Stop making every spec viable

#0 - April 4, 2009, 2:41 p.m.

*Edit: This thread has a heavier emphasis on PvP compared to PvE*

From your 4 years of WoW thread quote

"However I will offer that for every player that asks what was wrong with the good old days, there is a Prot paladin, Feral druid, Ret paladin, Arcane mage or Survival hunter who is happy that their spec isn't a joke any longer"

Making every spec viable is making balance in this game continuously slip away.

Instead of having 10 classes to balance you're trying to balance 30.
But not only balance 30 classes but make each spec feel as if they are completely different than another.

"I'm not a mage, I'm an arcane mage"
"I'm not a paladin, I'm a ret paladin"
"I'm not a druid, I'm a feral druid"

This line of thinking doesn't do any good for the game and is why wrath is where it is today.

The line of thinking should be I'm a druid, I'm a warrior, I'm a rogue, not I'm a subclass.

On that note, go back to having 1 spec for certain things

Ex:
Warriors: Arms-PvP, Fury-PvE dps, Prot-PvE tank

Mage: Arcane-gimmick for new players, Fire-PvE dps, Frost-PvP

Hunter: BM-gimmick for new players, Marks-PvE dps, Survival-PvP

Paladin: Holy-PvP/PvE, Prot-PvE tank, Ret-PvE dps

Priest: Disc-PvP, Holy-PvE healing, Shadow-PvE dps

Paladins, druids, and shaman have their healing trees tempered for both pve and pvp (which they are now).
Now we're back to one class, 10 classes to balance. Not 30.

Make it easy on yourself, otherwise this game will continue to be a joke.

Ghostcrawler

#84 - April 6, 2009, 2:40 a.m.

At a high level, you can design an RPG in two ways. You can have relatively few roles or you can have a lot of roles. However, even when you have a lot of roles, they tend to overlap a ton and have some very flimsy differences between some of the roles. So more realistically, you can have a few choices to fill your roles or a lot of choices to fill your roles.

You could make a game like WoW with a tank, healer, and maybe a melee and ranged dps class. Four roles. Four classes. It would work.

WoW however needs to last for a long time. It has already lasted a lot longer than many games, but because we have so many players, we need to keep designing a game to keep them interested. Adding new classes is one great way to do that. This time our class filled the tanking and dps role. Next time it might be a healer.

When you say "stop making every spec viable" usually what you are really saying is "let's have a game with less breadth and maybe more depth." That is definitely a way to design a game. But the breadth is also one of those things that provides options. To give just one example, if you get bored of your priest in WoW maybe you decide to roll up a warlock. Yeah you both use mana and wear cloth, but beyond that the classes start to diverge in what we hope are pretty interesting ways. If you have fewer specs or classes, then the reroll situation is a lot less compelling.

Ghostcrawler

#165 - April 6, 2009, 7:04 a.m.

Please take your arguments about how to write elsewhere. If the only thing you can find to attack in someone's arguments is their spelling and grammar, then you probably aren't discounting their argument. Likewise, we try to be patient for players who can't always express themselves eloquently, but if you skip over things like say grammar and punctuation, don't be surprised if people skip over your posts.

We have off-topic and realm forums for socialization. Please don't make other players have to wade through it here, at least under the guise of a topic they might be interested in.

I'll leave this open for now on the chance it gets back on to the original topic. Jeez.

Ghostcrawler

#634 - April 9, 2009, 1:01 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I can say with 99% confidence that this thread is going to be locked due to the quality of the last few pages of posts...

Yup. Heading that way. Could still be a good thread. Let's chill on insulting each other and try to stick to the merit of the arguments themselves.