Nerfs, and gameplay

This is a tough issue because for every player who thinks the game is changing too fast, there are others who become really impatient if their class feels underpowered for even a couple of weeks.

Obviously, the best solution would be that we nail everything off the bat and never have to change abilities or numbers after a patch launches. Realistically in a game as large and popular as WoW (the number of players experimenting definitely plays into the game balance), that is not going to happen.

We made a lot of changes in the 3.1 patch, and I would not expect that many changes in subsequent patches of this expansion. However we will continue to make smaller patches and hotfixes for issues that we think need to be addressed.

We're also open to more feedback on this topic. How do you tell a player "Yeah, you're probably a little weak, but we don't want to keep making changes?"

Q u o t e:
Hit the nail on the head.

It's not that you're making too many changes.

It's that the nerfs are just way too huge.

I disagree with that statement, or even that players feel that way. When DKs got nerfed a few times recently, the response from the community (minus the DKs of course) was that the nerfs were not sufficient. In reality, I think your sentiment is what we hear from players when it’s their class being nerfed. When it’s another class, the response is typically “How long do we have to wait for X to no longer be overpowered?”

Q u o t e:
If they weren't so heavy handed with their changes you'd have a point. But since Blizzard is balancing with a sledge hammer, this is what's causing the whiplash people are complaining about.

How do you justify a class/spec being competetive, if not slightly overpowered to becoming borderline worthless with the lowest representation between 2 arena seasons not even a couple weeks apart?

It’s because the equation doesn’t work that way in PvP. In PvE, if we nerfed a class by 5%, you might find that the class representation drops slightly. In PvP it’s a whole different ball game. Teams may choose to use other classes. Players who were dps spec may choose switch to healing. If a class is nerfed, the class it countered may suddenly rise. Balancing classes in PvE is like adding or removing helium from a balloon. You can make it go up or down a little. In PvP, all of the balloons are connected together through complex webs and you’re doing the tweaking in a wind tunnel. That’s not a cop out saying that PvP can never be balanced, but is instead my counter to the argument that “because spec representation rises and falls to such a degree that the changes are too extreme.” Even small changes can have extreme results in PvP.

Q u o t e:
"If we QQ enough blizz will change it."

I feel that is the only lesson you've taught us since 3.0

Nah. There are plenty of things players have QQ’d about for months that we do not think are worthy of change. We have also made plenty of changes that the forum community has never “requested.” Furthermore, our answer is often that we’re going to sit on a change or keep an eye on it. That’s not satisfactory to a lot of players. Your answer seems to be that we should just tell them “tough,” but that is obviously unsatisfying to some folks. You may be right that players will always freak out and play the “Blizz doesn’t care” card. But we’re stubborn and aren’t willing to give up on communication.

Q u o t e:
I have never really liked this theory that it takes time for the community to learn how to counter certain abilities. I mean no disrespect to the devs when I say this, but the game is not rocket science. People aren't playing the game and suddenly realize they can combine their abilities in new ways to "counter" certain abilities or classes. They do not discover that long neglected abilities are suddenly the perfect solution for a new problem.

I disagree with that too. There are clearly some things that players can never “learn to counter” because there is just no mathematical way to do so. But from our POV, one of the features of WoW that players often dramatically underestimate (and I cannot emphasize this enough) is that playstyles change over time. Someone discovers a new Arena spec, and suddenly everyone is switching to it. Someone comes up with a new strategy, perhaps involving an unusual use of a trinket proc, and that is all everyone is talking about. Even if we did nothing, class dominance in Arena (and even PvE) would rise and fall to some extent. Despite some players’ attempts to distill WoW down into simple equations, it is an enormously complicated game. It is impossible to predict what players will come up with given enough time.

Actually, I’ll just quote Rokkit because she said it well: "I don't think it's a "theory" at all. I think it's blatantly obvious that the community as a whole learns very slowly, and does indeed need time to digest and adjust to changes.

In some cases though, the imbalance is so great that no amount of learning will overcome it. DKs and Holy Paladins in S5 for example, or priests in S6 were not simply going to fade away as players learned to play better. Other classes were not going to magically catch up to warrior/DK damage if their PvE damage potential wasn't nerfed. To get the game where the devs want it, they had to make changes.

That doesn't mean that whatever exists today is exactly what will exist tomorrow except when the devs make changes. Players *do* adjust and trends emerge on their own. What starts out with a few knowledgeable players takes awhile to filter down to the masses.

The devs are then left with the dilemma:

Do we balance the game to account for the emerging trend, even though we don't know for certain if that is the final resting point, or do we wait and see, and potentially get caught napping when the trend really does turn into the norm?"

Q u o t e:
The 'Too Fast' complaints seem to come from the feeling of "Why did X get to be overpowered for a year, while Y only got a few days". Assuming X was even fixed to begin with.

The 'Too Slow' complaints come from "Why does Z still suck? Still? It's been forever and a day, you going to fix this any time soon? How about now? Maybe now? I'm paying 15 dollars a month here to be farmed/benched, can I get a little satisfaction? Now? No? Maybe now! /angry"

They are both symptoms of not fixing stuff. Not just changing it, but fixing it.

Nobody is arguing that it makes sense or is our goal to make changes that accomplish nothing. Our goal with every change is to fix something. You can certainly argue that you had the foresight to realize that a specific change would not have accomplished our goal and I fully acknowledge that you might have made different decisions in our shoes. That’s the nature of this business.

Q u o t e:
WoW was a much better game when the communication was limited and players werent salivating for the next patch because of so many what they considered to be "promises" from blue to fix this or nerf that. The community also had far more respect for the Devs back then.

I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve been reading these forums for much longer than I’ve been making blue posts, and I don’t recall the level of satisfaction you describe as ever being there. Patches would come out and players would caterwaul (and were often totally justified) when a change they had hoped to see didn’t materialize. Honestly, the only change I’ve seen is that perhaps by now we have made enough mistakes that we've learned from some of them. I am probably more accessible here on the forums than in the good old days, in part because I remember how frustrating it was as a forum reader to never get answers or direction to some of our concerns.

I agree with Sturmvogel’s response to this issue above too.

Q u o t e:
The old slow way, didn't prevent the above issue, not even a little. It just made the turnover time THAT much longer, which made those players with the Broken somethings, THAT much more bitter and vulgar and desperate.

Yes, this is why we make changes faster now. The downside is that some players get whiplash (or accuse us of selling out to QQ, which amuses me a little since we are so often accused of the opposite too.)

Q u o t e:
POSTING FROM IRAQ RIGHT NOW!

Offtopic, I know, but my hat is off to you, sir.

Q u o t e:
In S4, I saw strong representation from all classes and specs, with VERY few exceptions. How did you guys go from S4 to S5...? Like you guys ALMOST HAD PVP BALANCED COMPLETELY. Then you brought in maps like Ring of Valor and the Dalaran Sewers...Two maps that are TERRIBLE and disliked by at least 90 percent of the community. Then there was the whole DK LOL S5 FREE FROST WORM THANKS episode that went on that I'm not even going to get into.

What happened is that we added 10 levels of abilities and stats, juggled talent trees, added a new class, brought a few specs back from the dead and made everyone start over on their PvP gear. Furthermore, there were classes or specs who were not viable in S4. They were just beaten down because they were so used to be not being viewed as a legit PvP contender. That sucks.

The Arena maps are a huge topic, and offtopic from these forums, so I’ll just say that a sure-fire way to let the game fall into stagnation is to be too scared to experiment with anything new.

Q u o t e:
The reason that people feel changes need to be made fast is because people are at a disadvantage simply based on their class. The way to fix this is to give these "weak" classes incremental buffs. A small buff every week won't unbalance the game and will allow the devs to find the sweet spot.

That kind of fine-scale tuning will solve some problems but not others. To use one example, we don’t think it would have improved warriors. All we could have done is tweaked their damage higher and higher until they were just exploding other classes (in which case the community rightly freaks out because burst is so high). We think what warriors needed was a new ability, and we offered it in the form of Juggernaut. Introducing a new ability is hard to do through incremental buffs (though we were more conservative with Shattering Throw and the Overpower ability). It doesn’t surprise me at all that we have to continue to iterate on those new features some.

By the same token, if you are convinced you are say 20% behind and Blizzard gives you a 4% buff every week then you can do the math and determine that you shouldn’t bother for five weeks or so. We feel like we owe it to the players to make the right changes for their class. Sometimes that means incremental changes and sometimes that will mean big changes. In both cases sometimes we’ll still get it wrong. (Or we’ll get it right and you’ll just insist that it’s wrong.)

EDIT: I meant Shattering Throw. Trivia: it was originally a melee ability named Shattering Blow.