Devs: About scenarios...

#1 - Sept. 18, 2012, 8:38 a.m.

Just read a quick word on scenarios @ mmo from blizzard twitter, where i became rather.. confused by a certain statement

"Scenarios aren't intended to be particularly challenging endgame content. Similar to old group quests"

No one is asking for endgame content difficulty, however facerolling through trash for 5 minutes can't be considered challenging in any way. Old group quests such as ring of blood in nagrand actually required certain tactics back in burning crusade, you couldnt just faceroll the elite mobs, some had certain tactics, one ressurected, one absorbed spelldamage and did more damage to the tank ect.. none of this exists in the theramore scenario.

While i understand this is for a group of three players, i just read a post about some guy and his wife running the dungeon where a dragon soul hc geared hunter oneshotted and did the instance himself. After that he qued with his wife and one of his other account alts and 2 manned it.

I'm not expecting challenge modes to require tons of CC/Healing/dps but the trash specifially could have been much more fun to fight if they did certain mechanics which players would need to react to. The trash leading to Freya in ulduar is still fresh in memory which simply couldnt just be aoed down.

Vaneras

Community

#35 - Sept. 19, 2012, 3:56 p.m.

Just read a quick word on scenarios @ mmo from blizzard twitter, where i became rather.. confused by a certain statement

"Scenarios aren't intended to be particularly challenging endgame content. Similar to old group quests"

No one is asking for endgame content difficulty, however facerolling through trash for 5 minutes can't be considered challenging in any way. Old group quests such as ring of blood in nagrand actually required certain tactics back in burning crusade, you couldnt just faceroll the elite mobs, some had certain tactics, one ressurected, one absorbed spelldamage and did more damage to the tank ect.. none of this exists in the theramore scenario.

We agree that Theramore's Fall was too easy, which is why we have increased the HP of all enemies in this scenario through a recent hotfix. It is not our intent that scenarios should be steamrolled like what we saw with the release of Theramore's Fall.

It should be said that scenarios in Mists of Pandaria will be more tuned for players in quest gear and dungeon blues, and as such will not be tailored for players in raid gear.

Vaneras

Community

#49 - Sept. 20, 2012, 8:23 a.m.

19/09/2012 17:12Posted by Madahunt
how about the fact that NONE of this is explained properly? we dont see rhonin die, we dont see how jaina survived and we dont see WHY it happened

This is actually a concern the Developers addressed in a recent Developer Q&A session over at the Best Buy site. Here is what they had to say:

Q: The story of Tides of War is really interesting. I don't think players can get engaged if they have no idea what's happening, the bomb dropping is really anticlimactic. I felt a bit disappointed so little got included in the scenario. Was this because of lack of time, of developers or because you rather keep all that info in the novels.
A: I've been watching the Theramore feedback closely, and this comment seems pretty universal. We tried to keep everything all in the scenario, to make it really self-contained, but not burden it with lots of story that you have to slog through every time you played the scenario. It's pretty clear from the feedback that people wanted more story. We should've surrounded the scenarios with more quests or explanations to help round out the story for the people who wanted to know what exactly was happening. Lesson learned!

As you can probably get from this, we acknowledge that we didn't put in the level of context that people expected, and this is an important lesson we will keep in mind when working on future scenarios.

We want scenarios to be repayable, so we are concerned about burdening players with too much story that feels mandatory to wade through, but we can of course see from all the feedback we got from you guys that is also an issue if there is not enough story. We realise that Theramore could have benefited from one or more one-time quests on either end of the scenario, perhaps it could even have been a part of a one-time quest chain.

Vaneras

Community

#60 - Sept. 20, 2012, 9:19 a.m.

May I throw a quote to you?

As with many things, if we can't do something right, we end up not doing it

Obviously you did. And you never did anything worse since you decided to give shamans to alliance, and paladins to horde and bloodelves...

First of all, we never said that we never make mistakes. We are only human after all, and to err is human!

Second of all, what is right is entirely in the eye of the beholder. We do not think that Shaman and Paladins becoming cross faction classes was a mistake, but this of course is an entirely different topic, so let's keep that discussion out of this thread, shall we?!

What I am trying to clarify here is that we’re trying to do things right and do our best to avoid adding things to the game that can be done better. Of course, if we realise that something wasn't done exactly right after adding it, then we will of course attest to that.