Malchome's Mind on Gaming

So I have not posted in awhile.  There have been several reasons for this.  The two main reasons being a bit busy with work and not really getting around to post when at home, always more stuff to do in and out of game.  The other reason is that I really have just been waiting for patch 3.3 to hit.

Because I have been waiting for 3.3 and the joy of the new LFG tool to finally be able to get random groups when ever I have time I have mostly stopped playing my level 80s except when raiding.  I have farmed some more badges and stone keeper shards for my new time filler.  Leveling several new alts.  I am currently working on a Mage, Rogue and Druid.  The cool thing that is keeping most of the mind-numbing bordom at bay when leveling the umpteenth toon through the lower levels is now I am skipping large blocks of zones especially in the 14-20 segment.

The reason I am able to do this and doing this is that I can now get XP in the Battlegrounds.  I use to hate battlegrounds while leveling before because they always seemed to be a waste of time and then there were the twinks.  Now my Mage and Druid with 2 Heirloom pieces of gear are a quasi Twink but no where as bad as they use to be.  With the turn XP off feature all of the serious Twinks have been moved to their own little bracket.  This means that the battlegrounds are now full of people just wanting to play a game or few to either level through BGs or just to get a break from the normal quest grinds.  Before getting to one of the more serious points and improvements that needs to be made to Battlegrounds I have to say playing a Rogue with 2 Heirloom daggers enchanted with Life-stealing is fun as hell.

Bracket Restructure

As the section title directly above states Bracket Restructure is one of the main things that needs to be done now that we have XP in Battlegrounds.  All BGs need to run from X0-X9.  Let the level cap players always be in their own separate bracket.

The reason for this is the end result of several previous PvP changes.  Lissanna, a mutual friend and I got into an argument about this on Sunday over vent.  Because it is player behavior Lissanna is of the opinion that no blame can be placed on Blizzard.  Ok so what is the combination of issues that is causing a problem?   It is a mix of XP in BGs bringing players of All Levels into a BG instance and the level capped 80s only wanting 80s in their game using the AFK reporting tool to “kick” anyone of a significantly lower level out of the instance.  Because there are no repercussions for reporting someone AFK you can just do it to anyone for no particular reason.  This then causes the person to get the debuff and if they don’t do a certain action within a time frame they will be kicked and given the Deserter Debuff.  This occurred to our mutual friend in AV when they were killed and were running back to meet up with the group.  While they were dead they were reported and kicked while running back.  This type of crap can not be tolerated.  If a person is active and attempting to participate they deserve to be there unfortunately even if their performance sucks.

The report AFK tool has now become kick those that don’t agree with us and is now a device for griefing.  There needs to be a mechanism put in place that allows one to defend themselves from being wrongfully labeled.  Because there are legitimate reasons in battlegrounds to remain stationary to either defend or gather surveillance.    Especially if you are a Rogue or Druid since you can stealth and remain mostly hidden.

Yes as Lissanna pointed out this is a player behavior issue especially since the player base asked for such a system to be implemented.  However since we own nothing in the game it all belongs to Blizzard then they are also to blame.  The created the system and implemented it, and like many things they implement they don’t seem to stop and figure out all of the ways the system could and will be abused so that there are counter mechanisms in place to enforce better behavior or more fair play.  As in if you falsely report someone AFK then you are the one booted.  There should at least be a Query system to the player so that they can respond to their accusers directly.

Anyway I look forward to the PVP XP through level 70.  Afterward, looks like it will be impossible with the level cap Twinks behaving badly either because they don’t know better or are bored.  I suspect the later but ya never know.

I admit I don’t like seeing a non 80 in the BG when I run BGs on my 80s but I realize that the system allows them there and as long as they try I don’t have a problem with them being there.  I would prefer to see the level cap become it’s own bracket for just this reason.

I was looking at MMO-Champion and in one of their posts where they collect Blue Posts I saw the following text.  It ties into some of what I want to say in this post so I thought I would include it for reference.

Blue Posts from the Forums Here.

Whenever we see comments like this, we immediately assume that you have a different vision for class / spec / whatever than we do. If that is the case, you are likely to find yourself frustrated and scratching your head a lot when our changes never make the design converge on what you think it should be.

Now, we do want Subtlety to be more attractive. All of the pure dps classes have a spec that isn’t as popular as the others. Mages may be the closest because at least Frost has a viable PvP use, but there are also plenty of mages who want to be able to use Frost in end-game PvE too.

Subtlety (and Frost for that matter) are specs focused around utility. The problem is that players understandably nearly always choose damage over utility for raiding and often choose utility over damage for PvP, unless the damage is really high or the utility just doesn’t cut it for some reason.

What we are talking about doing is sharing more of the utility among other specs, or the core class, so that there aren’t “utility trees.” To do that though, we have to make the way the different specs do damage different enough so that players might choose a play-style preference over highest damage. This is particularly challenging for rogues, who have a history of giving up a preferred spec or play style for one with a sub 1% dps increase.

I think we are closest with the Arcane vs. Fire mage specs at the moment. They play a little differently, which goes beyond just the type of magic damage they do. While Fire might still do the highest damage overall, Arcane is close enough and plays different enough that even competitive players don’t feel stupid for playing that spec. There are a lot more Arcane mages out there than I think a lot of players assume.

That is harder with rogues. “I’m the sneaky one” doesn’t translate into sustained raid dps. Assassination feels like it emphasizes poisons more and Combat feels like it emphasizes weapons more, so we’re a little closer there. Subtelty needs a stronger yet damage-oriented niche.

HaT, sadly, is not a niche. HaT has scaling problems. It’s appropriate for a 5-player group, but gets too in larger groups with all of their raid buffs. We don’t want HaT to be the one talent that pushes players into Subtlety.

Now my Opinions of Rogue Gameplay

I find the rogue class in general to be somewhat schizophrenic in tree and abilities.  Before the rogue lovers lynch me on this one let me explain more fully.

The three trees are Assassination/Combat/Subtlety and at least when I want to think of archetypes for these I would select Assassin/Swashbuckler/Street Thug.  The problem with these archtypes which the lore and theme of the trees seem to suggest is that the skill and weapon implementation don’t match up.

Assassin - Poisons, Bleeds with a nasty finisher are what this spec is suppose to bring to mind.  However when I am soloing or even in groups when playing assassination I end up putting my bleeds on to get Hunger for Blood and then just go into a Eviscerate and Rupture rotation of finishers to keep up Slice and Dice.  Now I admit to not being the best rogue out there.  Hell I am lucky to be an average Rogue but , I seem to do acceptable damage for my gear, which is all I really strive for on any of my DPS classes.  The image to the right is of the miniature of Artemis Entreri from the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons and Dragons.

Combat - Swashbuckler so Swords and now Axes.  So essentially the dual wielding, one handed, melee monster.  The picture I selected for this is from the movie The Princess Bride, which I am sure most reading this post will be familiar with.  Now both the Dread Pirate and Inigo both really fit into the archetype for swashbuckler.  I will get into my issues with Rogue mechanics after highlighting the theme of each tree.

Subtlety - This tree is really about getting the drop on your target.  Which is why it is one of the harder trees to get a focus on for PvE.  It is really hard to get a drop on the boss, especially when they are pretty much immune to all of your lock down abilities.  Also given all the new amounts of AoE that bosses and their minions throw around being reliant on openers is a bit of a weak spot.  Now the image icon that I immediately think of when someone say stealthy and rogue one image comes to mind.  I don’t think I need to explain the image either.

Issues with Gameplay

My first and foremost complaint about Rogue mechanics from the perspective of actually playing one, not QQing about them on the forums after getting ganked by one, deals with the their specs and abilities interact with the weapons they use or lack thereof.  To put it simply too many of their abilities are weapon specific or have multiple caveats based on weapon.

Lets look at the other melee classes.  This gives us Druids, Shaman, Paladins, Warriors and Deathknights, now I am going to ignore Druids in this exercise, sorry those coming from Restokin because Druid feral weapon mechanics make it a moot point.  The other 4 classes that use melee weapons with a very few exceptions do not have their specs and abilities drastically changing based on the weapon they have equipped.  For all intents and purposes an Axe = Sword = Mace = Dagger for one handed weapons and 2H-Sword = 2H-Mace = 2H-Axe = Pole-arm for calculating damage.  Now I know there are some weapon specializations in the Warrior Arms tree but in all of the other trees the specific type of weapon in irrelevant and only the broad category matters, 1H versus 2H.

After looking at some of the source code for Rawr, which is a very useful dps/tanking modeling program, from the equations these differences especially for the Rogue are because they use Average Weapon damage to calculate the damage value of special abilities.  This is why certain classes want a slow main hand weapon, because as damage output for such abilities increases as the time between swings increases.  This is because to maintain a consistent DPS for a tier of weapons if the swing timer goes up so must the average damage per swing.

Now when I first started looking into this I went to WoWhead and copied the names of about 30 1 handed and 2 handed weapons.  I then looked at the min damage and max damage that each weapon would do before taking anything else into consideration.  The really cool thing was that on average over all any weapon’s min and max damage when compared to the average of the 2 values is +/- 30%.  The gambit of values were between at 28.9 – 31.1 so a quick eye balling of the numbers tells you it hovers around 30%.  So what this means is that if we want all special abilities to scale equally based on the DPS of the weapon.  Then we just need to take the DPS * (.7 – 1.3) + all other modifiers.  This then removes the weapon speed component from the formula directly as it is an intrinsic part of the DPS.

If we were to base special ability damage off of DPS and not weapon damage.  Then this means that Back-stab, Mutilate and any other abilities that may have a limit placed on them because of previous weapon speed dependency can have it removed.

This was very annoying when leveling Assassination because there were so few Dagger upgrades while leveling.  Ya there are a good amount at 80 but you can get a good pair late 60s/early 70s and then one more set at 76 then nothing until you get the crafted epic or run dungeons at 80.  If you go combat then you loose several of your abilities because they are dagger restricted.  Also as a side note it is really stupid conceptually to have Dagger Main hand and  something else much larger off hand.  When ever I have been fencing with 2 weapons you almost always put the heavier weapon in your main/stronger hand.  Now you may lead with the dagger based on stance and positioning but saying you can’t backstab because your dagger is in your “off” hand is kinda dumb.   It should be as long as a dagger is equipped you can backstab.  The code just checks for first available Dagger.  If you are dual wielding daggers it goes from the main hand otherwise it uses the off hand.

Now the one thing this modification would not affect would be the benefit of a fast off hand for rogues when it comes to energy regen.  I really don’t have a problem with this, however I would say for modeling and balancing purposes that ability should go to a Procs per Minute system.  Similar to the HaT and or the Feral Druid leader of the pack restriction.

All I can say is that I hope that in the 4.0 changes Rogues get an overhaul so that each tree is focused on a couple of weapons each.  The close quarters combat daggers should be merged into the assassination tree because you almost always would go deep in Assassination then go into combat for those first 15-18 talents.  This is where with the new talent allocation screen where you see all 3 trees at once you could start putting interesting talents in the first few tiers of each tree that require talents in 2 trees.  Keep them on the edge with the associated tree.  Assume that to the left of Assassination was Subtlety and the opposite for Subtlety.

Wintergrasp
The following is a link to Wintergrasp summary from Blizzcon 2008. I only point to this so that we can compare the plans for the 2 areas. Wintergrasp has changed a bit from when it was initially planed.

Tol Barad
We’re also adding a new zone that combines elements of Wintergrasp with the Isle of Quel’danas. During PvP battles, players will fight to take control points across the island. In between PvP battles, the zone serves as a daily quest hub for both factions, while the winning faction will have access to a raid area.

The previous paragraph was from Blizzard’s write up of the a panel at Blizzcon 2009 covering the initial concepts of the zone.

Concerns

• Tenacity
• Dailies and PvP

Tenacity

This image here sums up all of my concerns when the thought of Tenacity is added to the new PvP zone.

The BS Mechanic

My sub-title The BS Mechanic is in my opinion accurate.  Yes it would suck to be on the side that has fewer players however this is not the answer.  Essentially the Horde won last night when the alliance must have had either 70 or 110 people and the horde seemed to have about 30 or less than 1 raid.  It has been a while since I have seen that many stacks of Tenacity.

I have no problems with the total health increase.  It is everything else that is buffed that gets out of hand.

So a Players with 3K dps with this buff now does 11K dps, I thought we wanted to get the 1-shot and 2-shots out of PvP, nope sorry only if the numbers are about equal.

Here is the deal, now that faction changes are implemented it is time to have server faction population balancing drives.  No more of this 3-1 ratio on a server.  Offer free faction changes, usually from Alliance -> Horde on most servers until the  ratio hits 1-1.5/1.25.

I can see a maximum dps increase form Tenacity of about 100% or double your damage but anything else just makes pvp a joke.  It is ok for NPCs to hit that hard because there are these abilities that Tanks get that are called Taunt and they work.  When facing PCs these abilities do nothing and therefore it is a joke.  What this says is ok Side that wants to keep wintergrasp if you really want it don’t play.  Let your side get so much Tenacity that you are all walking raid bosses that can 1 shot everything and have fun.  Oh and all of your vehicles get your buff so you only really need  2-5 of them to take the keep.

Tenacity should be tied to the number of something you control in a zone.  So that if these mini-raid bosses want to keep being mini-raid bosses they have to defend their workshops.  The Horde won when we controlled everything but 1 work shop.  I am sorry but that is so much complete bloody bull shit that it really pisses me off.

The final reason that this mechanic has to be in the game is the worst one of all.  Because stone-keeper shared are one of the token currencies  in the game there needs to be a way for the population disadvantaged to get them some times.  Well this would not be a problem if it was not a binary option.  What I mean is that all bosses in dungeons should drop them all of the time.  You just get bonus ones if you control winter grasp.  Then the low population side can still progress and obtain them even if they don’t control and or always loose the event.  Additionally the vendors for the gear should also be in Dalaran so that they can spend then as well.

Dailies and PvP

Ok I play on PVE or RP servers for a reason.  I hate PvP at all times, except when I actually want to PvP.  I hate quests that make you flag for no reason.  The quests in Grizzly hills I am fine with.  Why because they tell you that you will be flagged.  I do not want to see the major hub for dailies in the next expansion be in a PvP only zone.  That is piss poor design and only caters to the bottom feeders out there.  Look if you are confused by what some of the ramifications of mandatory PvP can have on a mostly PvE game.  Read Bartle’s research on why people play and some of the results of game servers that went PvP.  The short answer is that those that became PvP games eventually died out.  Now I don’t think that this would kill WoW, but I think it would have a chilling effect on the dialy quest system in the expansion if the zone where almost all of the quests were held was a pvp only environment.

The panel mentioned that they heard that some people missed the impromtu PvP that would happen while questing on the Isle during Burning Crusade.  My question that for them would be, are the people that are reminicing about this from a PvP server or a PvE server.  If the former then it does not really matter as they picked to play on a PvP server.  I would also bet for every 1 person that actually likes that type of PvP there are many more who just get pissed off about it.  I would fall under this later category.  When I am playing and trying to get A,B,C done I do not what to have to deal with Dipshit 1,2, and 3 that are flagged and want to cause problems.  Hence why I am on a PvE server.

The best solution for Tol Borad if they want to capture the essence of Wintergrasp and IoQD would be to have it such that when the event is taking place it is a PvP zone.  When the event is over on a PvE server it is enforced neutrality like Shattrath for 10 minutes after every event.  Then the zone reverts to a normal PvE server zone until the next PvP event.  This leaves it open to those that do not want to PvP a viable option to go there get the non-pvp dailies done and leave.

The areas in Grizzly hills that have PvP quests in essence already respond this way, which works.

So for the most part I have not raided in WotLK.  The few raids I have been in have been mostly PUGs.  I have yet to focus on raiding as I want 9 level 80s, 1 of each of the original classes first.  It was a goal I set for my self shortly after launch of tBC.  I got 5 to 70 before the expansion hit and I have 5 now, interestingly enough only 3 of the my current level 80s were 70 before WotLK.

I started to dive into raiding in September/October of 07 so tBC have been out for 7-8 months, I also had taken a little time off from WoW that August and played Vanguard a little bit.  I will save my rant about crafting profession for a full crafting profession post because it would derail what I want to talk about here.

I have listened to a some commentary from others around the inter-web about raiding comparing and contrasting Vanilla, tBC and WotLK instances.  Even though I did not get farther than Lootreaver before getting burned out of raiding due to guild drama and other things, from what I can tell raiding was at it best in tBC.

I am certainly not going to say raiding has failed in WotLK but it almost seems that Blizzard learned form some mistakes last time around with removing some of the inane barriers to entry that made recruitment hell in the mid-later stages of tBC raiding.  However this time they went back and made the same mistakes that were in the Vanilla.

The problem is sprawling single instance raids.

Now when I ask people tell me their favorite 2-3 instances, especially if I limit it to Vanilla wow the instance that is almost always on that list is Scarlet Monastery.  When I ask why the reason in the end boils down to the wings.  You could run any of them at any time after you get the key from the library.  Why if this instance has been around for so long has the structure not been reused?  Naxx could have been retooled into 5 instances with 5 separate raid IDs  at the end of each wing you get a fragment of the key to unlock the last 2 bosses.  So once you accomplish each wing and get a key to unlock the last the next week you could start with Kel if you wanted to.  I think if there had been 5 discrete entry points each week it could have helped some of the burn out.  Then each wing/part would be just a little bit longer than the OS and eventually EoE raids.  This would have been 7 small discrete raiding opportunities, rather than the 1 monolithic and 2-3 short runs if you also include VoA.

Patch 3.1 comes out and we get the next big installment of raiding Ulduar.  Yay another 10-14 bosses of linear hell that has no breaks or true wings.

In the future especially for Icecrown citadel what we need are 2-4 discreet raiding opportunities per raid tier, like how TK and SSC were in tBC.  Hell as with the description of an improvement for Naxx would be acceptable.  Make it so that to attack the Keep you have to raid first the Dungeons to get the first half of the Gate Key, then you have to Raid the wall/towers to get the second half.  Finally you have to raid the courtyard to get at the Keep.  Now at the end of each of these you find/attune to a phased secret passage so that next week you can get to the Keep without having to repeat the previous wings to take on Arthas eventually.  Now what this also means is that each layer can get progressively harder.  Even though you can continue on it is not always the wisest decision.

The more discreet the raid instance the greater opportunity for more styles of play to partake of the content.  In the end I really think Raid IDs are the source of the problem.  I have suggested ways to improve them in the past and I will again here on this blog at some point or at least my spin on the issue.

In the end PUG-able and or Casual accessible does not need to mean easy and or face-roll wins.  It just means that the content must be designed intelligently so that it can be attempted in more discreet elements.  I do not use small because that is not necessarily the case, I use discreet to imply time rather than size.  Karazahn needed to be a winged instance as well.  It felt like 2-3 instances in one.  From the map Blizzard has for Ulduar it as well should have been 2-3 winged instances.

All I can say is that at least I have had much more fun running VoA and OS in one night than to run and grind away at Naxx.  Even if we wiped a few times in both it was less soul crushing than wiping half-way through Naxx.  Because in Naxx after a wipe you think: “oh god what have I got myself into we are only X bosses in out of 14 what the hell are the rest going to be like?  Well shit there goes my raid ID for the week.”.

I apologize for the somewhat broken stream of thought here. I may come back and re-edit it a few times.  There has not been any new posts for a few days and I wanted to get something out.