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#102 Nov 10 2013 at 4:56 PM Rating: Excellent
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-This is where the paradox issue comes into play. The Dark Portal now is connected to two worlds. Blown up Draenor (aka Outlands) and Draenor (what Blizz as shown us so far).


From what I remember reading there will be a portal in Caverns of Time that will take you to the BC Outland. It is extremely complicated regardless how you slice it though and really feels like a ham-fisted expansion to get some old faces back into play.
#103 Nov 10 2013 at 9:27 PM Rating: Excellent
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Hmm....

The end justifies the means, maybe?

lol.

If it has awesome gameplay and acceptable story, minor plotholes can be hand-waved.
#104 Nov 11 2013 at 7:42 AM Rating: Good
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Lyrailis wrote:
If it has awesome gameplay and acceptable story, minor plotholes can be hand-waved.

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#105 Nov 11 2013 at 12:44 PM Rating: Excellent
He said minor, not crater sized plot holes, which seems to be what you are expecting. Smiley: tongue
#106 Nov 11 2013 at 1:16 PM Rating: Good
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PigtailsOfDoom wrote:
He said minor, not crater sized plot holes, which seems to be what you are expecting. Smiley: tongue


Fact.

Then again, precedent is increasingly on my size. WoW's plot holes just get bigger and bigger with time...
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#107 Nov 11 2013 at 3:46 PM Rating: Excellent
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
PigtailsOfDoom wrote:
He said minor, not crater sized plot holes, which seems to be what you are expecting. Smiley: tongue


Fact.

Then again, precedent is increasingly on my size. WoW's plot holes just get bigger and bigger with time...


Meh.

I try not to judge anything until I see it.

If it plays out in-game OK, and if it isn't TOO unbelievable and if it is presented well, it probably won't bother me too much.

This is true, Especially if I'm having fun while playing the game. With the Garrisons, and the Timeless Isle-like discoveries, and a "revamp" of the leveling experience (they mentioned a fast-paced 'romp through the zones'), if all of that is done right, and done well then I doubt the plotholes will be that glaringly obvious. They'll be there, of course, but they are more easily handwaved when you're having a blast discovering new stuff, building your garrison, etc.
#108 Nov 13 2013 at 11:59 PM Rating: Excellent
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Interesting development concerning flying in WoD.
There's a lot of discussion about flying/not-flying and I'd like to try to sum things up and maybe realign the discussion a bit. Some of the other threads are near-cap, some have really gone down tangents, so I'm just picking this one to throw a reply into. Apologies to the other threads.

We intend to disallow flying while leveling from 90 to 100, and have flying become available again in the first major patch for Warlords of Draenor. No flying while leveling has been the case during Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Mists of Pandaria. We allowed flying during Cataclysm because as those zones were mixed-in with the 1-60 world it just would have been really jarring to dismount you as you fly into Hyjal, etc. but we would have disallowed it for Catalcysm zones as well if there was a reasonable solution there.

Flying trivializes combat. A lot of people like to say we're trying to force world PvP, or that we just really want people to look at the pretty trees we made, but those really aren't the reasons that drive this same decision we've made every expansion. Flying allows you to escape or enter combat at-will. There's a reason why flying isn't allowed in dungeons and raids, or battlegrounds and arenas, and that's because it would trivialize the core mechanic of the game in those areas - combat. For much the same reason it trivializes how content is approached in the outdoor world based on the simple fact that you can lift off and set down wherever you like.

So that's the main reason. But sure there are a lot of other problems it can cause for content design such as zones having to get a lot bigger because flying mounts can travel so quickly (and thus making ground travel in them take much longer), it reduces the impact of elevation within zones, it completely removes the ability for us to pace or present content in any structured way, and in general removes our ability to determine how and when players approach a situation, see a vista or location, or charge into/out-of a combat situation. It just greatly reduces any gameplay we want to create by allowing infinite choice in how content is approached to best suit a player's intention to (usually) avoid that content.

I totally sympathize with people's desire to do that, they want to be efficient and have it be their choice, but we have to balance our intent to create a game against creating a sandbox where anything goes. There's a happy medium there somewhere, but flying mounts in most cases just do too much to undermine too many of our core intentions with the game world, the basis of the game: combat, or guiding players through a game experience, and for those reasons we have continually chosen (when we could) to disallow flying mounts in the 'current' outdoor content. In the past that's meant only while leveling, but in our experiences with the Isle of Thunder and Timeless Isle we feel like we can extend that for a bit longer in the new content, and have it be kind of a big deal again once you're able to earn flying in the first big content patch, and in the meantime putting focus on flight paths as well as having some more interesting travel options for players to use.


This is quite intriguing to me. I wonder what would prevent flying until 6.1. Not that it bothers me that much. I enjoyed running around on my mount while leveling in Pandaria.
#109 Nov 14 2013 at 1:21 AM Rating: Good
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I feel like, more and more, Blizzard regrets adding flying mounts.
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#110 Nov 14 2013 at 6:16 AM Rating: Excellent
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No Flying wouldn't be so bad if they wouldn't insist on having ridiculous numbers of irrelevant aggressive trash mobs that keep dazing you and knocking you off your mount (something they really should get rid of already).

They need to just knuckle up and realize that players don't want to fight irrelevant trash mobs.

Also, some Terrain Design tends to be outright horrible. Dragonblight comes to mind with all of its sheer cliff faces and huge areas that are packed with aggressive mobs that you can't really just rush through unless you're playing a tank at the time (who cannot be dazed therefore cannot be knocked off their mount except for very certain special situations).

Or, how about the Timeless Isle? Are you down by the Monkey's Treasure Chests and you happen to look up and notice that rare elemental is up on the bridge?

Guess what? You have 0% chance of getting to it because it will be long since dead by the time you make that HUGE circle around to get up there.

If they want us to not fly for a whole freaking content patch, then they need to design these zones with a bit better logistics between areas and fix the flight paths so that they actually connect more, and have less circling around everything.
#111 Nov 14 2013 at 6:20 AM Rating: Excellent
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Not being able to fly till maxlevel is more than enough. I have plenty to do ingame without being inconvenienced by stupid trivial things on every corner. Smiley: mad
#112 Nov 14 2013 at 7:53 AM Rating: Good
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IDrownFish of the Seven Seas wrote:
I feel like, more and more, Blizzard regrets adding flying mounts.


Honestly, I've regretted them adding flying mounts for a long time.

Blizzard spends so much time and money developing their landscapes. It's a big asset.

Then they create a system that ensures players never experience any of that. Then they up the speeds to the point where most of the environment doesn't even load for most users.

Now, there's no immersion in zones at all. It's a whole lot of wasted money at that point. Just bad from a branding perspective.

And when we're talking about the design of terrain, they've been trying to design with flying mounts in mind, but it still just doesn't work. Think Hyjal - it was essentially a vertically-oriented zone. But you didn't really get to experience the landscape, and you spent way too much time flying into things or off into the distance.

To be clear, I don't think Blizz could remove flying mounts now. But I definitely think the game was much healthier without them.
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#113 Nov 14 2013 at 8:13 AM Rating: Excellent
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Update concerning flying mounts.
So a couple things I wanted to bring up in addition to what I posted earlier. The first was that we're of course refining our questing experience, you may have heard a bit about it from BlizzCon, and that expands to max level content as well. In Mists of Pandaria there was quite a bit of outdoor content at max level, but it was almost entirely in the form of dailies. From BlizzCon we shared we're looking to provide something quite a bit more story driven like the 5.1 Operation Shieldwall/Dominance Offensive with some of the exploration lessons we learned from the Timeless Isle, and that extends to the max level experience as well. We want the transition at max level not to be questing and story to a harsh "now you do dailies", but something that's more natural and feels a lot like the leveling experience just at max level for better reward. And so that goes back to all of the reasons I gave before about how flight interrupts some of the core mechanics we think present the best leveling and questing experience, and I thought it'd be good to point out that it'll also play a big role at max level due to our questing refinements.

The second thing is we really like when flying feels like a reward and something you've earned for each new expansion or area. It's such a powerful ability and we look back at BC (at least for epic riding) or Wrath and those were really big keystone achievements for us as players (mainly because they had some pretty huge gold costs on them...). Regardless of the unlock method though it was one of the bigger moments when you unlocked flying, took to the skies, and were able to see the world from an entirely different vantage because for most of us it wasn't easily attainable. Our plan has been to recapture some of that but make it a bit cooler, and while we don't have specifics just yet, it'll be something more involved than just paying gold; something that further emphasizes how powerful flight is. Unlocking it won't just be level 100 on the day 6.1 comes out with some gold, but something you'll be working toward over the course of the initial expansion release, and 6.1 will introduce the final steps to complete it. Think of something like a mini Legendary cloak quest. It's such a enormous power to be able to fly we really want it to be more of a key moment when you unlock it, and something that feels like an accomplishment more than just shelling out some gold like we've had in the past.

Anyway, I felt like those two things were worth spelling out.


Yay for quest gating to fly? Now I am really interested on the game lore why we won't be able to fly until we complete certain quests.
#114 Nov 14 2013 at 1:09 PM Rating: Excellent
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Criminy wrote:
U
Yay for quest gating to fly? Now I am really interested on the game lore why we won't be able to fly until we complete certain quests.


Because you need to get the flux capacitor before you can fly the time machine, dur.
#115 Nov 14 2013 at 3:47 PM Rating: Good
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My main gripe with MoP traveling was that the ground pathing was terrible. Giant mountains and walls everywhere. Good lord, just going to the portal hub was terrible. You had to not only go there, but you also had to first go to that other temple to unlock the event that allows you to get into the Vale in the first place. And you HAD to do it on EVERY character, because you wouldn't have access to VP/JP vendors if you didn't.

Whoever came up with the idea of putting said VP/JP vendors in the middle of ******* nowhere, away from flight paths, atop walls, across water... die in a fire. I'm done with that ****.
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#116 Nov 14 2013 at 6:07 PM Rating: Excellent
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teacake wrote:
Criminy wrote:
U
Yay for quest gating to fly? Now I am really interested on the game lore why we won't be able to fly until we complete certain quests.


Because you need to get the flux capacitor before you can fly the time machine, dur.


Obviously.

Edit: CinemaSins just posted an Everything Wrong With Back To The Future video on Youtube. Smiley: lol

Edited, Nov 14th 2013 7:09pm by Criminy
#117 Nov 14 2013 at 8:33 PM Rating: Default
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
IDrownFish of the Seven Seas wrote:
I feel like, more and more, Blizzard regrets adding flying mounts.


Honestly, I've regretted them adding flying mounts for a long time.

Blizzard spends so much time and money developing their landscapes. It's a big asset.


While I agree, what I said above still stands -- they need to design the landscapes to where you can ENJOY them, instead of designing them to where you feel like something exists only to annoy you (steep cliff faces forcing you to travel 5x as far to clear any given distance). They need more roads, more ramps, to get from Point A to Point B without so much annoyance. Again, Timeless Isle. 1 and only 1 way to get up on that Hill and it involves travelling miles, past mobs that stunlock you when you try to ride past them. Nope, you ain't getting no rare that pops up there unless you were already up there camping it.

Oh, and the birds were a hilariously badly designed mechanic. They fly way too slow and it is difficult to control where exactly you will go, and it takes too long to grab one to start the flight. In fact, they were so bad, most people devised other methods (gliders) to get around the sucky mechanic altogether.

Quote:
Then they create a system that ensures players never experience any of that. Then they up the speeds to the point where most of the environment doesn't even load for most users.


Leveling to max level without flying is fine. Once I hit max level, gimme a BoA book that lets me teach it to my alts. I experienced the landscape on the ground once, that's more than plenty.

I tend to have more fun with flying than I do without, go figure.

Quote:
Now, there's no immersion in zones at all. It's a whole lot of wasted money at that point. Just bad from a branding perspective.


There's that word again.

"Immersion".

You're never going to be fully immersed in a game that has hilarious mechanics, a not-so-serious graphics palette and stuff like magic flying around. It just doesn't happen. You want to be fully immersed in a game? Play a game with life-like graphics and realistic mechanics (look up Gone Home on Steam, for example. That game 99% immerses you into a 1990's world).

And besides, if you REALLY want to be immersed, nobody is forcing you to use a flying mount. You could just as easily mount a ground mount as you could a flying one. You want this so-important "Immersion"? Well, there you go. Mount a Ground Mound and do everything on the ground.

But you won't, most likely. Why? Because it takes too much time, and presents too many annoyances, and it is too tempting to just mount a flying mount of your choice. If this immersion were truly as awesome and fun as you claim it is, then people would be willingly ground pounding more often.

Quote:
And when we're talking about the design of terrain, they've been trying to design with flying mounts in mind, but it still just doesn't work. Think Hyjal - it was essentially a vertically-oriented zone. But you didn't really get to experience the landscape, and you spent way too much time flying into things or off into the distance.


Mount Hyjal was vertically designed because... I dunno.... its a MOUNTAIN?. Well, of course its a vertically-oriented zone. For it being on the side of the largest mountain in Azeroth, I found Hyjal to have quite a few flat areas....

And I experienced the landscape plenty -- there were enough quests that required you to travel on the ground, and I could see the landscape just fine from the air.

Quote:
To be clear, I don't think Blizz could remove flying mounts now. But I definitely think the game was much healthier without them.


I disagree.

With today's economy, we don't have time to waste. A lot of players are working two jobs, full-time jobs, jobs + college, what-have-you. When they scrape together a few hours to get online, they don't want to have to spend 15 minutes to do a 5 minute task because of terrain and constant trash mob aggro issues.

It is one of the reasons why Blizzard dropped the mega-raids like Molten Core in favor of the split up raids like we have now where there's only 3-4 bosses per wing of a raid. It is one of the reasons why raids are 10, 25 and soon 20 player instead of 40-player (because trying to get 40 people together without AFKs, disconnects, crashes, etc was a ridiculous notion TBH). It is one of the reasons why you level up so much faster these days; nobody wants to grind for hours for a couple bars of XP.

We don't have time these days to spend on stupid stuff, like trying to navigate around sheer cliff faces, ravines, flight paths that travel 5 miles to cover a 1 mile gap, fighting 50 irrelevant mobs to get from the questgiver to the questing area (not to mention the stuff the quests actually want you to kill), blah blah blah.

THAT'S why players don't like being forced on the ground.

Oh, and I paid ~17k now in flying fees. Let's see here.... Wisdom of the Four Winds... 2,500. Master Flying, 5,000. Epic Flying: I forget, 5,000? Something like that? Cold Weather Flying... 1k? Regular flying? 250? Flight Master's License? 500? Something like that?

I like to be able to use what I paid for, kthx.
#118 Nov 14 2013 at 9:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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As far as flying goes, I feel like the constant "U no fly" is a worn out joke:

Vanilla -- You can pay that guy, he'll get you there somewhat faster. OK, it would be a lot faster, but the bird likes to take the scenic route. No, you can't get your own bird.

Outland -- Hey, this world's all broken to bits. You can get a bird and discover hidden places! No, you can't take the bird home with you and fly there. You are not prepared.

WotLK -- OK, there's a war on. Bring your bird over here and pitch in. By the way, your wings tend to ice up, it may take awhile to get the hang of things.

Cata -- Some of you are Horde, some of you are Alliance. None of you are flying until you go union. Get your license and we'll talk about letting you fly.

MoP -- Um, the devs kinda ran out of excuses, it is just easier to design in two dimensions and run you like you're rats in a maze. There are ... yeah, there are giant bugs that control the wind and we don't really go into details about this but after a while you'll learn how to get around, but then we'll send you off to some islands where you forget how to fly but somehow their birds don't have a problem with it and you can handle a kite. It'll be cool, you'll have a dragon thingy as a mount. It'll have a big quest chain and you'll grind rep. No, you won't be able to use it much, but it'll be cool.

WoD -- So, like we were sitting around trying to imagine decent lore for Tauren and passing a pipe full of herbs and magic mushrooms just to get in character. Then this guy pulled out a fan poster of a goat girl doing /waggle and we were all like "whoa, they crashed their ship and we forgot ... its time for 'get moose and squirrel' again!" Then we thought about flying. Sure, most of you cut your teeth flying around the broken bits of this planet, but get this ... it is kinda the past, so you can't. At least, not yet and maybe not until a later patch. It's, um savage, that's it. No, you can't have giant birds that knock you off your own bird, or casters that snipe you as you fly by, or maybe even flying guards and siege engines that shoot at you. It is more fun to use curves to increase travel time and funnel you through that gantlet of tigers that are all chained together, do AoE, and aggro from half a map away (and leap about randomly to increase the chance they do). It'll be great! <toke>

*** Mind you, I like much of what we've been told about WoD, but I really feel like this particular joke has worn itself out. Let things blast me out of the sky. Rekindle my hatred of Giant Kaliri! But, go back to design where mounts really can fly and there are hidden pockets of ogres, elementals, and other things to discover. I didn't sign up for a side scrolling game.
#119 Nov 14 2013 at 9:51 PM Rating: Good
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@Rhodekylle:

Very nice way of putting it.

I'm not so eloquent with my words, but yeah. It does get old after awhile.

By the time your average player finally gets the Shaohao mount, WoD is probably going to be right around the corner (I calculated it takes a Human about 5 months to get Exalted with the 20 Elite daily. That's a HUMAN -with- the Guild Perk.).

So you get this awesome mount and then you go to Draenor soon afterward......oh, nice. You don't even get to use the mount much at all unless you go to old areas until 6.1 comes.

EDIT: For those of you who like math...

0 Neutral -> Exalted is 42,000 rep (3000 + 6000 + 12000 + 21000).

42000 / 300 = 140 days.

140 days / 30 = 4.66r months.

You can subtract 2 days ("Drive Back the Flame" and "The Archiereus of Flame") for a total of 138 days.

Edited, Nov 14th 2013 10:55pm by Lyrailis
#120 Nov 14 2013 at 11:21 PM Rating: Decent
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The time travel aspect of it seems convoluted. It also seems like the story is not progressing, simply going back to outlands and seeing lore characters. But then again I hated on MoP and ended up liking the story.

20 man mythic raids is kind of big deal. However 25 man raiding is dying, and nothing they have done this expac has halted the death of 25 man raiding.

No flying is an inconvenience, however with their take on Isle of Thunder & Timeless Isle it was clear that they have been mulling this over. Lots of forum chatter about it going this way as well for the last 2 expacs. Their explanation on how it muchs up the flow of content is valid. I think it is also important to take into account that they want you on the ground participating in non quest events. Sitting in a city and flying to a raid is not good for business. Farming rare mobs, and getting out keeps people busy and interacting with the world.

Stats will be dumbed down again. Reforge is gone. It will be interesting if they can keep the depth while removing the boring utility stats. Or if it is just another move to make the game simple.
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#121 Nov 15 2013 at 1:18 AM Rating: Good
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20 man raiding is a huge deal, especially for my guild. We're having to recruit double the number of people we have and/or merge guilds, and that itself is a huge pain in the ***. The only way they were going to save 25-mans was to make it the only option - it seems like that's the route they went.
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#122 Nov 15 2013 at 1:38 AM Rating: Good
Personally I prefer the Northrend method. Make us wait until max level to fly, but let us buy flying for our alts sooner. Still, I do kind of like the idea of having to do a quest chain to get the ability to fly. As long as a reasonably logical explanation is given.

Edited, Nov 15th 2013 12:39am by PigtailsOfDoom
#123 Nov 15 2013 at 5:49 AM Rating: Excellent
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While I would prefer to fly as soon as I hit 100 for the moment I think we should just wait and see how they design the new zones and their flightpaths. If the zones are not easily traversed with ground mounts and/or via flight paths, then is the right time to rage. And I think they are aware of that.

And I never got the love some people at Blizzard have for the Timeless Isle. The Isle of Thunder was cool. The Isle of Giants was okay but one or two steps down. The Timeless Isle is just annoying.


Edit: typo

Edited, Nov 15th 2013 6:50am by TherealLogros
#124 Nov 15 2013 at 6:09 AM Rating: Good
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Quote:
We don't have time these days to spend on stupid stuff, like trying to navigate around sheer cliff faces, ravines, flight paths that travel 5 miles to cover a 1 mile gap, fighting 50 irrelevant mobs to get from the questgiver to the questing area (not to mention the stuff the quests actually want you to kill), blah blah blah.

THAT'S why players don't like being forced on the ground.

Oh, and I paid ~17k now in flying fees. Let's see here.... Wisdom of the Four Winds... 2,500. Master Flying, 5,000. Epic Flying: I forget, 5,000? Something like that? Cold Weather Flying... 1k? Regular flying? 250? Flight Master's License? 500? Something like that?


All of which goes back to my "I don't think Blizz could take it away" point.

If they had never introduced flying mounts, players never would have gotten used to that stuff. Their terrain development would have continued to be friendly to ground mounts as the primary form of transport (rather than using the geography to drive questing paths, since flying wasn't an option).

And if players were used to it, they wouldn't be missing the alternative. Yeah, flying is the easier pathway. That's why EVERYONE flies, regardless of if they're on a time crunch.

My point is that it's worse for the game, from both a design and a marketing perspective, to have players always avoiding the bulk of their immersive assets.
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#125 Nov 15 2013 at 10:02 AM Rating: Excellent
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Rhodekylle wrote:
its time for 'get moose and squirrel' again!"
Rate-ups, just for this. Smiley: grin

idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
If they had never introduced flying mounts, players never would have gotten used to that stuff. Their terrain development would have continued to be friendly to ground mounts as the primary form of transport (rather than using the geography to drive questing paths, since flying wasn't an option).
I think in retrospect flying mounts were one of the worst ideas that's WoW has done over the years, and it's pretty telling if you look at the number of MMOs that haven't ever gone that route. Unfortunately they are pretty much stuck with them at this point, for better or for worse, and the cheesy explanations are what we get I guess.

Goblin: "Welcome to <location>. Oh hey, sorry big guy but that <flying mount> won't work here.

Goblin: "Why? Well see is the cold nether interferes with the thrust generated by the wings so that... I mean those winds are terrible, without a license at least, or um... I mean... Okay fine I don't know. It just won't work until you're nearly done here, it happens to everyone. Deal with it. I'm sure a big strong <race> like you will find a way. I got problems of my own here.
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#126 Nov 15 2013 at 10:10 AM Rating: Good
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What excuse did they use in MoP? They were always available in Cata, right? Or were the new zones exempt? I can't remember.
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