Idea: Training Grounds ((No) Scrubs)

Community General Discussion
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                    Idea: Training Grounds ((No) Scrubs)

The Problem (The Third Child)

Over the years, WoW has become increasingly complicated, and the new player experience is a mess. Even for people who have been playing for a while, it’s still necessary to use third-party tools and websites just to know how to play your class at a basic level (let alone for Mythic+ or raiding).

One way to address this problem is by introducing a new feature: Training Grounds. This feature would be accessed through class quests. Every 10 levels, your class would receive a new quest to attend the Training Grounds. Within the Training Grounds, you’d be shown how to use all the new abilities you learned in the past 10 levels.

You should be able to repeat this training at any time, for those who might have level-skipped, changed specs, or simply forgotten how or (more importantly) why to use certain abilities.

Arguments Against (Haters Be Hatin’)

  • Blizzard has bigger fish to fry than holding new players’ hands.
    I disagree. With WoW getting more and more complex, and Blizzard’s insistence on designing encounters assuming players will have WeakAuras and other raid tools, ensuring players know how to play their classes on a basic level is the least Blizzard can do to balance these increasing difficulty metrics.
  • Why every 10 levels and not just at max level? Levelling is quick now, after all.
    Because waiting until max level would require Blizzard to rework the whole system every expansion to adjust to the new level cap.
  • Just watch a YouTube video – there are so many.
    You shouldn’t need to search for a video to understand how to play your class. The game should be designed to naturally teach players how to play.
  • “Just get good, bro.”
    This is the usual response from those who fancy themselves in the top 1% of players. In reality, they are the ones who could benefit most from a system like this.
  • We already have Proving Grounds and LFR for new people – why a whole new system?
    While Proving Grounds is was ok at its launch (MoP was a long time ago), I’d rate it 3/10 in terms of usefulness. It does nothing to show you what your abilities do or how to use them effectively. It’s mainly just a way to pat yourself on the back: “Look, I’m not completely trash after all.” LFR suffers from the same core issue plagueing all of WoW PUG content. That is, if you didn’t join knowing the content or your role in it. Your just wasting peoples time, and they will hate you for it (it’s unfair, but it’s the truth).

Rewards (Where’s the Money, Lebowski?)

The feeling of achievement from finally understanding your class should be reward enough…
Who am I kidding? Of course, there should be rewards. Every 10 levels, after completing the Training Grounds, you should receive a token. This token could be used to buy an item from a vendor in the Training Grounds. All items would cost 1 token, with the same number of items as possible tokens available.

Each class would have its own rewards, such as class-themed pets, special glyphs that change ability colours, toys, and more. New items could be added each expansion so there’s always something to spend tokens on.

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This already exists, the proving grounds came into the game in MoP, I believe (But my memory isn’t what it was and might be lying to me) that you had to pass some level of proving grounds to partake in Heroic dungeons.

I think you can still access it, and still get the rewards for the endless modes.

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I literaly stated this in the post

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Sounds gate-keepy to me. A better idea is to have players visit their class trainer to pick up a new spell/ability and let them pick from a selection. To not make it an inconvenience, they could have your trainer spawn next to you (kinda like how that fan spawns and runs to you in the theatre).

That way you would read them and understand what they do and use them. The problem now is new spells get added to your action bar and you may not even notice for a while.

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It was gate keepy, and people moaned about it, so in WoD, you didn’t need to have proving grounds to run dungeons.

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I understand what you mean. That’s why I would suggest there would be no achievement attached, so people aren’t able to demand you link. And no requirement to actualy do them if you don’t need.

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Id say why not.
They throw you new skills that you have no idea what they do as a new player.
So might be useful to new plsyers.
But it has to be turned off if you wanna create an alt and already know most thingsm
I also think there are plenty other issues with the new player experience like proffesions, great vault, bis items, m+ system or raid system.
We old players takes everytjibg granted by nes players might have 0 clue.

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The problem with this is that if it’s not necessary, and you can’t proven you’ve done it, there’s no motivation for many people to do it.

Proving grounds had rewards, but was mainly popular because of it unlocking dungeons.

I’d rather that Exile’s reach be improved so that it actually shows people how to play the game.

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New player: “so i got to max level, learned my class every 10 levels and got an idea of how to play, im ready for more”

Blizzard: “heres a rework to your class making everything you learned irrelevant”

New player: “Ok then”

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I play hunter and Paladin, I’ve been through 2 reworks in the last 2 seasons, nevermind while levelling xD

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As appose to.
New player: “I got to my first dungeon have no idea what my abilities actualy do or what circumstance to use them without a video guide”

A guide btw that also becomes obsolete whenever blizz make class changes

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Yea, except one gets updated by the community and the other requires blizzard to not only know the classes they make but also not be lazy.

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I think your missing the point. The aim of a system like this isn’t to teach someone the best rotation or to be used as a form of bragging rights. The only aim of a system like this is to say “hey, you’ve learnt taunt. Try and keep aggro on this mob while the instructor attacks it, make sure to use other abilities like Death grip.”
While classes and spec do get overhauled. It shouldn’t be an issue for blizard to update a system like this. I know we are all used to blizz being lazy but we shouldn’t.

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Don’t we have exactly this already on exile’s reach, I remember them showing some basic spell abilities in combat there.

Sure it could be a lot better, but it exists.

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Pretty sure they do it for like two spells and that’s it.

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As would ‘training grounds’.

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Awakening The Machine is TWW’s Training Grounds, isn’t it?

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So this would be a bit like what monks already have, but for everyone?

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You don’t get new abilities, you get talents, which vary greatly between builds once you get past the first gate. You can’t design something scripted for it, and just using your abilities to kill stuff is already part of the game.

Only stuff I can see them teaching is basic mechanics like interrupt, dispel and taunt for the different roles.

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Ok. Thats not entirely true, you 100% learn new abilities as you level (just create a new class and open your spell book they are right there). But yes there would have to be limits on what is taught for sanities sake, passives and abilities that replace existing ones shouldn’t be included for obviouse reasons.