PTR Discussion (was Nighthold Feedback)

[See new sticky thread for Nighthold feedback]

11/30/2016 08:38 PMPosted by Darkmn

Watcher explain why we should test your dungeon you don't listen to feedback

Well, part of the point of opening Nighthold and leaving it open for a longer period of time is to let groups get in and give contextual feedback on class mechanics, as well as to gather data to help with tuning. If we were solely interested in polishing the encounters, we'd be doing short 1-hour tests that could be observed by the encounter design team in their entirety. But this approach lets a lot more people get in and try things out.

Basically no numerical tuning based on 7.1.5 changes has been done yet: in test builds and development, the primary initial focus tends to be on qualitative design changes, both to allow for time to iterate on them, and because there's a much smaller development window during which we can make large changes to text in tooltips (since everything needs to be translated for the game's different regions before a patch can be finalized). Numbers changes are best done when designs are closer to final (there's little point fine-tuning something that may get ripped out entirely next build), and can be done very late in the PTR cycle. Raid tests like this help tremendously with that process.

The past couple of weeks have been full of distractions, with a long holiday weekend in the middle, and we haven't done a great job of communicating regarding the 7.1.5 class and systems changes. We'll be working to correct some of that in the coming days, but I understand that there's more than a little frustration and distrust to overcome.

In the meantime, I'll rename this thread, and make a new one for Nighthold. Please try to keep that one clear for feedback and logs from the instance, so that everyone can have a more polished experience in the long run. Thanks.

12/01/2016 12:12 AMPosted by Clarlem

Feedback: you're leaving the warlock community out in the cold. Please communicate with us. We are extremely desperate.

We agree with a number of the core concerns raised, but don't have immediate solutions (or those solutions will take more time to design, implement, and test than the 7.1.5 PTR cycle affords). A couple of examples off the top of my head:

• Steady/predictable Ember generation suited the Destruction rotation well, and something important was lost in the course of unifying the class to use a single shared resource, but fixing that at this point isn't just as simple as rolling everything back to Embers.
• Mechanics like Demonic Empowerment and Soul Effigy are cumbersome to manage and while they have strong spec-specific theming, the actual gameplay of using them drags down their respective specs.

We're probably too reluctant to acknowledge problems for which we don't yet have a solution to present. But the fact that we haven't yet changed something doesn't mean that we think it's perfect as-is.