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• PC/Mac: No maintenance – January 27
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The dot changes won't fix the fundamental issue of the skill gap + alternate solution
QuantumPie
✭✭✭
I'd first like to say I understand there is a wide skill gap between casual and end-game players but the issue isn't that its not accessible, it's that people refuse to put in the effort to learn and want everything spoon fed to them. I'm a former raid lead on PC NA and between all the large PvE Discords I'm active in, everyone is incredibly welcoming and goes out of their way to help new-comers. The unfortunate issue is many don't act on the advice they receive or put in any sizable effort into learning what we're teaching them. Instead they go to the forums and complain that we're toxic for not instantly bringing them on hard mode runs and that the end game is too hard. Nefas' video about toxic casuals does a great job at explaining this particular issue.
As for the combat changes specifically, the weaving changes are understandable but extending the duration of dots only serves to dumb down the gameplay significantly so it's no longer interesting. There will no longer be a place for fast-paced rotations and necromancers specifically will be hit hard by these changes. My entire necro rotation consists of dots and I love the challenge that brings. The excitement of going through logs after raid and seeing how my uptime have improved is incredible rewarding and exciting. As it stands, these changes will turn the fast-paced and exciting gameplay into cast your dots and spam your spammable until the boss moves or they fall off 20 seconds later. To me that sounds incredibly uninteresting and boring. At the end of the day you can make weaving easier, you can kill off the need for complex rotations, but that's not going to fix the fundamental problem of people not wanting to learn. After these combat changes, these players are then going to complain that mechanics are to hard and its still not accessible. So are you then going to start dumbing down mechanics to appease these players?
For a very long time I've felt like this game has turned away from creating unique challenging end-game content in favor of drawing in casual players but this will be the nail in the coffin. Everything has been made easier over the years but at the end of the day the trifectas remained relatively intact. These combat changes will remove the little difficulty and excitement that remains in the game for us in a vain attempt to appease players that refuse to learn no mater how much we try and help them.
On a closing note, it wouldn't be fair for me to reject these changes without offering my own ideas for a solution. Over the years I've noticed two points of entry into trials The first are the vet training runs that guilds like the ones I'm a part of often host for newcomers. I agree that for newcomers stepping into a trial for the first time can often be overwhelming as they struggle to balance their attention between the mechanics on screen and their own rotation. I've noticed that players who are willing to learn will invest the time into it will overcome those challenges and move on to harder content. Other's are dissuaded by how much they need to learn and quit. The other point of entry I've seen is through the normal runs that trading guilds host. In talking to some of the GMs of these trading guilds, they've mentioned how the normal trial runs quickly become very easy and boring. Meanwhile, when they try to move on to vet, they usually hit a roadblock before clearing all the Craglorn trials and the GMs don't have the resources to help their members increase their damage. I propose creating an intermediary difficulty between normal and vet trials. This difficulty would have similarly punishing mechanics like vet does but the bosses would have HP in between when we see for normal and vet. This mode would ideally be more manageable for GMs of trading / social guilds to host as they can help teach their members mechanics while having to worry less about having high parses. As players get more comfortable through that mode, they can then more easily transition into vet trials as the mechanics will already be much more natural to them. The other great part I foresee with this solution is it won't fracture the player base like making separate BG queues did. End-game guilds can still run their vet training runs as normal, and trading guilds would be able to take things to a higher difficulty that is more manageable then a vet trials and can funnel players who are more prepared into end-game guilds. I believe this would solve the issue on all fronts where players who truly want to learn the game can more gently be eased into it, players who refuse to learn can still enjoy more challenging trials while not having to worry about their damage, and us end-game players won't have to worry about the combat we've come to know and love getting reduced to nothing.
I sincerely ask that you reconsider these dot changes or you're going to drive away the remaining end game players
As for the combat changes specifically, the weaving changes are understandable but extending the duration of dots only serves to dumb down the gameplay significantly so it's no longer interesting. There will no longer be a place for fast-paced rotations and necromancers specifically will be hit hard by these changes. My entire necro rotation consists of dots and I love the challenge that brings. The excitement of going through logs after raid and seeing how my uptime have improved is incredible rewarding and exciting. As it stands, these changes will turn the fast-paced and exciting gameplay into cast your dots and spam your spammable until the boss moves or they fall off 20 seconds later. To me that sounds incredibly uninteresting and boring. At the end of the day you can make weaving easier, you can kill off the need for complex rotations, but that's not going to fix the fundamental problem of people not wanting to learn. After these combat changes, these players are then going to complain that mechanics are to hard and its still not accessible. So are you then going to start dumbing down mechanics to appease these players?
For a very long time I've felt like this game has turned away from creating unique challenging end-game content in favor of drawing in casual players but this will be the nail in the coffin. Everything has been made easier over the years but at the end of the day the trifectas remained relatively intact. These combat changes will remove the little difficulty and excitement that remains in the game for us in a vain attempt to appease players that refuse to learn no mater how much we try and help them.
On a closing note, it wouldn't be fair for me to reject these changes without offering my own ideas for a solution. Over the years I've noticed two points of entry into trials The first are the vet training runs that guilds like the ones I'm a part of often host for newcomers. I agree that for newcomers stepping into a trial for the first time can often be overwhelming as they struggle to balance their attention between the mechanics on screen and their own rotation. I've noticed that players who are willing to learn will invest the time into it will overcome those challenges and move on to harder content. Other's are dissuaded by how much they need to learn and quit. The other point of entry I've seen is through the normal runs that trading guilds host. In talking to some of the GMs of these trading guilds, they've mentioned how the normal trial runs quickly become very easy and boring. Meanwhile, when they try to move on to vet, they usually hit a roadblock before clearing all the Craglorn trials and the GMs don't have the resources to help their members increase their damage. I propose creating an intermediary difficulty between normal and vet trials. This difficulty would have similarly punishing mechanics like vet does but the bosses would have HP in between when we see for normal and vet. This mode would ideally be more manageable for GMs of trading / social guilds to host as they can help teach their members mechanics while having to worry less about having high parses. As players get more comfortable through that mode, they can then more easily transition into vet trials as the mechanics will already be much more natural to them. The other great part I foresee with this solution is it won't fracture the player base like making separate BG queues did. End-game guilds can still run their vet training runs as normal, and trading guilds would be able to take things to a higher difficulty that is more manageable then a vet trials and can funnel players who are more prepared into end-game guilds. I believe this would solve the issue on all fronts where players who truly want to learn the game can more gently be eased into it, players who refuse to learn can still enjoy more challenging trials while not having to worry about their damage, and us end-game players won't have to worry about the combat we've come to know and love getting reduced to nothing.
I sincerely ask that you reconsider these dot changes or you're going to drive away the remaining end game players
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