less buttons = less interesting fights, less possibilities to outplay, less decision making, less skill gap, less depth etc.
If you want to play a 4 button game there are plenty of alternatives out there.
There are a few specs that have really easy rotations and you can easily have an impact in battlegrounds without really knowing what you are doing.
If you expect to be a top % player with no effort put in then competetive pvp is not for you.
Let me be clear:
Your standard dps rotation should not be more then 4 buttons.
You should be able to increase your dps rotation buttons via talent choices.
There would still be buttons for defence, mobility and utility.
My idea is that the buttons themselves should be more interesting in general. There is hardly an argument you could make that that would justify Slice and Dice + Rupture + Roll the Bones + Symbols of Death. Is interesting or reasonable to maintain in a PvP setting… or at all.
Imagine this:
You have 4 damage buttons. 2 defensive buttons, 1 utility button, 2 mobility buttons, 1 crowd control button and 1 DPS cooldown button.
That is a total of 11 buttons. That is much more reasonable as a baseline.
There are a lot of abilities that read like this:
“Reduces all damage you take by 40%.” - That is not an exciting button to press. It has no effect on player behaviour after one of us presses that button.
You shouldn’t need to pay for coatching or read through lots of forums to have fun at a game. PvP needs to be more approachable so more people could have fun. As a skilled person you will always try to min-max your numbers and put in the extra effort to win, but the average person can’t be expected to do that. They will log in and play until they have fun. If they are not having fun then they won’t log in and will unsubscribe.
if enough people unsubscribe then the game ends for everybody.
Did you even read what I wrote above that? Because based on what you wrote, it doesn’t seem like you did. So please, read the post you quoted that small part of it. (It seems like you stopped reading as soon as I mentioned there are 3rd parties. Try to read all of it instead.)
I did read the entire thing, but it almost comes down to you defeating your own argument and then suggesting that a mentorship program should be included inside WoW as a first party social mechanic.
While it would be nice to have I don’t think that would solve the primary issue which is that PvP is difficult for people to get into.
Most people play WoW solo. Yes, it’s an MMO, but the masses solo the quests and then queue for dungeons, raids and BGs through the LFG tool. These are all group experiences, but you aren’t actually interacting with anyone.
We know that players who have friends in WoW will remain subscribed for longer. But you need to be able to enjoy the game alone to even bother making friends in it. You are not going to bother becoming better if the first step is to learning is too hard.
Your thinking stops short at that first step. You’re thinking people won’t bother to connect socially when they’re playing for the solo experience, but while that might be true now, it won’t necessarily be like that with other social designs in place, such as a mentorship program.
It’s true as you mentioned earlier that the game kind of requires looking up a lot of stuff using 3rd party sources if one wants to succeed, but the game design is essentially leaving too much of that for other sources.
It’s hard to explain, but there’s a networking effect that occurs if the social design is done better, where more people branch out and enjoy doing so, if it happens in a good way.
So when the “loner experience” is what counts as normal, that’s when it’s done poorly. But with better social systems in place, it’ll change that norm for the better, and making people get used to other kinds of social interactions.
Which brings us to that mentorship program stuff, as you said, the game requires looking up a lot at 3rd party sources to get ahead right now. But if that would be handled socially instead, through mentorship programs, it’d both foster a more socially interactive environment by design, as well as encourage help becoming a key part of those interactions, which makes it easier to socially bond.
Which in turn can have ripple effects, making people choose to talk to the people they’ve bonded with instead of just jumping into a queue straight away, and maybe even do something together, and so on. The mentoring isn’t done over night, after all.
So it changes the way the game is enjoyed, because then it’s done between people that’s on the road to becoming pals, instead of just silent strangers that expects you to know everything already. Which also makes it easier to develop your own skills if you’re the one being mentored, since you’ve got someone holding your hand and helping you along the way.
On a grand scale, it leads to more informal teams shaping up, as well as a good chance of new friendships forming if there’s a shared interest between them, such as having the same IRL hobby or the same taste in movies or shows, and so on.
So when you say that you think it won’t get people to move out of their shell, I’d argue that’d only hold true for a small amount of people. Because we are social animals after all, and given the right circumstances, then people won’t feel bad for being put in social situations.
It depends on how such a mentorship program would look as well of course, but that’s up to the designers to solve.
disagree
more complex rotation = more room to mess up = better players get rewarded
its a defensive that can be traded for an enemy offensive cd. Trading cds is an important skill in modern wow.
you dont need to. You can have plenty of fun in unrated modes without even knowing basic stuff. If you want to play rated though and actually climb rating you need to invest time and i think thats good. I play arena for years maybe even a decade and i have still so much room to improve. I love that.
they can do that and people minmaxing is normal in every game. WoW just has the problem that there is a huge barrier to entry compared to most games. You need to level a char, get pvp gear etc.
If the playerpool is big enough you have alot more of these “noobs” that fight each other and have fun so its not a problem in general.
i think it would help if there would be some kind of tutorial for rated pvp IN THE ACTUAL GAME. Where it teaches people step by step core functions like trading cds, CC people, bursting and positioning by fighting bots or something idk.
Or it can be handled socially, as explained. I doubt any bot would be able to explain the variables anyway, so learning from bots probably wouldn’t go very far.
Once you master the basic character dps rotations the game still boils down to you attempting to counter, position and time things out.
Having bloated amount of arbitrary buttons just makes your character harder to learn. The mastering part still comes down to countering player behaviour.
Adding more letters to the English language wouldn’t make you a better writer. It just forces you to decide between a lot more arbitrary variables when writing.
That is the most boring type of decision. In fact it’s not even a decision if you think about it.
Yes, now add on top of that all the layers systems (+legacy systems) and oversaturated layers of abilities that don’t add meaningful decisions to the game.
Wow player base is only getting older. Wow isn’t attractive to young people or new players, because it isn’t approachable. Any meaningful changes are strangled off and so WoW is doomed to a slow death while it’s development budget is slowly reduced due to it’s inability to stay competetive in the market.
Wow devs even know this, as you can see from all the new class design philosophies. I just think they should go all in.
I guess you aren’t familiar with symbols used as writing instead of letters? What that means is that when there’s a language that relies on symbols to write, with either letters as well or just symbols, then the individual symbols carries meanings on their own. But when combined with other symbols/letters, that meaning can be read differently.
What that does, is basically elevate the writing. Adds more room for puns, or symbolic meanings in simple words, and adds a layer of depth to the writing as a whole.
It essentially becomes another layer of “skill expression” for writers, where they can differentiate themselves. Depending on the type of symbols the writer tends to use, it can even express the writer’s or character’s personality, simply through having a theme of symbols, even though what’s being said isn’t saying that at all.
(Just to clarify, what that means is that when there are more variables then there is more room for skill expressions, meaning it leads to more individuality in the gameplay and the game becoming more dynamic. Which is what you’ve been asking for, because you kept comparing it to a moba.
The problem is just that a moba adds variables via the environment and ways to “build” your character, although HotS was designed to be the moba for beginners and doesn’t have as much of that as other moba games. If you look at stuff like The International matches from dota2, and keep in mind that there’s fog on the map so they can’t see each other at all times, then you should be able to see what I mean.
You should also then be able to see why that isn’t an option for a game mode like WoW arenas.)
That one I agree with though, it should be about high sustained gameplay, not about heavy burst gameplay.
yes where is the problem?
yes and thats good. Mastering your spec should also come down to know all your buttons and when to use them. More buttons = more outplay potential and more depth in general. Thats important in a deatchmatch pvp scenario. We dont have objectives its all about mastering your spec and know the tactics.
Having the ability to chose from a wide variety of words increases the quality of texts. There is a difference between someone like me to whom is english the second language and someone who speaks and writes english on a daily basis and writes books and articles. He mastered the language and therefore his writing is way better than mine. So your example was actually an argument for my claim. Thanks.
you seem to lack the experience or knowledge. Knowing when to use defensives and when not. Knowing which defensives are enough is important. You can like it or not but its part of the game.
i think you are just not able to realize the potential of these decisions.
has more to do with the new generation than with WoW itself. Most people dont no life a single game anymore. Most younger people play on mobile phones or playstation. Paying 13 euro a month for a subscription is also a barrier to entry. And the game being 18 years old is itself a huge barrier to entry.
I dont think the complexity of the classes are the problem. Most WoW players quit when their classes are boring. Fun classes with alot of depth is the best content. Blizz seemed to realize that and put alot of effort into classes and talents this expansion.
this expansion classes got alot of more complex.
They tried this “noob friendly” class in Legion with DH and in my opinion its super boring.
Evoker heal is pretty challenging and has huge depth while dps evoker feels like a ranged dh so i dont think they changed their philisophy.
They did prune classes in WoD and Legion and people hated it.
That isn’t really true, other games that are complex and requires “no lifing” to get good at are seeing engagement from younger generations than WoW.
Thing is, he does have a point that the learning curve isn’t really that thought out in WoW, especially for rated PvP. But he’s wrong that the game should become easier. Easy games doesn’t translate into more popularity, it’s just shallow thinking to believe otherwise.
So what can be identified is a barrier of entry to rated PvP, which many people said a solo queue would solve but I guess we’ll see about that, and a lack of new players for the game in general.
When you combine these factors, then the problem isn’t how hard or easy the game is, but rather a lack of enticement for new players to try it out, and a poorly designed path to improve at the game.
Which you said you want bots to teach players, but that has severe limitations in and of itself. What’s more thorough is a mentorship program, in that regard.
However, as for the lack of enticement to get new players to test it out, a marketing plan that has been proven effective many times over in a lot of industries, is having people recruit the people they know.
The only part of the design that even encourages that, is the RAF system, and the rest of the game’s design isn’t really something people are saying is the “best game ever” so there isn’t much for people to recommend to others there.
So essentially, the game needs to hook players in more, and get 'em to recruit friends, and then use something like a mentorship program (not RAF), to provide a more socially inclusive gameplay experience, both in PvE and PvP. And such a mentorship program can also widen the areas of the game people tend to play in, as in getting PvEers to get into PvP and getting PvPers to get into PvE when before they would just be stuck in their corner of the game because it takes so much effort to get into the other part of the game when maybe not having done it before or it being a very long time ago since the player last did it.
hm also true. But idk i know so many people that play WoW for 2 months and then quit and come back every patch for 2 months etc. because there are plenty of other good games and WoW is not their life anymore. I think in general player behavior changed a bit. Maybe im wrong though.
just the basics of the basics. What is Crowd Control, what is trading cds, kicking important spells. Stuff like that. Obviously you cant teach a new player everything they need to know with bots but some basic stuff can help.
idk if that really works. I think most people want to learn on their own and with their own pace. But who knows.
I think the best solution for higher pvp participation is giving better rewards. There are enough WoW players but most of them just dont play rated pvp. Many dont even try it or only play it when the rewards are good. More cosmetic rewards for lower to mid players and some other incentives would 100% boost participation.
As for rewards, I kinda see it as a band-aid on a problem that’d solve itself with a better social atmosphere in general and more engaging gameplay. But because of the extreme amount of things you’d need to learn to get good enough at PvP to start earning many of the rewards, it needs more to be taught than just the basics. So a mentorship program for that fits in like a glove, if designed well.
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