My daughter pretty much confirmed what I suspected as to how the new player experience is. You get a great many abilities, a great many talents, you pick what seems fun and ignore about 80% of your toolkit because it’s just too much and seemingly not required. I’ve gently tried to guide her to class/spec guides but she is a resistant lil bugger
I simply disagree with a combat system where you have to dive into external sources to clear things up. I think it’s ridiculous. For finetuning, for squeezing out the maximum of your class it’s fine, I get that. But these days it seems you even need it for the most basic really, because there are quite a few interactions between abilities.
And I don’t even want to talk about the questing experience because it’s a convoluted mess, and very confusing for a new player. In that sense it’s good that it starts with DF now, as a reset button basically. Not ideal but at least something.
And on that we disagree.
I do think it feels nice.
It’s not perfect and there’s definitely things that could be done to make it better.
But the issue is: What that ‘better’ means exactly, is different for a lot of people.
Maybe it’s her?
It’s a tough one to solve.
WoW has so much old content that you can’t squish all of that into the leveling experience.
I think that they should do 2 things:
Chromie time should give you the complete experience of the expansion you choose. This includes the entire storyline, all the dungeons once and all the raids once (those last 2 could be a NPC thing, since that’s now possible).
Make 1 single campaign, tailor made for going from level 1 to the new expansion. This campaign should hit all the big moment throughout WoW’s history. Basically a big catch-up experience (not with tiny details, but the big picture). Because it’s tailor made, it’s pace can be determined, so you’ll spend a minimum X amount of time playing and learning your class.
This second one would be the standard ‘new player’ option.
Of course they would also have to properly fix level scaling.
But given you don’t like to step into M+, raids or arena, you may not know the actual problem there is here.
But… You discredited my last comment with “You don’t know that. You are not a new player”… I then tell you how it is for a new player and you go “maybe it’s her?”
Then lets just call it here. Because regardless of how many new people I bring forward you will probably just discredit it, and go “Maybe it’s just them?”
I repeat… if you spend what… 20 euros more, you get a boost directly to the current expansion lvl wise too… if you wait a bit during the expansion that boost goes all the way to MAX lvl…
They even start you off in the previous expansion to the current… So no. They are not trying to “squish in” anything. They are directing you to the latest of content and want you to get through fast, hence you are eligable for exp buffs, potions, whatever even as a new player.
And that they won’t do.
Why? Too much time vs. the payout.
Just this bit:
has been a problem for ages, and they haven’t solved it.
But again, let’s agree to disagree here, cus I know where the conversation will go
Wow used to be better at this. Back then leveling was slower so you had more time to learn your class whilst leveling. You had class trainers so you went and learnt spells, so you’d likely read about them then and there. Some times there’d be a quest to unlock a spell which would give a better understanding. I remember a Paladin quest in Classic from a bishop in the Cathedral which send you find someone, turns out they’re dead and you have to ressurect them, thus you learn that spell.
These days spells just appear in your spell book and the only way you know they’re there is if you go into that and check.
I do think more spells should have quests like the resserection one for Paladins back in days of yore.
Class Order Halls really should be a thing right from level 1 (or 10 maybe). You used to go to the Cathedral in Stormwind every level or two back then. I think doing that again would be a good way to introduce spells.
Yeah, I’m not sure when this started. I think I first noticed it in Legion. I was leveling in Stormheim on one of my alts (rogue I think) which dinged max and I went from handling mobs fine to barely able to down a mob in the blink of an eye. I had to gear up (can’t remember bow I did that, maybe WQs) before I felt as strong again.
Used to be when you first went into a new expansion you felt quite weak (I wouldn’t be going in with top-notch raid gear) and then you started to gain levels and some new gear (even quest rewards) and you got stronger and stronger.
Today you go into an expac with Pre-Patch catch-up gear which you don’t replace for the first 6 or 7 levels of an expansion. So as Stat Weights go against you as you level you get weaker and weaker until you do start to get better gear. It feels bad really.
But apparently enough people complained, starting at around the end of legion and again after BFA, about suddenly feeling so weak after losing all of their borrowed power that Blizzard eventually caved in and made everyone OP for the first few levels, then turning up the thumbscrews ever faster…
I get that we have the options for people seeking out challenges, like high key mythic+.
But these days almost everything needs to be turned into some kind of hardmode challenge.
It’s like people seem to have forgotten that games are meant to be played for fun.
And you cannot impose a mode played by only the top 1% or Blizzard’s wetdream on your entire player base.
Have both, sure, I don’t mind both modes existing.
But don’t make the minority mode the standard for everyone.
The problem with Retail is that it’s about endgame. Leveling doesn’t teach you much about your class. When I was leveling through dungeons, I actually felt quite overwhelmed by the amount talents I was getting because we are leveling incredibly fast. Trying to understand your character really starts at max level. Which is not new player friendly.
At max level, WoW offers a large variety of difficulties of every content you can theoretically progress through, however that progress will be severly hampered by inadequate UI and sometimes by a difficult class design.
I agree that the addon-less healer experience is horrendous. You really need addons and macros to make it work somewhat comfortably - Which is why the skill floor for healers is the highest of all roles, in my opinion.
Recently, I started tanking as a Prot Warr and without TellMeWhen, I would have a difficult time keeping track of very basic things like the duration of Shield Block, Ignore Pain, Shield Wall and Last Stand. The personal resource display under our characters is not fit for that task.
As an example of a difficult class design, I would present Shadow Priest - trying to figure out a good build without using a guide when nearly every talent affects 3+ sources of your damage in different ratios is basically impossible.
So yeah, the game is quite a mess for a new player.
Yeah, because it sounds like you’re basing your opinion off of 1 person.
Not a very good basis for an opinion about a whole (very diverse) group of people.
And?
Those boosts are obviously not targeted towards new players.
But rather existing players, to give them a fast way for a new alt, or returning players.
No. They don’t ‘want’ that. That’s what a lot of PLAYERS want. And they’re accommodating that. They ‘want’ you to play their game. Not skip it.
They are just cashing in on the lazyness of people and the fact that it’s easier to swipe a credit card than to spend some time playing.
I think the problem in case of dispellable indicators comes down to the basic group interface being very rudimentary. In order to see it you need to change your party frames to be raid frames.
For dispellables by default it is set to only highlight debuffs that are important for a healer to know of, and debuffs you can dispel (their border highlights the type of debuff it is). There is a setting for you to turn on the ones you cannot dispel as well.
I know this because I always healed with base UI. It is terrible, but with the revamp it can be customised to be more servicable. I think the only healer who is an exception from this are druids, as the base UI only shows 3 HoTs max on the character icon which makes it hard to gauge how many hots you have on your target.
Just like with everything else for a healer the rest comes with experience.
@OP:
This is the result of the levelling experience being way too short, as you have said, though even with a longer levelling experience this will not change much. The failure of the Proving Grounds from WoD is a clear example of this. Even know a lot of specs can be understood how they work, but the problem is that before you start playing you have a lot of reading to go through to understand the interractions between the talents.
If they want to teach players how to play their class better then not only do the levelling content need to be slowed down, but they also need to revamp a lot of the levelling content beside it. They also need to reintroduce the possibility of failure into the mix, so that you build a basic knowledge on how your class works, such as interrupts, cooldown usage, and a basic rotation.
That is a lot of effort from Blizzard’s side to fix, which I do not think they will spend time to do. It is much easier for them to let people who are interested in learning look at external sites to get the basics down.
So, are you saying that people who start playing WoW are basically uncurious robots with no willingness to learn new things, and, on top of that, they can’t read?
WoW already explains what spells can do.
Sure, it doesn’t specifically tell you which mobs can or cannot be CC’d, but that’s where human curiosity and the ability to learn come into play. You should be able to perform basic tasks without someone holding your hand.
Is this really what you want from Blizzard? A scenario where new players are bombarded with a tutorial that explains every single spell while leveling up, all the way to their first dungeon or raid?
How do you think we learned to play the game back in the day? It was driven by simple curiosity experimenting with what your class could do and figuring things out on your own.
That is the best way for games to be designed. There shouldn’t be a “class learning course” to explain what a simple stun or trap does. You can read the tooltip, then go into the world and try it for yourself.
While I agree on the gemeral premise, today´s new players are not the new players from 20 or even 15 years ago.
Todays “new” players are the ones that come to the forums to whine about dying on HC and how their chars ned to be restored, after clicking on a screen-filling warning box that explicity sayt that´s not going to happen.
Today´s “new” players are the ones that roll augvoker and never use EM or Prescience in a whole dungeon run “Because they do no damage”
They don´t need to have ther hand held all the way to levelcap, but it certainly wouldn´t hurt to provide them with clearer information on important things.
For ex, mage learns Frost nova, it gets added to teh bar automatically, with a “blurb” sayying “this is a spell that casts a ring of ice around you, freezing enemies in place for a few seconds or until you hit them”
Just learned Blizzard? “this is an areaa of effect spell that casts for 5 seconds where you put the large runed circle, slowing enemies and doing damage to them. moving will stop the cast”
Arcane Intellect? “This is a Buff, a powerful spell that you can cast on yourself or other party member to increase their intellect for one hour. Enables warriors to speak”
Something along those lines. At least for core abilities
So, most of what I am deducting from your comment is that the problem with newer players is that they do not read, so your solution is to force it on them to read?
I can already see a possible issue with this, namely that it jumps into your face in the middle of killing a trash pack.
I would think that anyone remotely interested in the game would check out an ability that gets added on to their hotbar by the game.
Other games solve this by adding visual guides into the spellbook. I think that in itself should be enough.
You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink, they say.
I think it’s more that when you start with a new game, esp one as vast as WoW is, the experience will be overwhelming even when you discount the intricacies of classes and specs. There’s only so much a new player can handle.
If I look at Classic, it works because the pace is very different, and so is the gameplay’s complexity. You learn as you go. Retail is more ‘Do whatever, things will die’ until they suddenly don’t, and that happens very late into the game. That learning curve doesn’t happen naturally and gradually, you suddenly bump into a wall.
I have no idea what the solution would be, if there even is one, it may simply be the best compromise they could come up with for both new and veteran players.
They read “selectively”, and often don´t take the time to understand what they´ve jsut read… for ex the HC player just saw a text popup and clicked it away like every EULA in the history of man, because it looked like a EULA.
The augvoker moused over EM and prescience, but was never informed of their actual value, because there was no “This does x damage” number attached to it, and hes “a damage dealer”.
So you make the actually pertinent information clearer more accessible at the moment when it becomes relevant.
If the small Blurbs already included in WoW are so large that they “jump into your face in the middle of killing a trash pack”, maybe play at a resolution higher than 240x480
Also, most new players are not running around mass pulling entire zones, and if they´re leveling in dungeons there are 4 other people in the group that should at least theoretically be able to compensate for tehm taking 5-10 seconds to read what their shiny new button does.
I´m not saying my idea is perfect, but the issue is that if the information is not clear and concise, it is generally ignored altogether, to the detriment of the user experience. Nobody is suggesting 3 chapters of lord of the rings to be displayed on screen to explain frostnova.
If people click away pop ups now then they will still continue to do so. If you check the description of abilities they are already compact enough to be understood, the problem starts from the talent choices as you actually need to read them to understand what they do.
I just do not agree that we should cater to the lowest common denominator. If they want to improve the general gameplay of players they should do it through gameplay design. It does not have to be hard mechanics either.
Enemy casts 3 second heal on low health and gets a big damage reduction ability during it. If the cast goes through it heals itself to full and the DR drops. If the player wants to get through said enemy they need to use CC or an interrupt.
Bring the Proving grounds back, add in the requirement to do this every 10 levels and always add something extra on to the challenge so people can learn how to use their toolkit. Maybe they can make it so that after completing the challenge they can do a gold version of it which is more challenging, but if completed they gain a small XP buff for the next 10 levels.
