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Making WoW more fun: A suggestion compilation (Half of which are now in the game)
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Post by
Sweetscot
Solo content wins, by far. I don't mind the social/grouping aspect of WoW, but easily 80% of my gameplay is done by myself. I would also be very excited for another AQ / IQD experience.
Alterac Valley is a battleground on a completely different level from the others, and I think it should be placed in it's own queue and restored to the epic hours-long rounds, with people joining and dropping out mid-fight without suffering the Deserter debuff.
And I think Drek-thar may be the reason Blizzard won't let us have paid class changes.
Player housing seems corny to me, but I have to admit your ideas for it are pretty good. I would love to be able to display my Warlock's Hand of Ragnaros (lucky drop while rep grinding, figured why not?), somehow.
I've never understood the allure to twinking. Where's the fun in playing a character that says "My entire purpose is to have an unfair advantage over players trying to level via BGs."? Separating them via the xp cap was a good idea in theory, but like you say there aren't nearly enough twinks populating each bracket to make it enjoyable. However, my thoughts on twinks being what they are, I have no problem seeing them dwindle into nostalgia. ;)
All in all, good ideas. Now Blizzard just needs to take a gander.
I think when it comes to twinking with capped xp they had the right idea but were afraid to tick off existing twinks even more than they already had. For capped seperate bg's they should have a seperate queueing system imo. For example you can cap your toon at any level, but you can only queue for bg's with your level capped at certain points. Say 19, 49, 60, 70, 80. Yes I left a big gap in there and more could be put between 19 and 49 but I was going off what seemed the most popular before they began nerfing twinking so much...then later just went by xpac end. They need to consolidate the twinks to make the system work better in the long run and I DO understand the draw of having a character that is DONE in the best gear and will never need to gear again, and the draw of pvp'ing with fewer skills to mess with. If there are only 5 queues between all the twinks in a battlegroup there would likely be lower queue times (imo) and I think that while twinks whos level group get axed will be severely p/o I think those that go ahead and retwink a toon to the brackets available will have more fun longer.
Post by
Interest
I've never understood the allure to twinking. Where's the fun in playing a character that says "My entire purpose is to have an unfair advantage over players trying to level via BGs."? Separating them via the xp cap was a good idea in theory, but like you say there aren't nearly enough twinks populating each bracket to make it enjoyable. However, my thoughts on twinks being what they are, I have no problem seeing them dwindle into nostalgia. ;)
Well to be honest, it's a bit more fair game nowadays. This is especially increased by the fact people walk around with heirlooms in battlegrounds, which I did not point out (I wasn't aware they were so powerful, but apparently at lower levels they are).
I agree Blizzard's idea of separating via xp cap worked, but no one really wants to do it. I have a Warrior at 84 who I would love to lock, but no one plays that bracket with experience lock, so.... (and btw, he doesn't do amazingly well unless people suck lol - an Arcane Mage can roll over me if he/she knows what he/she is doing).
Post by
Treskol
I voted 'More Sunwell', but not necessarily for the reasons you mentioned.
The best thing about IOQD was the World PvP.
With that many characters of both factions around, it was fun. And it was also relatively balanced, because Magisters' Terrace required Kara/Gruul gear, and Sunwell needed BT / Hyjal gear. So really it wasn't an excuse for Sunwell geared players to gank fresh 70's, because really they didn't need to be there.
/rose-tinted spectacles off
Post by
Astygia
Great post, great ideas, I really don't see any downside to any of them. Hell, I even made a massive post about Guild Housing here a couple years ago or something. Good stuff.
Suggestion: Gear Customization.
I'm okay with WoW using cartoonish character models (not really cartoonish, but just by comparison to the newer MMOs out there), and I'm ok with every scene, setting, and character detail not looking like it's currently being directed by James Cameron. That said, I believe adding a TEENSY bit more ability to make your toon unique would go an incredibly long way and be loved by the WoW masses.
How it works
I'm shamelessly stealing the mechanics behind this from Aion, and probably from other MMOs too since it's pretty simple. The concept of gear customization is unlocked and introduced to you at level 20 by an NPC that basically says 'yo I like my sword but it's fugly, I want it to look like this sword instead', you follow the quest breadcrumbs and discover the item remodeller. Upon speaking with the NPC, she tells you to put the item you want to keep (the master item) in the top box, and the item you want it to look like (the skin) in the bottom box. You pay a fee, the 'skinned' item is destroyed and its appearance permanently applied to the master item.
Items skinned in this way can essentially be cosmetically recycled forever; in other words if that 2h sword skin you're using now is still just the sexiest thing in the universe to you but you just got a blade with better stats, you can take that old 2h sword, skin it on top of your new piece, and enjoy the sexy new stats while still slinging the same look.
Limitations
Level of the skin and level of the master item are irrelevant, so a level 85 shoulderplate could be skinned onto a level 10 shoulderplate, or vice-versa. The stipulation is skins must be the same item type as the gear they are being applied to. Basically this means cloth shoulders can only be skinned with other cloth shoulders, plate chest with plate chest, 1h swords with 1h swords, so on and so forth. While I think this is an important limitation for weapons to avoid ridiculousness (a rogue with daggers remodeled into dual Armageddons would be funny for about 10 seconds and retarded for the rest of the week), I am not sure if it's such a huge deal for armor and don't think folks would have a real problem with the ability to make their cloth look like plate or anything in between.
Legendary items.. not sure if they should be skinnable; they are after all legendary and beyond unique. I could go either way with allowing them to be skinned I suppose. However, soulbound items
can
be skinned on top of unbinding 'trash' gear. This means you could actually farm the older instances (I'm looking at you, Burning Crusade!) for the more flashy, crazy bits of gear, and skin those boss drops onto gray vendor trash, then sell the skins on the broker. Which leads me to my next bolded section!
Why do this?
Forget about making your toon all unique and sexy for a moment...and remember the devs worked f'in hard on that old stuff, and you don't even stop to pay homage to it, do ya? When was your last pilgrimage to the Black Temple! Consider that this would bring a massive amount of activity into content that has so much appeal to offer, not just cosmetically but in gameplay and lore, but is completely skipped and forgotten these days because it's just not part of the flow anymore. People would go there again, to farm the skins for themselves, and/or as a lucrative way to make some gold by selling the more exotic and cool skins out there, and in doing so would actually get to see and feel the content of yesteryear.
And on a your-toon level...think back to BC, or even early vanilla; wasn't there a piece or two (or a set or two) of gear that still, to this day, nothing has really come close to being that cool? For me, a prime example would be the Bulwark of Azzinoth, the most beastly and intimidating shield in the game. Sure to you it's just a hunk of curvy, spiky metal, but to this day, no other shield out there has ever looked so awesome in the hands of my warrior, or hanging from my warrior's back. By today's standards though...the stats, not so awesome. I know many, many players feel the same way about various items, and allowing such models to be reused and kept alive would go a long way in putting some activity attention into the content of old.
Also, I don't care what server you're on, adding a new commodity to the market (skins) would be a hell of a boost to your local auction house.
Post by
434395
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Post by
160546
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Post by
Interest
Astygia, do you mind if I copy and paste that into the "user suggestions" list?
I can sympathize with that. Really, even when I did PvP before BGs gave xp, and we happened to face a twink... we'd just FF/distract them and it really didn't have
that
much of an impact. It was only when you ran into a premade with twinks that it became too much.
Like you say, with heirlooms being so prevalent in BGs these days and signature moves are learned early on, and now the brackets are smaller -- Blizzard has to see how unpopular the exp-locked brackets are.
I still don't like twinks or care much for that style of gameplay. I do think though that they are a viable way to enjoy WoW, and should be returned to regular BGs.
I mean, they allow shameless ganking on PvP realms... and that's completely unfair. I'd
much
rather face a few twinks in a BG where there's potential for immediate backup than have to log off an alt to my main and maybe even grab a friend just so I can properly retaliate until the offender gets bored enough to leave me be.
Amazingly honest. Thanks a ton for the feedback.
Post by
Astygia
Not at all, Interest; +1000 internets to you if you get dev attention and they go through with it.
Post by
Interest
Suggestion added with links.
Post by
812974
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Post by
485877
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Post by
Interest
My Suggestion To "Lock" Experience
I think it's time to bring "twinking" back. This can be done by doing either of the following:
I didn't read the WHOLE thing about this part of the topic, so bear with me if it's already been said.
They should make battlegrounds queu for gear score, rather than level (while still keeping the practical 10-15/19 etc. rule). This would allow twinks to fight twinks and players with lesser gear/nubs to be able to duke it out whilst having a fun learning experience about the game. It would also give twinks more challenge from the gank-n'-go that they're used to.
Everyone wins? :D
Well actually, the battleground queuing already does use that concept to some extent. You will be fighting people who should be about as geared as you (when possible)
Post by
3876
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Post by
Interest
For the interactive professions, i don't think it would be possible given that the action involves timing and dexterity which is not good for players with a high latency. My latency is above 400ms. So i am already handicapped in arena and given this, i might not even able to complete the craft if my pc is lagging above 800ms. Just saying.
Well, that's why you have the option to disable the interactive professions. I understand it's not something everyone will be able to do.
In addition to your early housing idea, players can also put their old sets and weapons that they don't use anymore to a mannequin for display and save bag space (only engineers can make mannequin).
Would be an interesting idea. I'll think about that. There would have to be some hefty restrictions on it, especially considering houses are account bound and the like. I would prefer it being restricted based on achievements (owning legendaries and so on) because I feel it would be easier to program player housing around that, and solve storing gear in a completely different way (Runescape gear set concept, etc).
I have additional ideas to make housing more fun rather than just for display, make it like farmville or harvest moon.
That's what the "sandbox build mode" is for. Everything costs no gold and you can build a house of your dreams. To keep it though, you actually need the gold and you spend gold on the upgraded house as if you were confirming talent point allocation. I feel this is enough to solve the lack of customization/sandboxing WoW has to offer in general.
Players can pick a land that they like. Anywhere in the world, and make it theirs by buying it. They bound their territory by placing fences. Once they're done, they can plant stuff and harvest it like in those farming games. Can even breed animals or monsters for auctions. This would open a wider range of cooking recipes but it would affect the current concept (which is just fine for me). So this should be more to gold making rather than combat oriented.
Well the area is actually a phased plot of land. You can, however, use any tileset available and it will assume your house belongs there (i.e. if you use a desert tileset you own a house in Tanaris, if you add in oasis tiles, it is now a house in Uldum)
The "plants" would be doodads, which I believe I mentioned can be added. However, breeding animals and stuff for auctions I feel is not a good idea - this is not for profit. In fact, it's a money sink. On the other hand, adding NPCs may be a bit troublesome, which is why I excluded it. If Blizzard can allow players to add NPCs too their house (like critters or something), all the better.
This would open to a new profession such as carpentry or farmers. Or alternative upgrade would be engineers that can build compact exploding house (like in the Goblin starting quest). Herbalist that can plant and farm their own herbs. Skinners that can breed their own livestock to skin. Miners that can dig and mine in their own tunnels or caves. Tailors can make their own cloth factory.
Maybe next expansion. However, the whole intent of player housing has a purpose of gold sinking - this is to deflate a heavily inflated WoW economy resulting from huge influxes of Cataclysm quest gold. In addition, keep in mind houses are Bind to Realm (account?), meaning all your characters use the same house. I feel individual houses per character would take server space even Blizzard would have difficulty accommodating. Also, I have a feeling that would take quite a long time to put in. I tried to keep it simple enough that Blizzard could add it in with a major content patch alongside something.
unknown effects could be on over populations or super rich players or big guilds will monopolize the lands and would hinder other players movement. there has to be some sort of control method for this. but it can open a new business ideas such as properties selling in the auction house. I believe this can be the best ego flex players can have.
Not the best idea. I feel that gold should only limit how good your house is and nothing more.
Also in the player house, they can spend gold to make their own training machine, bank or auction house. But that would require a lot of gold (with monthly fee). Maybe only guilds can buy big lands and make their own small town. Casual players can start small by doing small business first.
I don't think a house (or houses) should be an absolute replacement to a capital city. It would be nice to have stuff like a sparring area (area where dueling is allowed), and a bank and "innkeeper" that you can bind yourself to are quite acceptable. However, I feel auction houses and vendors and the like should be exclusive to cities that already exist to some degree. Designing the WoW engine to have a "build-a-town" concept would also be a nightmare to pull off.
Technology wise this housing idea is a long stretch for Blizzard. This require a special UI for players to place furniture and doodads and not forgetting the possibility to change the terrain. This can also affect the server capacity given that the the current map has a fixed doodad capacity which could affect the traffic indirectly. Instanced houses can save physical space but it defeats the purpose of displaying your achievements. Imagine how many people would want to enter other people's houses just to visit? So i vote for open space housing.
It's doable though. Making user interfaces isn't exactly hard to do. Blizzard has proven this time and time again by revamping the UI, adding in overlays and other features and the like. In addition, Blizzard can steal from their own map editors from Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3 for the UIs to add furniture and the like.
Overall, your suggestions aren't too bad. Some of them are a bit of a long shot to pull off without diverting too much time and resource from the other content Blizzard has planned. As it is, mine is already pushing the limit.
Post by
3876
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Interest
Maybe next expansion. However, the whole intent of player housing has a purpose of gold sinking - this is to deflate a heavily inflated WoW economy resulting from huge influxes of Cataclysm quest gold......
I disagree on the idea on just gold sinking. I would prefer interactivity with the housing features and gaining something out of it. If not gold maybe some other kind of currency. Which makes it feel worthwhile to waste time with. But other than that, i agree with you.
Well I find it will be interactive enough. Building the house will be something like building a map (at least in sandbox mode) for a Strategy game or something, or the player housing concept from Runescape (without the involvement of the Construction skill).
Post by
90790
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Post by
Astygia
it should be possible to offset one stat with another : lets say you short on STR, but you've stack mastery and switched few talents, and you can pewpew just as good.
This is (mostly) already possible through reforging.
i think that easiest way to accomplish that would be to do completely away with hit and expertise caps,
get rid off diminishing returns, have much more powerful gear enchants and have more cross-utility of gear stats - i.e: agility equally affecting crit and armor....
once that basic stats would be balanced with each other, number of possible talents/gear/enchants combinations would shoot-up exponentially...
Combinations would rise, sure...but many classes would suddenly become ridiculously OP once they no longer needed to balance their stats and did not suffer from DR. 100% crit sounds fun until you realize that all those gear combinations you've just opened up are pointless, now that everything can autoattack for like 40k dps and everyone dies just as fast, or faster, then they did before. If PvP was not a factor this would be a good idea, but since PvP happens, this couldn't work.
another thought i have for a long time now is separating PVP and PVE - it is really impossible to pvp balance classes performing such a different functions as tank and healer in pve.
ofc, you can try, but now and then it will emerge a talent/stat combo that is unkillable : resto druid in WotLK anyone?
Unfortunately, you cannot separate the PvP game from the PvE in WoW unless you removed PvP entirely. PvP-focused class nerfs have been a constant source of QQ over the years but it's a necessary evil and something that can never truly be solved.
Post by
90790
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Astygia
actually ; if you put all in crit you can have 100% cr, but you would hit for much less..thing would be in a stats balance so "stack of mastery and no crit" ="stack of crit and no mastery"
You might think this, but I don't think you are taking cataclysm equipment budgeting into consideration. Take a rogue for example...right now as a mutilate rogue, crit is one of my weaker stats and I reforge it off in favor of mastery for 2 reasons... one, because our mastery directly effects our poison damage and thus provides more dps on a point-by-point basis; two, because crit suffers from DR very quickly and is just quickly left behind by the impact mastery has on us, again on a point-by-point measure. So essentially DR keeps me from attaining both a massive mastery output and an incredibly high critical rating.
But
take the same ol' gear I have now and suddenly remove the diminishing returns. Napkin math suggests my raw critical % rating would probably double (or close at least), and that's with all my crit still reforged into mastery...and on PvE gear. Without DR my other passives would go up too obviously...and with a little clever tweaking, I would suddenly have ridiculously high everything - especially if this was applied to PvP gear, where crit is a dominant stat.
But that's just mutilate rogues, there are dozens of imbalances I can think of just off the top of my head with the other classes and their specs. Blood DK tanks with 100% avoidance (dodge/parry) and ridiculous mastery perks. Immortal healers. Mages 1-shotting everything. Ferals putting out triple the ginormous bleed damage than they were before they got nerfed recently. Basically any problem we see now that's just 'kind of' a problem but really not too gamebreaking....would become gamebreaking, and bring with them new issues.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of perfecting certain things, but WoW has been balanced, re-balanced, inflated, and redesigned so many times over the years, doing this would basically be like starting completely over again, and at the very best we'd end up with a system that worked about the same way as it does currently.
as far as pvp/pve conflict - not sure how that could be done. maybe completely separate talent tree set active only in pvp environment?
That's not a bad idea really, except you're forgetting about PvP servers...and also, isn't that just a cleverly disguised cookie cutter?
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