X sucks. Here’s the reason, and here’s the data that supports it. Here is how you can easily fix X without upsetting anyone.” not meaningful input?

No, Blizzard doesn’t respond to meaningful input. They respond to loud input. They do this because the general playerbase is exposed to loud input, not quiet input. All those prim and proper posts giving significant amount of effort to communicate to Blizzard where they could improve the game, while maintaining an air of excessive respect and adoration for Blizzard, that fall off the first page with 1 or 2 comments, don’t work. What matters is what is loud and what is debated/discussed often. Anyone who thinks otherwise is incredibly naive.

This of course isn’t to say that these loud discussions can’t give meaningful input, as that is what they’ve been doing for years.

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84

If what you say were true, then explain SV going to melee in the first place. You’ve spent the last few weeks on a crusade on these forums, telling people repeatedly that they’re wrong about people wanting melee SV. And I certainly don’t recall a loud playerbase asking for melee. Sure there were some, but not like this. You can’t have it both ways.

As far as data, you don’t have data. No one except maybe Blizzard really has the data, and that’s only if you believe they can actually determine why people switched classes and/or left. What you really have is several people using worldgraphs data in order to make assumptions that fit their respective narrative.

85

What are you talking about? Melee SV was a result of Blizzard’s new ‘vision’. They ignored all the negative feedback it accrued in Legion Alpha, so they didn’t care what the players were actually saying. It wasn’t a result of listening to player feedback, rather it was the opposite.

Are you Darkeforge’s alt or something? We have all the data we need to determine that Hunters faced a huge loss of players since the end of WoD. It’s not an ‘assumption’ to then interpret that data; its called logic and deduction. If lots of Hunter players left the Hunter class, way more than players left other classes, then we can deduce that something happened to the Hunter class that didn’t happen to the other classes. Then, lo and behold, there is something very significant that happened to Hunters that didn’t happen to other classes: one of their specs was deleted.

The reasoning here is very straight forward. Deleting a spec would cause people to leave the class. The is the most logical conclusion we can draw.

The only reason people like you and Darkeforge insist that we, as humans, are completely incapable of deducing anything from the data, is because there is no possible deduction that benefits your agenda. There is no way to interpret the data that we have that doesn’t reflect badly on the deletion of ranged SV.

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86

What I don’t understand about all this bickering back and forth is that Blizzard at the end of the day, does what they want. If THEY decided to make hunters ALL melee instead of having any ranged, people would still play hunter. The people that don’t like it because the world is over, will either quit or play a new character.

Meaningful input is great, and it can sway their decisions, but people seem to think they are entitled to something because that’s how it used to be. It’s been years, things change…

I LOVED WoTLK DK, do I still play DK even though I hate how Unholy plays? Yes i do. Because I enjoy this game, and my favorite specs changing isn’t enough to make (me) quit. I do hope you guys get what you want, and RSV is added as a fourth spec, but if it doesn’t happen will you just continue your crusade for years to come?

Sometimes you’ve got to just move on…

Kinda like the 2H enhance people don’t want to do either. I loved 2H enhance and would love to see it back, but it’s been gone from the game for soooo long. I doubt blizz will ever bring it back, but let’s hope they do :stuck_out_tongue: And yes, I still love and play my enhance.

At the end of the day this is a game, if you’re not enjoying it anymore then maybe you’ve outgrown the game?

(Edited for grammar)

87

I am playing Classic WoW at the moment (so clearly I haven’t outgrown the game), and I’ve been watching changes to retail ever since I quit in mid-Legion. I’ll watch and wait until I get tired of watching and waiting. Until then I will post on these forums about how to resolve the huge issues that caused me to leave, so long as I have the will to do so, and apparently that means Hunter haters will continue to prowl the forums deriding anyone who does so for no reason.

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88

I don’t hope to derail anyone, and trust me I understand where you’re coming from. There are lots of things I want for the classes I love, hell i want enhance shamans to go back to the WOD version, it was my favorite.

All I’m saying (and it’s not just you) is that people spend countless hours arguing about things that make no difference moving forward. I just want the hunter class to improve in general. I sadly don’t find current MM fun, BM (to me) isn’t fun either but I play it because it’s good. I do enjoy SV but there are changes I would like as well.

I think making posts about what you remember, miss and enjoy about a class is fine. But endless bickering in MULTIPLE threads about SV hunter specifically, especially when they aren’t talking about RSV, should be avoided.

All too often I see threads asking for help with SV, or asking why people enjoy it, and they just get derailed with “BRING BACK RSV”. That’s all I am trying to say. There’s nothing wrong with expressing your opinion, but turning every SV post into an RSV post isn’t the right answer either. There are some people that enjoy SV and want help with the spec, and they should be able to get help instead of just receiving comments about the “old” SV.

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89

I only engage in discussion about ranged SV if the discussion is already taking place in a thread. That said, the people that insult and deride everyone for wanting to bring back ranged SV do so regardless of the threads they are posted in, and they even bring up the ranged vs melee SV discussion in threads that aren’t about ranged SV. Darkeforge the other day incited that very discussion in a thread about melee SV, and then proceeded to deride anyone who commented that they want it returned.

Also, while I also don’t find current MM or BM as fun as they used to be like in Cata and especially MoP, they are still at least MM and BM. They still have the majority of their iconic abilities and still play like they used to play, even if the rotations aren’t as engaging. But Survival just straight doesn’t exist anymore.

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90

Nothing wrong voicing what people want back, ww brew can pick 1h or 2h now and frost got 2h back. Just cause something seems impossible, to give up on something your passion for isnt way to be.

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91

Because you’re so angry and bitter, you missed the entire point. You said the loud, squeaky wheel gets the action as justification for what you’ve been doing on the forums for the past several weeks. What I’m saying, there wasn’t this huge uproar on the forums for them to implement melee SV, but they did it anyway.

Basically, you’re wrong.

By the way, I liked RSV, so I don’t have an agenda. But attacking me shows you certainly do.

92

Wasn’t Survival as Ranged like… always overshadowed by Marksman and Beast Mastery though?

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93

Not really. It was just so easy to jump between specs that all it took was activating your dual specialization button.

94

Simply put.

They did not change SV because of feedback towards players wanting a melee-spec.

They changed it because of their vision for the class, no matter what current players thought of it.

The point here is that they lost more hunters than they gained from this change.
And more specifically, those who became SV Hunters as a result of the change to melee, most of those are rerolls of other classes. Not new players. So, few new subs came from a big investment.

Did you say the same thing to those who asked for Vanilla WoW to come back?

Those who kept at it for more than a decade?

That is very much the goal with the RSV-feedback.

The arguments? It’s just the result of varying opinions.
Doesn’t change what the purpose is of providing feedback.

Nope.

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95

I actually never read, or commented in any Vanilla classic forum. I had memories of Vanilla, and played Classic upon it’s release. But it’ll never be the same as it was the first time I played, when i was a pleb and didn’t know anything about the game.

TL:DR, no I never told anyone anything about Classic WoW.

96

How do we factually know any of this information is accurate?

  1. You don’t know that SV hunters are re-rolls.
  2. How do you know new players don’t play SV?
  3. Most of their sub losses probably weren’t because SV lost range capability, but we’ll never know. I remember everyone complaining about content droughts in wow, and that’s why my friends stopped playing after they hit 2k in arenas. They simply had nothing else they wanted to do. It definitely (for them) wasn’t because of hunter changes going into Legion.

Now I understand some people stopped playing hunter due to the RSV loss, but if you really like the game, losing ONE spec isn’t going to stop you from playing.

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97

My entire point was they didn’t change it due to player feedback, or “loud noise on the forums.” So you’re basically agreeing with me and the point I made to Spinner that being the loud squeaky wheel isn’t why Blizzard changes things.

98

Make it melee or make it ranged. Pick one but not both

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99

Both is good, makes it even more unique compared to other class.

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100

If by unique, you mean bad. Then yes

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101

Why is this such a difficult concept to understand? Not all of Blizzard’s changes to the game are to satisfy player feedback, requests and desires. The position you are currently taking is that literally all changes that WoW has ever gone through has been the exclusive result of Blizzard doing what the players told them to do, which is frankly ludicrous. Anyone whose been playing WoW for any length of time can tell you that that is incorrect.

No, when they make changes in response to player feedback, then the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Here are the sources for the relevant data (the first is June 2016, during WoD, and the second is now):

https://web.archive.org/web/20160614185245/http://www.worldofwargraphs.com/global-stats/classes

https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/global-stats/classes

Hunters dropped like a rock in representation. Way way more than all other classes. This means we can deduce that it was a result of something or some things that involved the Hunter class specifically and not WoW as a whole or IRL events/circumstances. What has changed about Hunters? Well apart from changes to BM and MM that are also typically criticized, SV being deleted and replaced with a melee spec was the biggest change, and as Blizzard stated is the biggest change to a class in WoW’s history. If most of this loss was due to MM and BM, then we should expect other classes that were dissatisfied with their class/spec changes to lose a lot more like Hunters as well, but they didn’t. It was Hunters who lost a ton of players, going down 4.1% in total representation, with the next closest being DKs going down 1.6%.

Because of this we can conclude that the disparity in player loss for Hunters was very likely first and foremost due to the deletion of ranged SV and its replacement with melee SV. At the very very least, the dissatisfaction with the class changes in general, that were headed by the deletion of ranged SV, caused such a loss. Furthermore, this wasn’t just a loss that occurred going into Legion, as the Hunter playerbase numbers continue to drop, even as more people allegedly pick up Hunter because they ‘like melee SV’. It is very clear that Blizzard did something to Hunters to cause the Hunter playerbase to lose a ton of players, and that something just so happens to align perfectly with the deletion of Survival. This isn’t rocket science.

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102

Fair enough. Though that wasn’t my point.

When, at any point in the game’s history(other than the launch of original Vanilla WoW), would you say was a point where the addition of a new class and/or spec, where that saw more new subs as a result compared to existing players that re-rolled to it?

I wasn’t stating a fact above, as obviously, it cannot be proven with 100% certainty(by us).
But you tell me, what would the most likely outcome have been?

Never said this.

When the playstyle of that spec is unlike anything else in the game since it’s removal, yes, it very much has the potential to cause players to stop playing the game.

It depends entirely on how much the individuals liked that particular playstyle.

On that part specifically, I agree with you yes.

Here, it depends on the situation.

In the case of SV, they did not change it because of forum-feedback(towards the desire of a melee-spec).

But most times where they do go back on certain changes that were made, they do so because of the vocal majority(feedback).

In the case of SV, it wasn’t so much about going back as it was just…going for something entirely different. Something within their vision.

Heck, if they had actually listened to the select feedback given regarding how “hunter specs were too similar in MoP/WoD” then they would’ve found a way to further distinguish between MM and RSV rather than completely removing RSV.

As you said, pretty much no one was providing feedback of how they wanted SV to be turned into a melee spec.
I would like to leave out the “pretty much” as well as I can’t recall a single post being made at the time in regards to such suggestions, but since I did not read every post in every forum/sub forum or other platforms, that’ll do for this.

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