What are your thoughts on how you'd fix WoW? Don't be shy to share; there's no wrong answers. I'll probably make a video of my own personal ideas here soon, if you all are interested.
1. Expansion-long gear progression rather than patch-based. 2. Raids = 2 difficulties. 10man = normal 25man = hard, just like WoTLK; both versions with hard-modes like in Ulduar. Second option would be flex. 3. Complete removal of timer from M+, but an option to put a timer on per run for leaderboards. I want to go on, but I already made a huge reply to your video. :|
I personally like WoW 99% the way it is now. I've been using LFR for raiding since it came out in patch 4.3. I have only done 4 raids outside of LFR since I started playing in WoTLK and I've done 100s of LFR raids. I don't use addons so having them is a bonus to players that want them. I like the number of spells I have now in WoW and wouldn't mind having more as long as the game doesn't get harder for LFR, dungeons and Open world quest. I wish they had 4+ tiers of raiding for every expansion, new exciting Epic & Random BGs and added checkbox for players that want queue to fight in Epic & Random BGs at one iLevel.
1. I would like 8-10 core combat/utility abilities and modifires for them in talents and then have any number of fun/RP/non-combat skills 2.15 man raid, 2 difficulties, same item level for both, harder has some cosmetic exclusives and tokes to choose any gear from the raid tier and some other fun stuff 3. Between all addons or no add-ons I am on the side of no add-ons, and then have Blizzard approved adds that are already in-game package and can be turned on/off with a switch quickly
I think for most Addons, if they "need" to be in the game or make the existing game "better", then they should be added to the base UI of the game by the developers.
I think when he says "remove all addons" he means "make the game function without addons." If an addon is required to play the game, then that function should be in the game
@@eodyn7They aren't, but the game's *designed* around the assumption that the players doing endgame (raids, mythic, etc.) have certain addons installed, especially DPS meters and boss mechanic warners/guides. So, strictly speaking no, you don't need addons. But practically, you're expected to use them, you're supposed to use them.
@@eodyn7 Yeah OkAaAaAy. Good luck getting into any guild or groups that take end-game at all seriously because the game is being balanced/designed around add-ons. Add-ons are mandatory in the community, and they are 100% checked for. It's a huge problem, ultra toxic, especially combat add-ons. Add-on's are essentially playing the game for you at end-game because end-game content has become too complicated (built around addons). Regardless, in most cases it's too difficult to even read/see what's happening because too much is happening at once alongside spell effect MESS - if you don't have add-on's you will fail more than someone who does have add-ons, and a decent guild/group doesn't want failures wasting their time. Add-on's need to go, cosmetic "community approved" add-ons can stay obviously. If you don't understand this, then you were never at a point, or played a decent enough level in WoW to have it within your sphere. Even with the benefit of the doubt that you're magically 0.0001%, better than all players, don't need addons, and mastered all bosses/raids with perfect multi-tasking awareness, this simply doesn't work for the majority, or the long-term for new players, nor casual players, etc., my friend refuses to play WoW because of addons alone ("too intimidating"). Many addons are also considered cheating in PVP because they give far too much information, like when to use spells, when someone is in the area or when they use a spell like stealth in the area, attack directions, etc., putting normal players who don't want to use them - at an extreme disadvantage.
Ah, my favorite defias brotherhood messenger, but this time wearing blue mask so those bad people from Sentinel Hill won't come for him and his message.
I think you misunderstand his point about addons, Nix.. he’s talking about making the game in a way that it does not require addons. Blizzard should make their game into a complete package and not incentivize people to make addons because the game is so incomplete without them.
From my ESO perspective: some addons might be contradicting, some remove shit from the screen for immersion and some add info on the screen so how can you have both
Raiding difficulties killed the raiding experience. You never feel like you “completed” a raid. Mythic difficulty requires so much commitment when compared to classic raids that it needs to be your second job to clear one. Im not saying make it as easy as classic raid. A raiding challenge is fine, not this torment level shit thats going on
I feel like the two "we need more spells" vs "we need less spells" camps are talking about two completely different topics. Yes, more niche spells can add to the rpg aspect of the game and they are nice if they are used with creativity like rogues distract but we dont need a 12 button rotation in perfect order to do max damage.
That is very true. Arcane Mage got alot of flak for its opener in Dragonflight, even has some CCs' making videos about "is wow to complex" and siting Arcane Mage. But only one Content Creator at the time ever pointed out the obvious. that rotation that was insane, is not for the common player, the world player, the heroic dungeons and i'm good. Hell not even really Heroic raids, or Plus 15 keys and i'm good player. That opener is for the 1 percent. the guy/girl that wants to squeeze their rotation till it screams and chokes to max out every last drop of dps. that have the time and the drive to master that opener till its muscle memory. People think there is alot of buttons now forget that wow use to have ALOT more back in the day. You know the MMO mouse with a150 buttons. lmao exaggerating, but you know what i'm talking about. those mice are not really needed anymore, but you use to, and they were king!
I like having a lot of buttons, but if it reaches the levels of tracking so much shit and so many conditions like optimizing Survival Hunter with Wildfire Infusion and how incredibly disastrous Coordinated Assault tracking is or Elemental Shaman with Icefury, Flux Melting and Surge of Power I will lose my fucking mind.
Same spell doing different things when used differently is something devs should look more into. Instead of having fast+inefficient and slow+efficient heal you could have one heal that if allowed to cast until the end will be slow+efficient, but if you press it again mid cast, it will finish the cast then and there, but it will heal for less. Or if you wanted instant+gigaHPS heals you can just mash the button, achieving extreme HPS for abysmal efficiency. Relation of mana cost, healing done and time spent casting doesn't need to be a line either, allowing for more gameplay decisions when choosing between spamming the spell, or letting it cast for a while, or letting it finish. All of this with a single spell. Same could be done with druid hots. Have regrowth work as reju when the cast is canceled midway through, and when mashed with no casting at all, it works like a lifebloom. AoE heals too could be given much more nuance that way, longer casts increasing the range/power of the heal.
I feel like the 10 spell argument was more to combat the bloat in our action bars. I think we could do with a few less spells, but maybe add class-skins and spell-skins so that each class can modify their spells appearance to suit their class fantasy/playstyle. I absolutely agree that we have too many "difficulties" in raids. Imo we could have LFR as a story-mode and then Heroic as the true raid experience.
maybe follow gw2 logic. where you have like 50 spells, but , on your bar you can choose a set number. 10 , 12 , 5, , 4 what ever, that would both help with balancing the game and the said classes, while also would follow the rpg logic, expecially for a mage/spell caster, and will also provide the thirst for customaization , were each said warrior will be different than the other. one might have execute. the other might have charge, the other might play with bleeds. and so on .
People have to remember that the main purpose of addons is to solve a shortcoming on Blizzard's game design. If players need to use an addon to do RP, implement better RP tools into the game. If players need to use addons for inventory management, implement better inventory management tools, if players need an addon to tell them where they should stand on a fight that has a red background with a red floor against a red boss that links two players with a red tether and after tether breaks it leaves a red puddle on the ground while 4-5 other red effects are happening around you which makes the fight extremely hard to read and comprehend, then change raid design so players aren't forced to use an addon so they know where they should be standing to correctly resolve a mechanic. How is it possible that this multibillion company is somehow unable to resolve issues with their own game that players, not only managed to identify said problems but also design a solution for them?
I disagree with more actions = more rp. I remember Paizo design lead (Pathfinder 2e TTRPG) that the reason why necromancer isnt its own designed class was because the wizard class had too many choices and its really hard to revert it after players have gotten used to "This is how wizards are" and its really shit to have options removed. If we have around 10 spells, i think you would end up with MORE classes and MORE diversity of choice and flavor. Not saying that its good or bad the point asmon made, but i just wanted to add this bit as a counter weight.
1) I think the amount of spells we have now is perfect. Some classes do have a bit of bloat like resto druid or affli lock but if that's a problem for you, there are plenty of classes with a lot less buttons. 2) 40 man should never be a thing in retail, there's a reason why blizz moved away from it straight into the very first xpac. Hell anything below mythic has flex up to 30man and no one ever goes beyond 20-25. I also don't think flex should ever go away for hc and lower cause it just makes raiding at that level a lot more accessible. As for the single difficulty thing, if they tune it to Ulduar hard mode (like asmon wants) it would be way too easy, if they tune it around hc, it would also be way too easy. If they tune it around mythic early bosses, I think it would be ok but then you end up losing those really cool fights from mythic end bosses and I think I speak for most mythic raiders that we really don't want to lose these really cool, 100+ pulls bosses. They could let go of nm and hc and turn it into a single difficulty and keep mythic for just cosmetic rewards maybe but I don't think anyone who raids mythic now would still play the game if all that was left was hc, which we clear on week 1 in about 4-5hrs. 3) I think what asmon was targeting there wasn't any of the ones you named and most likely Weakaura. Weakaura is the biggest offender when it comes to addons in high end content. Blizzard has tried to make bosses like Halondrus where WAs don't help you as much and I think that was a success. They also recently tried private auras which made it so some abilities could not be tracked by WAs and players had to basically trigger the WA lists on their end and that was a total failure and made bosses like Smolderon more frustrating. It's clear that blizz is not a fan of WAs but on mythic all raiders fully rely on it, and it does also do a lot more than just help with raiding. I think addons should stay but blizz should do something with WAs so that we can avoid the fights turning into a frustrating mess (like Neltharion was last tier).
I'd rather have 10 spells and give those spells customizations options in a way that they could be used in more than one way, than having 8723 spells that im FORCED to use, for the sake of complexity of the gameplay and personal fantasy appeal to my class. An example could be something like a dash that also deals good damage, therefore depending on the scenario you can either deal more damage risking not having that extra movility, or waiting for the right moment to spend your cd. Just my personal take, every opinion shall be respected.
Nah, completely on board with Asmon. It’s not fun when you have to have addons to track 50 different abilities and their cooldowns and have to have 30 rows of icons on the screen for all the redundant abilities strewn across the screen. The number of raiders isn’t really a big deal, but more raiders would be easier not harder to organize. With 40 you can have more room for error, so again I’m with Asmon. And of course the game would eventually be better with no addons because blizzard would be FORCED to actually design their game to be playable. And of course Nixxiom is gonna be biased here, he’s paid by Zygor lmao
Addons allowed Blizzard to ignore issues with the game like making a customizable UI for 20 years. Its not only about the addons, although making us use 3rd party tools to download and manage them is scummy, its about Blizzard actually updating the game instead of putting the responsibility on the community. How many times do you think Blizzard would be making the same mistakes in design if each time they had to use their own time and money to fix it.
I think you missed Asmond's point. He was talking about making the game more accessible for the middle 80% of players. His point wasn't balancing the game.
He really isnt though, As someone who has watched asmon for years he loves to make the everyman argument but if you really think about his ideas they would make the game even more boring than it can already be and boredom kills MMO's faster than anything. for somebody like him its perfect and ideal but it strips away a lot of what made wow different from ins competitors and what drew people to the game. Go look at any of the MMO's that competed with wow and what you'll find is they did what Asmon talked about and they all lost out to wow, then as wow became king everybody copied wow, then they tried to get rid of the trinity and shake up the wow gameplay system. They all fail, hell even OG FF14 was dog shit then they went in rebuilt the game carbon copying wow and holy shit it takes off.
1. make more buttons, but enemies have immunities and weaknesses that changes your rotation slightly, and eliminating half og the buttons. 2. 40 men raid is cool and should be a baseline, best rading expirience period, and you always can take some pugs in your raid, or it can be perfectly ok to clear it 30 men, also i like 20 men smaller raids like zul gurub 3. no addons, blizzard should implement qol things themselves, or make a moderatable mod shop inside the game. PS: not defending or arguing asmon, comes from my personal expirience of the best time playing expirience i ever had in classic wow, and i want this game to be like that again.
I think you missed most of asmon's points.. 1 10 spells or less - not because of balance, but because combat rotations in endgame retail are way too complex, i'm 65% sure he didn't mean rp spells or flavor spells because he never really talked about it - to make it more approachable to new players 2 raids - well you agree with him anyway so moot point 3 addons - he meant this primarily about the combat addons, especially those that 'solve' the raid fights for you. DBM for example. It's because 1 some features are too powerful and force devs into an arms race with the worlds' firsters and simultaneously make raiding way too difficult for new players - hell, worlds firsters have their own people on payroll to design new addons and weakauras to 'solve' the raid fights. This also forces new players completely out of endgame content if they're uncomfortable or unwilling to install third party code. And moreover if something is essential to beating the game (or essential to getting invited to most guilds) it should be part of official ui, no excuses for the poor indie multi-dollar multibillion blizzard employees please. pretty much all of his points are geared towards making WoW more approachable for newer players so that the game can start growing again and not be doomed to die. If you're arguing the points, at least best to do it against the dude's actual reasoning and not guessed ones.
I think the real middle ground for addons is "They are disabled during raids, bg's, and arena." I think those are the parts that should not require addons because one thing asmond is correct about is that it really makes it hard for a new player to get into WoW because we made those addons required to play. - Things like big debuffs, gladius are all things that blizzard should put in the base game. - You should not have addons that track other players abilites for you - You should not have addons that tell you how to beat mechanics, when to time your roto, etc. these are all things that should seperate a good raider from bad. - Fuck raider IO, even as someone who has a great score this addon does nothing but make the community hate each other. Alot of this stuff does hurt the end-game experience for veteran, returning, and new players. It wasn't so bad 10 years ago, but basically other people can track literally everything you do, every little mistake, every little thing. You won't find too many new people wanting to deal with that yet alone set it up. Will this stop me from playing WoW nah, has it made it virtually impossible for some new friends I made who never played wow come over from their current mmo and play. Yep.
As someone who used to love tanking before the rise of dps meters, I would LOVE to see them disappear. Having all the dps competing with each other rather than the dungeon killed tanking for me. I can only hold so much aggro for eff's sake!
"Make everyone OP". We already tried that. It was called BFA and Shadowlands. The two most absolute dogshit expansions in the history of wow, and WoD exists... "If everyone is OP, then no one is OP" has got to be the most braindead sentiment ever. If everyone is OP, then EVERYONE IS OP. PVP-wise the entire game just devolves into whoever hit their button first wins. 0 counterplay and everything is a 1-shot (much like SoD). PVE-wise they have to constantly ramp up the difficulty to compensate for how broken our characters are, to the point the game isn't even remotely fun to play. Everything just becomes an automatic 1 shot the raid mechanic.
One the spell issue, what about 10 spells per spec? My biggest problem right now with the rogue I've been playing since 2008 is each spec is completely designed around shadowdance burst windows. I miss the days when sin rogue was dots, outlaw was buffs/debuffs, and sub was burst. The benefit of being able to save multiple load outs and change specs between fights is that you can change things up. However the way it is now, each one feels the same so you just end up playing whatever is easiest with the least about of thinking. So to fix that, just make them all a bit more simple. At the end of the day, games are just a button pressing simulator. So how do you make them all feel unique?
I've been role playing since classic and I can tell you from experience that add-ons have objectively made role playing worse. People used to just play their characters and have a good time but stuff like flagRSP, mrp, trp have made people so pretentious. If you go to an rp hub like Cathedral district nobody tells stories or plays their character earnestly anymore, they idle around like model mannequins in a store window while they tap out novel length profiles with voice claims, artsy visuals, stats defining their personality traits, commissioned art, etc, anything but just playing out a scene in the moment. Add-ons were handy for identifying if someone was an rper at a glance but beyond that they've been an utter detriment to the hobby.
I like the rpg elements. From the reaction to the covenant system from shadowlands most players don't. Could be that ppl didn't like how Blizzard did it. However the amount of customization for non meta players was huge in that expansion but barely anyone wanted it.
Why Asmon had right ideas: adding more abilities doesn’t make a character play better. The game got bad when everyone was so focused on parses. Finally, raiding felt significant when there was one tier and you had a large group pulling together. Then again, I felt like the game was best when it was Vanilla
different kind of difficulties are a great way to get every player to experience the raid. Yeah there could be less difficulties like "normal" and "heroic"
A considerable amount of players with *"disabilities"* rely on add-ons to enable them to play, and removing them would alienate that portion of the player base, which would not only lose more players, but make them look like they don't want people with disabilities playing wow, creating a huge PR nightmare which would lose them even more people and goodwill.
OK I'll write a big one🌄🌄🌄 1.) Spells - I think the current state of spells in retail is mad bloated. Buffs, Debuffs, CC's alone are already a huge headache to keep track of/memorize -- especically with how frequently they evolve throughout patch updates. Give us 10 unique ways (max) to apply damage (~3 class / ~7 spec,) and maybe 10 utility/buff/debuff/CC unique spells per class. As I'm typing this answer, I'm realizing how challenging this would be to implement with finesse. 2.) Raid Difficulty - Agreed! 2.5) Raid Size - 20 is solid and should be the norm -- I just think 40 is infinitely cooler, but it should only be for the hardest content. I think at the very least it helps satisfy the "War" fantasy of Warcraft; I didn't beat the Frozen Throne campaign with only 10-25 units! 3.) Addons - While I get why they're there now, all combat statistic addons (damage meters, boss alarms, etc.) gotta hit the road and not come back -- but the caveat here is that the devs would for reals have to overhaul the current combat design, or at least provide a major update to it. All non-combat utility and questing addons are far less corrosive to gameplay imo. I think the biggest takeaway for me is that if boss mechanics, status effects, and the HUD were all improved in a way that clarified *and* simplified the way players make pulse checks throughout encounters -- I could engage closer to the game as opposed to being disrupted by 3rd party alerts, warnings, and UI during combat.
Normal/Heroic is fine as difficulties. 1. Is a bit challenging, but you can clear it with some effort & preparation, but it's not to tryhardy. And everyone has a chance to run it. 2. Then you have the heroic which is a challenge, more tryhardy, will whoop your ass the first times. Until you eventually progress & finally make it to the end. And you can feel good about that challenge & get better rewards.
I think a single raid difficulty is a very bad take. If you remove all the raid difficulties, then they have to remove story being tied to the raid as well. Not everyone is a mythic level player, normal and heroic is already difficult for some. If you tune the single difficulty to heroic level, what are the RWF and mythic players going to do - they'll kill the raid in a day and then complain there's nothing to do.
I don't know if Asmongold was talking about balance or not. However, I believe that he is right on one point probably not covered in that video. Retail wow is so complex with the amount of spells passive procs and debuffs that you have to track. That it's overwhelming and as someone who started casually playing in WoD PvP is completely not accessible to me at all. Everyone in the lower ranks of Arena cleans me up so fast that I don't even how enough time to know what has happened to me. Second point I don't agree or disagree with either of you. However, I do believe the gearing system in retail is so far gone from classic that it would be nice if they had one difficulty it might give them time to think about items outside of the item level again. Third point. If I am not mistaken he was talking about how Blizzard should be making those add-ons in the game. So everybody could have a fair footing. Either way, I completely agree with Asmongold. I hate being required to download a list of add-ons to keep track of things in Endgame. And I hate the fact that Blizzard balances the game around those add-ons. I think they should remove all addons and have the roleplaying addons and stuff in the game.
The question I have to ask when wondering if one difficulty would be good for the game is, would it attract more players than it drives away? I love watching race to world first, though I have to admit it irritates me that I'm just not able to play on the same level as CE players. It makes me feel like I'm always missing out on a big chunk of content. Still, players who are much better than I am could move on from wow in mass if their favorite modes were removed. Having multiple raid modes lets players of different skill levels enjoy the content. The 40m raid thing, if wow's community weren't already fractured enough, 40m raids would choke out so many potential raid groups. My guild has spent basically all of Amirdrassil not doing mythic because we can't scrounge together 20 people to be available all on the same day. You could say we should try recruiting harder, but that's extra effort that lots of people aren't willing to put in. And then they don't raid, and then they don't resub. It's a snowball effect. What wow retail could do to save itself is make each step of retail feel more rewarding and less fomo focused. I'm having a blast playing SoD because every time I log on, I feel like I'm accomplishing something. I feel rewarded. Every little skill point feels great. Each mob I kill, the pennies and dimes I earn from quests. I've noticed when I log onto retail lately, I do m+, get no upgrades, and then log in on Tuesday to check my vault and still get no upgrades. I think to myself, "Did I just waste a bunch of time?" Wow retail doesn't respect our time in a lot of regards. It's gotten better over the years, but between bad instances of fomo and systems intended to keep us grasping at straws for the chance to get a reward, it's not fun. Take me on a journey. Make me feel like I really got something done by the time I log off. The pace of retail is just all over the place.
I disagree with the balance side or your argument. Broken builds are amazing! In single player games. In wow, it doesn't work. Just look at covenants, if paladins are broken and shamans are weak, but I really want to pay a shaman because I like that roleplay or rotation, I won't get into groups like I will with a paladin. Same thing happened with covenants and probably the same with hero talents. I still think they need to have roleplay and style, but balance is also key, it's a tight line and I don't blame Blizzard for not achieving it yet.
They could just think bosses and raids better so they don't require WeakAuras. In Shadowlands for the Dreadlords in Sepulcher you would often get kicked for not having the proper addon, which is bad design on Blizzards part and should not happen.
I disagree with most of your points. 1.A lot of spells and skills sound great but are hard to balance. You need to have good balance. Even SoD showed us that without good balance some of specs like ranged hunter will have hard time finding group even when content is easy. What I would do is create specs to have 5-10 core spells and then 5-10 moze fluff ones like create water or portals. That also means less shitty little procs like in Bfa. 2.I would say 10 man are king of raids. Yes 20 and 40 man look cool but nothing will win over just going online finding 9 other players in maybe 10-15 min and just running raid instead of wasting time finding small village worth of players to then constantly reminding them to talk less on discord during encounters. About tiers i agree it should be just one difficulty that's all. 3.Today addons are necessary and that's bad for the game. New players are afraid if maybe 50 top addons they downloaded won't be enough. I think UI are Ok, but all dbm and bigwigs just make enconters easier so to balance them out blizzard has to make bosses unnecessarily hard for average player. Questing addons are also bad as they handhold players too much. I remember my friend that didn't know anything about story or even names of maps he leveled up and all he said after hiting max lvl was "I just followed addon". It's RPG and a game you are already wasting time so you can level up in normal, unoptimized way and waste extra hour or two without addon.
For addons; No it should ALL go. it shoudnt be a "is this ok or not?" estimate, it should ALL go. for RP`ers; I def feel for them, thats why blizzard would have to make RP incorporated into the game, maybe hire some of the most popular RP addon makers and get the shit into the actual game, a RP toggle like ff14 has for example. You shouldn't need to download a whole lot of 3rd party shit just to play a game. Raiding; I agree with 20 or 10 man raiding, i used to love 10 man raiding, bring it back. As for difficulty, no there should be some sort of hard modes or an additional difficulty. Or maybe something like a super ultra hard raid that comes mid expansion for the hardcores, like ff14 did and only reward a badass cosmetic. Its also a lot of fun to slowly work towards a goal with friends and after weeks or months finally down that goal. Some people are better and need that additional challenge. Just make it prestigious.
My ret paladin being forced to use spells that looks like hammers when i visualised blades.... true, but why not condense the amount of skills but give the skill different visuals you can swap between?
As a fellow North Carolinian I also hate pollen season both grass and tree I usually have to wear a mask when out and about in it lol. Also fun fact out of all 50 states North Carolina is the worst to live in for allergies lucky us right.
His point with addons was explicitly: remove addons so that it forces Blizzard to add these things into the game. Since the state of retail is made around the fact people use addons.
@@mobius4247 No it wouldn't. Fluff abilities don't need a keybind. Plus there could be over 40 abilities for a proper class fantasy expression but only 10 can be used simultaneously (different builds)
You are right balancing can be an issue but as you said "in a game of complex abilities" obvious solution make them less complex make less abilities a lot of people don't want 30+ abilities to press a lot which are irrelevant most of the time so why do they even need to be there. More isn't always better and with ability clutter especially so. Having so many abilities scares away a lot of potential New players who don't want that much stuff to deal with most games have no where near the number of abilities WOW does and that is because people want simple games to play. Majority of people don't want to have to download and maintain 17 add-ons and your opinion is biased since you are sponsored by a WOW add-on.
In regards to add-ons, I do think that they should be removed from instanced content. I feel like raids have increasingly been designed with add-ons like DBM and GTFO in mind making them less accessible to the wider audience. That being said Blizzard would need to implement some accessibility feature for players with color blindness, other vision issues, or any other factors that could imped someone from playing the endgame content. The only other changes I would ask for is a focus on story telling. Specifically around characters I loved from the RTS games. Shadowlands missed some amazing opportunities to bring old characters back. Cairne is one that comes to mind anytime I think about what could have been.
Sometimes i forget that Nixxiom is just a southern boy who was meant for the ice and snow and birthed in the wrong climate. Same bro, same. This grass pollen has had me half blind and unable to breathe all month.
No add ons part of the fun of the game back then was that certain gameplay aspects were clunky making the game a lot harder to figure out and do well in. No more hand holding
I'm gonna disagree that he's thinking of balance. Most of the time he's speaking from an onboarding perspective. He's said multiple times that there is too much in the game and no one knows wtf is going on and that's especially hard for new players. Which I get bc I was a new player in SL. Having 20+ abilities, having to know all of them for PVP and then covenant abilities on top with multiple per each faction just made keeping track of it all overwhelming. I do agree class fantasy is important - but is there any reason that those abilities cant just be optional for flavour, or different colours to fit the theme?
Addons is kinda out of context, at that moment he was speaking about raid addons that absolutely autos everything from position to timers for raid cd's ; in pvp you have 1 addon takes half the screen ; world addons on the other hand I consider to be fine. Also 40 man raids means there is more space to bring other classes/people not just the "meta" and also that raids are more accesible ( I don't mean everyone should be able to kill Mythic Fyrakk) , just more involvement and rather easier content (which doesn't has to be created with addons in mind by Blizz).
Hey Nixxiom keep up the great content, one take I feel like you need to think about is the add-on issue. The types of addons that you refer to such as for RP and overall quality of life should be added to the game by the developers in an official format and the mods should be done away with. It is impossible to get any of my friends to play WoW because of the addons, you literally are not allowed in end game groups unless you have specific addons... it is a joke and is the thing that made all 11 friends I tried to get into WoW to cancel their subscription.
I think wow needs to do three things: remove addons, make the open world more challenging, and stop being so formulaic. Addons just bog the game down, they make the ui look awful and create a barrier to entry for new players. I never played vanilla but when I played classic hc it felt great feeling forced to make groups to conquer regular quests, quests in retail are too much of a solo expirience. Every wow expansion since legion pretty much boils to the same thing over and over. Give us more mage towers, timeless isles, or something completely different.
1. I would like 10 core combat/utility abilities and then have any number of fun/rp skills 2.15 man, 2 difficulties 3. Between all addons or no addons I am on the side of no addons
Addon bloat is one of my biggest gripes with the game. Yes, all your "non-essential" or "supportive" addons make them game more customizable or easier in certain respects. But my argument is that if they're that important to you, you should push to have the functionality be part of the game. When I play nowadays, I don't want to have to download half a dozen to a dozen addons just to get the game to play a certain way. That's ridiculous.
I personally like WoW 99% the way it is now. I've been using LFR for raiding since it came out in patch 4.3. I have only done 4 raids outside of LFR since I started playing in WoTLK and I've done 100s of LFR raids. I don't use addons so having them is a bonus to players that want them. I like the number of spells I have now in WoW and wouldn't mind having more as long as the game doesn't get harder for LFR, dungeons and Open world quest. I wish they had 4+ tiers of raiding for every expansion, new exciting Epic & Random BGs and added checkbox for players that want queue to fight in Epic & Random BGs at one iLevel.
The biggest way I'd fix WoW is make content from older exapansions relevant again. It should be World of Warcraft, but right now it feels like Island of Warcraft because the Dragon Isles are the only place in the game that matters. 1) They should scale the whole world up and give you reasons go to other continents. Maybe add secrets and stuff to find like Season of Discovery to give you a reason to just go exploring out in the world. 2) Add an option to scale down and do ANY old dungeon or raid. They have timewalking, so why not make it available all the time, rather than just a seasonal event, and make it apply to all dungeons and raids from event past expansion. Kind of like FFXIV's roulette system. Then just add some good rewards to for doing old content and boom, legacy content is an endgame pillar
I feel like a lot of the "remove all addons" crowd just doesnt understand the purpose of modding. They dont exist because Blizzard "is too lazy to add better costumization" - they exist because it would be literally impossible to implement something that pleases everyone. Each person has their own preference and idea as to how their UI should look and I seriously dont understand why you wouldn't allow that to happen? This also ties into other addons, such as TRP3. A lot of people genuinely do not care for roleplay, while others only have the game to do it. Why should it be forced down the other side's throat? Why take away freedom to choose what you want your game to look like?
I think removing all addons is too extreme, I agree. I do think blizzard has the ability and power though to block certain functions that makes things like WeakAuras so overly powerful. Same goes for DBM. They can both be useful for accessibility reasons and comfort, and also not give any edge.
Second point. I don’t think it matters 20. 40 or even 100 man raid. The part where you have to manage really depends on the difficulty. Asmon has said before that he wanted 40 man raid but make it easier. Personally I can enjoy both 13/20/40 man raid. Just feel like you missed the point again when you said it’s hard to organize. Coz it would had been function differently like he said.
Though Nixxi don't forget that the more spells we have the more complicated the gameplay becomes and ofc people as always will try to minmax the shit out of it and we'd end up with useless spells that no one uses and no one would play with you as you are now a troll with negative damage. Therefore, Blizzard has to put extra effort and time to Balance which can be put into something else more original. IMO to fulfill the fantasy, we should get class skins and spell skins, a mage is not just Fire Frost and Arcane; a mage has magic and magic can be anything; the damage can remain the same as well as the rotation, but cool spell skin features can make us more Unique without hurting the game balance.
Imo Having 10 Spell that has 10+ Customizable talent for each spell like last Epoch or Poe Is Better Than Having 20 Spell That has 1-4 Customizable talent for each spell That Fills Your 4 Action bar!
When he said to reduce the number of buttons and spells, he didn't mean to make the game more accessible for newcomers. Because WoW is struggling from no new people coming on board and old players dropping off. If you watch a WoW stream as a potential new player you'll see a UI with 40 buttons and are instantly overwhelmed. While there is an audience for that, this audience is playing the game already and steadily dropping off (as mentioned previously). Judging by your response to his suggestions, you haven't put in the research to understand what he actually means and you're just putting out your gut reaction to the raw points.
3:55 this point is absolutely fcking stupid, because it should be flex no 40 or 20 :D They players are mostly the same but we're 20 years older, we've got families, responsibilities and the gaming landscape in general has changed. No one likes being benched, but fixed group sizes means you'll have to get benchies to fill. Just make it flex, the barrier to entry for mythic raiding for instance is not the difficulty, it's the bullshit around it.
What you don't realize is that, if you can' flex, everybody does 20s and nobody does 40s because there's just 0 reason for it. 40s being reserved for the main tier / main raid would be the best idea.
@@warmanreaper what you don't realize is that if you can't flex a significant amount of people just don't fcking raid. :D That's my point mythic isn't exclusive because of it's difficulty, it's exclusive because of the management bullshit around it. Raidleaders/GM's quite because of the management overhead not because they don't like raiding or leading the team. Guilds disband because they can't field the steady 20 man and don't want to have bench warmers that don't get to enjoy the game
I like flex. I prefer 25man hard 10man normal though; it gives more clear tuning goals for both difficulties while giving smaller groups something to do. That said, there were times in SoD where someone would be the odd-man-out...11/10 people wanting to raid...so I'd be ok with flex as well. Don't think Blizzard will ever make the hardest difficulty flex though, since they know top-end raiders will try to min-max the perfect number for each fight. Personally, those top raiders can do whatever they want, but Blizzard is obsessed with them...and ultimately they are why this entire discussion falls on deaf ears. : \
I have to strongly disagree with ALL of Asthmaboy's "suggestions." 1) This is completely unnecessary. A lot of spells come for the talent trees. If you want less spells taking action bar slots, then pick more passive talents. 2) No, just no. Having multiple difficulty settings is a good thing. WoW isn't Dark Souls. Those games only need one difficulty because they're after a specific audience. The "MMO" stands for *Massively Multiplayer Online.* It is designed for massive appeal like it or not. Removing options would hinder this. LFR is how me, and a bunch of players, get to experience raid content. It allows a lot of players to do this content on their time, instead of having to rework their whole IRL schedules just to "make it to raid." Let's not forget all the stories of people being kicked from guilds just IRL responsibilities popped up on raid night. 3) Absolutely not. Add-ons provide a great many quality of life improvements. Many that I don't trust Blizzard to implement well into the core game. Frankly my suggestion to improve WoW right now would be if Asmongold removed himself from the game and community. Maybe it will give him time to finally clean his room.
Pollen particles are smaller than the weave in the fabric, btw, so you could actually be trapping pollen against your face, and making things worse than they would be without the mask, or whatever you call that thing on your face. Also, final fantasy is better. :)
Addons are not fine though. Every example you mentioned only makes it worse for new people without those addons. TSM / any ah addon is basically cheating / lite botting that makes new people not able to even play AH. Stuff like bagon is bad because that is amount of time person without it is organizing their bags, that people with it don't need to. Marking prices / gathering spots for mats is also bad / cheating because again, people without it are at way bigger disadvantage trough artificial means. And looking at resources outside the game is a lot different than having those integrated into the core game itself. In games like cs2 or dota 2 althuogh there is a lot of outside resources that will make you better, ther isn't really anything inside the game that affects your performance as much as addons do in wow in unfair advantage, and the things that do are actually called cheats (dota 2 has dota plus subscription soo i can say in that one it isn't as clear). Also 40 man raids, game can be designed for 20 people but allow you to bring extra players. Imagine how less of a headache it would be to be bale to bring extra support / friends to play without worrying. Only reason why 40 man is pain for setup is becaus a) blizz designed raids to be unbearable 1 mistake = entire raid 1 shot bs. And 2 ) because people are min-maxing try hards. For me i remember playing mythics in legion with roster of around 28~ish people. And how we would have not bad players, but the ones that just couldn't be as good in the game as others due to irl commitements soo they got benched a lot. With the 40 man but desing for less you just allow people to bring more friends without needing to worry about wiping the raid (unless you try-hard but then it's your problem)
As a person who has literally never logged in to WoW, even on the day of vanilla release, without add ons, I think Asmongold is right. It's proven to be an impossible task to balance players that use them, and players that don't. They have to consider both groups, when they make content, and the results have been an unmitigated disaster.
I'd argue that WoW is an RPG in name only... unless you play on an RP realm. I guess technically it is a RPG, you roll a class and you "RP" as that class while you kill monsters, but you know what I mean. thre is no dialog with npcs or anything, you take a quest, where the npc is voiceless or worse, a one liner and you get on with your day. I have higher expectations for my RP games.
My takes, going on for both: 1. l haven't played since BFA, hence idk how many spells/abilities classes have nowadays, however, l disagree with both. 10 abilities is too few, and just shoving MORE abilities for the sake of RP and customization would just be a nightmare all around. Your rotation would consist of 20+ situational abilities that would be a pain in the ass to follow. A good middle ground is required with some conditional spells that may be required for certain actions and/or Easter Eggs, like the Mind Control-able goblin in BWL that teaches miners about smelting in classic. 2. Asmon probably went for 40 because as a popular streamer it would be a piece of cake to organize several 40 man raid groups in minutes, which is why l agree with your take on this, 20 sounds good. Maybe even 25 idk. 3. l think he meant it more like "l shouldn't have to download 300+ addons/plugins in order to play the game". ln that case l think FF14 did it best, prohibiting ALL addons so everyone is on a level playing field, but adding QoL improvements that were introduced as addons at some point or other.
Honestly I agree with all of Asmon's point just with minor adjustments. 1. All classes should have 10 or so buttons. I believe this is in regard to bloated rotations like the infamous Arcane spec Mage and in terms of classes feeling unique I believe pruning abilities helps with the design for devs creating abilities that feel less samey with other classes. This also helps with making ease to understand how to play a class better by making a "easy to play; hard to master" design with em. However I wouldnt necessarily make the 10 button thing a hard requirement, like I believe every class should vary in the amount of buttons you need to hit on your rotation. For the rpg aspect tho, I dont count utility abilities for each class and many of those should still be kept for the sake of its own brand of class fantasy. 2. Only have 40 Man raids and only one difficulty. The only adjustment I would make is for the devs to design a 40 Man and a 20 Man raid in conjunction. I feel that 40 Man raids should be made somewhat easy so that any casual dad gamer can clear them but still challenging enough where you still need to pay attention to mechanics. The whole reason why some are still adamant of 40 Man raiding is due to the spectacle of having so many people tackle a boss, which I think its a good want. 20 Man raids should be the harder of the two and these obviously should be the ones that you cant queue up for and you most likely need to be in a guild to raid with. 3. Remove all addons. This has got to be the most misconstrued point Ive seen around the community as it feels like they're actively missing the point and context behind this take. Removing addons DOES NOT EQUAL REMOVE ALL UTILITY AND QOL FEATURES FROM THE GAME. What this take means is that we want the devs to be held accountable to design their game to be playable and highly customizable for every player to be able to play the game RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. Addons are one of the biggest barriers of entry for players since you are forced to go out of the game to download bullshit in order to play the game properly. This is terrible game design and what the addon culture has created is a culture where the players have dictated the game design to be centered around something that should've been optional and the devs being complacent on fixing the game. I believe all the QoL addon features should be within the game itself and any extra RP UI utility such as TRP or Narcisissus or Storyline/Immersion should be an in-game feature at this point.
Like seriously Blizzard just hire many of these addon dev teams so that they can be officially put into the game and just nuke the whole addon culture. Addons should be a thing for single player games where nobody would care but for an MMO where balance and content is in constant flux and ever evolving, this is just something that should not be present in the game.
I think there is something to take from both sets of opinions, not necessarily for WoW, but for any role-playing game: Having a ton of spells is great for customization and thus enhances role-playing, and the unique combinations that arise are definitely fun, but especially in Classic where you need to buy spells for gold, you cannot really experiment with different combinations before settling on one, as you never get back that gold you could have otherwise spent on flying. You cannot really afford trying out them all, so perhaps it would be nice having a "basic" tier of really cheap spells but fine on average for everyone, and "advanced" tier for spells that are more expensive but customized. Overall I prefer games which have detailed and well thought-out systems that are however not forced upon people who are simply not into that kind of stuff. Give advanced choices to people who want advanced choices. As for raids, I see absolutely no point in doing the same instance over and over. How is killing a powerful baddie only to do it again next week immersive? Have big raids in terms of bosses, not in terms of players, so that it takes multiple weeks to conquer them fully, and you get the full reward. Nothing wrong with having difficulties for a certain number of players, but no point in making them tiered ‒ the more players, the bigger the total reward, but each player should still get the same amount of it. As for addons... I don't like when a certain addon becomes the "standard" that you "should" use, whether that are just unnecessary interface modifications or something that gives you information other players can't see... that should either be visible in the game already (like map coordinates for example), or simply unavailable to obtain in any way. But boy the fun I had with GHI, even though the whole nature of it was virtual, it was amazing. It would be so nice to have a way to create customized items, like in LotRO where you can inscribe a name to a crafted item.
I liked 25 people raiding. 40 is just way too much, it is a nightmare to schedule and with that many people, you are bound to have salties leave because someone got X and not them. Spells, I do think that there is a spell bloat in WoW but not "10 spelld per class max" either. I think there should be a decent way to reduce the overall amount of spells without going down to that few. Addons... if only the default UI and functions were good. the default UI is clunky at best, and sometimes unusuable. the default auction house is a nightmare to use, and you nailed it right on the head when you said that bagnon was harmless, the bags are so bad. You are also right that guides, and I'll add WeakAuras are very benificial. The default UI has either too much, or too little visible information and WAs really help with making the important stuff more visible.
Hes not saying get rid of addons, full stop. Hes saying that addons lead to blizzard leaving something for the addon community to fix. If addons didnt exist, it would force blizzard to remedy the problems the addons solve themself instead. Instead of needing bagnon, or dbm, or recount, blizz should be building these functions onto the game.
The first point is absolutely wrong by Asmongold. This is what actively ruined Wow as an RPG game and was a personal pet peeve of mine. When the min maxers started to be very vocal and control the meta, the developers acknowledged it and then basically made it the only way to play.
the 10spell only thing feels like hes taking the systems from ESO or GW2 and pasting them into WoW without undertsanding the nuances that make GW2 and ESO good, they may only let you have 5 to 10 skills on a bar but the depth of classes goes far beyond that with multiple choices and build potentials, so that could work in wow but we would still need more than 10 total the new system of heroic talents is a step towards that by altering existign abilities instead of just adding new ones addons well ok so UI addons for unit frames and health bars I think its fine for these to stay, but some really need to go all raids and dungeons are designed with the intent that players SHOULD use addons, all of them from the ground up if you dont use raid addons for callouts etc. it sucks, it is a miserable exiricnace, WoW needs to standardise raid effects so we know red circle = bad and green = safe, much like GW2 does things because there is so many varied spell effetcs going off its very hard to know whats going on if you dont have a raid addon raid dificulty nah having a "easy" medium" "hard" is fine, all mmos do this all games ever made do this, its fine, its a way to let people see content and a way to challange everyone with soemthing sure its also to make soemthign last longer without making 5 different raids just for one tier and only seeing 10 people go the highest,as for 40 man only, I mean have a cap of 40 man and then letting it scale up to that with health/damage etc. would be good so a guild of 12 friends can do it without having to pug 13 randoms.
As far as addons go, playing pservers without NeatPlates was such a hard adaptation. The default blizzard nameplates or any other modified nameplate... they all just look so bad and aren't clean and (sorry for the pun) neat. However, I can see where stuff like DBM, WeakAuras, and Questie are viewed as cheating. What's the point of playing classic, where the entire point is the adventure, and then just using google maps to find your way around. It's gross.
Asmon actually does mean every single addon he has had that opinion for years at this point and he has given his reason for it. The short version is that he just believes that addons like bagon and RP addons should just be added into WoW as a base feature instead of being addons.
I'm 100% against the 40 man just because its a nightmare to get this much people. His 10 skill argument is about rotation. The addon thing? I'm totally in favor, fuck all addons, remove every single one of them.
I agree with your take on these suggestions, but also addons help people who are disabled access some aspects of the game with more ease. As for the pollen, the next month or so is going to brutal, good luck
Sorry dude but I never disagreed with anyone so hard before. I also would like to play as who ever it is I want to play. That's why I'd love to play as a Death Knight the most, it's my favorite class fantasy in the entire game. Which class I NEVER mained in my entire WoW career you might ask? A Death Knight. I NEVER played as a DK and I probably never will unless they rework him entirely from the ground up and make him a class that doesn't push 100 buttons on 3 different keyboards for living. I have an MMO mouse with side buttons just for WoW and it's still goddamn too annoying to play as a DK.
Addons are the main reason I stuck with WoW and left the dozen of other MMOs I tried. I love customizing and modding games. Why are streamers suddenly going after the livelihood of addon programmers?
lfr IS NEEDED cause there is a big fat door to content called OTHER PEOPLE, as long as another person is deciding if another can play its not open to everyone.
You missed the point of less abilities. The argument was from complexity not balance. New players can't get into the game because of how complex and bloated it is. Less abilities equals less of a learning curve. Gw2 has a limited action bar and is super fun...more abilities does not equal more fun. Love the content keep it up.
Honestly, I think asmongold hit the nail on the head there in terms of addon bloat. It seems, nowadays, like there's an addon for everything and if you DON'T use the addon, then you're just straight-up missing something critical.
I 100% agree parses should be removed. Its made the game far too sweaty even at mid-core. Its spread to classic , cant even get into BFD cuz of em. Ultimately it ruins the game and doesnt matter much in the end anyways. If you want the top parse you gotta be propped and cheese tf outta the fight.
I agree with asmon about addons things like questie should already be in the game not a addon and honestly in terms of addons like zygor and rested xp which give the best leveling path are just wierd because if you want to level fastest spam dungeons if you want to experience the world having a leveling addon is the least natural way to do that sometimes they dont even have you complete quest lines in zones.
The addon issue is that it takes away from the base game, because the devs design the base game with the idea that every player will have all 10 different addons installed n set up Its too over saturated n stuffed
What are your thoughts on how you'd fix WoW? Don't be shy to share; there's no wrong answers. I'll probably make a video of my own personal ideas here soon, if you all are interested.
I totally agree with you
1. Expansion-long gear progression rather than patch-based.
2. Raids = 2 difficulties. 10man = normal 25man = hard, just like WoTLK; both versions with hard-modes like in Ulduar. Second option would be flex.
3. Complete removal of timer from M+, but an option to put a timer on per run for leaderboards.
I want to go on, but I already made a huge reply to your video. :|
I personally do not like the current talent system. Give me Classic's or MoP's anyday
I personally like WoW 99% the way it is now. I've been using LFR for raiding since it came out in patch 4.3. I have only done 4 raids outside of LFR since I started playing in WoTLK and I've done 100s of LFR raids. I don't use addons so having them is a bonus to players that want them. I like the number of spells I have now in WoW and wouldn't mind having more as long as the game doesn't get harder for LFR, dungeons and Open world quest. I wish they had 4+ tiers of raiding for every expansion, new exciting Epic & Random BGs and added checkbox for players that want queue to fight in Epic & Random BGs at one iLevel.
1. I would like 8-10 core combat/utility abilities and modifires for them in talents and then have any number of fun/RP/non-combat skills
2.15 man raid, 2 difficulties, same item level for both, harder has some cosmetic exclusives and tokes to choose any gear from the raid tier and some other fun stuff
3. Between all addons or no add-ons I am on the side of no add-ons, and then have Blizzard approved adds that are already in-game package and can be turned on/off with a switch quickly
I think for most Addons, if they "need" to be in the game or make the existing game "better", then they should be added to the base UI of the game by the developers.
Coming to the Cash Shop soon!!!
combat addons? get rid of them. non combat UI addons, QoL addons? fine. if Blizz is too lazy to care, let them be.
for me its the look lol i cannot play the game with Base UI. i havent used it since BC lol
That's what Asmon said in his video.
This video from Nixx is kind of misleading.
facts! but that takes time and recourses. why would they when they know the modders will do it for them.
I think when he says "remove all addons" he means "make the game function without addons." If an addon is required to play the game, then that function should be in the game
He said exactly that
yeah problem is tho, none of them are required for a standard wow player.
Addons aren't required to play the game.
@@eodyn7They aren't, but the game's *designed* around the assumption that the players doing endgame (raids, mythic, etc.) have certain addons installed, especially DPS meters and boss mechanic warners/guides.
So, strictly speaking no, you don't need addons. But practically, you're expected to use them, you're supposed to use them.
@@eodyn7 Yeah OkAaAaAy. Good luck getting into any guild or groups that take end-game at all seriously because the game is being balanced/designed around add-ons. Add-ons are mandatory in the community, and they are 100% checked for. It's a huge problem, ultra toxic, especially combat add-ons. Add-on's are essentially playing the game for you at end-game because end-game content has become too complicated (built around addons). Regardless, in most cases it's too difficult to even read/see what's happening because too much is happening at once alongside spell effect MESS - if you don't have add-on's you will fail more than someone who does have add-ons, and a decent guild/group doesn't want failures wasting their time. Add-on's need to go, cosmetic "community approved" add-ons can stay obviously. If you don't understand this, then you were never at a point, or played a decent enough level in WoW to have it within your sphere.
Even with the benefit of the doubt that you're magically 0.0001%, better than all players, don't need addons, and mastered all bosses/raids with perfect multi-tasking awareness, this simply doesn't work for the majority, or the long-term for new players, nor casual players, etc., my friend refuses to play WoW because of addons alone ("too intimidating"). Many addons are also considered cheating in PVP because they give far too much information, like when to use spells, when someone is in the area or when they use a spell like stealth in the area, attack directions, etc., putting normal players who don't want to use them - at an extreme disadvantage.
Ah, my favorite defias brotherhood messenger, but this time wearing blue mask so those bad people from Sentinel Hill won't come for him and his message.
*"HUH-!"* ~ Nixxiom, probably.
its obviously a shiny defias messenger
I think you misunderstand his point about addons, Nix.. he’s talking about making the game in a way that it does not require addons. Blizzard should make their game into a complete package and not incentivize people to make addons because the game is so incomplete without them.
From my ESO perspective: some addons might be contradicting, some remove shit from the screen for immersion and some add info on the screen so how can you have both
Bro I'm out of keybinds , I don't need any more spells
Raiding difficulties killed the raiding experience. You never feel like you “completed” a raid. Mythic difficulty requires so much commitment when compared to classic raids that it needs to be your second job to clear one. Im not saying make it as easy as classic raid. A raiding challenge is fine, not this torment level shit thats going on
I feel like the two "we need more spells" vs "we need less spells" camps are talking about two completely different topics. Yes, more niche spells can add to the rpg aspect of the game and they are nice if they are used with creativity like rogues distract but we dont need a 12 button rotation in perfect order to do max damage.
That is very true. Arcane Mage got alot of flak for its opener in Dragonflight, even has some CCs' making videos about "is wow to complex" and siting Arcane Mage. But only one Content Creator at the time ever pointed out the obvious. that rotation that was insane, is not for the common player, the world player, the heroic dungeons and i'm good. Hell not even really Heroic raids, or Plus 15 keys and i'm good player. That opener is for the 1 percent. the guy/girl that wants to squeeze their rotation till it screams and chokes to max out every last drop of dps. that have the time and the drive to master that opener till its muscle memory.
People think there is alot of buttons now forget that wow use to have ALOT more back in the day. You know the MMO mouse with a150 buttons. lmao exaggerating, but you know what i'm talking about. those mice are not really needed anymore, but you use to, and they were king!
Yeah I think in this particular case that's what Asmon was going for, I know he's done other videos essentially bringing this up too.
I like having a lot of buttons, but if it reaches the levels of tracking so much shit and so many conditions like optimizing Survival Hunter with Wildfire Infusion and how incredibly disastrous Coordinated Assault tracking is or Elemental Shaman with Icefury, Flux Melting and Surge of Power I will lose my fucking mind.
Same spell doing different things when used differently is something devs should look more into.
Instead of having fast+inefficient and slow+efficient heal you could have one heal that if allowed to cast until the end will be slow+efficient, but if you press it again mid cast, it will finish the cast then and there, but it will heal for less. Or if you wanted instant+gigaHPS heals you can just mash the button, achieving extreme HPS for abysmal efficiency. Relation of mana cost, healing done and time spent casting doesn't need to be a line either, allowing for more gameplay decisions when choosing between spamming the spell, or letting it cast for a while, or letting it finish. All of this with a single spell.
Same could be done with druid hots. Have regrowth work as reju when the cast is canceled midway through, and when mashed with no casting at all, it works like a lifebloom.
AoE heals too could be given much more nuance that way, longer casts increasing the range/power of the heal.
@@MidWitPride They're talking about REMOVING complexity to the game not adding more.
I feel like the 10 spell argument was more to combat the bloat in our action bars. I think we could do with a few less spells, but maybe add class-skins and spell-skins so that each class can modify their spells appearance to suit their class fantasy/playstyle.
I absolutely agree that we have too many "difficulties" in raids. Imo we could have LFR as a story-mode and then Heroic as the true raid experience.
maybe follow gw2 logic. where you have like 50 spells, but , on your bar you can choose a set number. 10 , 12 , 5, , 4 what ever, that would both help with balancing the game and the said classes, while also would follow the rpg logic, expecially for a mage/spell caster, and will also provide the thirst for customaization , were each said warrior will be different than the other. one might have execute. the other might have charge, the other might play with bleeds. and so on .
Was that a mini Asmon? 😅 Great video!
People have to remember that the main purpose of addons is to solve a shortcoming on Blizzard's game design. If players need to use an addon to do RP, implement better RP tools into the game. If players need to use addons for inventory management, implement better inventory management tools, if players need an addon to tell them where they should stand on a fight that has a red background with a red floor against a red boss that links two players with a red tether and after tether breaks it leaves a red puddle on the ground while 4-5 other red effects are happening around you which makes the fight extremely hard to read and comprehend, then change raid design so players aren't forced to use an addon so they know where they should be standing to correctly resolve a mechanic. How is it possible that this multibillion company is somehow unable to resolve issues with their own game that players, not only managed to identify said problems but also design a solution for them?
I disagree with more actions = more rp. I remember Paizo design lead (Pathfinder 2e TTRPG) that the reason why necromancer isnt its own designed class was because the wizard class had too many choices and its really hard to revert it after players have gotten used to "This is how wizards are" and its really shit to have options removed. If we have around 10 spells, i think you would end up with MORE classes and MORE diversity of choice and flavor. Not saying that its good or bad the point asmon made, but i just wanted to add this bit as a counter weight.
1) I think the amount of spells we have now is perfect. Some classes do have a bit of bloat like resto druid or affli lock but if that's a problem for you, there are plenty of classes with a lot less buttons.
2) 40 man should never be a thing in retail, there's a reason why blizz moved away from it straight into the very first xpac. Hell anything below mythic has flex up to 30man and no one ever goes beyond 20-25. I also don't think flex should ever go away for hc and lower cause it just makes raiding at that level a lot more accessible.
As for the single difficulty thing, if they tune it to Ulduar hard mode (like asmon wants) it would be way too easy, if they tune it around hc, it would also be way too easy. If they tune it around mythic early bosses, I think it would be ok but then you end up losing those really cool fights from mythic end bosses and I think I speak for most mythic raiders that we really don't want to lose these really cool, 100+ pulls bosses.
They could let go of nm and hc and turn it into a single difficulty and keep mythic for just cosmetic rewards maybe but I don't think anyone who raids mythic now would still play the game if all that was left was hc, which we clear on week 1 in about 4-5hrs.
3) I think what asmon was targeting there wasn't any of the ones you named and most likely Weakaura. Weakaura is the biggest offender when it comes to addons in high end content. Blizzard has tried to make bosses like Halondrus where WAs don't help you as much and I think that was a success. They also recently tried private auras which made it so some abilities could not be tracked by WAs and players had to basically trigger the WA lists on their end and that was a total failure and made bosses like Smolderon more frustrating. It's clear that blizz is not a fan of WAs but on mythic all raiders fully rely on it, and it does also do a lot more than just help with raiding. I think addons should stay but blizz should do something with WAs so that we can avoid the fights turning into a frustrating mess (like Neltharion was last tier).
I'd rather have 10 spells and give those spells customizations options in a way that they could be used in more than one way, than having 8723 spells that im FORCED to use, for the sake of complexity of the gameplay and personal fantasy appeal to my class.
An example could be something like a dash that also deals good damage, therefore depending on the scenario you can either deal more damage risking not having that extra movility, or waiting for the right moment to spend your cd.
Just my personal take, every opinion shall be respected.
Nah, completely on board with Asmon. It’s not fun when you have to have addons to track 50 different abilities and their cooldowns and have to have 30 rows of icons on the screen for all the redundant abilities strewn across the screen. The number of raiders isn’t really a big deal, but more raiders would be easier not harder to organize. With 40 you can have more room for error, so again I’m with Asmon. And of course the game would eventually be better with no addons because blizzard would be FORCED to actually design their game to be playable. And of course Nixxiom is gonna be biased here, he’s paid by Zygor lmao
40 man raid is way too much
Addons allowed Blizzard to ignore issues with the game like making a customizable UI for 20 years. Its not only about the addons, although making us use 3rd party tools to download and manage them is scummy, its about Blizzard actually updating the game instead of putting the responsibility on the community. How many times do you think Blizzard would be making the same mistakes in design if each time they had to use their own time and money to fix it.
I think you missed Asmond's point. He was talking about making the game more accessible for the middle 80% of players. His point wasn't balancing the game.
He really isnt though, As someone who has watched asmon for years he loves to make the everyman argument but if you really think about his ideas they would make the game even more boring than it can already be and boredom kills MMO's faster than anything. for somebody like him its perfect and ideal but it strips away a lot of what made wow different from ins competitors and what drew people to the game. Go look at any of the MMO's that competed with wow and what you'll find is they did what Asmon talked about and they all lost out to wow, then as wow became king everybody copied wow, then they tried to get rid of the trinity and shake up the wow gameplay system. They all fail, hell even OG FF14 was dog shit then they went in rebuilt the game carbon copying wow and holy shit it takes off.
As far as add ons go I think he was meaning mods that people require you to have just to get an invite.
1. make more buttons, but enemies have immunities and weaknesses that changes your rotation slightly, and eliminating half og the buttons.
2. 40 men raid is cool and should be a baseline, best rading expirience period, and you always can take some pugs in your raid, or it can be perfectly ok to clear it 30 men, also i like 20 men smaller raids like zul gurub
3. no addons, blizzard should implement qol things themselves, or make a moderatable mod shop inside the game.
PS: not defending or arguing asmon, comes from my personal expirience of the best time playing expirience i ever had in classic wow, and i want this game to be like that again.
I think you missed most of asmon's points..
1 10 spells or less - not because of balance, but because combat rotations in endgame retail are way too complex, i'm 65% sure he didn't mean rp spells or flavor spells because he never really talked about it - to make it more approachable to new players
2 raids - well you agree with him anyway so moot point
3 addons - he meant this primarily about the combat addons, especially those that 'solve' the raid fights for you. DBM for example. It's because 1 some features are too powerful and force devs into an arms race with the worlds' firsters and simultaneously make raiding way too difficult for new players - hell, worlds firsters have their own people on payroll to design new addons and weakauras to 'solve' the raid fights. This also forces new players completely out of endgame content if they're uncomfortable or unwilling to install third party code. And moreover if something is essential to beating the game (or essential to getting invited to most guilds) it should be part of official ui, no excuses for the poor indie multi-dollar multibillion blizzard employees please.
pretty much all of his points are geared towards making WoW more approachable for newer players so that the game can start growing again and not be doomed to die.
If you're arguing the points, at least best to do it against the dude's actual reasoning and not guessed ones.
I think the real middle ground for addons is "They are disabled during raids, bg's, and arena." I think those are the parts that should not require addons because one thing asmond is correct about is that it really makes it hard for a new player to get into WoW because we made those addons required to play.
- Things like big debuffs, gladius are all things that blizzard should put in the base game.
- You should not have addons that track other players abilites for you
- You should not have addons that tell you how to beat mechanics, when to time your roto, etc. these are all things that should seperate a good raider from bad.
- Fuck raider IO, even as someone who has a great score this addon does nothing but make the community hate each other.
Alot of this stuff does hurt the end-game experience for veteran, returning, and new players. It wasn't so bad 10 years ago, but basically other people can track literally everything you do, every little mistake, every little thing. You won't find too many new people wanting to deal with that yet alone set it up.
Will this stop me from playing WoW nah, has it made it virtually impossible for some new friends I made who never played wow come over from their current mmo and play. Yep.
As someone who used to love tanking before the rise of dps meters, I would LOVE to see them disappear. Having all the dps competing with each other rather than the dungeon killed tanking for me. I can only hold so much aggro for eff's sake!
Sounds like a skill issue comment, these 2 contexts dont correlate unless you can't hold aggro normally.
"Make everyone OP". We already tried that. It was called BFA and Shadowlands. The two most absolute dogshit expansions in the history of wow, and WoD exists... "If everyone is OP, then no one is OP" has got to be the most braindead sentiment ever. If everyone is OP, then EVERYONE IS OP.
PVP-wise the entire game just devolves into whoever hit their button first wins. 0 counterplay and everything is a 1-shot (much like SoD). PVE-wise they have to constantly ramp up the difficulty to compensate for how broken our characters are, to the point the game isn't even remotely fun to play. Everything just becomes an automatic 1 shot the raid mechanic.
One the spell issue, what about 10 spells per spec? My biggest problem right now with the rogue I've been playing since 2008 is each spec is completely designed around shadowdance burst windows. I miss the days when sin rogue was dots, outlaw was buffs/debuffs, and sub was burst. The benefit of being able to save multiple load outs and change specs between fights is that you can change things up. However the way it is now, each one feels the same so you just end up playing whatever is easiest with the least about of thinking. So to fix that, just make them all a bit more simple. At the end of the day, games are just a button pressing simulator. So how do you make them all feel unique?
I've been role playing since classic and I can tell you from experience that add-ons have objectively made role playing worse. People used to just play their characters and have a good time but stuff like flagRSP, mrp, trp have made people so pretentious. If you go to an rp hub like Cathedral district nobody tells stories or plays their character earnestly anymore, they idle around like model mannequins in a store window while they tap out novel length profiles with voice claims, artsy visuals, stats defining their personality traits, commissioned art, etc, anything but just playing out a scene in the moment. Add-ons were handy for identifying if someone was an rper at a glance but beyond that they've been an utter detriment to the hobby.
IIRC, Blizzard used to have the philosophy that if most people are using an addon, they should just make it part of the game.
As a north carolinian with horrible grass allergies, I 100% commend you for getting out there, it’s already starting to whoop my ass hahaha
I like the rpg elements. From the reaction to the covenant system from shadowlands most players don't. Could be that ppl didn't like how Blizzard did it. However the amount of customization for non meta players was huge in that expansion but barely anyone wanted it.
Why Asmon had right ideas: adding more abilities doesn’t make a character play better. The game got bad when everyone was so focused on parses. Finally, raiding felt significant when there was one tier and you had a large group pulling together. Then again, I felt like the game was best when it was Vanilla
different kind of difficulties are a great way to get every player to experience the raid. Yeah there could be less difficulties like "normal" and "heroic"
Oh shit, it’s the "how would I fix WoW" meta season again, bois.
I got my popcorn and best viewing seat. Let the shenanigans begin
I lived in Calabash NC for 2 years and the pollen is no joke. My black truck got a new paint job of yellow.
A considerable amount of players with *"disabilities"* rely on add-ons to enable them to play, and removing them would alienate that portion of the player base, which would not only lose more players, but make them look like they don't want people with disabilities playing wow, creating a huge PR nightmare which would lose them even more people and goodwill.
OK I'll write a big one🌄🌄🌄
1.) Spells - I think the current state of spells in retail is mad bloated. Buffs, Debuffs, CC's alone are already a huge headache to keep track of/memorize -- especically with how frequently they evolve throughout patch updates. Give us 10 unique ways (max) to apply damage (~3 class / ~7 spec,) and maybe 10 utility/buff/debuff/CC unique spells per class. As I'm typing this answer, I'm realizing how challenging this would be to implement with finesse.
2.) Raid Difficulty - Agreed!
2.5) Raid Size - 20 is solid and should be the norm -- I just think 40 is infinitely cooler, but it should only be for the hardest content. I think at the very least it helps satisfy the "War" fantasy of Warcraft; I didn't beat the Frozen Throne campaign with only 10-25 units!
3.) Addons - While I get why they're there now, all combat statistic addons (damage meters, boss alarms, etc.) gotta hit the road and not come back -- but the caveat here is that the devs would for reals have to overhaul the current combat design, or at least provide a major update to it. All non-combat utility and questing addons are far less corrosive to gameplay imo.
I think the biggest takeaway for me is that if boss mechanics, status effects, and the HUD were all improved in a way that clarified *and* simplified the way players make pulse checks throughout encounters -- I could engage closer to the game as opposed to being disrupted by 3rd party alerts, warnings, and UI during combat.
Normal/Heroic is fine as difficulties.
1. Is a bit challenging, but you can clear it with some effort & preparation, but it's not to tryhardy. And everyone has a chance to run it.
2. Then you have the heroic which is a challenge, more tryhardy, will whoop your ass the first times. Until you eventually progress & finally make it to the end. And you can feel good about that challenge & get better rewards.
I think a single raid difficulty is a very bad take. If you remove all the raid difficulties, then they have to remove story being tied to the raid as well. Not everyone is a mythic level player, normal and heroic is already difficult for some. If you tune the single difficulty to heroic level, what are the RWF and mythic players going to do - they'll kill the raid in a day and then complain there's nothing to do.
I don't know if Asmongold was talking about balance or not. However, I believe that he is right on one point probably not covered in that video. Retail wow is so complex with the amount of spells passive procs and debuffs that you have to track. That it's overwhelming and as someone who started casually playing in WoD PvP is completely not accessible to me at all. Everyone in the lower ranks of Arena cleans me up so fast that I don't even how enough time to know what has happened to me.
Second point I don't agree or disagree with either of you. However, I do believe the gearing system in retail is so far gone from classic that it would be nice if they had one difficulty it might give them time to think about items outside of the item level again.
Third point. If I am not mistaken he was talking about how Blizzard should be making those add-ons in the game. So everybody could have a fair footing. Either way, I completely agree with Asmongold. I hate being required to download a list of add-ons to keep track of things in Endgame. And I hate the fact that Blizzard balances the game around those add-ons. I think they should remove all addons and have the roleplaying addons and stuff in the game.
The question I have to ask when wondering if one difficulty would be good for the game is, would it attract more players than it drives away? I love watching race to world first, though I have to admit it irritates me that I'm just not able to play on the same level as CE players. It makes me feel like I'm always missing out on a big chunk of content. Still, players who are much better than I am could move on from wow in mass if their favorite modes were removed. Having multiple raid modes lets players of different skill levels enjoy the content.
The 40m raid thing, if wow's community weren't already fractured enough, 40m raids would choke out so many potential raid groups. My guild has spent basically all of Amirdrassil not doing mythic because we can't scrounge together 20 people to be available all on the same day. You could say we should try recruiting harder, but that's extra effort that lots of people aren't willing to put in. And then they don't raid, and then they don't resub. It's a snowball effect.
What wow retail could do to save itself is make each step of retail feel more rewarding and less fomo focused. I'm having a blast playing SoD because every time I log on, I feel like I'm accomplishing something. I feel rewarded. Every little skill point feels great. Each mob I kill, the pennies and dimes I earn from quests. I've noticed when I log onto retail lately, I do m+, get no upgrades, and then log in on Tuesday to check my vault and still get no upgrades. I think to myself, "Did I just waste a bunch of time?"
Wow retail doesn't respect our time in a lot of regards. It's gotten better over the years, but between bad instances of fomo and systems intended to keep us grasping at straws for the chance to get a reward, it's not fun. Take me on a journey. Make me feel like I really got something done by the time I log off. The pace of retail is just all over the place.
I disagree with the balance side or your argument. Broken builds are amazing! In single player games. In wow, it doesn't work. Just look at covenants, if paladins are broken and shamans are weak, but I really want to pay a shaman because I like that roleplay or rotation, I won't get into groups like I will with a paladin. Same thing happened with covenants and probably the same with hero talents. I still think they need to have roleplay and style, but balance is also key, it's a tight line and I don't blame Blizzard for not achieving it yet.
They could just think bosses and raids better so they don't require WeakAuras. In Shadowlands for the Dreadlords in Sepulcher you would often get kicked for not having the proper addon, which is bad design on Blizzards part and should not happen.
I disagree with most of your points.
1.A lot of spells and skills sound great but are hard to balance. You need to have good balance. Even SoD showed us that without good balance some of specs like ranged hunter will have hard time finding group even when content is easy. What I would do is create specs to have 5-10 core spells and then 5-10 moze fluff ones like create water or portals. That also means less shitty little procs like in Bfa.
2.I would say 10 man are king of raids. Yes 20 and 40 man look cool but nothing will win over just going online finding 9 other players in maybe 10-15 min and just running raid instead of wasting time finding small village worth of players to then constantly reminding them to talk less on discord during encounters. About tiers i agree it should be just one difficulty that's all.
3.Today addons are necessary and that's bad for the game. New players are afraid if maybe 50 top addons they downloaded won't be enough. I think UI are Ok, but all dbm and bigwigs just make enconters easier so to balance them out blizzard has to make bosses unnecessarily hard for average player. Questing addons are also bad as they handhold players too much. I remember my friend that didn't know anything about story or even names of maps he leveled up and all he said after hiting max lvl was "I just followed addon". It's RPG and a game you are already wasting time so you can level up in normal, unoptimized way and waste extra hour or two without addon.
For addons; No it should ALL go. it shoudnt be a "is this ok or not?" estimate, it should ALL go.
for RP`ers; I def feel for them, thats why blizzard would have to make RP incorporated into the game, maybe hire some of the most popular RP addon makers and get the shit into the actual game, a RP toggle like ff14 has for example.
You shouldn't need to download a whole lot of 3rd party shit just to play a game.
Raiding; I agree with 20 or 10 man raiding, i used to love 10 man raiding, bring it back. As for difficulty, no there should be some sort of hard modes or an additional difficulty. Or maybe something like a super ultra hard raid that comes mid expansion for the hardcores, like ff14 did and only reward a badass cosmetic.
Its also a lot of fun to slowly work towards a goal with friends and after weeks or months finally down that goal. Some people are better and need that additional challenge. Just make it prestigious.
My ret paladin being forced to use spells that looks like hammers when i visualised blades.... true, but why not condense the amount of skills but give the skill different visuals you can swap between?
As a fellow North Carolinian I also hate pollen season both grass and tree I usually have to wear a mask when out and about in it lol. Also fun fact out of all 50 states North Carolina is the worst to live in for allergies lucky us right.
His point with addons was explicitly: remove addons so that it forces Blizzard to add these things into the game.
Since the state of retail is made around the fact people use addons.
I think everyone misunderstood what he meant. 10 keybinds is a better way to put it not abilities
10 keybinds would effectively mean 10 abilities you dope.
@@mobius4247 No it wouldn't. Fluff abilities don't need a keybind. Plus there could be over 40 abilities for a proper class fantasy expression but only 10 can be used simultaneously (different builds)
You are right balancing can be an issue but as you said "in a game of complex abilities" obvious solution make them less complex make less abilities a lot of people don't want 30+ abilities to press a lot which are irrelevant most of the time so why do they even need to be there. More isn't always better and with ability clutter especially so. Having so many abilities scares away a lot of potential New players who don't want that much stuff to deal with most games have no where near the number of abilities WOW does and that is because people want simple games to play. Majority of people don't want to have to download and maintain 17 add-ons and your opinion is biased since you are sponsored by a WOW add-on.
In regards to add-ons, I do think that they should be removed from instanced content. I feel like raids have increasingly been designed with add-ons like DBM and GTFO in mind making them less accessible to the wider audience. That being said Blizzard would need to implement some accessibility feature for players with color blindness, other vision issues, or any other factors that could imped someone from playing the endgame content. The only other changes I would ask for is a focus on story telling. Specifically around characters I loved from the RTS games.
Shadowlands missed some amazing opportunities to bring old characters back. Cairne is one that comes to mind anytime I think about what could have been.
Sometimes i forget that Nixxiom is just a southern boy who was meant for the ice and snow and birthed in the wrong climate. Same bro, same. This grass pollen has had me half blind and unable to breathe all month.
No add ons part of the fun of the game back then was that certain gameplay aspects were clunky making the game a lot harder to figure out and do well in. No more hand holding
I'm gonna disagree that he's thinking of balance.
Most of the time he's speaking from an onboarding perspective.
He's said multiple times that there is too much in the game and no one knows wtf is going on and that's especially hard for new players.
Which I get bc I was a new player in SL.
Having 20+ abilities, having to know all of them for PVP and then covenant abilities on top with multiple per each faction just made keeping track of it all overwhelming.
I do agree class fantasy is important - but is there any reason that those abilities cant just be optional for flavour, or different colours to fit the theme?
Addons is kinda out of context, at that moment he was speaking about raid addons that absolutely autos everything from position to timers for raid cd's ; in pvp you have 1 addon takes half the screen ; world addons on the other hand I consider to be fine.
Also 40 man raids means there is more space to bring other classes/people not just the "meta" and also that raids are more accesible ( I don't mean everyone should be able to kill Mythic Fyrakk) , just more involvement and rather easier content (which doesn't has to be created with addons in mind by Blizz).
I dont like to convoluted Damage rotations, but i do like utility skills.
Hey Nixxiom keep up the great content, one take I feel like you need to think about is the add-on issue. The types of addons that you refer to such as for RP and overall quality of life should be added to the game by the developers in an official format and the mods should be done away with. It is impossible to get any of my friends to play WoW because of the addons, you literally are not allowed in end game groups unless you have specific addons... it is a joke and is the thing that made all 11 friends I tried to get into WoW to cancel their subscription.
I think wow needs to do three things: remove addons, make the open world more challenging, and stop being so formulaic.
Addons just bog the game down, they make the ui look awful and create a barrier to entry for new players.
I never played vanilla but when I played classic hc it felt great feeling forced to make groups to conquer regular quests, quests in retail are too much of a solo expirience.
Every wow expansion since legion pretty much boils to the same thing over and over. Give us more mage towers, timeless isles, or something completely different.
1. I would like 10 core combat/utility abilities and then have any number of fun/rp skills
2.15 man, 2 difficulties
3. Between all addons or no addons I am on the side of no addons
Addon bloat is one of my biggest gripes with the game. Yes, all your "non-essential" or "supportive" addons make them game more customizable or easier in certain respects. But my argument is that if they're that important to you, you should push to have the functionality be part of the game. When I play nowadays, I don't want to have to download half a dozen to a dozen addons just to get the game to play a certain way. That's ridiculous.
I personally like WoW 99% the way it is now. I've been using LFR for raiding since it came out in patch 4.3. I have only done 4 raids outside of LFR since I started playing in WoTLK and I've done 100s of LFR raids. I don't use addons so having them is a bonus to players that want them. I like the number of spells I have now in WoW and wouldn't mind having more as long as the game doesn't get harder for LFR, dungeons and Open world quest. I wish they had 4+ tiers of raiding for every expansion, new exciting Epic & Random BGs and added checkbox for players that want queue to fight in Epic & Random BGs at one iLevel.
The edit at 7:27 was insanely smooth and satisfying lol
The biggest way I'd fix WoW is make content from older exapansions relevant again. It should be World of Warcraft, but right now it feels like Island of Warcraft because the Dragon Isles are the only place in the game that matters.
1) They should scale the whole world up and give you reasons go to other continents. Maybe add secrets and stuff to find like Season of Discovery to give you a reason to just go exploring out in the world.
2) Add an option to scale down and do ANY old dungeon or raid. They have timewalking, so why not make it available all the time, rather than just a seasonal event, and make it apply to all dungeons and raids from event past expansion. Kind of like FFXIV's roulette system. Then just add some good rewards to for doing old content and boom, legacy content is an endgame pillar
I feel like a lot of the "remove all addons" crowd just doesnt understand the purpose of modding. They dont exist because Blizzard "is too lazy to add better costumization" - they exist because it would be literally impossible to implement something that pleases everyone. Each person has their own preference and idea as to how their UI should look and I seriously dont understand why you wouldn't allow that to happen?
This also ties into other addons, such as TRP3. A lot of people genuinely do not care for roleplay, while others only have the game to do it. Why should it be forced down the other side's throat? Why take away freedom to choose what you want your game to look like?
I think removing all addons is too extreme, I agree. I do think blizzard has the ability and power though to block certain functions that makes things like WeakAuras so overly powerful. Same goes for DBM. They can both be useful for accessibility reasons and comfort, and also not give any edge.
Second point. I don’t think it matters 20. 40 or even 100 man raid. The part where you have to manage really depends on the difficulty. Asmon has said before that he wanted 40 man raid but make it easier. Personally I can enjoy both 13/20/40 man raid. Just feel like you missed the point again when you said it’s hard to organize. Coz it would had been function differently like he said.
Though Nixxi don't forget that the more spells we have the more complicated the gameplay becomes and ofc people as always will try to minmax the shit out of it and we'd end up with useless spells that no one uses and no one would play with you as you are now a troll with negative damage. Therefore, Blizzard has to put extra effort and time to Balance which can be put into something else more original.
IMO to fulfill the fantasy, we should get class skins and spell skins, a mage is not just Fire Frost and Arcane; a mage has magic and magic can be anything; the damage can remain the same as well as the rotation, but cool spell skin features can make us more Unique without hurting the game balance.
Imo Having 10 Spell that has 10+ Customizable talent for each spell like last Epoch or Poe Is Better Than Having 20 Spell That has 1-4 Customizable talent for each spell That Fills Your 4 Action bar!
When he said to reduce the number of buttons and spells, he didn't mean to make the game more accessible for newcomers. Because WoW is struggling from no new people coming on board and old players dropping off. If you watch a WoW stream as a potential new player you'll see a UI with 40 buttons and are instantly overwhelmed. While there is an audience for that, this audience is playing the game already and steadily dropping off (as mentioned previously).
Judging by your response to his suggestions, you haven't put in the research to understand what he actually means and you're just putting out your gut reaction to the raw points.
3:55 this point is absolutely fcking stupid, because it should be flex no 40 or 20 :D
They players are mostly the same but we're 20 years older, we've got families, responsibilities and the gaming landscape in general has changed. No one likes being benched, but fixed group sizes means you'll have to get benchies to fill. Just make it flex, the barrier to entry for mythic raiding for instance is not the difficulty, it's the bullshit around it.
What you don't realize is that, if you can' flex, everybody does 20s and nobody does 40s because there's just 0 reason for it. 40s being reserved for the main tier / main raid would be the best idea.
@@warmanreaper what you don't realize is that if you can't flex a significant amount of people just don't fcking raid. :D
That's my point mythic isn't exclusive because of it's difficulty, it's exclusive because of the management bullshit around it. Raidleaders/GM's quite because of the management overhead not because they don't like raiding or leading the team. Guilds disband because they can't field the steady 20 man and don't want to have bench warmers that don't get to enjoy the game
I like flex. I prefer 25man hard 10man normal though; it gives more clear tuning goals for both difficulties while giving smaller groups something to do.
That said, there were times in SoD where someone would be the odd-man-out...11/10 people wanting to raid...so I'd be ok with flex as well. Don't think Blizzard will ever make the hardest difficulty flex though, since they know top-end raiders will try to min-max the perfect number for each fight.
Personally, those top raiders can do whatever they want, but Blizzard is obsessed with them...and ultimately they are why this entire discussion falls on deaf ears. : \
I have to strongly disagree with ALL of Asthmaboy's "suggestions."
1) This is completely unnecessary. A lot of spells come for the talent trees. If you want less spells taking action bar slots, then pick more passive talents.
2) No, just no. Having multiple difficulty settings is a good thing. WoW isn't Dark Souls. Those games only need one difficulty because they're after a specific audience. The "MMO" stands for *Massively Multiplayer Online.* It is designed for massive appeal like it or not. Removing options would hinder this. LFR is how me, and a bunch of players, get to experience raid content. It allows a lot of players to do this content on their time, instead of having to rework their whole IRL schedules just to "make it to raid." Let's not forget all the stories of people being kicked from guilds just IRL responsibilities popped up on raid night.
3) Absolutely not. Add-ons provide a great many quality of life improvements. Many that I don't trust Blizzard to implement well into the core game.
Frankly my suggestion to improve WoW right now would be if Asmongold removed himself from the game and community. Maybe it will give him time to finally clean his room.
Pollen particles are smaller than the weave in the fabric, btw, so you could actually be trapping pollen against your face, and making things worse than they would be without the mask, or whatever you call that thing on your face.
Also, final fantasy is better. :)
Addons are not fine though. Every example you mentioned only makes it worse for new people without those addons. TSM / any ah addon is basically cheating / lite botting that makes new people not able to even play AH. Stuff like bagon is bad because that is amount of time person without it is organizing their bags, that people with it don't need to. Marking prices / gathering spots for mats is also bad / cheating because again, people without it are at way bigger disadvantage trough artificial means. And looking at resources outside the game is a lot different than having those integrated into the core game itself.
In games like cs2 or dota 2 althuogh there is a lot of outside resources that will make you better, ther isn't really anything inside the game that affects your performance as much as addons do in wow in unfair advantage, and the things that do are actually called cheats (dota 2 has dota plus subscription soo i can say in that one it isn't as clear).
Also 40 man raids, game can be designed for 20 people but allow you to bring extra players. Imagine how less of a headache it would be to be bale to bring extra support / friends to play without worrying. Only reason why 40 man is pain for setup is becaus a) blizz designed raids to be unbearable 1 mistake = entire raid 1 shot bs. And 2 ) because people are min-maxing try hards. For me i remember playing mythics in legion with roster of around 28~ish people. And how we would have not bad players, but the ones that just couldn't be as good in the game as others due to irl commitements soo they got benched a lot. With the 40 man but desing for less you just allow people to bring more friends without needing to worry about wiping the raid (unless you try-hard but then it's your problem)
As a person who has literally never logged in to WoW, even on the day of vanilla release, without add ons, I think Asmongold is right. It's proven to be an impossible task to balance players that use them, and players that don't. They have to consider both groups, when they make content, and the results have been an unmitigated disaster.
I'd argue that WoW is an RPG in name only... unless you play on an RP realm. I guess technically it is a RPG, you roll a class and you "RP" as that class while you kill monsters, but you know what I mean. thre is no dialog with npcs or anything, you take a quest, where the npc is voiceless or worse, a one liner and you get on with your day. I have higher expectations for my RP games.
My takes, going on for both:
1. l haven't played since BFA, hence idk how many spells/abilities classes have nowadays, however, l disagree with both. 10 abilities is too few, and just shoving MORE abilities for the sake of RP and customization would just be a nightmare all around. Your rotation would consist of 20+ situational abilities that would be a pain in the ass to follow. A good middle ground is required with some conditional spells that may be required for certain actions and/or Easter Eggs, like the Mind Control-able goblin in BWL that teaches miners about smelting in classic.
2. Asmon probably went for 40 because as a popular streamer it would be a piece of cake to organize several 40 man raid groups in minutes, which is why l agree with your take on this, 20 sounds good. Maybe even 25 idk.
3. l think he meant it more like "l shouldn't have to download 300+ addons/plugins in order to play the game". ln that case l think FF14 did it best, prohibiting ALL addons so everyone is on a level playing field, but adding QoL improvements that were introduced as addons at some point or other.
Honestly I agree with all of Asmon's point just with minor adjustments.
1. All classes should have 10 or so buttons. I believe this is in regard to bloated rotations like the infamous Arcane spec Mage and in terms of classes feeling unique I believe pruning abilities helps with the design for devs creating abilities that feel less samey with other classes. This also helps with making ease to understand how to play a class better by making a "easy to play; hard to master" design with em. However I wouldnt necessarily make the 10 button thing a hard requirement, like I believe every class should vary in the amount of buttons you need to hit on your rotation. For the rpg aspect tho, I dont count utility abilities for each class and many of those should still be kept for the sake of its own brand of class fantasy.
2. Only have 40 Man raids and only one difficulty. The only adjustment I would make is for the devs to design a 40 Man and a 20 Man raid in conjunction. I feel that 40 Man raids should be made somewhat easy so that any casual dad gamer can clear them but still challenging enough where you still need to pay attention to mechanics. The whole reason why some are still adamant of 40 Man raiding is due to the spectacle of having so many people tackle a boss, which I think its a good want. 20 Man raids should be the harder of the two and these obviously should be the ones that you cant queue up for and you most likely need to be in a guild to raid with.
3. Remove all addons. This has got to be the most misconstrued point Ive seen around the community as it feels like they're actively missing the point and context behind this take. Removing addons DOES NOT EQUAL REMOVE ALL UTILITY AND QOL FEATURES FROM THE GAME. What this take means is that we want the devs to be held accountable to design their game to be playable and highly customizable for every player to be able to play the game RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX. Addons are one of the biggest barriers of entry for players since you are forced to go out of the game to download bullshit in order to play the game properly. This is terrible game design and what the addon culture has created is a culture where the players have dictated the game design to be centered around something that should've been optional and the devs being complacent on fixing the game.
I believe all the QoL addon features should be within the game itself and any extra RP UI utility such as TRP or Narcisissus or Storyline/Immersion should be an in-game feature at this point.
Like seriously Blizzard just hire many of these addon dev teams so that they can be officially put into the game and just nuke the whole addon culture. Addons should be a thing for single player games where nobody would care but for an MMO where balance and content is in constant flux and ever evolving, this is just something that should not be present in the game.
I think there is something to take from both sets of opinions, not necessarily for WoW, but for any role-playing game:
Having a ton of spells is great for customization and thus enhances role-playing, and the unique combinations that arise are definitely fun, but especially in Classic where you need to buy spells for gold, you cannot really experiment with different combinations before settling on one, as you never get back that gold you could have otherwise spent on flying. You cannot really afford trying out them all, so perhaps it would be nice having a "basic" tier of really cheap spells but fine on average for everyone, and "advanced" tier for spells that are more expensive but customized. Overall I prefer games which have detailed and well thought-out systems that are however not forced upon people who are simply not into that kind of stuff. Give advanced choices to people who want advanced choices.
As for raids, I see absolutely no point in doing the same instance over and over. How is killing a powerful baddie only to do it again next week immersive? Have big raids in terms of bosses, not in terms of players, so that it takes multiple weeks to conquer them fully, and you get the full reward. Nothing wrong with having difficulties for a certain number of players, but no point in making them tiered ‒ the more players, the bigger the total reward, but each player should still get the same amount of it.
As for addons... I don't like when a certain addon becomes the "standard" that you "should" use, whether that are just unnecessary interface modifications or something that gives you information other players can't see... that should either be visible in the game already (like map coordinates for example), or simply unavailable to obtain in any way. But boy the fun I had with GHI, even though the whole nature of it was virtual, it was amazing. It would be so nice to have a way to create customized items, like in LotRO where you can inscribe a name to a crafted item.
For someone like me who plays with one hand, I would rather have less spells to cast. Not more.
I liked 25 people raiding. 40 is just way too much, it is a nightmare to schedule and with that many people, you are bound to have salties leave because someone got X and not them.
Spells, I do think that there is a spell bloat in WoW but not "10 spelld per class max" either. I think there should be a decent way to reduce the overall amount of spells without going down to that few.
Addons... if only the default UI and functions were good. the default UI is clunky at best, and sometimes unusuable. the default auction house is a nightmare to use, and you nailed it right on the head when you said that bagnon was harmless, the bags are so bad. You are also right that guides, and I'll add WeakAuras are very benificial. The default UI has either too much, or too little visible information and WAs really help with making the important stuff more visible.
Hes not saying get rid of addons, full stop. Hes saying that addons lead to blizzard leaving something for the addon community to fix. If addons didnt exist, it would force blizzard to remedy the problems the addons solve themself instead. Instead of needing bagnon, or dbm, or recount, blizz should be building these functions onto the game.
The first point is absolutely wrong by Asmongold. This is what actively ruined Wow as an RPG game and was a personal pet peeve of mine.
When the min maxers started to be very vocal and control the meta, the developers acknowledged it and then basically made it the only way to play.
the 10spell only thing feels like hes taking the systems from ESO or GW2 and pasting them into WoW without undertsanding the nuances that make GW2 and ESO good, they may only let you have 5 to 10 skills on a bar but the depth of classes goes far beyond that with multiple choices and build potentials, so that could work in wow but we would still need more than 10 total
the new system of heroic talents is a step towards that by altering existign abilities instead of just adding new ones
addons well ok so UI addons for unit frames and health bars I think its fine for these to stay, but some really need to go
all raids and dungeons are designed with the intent that players SHOULD use addons, all of them from the ground up if you dont use raid addons for callouts etc. it sucks, it is a miserable exiricnace, WoW needs to standardise raid effects so we know red circle = bad and green = safe, much like GW2 does things because there is so many varied spell effetcs going off its very hard to know whats going on if you dont have a raid addon
raid dificulty nah having a "easy" medium" "hard" is fine, all mmos do this all games ever made do this, its fine, its a way to let people see content and a way to challange everyone with soemthing sure its also to make soemthign last longer without making 5 different raids just for one tier and only seeing 10 people go the highest,as for 40 man only, I mean have a cap of 40 man and then letting it scale up to that with health/damage etc. would be good so a guild of 12 friends can do it without having to pug 13 randoms.
As far as addons go, playing pservers without NeatPlates was such a hard adaptation. The default blizzard nameplates or any other modified nameplate... they all just look so bad and aren't clean and (sorry for the pun) neat. However, I can see where stuff like DBM, WeakAuras, and Questie are viewed as cheating. What's the point of playing classic, where the entire point is the adventure, and then just using google maps to find your way around. It's gross.
I’ve been a healer since 2007, without addons I would never heal again.
remove all add-ons? what about total roleplay which everyone on rp servers uses?
edit: annnnnnnnnnnd you mentioned it ty lol
Asmon actually does mean every single addon he has had that opinion for years at this point and he has given his reason for it. The short version is that he just believes that addons like bagon and RP addons should just be added into WoW as a base feature instead of being addons.
40 man is really hard to get with matching 40 peoples schedule.
I'm 100% against the 40 man just because its a nightmare to get this much people. His 10 skill argument is about rotation. The addon thing? I'm totally in favor, fuck all addons, remove every single one of them.
I agree with your take on these suggestions, but also addons help people who are disabled access some aspects of the game with more ease. As for the pollen, the next month or so is going to brutal, good luck
Sorry dude but I never disagreed with anyone so hard before. I also would like to play as who ever it is I want to play. That's why I'd love to play as a Death Knight the most, it's my favorite class fantasy in the entire game. Which class I NEVER mained in my entire WoW career you might ask? A Death Knight. I NEVER played as a DK and I probably never will unless they rework him entirely from the ground up and make him a class that doesn't push 100 buttons on 3 different keyboards for living. I have an MMO mouse with side buttons just for WoW and it's still goddamn too annoying to play as a DK.
You want lots of spells to choose from, but you will end up playing the meta if you want to be competitive.
25 is my favorite number for raids
Addons are the main reason I stuck with WoW and left the dozen of other MMOs I tried. I love customizing and modding games.
Why are streamers suddenly going after the livelihood of addon programmers?
lfr IS NEEDED cause there is a big fat door to content called OTHER PEOPLE, as long as another person is deciding if another can play its not open to everyone.
You missed the point of less abilities. The argument was from complexity not balance. New players can't get into the game because of how complex and bloated it is. Less abilities equals less of a learning curve. Gw2 has a limited action bar and is super fun...more abilities does not equal more fun. Love the content keep it up.
When he talks about removing add ons he wants a scorched earth policy and for blizzard to add the ones people want.
Honestly, I think asmongold hit the nail on the head there in terms of addon bloat. It seems, nowadays, like there's an addon for everything and if you DON'T use the addon, then you're just straight-up missing something critical.
I 100% agree parses should be removed. Its made the game far too sweaty even at mid-core. Its spread to classic , cant even get into BFD cuz of em. Ultimately it ruins the game and doesnt matter much in the end anyways. If you want the top parse you gotta be propped and cheese tf outta the fight.
I agree with asmon about addons things like questie should already be in the game not a addon and honestly in terms of addons like zygor and rested xp which give the best leveling path are just wierd because if you want to level fastest spam dungeons if you want to experience the world having a leveling addon is the least natural way to do that sometimes they dont even have you complete quest lines in zones.
The addon issue is that it takes away from the base game, because the devs design the base game with the idea that every player will have all 10 different addons installed n set up
Its too over saturated n stuffed
sup with the 911 sign in the woods?
nice woods btw
You are so right about this. Asmon's take was such bs. Glad someone brought it up.