Why is every mechanic now a swirly?

Community General Discussion
1

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.

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2

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.

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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.

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All these swirlies makes me want to puke. I really hope they come up with something else in season three, because right now it is incredibly overused.

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5

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 ?

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We’ve had the big swirling circle since Cata, and people still run away from the raid like a headless chicken to end up getting one shot…

Love it when I grip them to soak it with the raid for them to still run away…

So many people in LFR are beyond thick…

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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.

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Our consecrate vs their consecrate in Priory is also fun

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I hate the amount of swirlies, especially as melee. I want to hit things, not play dance studio.

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Worst are being sucked in puddles

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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.

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should try DK and seeing anything under Defile :dracthyr_sweat:

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But why do they have to be all swirlies and not magic circles with a solid outline etc.

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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
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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.

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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.

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Every boss mechanic ever has been Tank Buster, Swirly, Cone, Beam or Split the raid.

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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… :smiley:

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. :slight_smile:

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I dont mean a change in visual represention of things - a circuler or conical area saying get out is fine, but there is simply no imagination anymore in the design

I mean dungeons are just not interesting anymore.

Off the top of my head, I can think of some mechanics:

  • Make the dungeons alive, with puzzles that change behaviour of bosses, or layout of final encounters, making it easier or harder if you complete additional objectives
  • Make specific class abilities do stuff to bosses instead of just ‘interrrupt’ when they are relevent - heal for example damaging an undead boss so you can directly damage or choose to heal party, mind control confusing the boss so he randomly targets someone. Hell, even specific damage types could trigger a scared machanic
  • On a scared mechanic, make the boss run away, so you have to chase them down back through the dungeon if you do enough damage quickly enough, so they have increased damage themselves, but randomly use abilities and try to escape
  • have switches and levers that players can utilise, that could buff players or make mobs more difficult. randomise them, so maybe youll get a big buff, or maybe you wont. Add an override to it so you can just force a debuff to make it harder, but get better loot
  • NPCs to help you if you rescue them, or turn against you if you ignore them
  • split group up, maybe some dungeouns need multiple bosses in different locations to be killed simultaiiously
  • chase sequences
  • things you can only do as a ghost, so you HAVE to have a player die (incidentally, this is what I thought SL would do, have a whole new set of stuff you could do while dead, exploring that odd blue world for a bit, dungeons that could only be done with dead players etc)
  • Have a new procedully generated dungeon, so its never the same one twice
  • Decoys that force a retarget

Maybe combine all of these, so you can trap difficult boss with proper planning, so dungeons don’t just become a game of ‘try to keep up with the turbo tank’

THose are unusual and different mechanics, some of which we have seen before.

Older wow dungeons used to have clever things like this, but now it is just cones and swirlies, and ramping up hit points.

Wow is basically just ‘Dont stand there and Hit or heal stuff’

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You do realize that M+ is a timed instance right?

More like make the dungeons annoying as hell. The kart mechanic and the MotS maze are not enough proof ?

Absolutey not. Really bad idea.

So we already have issues with class utility and spec representation and you want to add even more to that dumpserfire???

Nah. Utility needs no be normalized.

Sure why not. But dungeons are 10% bosses 90% trash packs. You are firgetting that what defines the dungeon is trash packs.

M+ enjoyers dislike complicated boss mechanics. Because there is little to no recovery possible, and makes the overall dungeon boring if you spend a long time fighting a boss.

So too much focus on bosses will not result in a better dungeon. M+ is not a raid.

No. Same as above. Switches are boring.

And any “buff” or “support” is simply a bad idea. Say a switch gives you 10% crit. Classes that stack crit will benefit more in that dungeon. In another dungeon you wont.

So classes with crit can only play to their full potential in one specific dungeon. Because blizz said so. No thanks.

Help you in what way? By pulling things that should not pull? Buffing players (see coment above)??? Nah. Brann has to be in Delves. Not M+.

And where would the tank go? And the heale? Not possible in a 1-1-3 configuration.

No. Why?

And what ghost? There are no ghosts in instances content. You can’t even release.

And as a ghost you cant die either. So nothing is at stake.

In the end, its better to take a portal and do mechanics on a different phase.

And this has already existed.

So if you are lucky you get the easy 20+ and if you are unlicky you get the impossible 20+?

No thanks.

Sorry. But wow is not a SP game. Its an MMO and there are some limitations.