You just couldn't resist it, could you Blizzard? Torghast was too good to be true, so you had to add a timer

Community General Discussion
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What a major letdown. Blizzcon was great, the interviews were great, the initial alpha feedback from torghast was great. I thought you were learning, going in the right direction and finally adding solo endgame in a format that casuals like me would love. But you just couldn’t resist and had to ruin it with a stupid timer.

Timers are one of the worst things I’ve ever encountered in any game, since I begun gaming decades ago. Every single game with a timer stage i’d completely avoid replaying and would curse my entire way thru said stage. Timers take away freedom to explore and strategize, and instead put the emphasis on elitist groups and overgeared soloers which come from mythic plus content. There was little you could do that would turn me down more than adding a timer to virtually anything but specially to the expansion defining feature.

it’s like offering me my favorite pizza in the world, and just as im about to take the first bite, sprinkle it with powdered gnome droppings.

Preorder cancelled.

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Nah, they add a timer for a reason so they dont sit in 1 spot for hours and camping the spot to climb, thats not even challenging. Probably other reasons 2 so alot will agree and disagree about it. I wouldn’t want to do that tower if no timer on it and feels like a no challenge and such easy climb like all these twitch streamer ppl are doing that they saying its just to easy.

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I’ll be honest, after looking at what happened in Alpha…these seem pretty reasonable. You basically become really REALLY crazy the further you go and the more Anima powers you acquire. ANd with many streams/gameplays I’ve seen, it seems that around the time you get to the boss, they aren’t really that challenging anymore, which defeats the whole point of the mode. So with this debuff, it adds some more challenge to it. and it resets after every boss (every 6 levels or so) So that seems pretty decent. Let’s say you get to the boss floor.

  • The first minute you go inside, you speak to the Broker dude and get more anima powers and some other minor bonuses. No stacks.
  • First minute fighting the boss, you’re going to inevitably do a crap ton of damage because you have popped cooldowns. 6 percent debuff during this time, not to mention you probably have a lot of sustain type powers along with the offensive powers.
  • second minute against the boss, 12% damage taken debuff. You’re on the ropes but the boss is probably around <60% health by the time you main cooldowns (not to mention the possibility of things akin to 2 minute bloodlust along with Ascension, not even being factored in) You’re be am bit more careful now, I’d bet. But you are still doing MAD DAMAGE to the boss.
    -Minute 3. Honestly, I’m doubtful you’ll even get to the 3 minute mark with bosses. But maybe you had less damaging traits and more sustain traits (which… are still helpful. You get to choose between making a burst down build OR a sustain, wait it out type build because you’re a bit more confident even with the debuff about keeping yourself healthy.) by this time you’re probably gonna kill the boss very very soon, so the debuff nearly doesn’t even matter any more.

Then you reset your stacks and get a new debuff and an EPIC anima power presumably, to continue on your run. The big challenges are going to be on the boss rooms, like they should. Honestly, not seeing something too horrible here. Also, it is still alpha and if they continue doing what they have been doing this alpha cycle, we will see more tuning. ALso in beta, as inevitably, this is where more number tuning comes in. Persoanally seeing nothing horrible.

Honestly, I think these are pretty good. It keeps the challenge going.

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The biggest problem with Torghast on the alpha is that as you collect anima powers, the floors actually get easier. The anima powers outscale the increased floor difficulties.

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Why not tune the stupid powers instead of adding a timer? did they even think how many people would be disgusted by it? Number tuning is hard?

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Yawn.

Maybe you need to go back and read and understand what exactly is being implemented.

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Here’s another idea in lieu of a timer:

The original purpose of the timer was to stop players from idling and waiting for their big hard-hitting abilities (I.e. Bloodlust) to come off cooldown. How about instead of timers, there could instead be a limit on the number of times big cooldown abilities could be used per floor. For example, Bloodlust could be used once, Metamorphosis (Demon Hunter transform ability) could be used twice, and 3-minute cooldown abilities such as Stampede (Hunter talent) could be used 3 times. The number of charges could be adjusted based on the size of the floor (More charges for larger floors), and you could also loot additional charges while exploring. That would solve the problem while still allowing players to explore at their own pace.

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The timer is fine.

Stop crying

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Congrats, you’ve joined the ‘overreaction club’.

The only timers that will be present in Torghast are soft timers, to ensure that players don’t feel like they have to wait around for their DPS cooldowns to be available and maybe some hard timers as part of the challenge for the higher levels.

The reason those timers will exist is because by the time you get to the higher levels, you’ve already got enough anima powers to rip through almost everything, so now they’re encouraging you to up the challenge even further by basically making it so that you have to clear the content faster.

But no, you gotta get your whinge in for stuff you don’t understand.

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So add random complexity in limiting CDs that punishes certain classes but not others is your solution?

There is nothing wrong with what is being implemented, it is only going to impact the players that are pushing content (ie: level 10 or greater), and it is not even a hard timer just making it progressively harder if you are taking too much time (either because you are waiting for CDs or just not geared enough to go much further anyways).

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Imagine having such an embarrassing meltdown over something that’s not going to matter to you. The timer is only there to prevent people cheesing with bloodlust, not to rush you. Unless you’re doing that, the only time the timer is going to bother you will be if you’re literally AFK.

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Imagine cancelling a pre-order because a fansite article used the word “timer” and you get so triggered by that, you automatically assume the alpha version of a piece of content is so set in stone, that there’s no possible way it will be changed or made better by the time the product is released, months later.

Damn, Sconce beat me to it :frowning:

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Yeah because degenerate play patterns like waiting for bloodlust every pack was great right?

Having a steadily growing soft timer that resets each floor is the ideal way of handling this problem without hard timers.

Honestly anyone who believes this to be a negative either don’t truly understand the system or are parrotting something they heard elsewhere.

If you can’t handle a 10% damage taken debuff after 10 mins when you have abilities like perma earth elemental with earthquake knocking people down, and 500% increased lava burst damage with reduced cd, and Hex that deals over 100% of a targets health over it’s duration, then a 10% damage debuff is the least of your concern.

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As someone who is on the Alpha I have no idea where this logic even comes from.

What exactly are you waiting in one spot for an hour for? At most its people waiting between pulls for something like Lust, but that’s not an hour. Even then, why does it matter if a few people choose to spend four hours in a single run?

There are plenty Rogue Like’s, in fact pretty much every Rogue Like, that do not depend on a timer to make their game work. If Blizzard can’t fix what is broken with their system without tacking on an arbitrary timer then they shouldn’t be making something like that to begin with.

This is Garrisons all over again. Blizzard coming out and going “This is our version of a Roguelike Experience in WoW!” only to absolutely flub it by getting the entire focus/experience wrong.

The difficulty should be climbing the tower, not rushing through it.

Again, having played Torghast on the Alpha there is a lot of “exploration” ideas built into each floor. Dead ends that reward you with power, breaking pottery for currency/rewards, etc. All these debuff “timers” are going to do is change it from a fun, exploitative, push as far as you can by any means possible experience into another “Go, go, go” race of run through as fast as you can.

These timers will add nothing to the experience, they will only take away from it and its all because Blizzard’s dev team is too prideful to listen to the feedback that this is a bad move.

People like to blame the BFA Alpha failings solely on not getting the content out to test in a timely manner. That is only half the story, the other half was Blizzard stubbornly sticking to their guns and ignoring the feedback that was given. The feedback people were making about “X isn’t going to work” and instead assuring people “No no, it will work out in the end!”

Its the same failed logic as current class design in the thought that “Well, classes may feel bad now but Covenant Abilities, Legendaries, etc should make them feel better!” You should never need to tack on another system to make the baseline experience good. The foundation needs to be strong and Blizzard can’t seem to see that anymore.

Instead of tacking more onto a flawed foundation the focus needs to be making a strong foundation that works on its own.

EDIT: Also, just wanted to add something to this post real fast. This is a key slide about Torghast from Blizzcon 2019.

Really interesting how much emphasis is being put on that “Its not timed” and “Take your time”. Again, having played it on Alpha I can say for a fact that the experience is built for exploration. There are a lot of side passages and backtracking involved features that adding a “timer” to only detracts from and punishes.

This experience, Torghast, will be worse off with a timer and Blizzard can not afford to stick to their stubborn prideful ways after BFA. Its time to eat crow and listen to their player base instead marching forward to another Azerite Armor/Heart of Azeroth situation.

The original plan for Torghast was better, don’t flub this now Blizzard.

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You’re wrong, I understood it. Still hate it. Timers are terrible.

Green post above mine hits the nail on the head, thank you.

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I must admit after watching the interview between Preach and Morgan Day this is one of the biggest things I was worried about.

He was talking about “waiting to see what they feel like with all the systems in place” and I was thinking, no we don’t the classes should feel good to play regardless of having legendaries and covenants or not.

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Okay, but there’s a big difference between your standard rogue-lite and what Blizzard is trying to do here, which is that by the time you get to the higher levels, you’re pretty much a god.

Now that might be very different by the time Torghast is available to everyone after Shadowlands launches, but right now according to multiple streamers, once you’ve got a certain number of Anima powers, you just shred through the tower and nothing poses a challenge.

So Blizzard seem to be upping the challenge for higher levels by slapping a timer on there and saying “Okay, you have to pull more mobs with your godlike powers otherwise you’re going to die.”

And let’s be real here, by the time you get to the point in the tower where these timers come into effect, chances are you’re already ripping through the tower that quickly, so it probably won’t affect you. But if it does affect you, then that’s a clear indication that despite your godlike abilities, you’re not ready for that level of content yet.

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Why can’t I like your comment more than once?

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Which is exactly what we are saying is a terrible decision. It completely changes the experience. they should be number tuning the buffs, not adding timers. timers were bad in the 90’s when super mario world came out with those maps that forced you to keep going or fall off. They are still bad now, and will still be bad 100 years from now.

But, watch as this plays out the same way BFA beta did, in which we’re warning about bad things the second they are implemented and will STILL be talking about them when we finally get fed up and unsub before the .1 patch on their stupid “why did you unsub” form.

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Maybe if you’re spending 4 hours in a dungeon, you should re-think playing another game like…the Elder Scrolls.