(05-20-2014, 04:33 PM)Naunet Wrote: From my first post on this subject, I have been discussing the difficulty of raid boss mechanics. That is my criterion for difficulty, especially when they are mechanics that are not easily overgeared. Reacting to and planning ahead against a myriad of boss/environment abilities provides challenge. Button mashing does not.
Perhaps that is why I have always played tanks and healers in MMOs and hate playing DPS.
But really, you can't say things like "but your skills are not what they were in vanilla" and expect people to not feel as though you are insulting them. Tone down the completely irrelevant and misplaced superiority.
Oookay, I said it's usually harder for people who started after Wrath of the Lich King. Â I don't think that's really saying you don't have skill. Â In fact, I wasn't even talking about raids in that case. Â I was talking about dungeons, specifically challenge dungeons as compared to vanilla dungeons. Â You have to do a challenge dungeon to even get near that level of difficulty in an instance. Â I don't think it's crazy to say that even MoP instances aren't anywhere near that level of difficulty until you get to challenge mode.
The skills that you use in modern instances aren't anywhere near what you needed to run Zul'Furrak at level in vanilla. Â If that's a superior attitude, it wasn't meant to be insulting. Â Every single bit of trash had to be individually pulled and killed in a marked order after you use multiple CC to reduce the incoming damage. Â not getting enough DPS from someone could run you into the same problem. Â I remember having to stop to wait for the healer to drink after every pull or every other pull. Â That's how fast you could kill mana just healing the tank. Â Tanking meant single-targeting each target to throw a sunder or using a paladin or druid (which wasn't common, they were less resilient and didn't hold threat as well).
Honestly... I did enjoy the instances in vanilla more than the raids, but I still don't think I'd want to go back to them. Â Whereas I was really disappointed by Wrath dungeons, they are at least more fun and challenging than the two previous expansions. Â I kind of feel bad for people who didn't get to experience the original vanilla instances (not raids).
Not putting one together, though. Â Having dungeon finder is so amazing if you've ever had to use the LFG channel for your server.
Honestly, though, that's what I've dealt with. Â Most of the people who've run those old vanilla instances were better prepared for challenge dungeons. Â The skills that you need to run both are more similar than the general LFD dungeons in even MoP. Â Challenge mode dungeons are much easier to play for people who ran the original Blackrock Depths in vanilla. Â That's just how I've seen it, and I don't think I'm alone in that.
On raid boss mechanics though, if you're judging solely on that, it depends, but that would definitely color it your way. Â I'd understand that. Â It's a LOT easier using a modern skillset to kill an old raid boss than it would be to use an old skillset to kill a modern raid boss. Â Most of the difficulty in vanilla was tied directly to the game, so it came with you from boss to boss. Â Post-Heigan, that's not so much the case.
And that's a good thing. Â Imagine them releasing a vanilla WoW now. Â Back then, it was the fast, reactive, action-packed competitor to Everquest and FFXI. Â Vanilla WoW would fall flat on its face if it were released today. Â It would be completely boring and frustrating. Â More difficult, maybe, but people would rightly complain about it, and for precisely the reasons you brought up. Â It's more fun to fight a complex boss with a flexible set of skills than to fight a simpler one with a more inflexible one, no matter how difficult it is.
In the end, that's what's important. Â WoW has been getting better, and has been regaining its difficulty since Wrath. Â It's also fighting an uphill battle considering how long some of us have been playing it. Â Luckily, Blizzard didn't give into their veteran fan base asking to go back to vanilla WoW. Â That would have been a horrible idea. Â It was harder for ALL the wrong reasons. Â I'm not even adding in pre-raid gear and consumable grinding because that was flat out horrible.
So WoW getting more difficult (as they have been) is good because they've been doing it not by going back to vanilla's oldschool approach, but stepping up the difficulty of what they've developed.
There is every chance that, with the increased boss complexity, the number squish, redesigns of skills to take some of the wind out, a focus on making quick decisions between AOE and straight damage, and more that WoD will exceed vanilla in difficulty and be more entertaining. Â That seems to be what Blizz is aiming at. Â Hell, I wouldn't really say you're wrong with MoP's raiding; I thought it was easier than vanilla straight up, but it's hard to say that's as universal a truth as Wrath raiding was. Â Take it for what it's worth as an opinion from someone who did both.
I'm kind of hoping that the basic instances are longer, slower, and harder, though. Â If there is one thing I really miss from vanilla, it's those instances. Â That might not be a commonly held opinion across the player base, but there has been no dungeon more fun, more interesting, more exciting, and more brutal than when you hit level 50 and walked into Blackrock Depths. Â My favorite memories of the original 1-60 crawl were in that dungeon. Â Since BC's release, though, Blizz has gone out of their way to make the dungeons short and has even chopped up the big ones into smaller parts. Â They've also taken out and eased up many of the mechanics. Â Also, the new skillsets and heirloom gear makes instances a complete breeze.
Despite how much I hated putting together a /LFG party, my favorite part of vanilla WoW was grinding instances. Â It's where the game has really, irrevocably, unquestionably gotten soft. Â I think it's suffered for it.
Raiding, though, if you felt insulted, don't. Â I've done both. Â I think vanilla was still harder than MoP. Â A lot of the people that I've stopped and had to explain basic raid mechanics to, people that need the most help, started after Wrath. Â I know it's probably because they didn't learn the basic skills in instances because they aren't required to clear them anymore. Â I'll have to go out on a limb and say I just don't run into people who can explain the original rotation of their class from vanilla who fail in modern raids.
As a disclaimer, though, I'll say that's not universal. Â Nothing stops people from Wrath from becoming just as good at raiding as old vanilla raiders and I've also played with plenty of those. Â It's just a generalization taken from the fact that I don't think leveling via instances and the new blazingly fast quest leveling is generating high-quality raiders who are already familiar with the basics of what they may be asked to do during a raid, and especially would have had to have known just to step into a raid in vanilla.
Also as a disclaimer, keep in mind that I wouldn't recommend going back. Â Most people who started playing after Wrath get told they're missing something. Â I wouldn't say that what they missed was necessarily good or fun. Â The things that made vanilla hard weren't just gear and grinding, but the other stuff wasn't that much fun. Â All I regret newbies today missing is what it was like bonding with people you met on your server in a searingly hot instance dungeon that could sometimes take six hours to clear. Â As nice as Dungeon Finder has made finding a party and as easy as it is to get a party with cross-realm instancing capability, I think the game lost something when that instancing was gone. Â That's something I wish we could have back, so that everyone who came in after Wrath could have known what it was like to full clear BRD and ZF in vanilla. Â That's what I wish Blizz would put into WoD. Â It'd make better raiders out of people than anything you put back into the new game from vanilla raiding.
And sometimes I miss needing to prepare with ammo. Â Gear grinding sucked, but managing arrows was something you had to keep in mind that wasn't a chore.
Also, I have to point out that a vanilla rotation wasn't "button mashing", as defined by hitting everything as fast as you could. Â There were a lot less procs, those procs weren't always something you wanted to hit, and hitting any key out of sequence was a loss of DPS even if it just spent mana you might eventually have needed at the end. Â It's what most people could point to as what made anything after BC easier than vanilla WoW.
Then again, I've also pointed out to those people (it's weird to be argued with on this side for a change) that you could say that sort of system is fundamentally flawed. Â My usual argument is, "Yeah, so it was harder. Â It was harder because the system wasn't very responsive or reactive, and it punished creativity. Â We didn't know it at the time because all games had that kind of system and WoW's was just the best we had. Â It's like when people say NES games were better because they were harder, forgetting that sometimes those games were harder because you had one attack that didn't hit what was coming after you. Â Yeah, it's hard, but that's because the control system is a hurdle to jump over, not an aspect of gameplay."