Hearthstone has a promotion where you can get Lady Liadrin as a hero if you level a new character in World of Warcraft. Despite the fact that I am not actually playing Hearthstone, I decided to take the opportunity and level a new character. You can level to 20 without a subscription, making it very easy.
I created a Night Elf Druid, and mainly quested until 16, and then did a few dungeons to hit 20. Leveling to 20 was not a particularly fun experience. Here are the major issues as I see them.
Time-to-Kill
The Time-to-Kill for most mobs was really short. I didn't have any heirlooms, so I was just in quest greens. It's one thing to make the game easier for new players, but almost everything died in 2 global cooldowns. Very often only one if the first ability crit. It's actually kind of annoying because I was Feral, and it seemed very hard to get into the rhythm of using combos. Rake, Shred, and the mob would die before I could use a finisher.
It's one thing to have a short TtK in a game like Diablo, where you're pretty much spamming your mouse button. But in a game where you have an actual rotation where abilities work with each other, you really should at least get to use a full rotation before the mob dies.
If you want to make the game easier on new players, the better path would be to reduce mob damage, but keep a decent time to kill of at least 4-5 GCDs.
Heirlooms
I've said this before, but heirlooms are a mistake. One thing I didn't realize before, though, is that make group play for the non-heirloomed character singularly unfun.
I switched to Resto for the dungeons. The other players were in heirloom gear so they charged through the dungeon at max speed. I tried to heal, but my heals did so little because they had so much health and I had relatively few stats. But because they were pulling everything at once, they sometimes took enough damage to make things dangerous.
I think a lot of issues I have with group play in the current version of WoW have their genesis here. If people get into bad habits early, it's a lot harder to get them to "accept" proper play much later.
And that's not even getting into PvP, which I imagine must be horrific for the new player without heirlooms.
Stories
The revamp of the old world in Cataclysm was another mistake. It's been years since I played through Darkshore, and I don't remember the original zone very well. But the current Darkshore feels like it expects you to have played the old version. It feels like a continuation of that story, and it's kind of disconcerting to be dropped into the middle of things.
Conclusions
In some ways, the current early game of World of Warcraft feels hostile to new players, despite the fact that it's so trivially easy mechanically. You get all these neat abilities that combo together, and you can't get the satisfaction of executing a combo successfully, because the mob dies when you sneeze on it. Playing with other experienced players is like playing with cheaters because they're so far above you. And all the stories feel like you started reading a book in the middle rather than at the end.
All so true. I actually think there is still a great game in here somewhere, but it's masked my so much bad it's hard to see it. I'd love to think Blozzard still listens to us players and gets things right for Legion, but the whole levelling speed / cataclysm mess of a world / level 110 (!) thing would be a hard one to sort out at this point. Good to see you back around btw.
ReplyDeleteWell, some parts are easier to fix than others. I think that Time-to-Kill and basic combat would be relatively easy to change. Heirlooms would be easy to nerf, but there would be a massive outcry from the current players. And stories would be hard to change, but can be lived with.
DeleteI agree with almost all of what you wrote, but it would be interesting to see statistics on what others consider the 'appropriate' leveling speed. While this would be easy enough to fix, finding the right balance to keep everyone happy would be a nightmare, I think.
DeleteFor instance, I'd personally rather see the quantity of combats reduced by 90%, and the Time-to-Kill increased to 25-50 GCDs at a minimum, with players required to use personal CDs, healing abilities, and environmental awareness. Anything shorter and battles become mindless repetition; you need sufficient time to force players into interesting decisions and allow them to react to a changing situation.
I think that's way too high. I would use the rogue as a baseline. You should be able to stack 4-5 combo points and then kill the mob with your basic Eviscerate finisher. Thus the finisher "finishes" the mob, and it all makes sense.
DeleteInteresting that you mention TtK, because I was just saying in my last post that I think SWTOR kind of suffers from the same problem since 4.0, though I'm not sure if it's quite as bad as WoW yet.
ReplyDeleteI think TOR is a little different in that the standard encounter is a group of mobs. So even if you one- or two-shot a weak mob, there's usually another weak one and a normal mob as part of the encounter. And then maybe a group with a silver mob here and there. So you use multiple abilities over the course of the entire fight.
DeleteIn WoW right now, it's like each pull is one weak mob.
Now, maybe companions in TOR could stand to be toned down a little, but otherwise I think the combat is still pretty reasonable at low levels.
I've levelled a Worgen, an Undead and a new Draenei to 20 in the Draenor era and I agree that the levelling game is in poor shape nowadays.
ReplyDeleteThe incessant class medelling/simplification has led to big problems here. The tanking monk "one-shot issue" goes on way up into the latest expansions.
It's about time Blizzard stopped its fixation on the endgame/raiding and started caring about the state of the _World_ of Warcraft.
Yes, I think you're right that a lot of the changes made to improve endgame rebounded badly on the levelling game. But I think some of the changes were made to "improve" the levelling game, but ended up having a negative effect.
DeleteI haven't played WoW since the start of Cata. I loaded the game the other day (I was playing Starcraft and figured there was no loss to letting it run in the background.) I started a human Monk on my old server, and started leveling it raw.
ReplyDeleteAll of the reasons I quit before were even worse. I had zero fun, the rewards were pointless, and I've since uninstalled the game to keep it from polluting my hard drive.
Well, I don't think I'd go quite that far. WoW is still pretty decent, and I think it could be a much better experience with a few changes.
DeleteLeveling is going the way of the dodo, the sooner the better.
ReplyDeleteIt has ALWAYS been shit, it just smelled less because it was "new" and we all played using the second hand to hold the nose tightly shut..... but the whole idea of "levels" giving you new "skills" and "more power" was bad from the start, time only made it clear how REALLY bad it is.
They should have redesigned zones to be story-only, completely optional. And with the changes to combat you indicated: the "rogue metric" you suggest is a good one.
I don't think I'd go that far. I generally like levelling, especially in new games.
DeleteHowever, I'm not sure that story-based levelling is repeatable.
I had a similiar experience leveling a new Rogue. The only place I'd disagree is with the story. I thought the Gilneas story was very well done and the Darkshore/Auberdine stuff hit me harder emotionally than I thought it would. I remember those quests well from my early days in WoW and seeing the devastation and all those old questgivers and merchants killed gave the zone an emotional impact for me.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but you're not a new player. The storylines are great *if* you remember the old zones. But if you remember the old zones, you're an experienced player.
DeleteI just don't think the storylines are that good if you have not played the old zones.
Heirlooms were Pandora's Box for WoW: once out, they can't put it away. When I leveled my first toon back in 2009, I had to deal with the heirloom geared players in both instances and out in the world (I was on a PvP server at the time). I was always behind on gear compared to my compatriots, I struggled to heal in instances until I simply gave it up after a terrible Hall of Stone run where the tank kept running ahead, never giving me time to drink, and then calling me out saying "Can you even heal this instance?"
ReplyDeleteSwitching to Ret was better, but until I reached max level and began to acquire T9 gear on my own, I was always the weakest link out there.
I didn't mind too much once I switched to Ret, but being a Holy Pally was not fun in that situation. I was told that Druids in Wrath had it easy healing, even when they were crippled by having no heirloom gear.
On the face of it, WoW looks easy to get into. But a new player is thrown all of this backstory at once and tries to get up to speed while at the same time is at a significant disadvantage compared to a lot of his or her peers. And that doesn't even take into account the discombobulation of the story by Cata.
Yeah, it's really unfortunate that Blizzard can't undo that mistake.
DeleteI give them credit for trying, but they'd have been better off leaving it alone in the end.
DeleteI still play WoW, just not as hardcore as I used to, but I hadn't leveled a new toon. When that promotion came, I did what you did: picked an old night elf hunter I had at level 16 or 17, and started questing. She is now 62, but I experienced the same problems you did: in instances I always felt as the weakest link (mobs dead before I clicked twice) and mobs in the world died much too fast - I still don't really know my abilities yet - I only ever really use the same two or three buttons, and everything dies. No trapping, counter shooting, etc...
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, stories... I gave up on that and skipped reading texts. It was just weird.