I did see that wrong. It is indeed 14k guilds that have killed hc N’Zoth. 14531 to be exact. Still don’t trust that that is 60% of the playerbase.
First off because there is no way wowprogress could know that.
And second because it would be pretty weird for 60% of people to have killed N’Zoth but only 4% to have claimed the corrupted voidwing.
With the greatest of respecs you have absolutely no idea what Blizzards plans are for their features so for you say that someone who’s had barely any access should be able to scrap months of work based on a few words is mind boggling.
You are basically telling Blizzard they’ve failed before they have even had the chance to succeed and it is really a shame that you think this way.
Have Blizzard added features which ended up being busts? Absolutely but it doesnt mean we should tell them to scrap their work because it doesnt INSTANTLY appeal to us as players.
There isn’t one of these types of feature that hasn’t been a bust and been changed. If they are to be judged on their track record, its one of failure.
“We hear you but we aren’t listening” is what I hear when Ion says something.
They for sure hear my opinion. But that one doesn’t count for you?
It’s not that the covenants aren’t appealing. Quite the opposite. They’re awesome. I want my Monk to be a Necrolord, my Druid to be a Venthyr, my DK to be a Kyrian and my DH to be a Night Fae.
The covenants are awesome options for storylines, character development, character customization and similar.
There’s only one tiny issue. You gain several new passives, abilities and legendaries depending on what covenant you pick.
Now you may or may not remember legiondaries and the very beginning of them, my favorite example were DHs. DHs were famously getting deleted after receiving their first legendary in legion, so they could perform in the raid, because legendaries varied from a minor dps increase + utility to a major dps increase with no utility.
Of course, more dps is better in most cases.
Now we not only have legendaries tied to these covenants, we also have two abilities and several passives tied to them. I believe if we disregard covenant specific legendaries, we end up with 16 different combinations.
Now these 16 different combinations wouldn’t be an issue, if they were the exact same, except cosmetically. However, they differ largely in gameplay, and most importantly, damage output.
You have got to be aware of how things already are.
You’re a tank that’s not stacking vers? Good luck applying to anything above 20.
You’re a shadow priest? Good luck applying to any keystone.
Now imagine if people weren’t only discriminated against due to their class, but also their covenant.
I can already see the premade group tabs “link covenant for inv” “Venthyr only” and so on.
It’s just simply that players currently aren’t looking through rose tinted goggles. Everybody who’s criticising covenants is painfully aware of both the community that lives in this game, as well as the balance issues Activizzard has had in the past.
Unless covenants end up being perfectly balanced, for every situation, which is effectively impossible, I needn’t tell you, I hope, players are going to get discriminated due to their covenant choice.
And that’s something Activizzard could simply prevent by not being stubborn and allowing players to freely change between covenants, abilities, etc.
However, they obviously won’t, because Daddy Ion firmly believes in his capabilities of balancing 16 different combinations of abilities, passives, not including specs, talents and legendaries.
Covenants are great. They’re appealing. I love the idea behind them. I just dislike the idea of not being able to perform at max and pick the covenant I want for the character I want at the same time.
They hear everybodies opinion. They just don’t care about any that aren’t theirs. That’s also primarly how it should be, because a lot of feedback will be useless. But if presented the same feedback over and over again, with solid arguments, perhaps they should look at whatever the feedback is about, rather than turning into the meme of “no it’s the players who are wrong”. Just perhaps.
Sure it counts. But this stuff has failed and been changed in the past, consistently. So with that in mind, how much should I value your opinion?
Everyone is free to agree or disagree with their design decisions, but in the end it’s their game, and if they think that those decisions will increase player retention, it’s their decision(whether it’s a profit or loss)
Locked covenants hasn’t “failed and been changed” before. This is a completely new feature.
By ‘this stuff’ I mean all the preceding stuff where the design intent flops compared to what actually happens
There are two types of “stuff”. Stuff that’s a success and stuff that’s not a success. Where’s the logical argument to put covenants into the latter?
The numbers we can get now are completely squirrelly. They never were very solid, ofc, but since Blizzard shut down our ability to count from the API, they have been abysmal.
See also Wowhead apparently contradicting its own numbers quoting 26% with N’zoth Curve here:
I’m never sure about Wowhead’s numbers. They get them from a sample - people who make accounts on Wowhead. These people are obviously much more involved with WoW than most, and so that sample will be very skewed, and like the case above I often see apparently contrdictory numbers anyway.
Of course, the HUGE increase in boosting could mean that a LOT of people bought Curve, or will before tier’s end. I saw an offer of 50K on Draenor recently. It’s coming to that time where people are just buying the mount with the boost.
Wowprogress has always been omegalul for statistics. I do believe that their information on the competitive guilds who keep their listings up to date is exemplary, near-perfect, but they simply have no interest in anyone outside those M and (slumming a bit) HC raiding guilds, and they make no effort to include them in the figures. I realised this first back in Mists, in one of these numbers arguments, when I realised that Wowprogress did not list the largest guild on my server and had no record of any of the ~1000 characters in it. I followed that through, to find that Wowprogress searched only guilds that had defeated current tier bosses.
The overall stats have been similar since at least Wrath. 10%-15% of players engage in Normal (now called Heroic) raiding or above. 10%-15% of players engage in rated PvP. And there is a crossover between those groups, meaning that 15%-20% of the playerbase do stuff vaguely considered competitive. With the horrible treatment of PvP in BfA, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that number depressed for PvP at the moment.
These are the only two surveys of who has completed what in raids I have ever found credible. It was a big exercise at the time, and attracted a lot of scrutiny and discussion. I do not believe the patterns have changed.
I expect the number of people who have cleared Heroic N’Zoth without a boost, either paid or guild-based, to be the usual: about 10%.
This part was hillarious
I think you’re misinterpreting him. You say “Ion does not seem to like that skill is the deciding factor”, I interpret his question as if skill should be the only factor, or if a multiple factor scenario would be the best.
I think a combination of factors is preferable, for example i think RNG should one, gear should be another, covenant choice a third etc.
No, its literally what he said. Theres very little ambiguity there.
Unless you think the current design of who gets the most procs regardless of whether they are actually at the keyboard or not is compelling.
Indeed there isn’t. He asked if every hunter across the world should have the exact same stats and skill is the defining factor on output.
It is faaar diferent from what we have now. It would require gear to not matter at all and for there to be some kind of pve templates.
Hmm. Going to disagree.
Wowhead summarizes Ion’s words as this:
RNG and Variance
RNG and Variance in combat in your damage is not satisfying.
Passive effects and talents should not have more effectiveness than things that affect your active abilities.
There should still be certain RNG aspects to be expected in an RPG.
More specialized players should have a slightly different experience than those who choose to more versatile.
And here’s the segment in the video where he talks about it:
I won’t transcribe it, but I’d advice to re-watch the part of the video again and listen to what he actually says.
What he “literally” (please stop use that word randomly) said was:
“Do you feel like it’s an ideal end point for every hunter who’s doing a mythic raid encounter, across the world really, in terms of their stats their abilities and the only difference among them is who can push their buttons more effectively, who can execute the mechanical aspects of their class”
I mean, I can see what he actually said. I don’t really care for “what he reallllllly meant was” when a lawyer by training chooses his words so carefully.
So you’re playing the conspiracy card then.
Wonderful.
No, I’m playing the damn clip shows what he said card. You’re playing the “he didn’t actually say this but a 3rd party summarised his words as follows” card.
Wonderful.