- Moving around stuff on characters it made me think of an idea for an app and/or addition to the game I would love to see.
- Like those commercials "there's an app for that?"
- I wish there was one for this.
- What am I babbling about?
- Inventory control for us pack rats.
- A way to access the bags of every character we have and move stuff back and forth between them.
- Sure I understand there would need to be restrictions like stuff that is character bound or server bound, but it would be an awesome utility.
- Just killed a rare and got a big bag of herb.
- Woot, go me.
- Damn, accidentally opened it and now I only have three bag slots left.
- Open my app, move it all to my mages bag, because he is my herb catch all character, and tada, I have my bag space back and did not need to find a mail box to do it.
- Or while you are at work, do some cleaning up.
- Priest is holding on to all the cloth timeless pieces and I have a few in my bags around all my other characters.
- Move them over, no need to log into each, mail each, and then go fetch each mail.
- Who would not love something like that, in game and as an app?
- Okay, you got me, many people would not have a need for it.
- But that doesn't means I can't dream about how awesome having something like that as an ability in game would be.
- I am sure some people would use it, maybe even quite a few.
- Either way, I will willing to play the role of selfish elf and ask for it anyway.
- Just for me.
- Please. :)
- I asked nicely.
- My arena team is over 1300 now.
- Moving slowly doing 10 matches here and there, but getting there.
- And I got my weapon.
- Only 2 more non PvP peices and 5 low PvP pieces to replace.
- And I can calling anything under 522 low.
- All will get to 550, sooner or later.
- I had a dreadful outing last time we played.
- Funny as it might sound, the more I PvP the worse I seem to be getting at it.
- We are talking someone that could kite world bosses to main cities without even thinking about it and now I keep making mistakes kiting warriors.
- Maybe it is just as I do it more I am meeting harder opponents and I am making "nervous" rookie mistakes.
- They say sometimes to move forward you need to take a step back.
- Maybe this is a small step back for me.
- I just miss the days of being able to kite two melee at the same time all day long while I laugh at them never being able to catch me.
- Either I was better back then, or they were not as good back then.
- Or maybe a little of both.
- Seems everyone has so many catch up abilities now.
- Except retribution paladins.
- I could still kite them with my eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back.
- Now that is how all melee should be.
- Yes, evil, I know.
- I went cruising around the timeless island on three low geared 90s this weekend.
- My fresh 90 DK I mentioned last week, a 490 hunter I had not done anything with, and a 494 mage I had gotten to 90 and timeless geared up and never touched.
- For as much as I love hunters and will always remain a hunter, nothing can compare to a DK.
- Even a freshly dinged DK in timeless gear only with no gems and no enchants and no effort to fix them up could pull endless amounts of mobs, to some extent.
- Not frogs, oh hell no not frogs.
- My hunter could handle anything, as long as my pet could live.
- Some took more pet management than others, like stuff over the bridge.
- At that item level I could do chanters but the charge from the other guys one shot my pet.
- Unless I hit the shield shell before I pulled of course.
- But it took forever.
- My DK took forever too, but at least my DK was never really in danger of dying.
- My mage, I could not even try most stuff.
- Heading up the road I could get the elites but that was more about skill of positioning than skill of playing.
- Wait for them to do their herbing, then walk up on them to attack.
- No charge that way, because it would kill me.
- And then just stay far enough away not to get meleed and close enough not to get charged.
- Trust me, that is a skill all in its own.
- But that was too much work.
- It was interesting running the same route on three different characters with similar gear on the same day and seeing how they all fair.
- I had no trouble on anything with them at that item level but needed to play it differently on all of them as well.
- I decided to try and start gearing up my hunter, like I really need another one.
- Yes, I do, I do.
- But I find the gearing part fun.
- Did a few LFRs for the first time in months and now I remember why I stopped doing them.
- I did manage to get a fair deal of sigils in the ones I did do however.
- I was on voice chat with a few people when doing them when I made the innocent comment that had two very different responses.
- I said that all raids should be like they were in vanilla.
- One person said, if raids were that simplified they would quit.
- The other said, that it was a great idea.
- I think one thought I mean all raids as in "all" raids.
- I meant all raids in terms of what I was doing at that moment, LFR.
- Once I pointed that out, they agreed 100% as well.
- And the three of us also came to another idea that would be an awesome addition to LFR.
- Or at least we thought so.
- Addition by subtraction.
- LFR should be like ToC, just boss fights, no trash.
- Zone in at a boss, kill the boss and a portal opens, click it to move to the next boss, and so on.
- That would be great.
- And then after wiping not once, not twice, not three times or even four, but five times on the way to magara in ToT I proved exactly why that would be a great idea.
- Trash serves no purpose in random raids like LFR.
- Even more so any type of trash that could wipe you.
- It has just helped to create the hostile environment that leads to the toxic community when one person running in can wipe the entire group that is no where near them by pulling a mob that teleports people to it one at a time to mercilessly execute them.
- We never got magara down, the group gave up without even trying to run back for time #6.
- Sadly, I did not start on the first boss, I started on that one, so never even got a chance at the weapon either.
- It was a waste of time all around for me.
- Speaking of a waste of time, I got a learning lesson this weekend that there is no reason to ever be a nice guy in this game.
- Again.
- Yet I keep forgetting and try to be a nice guy and get screwed.
- I saw a boomkin fighting a rare so I landed and figured I would help him.
- I was not fishing for an invite, just figured I would help.
- Not like he invited me anyway, just pointing that out.
- He died, so I dismissed my pet and feigned death when the mob turned to my tag.
- Could I have killed it?
- Sure, even on a 490 hunter no rare is going to much of a problem for me.
- It was his tag, I was waiting for him to come back and I was going to let him tag it again then I would help him.
- He came back and started at it again and I went to help again.
- Somehow he managed to die even if my pet was tanking and there is no reason a range should die on one of the bug rares, but he managed it.
- I waited again for him.
- He came back and tagged it again and I started in to help him.
- He must have done something that caused him to lose the tag because it switched to my tag half way through the fight.
- I said screw it and invited him to a group.
- First mistake.
- I was in queue for the LFRs, 3 of them, and had been so for 1 hour and 17 minutes.
- As soon as I invited him I lost my space in the LFRs.
- My own fault, I made that mistake, but things get worse of course.
- No good deed goes unpunished they say.
- They are right.
- While waiting in queue I was running around killing rares, had already killed dozens, those baggies that have the goodies were just not dropping.
- But they dropped off this guy.
- I hit greed, because those loot bags are, in my opinion, the prime example of wanting something for greedy purposes.
- It gives you materials, which ones you do not know, but you want to get your greedy little hands on them.
- I hit greed, he hit need, not only on that but he hit need on the 440 cloak too, which he did not need when I hit disenchant.
- So he won both, of course, dropped group and never even said thank you.
- No thank you for dropping my LFR queue to help him, but I would not expect that because he did not know, but being I knew, having no thank you from him made it 100 times worse.
- No thank you for trying to help him kill the rare.
- No thank you for not stealing the tag when he died not once but twice.
- No thank you for waiting for him to come back so I could help him again.
- No thank you for when I did decide to kill it inviting him to the group so he could get a chance at stuff.
- And then the bastard needs on both things, never says thank you, and drops group.
- Not like I needed the stuff, but it is just not a very courteous thing to do.
- Someone goes out of their way for you the least you do is say thank you.
- And this my friends, is why you should NEVER help anyone in wow.
- I keep telling myself that, and I keep helping people.
- Yes, I am a flipping idiot.
- But they are not all bad, sometimes you run across a decent person.
- I saw a level 89 hordie getting his butt handed to him earlier that day and helped him.
- He was by that rare that is just where you enter the dread wastes.
- He was probably leveling, jumped down the rope and he was right there.
- I dismounted and blew it up for him and then mounted right up again.
- It was really quick, but he emoted thank you to me before he even bent over to loot the body.
- Now that is class.
- Reminds me of the tauren death knight I was having some fun with one day much earlier in the expansion.
- We must have both been doing the rare rounds and I stopped to help him and from that point on whenever we see each other fighting we always stop to help each other.
- I have not seen him around in a long time, hope he is doing well.
- See, there are some good people.
- Guess that is why I am an idiot that keeps going to help people.
- Sometimes, rarely, you get rewarded with a simple sign of respect such as a thank you.
- Is that really a lot to ask?
- Apparently it is if it is a boomkin you are hoping to hear it from.
- Next time I see him I am going to stand there and watch him die over and over again and maybe even do the laugh emote each time he dies.
- Then when he asks for help I will kindly tell them to shove it where the sun doesn't shine and steal the kill from him.
- Nah, I am not a jerk like that, but I really should be sometimes.
- Next time I will just not stop and help him.
- And because of him, next time I might not stop and help someone else that would be decent enough to say thank you afterwards.
- Yes people, one jerk can ruin the game for everyone, but one decent person can do nothing to repair the damage one jerk can do.
- My friends group tried gary again with no luck.
- He did not need me so I was not there this time, but he said they were not even getting to that phase they had problems with.
- Reminded him that they can push that phase early to practice it.
- But also mentioned, if they are not even getting to that phase, no reason to practice it now.
- I told him the only thing I could say is that it is a DPS issue for him.
- Without higher numbers his group will not get past it.
- Sad to say, because his team is pretty solid over all otherwise.
- Just not getting the most out of his damage dealers.
- Gear wise they should be able to do it.
- I think gear is a huge issue this expansion.
- More than in any other one.
- Not saying more gear will help them, they just need to get more out of the gear they have, but for the expansion as a whole gear is a problem.
- Too many raid tiers mean too many item level increases means too large of a gap thanks to that massive increase in item level.
- I think I have the solution.
- It is a two prong solution, one I should write a whole post on, but I will sum up an extremely oversimplified version here.
- First, add a new level of gear between green and blue.
- Lets use light blue.
- Was going to say yellow but the greens already look yellow to me and I am confused enough as it is, I do not need more confusion.
- So now we have 4 types of gear.
- Uncommon, Quality, Rare and Epic.
- Now, all the raids should drop the same item level loot.
- Yeap, LFR, normal (flex), heroic (normal) and mythic (heroic) will all drop the same exact item level.
- Lets call it item level 700.
- LFR would drop green 700 gear. As green gear it would have no gem slots, ever.
- Normal (flex) would drop light blue 700 gear. A higher stat allotment per item level but still no gem slots.
- Heroic (normal) would drop blue 700 gear. A higher stat allotment per item level and items can contain gem slots.
- Mythic (heroic) would drop purple 700 gear. The highest stat allotment per item level and can contain gem slots as well.
- Now that is how you really slow down item inflation.
- Each difficulty would have better gear than the one before, but not by huge margins like now.
- Each difficulty would have a different color to leave people the feeling as if they are getting stronger through gear.
- And it would help balance things over all.
- In theory anyway.
- Much better than the huge gap and huge stat boosts you get from raid to raid within the same tier.
- Sure someone in heroic gear should be stronger than someone in LFR gear but they should not have double the stats.
- 10% more with gem slots between the lowest to the highest is how you slow item inflation.
- Unless they plan to stat squish everything every single expansion, they are just going to back themselves into a corner faster if they keep up with this massive stat increase on gear every raid tier.
- Oh, speaking of stat squish, remember when I said there would be problems with it in reference to doing old content?
- Seems as if I was right.
- They are now going to give high levels a stat boost when going into old raids.
- It was a great idea, but I knew they could not make it work perfectly.
- At least they are addressing it before releasing it.
- Funny that we are being stat squished but being stat boosted when he go in old raids now.
- They had the best intentions.
- But I knew it would not work as they advertised it.
- Basic math could have told you that.
- I think I went on a little longer than usual today so I think I will end it here.
- Have a great day.
Blizzard Watch Weekly: Family togetherness
6 hours ago
Ha, you touched on two subjects I'm currently working on articles on! must be something in the air (or I read the same news you did...)
ReplyDeleteI make a point of killing Archerius (or however it's spelled) on the timeless isle pretty much every day. And as a hunter, people are generally happy to let me pet tank. Still, I'm always surprised how many people will add there dps to the mobs I'm clearing on my way there, knowing that they won't get anything out of it. I guess getting to get in on the arch kill is enough motivation. I'm never sure if I should be thanking each person or not, though.
In the world I've also gotten mixed responses. The other day I saw someone dying to an elite in northrend while levelling a newish hunter, so I pulled it off of them and helped them kill it. The person had less than 10% health when I stepped in and distracting shot off of them, and once it was dead, their response was: "I would have been fine, i could have killed it".
I really think people need to get over the stat squish. Let doing old bosses be harder. If you can't do them, roll a class that can. That they're wasting time tuning the stat squish to make doing old raids easier is just ridiculous to me. I would have been plenty happy with them doing that after the xpac hit. It's not like the first few months of an xpac are time when we are doing old content anyway. We'll have shiny new places to explore. Right now is a great time to do old content. Delaying WoD so they can make old raids more solo-able is much worse, to me, than delaying it for updated character models.
And finally, I don't know where I read this exactly, but one of the devs was talking about the exponential growth of power with each tier. I don't think the point is to make people feel more powerful. The point, which to me is somewhat brilliant, is that for a raid team like method, they can, for example, go into SoO with five forty something gear, and it will be challenging, while at the same time a casual team can slowly build up gear throughout the tier, and go into normal Garry with five sixty something item levels, and it be moderately challenging.
I'm no game designer, but I can't think of any other way to make the same content doable and challenging for a Method type guild, and a casual, normal only type guild. Even if that means having a stat squish each xpac, that seems well worth it.
In a case like that I would say no need to thank people, they are getting a benefit out of it by getting to arch. But on the continent where there are no shared tags, the person gets nothing from it, so a thank you is nice.
DeleteI agree, they are delaying WoD for stupid stuff. They can fix old raids later, they can add art later, heck they can even expand on garrisons later. Just get it out. A new expansion is about new levels to attain. Let us do that.
That is the reasoning behind 4 tiers of raiding, so each type of person gets something for them. I like normals (soon to be heroic) because they are easy enough to work through but challenging enough that we will not one shot everything on the way through, maybe just a boss here and there but in the same gear method might be able to pull off heroics and that is why normal is designed for me because I like it and heroic is designed for them because they like it.
But giving them a huge increase in power from the loot that drops just screws up the next tier, if there were to be one.
For example, if there was another, then LFR people would be getting something "just" under current heroic, because they would need to. And then they are getting a boost past flex, past normal and almost to heroic in one tier. If they kept the gaps smaller, huge jumps in power would not happen and it would be easier to design from tier to tier and for open world content that everyone, no matter if they raid or how they raid, will do.
Good post. The other day I was bored and figured I'd go around the Vale to kill elites. I saw a 300kish horde rogue getting his ass handed to him by one of the 91 elites. Went in there on my DK and helped him take it down. No thank you or anything. So I went about my business and saw another elite patting by. As I was about to go in for the kill, the same rogue comes and tags the elite. I stand there seeing the rogue's health slowly fade away, so I just let him die. I went to another elite, same thing happened. This has happened on numerous occasions, but your post made me laugh about what happened last week.
ReplyDeleteNow there are good people, like this resto druid who put the wild mushroom aoe on the ground for me when I was fighting an elite, even though I didn't need it. But I thanked her, as I always do with people who assist me.
I think I may focus my time in WoD around pvp. The only times I seriously did that was in BC and late Cata, on my hunter. I loved it, although fighting rogues and feral druids normally ended with them destroying me. However, I think I did ok vs everyone else as long as I stayed at max range. Oh and I miss my wing clip/disengage macro. I don't think I'll dps, I might go back to healing on my paladin or priest come WoD. I understand everyone goes for the healers first, but I'll take that challenge.
This last question might be hard to answer, but how do you go about picking your "main alts" for an expansion. I have more than a dozen 90s and have limited it to one main PVE toon and 1-2 PVP toons. Maybe an article about picking the right class would be cool to hear your thoughts on it.
I so miss my wing clip disengage too. I still have it in my marco as a matter of fact, never took it out. :P
DeleteI main is a hunter, my main alt is a hunter, and my secondary main alt is a hunter. Just kidding, but not really. My two top geared characters are hunters.
I usually go on feel and how much I enjoy playing them. For DPS it is a hunter, I do not need another. For heals it usually ends up being my priest or my shaman, depending on who feels gimped or not. For tanks it really switches up. My main tank has been a paladin, a warrior, a druid and a monk. Oddly enough, never a DK. My druid seems to be my standard fall back. I dabble in others and if I am enjoying them I keep playing them, if not, it is back to my druid. I always seem to come back to my druid.
Don't give up on helping out. It's just society nowadays. Walking down the halls in the office, you run into those, hiding in their cell phones, or 'reading some report', but in all honesty their just isolating themselves. Then you run into those that not just nod and say "hey!" but also talk your ear off about the latest stat squish issues. As bloggers, we tend to be the later, chatty, 'oh man did you see that ... " type. Then again you ARE playing Alliance.. ;-) "Horde, the cooler, friendlier faction".
ReplyDeleteHonestly I believe I get more thank yous from horde than I do alliance. In the form of emotes of course.
DeleteI'm too invested in alliance to switch sides now but I do need a home for my horde characters. Only one 90 on that side at the moment. Can you guess what class? Hunter of course.
It does seem that way. Seems like everyone is always in a rush but then again I am from new york city, so perhaps I don't notice that change in society as a whole because it has always been that way here since I was born. And new yorkers always have the time to say hello. Heck, if we can stop from our rush rush world others should be able to as well.
let me guess ... you are old school :P
ReplyDeleteyou might have been infected by a virus called "cooperativus playus", which is hard to get rid of.
Unfortunately the modern environment found ways to inoculate most players against this virus ("loofor groukingus" just be an example thereof).
That being said - I always played on RP-PVP servers. In such an environment it's always a double surprise, if the other guy not only refrains from tearing you completely apart, but helps you. oh sweet memories ....
Rauxis, chosen of CAT
Nothing old school about being a decent human being. ;)
DeleteOn a PvP server things are different. On a PvP server I would have killed the 89 and took the tag for myself because, as the saying goes, PvP happens on a PvP server. But, if I were in a particularly generous mood, I might have helped him kill it. But then I would have killed him and effectively kept him from looting it. No need to corpse camp, just stand on the body, he would keep coming to me to try to loot. Evil, right?
PvP is a different world. You are expected to kill the other faction.
Re: Boomkin... some folks who are soloing, even unsuccessfully, aren't looking for help. I'd put myself in that camp, when I'm soloing things I generally want to be soloing them. I will toss a /nod to someone if they help but I don't think it's strictly necessary. I'll help others out regularly, though, especially if they seem to be in trouble... I'd never expect a response, though. In your case considering all you went through I would expect a response but... some folks are clueless, both in-game and out. Every time I get all bitter about WoW players I just go drive around for 15 minutes and my fellow drivers remind me that discourtesy isn't just an issue in WoW. When did turn signals become optional?
ReplyDeleteRe: gear, that would never happen... iLvl is now a thing and, overall, I much prefer it to "gearscore" or equivalent. It's at least a neutral factor, either you have it or you don't and everyone knows what theirs (and yours) is. Having a variety of strengths at the same iLvl would be a problem. I sympathize with the scaling issues but that's just how it goes, they want new cutting-edge content to be a challenge with the best previous-tier gear for the best players, with a significantly flatter scaling line then it would be fundamentally too easy to get into current content. You're welcome to argue that it should be that easy but I'd disagree, both from my personal perspective as well as that of Blizzard... they want each tier to count for a whole bunch of reasons.
Re: Squish... yeah, as long as there's ANY non-linear gear scaling, and there will be at the highest levels (have they mentioned whether Cat gear will be linear or not? I'm assuming that's where the slow creep upward will begin), they'll have to artificially boost your power in some cases... but not all. The vast majority of older content should be doable without that kind of buff, although I believe they mentioned a long time ago that they'd like give us a +20% boost for all old content or somesuch just to keep things simple. Why's that an issue? As long as difficulty is the same or easier they've accomplished the goal, it doesn't have to be done in any particular way.
Good point, just go out in the world and you will release that wow player are no different than any other jerkwad out there. Never thought of it that way. Good way of putting it.
DeleteI do believe gear acquisition should be easy. Content should be harder. I think everyone should be able to get all the gear they want to get with a little work either solo or in a group, and yes, they even means the best of the best heroic gear. Because in the end gear means nothing.
I can give you a group of 10 people that have been playing the game for all 10 years it has been out and put them all in best in slot gear and I bet you they would never be able to down a boss. They have gear and experience, but they are not raiders. So people need to stop saying gear is important. It is only important to the sense that it gives the player a feeling of personal progression and that keeps them playing.
The content should be difficult, the gear acquisition should not.
Buffing us as we go into older content is not a big deal really. But it just goes to show you they bit off more than they could chew. They did not expect this to be a problem and even an outside like myself saw it was going to be a problem the moment they mentioned it. How can professionals not notice something like that? It should the quality of people that have working on the game are not really the highest quality if they could not notice the obvious. Sure, one person can miss something like that, happens all the time, but with everyone that works there no one notice this? What are they doing over there?
Eh. Content should be hard but there can't be a huge difference from tier to tier... doing ToT in 522 gear should feel roughly equivalent to doing SoO in 553 gear from a difficulty standpoint. If a typical raid who's capable of killing bosses in SoO with 553 gear could do it with 489 gear then it would throw everything out of whack.. there needs to be enough "required" gear progression from tier to tier that you can't just keep wearing the same gear for 2 years and have similar success. Well, you COULD, but that would be too big of a shift... there are already enough complaints out there that gear is useless, that move would validate those complaints.
DeleteEh again, it's just a knob to tune... I figured from the beginning they'd probably have to do something like that which means they knew it too. I still don't see the harm as long as the goal is achieved.
I agree, doing tot in 522 gear should be equal do doing soo in 553 gear, but the difference is you could get 522 gear with valor, you could not get 553 gear otherwise. Gearing should be easier.
DeletePeople pay to feel as if they are making personal progression. You can call it an MMO all you want, you can say it is meant to be played with others all you want, but in the end the only thing that will ever matter is the solo player and if that solo player feels they are advancing. Gear can give them that feeling and everyone, as in even the person that never steps foot into a raid, should have the same right to feeling progression as far as gear goes. This is why gearing need to be easier.
Leave the difficulty to those that wish to tackle it but let everyone have the gear. It is what they play for. Do not penalize them for not wanting to raid by telling them "to bad so sad no gear for you". It is bad design and will only hurt the game. Forcing people into group content is not the answer for allowing people to feel as if they have some personal progression and that is what blizzard is doing.
Agree to disagree, it's an MMO, solo players should NEVER be the focus. I'm fine with them making solo-friendly gameplay but that doesn't correspond to them needing to offer a way for solo players to get the same calibre of gear as players doing group content.
DeleteThe vast majority of my toons haven't touched or have barely run LFR... yet they're plenty well geared. I don't think there's anything wrong with the current ability of solo players to gear up, although in part that's due to ToT-level VP gear and I've had access to Ordos since day one which I realize taints my opinion. They should offer some sort of way for solo players to get some gear, my preference would be expanding crafted gear to cover more slots vs making them purchasable with points. I'd like to see more reliance on fellow players (or personal alts), not less, chain-running 5-mans or scenarios shouldn't be a gateway to getting cutting-edge gear, IMO.
I am not sating solo players should be the focus, I am saying the solo player (as in you, me, one person) needs to feel as if they are progressing.
DeleteI think you took what I meant to mean solo game play. I meant personal progression. Everyone wants to feel they are advancing.