Monday, January 20, 2014

Monday Random Thoughts

- Another monday and another day I could complain about the LFR groups I had this week.

- Yet oddly I have none to complain about.

- Not really anyway.

- Had a decent week for once with the exception of one SoO wing 2 run.

- And even that rough run was not bad for the most part because people were decent to each other.

- It occurs to me sometimes that the wiping is not really what makes the LFR bad.

- It is the people in the group and how they handle the wiping that makes the LFR bad.

- Which brings me to an old thought again.

- There is no reason that you should ever need to depend on 9 or 24 other people for anything in game.

- Everything you can do in game as a group you should be capable of doing solo.

- Yes, that means current tier raiding as well.

- Perhaps make it a lot more work, more of a grind, make it harder to do solo.

- But you should still be able to do it solo.

- You should never be put in the position where you need to depend on others.

- Yes, I know it is an MMO.

- All that means is that in the world there are other there.

- As in there are multiple players in the same world.

- It doesn't mean you need to play with them.

- I do not see the letter C for the word cooperative anywhere in MMO.

- You should be able to do everything solo.

- Other people are what can make this game great but they are also what can ruin the game.

- I was leveling a hunter in nagrand and basically just skinning my little heart out.

- I had no choice, to catch up on my leather working I had to do the entire last level just killing and skinning.

- Because with fast leveling you fall so darn far behind.

- I did manage to get my leather working to the level where I can start doing wrath stuff now however.

- So off the northrend the next time I play that character.

- I had exactly 3 pieces of leather left over.

- And that is after spending all of 67 - 68 skinning and skinning only.

- Yeah, professions need an upgrade to fit the faster leveling, no doubt.

- But what I want to complain about is other people while being a skinner.

- I killed a few mobs, was skinning them, someone flew up, watched me skin two mobs and then get attacked by one of those roaming elementals.

- So what did they do when I got attacked?

- They landed and started to skin off my pile seeing I was now in a fight.

- Scum sucking low life piece of shit mother fucker.

- Sorry for the language, but this is the exact example I mean when I say it is other people that make the game bad.

- I was skinning, they saw me skinning, I killed the mobs, they are my skins.

- Good news is they got nothing, I am a hunter, my pet taunted, I finished skinning and they stole none of my skins.

- I got lucky tapping them all for the skin before they did.

- But they tried, and that is the problem.

- If I see someone kill something that can be skinned I see if they skin it or if they walk away before I even consider walking up to skin it.

- It is called being a decent person.

- It is called common courtesy.

- It is how people should act in an MMO.

- Skinning is not like mining or herbalism.

- The ore or herb is just sitting there for anyone to take, first person to it gets it.

- If there are some dead mobs on a trail then they go by the ore and herb rule.

- First person to get to them can skin them.

- But unlike herbs and ore, if you kill something it is your skin.

- Or at least it should be.

- It is not a first come first serve thing.

- You did the work, you get the spoils.

- Letting someone else skin your kills would be like letting someone else loot your mobs.

- How would you feel if you were running around killing things and anyone could loot them?

- That is the exact same thing as you killing a mob and someone else skinning it.

- It is letting someone else loot your mob.

- I am sure no one in the entire game would be happy if someone else could loot their kills.

- So why accept people skinning you kills.

- It makes me wonder if there is a way to turn off AoE looting sometimes.

- I never looked, maybe there is.

- Don't get me wrong, I love AoE looting, but there are some times it gets in the way.

- Like when you kill a massive mountain of beasts with the intention of skinning them and loot and now they are there for everyone to skin.

- I want to loot one at a time so I can skin one at a time and not have my skins stolen.

- I got into the habit of killing things one at a time when I see some other skinners in the zone.

- I might be a decent person and have common courtesy but I would say, from my experience, that places me firmly in the 1%.

- It seems the majority of players are scum bags by nature.

- Now to pet peeve number two about skinning.

- People that do not loot.

- Seriously people, just loot everything and vendor it.

- It might not seem like much seeing 60 silver, but if you loot it all and vendor it all, it does add up.

- And while I understand bags being full, I only partly understand it.

- There is no reason anyone should not have the vendor mammoth the way money is easy to make now.

- So unless you do not already have a maxed character that can buy it for your alts while leveling or you are under 20 and can not mount yet there is absolutely no excuse for not looting everything.

- None what so ever.

- They should add something that if someone does not loot a mob after 1 minute you can skin it and a little loot bag will appear on the ground that contains what was there as loot, should the person decide to come back and get it.

- That and changing it to if a skinner kills a mobs only they can skin it.

- Only mobs that are killed by non skinners can be skinned by anyone.

- That would put them more in line with ore and herbs.

- On to other things.

- One of my hunters and my monk are now collecting runestones.

- My druid finally is collecting valor, but as I have not been needed to tank much and I do not do random content and do not feel like doing quests, I might be stuck there for a long long time.

- I think I will just run ToT 3 only on my druid.

- Even if I hate random content.

- It will help me get there and will allow me to keep trying to get the damn pet off the saurok.

- I still do it on at least 4 characters a week with a coin on all of them each week.

- It is getting to the point it is hard to believe I have not gotten the pet yet.

- Between doing it when it was current and doing it now when you can get pets on coins I would guess I have had over 100 kills and still no pet.

- See, I've told you RNG hates me.

- There are some people that have gotten it multiple times already.

- Like the guy that has 6 on the auction house.

- I might just end up buying it for 30K gold if I keep up at this rate.

- No, no pet is worth 30K gold, but being you can only get it in the LFR and once we level we can never do that LFR again I might have no choice.

- Funny part is, even if I got it, I would still use ToT 3 as a valor generator for all my characters because having extras is not a bad idea.

- If people can get 30K for it now can you imagine what people will get for it when no one is capable of getting it any longer once no one can queue for the LFR for it?

- Don't say people can still queue for it at 90 because no one will.

- Try to queue for DS at 85 and check your average wait time.

- Who is really going to wait 18 hours to get into a group?

- It would be nice if you could just walk into old LFR difficulty raids.

- So if you wanted some thing for transmog or wanted to solo it you could.

- Speaking of needing a way to walk into them, scenarios need a way to just walk into them.

- I still need a couple of scenario achievements and I sure as hell do not need a group to do them.

- So I want to just walk into them and do them.

- Why can we not walk into a scenario?

- I can understand old LFRs even if I don't like it but I can not understand why we can not go into scenarios solo.

- The mobs do not drop loot.

- You would not get a baggie with goodies if you walk in.

- There is nothing to be gained from walking it so they can not use the same excuse they use for limiting dungeons to 5 per hour.

- If there is nothing to be gained from doing them why don't they let us walk into them?

- Would love to hear a real answer to that, a reasonable answer.

- None of that "because we do not want people walking in" bull crap.

- We pay your salary, if we want to walk in and it is not game breaking if we do, there is no reason to keep up from doing so.

- Blizzard has a different way of thinking and most of the time it is about as off base as possible.

- Like the gearing cycle now.

- With each tier of raiding have 4 levels of gear that effectively means we need to gear up 4 times, or at least have the option to do so.

- If there is anything in this game I am sick of it is gearing up.

- I am tired of the treadmill of gearing, enchanting, gemming, reforging, and doing it over and over again with each new piece of gear at four levels of gear in one single tier.

- My mage currently had 5 pieces of gear in his bags that are upgrades.

- One is even a 559 that upgrades a 502 I am currently wearing.

- I am in no rush to put any of it on.

- I am waiting until I get more gear to do it.

- It is an alt, it is capable of doing the DPS required for the content it is currently doing which is the occasional flex, so I do not really "need" the gear for anything other than extending my epeen so I can put out bigger numbers.

- Sorry, I do not function that way.

- I do not give a heck if I put out bigger numbers when bigger numbers are not required.

- At least not on an alt.

- If anything I like bigger numbers so I can solo things better, not for raiding.

- Sure they are good for that, but if I am well over the minimum requirements to begin with, it is not really needed.

- It is needed more for solo stuff than for raiding.

- And I do not do anything out in the world on my mage any longer, so that is why I am not rushing to put the gear on.

- If I went out and killed rares on it then I would have upgraded them ASAP.

- But not if all I do is flex and LFR.

- If I had equip those 5 pieces as I got them the situation would have went something like this.

- Get an upgrade.  Equip it.  Gem it.  Enchant it.  Change a few other gems because of that pieces gems.  Maybe change an enchant too.  Reforge everything.

- Next day get another upgrade.  Equip it.  Gem it.  Change the gem I put in the piece I got the day before.  Enchant or change a few enchants.  Reforge everything.

- Same day, next flex wing, get another upgrade.  Equip it.  Thank god no gem slot on this one.  Enchant it, change another enchant, reforge everything again.

- Craft myself the belt.  Equip it.  Get a belt buckle for it.  Gem it all up causing me to change one other gem in the process.  At least no enchants need to change this time.  Reforge everything again.

- Ordos loves me and gives me a piece I need.  Equip it.  Enchant it.  Oops, need to change another gem and enchant because of stat weights.  Reforge everything.

- Okay, so over the course of 3 days I've wasted gems, enchants, time, effort, and had to work on getting my character back in order 5 times.

- No thank you, I will wait until I have about 8 or more upgrades in my bags and put them all on at the same time and do all that once.  Just once.

- And then with their LFR version and flex version and normal version and normal warforged version and heroic version and heroic warforged version.

- Within theory you could effectively get and have to manage the same piece of gear with the same exact name 6 times.

- They really need to simplify gear, big time.

- And I am not talking simplify it like they are in WoD by removing reforging, some stats, some gem slots and some enchants from the game.

- I mean simplify it by making you not have 4 tiers of gearing in the same tier.

- One type of gear is fine.

- LFR, Flex, Normal, Heroic, they should all drop the same item level gear.

- Add a little tag on it for where it comes from for peoples epeen.

- LFR should be a watered down version 20% difficulty.

- Flex should be a half difficulty version 50% difficulty.

- Normal should be, well, normal and 100% difficulty.

- Heroic should be the challenge for people that want challenge and be 150% difficulty.

- It would mean no more time spent balancing 4 different raid tiers.

- Much less item inflation thanks to there no longer being 4 sets of gear for one tier.

- And because of that it would mean more content could be developed instead of spending all that time balancing 4 different versions and creating 4 different sets of gear and deciding on 4 different stat levels.

- Just design it once, nerf or buff it from normal level to fit the others, and let them all drop the same gear.

- But that would never work because most people in the game do not raid for the same reasons I do.

- I raid because I like to raid.

- I raid because I like beating a challenge.

- They raid for gear, and why raid heroic if you can get the same gear in LFR.

- Many people will say that.

- And the heroic raiders would cry a river because their gear was not better than anyone elses.

- They would never want the real challenge of doing it in lesser gear, they want the better gear.

- I would make you a bet that there would probably be less than 10 guilds in the world that would be capable of doing heroic raids if they needed to do them with all normal mode gear.

- Those 10 guilds are real heroic raiders.

- Those 10 guilds want the challenge.

- The others just want the gear and use the gear to get it down.

- Not like there is anything wrong with that.

- But that is why something like a single gear level will never happen.

- Because the hard core 1% would cry a river and blizzard would listen to them and cater to them like they always do instead of doing something that might upset them.

- Remember how well cataclysm started out when they decided to make the random dungeons for the 1%.

- I must say I loved it, they were fun, they were a challenge, and in a guild group they were never really half bad once you figured out what to do.

- In a random setting however, they took the one thing the casual players, the part time players, the bad players, had for their own use, dungeons, and handed it over to the 1% that most likely would never do them anyway.

- What the hell was blizzard thinking?

- They let the people that do not even do dungeons decide how dungeons should be made.

- Blizzard needs to stop listening to bad ideas.

- And that includes some of mine.

- More specifically this idea.

- While I like the idea of one set of gear for all 4 levels of raiding, it is a bad idea.

- But watch blizzard do it.

- Because they really are that brain dead sometimes.

- Maybe I should start working on my mage for his legendary now.

- Might give me a reason to upgrade those pieces.

- I am not sure I would be capable of doing the caster boss at the end of the quest line at 514 item level.

- Then again, I would have never guessed I could do the melee one on a 520 rogue with 502 weapons and I managed that.

- Never under estimate the power of dedication, practice, problem solving and perseverance.

- If you put your mind to it, you can do anything.

- Have a great day.

19 comments:

  1. I'd love to be able to walk into scenarios to do achievements. That'd be awesome. I do that for dungeons all the time.

    If walking in is a development problem, at least allow solo queues.

    I don't re-gem or re-enchant other pieces when I get new gear unless there is a hit/exp cap problem. Normally, just gem and enchant the new item and then reforge everything.

    I could go for the same gear in all difficulties; they'd never do it because of all the reasons you mentioned, but anyway. The world first groups always do the content while undergeared. The gear grind is really just there to keep people doing it over and over, but I've never subscribed to that model. I alwayd did it for progression, achievements, mounts, etc. Gear was just a bonus.

    This week I said adieu to the Hunting Party Podcast. They had their final show, Episode 200, on Saturday. It was 5.5 hrs of hunter fun and shenanigans both ingame and on the stream. Even Crithto joined the stream for a little bit, which I was very surprised to see someone from Blizzard jump on. Very sad that the show is over though. The hunter blogging/podcasting community has definitely been shrinking over the last year.

    They did make a special mention about "the Angry dwarf, err, Angry Elf, no wait, The Grumpy Elf"... I blame it on the alcohol... Anyway, your blog seems to be a favorite among the hunter elite.

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    1. I've gotten most of the dungeon meta achievement ones doing them solo. Just need to get a group for schools out, because you can not do it solo, and I will be done with it.

      We are a different breed that do it for something other than gear. For most gear is the great motivator. I have many people in my guild that just do not want to raid unless we are going to do heroics because "there is no gear I can get from it" even if we are doing it to help gear others.

      The hunter community has taken a huge hit over the last year sadly. We lost so many great hunters and pages and pod casts. It is sad each time I see one go. But we still, even at that, have one of the most active class communities, just fewer places to gather now.

      That is awesome. I would have figured I would be an outcast being I am often opinionated, and always grumpy.

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    2. Just heard it today while at work. Was funny with BRK calling me the angry dwarf.

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  2. People stealing skins also pisses me off. So much so that I'll waste my going around either the timeless isle cats, or the goats in the valley, and just kill all of them that I can without looting, just so that other person can't skin anything.

    I would be fine with not being able to ever skin anyone else's kill, as long as that meant no one could skin my kills.

    I realize that it's not really that big of a deal, and that I can (especially this late in the xpac) just go kill some more, since it takes way less time to kill them than skin them... but it still makes my furious. It's probably the only thing I do, in game, that makes me angry (I gave up LFR long ago).

    ~delirium

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    1. oh, better idea: if you skin someone else's kill, you're now tagged for pvp, from either faction. If someone still skins your killl, and you then kill them, they become skinnable, regardless of race, which makes them unable to rez at their body, and they have to take res sickness, while still flagged for whatever pre-determined amount of time.

      Now that I think about it, that would be a fun way to encourage world PvP on PvE servers. You can loot the opposing faction's kills, but when you do it flags you for pvp, and if they kill you, they can loot whatever they would have gotten.

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    2. It is annoying when someone steals a skin from you like that. I can see if they did not know you were a skinner, but when they know you are and do it, it is infuriating.

      -

      On a PvP server that would work, that if the same faction skins you can kill them. That solution would never work on a PvE server. I can hear people complaining about it already.

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    3. On that last note in particular:
      http://darklegacycomics.com/172.html

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    4. That would be great.

      Remember when worgen used to be skinable? I loved that.

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  3. Heh. You finally had some of my decent LFR runs, I finally had one of yours, a fail on Sha of Pride... I gave it 5 attempts before giving up, even at that point we were barely getting to the Pride reset. 10 people, the same 10 people, constantly dying as soon as the puddles hit hard enough to take them out. Some, unfortunately and ironically, near the top performance-wise... why someone with gear and skill and actually pushing buttons appropriately would wipe themselves and by extension the raid, repeatedly, is beyond me. Didn't really need anything off that boss on that toon, though, so I sacrificed the 90VP in exchange for my sanity and walked away.

    Upside, I picked up a few LFR weapons this weekend on alts that needed them... pretty soon I'll have LFR+ weapons on all my main server toons. That'll be step 1 in wrapping up MoP for me. Still many steps after that, of course.

    I've done that a few times for scenarios, just ask a pair of buddies to pop on max-level alts, group up, get into the scenario, then they can log off and go back to their business leaving you to yours. 2 minutes, done.

    For me, I typically do the gear upgrade thing once a week... once a toon has gotten all the upgrades for the week they're likely to get, I deal with it all at that point. That includes if only a single piece is being replaced, I like to keep my toons in a relatively ready state in case an opportunity comes up to do something. Weapons are the exception, if I get a weapon I'll switch to it immediately and upgrade it or farm the VP to do the upgrade if I'm short.

    I've had that same thought to be able to turn off AoE looting, also for skinning purposes... it's really the only reason I can think of to do it. I don't think I've ever been stalked by anyone looking to steal my skins but I've lost a few over time... probably also got a few I shouldn't have without realizing it. Not sure if this is the case everywhere but on one of my servers I've occasionally farmed (for XP, so not really farming) the small turtles in the Valley for skins and others have been there doing it as well. Usually we get into a quick rhythm, we all grab turtles and pull them back to the shore, clump 'em up, burn 'em down and then collectively skin them all together. Rinse, repeat. Not sure why but that's ended up happening every time I've been out there when others are there too. Spontaneous cooperation. Crazytown.

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    1. I don't mind 4 mini-tiers of gear, I do mind 4 tiers of gear that are all better than the previous tier... if they make current LFR equivalent to previous Normal and current Flex equivalent to previous Heroic, that'll basically chop off 1 or 2 of those mini-tiers for any one person if they're raiding regularly. Otherwise, must suggestion has always been to just run the highest level of content you run semi-regularly... if it's normal, just run normal. Flex, flex. Again, possibly different for a primary raiding toon, I'm talking more casual toons that you would still like to get some gear on.

      Blizz has acknowledged that getting gear upgrades IS a core part of and reason for raiding for most, if not all, players... for some it's the entire point but even those of us who in large part just "raid to raid", it's still a perk. Interest in raiding would probably crater if you got the same gear from heroic as well as LFR and I'm not saying that from a 1%er perspective... better gear is one of the reasons someone might be convinced to try Normal raiding if they've been doing nothing but Flex.

      As for 5-mans, agree to disagree... normals should be easy, heroics should provide some challenge at appropriate gear levels (they did at i435, absolutely) and for those who want the Cataclysm experience, there are Challenge Modes. I haven't actually tried those because I didn't like the Cataclysm model for 5-mans... I hate that they're talking about going back to a harder 5-man model again in WoD, I hope like hell that was said in error or that they change their mind on that.

      Blizz has also acknowledged that old LFR is an issue, I think they're working on something. That shouldn't be an issue forever.

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    2. Yeap, decent ones happen from time to time. had wipes, but had good people for the most part which makes it okay in my opinion. I am not against wiping, I am against the people that make wipes hell.

      Seems like we traded groups this week. Your sha adventure is the same one I have nearly every single week.

      Never though of doing that, nice idea. Heck, just tell them to stay at the entrance and collect the valor if they want. I still think we should be able to just walk into a scenario.

      I only keep toons I intend to use for the real raid as up to date as possible. If all I am doing is a flex or LFR as long as I can do my job well I'll wait to update.

      Spontaneous cooperation is nice and I too have experienced it before but it is really rare.

      Making current LFR equal previous normal and current flex equal to previous heroic that would solve a lot, in my opinion.

      I agree, and as I said, why raid heroic if you can get the same thing from LFR. Unless you actually want to for the challenge, there would be no real motivation. Gear has always been and will always be the great motivator. Even for non raiders.

      I hate that they are thinking about harder 5 mans also. They will be face roll by the second tier anyway, so why not just start them like that.

      I hope they are working on something for the LFR. It is way too hard, insanely hard, for the people that it is intended for. If it were not for a few good players each run they would never down anything. Sometimes even with 10 stacks.

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    3. Recent Twitter exchange re: old LFR that should provide some good vibes:

      Any chance of us ever being able to do Dragon Soul LFR higher than 85? Really nice xmog sets in there!

      Unlikely that it'll just be opened up as is, but future system changes may make such viable.

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    4. That would mean, as I read it, that it might happen for future LFRs. The old ones you will most likely never get a chance to go back into. Blizzard has a terrible track record for updating older content to fit a newer system. So unless they go out of their way for it we will never be able to walk into anything from mists LFR or DS.

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    5. I'm reading it that they may implement a system change that'll make it possible to run LFR without a full group or without queuing... could be the "[ ] Just let us in with our current group" toggle that has been discussed before. I'd be fully in favour of them rolling that out for all queued content, not just LFR and no reason it couldn't apply to older content, too. Fingers crossed.

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    6. They said they would be adding flex capability to LFR during blizzcon to help with queue times. Not sure how that would work but it would be welcome.

      Part 1 to change. Make all fights capable of being solo tanked.

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  4. I definitely understand the "this is an alt and I can already do the content I'll do on it", but just curious why not still equip and just not enchant/gem the 559 vs the 502. I would think it'd still be an upgrade.

    Personally most of my toons I don't gem, enchant, and reforge them optimally at all because I'm still good enough for the LFR which is all I do on most of them. I actually will tend to figure out what I would gem and enchant them when I finish getting the set I want and just put those in now and not worry about if it is optimal currently. If I'm still always going to be top few in LFR I don't think me being over the hit cap by 0.5% is really going to matter. If I was raiding progression heroics still I'd understand redoing every piece, but I'm not.

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    1. This might sound like a cop out, and probably is, but I am just not the type of person that can put on a piece and not gem, enchant, reforge it. If I am going to put it on I want to do it all the way.

      If it is one of my questing only alts or one of my bank alts (yes I have bank alts at 90) I might put it on because I do not intend to do group content with it. But I can not, will not, ever feel comfortable showing less than my best in group content, even on a character I am bad on. I would rather wear a 502 not done up right and say I have not got anything better then put on something better and not make the effort to do it up.

      Hope that makes sense.

      A new alt I will not gem and enchant or reforge as I am first leveling it up gear wise like you, for the LFR. But once I reach the top level and for LFR that is SoO, I will start to set it all up right because I feel I should.

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    2. yes, I am like you GE in this regards, but I also like Cain's ideas. Why do spend all that time, money, etc to gem enchant, upgrade or reforge ones that really aren't going to be used for any other thing.

      NOTE - not a question, but if you want to answer back, go ahead :)

      -roo

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