Hardcore Casual recently ran an article describing MMO quests as lackluster (my paraphrase). Whether it is the difference between trivial tasks (kill some rats) and epic quests (change the world), or the text we all ignore since we really dont care about an NPC's starving family, we just want to level and move on.
The author touches upon the possibility of putting in some random rewards. Sometimes gold. Sometimes gear. Sometimes...an XP boost.
And that last one hit a chord with me.
WoW is the first game I ever played where the expansion packs require you to PLAY the original game plus all earlier expansion packs.
Many games require you to BUY and INSTALL the original, because the companies want to get paid, but to play the expansion pack, you can jump right in and play the expansion pack.
MMO is different. They require you to buy, install, and PLAY all past versions of the game before you can start playing the xpac.
And the parts of the old versions that you generally get to play are the (my opinion) less exciting ones. For a large group of the player base, the end game is where the fun is at. Questing and leveling provide some entertainment, but often are viewed as an obstacle in the way of the end game. When you want to play the expansion pack, you don't pause to enjoy the classic raids at the appropriate level, since everybody else is playing the new expansion's end game and in a social game, you pretty much need to be at the same general point as a large group of other people.
Blizzard seems to acknowledge this so they reduced the XP needed to level in classic, and then TBC levels. They invented recruit-a-friend so you can sucker in other paying subscribers and help them fastforward through the obsolete content (or triple box your way to a half baker's dozen level 60's). If you want to play an alt, you can Death Knight it up and hop in at 55. Still only applying to your own alts, there is the 10% increase in XP from heirloom shoulders.
Seems that they realize nobody wants to play the old games as much as they want to play the new game. What a revelation??!!??
I doubt they'd build a Death Knight-like path for every class (do some entry level stuff to learn the very basics, and then enter the world at 55 or some other fast-forward point), which would be nice, IMO, even for new players.
But, maybe just add in an optional Quest Reward on all quests that currently allow you an option of gear or potions or whatever.
I'd choose "Nice Chunk of XP" as the reward every time, especially when playing a toon that's getting a free ride through quests by their big sister level 80 toon, and therefore does not need any gear.
Showing posts with label blizz suggestions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blizz suggestions. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Exotic idea for Raid benchmark
Being thrust into a brand new spec, with a variety of new attacks available, I am at a heightened level of need for performance measurement data.
When we first started raiding in WotLK, Patchwerk was the perfect benchmark to measure changes to your gear, spec, rotations, DPS, healing through-put, damage mitigation/avoidance, threat output, you name it.
Long (ish) fight, zero maneuvering, easy to predict where incoming damage will land (if not 100% easy to know when).
One would not want every single fight to be like this, but I'm very happy they put one stand-and-deliver fight.
Patchy served as an excellent benchmark.
But then we got better.
What used to take 7 minutes now takes 3 minutes and 3 seconds (yeah, damn hunter nerf prevented us from getting Quickwerk achievement, /pout)
Mana is no longer an issue, so that's kinda removed from the benchmark equation.
Most abilities and trinkets are able to be used only one or two times during the fight. Maximizing output became more a matter of hyper-tuning the timing of special abilities to the known duration of the fight and confident knowledge of when heroism would be activated.
Over time, Patchwerk has become a less valid yard stick for me.
Reading over at BRK, he often describes his own personal DPS tests that he performs on the dummies.
He generally uses the basis of "choose a rotation, fire 1000 rounds, assess results. change one variable, fire 1000 rounds, assess results."
The problem I see with that mentality is very similar to the problem I now have with Patchwerk....the time is variable.
Using the BRK method, if you stack haste, you'll come to the conclusion that mana is no problem what-so-ever. Autoshot blows through the 1000 rounds lickety split and you're off happily, but incorrectly, buying up haste gems and only considering Intellect as a means to increase your Attack Power (if you spec appropriately).
Benchmarks need to keep time consistent.
Using a boss as a benchmark is flawed because the time will vary as your teams DPS varies. Your team composition may vary from week to week also, but given a robust Raid Comp, this is less of a factor, at least for 25's.
Using a "fire X rounds at a training dummy" is flawed because (A) time is variable by your haste, and (B) no measure of cross-player interactions and buffs. To mitigate (B), raid leaders could choose to always start raids in Exodar and begin each raid with a 6 minute dance with a dummy, but I'm doubtful that would happen.
So the new and innovative idea I have is for Blizzard to introduce a twist on Patchwerk.
You know how Sartharion has a difficulty setting, whereby you kill or don't kill drakes prior to engaging the boss.
Give us a similar mechanic for Patchwerk.
Three trash blobs stand off in corners of the room, with tiny aggro radius, so its easy to leave them alone if you want.
Kill all three, and you get Patchy as we currently know him.
Leave one blob alive before engaging Patch, and at the start of the fight he will gain an Immortal buff with a duration of four minutes. If his health reaches zero while buffed Immortal, he stays alive until the buff wears off, at which point he dies immediately. If his health is above zero when the buff wears off at the four minute mark, its just as if you had killed all three blobs, keep up the pew-pew until he's dead.
Likewise, two blobs gives a 5 minute timer, and three blobs gives a 6 minute timer. Or some other options instead of 4,5,6, but you get the point.
One special case to consider, for example in the "one blob" (4 minute) option, if you bring him to 0 health at 3 minutes, but then wipe while the Immortal buff is active, don't release, he'll die the moment the buff wears off. They need to program in this special case so he doesnt reset or evade bug. Maybe have him do funny emotes or some other strange easter egg.
I wonder if raids would accept adding 3 additional minutes, and perhaps additional consumable usage (I need to drink zero potions on Patchwerk now, might need to drink a mana pot if fight lasted 6 minutes), to an encounter in the pursuit of better measurement of performance?
Most raids would want to actually ding the Quickwerk achievement before entertaining this type of scheme, but personally, as a player who is very interested in learning the capabilities of a brand new spec and selection of shots, this would be very valuable to me.
When we first started raiding in WotLK, Patchwerk was the perfect benchmark to measure changes to your gear, spec, rotations, DPS, healing through-put, damage mitigation/avoidance, threat output, you name it.
Long (ish) fight, zero maneuvering, easy to predict where incoming damage will land (if not 100% easy to know when).
One would not want every single fight to be like this, but I'm very happy they put one stand-and-deliver fight.
Patchy served as an excellent benchmark.
But then we got better.
What used to take 7 minutes now takes 3 minutes and 3 seconds (yeah, damn hunter nerf prevented us from getting Quickwerk achievement, /pout)
Mana is no longer an issue, so that's kinda removed from the benchmark equation.
Most abilities and trinkets are able to be used only one or two times during the fight. Maximizing output became more a matter of hyper-tuning the timing of special abilities to the known duration of the fight and confident knowledge of when heroism would be activated.
Over time, Patchwerk has become a less valid yard stick for me.
An alternative, flawed benchmark
Reading over at BRK, he often describes his own personal DPS tests that he performs on the dummies.
He generally uses the basis of "choose a rotation, fire 1000 rounds, assess results. change one variable, fire 1000 rounds, assess results."
The problem I see with that mentality is very similar to the problem I now have with Patchwerk....the time is variable.
Using the BRK method, if you stack haste, you'll come to the conclusion that mana is no problem what-so-ever. Autoshot blows through the 1000 rounds lickety split and you're off happily, but incorrectly, buying up haste gems and only considering Intellect as a means to increase your Attack Power (if you spec appropriately).
Benchmarks need to keep time consistent.
Exotic Idea
Using a boss as a benchmark is flawed because the time will vary as your teams DPS varies. Your team composition may vary from week to week also, but given a robust Raid Comp, this is less of a factor, at least for 25's.
Using a "fire X rounds at a training dummy" is flawed because (A) time is variable by your haste, and (B) no measure of cross-player interactions and buffs. To mitigate (B), raid leaders could choose to always start raids in Exodar and begin each raid with a 6 minute dance with a dummy, but I'm doubtful that would happen.
So the new and innovative idea I have is for Blizzard to introduce a twist on Patchwerk.
You know how Sartharion has a difficulty setting, whereby you kill or don't kill drakes prior to engaging the boss.
Give us a similar mechanic for Patchwerk.
Three trash blobs stand off in corners of the room, with tiny aggro radius, so its easy to leave them alone if you want.
Kill all three, and you get Patchy as we currently know him.
Leave one blob alive before engaging Patch, and at the start of the fight he will gain an Immortal buff with a duration of four minutes. If his health reaches zero while buffed Immortal, he stays alive until the buff wears off, at which point he dies immediately. If his health is above zero when the buff wears off at the four minute mark, its just as if you had killed all three blobs, keep up the pew-pew until he's dead.
Likewise, two blobs gives a 5 minute timer, and three blobs gives a 6 minute timer. Or some other options instead of 4,5,6, but you get the point.
One special case to consider, for example in the "one blob" (4 minute) option, if you bring him to 0 health at 3 minutes, but then wipe while the Immortal buff is active, don't release, he'll die the moment the buff wears off. They need to program in this special case so he doesnt reset or evade bug. Maybe have him do funny emotes or some other strange easter egg.
Doubts
I wonder if raids would accept adding 3 additional minutes, and perhaps additional consumable usage (I need to drink zero potions on Patchwerk now, might need to drink a mana pot if fight lasted 6 minutes), to an encounter in the pursuit of better measurement of performance?
Most raids would want to actually ding the Quickwerk achievement before entertaining this type of scheme, but personally, as a player who is very interested in learning the capabilities of a brand new spec and selection of shots, this would be very valuable to me.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Bring the au jus, not the spec
BRK writes about a buff that Beast Mastery is getting along with the incoming nerfs that'll boost Arcane Shot.
That post inspired a semi-entertaining, un-educational conversation of comments in which the conversants are generally playing a tennis match of "my spec rulz and should be op, your days are over" or "my spec rulz and that's fine, you should continue to drool".
That conversation inspired this post. Enjoy...
Besides the tennis match, many of the commenters were rallying behind a banner of "bring the player, not the spec".
WRONG
WRONG
WRONG
Blizzard's position has been "bring the player, not the class". NOT "...not the spec".
So they tried to give a variety of options from different classes to provide the appropriate buffs/debuffs that raid leaders were deeming required, to avoid a raid sitting on their thumbs for an hour searching for that one last perfect class to finish off the raid. I'll leave the conversation of whether they've succeeded or not for another day, but that is the motivation behind their actions.
If I'm a Warrior, and the role I choose to play is Tank, there is one talent tree that will be receiving the bulk majority of my talent points.
If I'm a Druid, and the role I choose to play is Healer, there is one talent tree that will be receiving the bulk majority of my talent points.
Why?
I would not spec that way because I think Protection is cool and Arms is dumb.
I would put my points there because going heavy into the Prot tree gives me the tools to do my chosen job better than going heavy into the other two trees.
There's two reasons I have the spec that I do (50/21/0 as of this writing):
1) Close to 50/50 split in DPS between me and my pet. That is fun for me. I've long been a proponent of skewing even more in favor of the pet, but I'll stop the qq at that. Pretty damn near 50/50 is nice.
2) As of right now, this build provides very good PvE DPS (some might even say OP dps), which is the job I choose to play.
So clearly, reason number one is personal to me, I wouldn't expect everybody to share that.
However, I'll go out on a limb and say that reason number two is ubiquitous (oooh, big word) amongst the raiding Hunter community.
Warriors choose a job and put points into the tree that provides the best tools to do it.
Players of all classes choose a job and put their points into the tree that provides the best tools to do it.
Hunters should be no different.
Ok, I'll stipulate that 50/21/0 with cat or scorpid is OP right now. Blizzard should nerf it because its too out of balance.
If I had my druthers, I'd ask Blizz to nerf me, not my pet. Keep the pet's DPS where it is.
Additionally, they seem to be adamant that we include Arcane Shot in our rotation. Ok, that's cool, spamming my #3 key and blowing away the meters is probably unfair. Make us want to use other shots.
Here's how to make a Beast Master fire Arcane Shot.....
Make the shot apply an Au Jus debuff to the mob. Pets love gravy, so for the duration of the debuff, your pet just goes to town. Maybe more pet crit, or more pet attack power, or attack speed. What ever.
But make Arcane Shot attractive to a Beast Master because it helps your pet, not because it helps your hunter.
When the patch hits, what'm I gonna do?
To be honest, I don't know.
If any given spec provides an OP amount of damage, I'm there. I could care less what tree.
Reason #2 above trumps Reason #1.
I cling to hope that there will be at least two different specs that provide equally OP damage. It would be nice to see variety among the Hunters I raid with, accompanied by similar (if not exactly equal) DPS production.
But if there is one clear cookie-cutter winner and we all dress alike? Its all good, where's the Hunter Trainer?
That's all I got.
Would you discard your preferred spec/style for an OP spec? How about for just a minor increase? How much of an improvement would it take for you to change your ways?
That post inspired a semi-entertaining, un-educational conversation of comments in which the conversants are generally playing a tennis match of "my spec rulz and should be op, your days are over" or "my spec rulz and that's fine, you should continue to drool".
That conversation inspired this post. Enjoy...
Besides the tennis match, many of the commenters were rallying behind a banner of "bring the player, not the spec".
WRONG
WRONG
WRONG
Blizzard's position has been "bring the player, not the class". NOT "...not the spec".
So they tried to give a variety of options from different classes to provide the appropriate buffs/debuffs that raid leaders were deeming required, to avoid a raid sitting on their thumbs for an hour searching for that one last perfect class to finish off the raid. I'll leave the conversation of whether they've succeeded or not for another day, but that is the motivation behind their actions.
All Specs Equal? Come on now!
If I'm a Warrior, and the role I choose to play is Tank, there is one talent tree that will be receiving the bulk majority of my talent points.
If I'm a Druid, and the role I choose to play is Healer, there is one talent tree that will be receiving the bulk majority of my talent points.
Why?
I would not spec that way because I think Protection is cool and Arms is dumb.
I would put my points there because going heavy into the Prot tree gives me the tools to do my chosen job better than going heavy into the other two trees.
Why should hunters be different?
There's two reasons I have the spec that I do (50/21/0 as of this writing):
1) Close to 50/50 split in DPS between me and my pet. That is fun for me. I've long been a proponent of skewing even more in favor of the pet, but I'll stop the qq at that. Pretty damn near 50/50 is nice.
2) As of right now, this build provides very good PvE DPS (some might even say OP dps), which is the job I choose to play.
So clearly, reason number one is personal to me, I wouldn't expect everybody to share that.
However, I'll go out on a limb and say that reason number two is ubiquitous (oooh, big word) amongst the raiding Hunter community.
Warriors choose a job and put points into the tree that provides the best tools to do it.
Players of all classes choose a job and put their points into the tree that provides the best tools to do it.
Hunters should be no different.
Suggestion to Blizzard
Ok, I'll stipulate that 50/21/0 with cat or scorpid is OP right now. Blizzard should nerf it because its too out of balance.
If I had my druthers, I'd ask Blizz to nerf me, not my pet. Keep the pet's DPS where it is.
Additionally, they seem to be adamant that we include Arcane Shot in our rotation. Ok, that's cool, spamming my #3 key and blowing away the meters is probably unfair. Make us want to use other shots.
Here's how to make a Beast Master fire Arcane Shot.....
Make the shot apply an Au Jus debuff to the mob. Pets love gravy, so for the duration of the debuff, your pet just goes to town. Maybe more pet crit, or more pet attack power, or attack speed. What ever.
But make Arcane Shot attractive to a Beast Master because it helps your pet, not because it helps your hunter.
You talk a big game, Amava, but whatcha gonna do?
When the patch hits, what'm I gonna do?
To be honest, I don't know.
If any given spec provides an OP amount of damage, I'm there. I could care less what tree.
Reason #2 above trumps Reason #1.
I cling to hope that there will be at least two different specs that provide equally OP damage. It would be nice to see variety among the Hunters I raid with, accompanied by similar (if not exactly equal) DPS production.
But if there is one clear cookie-cutter winner and we all dress alike? Its all good, where's the Hunter Trainer?
Au Jus Shot, FTW
That's all I got.
Would you discard your preferred spec/style for an OP spec? How about for just a minor increase? How much of an improvement would it take for you to change your ways?
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Strange Idea for Relieving Tank/Healer Shortage
Everybody whines all the time about the Tank/Healer shortage.
I do too.
Generally no problem finding a group, but when there is an issue, more often than not its a tank or healer that's missing, which seems statistically against the odds since they comprise 20% of an ideal 5-man group each. Find one Tank and you're golden, Find only one DPS and you're still fishing at the summoning stone.
Aside: Blizzard, put more bodies of water near summoning stones. Fishing while waiting for the team would be better than playing Bejeweled. But I digress.
A variety of reasons for the shortage, a variety of potential solutions.
How bout Death Knights? No, just no. Hasn't really seemed to solve the tanks for 5-man shortage. At least not in my experience.
Here's my latest hair-brained scheme.......
Lets take me as an example. Actually, lets take me as an example, but imagine that I also have a level 80 tanking character, because that'd be necessary for this to work.
For raiding, my passion is with my Hunter. Maybe because its the only end-game toon I've played, or maybe because I really do enjoy (A) pew pew, and (B) having a pet that's not a slave or possessed in any way, or maybe its just because we're totally OP.
So, when a bunch of guildies are looking to run a Heroic, my first choice is to run on my Hunter, because she needs the Heroic badges, the Heroic loot drops, and the Faction Rep that comes from wearing a tabard in a Heroic.
If I had this imaginary Tank alt, sure I could volunteer to log on that one and tank the heroic dungeon, but then my Hunter would be missing out on the opportunity to advance her Improvement Plan.
And most other players, whether via a formal Plan or an informal approach of wanting to get shiny stuff for their main, also choose to NOT play their hypothetical Tank alt, so the team suffers and keeps looking.
But WHAT IF...
What if there was a way to specify which toon you're "playing for" when you enter a dungeon?
Similar to how you wear a Tabard to serve as the Champion of a faction.
Let me play on my Tank character. Let that tank wear Amava's Personal Tabard, and serve as Amava's Champion.
Any loot or emblems that drop would be for Amava, not the Champion.
Any quest objectives that're progressed (think dailies) are Amava's, not the Champion's.
Any rep that the Champion gains (would need to work something out regarding the whole "two tabard" part of this, but that's an implementation detail that Blizz will simply have to figure out) would go to Amava, not the Champion.
The Raid ID lockout would be for Amava, not the Champion.
Wow, that's fantastic!!!!
Isn't it?
Got 5 players who want to enjoy the game together?
Lets really cut through the fluff of "bring the player, not the class", shall we?
Using this method, you would have much easier time finding group, as you'd have lots more people willing to level up alts to fill in gaps, knowing that those alts would not prevent you from improving your main toon.
Pure win! What could possibly go wrong?
I'm sure there's a million and one things that suck or could go wrong with this.
Firstly, to be an effective tank you (A) need to know how to play a tank, and (B) have suitable gear, at least be uncrittable.
Same for healing, minus the crittable part, and plus some solid heals and mana-endurance.
Forget skill for the time being, because that'll come with time as you play the toon/role.
So either it means that you're still required to run the alt NOT as a champion, but representing themselves at first so they can gear up.
Or come up with something like the Death Knights.
Maybe allow me to specify a toon as a PERMANENT Champion. Create some training program, like the Death Knight starting area, that leaves a player with a very solid set of gear that's perfect for entering into Heroics.
I know, I know, this is kinda flaky, but I have severe cramps today and just don't care.
Other things that can go wrong?
Raid ID. They'd need to figure out how to properly manage the Raid ID. It might be as simple as Amava gets locked to the Raid ID, not the Champion. This would mean that you could run a Heroic twice in one day on your Tank. Once as a Champion, and once representing herself.
If you think about it, that's kinda how it works now. I can run a Heroic twice, once on Amava and once on my Imaginary Tank. The Raid ID is there to stop you from chain-running a dungeon till you get your loot. They want to spread the time out. This still allows each toon only one shot at the loot they want per day.
There might be a problem of a well advanced main toon serving as the champion for an alt and far too easily gearing up alts. Maybe thats a problem, maybe its just fine. Maybe the "permanent champion" requiring a real life payment to switch the flag would discourage or reduce that behavior.
Heirloom Bind on Account items already come so close to this, but my proposed system hopefully has the added benefit of making more players willing to play a Tank or Healer, even if its not their Raiding Toon.
Perhaps this would need to only qualify for 5-man heroics, and not raids (wouldn't want somebody killing [fancy boss that few people get to kill] on their Champion and then looting a Legendary weapon to Amava, that would become silly pretty fast). Also probably not solo stuff like daily quests.
What do you think?
Good idea? Insane ramblings?
TMI with the "cramps" thing?
I do too.
Generally no problem finding a group, but when there is an issue, more often than not its a tank or healer that's missing, which seems statistically against the odds since they comprise 20% of an ideal 5-man group each. Find one Tank and you're golden, Find only one DPS and you're still fishing at the summoning stone.
Aside: Blizzard, put more bodies of water near summoning stones. Fishing while waiting for the team would be better than playing Bejeweled. But I digress.
A variety of reasons for the shortage, a variety of potential solutions.
How bout Death Knights? No, just no. Hasn't really seemed to solve the tanks for 5-man shortage. At least not in my experience.
Here's my latest hair-brained scheme.......
Lets take me as an example. Actually, lets take me as an example, but imagine that I also have a level 80 tanking character, because that'd be necessary for this to work.
For raiding, my passion is with my Hunter. Maybe because its the only end-game toon I've played, or maybe because I really do enjoy (A) pew pew, and (B) having a pet that's not a slave or possessed in any way, or maybe its just because we're totally OP.
So, when a bunch of guildies are looking to run a Heroic, my first choice is to run on my Hunter, because she needs the Heroic badges, the Heroic loot drops, and the Faction Rep that comes from wearing a tabard in a Heroic.
If I had this imaginary Tank alt, sure I could volunteer to log on that one and tank the heroic dungeon, but then my Hunter would be missing out on the opportunity to advance her Improvement Plan.
And most other players, whether via a formal Plan or an informal approach of wanting to get shiny stuff for their main, also choose to NOT play their hypothetical Tank alt, so the team suffers and keeps looking.
But WHAT IF...
What if there was a way to specify which toon you're "playing for" when you enter a dungeon?
Similar to how you wear a Tabard to serve as the Champion of a faction.
Let me play on my Tank character. Let that tank wear Amava's Personal Tabard, and serve as Amava's Champion.
Any loot or emblems that drop would be for Amava, not the Champion.
Any quest objectives that're progressed (think dailies) are Amava's, not the Champion's.
Any rep that the Champion gains (would need to work something out regarding the whole "two tabard" part of this, but that's an implementation detail that Blizz will simply have to figure out) would go to Amava, not the Champion.
The Raid ID lockout would be for Amava, not the Champion.
Wow, that's fantastic!!!!
Isn't it?
Got 5 players who want to enjoy the game together?
Lets really cut through the fluff of "bring the player, not the class", shall we?
Using this method, you would have much easier time finding group, as you'd have lots more people willing to level up alts to fill in gaps, knowing that those alts would not prevent you from improving your main toon.
Pure win! What could possibly go wrong?
I'm sure there's a million and one things that suck or could go wrong with this.
Firstly, to be an effective tank you (A) need to know how to play a tank, and (B) have suitable gear, at least be uncrittable.
Same for healing, minus the crittable part, and plus some solid heals and mana-endurance.
Forget skill for the time being, because that'll come with time as you play the toon/role.
So either it means that you're still required to run the alt NOT as a champion, but representing themselves at first so they can gear up.
Or come up with something like the Death Knights.
Maybe allow me to specify a toon as a PERMANENT Champion. Create some training program, like the Death Knight starting area, that leaves a player with a very solid set of gear that's perfect for entering into Heroics.
I know, I know, this is kinda flaky, but I have severe cramps today and just don't care.
Other things that can go wrong?
Raid ID. They'd need to figure out how to properly manage the Raid ID. It might be as simple as Amava gets locked to the Raid ID, not the Champion. This would mean that you could run a Heroic twice in one day on your Tank. Once as a Champion, and once representing herself.
If you think about it, that's kinda how it works now. I can run a Heroic twice, once on Amava and once on my Imaginary Tank. The Raid ID is there to stop you from chain-running a dungeon till you get your loot. They want to spread the time out. This still allows each toon only one shot at the loot they want per day.
There might be a problem of a well advanced main toon serving as the champion for an alt and far too easily gearing up alts. Maybe thats a problem, maybe its just fine. Maybe the "permanent champion" requiring a real life payment to switch the flag would discourage or reduce that behavior.
Heirloom Bind on Account items already come so close to this, but my proposed system hopefully has the added benefit of making more players willing to play a Tank or Healer, even if its not their Raiding Toon.
Perhaps this would need to only qualify for 5-man heroics, and not raids (wouldn't want somebody killing [fancy boss that few people get to kill] on their Champion and then looting a Legendary weapon to Amava, that would become silly pretty fast). Also probably not solo stuff like daily quests.
What do you think?
Good idea? Insane ramblings?
TMI with the "cramps" thing?
Thursday, December 4, 2008
So whatcha gonna do about it?
I've always been a big fan of working as a team. Finding ways to complement eachother's strengths, mitigate eachother's weaknesses. Sacrifice personal glory to achieve collective goals.
To a point.
There's a fine line between mitigating weaknesses, and carrying dead weight. I've never been a big fan of being carried, you never know where people are gonna put their hands.
Here's my self proclamation: I will not be dead weight.
At work we call it cholesterol. These are the folks who can't be billed directly to our customer, people in support or administrative jobs. Just like real cholesterol, a certain amount of the right type is a good thing, but too much of the wrong type is deadly. To the human body, to a profit-driven organization, and also to a raid.
Re-proclamation: I will not be cholesterol. The bad kind.
Ok, good for you. Whatcha gonna do about it?
I'm supposed to be a DPS machine, and a DPS machine I shall be. Here's the plan...
Step 1) Talent Spec. Pressed for time, I took the BRK 53/15/3 spec, and flung the 3 survival points into Focused Aim for 53/18/0. The hunter I raid with now, who basically doubles my output, swears by Readiness. I suspect that Thursday's raid will find me trying a new spec, likely a carbon copy of this guys, with perhaps a personal twist, depending on hit rating.
Step 2) Glyphs. Steady Shot is a no brainer. I've been using Viper, which might be silly. I've also been using Serpent Sting, since it complements the Steady Shot one reasonably. I've got a feeling that Viper and Serpent have gotta go.
Step 3) Chesty Le'franze. Argent Crusade has a verah nice chest piece, my current one is green and awful, taken nearly exclusively for hit rating. I'll be their Champion until she be mine. Also need to check Wiki for other avenues to grind their rep.
Step 4) Badge Crossbow has got to go. She's served me well, but its time to hang her up. I really don't think the Nessingwary bow is an upgrade, and barely a sidegrade when all stats are taken into consideration. Heroic Utgarde Keep is the place. Drake-Mounted Crossbow. H-UK like crazy, which serves double for grinding AC rep.
Step 5) Shoulder Inscriptions. Not a massive upgrade, but its a slow steady process to grind the rep out. Do the Hodir quests daily. Review Wiki's guide at each new level of rep to see if new quests or turn-ins open up.
The plan doesn't stop there, however, if I try to lump in more than that, I'll just blow it all off. These are some very do-able goals, with only #4 subject to the Random Number Generator.
Makes me wish Blizzard gave us a "custom achievements" screen where we could enter a piece of gear and track some stats about what it took to get the piece. How many H-UK runs will it take? How many dungeons wearing Argent tabard till chest piece? How many days of grinding Hodir? Twould be a fun little twist of tracking the effort we make to accomplish some of our in-game goals. But I digress.
Will these steps make me win at WWS? Surely not. But that fine line between supporting the team and being carried must be put out of the picture.
Repeat after me...
I will not be dead weight.
I will not be cholesterol.
To a point.
There's a fine line between mitigating weaknesses, and carrying dead weight. I've never been a big fan of being carried, you never know where people are gonna put their hands.
Here's my self proclamation: I will not be dead weight.
At work we call it cholesterol. These are the folks who can't be billed directly to our customer, people in support or administrative jobs. Just like real cholesterol, a certain amount of the right type is a good thing, but too much of the wrong type is deadly. To the human body, to a profit-driven organization, and also to a raid.
Re-proclamation: I will not be cholesterol. The bad kind.
Ok, good for you. Whatcha gonna do about it?
I'm supposed to be a DPS machine, and a DPS machine I shall be. Here's the plan...
Step 1) Talent Spec. Pressed for time, I took the BRK 53/15/3 spec, and flung the 3 survival points into Focused Aim for 53/18/0. The hunter I raid with now, who basically doubles my output, swears by Readiness. I suspect that Thursday's raid will find me trying a new spec, likely a carbon copy of this guys, with perhaps a personal twist, depending on hit rating.
Step 2) Glyphs. Steady Shot is a no brainer. I've been using Viper, which might be silly. I've also been using Serpent Sting, since it complements the Steady Shot one reasonably. I've got a feeling that Viper and Serpent have gotta go.
Step 3) Chesty Le'franze. Argent Crusade has a verah nice chest piece, my current one is green and awful, taken nearly exclusively for hit rating. I'll be their Champion until she be mine. Also need to check Wiki for other avenues to grind their rep.
Step 4) Badge Crossbow has got to go. She's served me well, but its time to hang her up. I really don't think the Nessingwary bow is an upgrade, and barely a sidegrade when all stats are taken into consideration. Heroic Utgarde Keep is the place. Drake-Mounted Crossbow. H-UK like crazy, which serves double for grinding AC rep.
Step 5) Shoulder Inscriptions. Not a massive upgrade, but its a slow steady process to grind the rep out. Do the Hodir quests daily. Review Wiki's guide at each new level of rep to see if new quests or turn-ins open up.
The plan doesn't stop there, however, if I try to lump in more than that, I'll just blow it all off. These are some very do-able goals, with only #4 subject to the Random Number Generator.
Makes me wish Blizzard gave us a "custom achievements" screen where we could enter a piece of gear and track some stats about what it took to get the piece. How many H-UK runs will it take? How many dungeons wearing Argent tabard till chest piece? How many days of grinding Hodir? Twould be a fun little twist of tracking the effort we make to accomplish some of our in-game goals. But I digress.
Will these steps make me win at WWS? Surely not. But that fine line between supporting the team and being carried must be put out of the picture.
Repeat after me...
I will not be dead weight.
I will not be cholesterol.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Pet Titles
I'm a hunter.
I chose hunter because I thought a pet would be cool.
That has turned out to be true, it is cool. 'Cept when they die, that's not cool.
I generally plan to stick with Beast Master tree even if it becomes the spec that's looked down upon, as if that'll ever happen. Amiright?
I'm a big fan of the new pet talents, pet categories, bigger stable, you name it.
Next up, Blizzard, give me Pet Titles.
I think it would be awesome to have my best Burning Crusade friend roll with the nameplate "Condoleezza, Champion of the Na'aru".
Or "Bubbles Jenkins"
And the same qualifications should apply to the pet as to the hunter. That specific pet needs to participate in the completion of each step of the quest chain and stuff.
I'd re-run the Leroy Jenkins achievement again and again with each pet so my whole stable can get the title.
I chose hunter because I thought a pet would be cool.
That has turned out to be true, it is cool. 'Cept when they die, that's not cool.
I generally plan to stick with Beast Master tree even if it becomes the spec that's looked down upon, as if that'll ever happen. Amiright?
I'm a big fan of the new pet talents, pet categories, bigger stable, you name it.
Next up, Blizzard, give me Pet Titles.
I think it would be awesome to have my best Burning Crusade friend roll with the nameplate "Condoleezza, Champion of the Na'aru".
Or "Bubbles Jenkins"
And the same qualifications should apply to the pet as to the hunter. That specific pet needs to participate in the completion of each step of the quest chain and stuff.
I'd re-run the Leroy Jenkins achievement again and again with each pet so my whole stable can get the title.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Accessibility and Netherspite
Can't. Resist. Urge. To. Think. About. WoW.
What can I say? You gotta babystep into these good-corporate-citizen-knows-a-job-aint-nuttin-but-work binges.
I accidentally opened up my google reader and stumbled across a gem of an article by the Serial Ganker describing Warhamer Online from the perspective of a WoW player.
Kinda neat description that would have any WoW player who is on the fence with hating on grindy grinds, stupid class composition and balance issues in raids, and a whole host of other things thinking.
Buried in there somewhere he mentions being colorblind, and thus very frustrated with the Netherspite fight in Karazhan.
I never thouhgt of it from that perspective.
The fight is largely undoable if you cannot differentiate between the colored beams.
Kinda makes me think they should make the red beam lasoo shaped, like the damn lasoos (sp?) you wrangle rays with for the Shatari Sky Guard. I grew to despise that quest, because my pet would continuously kill the damn ray while I was in the process of lasoo'ing. So I dont do it anymore. Because, as a wise man said, it's my 15 bucks, I'll do what I want with it, lol.
And maybe make Netherspite's green beam with sharp, pointed zig zags? And keep the blue one nice and smooth, just for good measure.
Would add a bit of Accessibility to the software, yes?
Edit: firefox's spell checker correctly informed me that the way to spell it is lasso, unless you're a jackass. I am a jackass and like the way lasoo looks better.
What can I say? You gotta babystep into these good-corporate-citizen-knows-a-job-aint-nuttin-but-work binges.
I accidentally opened up my google reader and stumbled across a gem of an article by the Serial Ganker describing Warhamer Online from the perspective of a WoW player.
Kinda neat description that would have any WoW player who is on the fence with hating on grindy grinds, stupid class composition and balance issues in raids, and a whole host of other things thinking.
Buried in there somewhere he mentions being colorblind, and thus very frustrated with the Netherspite fight in Karazhan.
I never thouhgt of it from that perspective.
The fight is largely undoable if you cannot differentiate between the colored beams.
Kinda makes me think they should make the red beam lasoo shaped, like the damn lasoos (sp?) you wrangle rays with for the Shatari Sky Guard. I grew to despise that quest, because my pet would continuously kill the damn ray while I was in the process of lasoo'ing. So I dont do it anymore. Because, as a wise man said, it's my 15 bucks, I'll do what I want with it, lol.
And maybe make Netherspite's green beam with sharp, pointed zig zags? And keep the blue one nice and smooth, just for good measure.
Would add a bit of Accessibility to the software, yes?
Edit: firefox's spell checker correctly informed me that the way to spell it is lasso, unless you're a jackass. I am a jackass and like the way lasoo looks better.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Guild-Funded Respec Costs & Repair Costs
Quick thought of the day.
Other than the big respecs, such as asking an excess Paladin tank to respec Holy for a raid, I never really ask players to do anything with their specs. Even when I do ask, I make sure the player knows that it is actually an option for them to say NO and its no hard feelings.
Last night, I was faced with a raid containing 4 Hunters, 3 Rogues, and 1 Fury Warrior.
Lots of physical DPS.
I had no Expose Weakness in the raid.
With all that heavy physical DPS, I wanted EW.
I asked the Hunter with the highest Agility to respec Survival to pick up EW.
I was left wishing that Blizzard would implement an easy to use feature to allow the Guild to pay for that.
Sure, the Guild Bank has some options for paying for repairs, and the guy could withdraw the gold directly.
I'd like it if I could give out a token to the guy. Redeemable for One Guild Funded Respec. And I'd give another for a free return trip.
If they gave a feature like this, we could keep the gold withdrawals limited to only a few toons, which is protection against hacked accounts or plain old ninja activity, while still retaining the ability to let the Guild fund activities like this.
Other than the big respecs, such as asking an excess Paladin tank to respec Holy for a raid, I never really ask players to do anything with their specs. Even when I do ask, I make sure the player knows that it is actually an option for them to say NO and its no hard feelings.
Last night, I was faced with a raid containing 4 Hunters, 3 Rogues, and 1 Fury Warrior.
Lots of physical DPS.
I had no Expose Weakness in the raid.
With all that heavy physical DPS, I wanted EW.
I asked the Hunter with the highest Agility to respec Survival to pick up EW.
I was left wishing that Blizzard would implement an easy to use feature to allow the Guild to pay for that.
Sure, the Guild Bank has some options for paying for repairs, and the guy could withdraw the gold directly.
I'd like it if I could give out a token to the guy. Redeemable for One Guild Funded Respec. And I'd give another for a free return trip.
If they gave a feature like this, we could keep the gold withdrawals limited to only a few toons, which is protection against hacked accounts or plain old ninja activity, while still retaining the ability to let the Guild fund activities like this.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Casting on the Run
Random thought.
WoW Insider posted the following tidbit about WotLK for Paladins:
They're [Blizzard] working on building "mechanics that don't make running fights so punishing,
I have no idea what they're proposing, but, how bout making some spells able to be cast while running, but aren't instant?
Healing spell with 4 second casting time, but you do not have to stand still while casting it.
Can't be as powerful as a similar spell cast while stationary, but might give Paladins some flexibility in highly mobile fights.
WoW Insider posted the following tidbit about WotLK for Paladins:
They're [Blizzard] working on building "mechanics that don't make running fights so punishing,
I have no idea what they're proposing, but, how bout making some spells able to be cast while running, but aren't instant?
Healing spell with 4 second casting time, but you do not have to stand still while casting it.
Can't be as powerful as a similar spell cast while stationary, but might give Paladins some flexibility in highly mobile fights.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
wowHarmony
My lil stint with randomly cold calling players off of /who to locate a 10th player for a Karazhan raid the other night had me thinking.
Here we were, 9 people ready to play the game. Can't play without a 10th.
A boat-load of total blind luck, and a drop of assertive resourcefulness, ended up locating me that 10th player. And it worked out perfectly. This player and our group matched up on class, spec, relative gear level/progression, availability for the same three hours on all three nights of the raid week, maturity level, etc...
Blind luck prevailed and 10 players had a great time and a great raid for three nights over a week's time in two different dungeons. Couldn't have worked out better. Well, would be better if she could join our guild, but apparently "that's complicated". /crossfingers
So that got me to thinking about how much of this sort of thing is out there. Groups of players who all have the basic fundamental building blocks to form a compatible raid, but who have never happened to locate one another.
As this one example I provide shows, the concept is out there. And on any given raid night, if we're struggling to find a player, it makes me wonder what Blizzard could be doing to help with this situation.
When looking for a player, we typically go thusly:
1) Look in the guild first.
2) Look on friends lists.
3) Enter into LFM tool
4) /who for classes and Armory for spec, followed by blind whispers
5) Spamming /general in Shatt City or Deadwind Pass
Numbers 1 and 2 are ideal, as the players on those two lists are already known quantities. We wouldn't have you in our guild or on our friends list if you didn't match up with our team at a basic level.
Numbers 3,4,5 all suck.
SOLUTION:
Blizzard needs to contract out to eHarmony.com to implement a new match making system. This should be usable for a long-term search, such as finding a Guild for yourself or finding new recruits for your guild, and it should be usable for short-term searches like a LFM tool.
You answer a whole stack of questions about yourself and they have these funky algorithms that match you up with players that they think you are compatible with.
The questions can cover the basics like class and spec, number of raiding nights/hours you are interested in, what nights you are available. Then they would get into the personality profile type questions to match players up on how likely they are to enjoy playing together. And they could try to understand how you react to different game situations (out-of-game research, thoughts about loot, how you react to wipes, etc).
The basic idea is that there's lots of great players out there, but its not easy to find them. It is easy to find players, but its not easy to finds ones that match up to form a successful bunch of friends and raiders.
In the end, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks Blizzard LIKES it when we can't field a team. That's one more week that we aren't gobbling up their content and one more week slapped onto the end of our subscriptions. So I'm doubtful we'll ever see something implemented to fix the situation. But the optimist in me remains hopeful.
Here we were, 9 people ready to play the game. Can't play without a 10th.
A boat-load of total blind luck, and a drop of assertive resourcefulness, ended up locating me that 10th player. And it worked out perfectly. This player and our group matched up on class, spec, relative gear level/progression, availability for the same three hours on all three nights of the raid week, maturity level, etc...
Blind luck prevailed and 10 players had a great time and a great raid for three nights over a week's time in two different dungeons. Couldn't have worked out better. Well, would be better if she could join our guild, but apparently "that's complicated". /crossfingers
So that got me to thinking about how much of this sort of thing is out there. Groups of players who all have the basic fundamental building blocks to form a compatible raid, but who have never happened to locate one another.
As this one example I provide shows, the concept is out there. And on any given raid night, if we're struggling to find a player, it makes me wonder what Blizzard could be doing to help with this situation.
When looking for a player, we typically go thusly:
1) Look in the guild first.
2) Look on friends lists.
3) Enter into LFM tool
4) /who for classes and Armory for spec, followed by blind whispers
5) Spamming /general in Shatt City or Deadwind Pass
Numbers 1 and 2 are ideal, as the players on those two lists are already known quantities. We wouldn't have you in our guild or on our friends list if you didn't match up with our team at a basic level.
Numbers 3,4,5 all suck.
SOLUTION:
Blizzard needs to contract out to eHarmony.com to implement a new match making system. This should be usable for a long-term search, such as finding a Guild for yourself or finding new recruits for your guild, and it should be usable for short-term searches like a LFM tool.
You answer a whole stack of questions about yourself and they have these funky algorithms that match you up with players that they think you are compatible with.
The questions can cover the basics like class and spec, number of raiding nights/hours you are interested in, what nights you are available. Then they would get into the personality profile type questions to match players up on how likely they are to enjoy playing together. And they could try to understand how you react to different game situations (out-of-game research, thoughts about loot, how you react to wipes, etc).
The basic idea is that there's lots of great players out there, but its not easy to find them. It is easy to find players, but its not easy to finds ones that match up to form a successful bunch of friends and raiders.
In the end, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks Blizzard LIKES it when we can't field a team. That's one more week that we aren't gobbling up their content and one more week slapped onto the end of our subscriptions. So I'm doubtful we'll ever see something implemented to fix the situation. But the optimist in me remains hopeful.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Raid ID Maddness
I imagine its happened to everyone. You're all gung-ho and ready to rock for some Karazhan action.
Let's follow along with a hypothetical raid situation and see how it goes.....
You've got 9 players, all with bags stuffed to the rim with consumables and other goodies necessary for waging war. You look through the guild and see that nobody's available to run tonight, either not enough time, maybe saved to a different raid ID, or perhaps just plain old wrong class or spec.
So you look around your collective friends lists. You find a person who wants to join up and their class/spec matches up with what you need. Great.
Go get your stuff and we'll summon you.
Head on up the stairs to Kara's back entrance. Buff up on the lil bridge, careful to not fall off the narrow ledge, lol.
The hypothetical raid is now buffed up, does a ready check.....all's well. RL gives instruction to head on in.
You run in the little vestibule and wait so that a tank can open the doors and run directly left and pick up that wormy or sparky thing that's right there. Kill him off no problem.
Get ready for next pull.
Then you hear over voice, the 10th member who was added in late asking....
did you guys run up to Curator's room? where are you?
Did you run kara this week? (its monday night)
No.
Really, where are you?
Running up to Curator's room.
Um? How, we gotta clear the trash up to him first?
what trash? the steps are clear
You sure you didn't run kara this week?
No, last time i was in here was last thursday.
Right. Raid weeks run tuesday-monday, not normal like a calendar that runs sunday-saturday.
Oh. I guess I cant run with you. Sorry.
tyvm. smell you later.
So I understand that this purely hypothetical situation can be avoided by raiders understanding that Kara is a week long and it resets at the tuesday morning reboot.
BUT...Blizzard needs to give us a better way for Raid Leaders to determine this information.
You've got that silly little Raid Info button on the Raid Tab of the Social Window, but that's all cryptic and what not.
Should be a button or a /command that a RL can execute that will visually display who is all in the same Raid ID, who is not saved to any Raid ID yet, and who is saved to a different Raid ID.
Basic things like this just add in stupid 20 minute delays, during which this hypothetical raid could have been looking for a different player. As a result, the first real pull for our little imaginary group, after that one trashy trash guy, occurred 35 minutes after their scheduled hypothetical start time.
Any addons that nicely illustrate who's who and what's what for Raid ID's?
Let's follow along with a hypothetical raid situation and see how it goes.....
You've got 9 players, all with bags stuffed to the rim with consumables and other goodies necessary for waging war. You look through the guild and see that nobody's available to run tonight, either not enough time, maybe saved to a different raid ID, or perhaps just plain old wrong class or spec.
So you look around your collective friends lists. You find a person who wants to join up and their class/spec matches up with what you need. Great.
Go get your stuff and we'll summon you.
Head on up the stairs to Kara's back entrance. Buff up on the lil bridge, careful to not fall off the narrow ledge, lol.
The hypothetical raid is now buffed up, does a ready check.....all's well. RL gives instruction to head on in.
You run in the little vestibule and wait so that a tank can open the doors and run directly left and pick up that wormy or sparky thing that's right there. Kill him off no problem.
Get ready for next pull.
Then you hear over voice, the 10th member who was added in late asking....
did you guys run up to Curator's room? where are you?
Did you run kara this week? (its monday night)
No.
Really, where are you?
Running up to Curator's room.
Um? How, we gotta clear the trash up to him first?
what trash? the steps are clear
You sure you didn't run kara this week?
No, last time i was in here was last thursday.
Right. Raid weeks run tuesday-monday, not normal like a calendar that runs sunday-saturday.
Oh. I guess I cant run with you. Sorry.
tyvm. smell you later.
So I understand that this purely hypothetical situation can be avoided by raiders understanding that Kara is a week long and it resets at the tuesday morning reboot.
BUT...Blizzard needs to give us a better way for Raid Leaders to determine this information.
You've got that silly little Raid Info button on the Raid Tab of the Social Window, but that's all cryptic and what not.
Should be a button or a /command that a RL can execute that will visually display who is all in the same Raid ID, who is not saved to any Raid ID yet, and who is saved to a different Raid ID.
Basic things like this just add in stupid 20 minute delays, during which this hypothetical raid could have been looking for a different player. As a result, the first real pull for our little imaginary group, after that one trashy trash guy, occurred 35 minutes after their scheduled hypothetical start time.
Any addons that nicely illustrate who's who and what's what for Raid ID's?
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Imaginary Hunter Talents in WotLK
Lots of buzz around the community as leaks of Death Knight and Warrior and a handful of other WotLK talent specs are coming out.
Then I read a posting over at The Mystic Hunter with some ideas for what would be fun Hunter talents. Got me thinking.
Using my minimal imagination, here's a few strange ideas. Long-ish post, but its filled with gems, so pls stick with it :-)
Start off with a new Aspect...
Aspect of the Bison - The hunter's health and armor increase by 20% and agility reduces by 10%. Useful for when trap resists and you've got to kite/tank a mob for a few seconds.
Aspect of the (Vampire) Bat - mana regen based upon pet damage. Not as powerful as Shadow Priest mana battery, but some portion of pet damage returning to you as mana.
Then some lovin' for the three trees...
Beast Master
5 Point Talent called "Respect Meh Authoritah". Click it and your Pet's next three attacks will be one-shots of whatever they're targeted at, including lvl 83 Elite boss mobs or other PvP players. Oh, and also you and your pet will become big and red for a little while. 7 second cooldown.
Ok, i joos keeeding.
No seriously, that would be cool.
Ok, back to imaginary reality...My view of this spec is one that really stresses the pet, even more than what we see in TBC. I'd like them to make the DPS output be even closer to 50/50 between hunter and pet, maybe even more lopsided towards the pet. Really make the Raid love this guy's pet, so much more than today.
Marksman
We need to make this guy more of an archer/rifleman than he is currently. I'd like to see these guys do an equal amount of damage as the BM/Pet combo, but the difference is that MM does nearly all the damage himself, with the pet mostly being a buddy who costs money to feed. Again, we kinda have this in TBC, but I want to take it further.
Survival
Continuing with the concept we have today, Survival would have a little less DPS than BM or MM, but continue with raid utility and a general inability to die. Think Davey Crockett. King of the Wild Frontier.
So I admit, I know the least about MM and SV, being a cookie cutter BRK Raid BM spec user, but I'd like to see a bigger difference between BM and MM, while keeping DPS more evenly balanced between the two (some might argue that it already is, but w/e), and make the SV hunter a more unique type of spec.
What do you think? Hump Leg, FTW!!!!!
Then I read a posting over at The Mystic Hunter with some ideas for what would be fun Hunter talents. Got me thinking.
Using my minimal imagination, here's a few strange ideas. Long-ish post, but its filled with gems, so pls stick with it :-)
Start off with a new Aspect...
Aspect of the Bison - The hunter's health and armor increase by 20% and agility reduces by 10%. Useful for when trap resists and you've got to kite/tank a mob for a few seconds.
Aspect of the (Vampire) Bat - mana regen based upon pet damage. Not as powerful as Shadow Priest mana battery, but some portion of pet damage returning to you as mana.
Then some lovin' for the three trees...
Beast Master
5 Point Talent called "Respect Meh Authoritah". Click it and your Pet's next three attacks will be one-shots of whatever they're targeted at, including lvl 83 Elite boss mobs or other PvP players. Oh, and also you and your pet will become big and red for a little while. 7 second cooldown.
Ok, i joos keeeding.
No seriously, that would be cool.
Ok, back to imaginary reality...My view of this spec is one that really stresses the pet, even more than what we see in TBC. I'd like them to make the DPS output be even closer to 50/50 between hunter and pet, maybe even more lopsided towards the pet. Really make the Raid love this guy's pet, so much more than today.
- Raging Beast - To make the damage output more balanced between pet and hunter, make a high-level talent that hardcore gimps the damage output of the Hunter and massively buffs the pet. I'm talking 50/50 split, or even better, make the whole story about the pet and the Hunter is basically a handler who does a little damage. And not a proc, a permanent transfer. Of course, I'm just floating ideas here, so Blizz, you go figure out how to make it work, I'm just listing requirements :-P Call the talent "I'm with Stupid" and the pet gets to wear a T-Shirt with that printed on it.
- Improved Growl - If they don't balance the damage output, then definitely want to see a talent that'll boost Pet threat generation either through better growl or through increased threat from damage dealt by the pet.
- Porcupine Quills - Perhaps a talent that'll make your pet do something like what Prot Pallies do. Not consecrate, but the thing where they cause threat on any enemies who do damage to them. So not a completely ez mode AoE tank, but makes it a drop easier to AoE tank with your pet.
- Improved Aspect of the (Vampire) Bat - Extends Aot(V)B effect to all party members.
- Soothing Cuddles -or- Pet Meh Belleh -or- Lick Wounds. Pets IRL are sometimes used in hospitals to help the spirit of the patients and help them get better. Go pet his belly and you get healed. A second tier talent could let a raid member cuddle your pet and get healed. Could function like a Lightwell, where players just need to walk up to your pet and right click to pet his belly. I know it sounds a tad silly, but I kinda like the idea. They are pets after all.
- Hump Leg - the pet goes up to a friendly player and humps his leg, applying an Embarrassing Debuff causing the player to be unable to herb, mine, or skin for 10 seconds. This would be the Player vs Faction ninja ability to use when some coconut tries to steal your flowers.
Marksman
We need to make this guy more of an archer/rifleman than he is currently. I'd like to see these guys do an equal amount of damage as the BM/Pet combo, but the difference is that MM does nearly all the damage himself, with the pet mostly being a buddy who costs money to feed. Again, we kinda have this in TBC, but I want to take it further.
- Automatic Fire - put an even better improvement to Rapid Fire deeper in the MM tree and give them 18 seconds or so of true and utter machine gun auto-shots. Would need to be calibrated such that a similarly geared BM using Bestial Wrath would do roughly the same damage during this proc, only difference is that the MM is using auto only, so mana regen is going on.
- Sniper Shot - A special shot that if used as the opening shot of bringing a mob into combat, does massive damage, or has a special effect (stun).
- Tracer Rounds - Although it currently exists in the Survival tree, I would think that MM should have the talent that reduces chance to miss. I mean, come on. They're marksmen for g0d sake. They should have pretty good aim. And this should give every fifth shot a really cool visual effect. Provide a second tier of the talent that applies the effect to the whole party.
- Duh - oh yeah, and make Trueshot Aura scale with Hunter AP.
Survival
Continuing with the concept we have today, Survival would have a little less DPS than BM or MM, but continue with raid utility and a general inability to die. Think Davey Crockett. King of the Wild Frontier.
- Stealth - Come on ppl. Hunters IRL hide, and then surprise their prey. Let us do the Rogue Nasty.
- First Aid Mastery - Davey Crockett didn't have a doctor nearby, so he had to rely upon his own skills to dress battle wounds. This should double or triple the healing received from a bandage. Or maybe remove the first aid cooldown. Could have another tier of the talent that allows the improved bandage benefit apply to when you put a bandaid on someone else.
- Gnaw Off Limb - Animals in the wild have been known to gnaw off their own limbs to escape a trap. Some lizards can split off their tails to escape from a bird's beak. I've even heard of some guy who chopped down a tree and it fell on him, pinning him to the ground. After a few days being trapped there, he used a swiss army knife to cut off his own leg and limp miles home. Give survivalists a talent where they can sacrifice some health in order to escape a movement impairing effect. Like above, could have a second tier talent that allows the SV Hunter to take some damage and free another player from a movement impairing effect.
- Skinning Master - This one is a little strange, but fits with the whole trapping frontiersman image. Gives the hunter +25 skinning. Then put some mobs in the game that require 475 skinning skill, thus making them only skinnable by these guys. Probably not a raiding talent, but if the skinnables were valuable enough, would be worth the cost of a respec to take this then spec back to your raid setup.
- Soothing Cuddles/Pet Meh Belleh/Lick Wounds might fit better over here, as its more consistent with the idea of having SV be a raid utility guy much more than the other specs.
So I admit, I know the least about MM and SV, being a cookie cutter BRK Raid BM spec user, but I'd like to see a bigger difference between BM and MM, while keeping DPS more evenly balanced between the two (some might argue that it already is, but w/e), and make the SV hunter a more unique type of spec.
What do you think? Hump Leg, FTW!!!!!
Friday, May 9, 2008
Pause Button
You know, I just had a light bulb moment that illustrates one of the dislikable things in WoW that makes me question my long-term involvement with the game.
There's no Pause Button.
In the past, when playing video games, there was always a pause button.
Playing NHL 94 and cooking brownies and the timer goes off. Pause the game and take it out of the oven.
Playing Tetris and you hear mom coming down the stairs to your room. Pause the game, turn off the TV and hop over to your desk and pretend you're doing homework.
Playing Age of Kings and the baby wakes up from a nap. Pause the game and leave it for later.
But WoW has no pause button.
So what happens when something comes up in RL?
Lets say you're defending Ice Blood Tower and your gf says she's going to head out to pick up some food.
What do you do?
Well, if the Capping timer shows that there's still 2 minutes till the cap, and track humanoids shows there's no horde nearby, you avert your attention, give your loved one a proper goodbye and maybe, i dunno, listen to any questions she has and give her attentful answers. And then return to your game, drooling over thejuicy steak and cheese sub, with sausage crumbled on top, and special sauce beautiful woman that's going to be arriving shortly.
But if there's 30 seconds till the cap, and you see 3 horde entering the tower on your minimap. Well that's a whole nuther ball of wax. In this case, its like nothing else exists and the sole focus is keeping those buggers off the flag for just a few moments more. This has a tendency to leave the loved ones feeling not-so-loved.
And I won't even go near a boss fight in a raid. Especially a progression fight. The house could be on fire, and we'll all be sitting there, spamming our 1:1 shot rotation macro, oblivious to those around us.
If this were a normal game, one that's fit for long-term human consumption, there would be a pause button.
Granted, given the fact that there's 80 people in the battleground, 60 of whom are actually sitting at their keyboard and trying to play, or 10 to 25 people in the raid, implementing any sort of pause functionality would be ludicrous.
But that doesn't change the fact that a video game without a pause button has an inherent incompatibility with real life.
There's no Pause Button.
In the past, when playing video games, there was always a pause button.
Playing NHL 94 and cooking brownies and the timer goes off. Pause the game and take it out of the oven.
Playing Tetris and you hear mom coming down the stairs to your room. Pause the game, turn off the TV and hop over to your desk and pretend you're doing homework.
Playing Age of Kings and the baby wakes up from a nap. Pause the game and leave it for later.
But WoW has no pause button.
So what happens when something comes up in RL?
Lets say you're defending Ice Blood Tower and your gf says she's going to head out to pick up some food.
What do you do?
Well, if the Capping timer shows that there's still 2 minutes till the cap, and track humanoids shows there's no horde nearby, you avert your attention, give your loved one a proper goodbye and maybe, i dunno, listen to any questions she has and give her attentful answers. And then return to your game, drooling over the
But if there's 30 seconds till the cap, and you see 3 horde entering the tower on your minimap. Well that's a whole nuther ball of wax. In this case, its like nothing else exists and the sole focus is keeping those buggers off the flag for just a few moments more. This has a tendency to leave the loved ones feeling not-so-loved.
And I won't even go near a boss fight in a raid. Especially a progression fight. The house could be on fire, and we'll all be sitting there, spamming our 1:1 shot rotation macro, oblivious to those around us.
If this were a normal game, one that's fit for long-term human consumption, there would be a pause button.
Granted, given the fact that there's 80 people in the battleground, 60 of whom are actually sitting at their keyboard and trying to play, or 10 to 25 people in the raid, implementing any sort of pause functionality would be ludicrous.
But that doesn't change the fact that a video game without a pause button has an inherent incompatibility with real life.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Private Servers, Raiding Servers
I read a post on one of the more well thought out blogs recently that discussed the concept of Private Servers for WoW. Unfortunately, I can't find which post it was or from which blog, so I can't provide linkage. If this rings a bell to anybody, drop me a comment and I'll give proper credit here.
The gist of the post was that the author said he got approached by somebody to go play on a private server.
I have no idea if this is even a possibility, so the rest of the post is purely hypothetical, but what if you could do that?
What if you could choose to play WoW, not quite solo, but in a closed server with only a handful of people of your choosing?
How interesting would that be, and how would the game be different?
Firstly, I would not want the game to be solo. I do enjoy my solo moments where I'm just immersed in what I'm doing and only slightly aware of the larger social context around me. However, my favorite parts of the game are 5 and 10 man instances, so there would have to be the ability to include more than just yourself. When I play solo, I fall back to RTS and building little bases and turtling giant maps and slowly crushing the computer AI's in a very predictable pattern that is still fun to me again and again, no matter how predictable or how similar each randomly generated map is.
So WoW can't become solo, but what about dramatically scaled down to 40 or 50 people on your server?
The economy would be non-existant, with basically no Auction House or trade channel other than the closed group of friends. Enchants or rare recipes would be tough to find. Gathering would be meaningless other than to supply what your group needed.
PUG's would be out of the question. If the small group of people on your server had close enough play schedules/habits, this isn't too bad, but unless your server mates maintained enough compatibility, this would cause some long term problems. I don't play with any people I know IRL, so essentially every friend I have in game comes from the general social network that's brought them to me from being originally a stranger. Private server would not have this possibility.
There are times when I just want all the jokers and ninjas to go away, and I just want to play with a small group of mature reasonable people, so there's a great appeal to the concept of a private server. I do recognize that the game would be so fundamentally different as to be perhaps useless, but interesting to think of none the less.
Or how about take a slightly different turn....
Blizzard now has an Arena Tournament server. You get a character over there and basically can equip it however you want, with the goal being that skill is the determining factor in tourney victory rather than gear. Level the playing field, see who is the better player.
What if Blizzard did the same thing for raiding?
I like developing my character and enhancing the various skills and gear and stats. Sure sure, anybody who plays WoW has some joy in that, its so core to the game. But at end-game, my real fun is trying to overcome the raid content. Getting the whole team to do a job together. Most of my joy in getting loot, or watching a teammate get loot (when will i actually win a roll for garona's signet ring?), is that it can enable me to be a step closer to other dungeons, not because I get off on watching my crit rate jump from 28.5% to 29.1% from a new armor piece.
There's two big things that prevent me from seeing the bulk of the end-game dungeons:
1) Having the right team of friends with the same schedule, raiding desires, and proper class/spec composition.
2) Gear. We're simply undergeared for much beyond Kara.
What if Blizzard gave us the option to form up our raid and then when you zone into the instance, you've got a giant armory right there. Everybody walks in and grabs the gear they need. The armory for each dungeon has gear tuned for the bosses in there. There's also a ready supply of all the consumables you could desire.
We then reduce the challenge to simply mastering the boss fights. And having fun.
Blizz would need to control progress, as it certainly is better in a game to have you progress in a some-what linear fashion through content.
They could do it by requiring you to get some key or complete some quest that persists with your character as you return back to your regular server after the dungeon is complete. Or they could do it by making the fights harder and harder. You as an individual and your team as a cohesive unit will build the skills and coordination necessary for each dungeon in the previous dungeon. Just like if I walk into BT today, I'd get crushed, they'd have to make it that the advanced encounters are so challenging, confusing, require so much coordination between the players, that you'd similarly get crushed if you hadn't learned the progressing levels of small squad and larger raid coordination from earlier fights.
Of course, this is very hard for game developers to do. Easier to make boss fights a little more complex as you go, but the major changes are to buff their armor, hit points, attack power, etc, requiring better gear on the players to avoid getting stamped out.
Blizzard uses gear and a slow trickle of random drops as a way to keep you from blowing through content. It takes you many many runs through one dungeon to gear up the whole team to qualify you for the next dungeon. This in turn keeps the monthly subscriptions flowing.
Ok, so charge differently for this type of service to make up for the difference.
I wonder how player interest would change if gear progression weren't part of the picture, but skill progression was king.
The gist of the post was that the author said he got approached by somebody to go play on a private server.
I have no idea if this is even a possibility, so the rest of the post is purely hypothetical, but what if you could do that?
What if you could choose to play WoW, not quite solo, but in a closed server with only a handful of people of your choosing?
How interesting would that be, and how would the game be different?
Firstly, I would not want the game to be solo. I do enjoy my solo moments where I'm just immersed in what I'm doing and only slightly aware of the larger social context around me. However, my favorite parts of the game are 5 and 10 man instances, so there would have to be the ability to include more than just yourself. When I play solo, I fall back to RTS and building little bases and turtling giant maps and slowly crushing the computer AI's in a very predictable pattern that is still fun to me again and again, no matter how predictable or how similar each randomly generated map is.
So WoW can't become solo, but what about dramatically scaled down to 40 or 50 people on your server?
The economy would be non-existant, with basically no Auction House or trade channel other than the closed group of friends. Enchants or rare recipes would be tough to find. Gathering would be meaningless other than to supply what your group needed.
PUG's would be out of the question. If the small group of people on your server had close enough play schedules/habits, this isn't too bad, but unless your server mates maintained enough compatibility, this would cause some long term problems. I don't play with any people I know IRL, so essentially every friend I have in game comes from the general social network that's brought them to me from being originally a stranger. Private server would not have this possibility.
There are times when I just want all the jokers and ninjas to go away, and I just want to play with a small group of mature reasonable people, so there's a great appeal to the concept of a private server. I do recognize that the game would be so fundamentally different as to be perhaps useless, but interesting to think of none the less.
Or how about take a slightly different turn....
Blizzard now has an Arena Tournament server. You get a character over there and basically can equip it however you want, with the goal being that skill is the determining factor in tourney victory rather than gear. Level the playing field, see who is the better player.
What if Blizzard did the same thing for raiding?
I like developing my character and enhancing the various skills and gear and stats. Sure sure, anybody who plays WoW has some joy in that, its so core to the game. But at end-game, my real fun is trying to overcome the raid content. Getting the whole team to do a job together. Most of my joy in getting loot, or watching a teammate get loot (when will i actually win a roll for garona's signet ring?), is that it can enable me to be a step closer to other dungeons, not because I get off on watching my crit rate jump from 28.5% to 29.1% from a new armor piece.
There's two big things that prevent me from seeing the bulk of the end-game dungeons:
1) Having the right team of friends with the same schedule, raiding desires, and proper class/spec composition.
2) Gear. We're simply undergeared for much beyond Kara.
What if Blizzard gave us the option to form up our raid and then when you zone into the instance, you've got a giant armory right there. Everybody walks in and grabs the gear they need. The armory for each dungeon has gear tuned for the bosses in there. There's also a ready supply of all the consumables you could desire.
We then reduce the challenge to simply mastering the boss fights. And having fun.
Blizz would need to control progress, as it certainly is better in a game to have you progress in a some-what linear fashion through content.
They could do it by requiring you to get some key or complete some quest that persists with your character as you return back to your regular server after the dungeon is complete. Or they could do it by making the fights harder and harder. You as an individual and your team as a cohesive unit will build the skills and coordination necessary for each dungeon in the previous dungeon. Just like if I walk into BT today, I'd get crushed, they'd have to make it that the advanced encounters are so challenging, confusing, require so much coordination between the players, that you'd similarly get crushed if you hadn't learned the progressing levels of small squad and larger raid coordination from earlier fights.
Of course, this is very hard for game developers to do. Easier to make boss fights a little more complex as you go, but the major changes are to buff their armor, hit points, attack power, etc, requiring better gear on the players to avoid getting stamped out.
Blizzard uses gear and a slow trickle of random drops as a way to keep you from blowing through content. It takes you many many runs through one dungeon to gear up the whole team to qualify you for the next dungeon. This in turn keeps the monthly subscriptions flowing.
Ok, so charge differently for this type of service to make up for the difference.
I wonder how player interest would change if gear progression weren't part of the picture, but skill progression was king.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Injustice for Support Classes
Lots of issues with how hard it is for tank spec/geared players and holy spec/geared players to farm for materials and gold. Not going to rehash them, but Tankgst has been doing an ongoing thread of posts regarding possible ways to fix it.
I threw in my Jousting idea the other day. This was for PVP, but now I'm on a different horse, so to speak.
Why not a daily quest?
Lets use the Netherwing faction daily quests as an example. While running around in the Netherwing mines, I rarely see a healing class. I rarely see a warrior or priest at all. Kitty druids, but never a bear or elf/caster form. And I've often thought to myself, while completely delusional about levelling up my priest, "ugh, if i ever get my priest up to 70, he's going to grind this rep out with the booterang and amava will farm him the netherdust pollens. it'll take longer, but whatever."
Of course, my holy priest friend just dinged exalted with Netherwing, and he did the grind faster than me, as he found locations for eggs and collected those puppies like there was no tomorrow, but I digress.
So for daily questing, lets say for the sake of the argument, that my hunter can kill stuff way way faster than a prot warrior. And lets also say that the majority of the quests out there involve killing stuff, and then either just grabbing the drops of of them, or taking the drops and doing stuff with it, like Yarsil's Mutton. And finally, lets say we believe that this is an inherent injustice.
The problem isn't in the class designs. We don't need to make support classes kill stuff faster.
What we need are more quests designed around the unique skills that support classes have.
Try this one on for size: Some armorsmith in Honor Hold is trying to find the best armor in the Outlands. Take this hit impact recording device, and go absorb 50k damage and report back to him so he can analyze the performance of your armor. Or maybe make it a certain number of swings from the axe of this sparring partner. If you're critable, you're gonna die.
Pick whatever amount of damage you want, the point is...make it such that a tank spec'ed player will be able to do it, and other classes will find it much harder or it'll take much longer (in this example, sure a DPS'er can bring a healer and do the same quest, but for the same financial return you'd rather just go kill some stuff since that's what you're good at).
For the healers out there, make another quest like the crazy bandaging quest in Theramore. You gotta heal a bunch of guys. Make it really really hard to do with bandages, so its accessible to all classes, but for a healer, it'll be straight forward, just like the "kill X mobs" quests are for DPS classes.
These are just two ideas that pop up in my head in a quick brainstorming session, so there's more and more that can be invented.
Now, putting on my Blizzard profit hat, this is not such a good return on investment. You put money into developing these quests, and you're more or less building content that's only going to be enjoyed by a portion of your customers. It makes more financial sense for them to just buff the DPS capability of spell damage for healers. Then they're making existing quests that're already paid for accessible to more of their customers.
They'd have to do the analysis on a much larger big picture. Would the investment in making tanks and healers more viable actually increase the ability of the entire player base to see more of the very expensive-to-develop content in raid dungeons since there'd be less shortage of those key player roles?
I play DPS because I like providing MQoSRDPS. My Holy Priests play healer because they love keeping us alive. And my tanks thrive on making sure that nobody else ever feels steel hitting their squishy little hides.
Does the least-common-denominator approach of buffing everybody's ability to deal damage sacrifice too much of the concept of the roles that players choose?
I threw in my Jousting idea the other day. This was for PVP, but now I'm on a different horse, so to speak.
Why not a daily quest?
Lets use the Netherwing faction daily quests as an example. While running around in the Netherwing mines, I rarely see a healing class. I rarely see a warrior or priest at all. Kitty druids, but never a bear or elf/caster form. And I've often thought to myself, while completely delusional about levelling up my priest, "ugh, if i ever get my priest up to 70, he's going to grind this rep out with the booterang and amava will farm him the netherdust pollens. it'll take longer, but whatever."
Of course, my holy priest friend just dinged exalted with Netherwing, and he did the grind faster than me, as he found locations for eggs and collected those puppies like there was no tomorrow, but I digress.
So for daily questing, lets say for the sake of the argument, that my hunter can kill stuff way way faster than a prot warrior. And lets also say that the majority of the quests out there involve killing stuff, and then either just grabbing the drops of of them, or taking the drops and doing stuff with it, like Yarsil's Mutton. And finally, lets say we believe that this is an inherent injustice.
The problem isn't in the class designs. We don't need to make support classes kill stuff faster.
What we need are more quests designed around the unique skills that support classes have.
Try this one on for size: Some armorsmith in Honor Hold is trying to find the best armor in the Outlands. Take this hit impact recording device, and go absorb 50k damage and report back to him so he can analyze the performance of your armor. Or maybe make it a certain number of swings from the axe of this sparring partner. If you're critable, you're gonna die.
Pick whatever amount of damage you want, the point is...make it such that a tank spec'ed player will be able to do it, and other classes will find it much harder or it'll take much longer (in this example, sure a DPS'er can bring a healer and do the same quest, but for the same financial return you'd rather just go kill some stuff since that's what you're good at).
For the healers out there, make another quest like the crazy bandaging quest in Theramore. You gotta heal a bunch of guys. Make it really really hard to do with bandages, so its accessible to all classes, but for a healer, it'll be straight forward, just like the "kill X mobs" quests are for DPS classes.
These are just two ideas that pop up in my head in a quick brainstorming session, so there's more and more that can be invented.
Now, putting on my Blizzard profit hat, this is not such a good return on investment. You put money into developing these quests, and you're more or less building content that's only going to be enjoyed by a portion of your customers. It makes more financial sense for them to just buff the DPS capability of spell damage for healers. Then they're making existing quests that're already paid for accessible to more of their customers.
They'd have to do the analysis on a much larger big picture. Would the investment in making tanks and healers more viable actually increase the ability of the entire player base to see more of the very expensive-to-develop content in raid dungeons since there'd be less shortage of those key player roles?
I play DPS because I like providing MQoSRDPS. My Holy Priests play healer because they love keeping us alive. And my tanks thrive on making sure that nobody else ever feels steel hitting their squishy little hides.
Does the least-common-denominator approach of buffing everybody's ability to deal damage sacrifice too much of the concept of the roles that players choose?
Monday, March 10, 2008
Jousting
Got to thinking earlier. Whilst reading about WoW, you're bound to come across discussions of how there's a general feeling that there's a shortage of tanks and healers in the world.
My jury is still out on that one, as to whether it is truly a shortage, or just that most tanks/healers learn pretty quickly to dislike PuG's as everybody and his brother tries to lure them in even if the guy and his brother both suck worse than the othe Could just be that tanks are smartly selective in who they run with. Or, maybe its just a shortage because the game makes it rough on them, and people would rather roll a hunter and eat waffles with Auto-Shot on and still deliver some major pain.
Either way, most discussions of the shortage visit the fact that a true Tanking build is very slow to level, difficult to grind gold with, difficult to solo quest with, and difficult to PvP with.
For healers, there was some lovin in a recent patch that gives the healers some bonus spell damage that's proportional to their +healing capability. Outstanding, more reason to be a healer, gotta be a good thing for the community at large.
Well what about our tanks? No real equivalent that makes sense here.
But then an idea hit me....here you are, with a giant hulk of a toon, wearing armor that weighs more than Amava does including her gear and soaking wet with her whole gold stash in her pocket.
Historically, that sort of beautiful plate armor was used in jousting, where by two contestants face off on horseback at opposite ends of a field and try to knock eachother off their horses using lances.
Maybe some PvP jousting event that has lots of sweet tanking plate rewards? How about a weekly jousting tournament, that's a hybrid concept like the Fishing Tournament and Arenas. Use a ladder system to pair people off against similarly skilled players. Provide small rewards to the low-end, and nicer rewards accessible faster to those earning more points at the higher end of the spectrum.
You might have to do something to make it intersting to more than just tanks, otherwise it probably would not be too popular. Include some rewards that are good enough for non tanking folks to want to participate. Badges of Justice?
But here you have an example of real historical PvP combat that heavily favors our tanks, so why not throw them a frikin bone.
My jury is still out on that one, as to whether it is truly a shortage, or just that most tanks/healers learn pretty quickly to dislike PuG's as everybody and his brother tries to lure them in even if the guy and his brother both suck worse than the othe Could just be that tanks are smartly selective in who they run with. Or, maybe its just a shortage because the game makes it rough on them, and people would rather roll a hunter and eat waffles with Auto-Shot on and still deliver some major pain.
Either way, most discussions of the shortage visit the fact that a true Tanking build is very slow to level, difficult to grind gold with, difficult to solo quest with, and difficult to PvP with.
For healers, there was some lovin in a recent patch that gives the healers some bonus spell damage that's proportional to their +healing capability. Outstanding, more reason to be a healer, gotta be a good thing for the community at large.
Well what about our tanks? No real equivalent that makes sense here.
But then an idea hit me....here you are, with a giant hulk of a toon, wearing armor that weighs more than Amava does including her gear and soaking wet with her whole gold stash in her pocket.
Historically, that sort of beautiful plate armor was used in jousting, where by two contestants face off on horseback at opposite ends of a field and try to knock eachother off their horses using lances.
Maybe some PvP jousting event that has lots of sweet tanking plate rewards? How about a weekly jousting tournament, that's a hybrid concept like the Fishing Tournament and Arenas. Use a ladder system to pair people off against similarly skilled players. Provide small rewards to the low-end, and nicer rewards accessible faster to those earning more points at the higher end of the spectrum.
You might have to do something to make it intersting to more than just tanks, otherwise it probably would not be too popular. Include some rewards that are good enough for non tanking folks to want to participate. Badges of Justice?
But here you have an example of real historical PvP combat that heavily favors our tanks, so why not throw them a frikin bone.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Quest Helper Link
By popular demand, the link I used to access the wonderful wonderful addon Quest Helper.
I've read that some people don't actually like the addon, because it makes questing too easy, and takes some of the zest of exploration and challenge out.
Personally, I love it. When I first started playing WoW, I didn't know about WoWHead or thottbot, or the likes. I found the nature of what I came to call "blind" questing to be hugely frustrating. Its not like you're trying to solve puzzles or creatively tackle problems. No. You've got to find the one spot in this giant world where the one type of mob among thousands drops the one item you want.
If the only "challenge" to a quest is to blindly kill random stuff until you find the mobs that drop what you want, then that kinda bores me. Its bad enough that once you find the mobs that drop what you want, you still have to grind through piles of them to get your items. So I research the quest on WoW Head, or Thottbot, to remove part of the drudgery.
When I first found those research sites, it was a giant improvement to my play time, especially because I've got 2 computers with monitors next to eachother, making access quite natural and easy. But even when one is shut down and I Alt-TAB to WoWHead, its still better than the in-game quest text.
QH takes it one step further, and integrates the experience.
And the benefit to parties? HUGE. How cool is it to be able to see shared quest goals so your party can really go help each other clear out those pesky group quests that're just laying there in your log for ages and ages.
Now if it could add a feature that will assist you in bringing a party member up through a quest chain to get sync'ed with the other members? That would be priceless. How often have you been in a group, ask for "share pls", only to find that you're unqualified?
If they could help you get caught up, w00t on them. Those types of features are, IMHO, the exact type of stuff Blizzard should be including by default to encourage socialization and group activity. Sure, sometimes you just want to solo and get away from it all, but if they made it that easy to cooperate with one another, the game would be so much cooler.
I've read that some people don't actually like the addon, because it makes questing too easy, and takes some of the zest of exploration and challenge out.
Personally, I love it. When I first started playing WoW, I didn't know about WoWHead or thottbot, or the likes. I found the nature of what I came to call "blind" questing to be hugely frustrating. Its not like you're trying to solve puzzles or creatively tackle problems. No. You've got to find the one spot in this giant world where the one type of mob among thousands drops the one item you want.
If the only "challenge" to a quest is to blindly kill random stuff until you find the mobs that drop what you want, then that kinda bores me. Its bad enough that once you find the mobs that drop what you want, you still have to grind through piles of them to get your items. So I research the quest on WoW Head, or Thottbot, to remove part of the drudgery.
When I first found those research sites, it was a giant improvement to my play time, especially because I've got 2 computers with monitors next to eachother, making access quite natural and easy. But even when one is shut down and I Alt-TAB to WoWHead, its still better than the in-game quest text.
QH takes it one step further, and integrates the experience.
And the benefit to parties? HUGE. How cool is it to be able to see shared quest goals so your party can really go help each other clear out those pesky group quests that're just laying there in your log for ages and ages.
Now if it could add a feature that will assist you in bringing a party member up through a quest chain to get sync'ed with the other members? That would be priceless. How often have you been in a group, ask for "share pls", only to find that you're unqualified?
If they could help you get caught up, w00t on them. Those types of features are, IMHO, the exact type of stuff Blizzard should be including by default to encourage socialization and group activity. Sure, sometimes you just want to solo and get away from it all, but if they made it that easy to cooperate with one another, the game would be so much cooler.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Primal Butters
Primal Butters
For some reason, anytime I hear the plural form of Primal Nether, all I can think of is the South Park character Butters, so the phrase "Primal Nethers" hits my eyes or ears, but my brain receives "Primal Butters". I have absolutely no idea where it came from, other than perhaps the word "nethers" just sounds silly, and that I sometimes watch SP while playing WoW. Go figure.
In other news, Valentine's Day was awesome, good non-WoW fun. As much as I like WoW'ing it up, taking a night off to spend quality time with real people (as opposed to the imaginary people that're really just computer constructs who serve as guildmates) feels great.
That leaves me with little to write about here. So I'll do what I laughed about earlier...and speculate about patch changes.
Supposedly 2.4 will make Primal Butters bind on equip, which will make high-end crafted items more accessible. I like the concept.
Part of me is wishing for a different solution though. Ever since I learned about the 24-slot quiver that takes stacks and stacks of Light Feathers to craft, I learned that I'll need to find a crafter who has the recipe and a Primal Butter she's willing to part with. I've been saving up the feathers, and once I get them all, I was planning on taking a friend who's got the pattern on a run through a heroic that drops a nether, and hope that others are willing to pass on it, or that my crafter wins.
I had in my mind a new type of soulbound called BoC, or Bind on Craft.
BoC would be for items that require Primal Butters, and would kinda behave like soulbound items you want enchanted, using the trade window.
You go farm or use Badges to Purchase a Primal Butter which is BoP, and then you pop the butter into the trade window "not to be traded" and that allows a crafter to use it to craft something that is then instantly bound to the Butter Holder once its crafted.
Personally, I'd like it if all the BoP crafted items were like this, but I suppose that's because I'm not a crafter :-)
While I like the increased accessibility of the mats, I do like that you need to complete the Heroic or Badge-generating content as a small barrier to entry.
Under the 2.4 system, and BoE Butters, all you'll need to do is farm gold and you've got your item.
For some reason, anytime I hear the plural form of Primal Nether, all I can think of is the South Park character Butters, so the phrase "Primal Nethers" hits my eyes or ears, but my brain receives "Primal Butters". I have absolutely no idea where it came from, other than perhaps the word "nethers" just sounds silly, and that I sometimes watch SP while playing WoW. Go figure.
In other news, Valentine's Day was awesome, good non-WoW fun. As much as I like WoW'ing it up, taking a night off to spend quality time with real people (as opposed to the imaginary people that're really just computer constructs who serve as guildmates) feels great.
That leaves me with little to write about here. So I'll do what I laughed about earlier...and speculate about patch changes.
Supposedly 2.4 will make Primal Butters bind on equip, which will make high-end crafted items more accessible. I like the concept.
Part of me is wishing for a different solution though. Ever since I learned about the 24-slot quiver that takes stacks and stacks of Light Feathers to craft, I learned that I'll need to find a crafter who has the recipe and a Primal Butter she's willing to part with. I've been saving up the feathers, and once I get them all, I was planning on taking a friend who's got the pattern on a run through a heroic that drops a nether, and hope that others are willing to pass on it, or that my crafter wins.
I had in my mind a new type of soulbound called BoC, or Bind on Craft.
BoC would be for items that require Primal Butters, and would kinda behave like soulbound items you want enchanted, using the trade window.
You go farm or use Badges to Purchase a Primal Butter which is BoP, and then you pop the butter into the trade window "not to be traded" and that allows a crafter to use it to craft something that is then instantly bound to the Butter Holder once its crafted.
Personally, I'd like it if all the BoP crafted items were like this, but I suppose that's because I'm not a crafter :-)
While I like the increased accessibility of the mats, I do like that you need to complete the Heroic or Badge-generating content as a small barrier to entry.
Under the 2.4 system, and BoE Butters, all you'll need to do is farm gold and you've got your item.
Friday, January 11, 2008
The WoW-Jones Industrial Average
I'll start off by saying, for the umpteenth time, that while herbalism has led me to giant financial joys in WoW, lately its like school in summer time, it sux. Positive thinking, my @$$
Ok, on to the post...
Raise your hand if you use an alt as your AH mule?
Now, raise your other hand if you also created a guild for that AH mule, purely to gain access to the new guild vault features (and the side benefit of no longer being un-guilded and thus the target of "sign my charter" spam)?
I know that before the guild vault was available, my AH mule's personal bank slots were jam packed with all sorts of stuff that I was either saving up for optimal stack sizes before selling, or just wouldn't sell so I was holding on for better market conditions.
Ok, you can put your hand(s) down now.
The guild vault helped reduce the problem, for a while. Now I've got two tabs that're nearly full. Granted, one whole tab full with green items to DE, and his Enchanting just hit 275 on wednesday, so those puppies will get one final run through the AH, afterwhich any that don't sell will be sizzled, and I'll have an empty slot to play with. When's somebody going to write an addon that calculates the total value of all items on a Guild Vault tab? Don't look at me ;-) I'd like to see the total value of the giant pile of greenies, then sizzle them all and replace the spots with the DE'd mats and compare the values, without a lot of manual arithmetic fuss.
Led me to ponder, as I'm apt to do.....how about a new profession called Banker.
Only a half baked idea at this point, but it would be a profession for exactly this purpose, an alt who's main purpose in life is to read email, sell stuff, and reap gold.
Possible features of the Banking profession:
1) Firstly, you can only play him during normal business hours, as he is a Banker afterall :-)
2) Maybe this type of player comes with all the bank slots pre-filled with large bags
3) Bankers get access to a "savings account" where they can earn some sort of realm-specific adjustable interest rate. Not sure how they'd calculate this interest rate, but I'm sure they have economists on staff at Blizzard who could figure out a formula based upon the market conditions and fluctuations of prices and volumes of certain staple products. Maybe a WoW-Jones Industrial Average?
4) If the savings account proves to be an economically viable concept by Blizz, then as you skill up your banker, you could invest in CD's, Mutual Funds, and other more advanced financial instruments.
5) New recipes in the Tailoring profession for formal business attire. My dwarf would look awesome in a 3-piece suit. And maybe my engineer can craft a Comb so he could brush his hair into a nice little do, kinda like when Bart Simpson combs his hair for church.
6) You could set it up such that the gold resides on the Banker alt, but your main can withdraw the money without having to log out and then log back in. Not sure if it should work that way for item slots as well, but maybe.
Sure, this profession wouldn't be as feature-rich as some of the others, but it would solve some of the things that are painful about storing items, and I'm not 100% clear on Blizzards reasons for making those activities difficult on us.
Ok, on to the post...
Raise your hand if you use an alt as your AH mule?
Now, raise your other hand if you also created a guild for that AH mule, purely to gain access to the new guild vault features (and the side benefit of no longer being un-guilded and thus the target of "sign my charter" spam)?
I know that before the guild vault was available, my AH mule's personal bank slots were jam packed with all sorts of stuff that I was either saving up for optimal stack sizes before selling, or just wouldn't sell so I was holding on for better market conditions.
Ok, you can put your hand(s) down now.
The guild vault helped reduce the problem, for a while. Now I've got two tabs that're nearly full. Granted, one whole tab full with green items to DE, and his Enchanting just hit 275 on wednesday, so those puppies will get one final run through the AH, afterwhich any that don't sell will be sizzled, and I'll have an empty slot to play with. When's somebody going to write an addon that calculates the total value of all items on a Guild Vault tab? Don't look at me ;-) I'd like to see the total value of the giant pile of greenies, then sizzle them all and replace the spots with the DE'd mats and compare the values, without a lot of manual arithmetic fuss.
Led me to ponder, as I'm apt to do.....how about a new profession called Banker.
Only a half baked idea at this point, but it would be a profession for exactly this purpose, an alt who's main purpose in life is to read email, sell stuff, and reap gold.
Possible features of the Banking profession:
1) Firstly, you can only play him during normal business hours, as he is a Banker afterall :-)
2) Maybe this type of player comes with all the bank slots pre-filled with large bags
3) Bankers get access to a "savings account" where they can earn some sort of realm-specific adjustable interest rate. Not sure how they'd calculate this interest rate, but I'm sure they have economists on staff at Blizzard who could figure out a formula based upon the market conditions and fluctuations of prices and volumes of certain staple products. Maybe a WoW-Jones Industrial Average?
4) If the savings account proves to be an economically viable concept by Blizz, then as you skill up your banker, you could invest in CD's, Mutual Funds, and other more advanced financial instruments.
5) New recipes in the Tailoring profession for formal business attire. My dwarf would look awesome in a 3-piece suit. And maybe my engineer can craft a Comb so he could brush his hair into a nice little do, kinda like when Bart Simpson combs his hair for church.
6) You could set it up such that the gold resides on the Banker alt, but your main can withdraw the money without having to log out and then log back in. Not sure if it should work that way for item slots as well, but maybe.
Sure, this profession wouldn't be as feature-rich as some of the others, but it would solve some of the things that are painful about storing items, and I'm not 100% clear on Blizzards reasons for making those activities difficult on us.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
WoW Threat Management Training
I'm not sure if this is a request for Blizz to include, or if its a question to the readers to see if this already exists in some form or another. Any hoo, here it is...
I would love it if there was an instance a 5-man group could go to that is pretty much purely for practicing keeping aggro on a tank. I'm talking about a dungeon that has very little trash to deal with, very little complex pulls (or any pulls besides bosses). I don't care about loot in here.
Just a series of bosses that add in a twist as you get to each next one. And either Blizz or some third party could write up suggested "lesson plans" for a team to run through.
First boss - just a total tank and spank. One mob, no adds. Very little movement or special attacks. Only attacks 1 target, the highest on his threat list. His hits are moderate in strength, but he's got tons of health. The purpose of this guy is to allow a team of 5 (or maybe more, but I want to start basic) to practice the most basic threat management skills in a very simple environment. The lesson plan for this guy could include ideas about allowing the tank to solidify aggro before DPS goes nuclear. Perhaps a Q&A review at the end where the team asks itself "did anybody besides the tank take any damage during the fight?" Since its a hugely simplified environment, just for practice purposes, that should be feasible, unlike real instances where there is much more complexity.
Second boss - Similar boss to first fight, but some relatively weak adds show up.
Third boss - Maybe mix in an attack that will stun the first person on the threat list and switch attack to the second person on the threat list.
Fourth boss - Add in some movement or terrain complexity.
And so on.
Is this just something that a player and team of players just sort of go through during normal instancing? My experience has been that the instances start you off with just a hair too much complexity to allow n00bs like me to really build strong fundamentals.
Maybe it'll just come with time and repetition with the same players, and good communication with those players.
This past weekend was the first time I've ever had a party with other players who use a threat meter. Up to this point, its only been me and my pet on the meter. Now that I'm running more instances in Outlands, many or even all the other players are also running a meter, so my Omen shows a big chunk of the party. Funny, because on one run, everybody except the tank had it installed, making it pretty useless :-)
Being new to seeing other players on my meter, I was not really able to pay attention to the meter, plus chain trap a mob, plus try to keep pouring DPS on the proper targets according to our specified targeting order. Lots of data to process and adapt and react to. I'm hoping that it'll just come with time and practice. And that's what spurred the idea in my head of a hugely simplified environment to allow a team to do a doggy paddle in the kiddy pool first, rather than plunging into the pool to learn to swim.
I would love it if there was an instance a 5-man group could go to that is pretty much purely for practicing keeping aggro on a tank. I'm talking about a dungeon that has very little trash to deal with, very little complex pulls (or any pulls besides bosses). I don't care about loot in here.
Just a series of bosses that add in a twist as you get to each next one. And either Blizz or some third party could write up suggested "lesson plans" for a team to run through.
First boss - just a total tank and spank. One mob, no adds. Very little movement or special attacks. Only attacks 1 target, the highest on his threat list. His hits are moderate in strength, but he's got tons of health. The purpose of this guy is to allow a team of 5 (or maybe more, but I want to start basic) to practice the most basic threat management skills in a very simple environment. The lesson plan for this guy could include ideas about allowing the tank to solidify aggro before DPS goes nuclear. Perhaps a Q&A review at the end where the team asks itself "did anybody besides the tank take any damage during the fight?" Since its a hugely simplified environment, just for practice purposes, that should be feasible, unlike real instances where there is much more complexity.
Second boss - Similar boss to first fight, but some relatively weak adds show up.
Third boss - Maybe mix in an attack that will stun the first person on the threat list and switch attack to the second person on the threat list.
Fourth boss - Add in some movement or terrain complexity.
And so on.
Is this just something that a player and team of players just sort of go through during normal instancing? My experience has been that the instances start you off with just a hair too much complexity to allow n00bs like me to really build strong fundamentals.
Maybe it'll just come with time and repetition with the same players, and good communication with those players.
This past weekend was the first time I've ever had a party with other players who use a threat meter. Up to this point, its only been me and my pet on the meter. Now that I'm running more instances in Outlands, many or even all the other players are also running a meter, so my Omen shows a big chunk of the party. Funny, because on one run, everybody except the tank had it installed, making it pretty useless :-)
Being new to seeing other players on my meter, I was not really able to pay attention to the meter, plus chain trap a mob, plus try to keep pouring DPS on the proper targets according to our specified targeting order. Lots of data to process and adapt and react to. I'm hoping that it'll just come with time and practice. And that's what spurred the idea in my head of a hugely simplified environment to allow a team to do a doggy paddle in the kiddy pool first, rather than plunging into the pool to learn to swim.
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