Tuesday, February 5, 2013

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.

17 comments:

  1. PVP anon here:

    Conditional macros won't happen, since (if you only add checking for buffs / debuffs on yourself / target), you'd be able to fit a 99% rotation for every spec into a single button. No jokes.

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    1. (Argh, incomplete post.)

      Why I am so sure? Because the topic of conditionals has been brought up earlier (somewhere in Cata), and Blizzard said that's why they won't have neither conditionals nor buff / debuff analysis in macros, ever. Maybe doing just the conditionals won't allow for a 99% rotation, but it makes sense to me that they don't want to risk even a 95% one, even if only for some specs.

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    2. That is why I said only one conditional per macro allowed.

      I could easily write a script that could do complete conditionals, it is not hard. Implementing the script however, that would I would know how to do.

      As such, if I were able to, I would, but it would get so boring so fast from a DPS standpoint it would ruin the game for me. So that is why I do not think they are good ideas. I do think that individual conditionals would be nice, but like I said, I do not see that ever happening.

      But like I said, with only one "if/else" conditional per macro allowed it would not be something that could be completely automated and would be capable of removing the bloat from many classes.

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  2. The sliding scalar for raiding sounds good. That gets my full approval. I'd like to add some sort of mode where you could go with different compositions. Rather than needing 2 tanks, 2-3 healers and then 5-6 dps for a 10 man raid. Maybe it's just because of my battle to find healers, but I'd love to have a raid option where you could have npc's help. They'd be operated as an AI so it wouldn't be as good, maybe the gear dropped would be inferior, or you couldn't get achievements that way. I don't care, but I would like to be able to raid with less people and/or not correct raid composition.

    As for the character copy. I don't know. I wouldn't put my hand in my pocket to pay for such a service. I just couldn't justify it. I could grind out a character if I wanted it that bad. I dislike paying real world currency (or in game as it happens) for something I could get if I worked for it.

    I would much prefer that they relax lockout/realm restrictions. Have it so you can personally only get loot off the boss once a week, but that you can raid it as many times as you like. There'd be no benefit to doing so, beyond helping friends out and I suppose getting more practice at it. I guess the practice part could be problematic, but you'd have that anyway with the character copy. I suppose you'd have to gear more characters ready like that. I'd prefer just to have my characters as they are, but then I never have really liked the gearing treadmill.

    I also wish they'd relax the restrictions for current tier raiding x-realm. I understand the problems of realm first which is why I think they should introduce a leaderboard. Something similar to your idea about the feat of strength per difficulty tier. I'm all for breaking down the boundaries of servers, possibly because I'm on a low pop one. I have friends on other servers who'd raid with me, and I'd like to raid with them. The ability to do x-realm current raids would be a big bonus and I don't think it'd hurt the community any. Take OpenRaid, that's building a whole new community, which I think is fantastic.

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    1. Healers are always hard at the beginning of an expansion sadly because it seems like the first tier is all on how quick they gear up.

      I had read a few people that had NPC raider ideas, that could have some potential but unless they are perfect it would be all about the RNG on if you NPC does the right thing or not and in my opinion the last thing this game need is more stuff left up to random, there is too much of that crap already.

      I would like to see two lock outs again myself.

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  3. Resource tagging would be nice - "They would say it is a multi-player game and that is part of the game"

    How is being a shiffer brained selfish jerk part of the game? Maybe in that tiny footed vermin's world it is. But not in mine or yours.

    Good post. I would like to take it add some more food for thought - some are prob silly, some might make you go WTF?!? And others, well, who cares, at this stage, it is called barn storming. No idea is too silly or too great–
    • ability to turn off pet or human dueling with a check mark - they try to duel you, they get a polite "no thank you" and you don't see it happening nor does it stops you in your gathering or doing your quests.
    • How about a special dueling area oft to the side of a major city or under the city (in the sewers)? Like how our farms are. No special weapon awards or anything, maybe an achievement at being the top 10, the top 5 and even the #1? Leaderboard? It is tiring doing low quests with every dueler being in the middle of Goldshire, blocking post boxes, flying mounts, quest givers, etc.
    • Ability to replace that terrible 16 slot bag by giving everyone a +2 slot bag for every 20 levels made for that first bag (or last bag, but you know which one I am talking about), with the ability on lvl 90 (or highest level of the game) to replace it with whatever one wants.
    • No mounts at doorways, post boxes, quest givers, trainers, etc. no blocking of the same. That way you might be all crowded up but at least you can click on the item or quest giver/trainer.
    • Items used for transmorg (is this the right word?) do not take up bag or bank space.
    • Ability for a tradespeople to go up professional levels without having to go up toon levels.
    • Ability for professions/tradespeople to change color of items. For example - maybe I want a red Santa hat, but all that drop was green – take it to a tailor who can change the color (bleach out the present color, use red dye to make it red). Why not :D
    • Add more professions – such as bow maker and let the professions/tradespeople make all the weapons, armor, etc in the game – NO DROPS for armor or weapons, but better add-ons do drop outside of the normal profession/ tradespeople add-ons as rewards for killing raid bosses (plus 1000 gold for each person on the kill).
    • When pvp’ing or dueling, everyone’s armor and weapons become the same. No one has a better weapon or armor than the next. This would then prove that the better pvp’er or dueler is the better skilled player, not better geared.
    • Armor or weapons drop related to the class and not a universal cloth item for a mail user. Also, if raiding, everyone gets loot related to their class

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    1. RE Starter bag, I think they explained it as the initial 16 slotter is hardcoded in, rather than being a slot in which a bag is perma-equipped. So changing it to an equippable slot would probably be too much. I don't know why they couldn't add slots though, as you level up.

      IMO though, all this bag space stuff would go away if they would just have reasonable stack sizes. Who made 20 the iron law of stack size? Is anyone honestly bothered by Kyparite stacking to 200? Why doesn't all ore/herb/cloth/leather do this?

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    2. thats what I was thinking, though I didn't explain it too well. every 20 levels, you get +2 more slots added to it. Thanks for helping me explain it better. :D

      -roo "better living thru chemistry"

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    3. I think there is a setting to auto decline dueling already in game. The sewers were a great dueling area and I guess something like that could become a ranked thing if they wanted to do it but people would complain because PvP is not balanced for 1 on 1 and never will be so some classes would just be over powered. For example, no class could beat a hunter one on one, a good one that is, I would lose all the time.

      Oh yes, we need something better than that starter bag desperately.

      They have armor dye in diablo, I could see it coming to warcraft one day.

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  4. • Increase cloth drops, ore nodes, plants, etc in the world.
    • Make humanoid npcs have to fight animal npcs out in the world. No more walking npc humans not being attacked by npc animals.
    • Let npc animals be skinnable after 2 minutes if not looted by the killer.
    • No more server worlds. By this I mean, Everyone is in the same world - able to buy, sell, join guilds, to each other, etc - there will be 1 world for all practical purposes. PVP can be turned off and no one can cause you to turn it on, unless you flip that switch (but you have to flip it on and off in a city, not in the middle of someone’s fight.). that way folks who want to pvp can do it, those who don’t want to, don’t have too. Nodes or herbs are increase tenfold or a hundred to make up for everyone being in the same world.
    • Horde and Alliance are yellow to each other. You can go into their capital and cities, but you can’t buy or repair or daily quest (though that may be fun for fishing). You can fish without being killed :)
    • Bring back 1 handed weapons for hunter. I miss the adds. :)

    The condition macros, as nice as having them would be, I think would be a bear for Blizz to program into the game. And as PVP annone says, Blizz did write in their forums way back when it wouldn't happen - of course they say a lot of things and they seem to happen sooner or later. :D Though again, that would be nice.
    First things first though, we need to have a lot removed off the global cooldown.

    Like your ideas on raids :D

    @PVP Anon - why don't you register and get yourself an avatar? :D I mean you have a lot to say here. And if you would need help with an icon for your avatar, I would be more than happy to help ya out. :)

    Ok, a lot of nothing here. Move on….

    -roo "trying to get thru the day"

    A blind Dwarf in a bar shouts to the bartender, "Wanna hear a Night Elf joke?"
    In a hushed voice, the guy next to him says, "Before you tell that joke, you should know something. Our bartender is a Night Elf, the bouncer is Night Elf. I'm a monk. The guy sitting next to me is a warrior. The fella to your right is a druid. Each one of us is a Night Elf. Think about it, Dwarf. Do you still wanna tell that joke?"
    The Dwarf says, "Nah, not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times."

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    1. The skinning thing would be awesome. I hate seeing a nice pile of animals and starting to drool thinking of all the free leather and the person did not loot any of them.

      Why do people do that, every thing is worth money, pick it up and sell it people.

      I think the anon wants to stay anon, some people do and I can respect that.

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  5. On the raid difficulty idea, not bad but no no no to the gear differential. This game has way too many gear levels as it is. All raids should drop the same gear!

    For my ideas:

    As I mentioned above, everything should stack to 200, except when it should stack to 1000.

    Get rid of vendor trash. Just have everything drop gold.

    No more hit and expertise

    No more dodge and parry while we're at it

    Each class can use one set of gear for all of its specs. It may not be totally minny-maxxy, but it'll get the job done.

    Enchanting and Jewelcrafting no longer offer performance stats, instead they give interesting buffs, like lifestealing or chance to cast/proc certain effects.

    (As you can see, I care nothing for the gear optimization minigame, but others' mileage may vary)

    There should be a transmog interface, where you can open a window, drop a piece of gear in it, and it will disappear and be added to your collection with a warning so you don't inadvertently waste something. This interface would contain a searchable and favorite-able database of all gear and sets in the game, and be account-bound, and you can transmog directly from it.

    Server transfers should be free, or keep the 25 dollar fee and add a mass-transfer option.

    I could go on and on, but I'll spare you.

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    1. Larger stacks just make sense, even more so being the game encourages hording, at least as I see it, it does.

      The raids would need different gear or there is no reason to do it in a harder version. If the easiest version offers the same gear as the hardest version only a complete moron would do it on the harder version. That would be like giving heroic raid gear in LFR. Why would anyone do the heroic version if they did not have to? Sure, some want the challenge but human nature would take over and they would do the easiest version to get all the gear first.

      I have often said it is time for hit and expertise to go, so I agree there 100%.

      I also support the one gear per class thing. Sure you would need to reforge between specs but all specs should use the same gear.

      If server transfers were free the whole dead server issue would be a non issue. But blizzard cares more about money than about quality game play and experience or keeping its subscribers happy so that will never happen.

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    2. The reason to run the raid in a harder version would be for mounts/titles/achievements. You're right though that this wouldn't provide a reason to run the harder raids repeatedly, which I suppose is the real issue. But doesn't it strike you as odd design in the first place, to have people running these raids long past the point of interest in the content just to chase randomly dropping gear of a particular itemelevel?

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  6. Yes for Conditional macros but probably won't ever happen.

    Maybe for Resource tapping. I'd just change it so you don't get a pushback or take damage while doing it. You'd still be "in combat" though.

    Yes for Scaling difficulty. I always hated that it was all or nothing and there was no reward for doing it on normal difficulty. I'd probably not go with the different gear levels though because I just don't like gear levels anyway.

    No for character copies. I just wouldn't pay that much. I'd rather allow more x-realm activities as Taitrina said.

    And for other people's ideas:

    Yes for all gear being crafted. I've commented on this before.

    Yes for PvP being about skill only (take gear out).

    Yes for better item stacking.

    Yes for gear closets.

    Yes for same gear for all specs in the same class.

    Yes for getting rid of hit/expertise and dodge/parry.

    No for a single world server. I'd quit playing if I was on a high pop server and that's how everything would end up.

    Yes for peace between the Horde and Alliance though. It'd be cool if that's how it ended up with this expansion.

    Yes for armor dye. Blizz can do it! They had it in Diablo 3! And it's in other MMOs.

    Yes for profession level being separate from player level.

    And a few "Things I'd like to see":

    Better Auction house UI: take the best elements from Auctioneer, Auctionator, and TradeSkillMaster.

    Separate AH messages from normal mail.

    Remove racials.

    Remove profession bonuses.

    Learn all professions on one character (there can be an increasing fee for learning the 3rd, 4th, etc to keep it more balanced).

    Get rid of infinitesimally small percentage things. 1/1000, 1/5000, 1/10000... that's just stupid. Nothing can have a rate lower than 1/500. It's a game, not torture.

    Scale rare spawns based on zone population. More people, more frequent spawns.

    Take Loque'nahak off Frostbitten. It's just cruel for hunters.

    Move Vryagosa so it doesn't share a spawn with the TLPD. It doesn't need the extra competition.

    Add a Pandarian fish for "One That Didn't Get Away" so we don't have to fish for an eternity in low lvl areas.

    Get rid of the stupid PvP holiday achievements. I've trudged through them all to get my proto-drake but people should not have to go through all that. Keep the holiday goers out of the BGs.

    Something to increase the availability of healers. Perhaps make all classes into hybrids by adding 4th specs:
    - Hunter - Beastrider, mounted tank
    - Rogue - Brawler, avoidance tank
    - Mage - Barrier (can't think of a good name), shield healer
    - Warlock - Vampiric, lifestealing healer
    Matt's idea of using the same gear for each spec would help too since you wouldn't need to grind multiple sets (Respec and Just Do It!).

    Lots of other ideas but they're mostly superseded by things already mentioned.

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    1. As I mentioned in another reply, the gear differences would be needed or no one would do it at the harder difficulties. There would be no reasonable reward to encourage people to try harder or get better. Gear is a great motivator for many.

      I would love to learn all professions on one character but like you mentioned you would need to remove profession bonuses for that to work.

      Even 1/500 drop rate is out of line. I think the worst anything should be is 1/100 and there should be an internal counter that checks and assures a guaranteed drop on the 100th try. There are a few mounts I am approaching that 500 number for and it is just wrong. It is a game, and random has the ability to ruin games.

      Want to increase healers? Remove mana being an issue. Make healing about using the right abilities at the right time and less about managing a resource and you will see the healers quadruple over night. I would bet money on that.

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    2. So forget mana and balance it with CDs, I guess. The big heals are on a longer CD than the small heals so people only use big heals when needed and just keep the small heals going regularly but not constant button mashing?

      I don't have a healer but I guess it could be something like that.

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