Actually picking something specific and talking about it might be better. While reading a few forum posts it occurred to me why I am really bored. It took someone pointing out what they think needs fixing to make me really put my thoughts together into something more precise then heroics are to damn long. For arguments sake that is what it boils down to however.
Lets us turn the clock back to my average day in wrath.
I would log on to my main. Queue for a random, pick up a few dailies, knock them out while waiting and then maybe camp the time lost proto drake or a rare pet while waiting and pick a few herbs.
Roughly 20 minutes of waiting I would get my dungeon, power through it. Never cared if I had someone doing 800 DPS in it because they really where not needed anyway and I was done with the dungeon in 20 minutes max. Even a lackluster healer or tank would never hinder a run. It was nice with only the rare wipe, as in once in a blue moon.
I would log out and log in on my Shaman. I would queue up for my dungeon as a DPS and go mining. I'd mine in circles around icecrown and about 20 minutes later my random would pop. I would power through the dungeon and port out. I'd finish mining from wherever I was on my standard path and then go back to dalaran.
After that if someone in guild was looking for a random I would pop on my priest healer or druid tank to help them with a faster queue time and I would run a random with them. 20 minutes later I would then decide on which character I would do next.
If I tanked that run I would go as a healer on the next one. If I healed that one I would pop on my tank to do the argent dailies and see if anyone needed a tank. I never tanked without guild, to many bad memories that left me scarred for life.
Once that was done, if the raid was not starting yet I would pop on my Rogue and do a random with him. Even if my DPS sucked on my rogue, only 3500 back then, it was still more then ample for a heroic. You could do those heroics with 1200 each from the 3 DPS.
Now raid time came. Most of the time raid time came before I even got to the step of doing the dailies on my druid. You see, I was actually doing stuff. I was getting things accomplished. I was actually playing the game. Who would have ever guessed that you have more fun playing the game when you are actually playing it.
I never got the chance to get everything I wanted to get accomplished. I had characters that still needed rep, still needed argent dailies, still needed other things. There was always so much to do in game that I never got everything I wanted to do done. I loved that there was always something to do.
Now it is different and this is why I am so bored with the game.
I log in on my main. I queue up for my random. There are no dailies worth doing with the exception of the rare occasion I feel like doing the TB ones, which are annoying as hell so I do them maybe once every two weeks.
I try to find something to do. I sometimes go solo heroic UP for the mount, that eats up 5 minutes. I sometimes do the argent tourney ones because I still need mounts and pets. I sometimes solo SH and MgT for the mounts there as well.
There have been times where I did all my argent quests, UP, SH and MgT and was still waiting for my queue to pop.
Either way I get into my heroic and I hope and pray to anyone that might listen that it is not stonecore or grim batol. This I will use as anecdotal proof that if there is a god, he does not play wow or has a warped sense of humor because I always seem to get those.
If it is one of them I give it all I got but I know that this will only end in the group breaking up. Stonecore is at best a 25% success rate. 75% of the times it will die well before the last boss. Grim Batol is epic failure on all bosses. I have still never, I repeat, never found a group that can do it.
So most of the time my group disbands and now I go back to waiting another 40+ minutes for another run. Usually by this time it has been over an hour since I first started trying to get my daily done and I am starting to clock watch because raid time is coming soon.
If I get lucky there are enough guild members on to do a guild run before the raid and that is a beautiful thing and other times there are not. I always let other DPS have my place so they can get their gear. I'll use the random system because I know they won't and I need my guild mates geared.
If I get lucky I get a dungeon and can finish it before raid time. Most of the time I don't and just drop from the queue when I get to within 1 hour of raid time because I know, unless I get a rare good group, no heroics take less then 1 hour in LFD.
So now I've dropped group and it is an hour before raid. I've done everything I could do already while waiting for these runs so the only thing left for me to do is archeology and finding more troll pieces for a sword it will never give me or more tol'vir pieces for an alchemy recipe that it will never give me either.
So the raid starts and I wasted 2 1/2 or 3 hours before the raid doing nothing but pounding my head against the wall trying to have fun playing a game. Doing mount runs is fun when you want to. Doing them because you have to find something to do is not.
Where I am now is trying to find something to do because there is nothing to do. I do not even try to queue for a heroic on my main any more except for once a week maybe if I am really really bored and willing to be abused a little by having to deal with these people.
My alts, no heroics for them either. Why? So they can have to deal with the crap my main does? Also, as alts, I am not as good on them and now a days you need to be on the top of your game for heroics because more likely then not the other people won't be. I can't tell you the number of bosses I've downed in heroics where only me or only me and 1 other person where still alive.
I've actually soloed a bunch of bosses on my Hunter already so I do not feel as I am in a lose/lose situation if things start to go south. I do not think I am even close to that skilled on any of my other characters. Not to mention, if I am the last one left I have feign death.
So I have nothing to do. I log on and wait for raid time and try to do anything I can to fill the time. I am no longer doing things because I want to. I am doing them because I have nothing else to do. I log on hoping that guild mates log on so I can do a heroic with them. I sit and playing the waiting game. Waiting for something to do.
Before there was always something to do. Now, nothing to do.
This is why I am bored.
Lets not even mention all the other wonderful things that you could do to pass the time before that are gone now. Like doing 10s with the guild and 25s in a pug. Hell, pugging either way. I miss that. My server is doing trash clear pugs trying to get epic drops because it sucks so much.
The other day someone asked me 3 times to join their trash run. They said, you can get gear and I replied, I can get gear from downing bosses too, why waste my time clearing trash. To me that is just not fun.
I miss logging on to the game and having something to do. I miss logging on to the game and having fun. I miss not having the time to do dailies because there were other things to do that I wanted to do.
Until they nerf the crap out of heroics and figure out a way to get rid of this 40+ minute wait time the game will continue to be useless to play from a fun standpoint. Now it is only good as a waiting game.
Please, leave the difficulty to my raids and keep the heroics for the masses that suck nice and cake walk easy.
I want my easy and lightning fast heroics back because they where fun. I'll take my challenges in my raids please, thank you.
Back when there were easy heroics I had something to do. I would not even mind the 40+ minute wait if I knew there would be success. Now, even if I do get a somewhat quick heroic in on my main I do not have the patience to try and get another one in based on law of averages. If I got a good run the law of averages says I will not get another good one any time soon.
I don't want easy heroics because I want easy loot. I have 3 raid geared characters already proving I can do it. It is not like they are hard, just most players can't do it. I want easy heroics because they gave me something I could even do on an alt, low pressure, no praying for competent people. I want them because it is a lot easier to deal with an idiot that screws up and dies when you know it is not going to mean a wipe. I want them because they were fun.
I love my challenges in raids with a group of people I assemble that I know that we approach the fight with knowledge and ability. I do not want my heroics to have that challenge when I am with 4 other people that I do not even know if they can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Nerf the ever loving crap out of heroics. Make them so easy that all you need to do is walk in and start poking things with sticks to kill them (and trust me, someone will still mess up doing that). At least that will give me something to do instead of being bored off my ass all the time.
Heck, just remove all trash completely. Give us the bosses, same difficulty they are now, and I am sure things will get better. Trash seems to eat up most of the time these dungeons take and as I have seen trash is responsible for more wipes then any heroic boss in this expansion. This will make dungeons fast again. That was fun.
Fast, high rate of success = Fun
Long, low rate of success = Not Fun
I miss the days of getting 4 heroics in before raid time in less then 2 hours of playing. I want that back, please.
Note:
Yes, I am aware that in a few more patches we will be barreling through heroics in 20 minutes. I just want it now, not in two or three patches. I know it can be done. I had a SFK run where it only took 20 minutes for all bosses. I wish every run was like that. However that run had something most run do not, 5 people with a brain and the instruction manual on how to use it. A very rare thing in the random system.
How did you spend your time in WoW before the dungeon finder and easy heroics? Or did you not start playing until they were already in the game?
ReplyDeleteFast, high rate of success = Fun
ReplyDeleteLong, low rate of success = Not Fun
You hit the nail on the head with this comment.
Nice write-up
@Shintar
ReplyDeleteI rarely did the daily. If on the odd chance I was in Dalaran and saw someone posting saying they needed a DPS I would send them a whisper otherwise I would only do it once or twice a week and on weekends when I had the time to hang around searching for a group or the times when there were guild on that wanted to do it.
A good week would mean I did it 5 times that week. The average week I did it maybe 3 times a week. Basically, it is what I am back to doing now.
I also never leveled an alt to top level until after the dungeon finder came out. So I had the extra time on my main.
I liked the dungeon finder because I was able to do it every day. Actually, if it were not for dungeon finder I probably would have never done Occ, no one in the guild ever wanted to do that one. I had never even stepped foot into that until the dungeon finder came out.
You have to realize there is no such thing as instant gratification, besides the point you're making at least in my opinion is invalid. When I run heroics on my main (which is rare) they aren't a problem whatsoever, maybe that's because I'm completely carrying my group, but who knows? My average Stonecore run takes about 30 minutes, and since the release of Cata i've only had a single group that never completed Grim batol, probably because it was the fourth day into the expansion. /shrug just my thoughts on things.
ReplyDeleteMagnifice
Llane Server
Also as a side note you also have to consider that all of these dailies and such that you were doing in wrath were much much later into the expansion, at this point most guilds haven't even cleared the first tier off bosses, as people get geared things will become easier (obviously) but really if anything I hope they make heroics harder, I completely hated the Wotlk expansion because people who had no idea how to play the game could simply raid (ICC)with a 30% buff, or heroics giving a 5% buff, and stuff was just way too easy, I like things to be challenging, hence why i spent 15 hours in Ruby Sanctum on the night of its release on my shaman just because it wasn't a walk in the park.
ReplyDeleteMag
@Magnifice
ReplyDeleteI hope they do not do what they did to ICC with the buff. I think raids are where you should be challenged. I do not mind wiping 50 times before getting a boss down in a raid. If anything that is part of the joy of playing.
I was like that too the day RS came out. My guild was the first on the server to get to the last boss and we wiped for nearly 5 hours before the raid broke up because everyone was tired.
Woke up next morning and someone had gotten server first a few hours earlier. I wish we had tried longer, we where getting close.
For a casual guild like mine a server first would have been amazing. When we broke up for the night we had gotten it down further then anyone else had. I am sure we would have gotten server first. Then again, that is why we are casual. If we where hardcore we would have stayed until we got it.
I agree. In time they will be nerfed to all hell and by the time we are all in T13 it will be easy to carry a 4K DPS in a heroic. If I am doing 20K now I can imagine what I will be doing in T13. Heck, by then it will be like wrath dungeons in the fact that the other DPS will just be along for the ride and anything they can contribute is a bonus.
You say you carry groups now but I must say I do not believe you unless you are talking about average players.
You can excel in an average group and basically make a good run into a fast run but you can not carry a bad group. It is impossible. On some bosses it is mechanically impossible.
Second boss of BRC, unless you get at least 2 other people that are not totally spastic that boss is not going down no matter what anyone says. You can only carry people so far. Sooner or later, you need people to do their own job correctly.
That is where my argument is.
Randoms put you with random people. You can not count on random people to do their job correctly so stop making dungeons that require random people to do things that they are not capable of doing.