True, I had meant to imply that without any evidence aside from “what I experienced” we dont have much to go on, but I see I could have worded it to make the position more clear.
So to put it better, without any hard evidence either way, I feel like this is a generally exaggerated claim. I think Cata caught a lot of (unfair) flak for being a much tougher expansion than Wrath was, and was further demonized due to content drought at the end of it. I believe it gives an unfair ‘brown colored glasses’ effect. To be fair, I was on the opposite end, loving Cata and hating Wrath, so in fairness that could be me getting a rose colored tint as well.
I’d argue the badge system is nice, because at least you always move toward getting a useful piece of loot while the dungeons are relevant, which becomes more helpful as you need more and more specific slots for gear. I don’t think it loses relevance with personal loot, as it still doesn’t change the chances to get loot that’s actually needed by the player. I think it would have been immensely helpful this expansion as well given how important it was to make sure you upgraded the Helm, Chest and Shoulder slots.
I also believe that CC’ing mobs being beneficial, as apposed to detrimental (which as it will slow down pulls without decreasing difficulty at this point, is how it is) is a lot more engaging. In fairness, the Cata model would be obsolete at this point, since Heroic Dungeons no longer occupy the same role that they did, but it would be refreshing to my opinion if went for a more modern version of it, so to speak. I don’t think it would meet the same level of toxicity some may have seen, since I believe there seems to be a lot less toxicity in general now (I think the gamming community as a whole is simply becoming less tolerant of jerks, forcing them to only hang in their on clicks of jerks). Cata’s difficulty was also a very steep step in direct comparison to all but 2 or 3 dungeons in all of wraith, so I’m sure if was jarring for many.
the industry is being manipulated by corporates in order to make more money, the are trying to develop the cheapest and the fastest with the biggest gain, blizzard was not like that before, there would always be delays due to polishing being left to do.
the current blizz owners are the same guys who made candy crush and call of duty, dont be so blind man.
If they had done that, the “baseline quality of player” would have gone up as you weeded out the overwhelming majority of players, turning the game from the biggest in the genre to a tiny game with a cult following.
When the game is designed around aoe, people use aoe to mow down those trash packs. Designing the game around aoe cap means it will have to be designed differently.
Pulling one mob at a time in Freehold is definitely doing it wrong. The entire dungeon was designed to be a series of aoe smashes.
I have to disagree, since CC still exists, in a different form. As a hunter, I now interrupt, tranq/pet dispell, slow, stun, and I find that I do it more now than before when it was just, one sheep one trap. If someone breaks the trap its a wipe, and that wasn’t fun tbh. I feel like I have more control than before in the outcome of a pull. I also don’t have a lot of time to slow play dungeons with how my time is now vs back then when the game first came out, you’re asking to cut 2-3 dungeons down to 1. BTW you can’t ask for “more variety” AND “deterministic loot” at the same time. Deterministic also makes it more boring. I accept that if some basic loot is deterministic to get you up to speed, that would be ok, but as it stands, if I got my dice drop the first run, i’d probably never run it again (which I didn’t on my last character). If you’re asking for a more slow paced game, or the old ways, I think the real solution is, to play classic. In fact it would be interesting to let classic evolve into a separate expansion path, that kept classic features specifically for this divide. You can make it slow and hard, and the loot more deterministic. Or it has to be fast paced and variable. The CC is definitely still there, if you don’t manage a CC right, and miss a stun that could be a wipe in high M+.
How do you learn when you go through a dungeon so fast you leave it not knowing what even happened? How do you learn when you don’t have time to even use most of your abilities because they are very trivial that requires little effort or thought and just AoE fests?
I’m not trying to be a jerk by saying that and I respect your opinion, but I don’t understand how anyone can learn in that type of environment.
I know what I learn from them. Go as fast as you can, hope to even get on the damage meters to avoid being kicked and hope you even have time to pick up loot. Good luck even picking up quests. By the time you click your mouse as fast as possible at the various NPC’s the party is long gone. I honestly hate how they are now.
Cata heroic were never that hard, the issue is that they were in the random queue so you just got bad players. We can see the same thing happening in LFR when bosses have 1 actual mechanic, mythic 0(on release) is on par with cata heroics.
There was no need to cc either, you could easily pull the whole pack and do the same as m+. Nobody was using sheep/trap, at least not anyone competent that knew how to interrupt/stun.
I personally think Cata had the worst dungeons and zones in the games history, but I will say this in support of what you said.
Cata dungeons were made harder simply because Blizzard destroyed healing at the same time they tried to make dungeons harder and DPS never learned until a LOT of deaths.
I was primarily a healer in Cata, while having tanked and healed since BC launched. Healing was never worse than at that time because tanks still wanted to group up and AOE and so did DPS. This lead to WTF Healer, Y U no heal?
Queue Captain Grimm video The Struggles of a Healer
If you haven’t read this yet, you might find it interesting.
Here is an excerpt from one of the past lead devs in an interview recently on Wowhead, Ghostcrawler. This is what he had to say about this topic.
“When responding to concerns that all dungeons, not just leveling dungeons, are AoE fests, Ghostcrawler expressed regret that he may have contributed to this problem by Wrath encouraging players to run dungeons long after they outgeared them.”
@DASgut Is that just where we are in the expansion though? I’ll definitely take some of the blame for too much AE. We asked players to run the LK dungeons far after they provided any challenge, and then it was hard to ever go back."
Here is the link to the article:
So they messed up, knew they messed up and it was too late to go back. I feel this is where we are now in this game. They took a wrong turn long ago and they have went too far to just go back.
They did make a change. You can only do aoe damage to 8 mobs at a time now. Lots of people are unhappy about it though. Personally, I think ti’s a great change. Forget CC in dungeons though. They should make that something for raids.
They seem to have a lot of ideas about what should have happened, but less of a grasp of the possible ramifications if they had done things differently.
People ran heroic dungeons after they were geared because it was entertaining. It doesn’t how many times Ion tells us it’s not fun to smash stuff. The playerbase disagrees.
If you take away people’s fun content and give them nothing to do, they’ll get bored and leave. Giving them something that’s not fun and trying to force them to do it is what current development is based on.
The idea that changing content drastically will have no effect on the playerbase in any way is kind of weird. When the game stops being fun, people start leaving.
The fact that Ghostcrawler is saying this merely shows how long it has been that devs have had no respect for players as people who expect to find this entertainment product entertaining.
I love Captain Grimm animations, but healing wasn’t intrinsically wrong in cata - the issue was the community failing to learn basic concepts as you stated in your post. I’m posting on a mage, but Disc was my main in Cata, and it was the first time I ever mained healing period. Perhaps I was just lucky and my server was better off than most, but if folks didn’t go bananas on the pulls, the instance went smoothly.
no matter how much we (the players) keep saying these things, they don’t listen anymore. It’s activision blizzard now. not blizzard as you remember.
It’s all about transmog, pets, and any other form of microtransactions you can think of. Retail failed when more people were interested in dueling pets then dualing each other, transmogging gear to look cool instead of taking the walk of shame with those ugly shoulder pads until you earned your place to have your shoulders, etc. Whats the point of playing retail, maxing a toon, obtaining gear that looks weirdly cool (but the same as every other set before it) then transmogging it to something else? It defeats the purpose of obtaining gear. Activision blizzard should just make gear that’s a blank grey model…all sense of pride over your toon has been lost. All sense of “My toon is different, playability wise, and looks wise” is gone. Go look at instagram and look up anything wow related, it’s a bunch of GW2 gamers who only care about their 10th maxed toons transmog set that season…
