Two Non-QQ Questions for the Devs

#0 - Jan. 22, 2009, 12:26 p.m.

I know, I know.. don't make threads like these. I (and likely others) just want clear answers to these questions to clear up quite a bit of confusion and anger.

1. When you say if this happens, then we will do that.. how do you determine if those criteria have been met?

For example.. you have said that if damage is still too high for PVP-geared players, something would be done about it. More recently, you said that if Priests stop getting raid spots, the developers will find ways to buff them.

You obviously don't (nor should you) go by what people say on the forums. Your internal testing doesn't agree with our observations or it never would have gotten to this point in the first place. You certainly don't watch every single game or base decisions on limited statistics (after all, numbers can be taken a dozen different ways and don't reveal reasons).

So HOW would you decide that yes, PVP damage is too high if not from the forums or statistics? Likewise with Priests and raid spots. Are you checking who is doing how much healing for every single raid on every single realm? If not, how would you even know that this was the case?

Basically what I'm saying is.. it doesn't look like there's any way for you to really check if any of these things are happening.

2. Why not be more honest? You can tell people something they don't want to hear and make them angry, or you can avoid certain issues + word things in a way that might keep people happy.. and make them REALLY angry.

This seems to be - no offense - rookie public relations work. Which is to be expected, since GC is a game developer and not a public relations expert.

Be honest.

PVP damage is not going to change this season. It's obvious to anyone who is paying any attention or has any common sense (in regards to the unfairness of major changes mid-season). You're going to let this season play out, check the detailed standings and stats near the end, see how the best players at each class managed versus specific comps, and otherwise take a good hard look at it then.

Likewise with Priests. Any changes you do make will be along the lines of mana costs, coefficients, bonuses from talents... tweaking sort of stuff. You're not going to give them a niche. You're not going to completely overhaul the mechanics of any of their spells. The sort of changes players are wanting, the large-scale stuff, the ETA on those changes isn't measured in months and patches.. but years and expansions.

Why not just say it clearly and directly? Sure, it will make some people angry.. but then they can make an informed decision and move on. As it stands, people are harboring false hopes and are 'in limbo,' which just makes them angrier.

Ghostcrawler

#1 - Jan. 22, 2009, 5:15 p.m.

Q u o t e:
1. When you say if this happens, then we will do that.. how do you determine if those criteria have been met?

For example.. you have said that if damage is still too high for PVP-geared players, something would be done about it. More recently, you said that if Priests stop getting raid spots, the developers will find ways to buff them.

You obviously don't (nor should you) go by what people say on the forums. Your internal testing doesn't agree with our observations or it never would have gotten to this point in the first place. You certainly don't watch every single game or base decisions on limited statistics (after all, numbers can be taken a dozen different ways and don't reveal reasons).

So HOW would you decide that yes, PVP damage is too high if not from the forums or statistics? Likewise with Priests and raid spots. Are you checking who is doing how much healing for every single raid on every single realm? If not, how would you even know that this was the case?

Basically what I'm saying is.. it doesn't look like there's any way for you to really check if any of these things are happening.

We have a lot of tools available that we don't publicly discuss. Forums and statistics certainly weigh into that. So does feedback from expert players and internal testing.

Q u o t e:
2. Why not be more honest? You can tell people something they don't want to hear and make them angry, or you can avoid certain issues + word things in a way that might keep people happy.. and make them REALLY angry.

This seems to be - no offense - rookie public relations work. Which is to be expected, since GC is a game developer and not a public relations expert.

Be honest.

PVP damage is not going to change this season. It's obvious to anyone who is paying any attention or has any common sense (in regards to the unfairness of major changes mid-season). You're going to let this season play out, check the detailed standings and stats near the end, see how the best players at each class managed versus specific comps, and otherwise take a good hard look at it then.

Likewise with Priests. Any changes you do make will be along the lines of mana costs, coefficients, bonuses from talents... tweaking sort of stuff. You're not going to give them a niche. You're not going to completely overhaul the mechanics of any of their spells. The sort of changes players are wanting, the large-scale stuff, the ETA on those changes isn't measured in months and patches.. but years and expansions.

Why not just say it clearly and directly? Sure, it will make some people angry.. but then they can make an informed decision and move on. As it stands, people are harboring false hopes and are 'in limbo,' which just makes them angrier.

Heh. I try to be very honest, and we're generally not at all afraid to make people angry. We are going to do what we think is right for the game, not what will earn us the most immediate kudos on the forums. Elemental dps was too low coming into Lich King and would have lagged behind as players got more gear. Warlocks were too easy to kill in PvP. Unholy DKs were too good in PvP and dual-wield DKs were too good in PvE. Those are mistakes we made.

There are others we are working on that we aren't ready to talk about yet (generally because we haven't finalized a solution). I have mixed feelings about announcing problems when we don't have solutions. Those postst tend to generate a lot more anxiety (and launch dozens of threads) among the players than if we are also able to add "and here is what we are doing about it."

I don't even have a problem telling the community "We don't know yet," though that often causes equal frustration. ("How could you NOT know? It's so clear to us. We've been telling you since beta and you IGNORED us.") Players are right a lot. They are wrong a lot too.

I suspect that what you're getting at here is that you just disagree with me, can't understand how that possibly could be the case, so conclude it as deceit on my part.

Ghostcrawler

#41 - Jan. 23, 2009, 2:03 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Wait a sec. So it's ok to fix Elemental shaman due to scaling issues, but Hunters get brushed off? We'll be looked at at some unknown future date for some unknown future patch so live with what we nerf you to?

We do not plan to overhaul Elemental's spells in 3.1 so we need a longer-term fix for them. (This does not mean Elemental is getting no attention in 3.1.) We do plan on changing hunter abilities so we will have to rebalance them anyway.

Q u o t e:
I'd just like to point out something regarding the "expert players" comment - I think one issue we are seeing with priests is that the very-tip-top priests may do adequate in arenas, but the general priest population does not seem to.

This is a very broad topic beyond the scope of this post, but it is a pretty interesting idea to discuss. Do you balance for the expert player or the average player? Most experts would say to balance for the experts, but that isn't always the right call. Some abilities which are balanced for the upper 2% become impossible to use for the remaining 98% because they require so much skill to use correctly.

Q u o t e:
good players have been saying this since beta, grats on finally catching on!

Players made a lot of predictions that were totally wrong too, but I didn’t want to start a lot of fires by listing them. No doubt some player still don’t think they were wrong. :)

Q u o t e:
The disconnect may be that Blizzard does not consider 10 months to be a long time.

This was in reference to why we let Elemental shaman damage be low in Sunwell. Our old design for shamans was that they couldn't do damage or heal as well as other specs because they could do both and because their buffs were so good. We retired that dated philosophy and now intend for them to do competitive dps -- just below the pure dps classes.

Q u o t e:
Will the Priest class see significant change in a positive/new direction: YES or NO?

We want to get a straight answer. Then it's easier to decide if we (a) want to keep playing your game (b) keep playing but tie our priest to a tree and blow his/her pathetically designed brains out and roll something else

To use your own terminology, that isn’t a straight question. Here are the likely outcomes I see from trying to answer that question.

I say YES. Players who like priests now get concerned. Players who don’t like priests get excited, but then disappointed when they find that their definitions of “significant” don’t match ours. If I say NO, then nobody is any happier either.

We have some exciting changes planned for priests. Many of them will make it in 3.1 (Ulduar). We hope to have them finalized enough to be able to announce some in the next couple of weeks, but that date might not work out for a number of reasons. The community has a way of overlooking all those caveats such as “at this time” or “assuming nothing changes” and suddenly we are “breaking promises.” :)

Q u o t e:
If so, I might point out that a lot of players like me make a lot of posts simply trying to convince you (when not arguing with other players) that pvp damage is too high.

PvP damage is too high. If I am not always clear about that it is because again I feel like I must offer a lot of caveats. It is easy for some specs to say "Well, wait. I can't mana drain or chain stuns. All I can do is damage. Does this mean I am doomed to never being on an Arena team?" Damage has to matter. It just matters too much right now.

Q u o t e:
1. The dev team is currently working on reducing how bursty pvp is currently, but I don't want to give exact promises on the quantitative degree of the changes or the timeframe before completion.

This.

Q u o t e:
What's interesting about that is there's inherent conflict built into the metaphor -- devs are authority, and players are anti-authoritarian.

And yet our goals are the same: we all want the game to be as fun as possible. :)

Ghostcrawler

#87 - Jan. 24, 2009, 6:28 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I just wonder, do the Blizzard devs think that Disc is turning out the way they imagined?

Yes. I am very happy with it. The designers who worked on Disc did a great job. It was a good PvP spec before but now is also a viable PvE spec, yet with a different healing vibe than Holy.

Q u o t e:
Are there any mechanics of the tree that might get tweaked soon?

Yes. Spirit and Penance come to mind. No, they're not nerfs.

Q u o t e:
I've also heard that some Disc Priests complain that it doesn't scale as well as Holy at extremely high gear levels. Is this an issue that is being looked at, or is it not considered significant?

There are no extremely high gear levels in the game so it's a little premature to worry about. We do need to make sure Discipline's tools scale with spellpower and other stats as do other healers.

Q u o t e:
Last and perhaps most importantly, is there any possibility of either getting separate Disc armor sets, or set bonuses/stats that appeal to Holy and Disc equally? Currently, I find the Holy sets to be great but not ideal: I'm aware they were not designed for my specc.

Bonuses we might do. Sets are unlikely. A big direction for us this time around was to drop fewer unique types of armor, but let players customize them towards their own play style with gems and enchants.