Seriously, I get the idea to display info to the player on the direction etc of the swirly, But every single mechanic now seems to be ‘mob drops swirly, don’t stand in it’.
Is the design team that bereft of idea, that this is the only thing they can do to increase challenge? I, for one, would like to see clever design, incorporating the uniqueness of bosses and mobs, not just a different colored circle on the ground, prompting my to sarcasticlly think ‘oh. what a surprise. this mob drops random circles on the ground’.
Its gotten so prevelelent now that its a genuine surprise when I see a pizza slice, or a cone, or, god forbid, a new unique mechanic.
I don’t work for blizz but I can think of several intresting ways that they USED to provide challenge to an encounter, but now, it just seems like they are phoning it in and just using a cookie cutter template and just reskinning things, and its just plain lazy.
In a recent interview, Ion Hazzikostas discusses how WeakAuras and addons take a lot of the problem solving elements out of encounters.
This results in one of the remaining mechanics left to increase difficulty is “twitch reaction” mechanics and swirlies players need to dodge or soak.
There’s a popular rumor - somewhat confirmed by Allen Adham himself - that many game studios, including Blizzard these days, no longer prioritize hiring developers who are nerdy gamers themselves. Instead, they focus on highly skilled coders who may not actually play the games they’re working on.
To me, that explains a lot about the current state of swirly flood mechanics (as well as other elements) in WoW.
Got to love not being able to see swirlies at all as prot paladin as well in meadery, because its almost the same color and whole floor is covered in yellow…
Was’t the whole point to make it easier to see not harder ?
It’s just the limitations of the game. It can’t be like Dark Souls where the players have to learn a bunch of different boss abilities tied to a sound or visual effect and then do split second a dodge, block or parry and attack during a specific opening.
Block, parry and dodge are all automatic and some classes can’t even do all 3. There is also the fact enemies only attack one person. If there was no swirly to avoid it would just be standing attacking stuff that is attacking someone else.
Also factor in some players will use MMO mouse for all their abilities and do not use their keyboard hand for any abilities. If there was no swirly I would never need to touch my keyboard.
Well from a gameplay perspective, if you dont need to move and all you have to do is stand there “turret mode” and DPS… How would that be any “fun”?
So tell me. Any idea to make players move and adapt to their environment with out a swirlie, or something that looks like it (like a frontal, which is a swirlie in the shape of a line) or areas of denial (which is also a swirly that takes up the whole room in the shape of a pizza slice)?
And seccond question: What would you replace that difficulty with? More casts to kick? More adds to kill?.. dosent seem to me like a proper alternative.
If it’s not a swirly, it will be something else that pretty much translates to “Move from your current position”.
The only thing left to include in WoW is QTEs. -=EDIT=- Oh wait, we have them in world quests already, like the one in Undermine with the robot that has to deactivate 4 traps!
I had read a similar rumor too. Something about people passionate about a product will inevitably try to change stuff in it to their liking without permission. So they don’t want people who care about the product to be part of its production.
I would like to see some overworld-type puzzles in instanced content, even though I do acknowledge that the playerbase would autosolve them with addons; stuff like:
Panels light up and one has to go over them in the correct order
Set 2 levers in a specific combination (up up, up down, down up, down down) and get a buff depending on that (crit, haste, vers or all 3)
Hit a boss from a specific angle or height difference to cause extra damage
Not sure if I am misunderstanding you, or you haven’t played much of the season 2/ 11.1-11.1.5 content - but the majority of “swirlies” are now solid outlines.
Guilty as charged.
I have not raided in the current expansion. I burnt out of collecting curves every tier for years. I was not even in the mood to do LFR and did the story mode.
Yeah… MotS mini-game sure was a success… Or more recently, the DFC kart mini-game.
Its a drama even outside instance content. I remember in Zereth Mortis with the little robot you had, and the puzzles you had to solve… they had to implement a “just open the chest, I don’t want to do this nonesense” mechanic…
I dont think people want that. Every time something like that was implemented there was outrage. I personally think that it’s really boring and I dont want mini-games like that. Its not what I envision “combat” to be. I want more high-octane situations.
So its easy to say “swirlies” everywhere. But nobody wants the alternative’s… So for me, its hypocresy of the masses.
Also. There were as many swirlies in DF and prior expansions as there are today. Its just that now you see them better and you have an impression of “swirlies everywhere”. Just to prove a point: Motherload is a BFA dungeon. And mechanics are identical. So it cant have more swirlies, it has the same ones it did in BFA.
