Wednesday, November 28, 2012

5.1 - A Return to Cataclysm

I am not sure if there would be a better way to explain what I think of 5.1 than to say it is a return to cataclysm.  Cataclysm was a series of good ideas implemented badly.  That is 5.1 my friends.

Lets not even talk about all the stealth nerfs that are not in the notes like changing the how many golden lotus you get from a spirit from 3 to 2.  It would have been nice to get some notice here because I usually buy 300 a week, now I can only get 200.  Thank you blizzard for effectively screwing me out of 100 golden lotus.

They could have mentioned it was being changed, they could have left it as was because it was fine, they could have at least given us a reason for a change that was not needed, asked for, or desired by anyone.  This is just one in a series of changes that blizzard, in the infinite wisdom, decided not to tell anyone about.

Trust me, there are a lot more of these little changes that are unnoted.  Not just the golden lotus nerf.  I won;t ruin all the ones I've found just now, I'll let you find some of them yourself and get pissed off over them.

This is cataclysm design, doing stupid things for stupid reasons.  5.1 is a return to that concept of game design.  Didn't blizzard notice that cataclysm was the biggest failure they ever had and if they had noticed it why follow the formula of bad design into what has started as a fantastic expansion this far?

I could go on and on about the nerfs to hunters in PvP but I won't go on about it too long as I am not active on the PvP front enough to care more than knowing blizzard was 100% wrong to do what they did.

One short, really short, patch that hunters where powerful and they felt the need to not only nerf them but to overnerf them to the point where they are useless in PvP again.  The bestial wrath / lynx rush combo was too powerful in PvP so they had to screw them both up.

How about you tell people to get better at PvP instead of nerfing something that did not need to be nerfed?  Anyone that is even a half way decent player would hit a defensive cooldown when the hunter does their BW/LR combo and take little or no damage from it with the knowledge that when that is over the hunter really has no ability to burst them down again

So instead of telling people that they need to, you know, actually play better, they nerf the only burst that hunters have in PvP.  Mages have been insanely over powered in PvP and PvE for what, 5 or 6 years now, and they have never seen a nerf.  Hunters are OP, against bad PvPers only, for 2 months and they have to nerf it ASAP.  Nice way to tell a class to bend over because they are getting a surprise.  Did a hunter offend you ghostcrawler and this is how you are getting your revenge?  More bad ideas here.

Speaking PvP how about them new dailies.  As if we did not have enough of them already some might say, I welcomed them.  I was done on my main with all the others for a month already so it is a nice addition to feel as if there were dailies worth doing again.  Or lets say they could have been a nice addition.  Except blizzard in their infinite wisdom screwed the pooch on this one again but being we are returning to the cataclysm era of screwing up every good idea, what else is there to expect.

I know that the intention of mists is to being the war back to warcraft but lets face it, a large portion of the player base does not PvP and many are like myself, drawn to the game because they are lifelong fans of the genre and not for PvP.

For many of the lesser skilled players and players that do not understand the battle design and what can flag them for PvP the new dailies mean they will spend their entire day walking from the graveyard thanks to the fact that the quests are so close to flagged NPC that will cause them to be flagged.  People from the opposing faction sit waiting for a PvE player to accidentally get themselves flagged and land for a quick and easy kill.  On a PvP server this is an awesome area and it makes me wish I had a max level character on a PvP server but on a PvE server this is a place for griefers to have fun doing what they do, griefing others who accidentally got themselves flagged.

You can't always blame the player either.  You walk into an area with enemy NPCs and get yourself flagged, that is your own fault.  Man up and fight.  Hearth and wait for the flag to wear off.  Or die and wait until the flag is gone before reviving.  You made your bed, you lie in it.

However, that is not the problem, the problem is in game design.  Back in BC they made a change to coding where if you were doing AoE and were not flagged it would not hit flagged targets and flag you.  In cataclysm, yes, the worst expansion in warcraft, they broke that.  What do you expect, cataclysm broke everything.  Now you get flagged for anything that might hit the enemy, even if you are not flagged.  Have your pet in tank spec and it does its thunderstomp, better hope there is not a flagged person around because you are now going to be flagged.  I've seen people stand on top of pets waiting for the pet to do something like that just to flag the person.  Has not happened to me yet because I know how it works and I single target in areas where there are flagged people running around, but I have seen it happen to others.

The makers of the game need to understand PvP is fine on PvP servers but on PvE servers things like this are not as welcome.  When I want to fight I flag myself, when I want to quest, I don't.  They should not have me have to watch everything I do out of fear of accidentally flagging myself.  I am there to do dailies, not to fight and the majority of people on PvE servers are the same way.  If you are there to fight you should man up and switch to on a PvP server where you would be facing people that want to fight and not jumping people from behind that do not want to fight, do not know how to fight and are already in battle and at low health to begin with.

There were flagged people standing on top of all quest objective mobs hoping someone would accidentally hit them or do an AoE and get themselves flagged and they would kill them.  These PvP heroes, players that like to play PvP but are not good at it so they roll on a PvE server and kill the only people they are capable of killing, pure PvEers, like to go around and grief the people because they know they will not fight back as all they want to do it go about their questing.

Blizzard has given these PvP heroes the ability to grief these people by making incidental AoE flag them.  Thanks blizzard.  I guess I need to write an article on how to effectively not flag yourself when questing in these areas now, because if yesterday showed me anything, most people have no clue.  I was watching people get flagged accidentally and seeing dozens of people on them in a matter of seconds.  They were griefing non PvPers because they were flagged due to bad design, not because of a desire to PvP.  Yeap, that is cataclysm all over again, good idea, bad implementation.  PvP because you want to is good, PvP because it was accidental while doing a quest is not.

How about those quests you can get from turning in commendations, are you enjoying them?  I will go out on a ledge here and say your answer will be an astoundingly loud hell no.  I wrote about bad drop rate quests yesterday and said that for the most part blizzard has gotten much better with these.  Leave it to blizzard to make me wrong the day after I post something.

I did all three of the quests you can buy and it took me two and a half hours to get them all done.  I had no time to do anything else, did not even do my other dailies, run LFRs, anything to cap out my valor like I normally do on tuesdays because I spent two and a half hours on these quests that have drop rates that are not quite as bad as the old moonsaber ones but they sure as hell bring back memories of that.

Few mobs, many people doing it, extremely low drop rate, does not equal fun blizzard.  Back to cataclysm design, good idea, bad implementation.  Having 3 additional daily quests you can buy and start with commissions is a great idea.  Having those three dailies take me longer to complete then it would do do every other single daily in the game is a bad idea.

Do you want the real kicker to these horrible new dailies that take all day to finish?  No reputation.  No F'N reputation.  I did all of this to get the new faction up as fast as possible for nothing?  What?  Who decided on this retarded idea?  Who wasted my entire time to play last night for no reason what so ever?  Well, this time it was me that wasted my time but I assure you will I never do these quests again.  They should have said I would not get any reputation from them, that would have been nice of them.  How the hell do you offer three dailies for a faction, that you have to buy at that, and they do not give you any reputation?  Back to cataclysm's motto, if there is something we can screw up, we will and we will screw it up even worse than you expect.

Top that all off with the new addition of the brawlers club and the ticket system that benefits the people with no jobs and people that play on off hours.  I wrote a post a short while back about all the things that are wrong with it and guess what, blizzard did not fix any before they released it, they are all things that are still wrong with it.  So people that have no jobs will be able to get the tickets first because they can be on all day to get them and people that play on off hours will have the ability to wait 15 minutes to fight when I, playing at prime time, will probably have to wait hours, if I can even get a ticket to get in.

I wonder how they decided on doing things like this.

Idea Man: "I've got a great idea, we can make something like fight club where people sit around and watch others fight"
Naysayer Man: "It is a great idea but it is a bad idea to make people wait to play.  Lets phase it so everyone can do it when they want to do it."
Bad Idea Man:  "But we can do something with it I am sure, it is a good idea, maybe if we make people have to buy their way in and put those things in limited supply on the black market auction house."
Worse Idea Man: "And don't phase it so people are forced to watch and wait hours to fight."
Ghostcrawler:  "Nice work guys, but can we make it worse?  It is still too good for these people."
Naysayer Man:  "Do you really think it is a good idea to make people wait hours to play a game?  What are you all smoking?"
Ghostcrawler: "Naysayer man, you're fired.  Maybe you will learn to never bring up logic and common sense into game development on your next job."

They took a good idea and bounced it around until they destroyed it.  How does a company with this much experience in the gaming industry decide on something like this?  Now more than ever I wish I played on off hours.  At least if I want to do this.  It would be easier to win a ticket, it would be a shorter wait to get into a fight, it would be a little closer to how it should be.  As it is, as a prime time player with limit time, it is a horrible idea and being most people play at prime time, hence the reason it is prime time, this design is a bad idea over all.

5.1 is a return to cataclysm.  A return to good ideas implemented poorly.  A return to changes that were not need or asked for or even understandable why they were made.  Cataclysm was the worst expansion ever, why are they trying to emulate it so soon after such a fantastic release of a new expansion.

5.1 wasn't all bad however, there were some good changes and additions.  And it could have been worse, they could have remade AQ 20 and AQ 40 and made them incredibly hard for the average player and made it so we had to grind only those two over and over again, but I guess they will save that sort of horrible design for a future update, just to prove they can make things worse.

Being able to enter old raids without being in a raid group is good.  Having some old raid bosses drop pets is good.  Having those items be on use and not soulbound is good.  It is not all bad, but in the end it was not good either.

My Opinion of 5.1: 
Rating: One and a half stars
Comment: 5.1 was an extremely poor excuse to break addons for.

22 comments:

  1. that rascal Grumpy sezs "I guess I need to write an article on how to effectively not flag yourself when questing in these areas now"

    YES, please do! I like your articles. I know enough to be dangerous, but always like to read on how to be better and safer.

    -roo the hunter dwarf that read the pamplet that came with his bow on how to make it work, ahem, "pointy end of arrow goes away from body"

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    1. It would basically be more about what skills not to use and what pets not to use. Hunters more than any other classes can accidentally flag themselves to no fault of their own.

      For a while I was using a fox that loved to flag me when I did not even notice there were things around that could get me flagged.

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    2. Thunderstomp, anyone?!? I use cat, the portent and a waterwalker. They are all the middle one (sorry, cant remember its name right now). And thunder stompo is on the beast bar turned off, so I dont get them goats pissed off at me.

      Grumpy, anything you write in any old fashion will be well received. Trust me.

      -roo "wo bin ich" der jäger

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    3. That is the tank spec you are using as it is the only one with thunderstomp. It can cause more problems than it is worth sometimes but it is also extremely important in some soloing as well. It is one of those damned if you do damned if you don't.

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  2. I had a whole bunch of things typed then me computer did a refresh and I lost what I was typing. So, this patch, who was it meant for? All I see out of it is some nerfing of lynx rush (god, big red kitty and Lynx rush and a few shots, I got myself out of a lot trouble. Now I am lucky to be able to survive a pull that went so wrong. Not the same. Here is an idea - why not have a toon when they are in pvp, just become the same as everyone else - cave men or cave women-their melee weapon turns into a stick, range weapon is a rock that is thrown, all armor becomes hides, magic types get a stick or rock to shake at others and then have at it (my ideas aren't coming out all that clear, so just re-read and think on what I am trying to say. then when they are not flagged, "Poof" they come back as hunter, warrior, mage, etc with their correct armour and weapons. In other words, if you want to pvp on a pve server, you suffer for it. yeah, and no, I am not the brightest crayon in the box. 5.1 is for the pvp'er, griefers, trouble-makers, etc. Blizz has been doing this for a long while (look at gathering eggs during the spring fest thingie - you don't think that leads to camping in one spot for eggs and ill feelings :) catering to one group of people and "welcome to wow"

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    1. In a way you are suggesting the same thing everyone has been suggesting for a long time. Just make things in PvP work differently. They could do that and I would like to see it but the problem is not with damage it is with healing. They have never found a way to effectively manage healing in PvP. So nerf PvE left and right to balance PvP instead of fixing the problem directly.

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  3. One of the changes that they didn’t mention is AoTH is now 15% instead of 10%. was a nice little hot fix they added.

    Also, since when does blizzard need to inform you of EVERY little change they make in game. Dailies not having rep, should have told Grumpy first, Nerfing the amount of lotus's, better ask Grumpy first. Surprised you're not mad at them for not running the 5% increased aspect past you first.

    Would you like them to attach notes to each quest stating what they will give and won’t give you in terms of rep/items/ect, Since when has a quest ever told you that you will or won’t get rep for this or that.

    You also seem to be blaming blizzard for people not knowing there classes. Opposing faction around, DONT AOE! Is it really that difficult? After once or twice it should be common since, no?

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    1. Yes, they should have told me first, before everyone else in the world as a matter of fact. Seriously however, a daily for a new faction that does not give you reputation is a change in design. Changes are nice to know about don't you think?

      I am not blaming blizzard for people not knowing their classes, I am blaming blizzard for designing something badly. People not knowing their classes comes without saying. There will always be people that do not know their class.

      The hawk change was nice, but it does not even touch the tip of the iceburg that are hunter problems at the moment. It is a lazy response to a much bigger problem. So instead of working on balancing hunters they say, just give them 5% and maybe they will forget everything else we screwed up on. Yes, it is nice and I like it but there is no way it will fix hunter issues.

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    2. No, not that Blizzard should have told Grump first, but it should have been mentioned in the change log. Any change large or small should have been mentioned, no if's, and's, or but's.

      I don't understand why killing critters attacking my farm (hawks and wigglers) don't yield some kind of exp. They are the level as me. And lately, I have between 4 to 6 that I have to attack and kill to be able to plant.

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    3. They do give experience if you get on while not at max level. I just wish they gave loot too.

      I hate any mob you have to kill that does not drop loot. It makes me feel as if I wasted my time and I am not a big fan of wasting time.

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  4. Let me ask you this... Why do you get so upset at Blizzard trying new things to test the waters? They nor you truley know the outcome of some of the things they do untill they actually roll them out. (ex. Brawlers Guild, and buying invitations) You ever sit back and think WoW has become a testing platform for a future game? Or thought, Hmm maybe a company that has reigned king of the MMO world might now WTF they are doing to an extent?

    Most of the time I see you whining and complaining the first day or even before a patch hits with out giving it a try. Yes I do know the name of the blog is GRUMPY elf, not happy elf.

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    1. I like to complain and that is what I do. I do not mind new things but I also do not like changes that they were told were issues on the PTR and they ignore them instead of addressing them.

      I am also not saying wow is bad, it is still the best game out there and I still enjoy playing it, but that does not mean I like everything. I only write about things I dislike because lets face it, there is more to write about when you disagree with something than there is to write about when you agree with something.

      I complain because that is what people expect and it makes a better read for anyone that stumbles by and it gives me something to write about. As you stated, hence the name of the blog.

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    2. LOL. Really? You are saying that Blizz does not do alpha, beta, and PTR testing at all? That they just roll out something without knowing?

      Come'on Anonamoose, Blizz knowns it is screwing up with a lot of things. It failing is it doesn't think from all angles and doesn't seem to care.

      I (like everyone else) pay $15 a month not to be beta tester for a future game and no, I don't think "they know wtf they are doing", but I do think "wtf are they doing now".

      Welcome to WOW. (gosh, I love that, Grumpy!)

      -roo "Of all the heroes in legend and song, there's none as brave as El Kabong" the hunter

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    3. @Roo Come on now... listen to what you are saying. A multi million dollar MMO/company that is and has been #1 in the industry for how many years, is and has been knowingly screwing things up. Yet still remain in the #1 spot despite all these years of people saying "Blizz is screwing up" of "Blizz doesn't know WTF they are doing". It doesnt add up. Explain how you get and stay #1 if you are purposly screwing up and don't know WTF you are doing.

      Also, you pay 15$ for what ever Blizz puts out, weather you are being used for a tester or not. That decsion isn't up to you on what they use you for. You have 2 options, play or don't. (Guess I kinda contradicted my self there, no? :P)

      I guess it just amazes me people still play a game that is knowingly screwing up and doesnt know WTF they are doing. Yet still are able to get 10+ million people to keep forking over money.

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    4. You seem to forget one major factor with what you said.

      Blizzard does screw things up all the time. When basing it against its own standards. Blizzard screwing up is still 10 times better than any other MMO out there.

      So why do people keep playing, because wow is still the best. Even if they do screw up.

      Just look at all the problems with crashes and such with the CRZ when it came out. On beta people had been complaining for months, reporting bugs, reporting crashes, reporting lag spikes, reporting all these errors and not just one or two here and there. Hundreds of people in dozens of threads were reporting all these problems with the CRZ and guess what blizzard does?

      Instead of fixing it before they release it they released it early.

      Don't say blizzard does not screw up all the time because they do. If they did not screw up all the time they would not be stuck in perpetual mode of fixing everything all the time. CRZ is still a clusterfuck and how long as it been out now? It should have never been released as was.

      People will keep playing because wow is still the best game out there of its type. But do not take the fact people play the game to mean they have no right to complain of they think nothing is wrong with it.

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    5. hello all,

      Just woke up after downing some heavy duty meds last night, damned head. But here it goes...

      @ anonamoose - Good question. WOW is like facebook - There are so many in the game, I don’t believe it can't die. But, have you noticed that the number of subscribers is going down. : )

      Still like you said, grumpy said and most everyone who still forks over their hard earned $15 says - it's the best out there. The art, the story and some of the folks one meets. Almost all the MMO's require one to PVP - WOW doesn't and thats why I play (and I refuse to play those free to play, but fork over your buckazoids to upgrade MMO's.). But I can still wonder with all the testing, talking and decision making, why it seems the game caters to Cartman players and is ill-thought out.

      @ grumpy – yeah, I’m grumpy too. BTW, I still have not seen the 15% increase of AoTH from patch 5.1 (oh please don’t tell me the tool tip is wrong! Egads!), oh yeah, I forgot – WtW.

      Ok, thats it. Grump has his opinion, Ananamoose has his/hers and I got mine. :P

      -roo the grumpy dwarf with no snappy come back.

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  5. PVP anon here:

    The PVP changes in 5.1 that were supposed to fix balance issues at the beginning of the expansion (many really terrible ones) indeed seemed to break at least as many things as they fixed.

    One of the biggest problems that the devs tried to address, but weren't successful, to put it lightly, is that sustained damage is too low and burst damage is too high (not even talking about heals now, which have to fit into this idiotic picture, and are broken as well). Well, here's one illustration from after 5.1:

    http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/7048/1shots.png

    A T2 resto shaman at full health (could have been T18 as you will see) globaled by a T1 warlock. No choice of retaliation, ever. "Dude, why did you let him target you and press the button". Yes, 100+% hits like that are not all that rare and 70% hits happen literally all the time.

    Really, I have played in almost every season and I am not saying this lightly, but this season we are having almost seems to be the worst, only maybe yielding to the first WOTLK season with the hero class.

    It is hard to take a game seriously at this point, frankly. I think I will just go FOTM for some time, both in arenas and in rated BGs. Who cares about playing regular comps in order to learn something, when it can be no-skill OP specs over for eternities.

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    1. PVP anon here again:

      Just another small note.

      I talked about burst being too high and sustained being too low above, remember. Fine. Everyone agreed on that, including the dev team.

      So, one of their changes in 5.1 is... wait for it... a 10% BUFF to PVP power for damage dealers! No jokes.

      GG

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    2. That's still me, and I am awfully sorry for spawning, but this just has to be said:

      I just found out the reason they buffed PVP power on weapons. They did this because we have convinced them that PVE weapons in the last raid are better than the best PVP weapons.

      This illustrates what's wrong with the game perfectly. The change was supposed to be a good one. Heck, it *is* a good change, we asked for it and for once they listened. But the way the change has been implemented makes things much worse, instead of better.

      One problem fixed, another problem created. It's hard to say which state was worse, the only thing that can be said with certainty is that valuable time has been lost. This season is already beyond salvation it seems, there's just not that many weeks left to play, we had to play with idiotic imbalances through and through. That's how they roll and I don't think they can do it any other way, the game is too big and they evidently can't control it.

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    3. Healing has always been the problem with PvP in my opinion. They can balance damage all they want but in the end what it comes down to is healing.

      That is why I really hate facing a holy paladin and the booming heals. You spend 2 minutes slowly whittling them down they cast one heal, max health again. This goes on and on, you work forever to get them down, they cast one heal and are full health again. Even if you get lucky enough to interrupt that one heal they can bubble, lay on hands, all instantly.

      Healing needs to be balanced to balance PvP, not damage. No one gives a flying crap if someone can down you in 10 seconds as long as you have the ability to down them in 10 seconds as well. That is fair. What people hate is healing and that is what ruins PvP in my opinion.

      To many heals, to many shields, to many damage reductions. If they made PvP all about doing damage I think it would be much better. The first one to get their opponent to zero wins. That is how it should be, not who has the most heals or shields of defensive cooldowns.

      Once they fix all that crap, I will get into PvP more.

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  6. @ potatoeWoW - thanks potatoeWoW! (you say potatoeWoW, I say PototoeWoW) thats good news. Makes me feel a little better. But how did you make your links work? When I put mine in here, they don't. :(

    Well, it looks like the o'salmon jumped right up and slapped Blizz in the face on this one. Glad to see it was address and fixed.

    LOL, someone in the forum made the statement they would like to see the word "PVP" removed off any PVE server. I agree.

    If Blizz can have CRZ's, why not have PVP CRZ's where someone goes if they are flagged and wants PVP? Hmmm, doesn't matter where you are (PVE or PVP), if you flag and leave a capital city (i.e. SW) then instead of going into the PVE Elwynn Forest (or world) then you to the PVP version of Elwynn Forest. Once you are flag, you can't unflag until you are back in your capital city. Of course battle grounds is still available and pvp/pve has an optional turn off in the menu (like displaying cloaks). Making sense here?

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  7. Thanks PotatoeWow! I am writing this down. I did not know that I could use html on this blog (I am too chicken to try new things, well maybe more like too cow "mooooo" - can't spell chicken talk. Appreciate the feedback.

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