Things I'd Like to See

Every so often I think about things I would like to see in the game and after finding out one of those things I always wanted for a quality of life chage is coming it had me thinking about what else would be some nice quality of life upgrades to game play.

Knowing that more useful UIs will be coming, either soon as in 5.3 or with the release of the next expansion, that solves one of the things that I consider a huge quality of life upgrade.  No more will I need what feels like a million addons to do what should be capable of being done in game naturally.  I call this a huge quality of life change.  No more broken UI addons when patch day comes as it will all be integrated and part of the game. Woo-F'N-Hoo, what took so long.

Conditional Macros:

The recent change that you can not use two things that are on the global cooldown in the same marco was an annoying change.  I liked just macroing my dire beast to my arcane shot and making it a set it and forget it thing.  I do understand why they did it however, because people could basically make rotations with them by putting a bunch of abilities on the same button and spamming it but what if there were a way to do something like that, to make bloated rotations less cluttered, while not making every spec into a one button wonder.

I would like to see conditional macro ability added.  Allow all macros to have one "if" statement in it.  Just one, not so much that you could put an entire rotation in there but enough that a smart player can ditch some of the button bloat.

if target < 20% /cast Kill Shot
else /cast Arcane Shot

Something like that would be nice, it would basically make it possible to remove some of the clutter.  It could have many applications to remove some clutter and the smart players will take complete advantage of it.  It would not simplify rotations into one button wonders but it will surely remove some of the useless clutter in the game.

The more expansions that come out and the more levels we get the more clutter our characters have.  While some classes are fine with the amount of buttons they have at the moment sooner or later all of them will become hunters, 101 buttons to do the same thing other classes can do with 5.  Anything to reduce a little clutter would be nice and those other classes might not be asking for it now but they will be asking for it when they too enter the world of annoyance that is the hunter buttongeddon.

Resource Tapping:

On many characters I do not have much of a problem with quest collection or resource gathering because there are ways to get what you want anyway.  As a hunter I just let my pet attack and I gather, same with my lock, but other classes it does not work as well.  Sure I can throw a stun off on my warrior, paladin, bear, and others, and I do.  Land on a mine, start getting attacked, stun them and finish mining then kill them.  Other classes are basically shit out of luck however.

One of the most annoying aspects of a multi player game is that there are other people in it.  Duh, that is obvious, but it is also true.  I am the type of player where if I see someone fighting over something I pass it up.  I figure they are fighting there, it is their quest item or node.  No worries, there are 100s around and I will get mine elsewhere, that one is theirs.

I am one in a million.  Most people are not like that, as a matter of fact, most people are pricks.  I remember back in wrath when I landed on a titanium node and got attacked and someone landed and took it and said thank you.  I said, that was not nice, you saw me coming for it.  They said, yes I did and was waiting for someone to do that.  I knew I would get attacked and someone might steal it from me so I hovered here and waiting for someone else to land and take the mob so I can get the node, maybe you should be smarter next time and do it the right way.  I told them the right way is to let the person that fought for it to get it.  The conversation ended there.

That is the exact reason why there should be something called resource tapping in game.  I understand that there are many, most even, that would not agree with me.  They would say it is a multi player game and that is part of the game.  Sure, it is.  Doesn't mean I have to like it.  I treat people with respect and let someone fighting for a node get it and all I want is the same respect in return.

Being most of the people that play this game are incapable of that sort of respect, they are all basically the dog that shits on the living room rug and no matter how much you try to train them they still do it.  That is the player base and that is why I think resource tapping should be added.

When you start to mine a node, pick an herb, or gather a quest item it is tagged for 1 minute.  So if you are attacked you basically now have 1 minute to finish your fight and get back to what you were gathering.  If it takes longer, it is now open for someone else to take.

It would be a minor quality of life update but one I believe is needed in a game that is inhabited by what seems to be some of the most disrespectful people to ever assemble and play a game.  Sure we all want to get our quest done as quick as we can, sure we all want to gather all the resources we need but some common courtesy to your fellow player would be nice and the player base is just not capable of that level of decency, so a change like this would have to be made to force them into being decent by taking away their ability to be assholes.

Character Copy:

Who hasn't ever wanted to make a character on another server to play with someone they met there?  If they are like me they do not want to transfer, and it is not a money issue, it is just that the character you have is settled in where it is.  You have your friends, your guild, your routine.  But you want to play on that other server so you start an alt and start leveling it just to play there.

Now if you are obsessive like me you have done that a few times and even maxed out that said character a few times but by the time you get there you are not really into it any more and the character just sits there.  Or someone needed a healer and you leveled a healer but by the time you caught up they no longer needed a healer.

Enter the character copy to help assist in doing just that.  With some extremely restrictive rules and a $50 cost of course.  This would be the rules I would not mind and would be willing to accept.

1) Copied characters must be max level.
2) They must have been max level for at least 30 days.
3) They will have stock gear of a 450 item level  in each slot, not copied gear.
4) No achievements or reputation will be copied, shared achievements will still be shared but that character can get them again for the first time as the only achievements they will have themselves are the level ones.
5) The character would act like a completely fresh character that started at level 90.
6) The only skills that would carry over are riding skills, no other professions will be copied.

Now you can copy over that priest to heal for someone and just need to gear it up and get some professions.  You can easily jump in and do the end game leveling, via gear, instead of the entire process.

Some people like to level, I know I do, but sometimes you just want to have a max level character to help out someone else on another server and do not want to transfer one of your others, this would be a nice little addition for that and I would surely use it.

Would anyone else besides me buy something like that?  I think so.  I actually think many people would.  It would be a nice quality of life addition to the game and in the end, it would be great for blizzard in two ways.

When the next expansion comes out that person will now level that character from 90 to 95 thus meaning they are on playing more often, something blizzard would like, or they will just level the original to 95 and pay to copy it again, making blizzard more money, something blizzard would like.  It would be win/win for them.

It would be great for guilds like mine that are having trouble fielding a second team too.  Someone can just copy their main so they can play on both teams filling a spot.  I know I would make a crew on any new server I went to, just to go back and max out every profession for all of them, so I had my network built, the same crafting and gathering network I try to build on all servers I play on.

Scaling Difficulty:

There are 10 million people playing this game and each of them plays at a different level of skill.  Blizzard is aware of this and it is part of the reason for LFR, normal and heroic raids but that does not actually address the issue enough.  The more people that play content the better it is for them.  So why not allow difficulty scaling.

Something like the ICC buff or the DS debuff, but on a sliding scale.  And not just making it 30% easier but 30% harder.  From the moment a raid comes out it would have the difficulty slider available.  No waiting, so everyone regardless of skill level can step in on day one if they want to.

To address the problem some people have with the need to feel better than others because they did it without the buff/debuff and the people that have the sense of entitlement that they too should be allowed to do everything there would need to be some other changes as well instead of just a slider bar set by the raid leader that moves the buff/debuff 10% up or down to a maximum of 30% either way.

Lets make a factitious raid that drops 500 normal gear and 513 heroic gear.

Normal Mode -
-30% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 494
-20% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 496
-10% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 498
Normal - Drops 500
+10% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 502
+20% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 504
+30% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 506
Heroic Mode -
-30% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 507
-20% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 509
-10% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 511
Heroic - Drops 513
+10% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 515
+20% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 517
+30% to all mobs life and abilities - Drops 519

Also, there would need to be achievement changes, so people do not feel the need to do them all to get all the achievements.  Just for finishing it there would be an achievement that awards points.  So what difficulty or when you did it makes no difference.  Just like now.  However, there would be an added achievement as a feat of strength that keeps track of the the highest level of difficulty you finished it at while it was current content.

Now the people that need to feel like they are better then others can do so because they would have better gear and a feat of strength to prove they did it, and people that are in guilds that hit the brick wall can scale things down a little and still keep moving.

I think a system like this would be better than the ICC or DS version as those offer the same gear and no incentive to do it without the beneficial buff.  The blues always said to people that complained about the buff could "just turn it off" but they do not understand the mentality of people, myself included.  Sure I can turn it off, but why do that when there is no benefit to turning it off?  If I get the same gear for no buff that I do with the 30% buff I would be a fool to do it without the buff.  Offering different gear for different levels creates an awesome incentive to turn it off, and even to turn it up.

Lets say you were stuck on the 5th boss in MV or the 3rd boss in HoF, like it seems half my server is, this would allow you to do it with a -10%, -20% or even -30% just to get past it. It would also allow you to get some better gear off the ones you have on farm, like my guild 8 manned MV a couple of weeks ago because we did not have enough on and did not feel like pugging.  If we could have boosted it to +30% we would have been encouraged to pug 2 people so we could get better gear.

A sliding scale would be easiest to implement because all you are changing are values.  Life totals and damage of abilities are increased or decreased by whatever percent you choose.  I would love it.  It would mean you can bring lesser players in on those days when a normal player does not show, it would mean that farm content is not just farm content but a chance for some small upgrades.

And lets not forget the added bonus to community from something like this.  More pugs running at -30% just to get it done.  And what about business.  Scribes selling more shoulder enchants, leather workers selling more leggings, enchanters selling more enchants, jewelcrafters selling more gems, engineers selling more scopes, blacksmiths selling more buckles.

There is so much good that could come from scaling and it can be done without offending the people that want things hard, because they can have it 30% harder now, or making people that are not that good fell left out, because they can make it 30% easier now.  It would also begin a whole new race to the end game by making the +30% the real world first and I am sure that will extend the race considerably.

This would be a quality of life change on a scale of epic proportions.  It would make the game a whole new game and breath life into raiding like it has not seen since the days of wrath with separate lock outs and the ability to gear up alts quickly.  If you notice, the item scaling I suggested also works out perfectly with their designed 13 item level difference between tiers and difficulties.  The lowest level heroic is 1 over the highest level normal.  As it should be.  Perfect design that fits their theory already.

What other quality of life changes could you come up with?  I know the three I would like to see would not be difficult to implement.  What do you think the chances we will ever see any of them?  The macro one I see as never happening.  The character one I see as quite possible.  The raid one I think is the most likely of the three.