Do we REALLY have to wait for Cata for fixes?

#0 - Jan. 19, 2010, 6:06 a.m.

In a recent post GC stated:

Q u o t e:
On the flip side, we could tone down damage and healing, but that has huge PvE ramifications and we're not ready to re-balance the entire game -- though this is the intent for Cataclysm. What we'll likely do for the next expansion is ramp damage up a little as players advance, but have health pools increase greatly and healing increase by marginal amounts. The same change would have benefits for PvE too because mana then becomes a consideration for healers -- they must make a more determined choice between an efficient strategy and a spamming strategy -- and tanks won't constantly face dying by two unfortunate strikes. In PvP, you'll ideally see more players in a wounded state, and they can eventually be worn down rather than blown up in a couple of global cooldowns.

Now, this all sounds great. I would love to actually have real fights again. Not that TBC was perfect(healers were very good), but it was a lot more fun than instagibbing and being gibbed in PvP. Right now people are literally being "globaled" or killed in 2 GCDs, very easily actually. This is not fun for anyone, in my opinion. I would love to see hybrid specs being somewhat viable again, as well as decisions mid combat making more impact on the actual gameplay, rather than: "What does the most damage the fastest right now?" I would much rather see strategies that outplay opponent than ones that gib them faster than they gib me.

My question however is: Do we really have to wait for Cata for any of these changes to be published? I am willing to wait of course, as I respect that the developers have a big burden balancing this game but I truly wish there was something that could be patched in to help reduce the insane healing/damage ratios to HP levels. Possibly increase stamina value on HP?

To me, PvP right now is near unplayable. It's just not fun, period. There are games that can be, but it's extremely rare. PvP in this game has always been fun to me despite small and large imbalances that are always going to be in this game until this expansion hit. It just plain isn't fun anymore. I hope to see fun PvP return to this game soon as there is just so much more potential than there was in previous expansions. We just need to tone down damage/healing or increase HP(as soon as possible :D).

Ghostcrawler

#80 - Jan. 20, 2010, 5:03 p.m.

You really have two options here. You can choose to hear about our long-term plans or you can choose to be surprised by them when they eventually show up in patch notes. Quickly implementing a long-term plan isn't on the table, or we would have made it a short-term plan and not a long-term plan in the first place. Most likely there is some reason we aren't able to quickly throw the change together, which could be anything from not having the technology yet to the testing required. It might be easy for you to say that you don't mind what bugs or other balance problems get introduced as long as your problem is fixed ASAP, but it's hard to speak for everyone in that regard.

TLDR: we're trying to share with you more about future plans and problems that we eventually want to solve. If you beat us up for it, then the powers that be may decide this isn't an effective way of communicating.

As for the final LK PvP season, we are going to make a survivability change that will be announced today if it hasn't been already.

Ghostcrawler

#112 - Jan. 20, 2010, 9:07 p.m.

Q u o t e:
Regardless of what your long term plans might be, the fact is we, the customer, are playing your game in REAL TIME. And while we are busy Beta Testing your game, 12 months after it's 'Gone Golden', many of us are rather fed up with playing an unfinished product.

TDLR version: It's an MMO.

Longer version: In this day and age, even single-player games are routinely patched and updated if the developer and publisher care at all about their players and the legacy of their title. Stating that a five-year old-yet-frequently patched game has bugs and / or designs that have grown stale over time isn't news to anyone and certainly no reason to be rattling your saber.

We are far, far harsher on our designs than you are, and there isn't a single feature in WoW that we don't think can be improved upon. Don't mistake our candidly addressing that reality as our saying we ship things before we think they're ready. We don't.

Q u o t e:
I know it can be hard to respond to a thread when there are always dev-bashing going on. And I think that your response above is overly defensive. You, I, and all the civilized people are never going to eliminate the bashing, so please just ignore it instead of basically saying "if we hear negative criticism we're just not gonna tell you what we're thinking".

The issue in this case isn't negative feedback. The forums are full of that, and that shouldn't surprise anyone who has spent much time on the internet. :)

The question was essentially "Why are you telling me that a change I want now won't be made for some time?" My answer was that we can tell you about our plans or not tell you about our plans. The assumption that we're somehow being lazy or mean by holding back changes is a little silly. If we thought it was a good idea to make a change now, we would make it. That leaves us with either sharing long-term plans (which players generally seem to like) or not sharing those plans. The third option of ramming those changes into the game when we don't think that's a good idea, well, isn't a good idea.