Ghostcrawler cleans up two dev chat questions
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 24th 2009 at 4:00PM
The first is in response to some feedback about what the devs yesterday called "binary" hard modes -- they said that instead of providing multiple levels of difficulty (as in Sarth and his drakes), they'd prefer to have a hard mode either on or off (you'll be able to toggle between the two in Icecrown). This relates to what we just said recently, with different types of guilds looking for different types of content to play. GC replies that the "in-betweens" in terms of difficulty will come with later bosses in normal mode -- if you want to play a challenge without stepping into the hard modes, Blizzard will do their best to make sure that the last bosses on normal give you that challenge. Which makes sense -- bosses should ramp up in difficulty as the instance goes along, and no one would suggest, for instance, that Yogg was nearly as easy as Flame Leviathan.
And GC also talked about one of my favorite (and missed) game mechanics: crowd control.
The question was asked yesterday about bringing crowd control back into the game, and the devs cited the Faction Champions fight as an encounter where it was still necessary. Obviously, players weren't quite happy with this one either, pointing out that as a showcase for CC, a fight meant to emulate PvP, where crowd control is still on diminishing returns, might not be the best option. Not to mention that plenty of guilds don't bother to use CC at all in the fight, and get along just fine.
Ghostcrawler falls more in line on this one, saying that if you're completely ignoring CC for the heroic version of Faction Champs, he wants to see the fight. He does admit that Trial of the Champion was a little bit of a break from standard raiding, and that Icecrown will have the trash that a normal instance has, though he seems to stop short of saying crowd control will be required in there. It actually seems like Blizzard does want to bring CC back as a mechanic, but because of all of the different levels of raiding and gear they're putting into the game, they're finding it hard to nail down an encounter where certain players won't end up being overgeared. Hopefully they'll find a good balance -- I do agree that it's nice not to have to have two mages bring two sheep spells along for the ride during every encounter, but on the other hand I miss the tactics and strategy that a big CC-required fight can put into play.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Instances, Bosses, Classes, Buffs
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Knob Oct 24th 2009 4:09PM
I have to say that the Twitter dev chat thingy was a waste of time. I'm glad I actually just saw the transcript instead of actually trying to pose a question. I mean when they choose to accept questions like "Can we explore Hyjal in Cataclysm?" and "Will Worgen have mounts?", you know there's something wrong.
As for CC, it's quite funny how no matter what Blizzard does people find some reason to cry. When CC was important for trash in TBC, people cried about the trash being too hard and how you needed certain classes. Now when there's no CC required, people cry about trash being too easy. When Blizzard completely removes the trash in TOC, people cry about there being no trash when they cried beforehand about trash being present and how "imba" and "uber" it would be if there was a raid with no trash.
I sometimes feel sad for the developers.
Olicon Oct 24th 2009 4:31PM
Agreed.
The problem is Bliz is trying to please everyone, and it simply is impossible to appease the polar opposite. Hard mode alleviated that to a certain degree, but you just have to give somewhere.
Sedirex Oct 24th 2009 4:31PM
Let's not forget "There's plenty of great endgame content, what about some new early/mid content to keep new players entertained?" The devs seem to have forgotten that the only correct answer to a question like this is "Levels 1-79 are there to keep new players entertained"
Jinee Oct 24th 2009 4:36PM
I personally love that ToC has no trash. Otherwise I find it the most disappointing instance ever made. There is nothing difficult about it. Sure hardmodes require a bit more DPS and whatnot but there's no changes to the tactics whatsoever. The only changes 90% of the time is more DPS, heals and HP on the tanks. I personally am very disappointed with ToC. Ulduar was excellent. You had your regular content that was challenging but not breaking and then you had hardmode that drastically changed the fights for the most part and truly showed a guild's skill. Now we have ToGC where guilds got a Tribute to Madness and a Tribute to Insanity very quick after hardmodes were unlocked.
Clevins Oct 24th 2009 4:52PM
Well the issue with CC and trash is that they need to balance it by not having just tons of mobs and to have trash that not only one class can CC (i.e. trash that includes no humanoids renders Mage polymorph useless, I can't Sap Undead on my rogue,.... )
CC brought some flavor to each class... without it, DPS classes are judged entirely on DPS output and many of the skills that differentiate good players from merely decent players just don't come into play. I loved seeing a good hunter trap kite things, a rogue grab abd stunlock and out of control mob, etc. What I don't want to do is have to fight through 50 mobs between each boss.
Is doing this balance hard? Sure. But that's what they get paid to do, isn't it? ToC is boring and feels like a cheap way to say "we had X raids in Wrath!". Face it, Wrath's giving us 2 new real raids - Ulduar and Icecrown. Naxx was a redo (yes, it took work, but wasn't a from scratch effort) and the rest are short, simple raids. Contrast that to TBC... Kara, Tempest Keep, SSC, Black Temple, Sunwell - all were fairly long, multi-boss raids.
tim Oct 24th 2009 5:04PM
"Sure hardmodes require a bit more DPS and whatnot but there's no changes to the tactics whatsoever."
Sure, there's little changes to the tactics if you were executing them exactly the same in normal as you would in heroic. It's not a fair comparison; for example, the room for error in heroic Anub'arak is vastly smaller.
I agree with the OP here. Blizzard cannot possibly satisfy everyone. People want CC, they give them CC, but oh noes now it's too much like PvP. People want no trash, they give them no trash, now they miss trash? People want hard modes to be harder versions of the regular fight, Blizzard gives them that, now they want hard modes to be completely different fights. Just... wut.
krizzlybear Oct 24th 2009 7:09PM
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnpleasableFanbase
=/
Chilblain Oct 24th 2009 7:10PM
I agree. They should just make the game they want to make and quit listening to these people. Shut down the official forums.
Dreadskull Oct 24th 2009 8:14PM
Eh, that's what happens when you have... what is it now, about 12.5-13 million players? There's always a chunk somewhere that's unhappy about something. Some people won't be satisfied until WoW is personally bent to what they want, but even then they'd find something to complain about.
Killchrono Oct 24th 2009 9:26PM
There was a thread about bringing CC back into instances a few weeks ago, and there was a massive outlash against the OP, saying the removal of CC was the best thing to ever happen to dungeons.
Who were the main people saying this?
DPS warriors and ret pallies. Go figure.
Telwar Oct 25th 2009 1:15AM
RE: CC in instances really rewards bringing classes with renewable CC over those who can't.
Like mages with sheep. So it was a lot less pleasant in TBC when you were a class w/o renewable CC and wanted to do a heroic.
Eskarel Oct 26th 2009 4:37AM
The problem with CC is that it's not equal. Sheep is not the same as fear. Fear is not the same as sap. Sap is not the same as repentance, or cyclone, or sleep, or shackle undead, or anything else. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses.
This is great for PvP, it gives classes additional flavour and makes them more interesting to play. However, for PvE this sucks as it means that either encounters have to be designed in a way where all kinds of CC work, or you have to bring a specific class. The first is very difficult and the second violates the whole "bring the player not the class" deal(and in 5 mans, bring the class sucks).
The alternative is to give every single player a "CC" button which does exactly the same thing with no differences, which would make life far more boring for everyone, especially in PvP. As much as things are kind of boring now, it's much better than the old days where if you didn't have the right class(which generally meant a mage unless you were dealing with undead in which case it was a priest) you were screwed.
edgehead Oct 27th 2009 5:36AM
CC can work on every target without being the same, it is the style of move and the way it is done not the target it affects that makes each classes CC spells different.
EG: Rogues must sneak up behind (or close enuf to) their target while stealthed to apply sap, however a mage can simply stand at range and cast polymorph.
So if u changed every CC spell (and im not going to list them) to work on Humanoids, Undead, Beasts and Dragonkin; every class would be able to CC everything, and the spells would still be different as they are applied differently and have a different effect.
DragonFireKai Oct 24th 2009 4:18PM
Icecrown trash will break your guild. It will be an assortment of Naxx 25 bosses. The last trash pull before Professor Putricide will be 5 Thaddiusses, who will bestow a random assortment of debuffs to the raid, forcing raid members to detirmine if they are more positive or more negative, and sort themselves accordingly.
lee3821 Oct 24th 2009 4:29PM
Sapph+Thaddeus+Grobulus.
Have fun with that!
olzer Oct 24th 2009 4:58PM
"DAMN IT IF YOU HAVE 3 NEGATIVES AND 2 POSITIVES YOU MOVE TO THE NORTH-EASTERN HEXAGON!! YOU IDIOTS THAT HAVE 4 POSITIVES AND 1 NEGATIVE MOVE TO THE SOUTH-WESTERN SQUARE!! IT'S NOT HARD DAMN IT!"
Eternauta Oct 24th 2009 5:20PM
@ olzer:
I LOL'D SO HARD!!!!!!!!!!
That's exactly what I was thinking =)
arilasWL Oct 24th 2009 4:28PM
Vezax trash says "Hi"
Khrono Oct 24th 2009 5:08PM
That was some trash that actually needed CC. And that was true until about a week ago, when we realized we could just kill two mobs and aoe the rest down.
flawless Oct 24th 2009 5:11PM
Spam AOE says "Hi" back.
We call it "naxxing" the trash, now.