I am seeing a lot of posts on here about people worried about add-ons in general,
Let’s talk about it in a more factual stance, There was a video last month with Ion, Max, and Dratnos. You may remember it because it was 40+ minutes in length. I am seeing people worried and not really relaying any of the information the game director spoke about in the video. The whole point of the video was to show their philosophy of Combat Add-ons shifting to an in game design and changing their encounter design.
I will sum up most points people didn’t either see or comprehend what the video was about,
Ion Hazzikostas spoke about Combat Add-ons specifically (Weak Auras, DBM, BigWigs,etc), not cosmetics ones.
They spoke on improving the Cooldown Manager from it’s current state
Ion brings up an example of Outlaw rogues managing their buffs (roll the bones) to test their players being a bad design of gameplay meaning that type of modifier tracking gameplay needs to be improved or possibly changed.
An in game real time damage meter (better than details)
Allowing the bells and whistles (audio queues to be in game).
Encounter Design being changed from avoidance mechanics.
Less kicks and more visual representation of enemy casts for kicks.
One button rotation being a LEARNING tool, not a primary rotation. (It has a 0.3 penalty to globals).
Better Visuals in mechanics
Cosmetic Add-ons won’t be touched
Better Nameplates
This is not all of it, but these are all the talking points I see people have not done the fact checks on what’s to come with this new philosophy of what they are doing with add-ons. Going forward, I believe this shift in design is great for the game. If you think you need something to tell you what to do is what is problematic because it is making the encounter design from blizzard less forgiving for players simply because they have to design around these combat add-ons. To add onto this, I’d like to say avoidance based mechanics have become a normal thanks to the extra challenge of combat add-ons.
Personally I welcome this change simply because this allows some cool ideas for fights to come because there’s so many fights in other games they could take notes on. I like to think of Crota’s End in Destiny 1 where the mechanics were just simply add control, and killing a Sword Bearer and grabbing the sword after you get Crota (the boss) to kneel in his vulnerable phase. While in an environment like this I’d like to picture a fight like this in WoW where you have a vulnerable phase like that it would be easy to say “LUST or HERO” in a scenario like this making it organic and coordinated with your raid without silence and just Weak Auras to notify you or give you a task.
It’s not really the same, you misunderstood my point here, it’s seeing the vulnerable phase than a numeric value. The bikes do help but the boss encounter isn’t telling you in real time is the difference. Yeah you see the bikes and dps them down and mount them but my argument is actually seeing the boss visually shut down or kneel in this kind of instance.
It does. The phase is literally called Mechanical Breakdown. The boss sits there recharging and taking increased damage until the protective platings that you removed are restored. This is explained in three ways: by looking at the boss, by checking the boss’s buffs, and by looking at the encounter in the Adventure Guide.
Also weakauras do absolutely nothing in that fight.
Okay so one fight, wow. Look at all the avoidance mechanics later on in the raid where you need tech support to do Stix, Sprocket, and so forth.
Listen, my whole point of this post was to recap the factual statements no one paid any attention to of what they talked about in terms of combat add-ons.
Sludgefist would crumple for 12 seconds and take increased damage after guiding his charge into a pillar. Altimor took increased damage after killing gargons. I’m sure there are plenty of others, this is a pretty commonly used mechanic.
I’m not asking for every fight. I had imagined a scenario of a more Visual representation of what the bosses can do with their model so you can see what the boss is going to do. I compared an example of an imaginary organic way of boss design. You can label all the bosses you want. I am simply personally stating my own idea. I am not Blizzard. I am just wanting to see boss Animations for specific mechanics. Does that make sense now?
The bosses I mentioned literally already do that. Either by animations in the form of Vexie and Sludgefist or by voice lines in the case of Altimor. What you’re asking for already exists.
The bosses I mentioned literally already do that. Either by animations in the form of Vexie and Sludgefist or by voice lines in the case of Altimor. What you’re asking for already exists.
Now reread that, I am not the design encounter. What are you getting at? I had my own idea of what could happen. Doesn’t mean I am going to be the developer that does it. You just want to argue points that make it seem Blizzard doesn’t have a solution. Be optimistic it may surprise you.
You aren’t getting the message nor read the first post. I said “take notes from other games”. They could make animations like Dark Souls for specific combos for tanks and a wide array of abilities to make it more visually presented. I can tell you don’t want to believe that could be in wow because you want to be correct.
I read it. Your “message” is that bosses should have more visual animations, then proceeded to give an example of something that was already in the game.
looking at the bosses buffs is the issue I have, like just make it damn obvious so I don’t have to look at a tiny square or heavily modify a nameplate addon to include that but not an array of “noise” buffs in other situations, …
reduce clutter, articulate key points better, WoW is very fast paced, and the reliance on outside sources to comprehend a very minute, albeit, important detail is absurd.
Audible cues do wonders, Blizzard should make in game nameplates more customizable and just ban 3rd party stuff. However for that portion to be worth it, they have a long way to go to decide what is actually important on nameplates and what should honestly be removed or streamlined to be the same for everyone.
PvP nameplates should have no appearance from behind walls and large objects, their range should be greatly reduced and you should not be able to see cooldown timers on your targets.
Key word “Organic” no notifications, not knowing. Simply just watching and learning what the pattern is. They may exist but what will you do once you could be wrong and notice they could shift into a more realistic boss fight. That is all if you still don’t understand that I don’t know how to get that through to you.
Everything is explained in the in-game adventure guide. Most, if not all, abilities are telegraphed with an animation or voice line. Read about the fight in the adventure guide, do the fight a couple times, and that should be all you need.
Huh? If you’re implying Blizzard should move away from timers and randomize boss abilities, that’s an awful idea. This isn’t Dark Souls like you mentioned. Set timers and abilities at certain points of the fight are required for balancing group play, especially considering the classes and specs that need to ramp into their damage or healing burst windows.
I feel I need more info on this. I’ve played since vanilla, because my sons were playing, and I wanted to check the environment. I only use 1 add-on currently (it makes annoying sounds when i stupidly stand in fire) and in the past have used a bar manager, (btw bliz, (ol buddy ol pal - can I have 1 more bar please, i need for pvp bumps, etc,) yet my best friend uses soooo many. I’ve never cared. but add-on features have been added to the game. Someone created that add-on, do they get compensated? Are there legal actions over some of these “abilities”, since Bliz can say they wanted to include them, but people demanded a release? I really want to know