Picking Apart the GC Twizzcast

Ghostcrawler left us a nice collection of comments from the twizzcast yesterday and as always I found a bunch of things I would like to comment on.  You can check out a summery of them over at mmo-c here but I'll just quote the ones I want to talk about.

Valor Points will not be converted to Justice Points for Patch 5.4. "Players who want to stockpile their 3,000 Valor before Patch 5.4 hits will be able to do that, and probably should start thinking about that."

There are two specific things I grabbed out of this by reading between the lines.  First is the obvious one I am sure most will pick up on and that is him saying we should think about capping now.  Being today is a reset day (tomorrow in the UK) does it mean that three weeks from this reset that 5.4 is coming out?

He did say to "think" about it, so that might mean it is close but it is not three weeks.  Maybe it is four weeks and that is why he said we should "think" about it.  Or perhaps he is just covering his ass, just as I would do the same, and the intention is for it to be out in three weeks but he said "think" so if they need to delay a week or two he can't be held accountable for saying it was going to be three weeks when it wasn't.

I think that is most likely what he meant.  It is expected to be out in three weeks, he gave us fair warning, but he did not guarantee it would be out in three weeks.  This is basically perfect customer relations at its best.  Perhaps good ol' GC has been taking lessons on how to say things.  Give people the warning, but do not promise them.  Nice touch there crab boy.

The other part of the comment that made me think of something was the first part.  Valor will not be downgraded to justice.  Usually when new valor gear comes out and older gear becomes justice gear and the valor points become justice points.  This is usually done to keep us from getting a head start on valor gear.  I never really agreed with it since they added the cap to valor.  Who really cares if I get one piece (or 2 small ones) faster because I had valor.  It always came off as rather petty to deny the people that worked for it a tiny head start in my opinion.

However, with that said and the fact I do not recall seeing any posts about new valor gear I am thinking that unless they add something last minute we will have absolutely no new valor gear next patch.  Basically this seems to be blizzard reenforcing the feeling I have said many have since the beginning of the expansion.  It is "raid or die".  When there is no way to get current level gear except raiding it is a raid or die design.  Bad move blizzard, really bad move.

I raid, so no huge deal.  Even my characters that do not raid it is no big deal as I will begrudgingly do the LFR for some gear.  But for non raiders, or for raiders with bad luck, those valor pieces were not only nice, they were required.  No valor gear is a huge slap in the face to every person that plays the game, raider or not.  You have three weeks, rethink this one blizzard.  Add valor gear.

It is easy for your character's level to advance much faster than your profession skill level. Fixing this will take a significant amount of developer time, as what to do with all of the recipes have to be considered.

No shit Sherlock.  Are you telling me it took you this long to notice what everyone with a brain figured out the first time they took a character through these new faster than lightning leveling processes since cataclysm? 

Oh wait, I forgot that one word there, brain.  Yes, it would have required someone with a brain to notice that when you speed up leveling you should speed up the professions too.  Because the things were so well designed as to be leveled together changing one should have meant you changed the other as well.  But no, that type of logic flies way to far over blizzards head.

Beside the fact that it took them well over 2 years to notice a problem that hundreds, thousands even, have posted about on forums, blogs, and twitter about they now say it will take significant developer time to fix it.

Who do they have working on the development team, the the puppets from sesame street?  Let me fix this for you blizzard.  No serious developer time needed.  Just read the following.

Make high chance skill gathering give 2 points instead of one per herb picked, node mined or animal skinned.  Lets normal chance give 1 skill point and let low chance give 1 skill point every other.  This will help speed up gathering professions so they keep up with the increased leveling speed.

For crafting professions, decrease the number of items you need.  Having leveled 4 leather workers since the change in cataclysm I can say with absolutely no doubt that it is 100% impossible to keep it leveled with your character because of the demands of each pattern.  When you need 12, 14, 16 or 20 leather per pattern at some points and you might only get a total of 60 of that type of leather while leveling before you out level the zone, if you even happen to be doing quests that allow you to skin something that is, there is no way your leather working can keep up.

Decrease the amount of leather needs per pattern to 2-6 pieces each.  Same for blacksmith patterns.  Tailoring can just a tiny turn down also.  Alchemy seems fine, as long as you do not get CRZed to death and go 20 levels without seeing one herb, which has happened to me.

And those special patterns in leather working, the ones that need turtle scale or scorpion scale.  Lets get real here blizzard.  Of the four leather workers I have leveled since cataclysm I did not collect enough of either of those to make one of those items, combined.  As in 4 characters skinning while leveling did not collect 20 turtle scales.  Lets lower those special case items down to 1 per pattern, maybe 2 at max.

That is how you fix it, lower the requirements needed for the patterns.  I did not need hours upon hours to come to that conclusion.  Just logic.  If I level 4 times faster than I did when the professions were created to develop hand in hand with leveling then the professions need to be decreased proportionately if I want to keep them tied together.

What type of developers do you have working there that it would take them significant time to figure that one out?  Seriously, I would like to know.  I understand what you said there is a customer relations thing just like the "think" in collecting valor was.  The difference is one was a hint (think) and this was an outright disrespect to the players reading it.  It would not take significant developer time to fix it, you just do not want pay someone to edit all those numbers to fix it.  Two completely different things.

The heirloom weapons are also intended to make Mists of Pandaria a little more alt friendly.

There were many lines in the raid portion I could comment on, all of them I could actually, but this one has to go first because I found this to be particularly humorous.

Alt friendly?  If they dropped in the LFR, which they do not, I can see your point about them making mists a little more alt friendly.  But to complete the actual raid to have a chance to get them it is not really all that alt friendly.

Lets forget for a moment that I am a weirdo that has a billion alts and will most likely finish the raid on at least normal difficulty.  Most alt-a-holics are not raiders.  They might be part time raiders, fill in raiders, some time raiders, but if anything they are more likely to be looking for raiders.

If you are making something for alts don't you think it would be best to make them available easier to the people that would need them the most?  People that just have an army of alts but not really a dedicated raid schedule.

There is no valor gear this tier, how about making those BoA weapons available for valor.  Now that would be alt friendly.  Do not say something is alt friendly and then put it in a place where most people that are just alt levelers will never see it.  I look forward to gearing my non raiding alts from my mains doing it as I am sure many others are as well.  But the difference is I am a casual raider with lots of alts.  I am not an alt-a-holic that happens to raid sometimes.  It will help many alt people, sure, but it will not help the people that actually would need it most.  The people that do not raid and just level alts mostly.

They are not being put in the game to make it a little more alt friendly.  They are being put in the game so that the main raids have something special in them that the LFR does not.  I think they could have put something special in the main raids a lot better than that and let that go where it should be, somewhere that everyone can have access to them.  Just another case of the "raid or die" mists attitude.

Siege of Orgrimmar has a little bit of branching in paths and ideally raids in the future will have more, allowing you to skip a boss or do bosses in a slightly different order.

After the success of the wrath raids that had options on how you do them, like naxx, OS, ulduar, ICC,  and the continued requests from the players for more path driven content, it took you this long to figure out that options are good?

Now I understand why you say changing professions would take significant developer time.  You people can not make a decision and move with it.  Everything needs to be months or years of discussion before you do it.  There is no reason it should have taken you this long to realize that one straight line in a raid can lead to burn out faster than anything else, even more so when the second boss is something like horridon and you have no other options.  Which leads us to...

The first three or four bosses shouldn't be too hard for most raiding guilds, allowing them to have bosses they can use to gear up with as they progress.

In theory this if fine but I've heard it before.  Stop talking about it and do it.  And do not take forever to fix things if there is a problem.  There are still guilds stuck at horridon as hard as some might find that to believe. I've watched multiple guilds disband on my server because of horridon, and even if you did make nerfs you never made them enough to even out the playing field.  There us no reason the second boss should be one of the three hardest bosses in a 12 man raid.  And if it so happens that it is, fix it ASAP.  Don't "wait til next patch" like you do now. 

That is going to be the huge key to if you live by what you just said there mr crab.  If one of those first three or four bosses starts giving the majority of guilds fits, nerf is fast and hard.  It is supposed to be easier.  You just said that.  So make it so.  Don't let a whole patch go like you have this one where you leave one early boss too hard when comparing it to the boss that comes after it because the third one is a joke.  Where is the building up difficulty in that when the third boss is roughly a quarter of the difficulty of the second one?

I feel bad for the people that ended up seeing their guilds destroyed by him.  I feel bad for a few people I know that have still not gotten past him.  You should always start slow and build up with raid design.  Listen to nike, just do it.  Stop with the talk and just do it.  I've heard this line before and you did not come through so excuse me if I do not believe it when you say there will be a ramp up in difficulty.  You are the same people that thought added crush was a good idea for the LFR.  You are not always the best of judges when it comes to considering what is too easy or too difficult for your players.

Proving Grounds could even be used to replace item level as the gating requirement for Raid Finder or other things that use matchmaking.

I support this idea and while I am at it I dislike this idea.  I can do both at the same time can't I?  I think having someone past the most basic of basic ability tests is a fair idea.  However, I do not believe it should replace item level.  I think it should work in conjunction with it.

Lets face it, if you can get a gold in the proving grounds it shows you know how to play your class.  But will someone that just hit 90 and is in 435 gear actually be helpful to their SoO LFR?  Even if they are the absolute best player in the entire world they will still drag down the group.  A 435 item level tank would not be able to take the hits that would be going out in SoO even on LFR level.  A healer would be oom instantly trying to keep people up.  A 435 damage dealer will in no way be able to pull 80K, when that should be the absolute worst anyone should be doing in there when SoO comes out.

So while I do believe using the proving grounds as a gate would be a nice idea I could support, it can not be a gate alone.  There needs to be another gate with it.  Lets say you need a 500 item level to get into the SoO LFR when it comes out they can scale it based on the proving grounds.  As in, you need a bronze and a 500 item level or a silver and a 490 item level of a gold and a 480 item level.  But even in the worst case, you would still need a certain item level.  There is only so much that skill can make up for this expansion where gear is everything.  And even at that I would question if a 480 tank would be able to take the hits, even if they are a gold caliber player.

Yes to proving grounds being a buffer to enter.  No to it being the only buffer.  Just think about it before you switch, doing proving grounds only will spell disaster.

Most guilds should be able to make progress in Flex difficulty.

Nice in theory not so nice in implementation if you are delaying its release until after the normal and heroic are out.  If indeed flex is mean to be "progression for friends and family guilds" then they should be allowed to start their progression at the same time normal and heroic mode raiders do.

Unless something changed that I did not take notice of flex is not coming out when the patch comes out, it will be rolled out later.  As such, it will force the people that should be in it to dabble in normal until it comes.  Why not just let them dabble in flex on the same day if that is where they belong.

I am sure most people, even most people that only use LFR, will agree that we understand the reasons for the LFR coming out after the real raid does.  But if flex is meant to be a form of real raiding like normal or heroic but for a different skill level it should be treated the same as normal or heroic and not thrown in with the LFR as delayed content just to see it.

Let the friends and family guilds start their progression with everyone else.  It is only fair.  If you want people to feel like raiders, let them raid when the raiders start raiding.  Not afterwards.

The developers have to strike a balance between making too many changes and making the necessary changes.

Last but not least I post this one with oh so many thoughts in mind and sit here ready to type out my thoughts but sometimes I consider what I am about to say and figure it might be best to keep my mouth shut.  There have been so many changes this expansion that seem like changes for the sake of making change and there have been countless things that have needed changes and fixes and yet we sit waiting as they do nothing.  I could make a post on this comment all in itself, and I just might do that.

But for now I'll heed those words I'm sure everyone's mother taught them, if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything.  I will take that advice this time around and say to our friend the crab, I have nothing to say to you about that line.