soneil wrote:
Yeah I think bc definately had the right balance as far as challenge go. I was only raiding casually in bc and I didn't mind being all over the new content - because the rest of the game was so fun. These days it seems the only way to get fun, challenging pve content is to level as quickly as possible and get in to the latest endgame. You don't get people doing older tier raids because it's so easy to skip straight to the latest stuff. Removing attunements had a lot to do with that. When people were doing tier 6 content our guild was still having a blast with tier 4 content and getting our kara key was half the fun. Not to mention the fact that it forced us to be appropriately geared and skilled before starting raids. You didn't have people hitting max level one day and jumping in to endgame the next with no clue about working in a group.
And levelling has become an absolute joke as far as challenge goes.
I agree with most of this. I think that you have far too many people looking at entire sections of the game as purely stepping stones - to be passed over as quickly as possible. (Sub 85, Regulars, Heroics, Raid Tier 1, Raid Tier 2, etc...)
Putting a gear limit (iLvl) on entering heroics with the LFD tool was a sign of the problem. They recognize that you CAN do heroics without 333 gear. They realize that bad players will use the LFD tool to quickly enter heroics - thus making the LFD tool the horrible experience it was during the opening 2 months of this expac. But rather than fix the problem - they put a band-aid on it. You can't use the LFD tool until you hit 333 gear - which reasonably means most average to slightly below average players could complete the heroics.
They haven't addressed the problems: 1. Players have been spoon fed content and the skill level has fallen off.
2. Players have skipped content that would have taught them stuff.
3. Players feel they are entitled to be at end game.
A perfect example of this is Naxx. Really good players hated it because it was re-hashed and they were not challenged. Bad players had never really done Naxx, but didn't want to appear bad. So they bashed Naxx for being too easy or basically repeated what they heard on the O-Boards or from better players... The bad players, if they attended with a similar group of people (meaning they weren't boosted through) could have/would have learned something. The kiting of 'zombie-chow' was important for frost mages or hunters to learn. But the baddies never did Naxx at proper gear levels, they were boosted through, or they outright skipped Naxx.
The same could be said for bosses like Grob. Was he a simple Kite, Kill Adds, collect loot fight.... Yeah. But when 'tunnel-vision the mage' stands in the center and drops his cloud - that simple fight just got a lot harder. People just skipped this stuff. Or they did it with such an OP gear set that it was trivial.
IMO - you should be rewarded a BOA token for completing content. You should have to attune for heroics and recieve a BOA 'key'. You should have to clear every tier. People in the united states use 4 coins and about 6 pieces of paper currency = WoW players can figure out more than 2 types of currency. Rewarding Justice points in heroics is fine, but having justice points buy Tier 10 equipment during patch 4.0, then using the same heroic-justice points to buy tier 11 in patch 4.1 is stupid. It makes the entire tier of 10 - completely useless. If they need to make the names of the points more self- explanatory -- Do it. (Naxxram Point of honor, Ulduarian token of justice, Stupid arena badge of courage, Citadellian Coin)
Nerf content 4.0 when content 4.1 comes out. If baddies can't beat Cho'Gall with a 30% buff - they shouldn't be in the next tier. Do not make heroics = tier 10 Prep, then suddenly make the same heroic = tier 11 prep.
Do not force people to attune to everything once they have done it on one character. Once you have attuned your main - you are done. Does this mean some DPS will attune, then go on to be lousy tanks... Yeah, possibly, but it's a better solution than the BS we have now.
Currently we are catering to the lowest common denominator. If it's easy for bad players to get into raids, it's stoopid easy for good players.
*I don't claim to be all that great. I'm probably a little above average. When I tank (Paly) I keep healbot up because holding agro and dancing around isn't hard for me, so I can go the extra mile and heal, cleanse, HoP, LoH, etc... But when things get hard... all that goes out the window and I struggle like everyone else. I started too late in TBC to raid, but cleared all of Wrath (though some time off did slow that and cause me to clear IC after some of the nerfs.) I haven't cleared the current content - due to taking time off (read: quitting).