Why Blizzard hates new players

Community General Discussion
104

No, it does not.

As a Holy Priest, if I get locked out of my Holy school of Magic, then I have 2 Shadow abilities I can use. One is a DoT and the other is an execute. It’s very binary when to use these abilities. There’s no real decision-making involved.

I’ll illustrate depth with another ability.
Leap of Faith.
It’s not clear when to use it, or who to use it on, or what the benefit of using it is.
You can always use it, so there’s decision-making involved in knowing when is the ideal time and who it should be used on.
Its usage doesn’t result in damage or healing, so experience and understanding of the situational space provides a strategical result which may or may not be desirable.
That is depth.

Most buttons are just management and upkeep.

No, that’s my point. Design-wise it doesn’t make sense.
It just is the way it is, because that’s how it’s always been, and Blizzard don’t want to break with tradition. But it does make for some convoluted game design.

I mean, explain the logic behind it. If a Warrior pummels you in the head, then you momentarily forget how to cast all your Holy abilities, but you do remember how to cast your Shadow abilities. How does that make sense?

It’s 16 year old arbitrary game design that is way past its expiration date. No other games have ever adopted a similar design. Because it’s crap.

Blizzard obviously struggles with it themselves, because they keep coming up with band-aid fixes for it.

No, I compared a game with a lot of buttons to two games with far fewer buttons and concluded that the number of buttons don’t correlate with the amount of depth of skill associated with the gameplay. And that does in fact make sense.

That’s kind of admitting that it’s bad design if the solution is to make macros to tie abilities together. If it was good game design, then you wouldn’t have to do this.
If you need a bunch of addons and macros to play WoW without being hamstrung by the design, then the designers have obviously failed their job.

That doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to make macros and use addons and such. But let’s not applaud Blizzard for creating a game where such qualities of life are all but requirements for playing.

3 Likes
105

While I do like many of the returning abilities I think it’s getting out of hand for some classes/specs. On my feral druid I counted atleast 59 binds that I needed for pvp, and that’s not counting target/focus arena123 (for 6 more binds) and while using focus macros rather than arena123, which would then be several even more binds. They should keep the interesting ones, but sort of merge the ones that are very similar already. Even if it is tough to learn and figure out the binds it is nice to have so many tools!

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106

I heard the human brain has more potential than most of us can dream of. Please give me a frontal lobotomy so I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

107

I think people do not understand that a game could be complex and difficult to master AND easy to learn in the same time.
There are a ton of examples of games where you can immediately and comfortably learn, but on the other hand you will need to understand the game in depth if you want results.
For instance, take any tanks game… you have 2 buttons, laterally… 1 for each type of ammo. Easy to learn, just click 1 of the 2 buttons and shoot… but on the other hand, if you want results, you will need to know the enemy armor type and displacement, penetration angles, position yourself so you get the right angles, calculate lead based on vehicles motion, take into consideration maneuverability, turret traverse, fire resistance etc. etc. etc.
That is depth… just adding buttons over buttons over buttons to press when there’s no more fun mechanics you can invent is… dumb… it’s not depth anyway… having different schools of damage but not actually meaning anything… that’s not depth…

108

I dont necessarily have a problem with lots of abilities myself. I enjoy a balance of complexity and smoothness in rotations as a dps player. I would prefer not to have a couple of abilities but instead a nice middle ground. Not too much, not too little. But I’m not opposed to having less abilities as I loved to play dh and I think before pre patch dh is a good example of a class with not too many abilities but fun to play. I enjoyed always thinking about keeping my metamorph up time to best it could get and unloading damage. I also enjoyed running soul leach talent on it as it made me think when would be the best time to go into meta for my sustain. This made it really fun in raiding as I preferred that gameplay to netherwalk. I think blizzard should focus on making classes actually feel good to play give them fun gimmicks. There are a lot of classes/specs that feel too similar or dull, example would be fury warrior. That spec is so boring to play. Aside from dh the last spec I truly enjoyed was survival hunter in mop when you had explosive shot procs. It felt good and smooth and was fun to play.

109

Oh my … Too little buttons, too many buttons. It is very hard for this community to make up their mind, isn’t it ?

110

Sounds about right leveling teaches you nothing and when you are at the “endgame” the game becomes download dozen addons because you cant play it without them bs and read 3th party guides what to do with your character.

I kind of miss old style RPG games where you looked at stats and you immediately knew what they do.

5 Likes
111

It feels like you’re waffling bro or bad at effective keybinding.

Logged on my disc priest and binding everything that one would bind you end up with 26 keybinds, then add maybe a racial and mount and you’re at 28.
(every ability except for ress, mass ress, shackle undead, mind vision, mind control and levitate).
Then healthstone, healthpot, engi ress, maybe a trinket and essence, you’re up to 33.
That being said you can easily remove 2 keybinds by binding say dispell to left click and penance, shield or shadowmend to right click, which brings you to 31.
then there might be some macros you could use, but sure as hell do you not need 12 of them, so you say that you need 43 keybinds as a reasoning for it being unfriendly to new players, but you don’t at all need to remoletly keybind that many abilities, especially not as a new player, and you can definitely get away with less than 30, which is think is fine considering they are added slowly during leveling.

112

i loved holy priest in legion when u had like 10 diff heals on 1 bar then u have ress and all other skills on 2 addunal bars . it had so meny bottoms to press so it felt like playing a piano more then wow :stuck_out_tongue:

113

The problem is default keybinds are terrible. Nobody teaches you to bind "c,v,f,r ,… " because they are used by the interface such as character panel.

1 Like
114

if anything daddy blizz holds players hands too much these days, gone are the days when you had to read quest text just to figure out where tf you were going, what you were doing.

It is an RPG after all… disc is beginner friendly, 35 spells isnt that many honestly.

1 Like
115

35 buttons? Can you break that down please? I have never used 35 buttons not even close.

116

Here some key binds i use
1 2 3 4 5 6
Shift + 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5
F G H E Q C X R
alt + x
shift + F or G or E or C or X R
F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6
M4 and M5
That is about 34 binds should be pretty do able to play your class im sure some can find some more easy binds

117

please give me the exact list of spells I should not bind, and keep in mind that binding spells to mouse left or right is still key binding.

118

You replied to me, but quoted someone else so idk who you’re talking to, but as this is relevant to my comment i will answer, but i already did list all the abilities i think you don’t need to keybind, but i’ll do it again i guess.

There are 2 types of abilities that don’t necessarily need keybinding, those are non combat abilities and niche abilities.

Abilities you certainly don’t need to keybind:
Resurrection
Mass Resurrection

Abilities so niche that you don’t need to keybind, but if you have the space then you should:
Shackle Undead
Mind Vision
Mind Control
Levitate

As an honorable mention you also don’t really really have to keybind fortitude, but since it comes into effect quite often in combat, but not in a niche way, i like to have it keybound.

Yes technically it is, but when people talk about running out of keybinds it usually refers to left hand keybinds on their keyboard or side of the mouse.

119

I can agree with Fortitude but definitely not Mind Control. That is very important in pvp. So we are at 37… 43 - 6. And there will be 2 more at higher levels Mind Soothe and Power Infusion, plus the talent at level 60 if I am not mistaken… plus whatever covenants in shadowlands or other … things

120

Didn’t know you played pvp, was talking pve. Then yea mind control needs to be bound, but then fortitude not really as it is very rare to lose it by purge and if you lose it by dying and ress them that is rare AF.
but switching those out keeps you at a 31 amount of keybinds (33 if you count left and right click on frames) which is still nothing.
Not even counting that you can also bind shift, ctrl and alt with left and right click on frames, you should have more than enough room.

I play with a relatively low amount of keybinds that are all reachable.
½,1,2,3,4,r,f,v,c,MB5,MB4,MB3
You can add to those
5,x,t,g,v,MB2,MB1,q/a,e/d,s
which gives you 21 keybinds, times up to 4 (shift, ctrl, alt and neutral) which is 84 keybinds if you try hard.

You should be able to fit those 35 abilities in easily, especially if using mouseclicks.

There is no level 60 talent, but we have covenant ability, that i will just put in the same keybind as current essence.

Anyways you asked originally if it’s too much for new players, and i stand by that there are quite a few abilities i didn’t list that you don’t need to keybind when you start playing and topping out at 35 i don’t think is too much personally, for some it might be, but i think on average it’s a fine number.

121

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