Comments on: Beta 9014 Feral changes, and I rant a bit

By: Flaime

Flaime — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:18:14 +0000

I would love to go get my feedback on the beta forums. Unfortunately, I’m not in the beta and they are ignoring the PTR forums completely.

I still have 2 primary concerns – 1) druids will have to do 40 respecs a week to level, because bear solo survivability is suspect and 2) nobody will want druid tanks because they are too hard to keep up.

By: Qix

Qix — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:11:41 +0000

In the beta, the numbers they get are not necessarily reported by testers. They just litterally troll the combat logs of each kind of tank and compare the numbers and come up with mean averages. If warriors, paladins, and deathnights all take 1,000,000 average damage from a specific encounter, and you put those numbers up against bears and bears only take 800,000 damage, and the mechanic wasnt purposely set that way, then bears are more powerful. They can do this with every number (tank numbers are damage taken/dodged/parried/blocked/heals and threat). Pretty much everything in the game goes into a database, how do you think they do a restore after a hack? They just have a program to amalgamate that data into something that can be used to compare in a general sense.

We’ve ALL played with better and worse tanks/healers/dps. You just need a lot of numbers to find an average. The 3.0.x patch is going to provide the best data for them for balancing issues, moreso than they can get on the beta servers now.

When I beta test I never worry about class balance, I pick classes that will be fun to play, and proceed to try and break stuff. Can I fall off the world? can I swim off the map? Can i kill the same boss over and over for a rare drop, well above my level for free cash and uber loot? ( Im looking at you troll chief outside silvermoon! ) Class balance is ongoing, but world crashing bugs? Thats epic fail to miss ;)

Im looking forward to seeing what is coming for my druid/warrior/hunter/mage/warlock/priest but Im not even remotely concerned about the beta changes. But the day it goes live, Ill be on wowhead and wotlk wiki for most of the day before i even log in. Until then, I might as well be reading the enquirer for all its accuracy for me :)

By: Xathras

Xathras — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:03:38 +0000

Hear hear!
I play a hunter in live and the beta and I can barely stand to visit the beta hunter forums. The amount of whining makes me think I’m reading a mage forum ;)
Please people, whatever class you play. Be patient, intelligent and reasonable. Anger helps nothing.

By: Ursiheil

Ursiheil — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:35:49 +0000

Thank you, BBB! Finally someone else gets it that Blizzard is the only party who has all the data. And that they are trying to produce a fun and entertaining balenced game for multiple play styles.

Also thank you for not posting knee jerk reactions to all the beta builds for druid tanks… you last post on wowinsider was the most benifical post on the 3.0 topic to date. Keep up the good work!

By: Tesh

Tesh — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:15:23 +0000

ARA, the sense of investment in an avatar is one of the double edged swords that makes WoW such a beast. (Both good and bad.) It’s a big part of the addictiveness of the game, but it does indeed make people think in strange ways and feel entitlement or offense when neither is appropriate. I’m not sure there’s a way around it for Blizzard… which is probably why they don’t sweat the whining much. ;) At the end of the day, those people tend to keep their subs running anywho, so as long as Bliz makes enough content to keep them playing, they can whine all they want.

By: Thunderpaw

Thunderpaw — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:29:14 +0000

Actually, it’s a percentage of your “base” mana. Your mana pool when totally naked. Once you in add in your gear, your total pool will skyrocket. A druid’s shapeshifting cost is based on this, and if you check… it’s not a percentage of your mana as you shift gear around, it remains static for a given level.

It’s worrisome.

By: Toon

Toon — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:44:27 +0000

Mana issues….less INT on gear. Since a lot of the mana cost is now based on the % of mana pool you have. Does it really matter how big uour mana pool is? Doesn’t matter if your mana pool is 100 vs a billion..its still gonna cost you a certain % of total mana. It gets really sticky when some spells are % mana-based and some are mana-defined cost.

Just give me back my Armor multiplier and health pool, b/c parrying and blocking w/ my paws will hurt.

By: ARA

ARA — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:23:49 +0000

Couldn’t agree more with you! Yes it is rather dicey for those reasons, but what can you do? Its not a perfect world, and software cant be perfect. GC made a post when she mentioned staff at Blizzard making “heroic efforts” to make the expansion excellent – and I believe them. Who knows if we’ll still be viable at late endgame content thats un-beta tested right now. Blizzard dont know, but I know they really care.

One theory for whining I came up with just now: its an avatar driven game, and too many players identity their RL selves with their virtual toons. Therefore their sense of who they are is threatened every time Blizz make a code change. “Who I am” is at the mercy of some reckless programmer at Blizzard who doesnt understand ME. Because its all about ME, and not about an avatar, you take every little change personally… which tends to bring out the whiner in all of us. Anyway, thats my pet theory for the day, totally off topic…

By: Stobnor

Stobnor — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:16:59 +0000

Overall, I’m kidding… Mainly because the “drive” behind people who would put enough effort into end-game raiding in Beta is such that they could never hold back! But also because, regardless of what players might think, the developers (and the overall company) are smart and do know what they’re doing…

But the interesting thing about Beta (like in all software developments, really) is that the feedback out of it is very much limited by the users in the Beta programme…

In order to believe that the balance of the final product is “correct”, one has to assume that every class, and every variant of the class, is represented at an appropriate skill level within the Beta – and have to assume that the people analysing the data out of it are able to factor in/out the skills required… Equally there will be models they use in order to do straight “effectiveness calculations”, based on the “normal” attack rotations of people in those classes…

Personally, I’m always amazed by the general whining in WoW forums – across the board almost everything is complained about by someone and that someone then generates a huge amount of “Me too” comment… I always come back to the fact that… It’s a GAME… And not all things are ever created equal…

Anyway, sorry for the suggestion that distortions might be introduced!

By: Doncuailnge

Doncuailnge — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 18:13:38 +0000

“I do NOT want to see people going on to that thread and exploding into whining little QQ fests.”

Triple B, you’re overly optimistic today. :-)