Y'all need to calm down a bit

[CzarnyKolor]

Additionally, many of my guild mates who moaned about these changes for a few years and finally got their abilities back in Shadowlands forgot all about them. We've had a hunter who wanted Eye of the Beast back since Cataclysm because, and I quote, it was "integral to his fantasy of having a pet." He got it back in Shadowlands and has used it a grand total of...*checks notes*...zero times. He hasn't used it. He doesn't even have it bound to a keybind. I saw screenshots of his interface. When I asked him whether he used it, he said "not really."

 

You know, in that vein, I would actually love to see all of the people who complain about the abilities being trimmed to post their combat logs. It's not hard, literally anyone can do it, and anyone with star parse can view them at their leisure.

 

After all, stats speak harder than words. If you use the ability constantly to the point that it is part of class identity for you, it shouldn't be too hard to actually show that in tangible way, instead of just griping.

[SirCaldric]

Us, who actually use the abilities we say we use: "Please dont do this. We beg of you. This is a bad idea!"

 

Them: "You dont even use those abilities! Like, who even uses saber throw? yall need to calm down a bit!"

 

 

 

Projection is real.

 

Sigh

 

I explicitly said we should avoid this kind of mentality.

 

Saber Throw isn't an ability that has been removed. Did you check the spoiler in the official Jedi Guardian thread? Yes, it's a choice between two other abilities and yes, it's not great to have to choose between Saber Throw or the other two. But you do realize that none of these changes are set in stone at this point? You can provide constructive criticism without acting like the end is near and that the sky is falling.

 

If having a knee jerk reaction to a post asking you to be more reasonable and calm down isn't overreacting, I don't know what is, But hey, if you want to be all doom and gloom and have your blood boil for the coming months until December hits, be my guest.

 

Let's just argue senselessly with each other even when the overall consensus is "This is bad" because we can't agree on varying perspectives on why it is bad.

[Alssaran]

You really have no idea what you're talking about, do you? No one cares about Classic WoW class design. It's atrocious. People want MoP class design. That's when the classes were interesting to play. Take your pathetic strawman arguments elsewhere.

 

I know perfectly well what MoP class design was like. There are some examples that are frequently brought up (e.g demonology warlock), which were turned into the baseline for an entirely different class. What people also generally ignore when talking about class design in MoP is that a lot of it felt good because casters had a ton of movement baked in, but that in turn wrecked havoc with PvP. They were just insanely strong for most of it. And I enjoyed that, yes, but in retrospect I only enjoyed it because I wasn't on the receiving end of it. Too many self-healing options, too much movement and too much utility wreaked havoc with the ability to actually design classes going forward. It was literally the utmost end of the mountain and had Blizzard not taken away from it but added more, the entire house of cards could have collapsed.

 

The one class I preferred overall in MoP (if I had to pick favourites) was DK. However, with other classes, I can see why they made the changes they did. I didn't like it, but again, that doesn't mean the problem of continuing power progression and adding utility to classes goes away.

 

This will come as an absolutely shocking surprise to someone like you, but people can disagree on what was fun and what wasn't. MoP class design was better in certain places, terribly in others, and it didn't address the fundamental issue of utility bloat (as opposed to ability bloat) to the game. And now take your personal attack and bugger off.

Edited July 12, 2021 by Alssaran

[Giliodor]

This will come as an absolutely shocking surprise to someone like you, but people can disagree on what was fun and what wasn't. MoP class design was better in certain places, terribly in others, and it didn't address the fundamental issue of utility bloat (as opposed to ability bloat) to the game. And now take your personal attack and bugger off.

 

I doesn't matter that you disagree with me on what's fun to play. What matters is that you strawman people who bring up WoW class pruning, by pretending like classes in WoW had 1-button rotations during the period which people are nostalgic about. That is a plain lie, and everyone knows it. It's a weak attempt at downplaying very legitimate concerns shared by many people in this community. There's nothing personal about me calling out your deception. If you don't enjoy being called out, don't spread false information.

Edited July 12, 2021 by Giliodor

[Death-Hammer]

Just wanted to start off this post by saying I'm 100% understanding of the concerns regarding missing abilities right now. I am.

Let's calm down a little, shall we? And if down the line it turns out that they really did break everything, go nuts.

 

1. If we wait until " down the line " then it will be to late

 

2. They could easily calm things down whenever they wanted to by simply responding to all the feedback they have gotten over this instead of being maddeningly silent.

[Lyriel]

BioWare is simply being true to form here.

 

• Put something on PTS that they know is not close to their final plan but that is sure to cause a lot of player complaints.

• Withhold information while the 'feedback' reaches a crescendo.

• Come in and do some minimal 'splaining (that will probably open up at least as many questions as it answers).

• Eventually cough up a modified version of the thing that addresses whatever they had already planned to change.

• Take credit for being so, so responsive to player feedback.

 

Rinse/repeat until actual release.

[Dagis]

Just wanted to start off this post by saying I'm 100% understanding of the concerns regarding missing abilities right now. I am.

 

But this is turning into a mob mentality faster than quick. Please remember that this is very likely nowhere near how the actual systems will work (based on their "status" thread, and how everything is subject to radical change). It's a super early test for some Guardian paths between the disciplines.

 

I also want you to keep in mind that it seems this test was not thought out/planned properly/rushed through to the test server. There's plenty of evidence of this, such as the very primitive way of getting to the testing area/content, the many bugs present (companions with no stats and 30k HP, mounts being useless...) and overall confusion on what the heck is going on, despite having read the threads regarding the testing phase.

 

It's great to voice your concerns, but there have been some absolutely ridiculous posts on here from some people, ranging from "they're changing OUR classes!", "I will never play again if this happens", "YOU'RE DESTROYING YOUR OWN GAME IN A DISGRACE" - at this point you might as well ask to see the manager too.

 

The test itself was kind of a disaster, that much is true. But let's reserve our opinions until we get into the meat of things where we can finally say "Wow, they really did remove our abilities" or "Oh, there they are" because at this point, we truly don't know.

 

Let's calm down a little, shall we? And if down the line it turns out that they really did break everything, go nuts.

 

EVERY game I have ever played which has been destroyed, gutted and "reworked" someone always stated this!!

 

The game devs need to listen to people opinions or they will alienate the few players who still play...

 

For me the combat in swtor is engaging and fun, I love the complexity. but all the time they streamline and remove "bloat" skills, personally I don't want to play a dumbed down game. I want to play a complex game which requires skill and agility to play. But this is just my thoughts.

[Nee-Elder]

BioWare is simply being true to form here.

 

• Come in and do some minimal 'splaining (that will probably open up at least as many questions as it answers).

.

 

I very much look forward to BioWare's next dev post here in PTS forums.

 

And, despite my own

instincts, i'm honestly hoping they (BioWare) will render all (or most) of these supposedly "over-reaction" concerns totally moot.

---

. I want to play a complex game which requires skill and agility to play. .

 

So do i , and so do our guild(s).

 

But i guess people like us who relish challenge & complexity are just the "crazy mob" now.

[DarkTergon]

Just wanted to start off this post by saying I'm 100% understanding of the concerns regarding missing abilities right now. I am.

/snip

 

 

 

Just want to point out two things

 

1. If we wait until " down the line " then it will be to late

 

2. They could easily calm things down whenever they wanted to by simply responding to all the feedback they have gotten over this instead of being maddeningly silent.

 

This is why people aren't calm, when people are calm, BW rush whatever rubbish they have, then pat themselves on the back for a job well done. When the sith hits the fan, the only time it's ever reversed, not that it is often, is because of a backlash here.

 

and this

 

BioWare is simply being true to form here.

 

• Put something on PTS that they know is not close to their final plan but that is sure to cause a lot of player complaints.

• Withhold information while the 'feedback' reaches a crescendo.

• Come in and do some minimal 'splaining (that will probably open up at least as many questions as it answers).

• Eventually cough up a modified version of the thing that addresses whatever they had already planned to change.

• Take credit for being so, so responsive to player feedback.

 

Rinse/repeat until actual release.

 

This is what always seems to happen. Personally I think it's too early to test it on the pts, they should have left it with the private testers, then when they were ready release the JG, but let people level it up from the beginning, so they can really see how it feels. The instanta 75 just felt wrong to me, and the fixed choices, just seemed off.

[Savej]

You know, in that vein, I would actually love to see all of the people who complain about the abilities being trimmed to post their combat logs. It's not hard, literally anyone can do it, and anyone with star parse can view them at their leisure.

 

After all, stats speak harder than words. If you use the ability constantly to the point that it is part of class identity for you, it shouldn't be too hard to actually show that in tangible way, instead of just griping.

 

I don't use starparse normally, am a total newb with it, but used it to look at a log from a wz on 7/10. In a 2.5 min busy window, not even sure how the log picks what times to look at, my character used:

 

Awe 1x

Blade Barage 9x

Blade Storm 8x

Challenging Call 3x

Combat Focus 3x

Enure 2x

Focused Defense 1x

Force Clarity 1x

Force Kick 1x

Force Leap 5x

Force Push 2x

Force Stasis 3x

Freezing Force 4x

Overhead Slash 11x

Plasma Brand 9x

Resolute 1x

Riposte 2x

Sabre Reflect 3x

Sabre Throw 2x

Saber Ward 1x

Strike 1x

Sundering Strike 3x

Vigilant Thrust 5x

 

I use regular taunt and slash often enough as well, just not in that window. I never use Guard unless I'm running next to the ball carrier in Huttball. But I know some dps use it temporarily to help someone who's getting focused even though it cripples their damage output (and some don't know that it cripples their damage output as of a recentish change).

Edited July 12, 2021 by Savej

[captainbladejk]

I never disputed the fact we will have less abilities. In fact, I clarified multiple times which abilities will be gone and won't be. Don't patronize me.

Then why are you sitting here trying to pretend it's not a nerf since they've stolen abilities from us. That's the very definition of a nerf as it makes the class weaker.

 

This is what I said, you just re-worded it to sound fancier than "it killed WoW" to paraphrase. This is a false argument and a dishonest one at that.

 

We do not have evidence of where sub numbers would be today without the pruning. We don't have any data to make an informed guess about that, and we don't have any data to see how many people were lost exactly to the pruning. You complain that I make "emotional" arguments, but this is an emotional argument itself: you are creating a direct correlation between something you personally dislike (lesser abilities) and sub numbers being declined, but causality is not causation. You are merely hijacking the sub numbers in support of your arguments. You can't prove anything.

 

The game could have sunk even deeper if the pruning didn't happen. The game could have thrice the users it had WotLK if it didn't happen. The simple fact is that we don't know. What we do know, however, is that even after the great pruning in early WoD, the game still reached over ten million users during Legion years after the pruning. Thus, it stands to reason that a very insignificant portion of the player loss was specifically due to pruning and a lot of it was combined (or solely) due to other reasons.

 

Stop hijacking sub number losses that can't even be accurately tracked in terms of reason or severity (since we don't have numbers) to try and strengthen your argument. It's dishonest and false.

So then you admit I never called it a WoW killer and you’re just trying to strawman what I said, good to know dude. You just destroyed any credibility you may have had before. You’ve already admitted to lying about what I said before by acknowledging I never called it a WoW killer, so why should anyone believe anything you say from here on?

 

Contrary to your beliefs, yes actually do have data that can inform about what would happen. We can look at what happened in similar games that did this exact same thing. We can see that WoW did it and lost millions of players. That is not an emotion based argument, but objective fact that their numbers went down which coincided with the ability pruning. We also know large amounts of people left the game because of it because Blizzard themselves admitted as much when they were announcing they were bringing back many of the abilities they removed. If the pruning was such a success, why have they still never fully recovered their numbers from before The Great Pruning happened? Why did they have to bring most of those abilities back if it was such a great success?

 

Looking back on Wrath after nearly 10 years now, I’ll give you that Wrath got some things wrong, but it also got a lot right as well. The 10 million subscriber number you mention for WoW was at the start of Draenor and steadily declined ever since. Draenor was also when the first pruning took place. I also never said ability pruning was the only factor. You are the one who said that, again twisting my words and trying to strawman what I said. That was also the time the whole “flight vs no-flight” crap show was taking place. Basically folks were being told “yeah we don’t like that you can fly so we’re restricting it. We also don’t like that you have all these abilities and think half of them are useless, so we’re removing the greatest amount of them.” If you think that’s not going to make people quit then that tells me you’re little more then you are white knighting them like there’s no tomorrow thinking they can do no wrong. You can’t make people play the way you want them to play through brute force and Blizzard found that out, just like SWTOR will find out if they keep going down this path. Facts remain, they have far far fewer subs now than when The Great Pruning took place. That is not emotion, but objective fact. If a massive pruning didn’t work in WoW, which is far bigger than SWTOR was/is, what makes you think it’s going to work here?

 

Again the only hijacking here is you trying to hijack my argument to strawman it into something I never said. Read what I said previously SLOWLY. What’s dishonest and false is how you’ve tried to strawman my arguments into something that I NEVER said, with you even admitting I never called it a WoW killer. THAT is dishonesty, and you have the gall to accuse me of trying to patronize you. If you don’t like the WoW examples I’ve used, then explain why they’re wrong. Demonstrate for us how you believe the argument to be flawed. The fact that you’re trying to strawman me and by your own admission lied about what I said demonstrates to me you have no real rebuttals to what I’ve said.

 

 

I'm so tired of this statement being taken out of context of when and how it was made, and what followed months(!) after that statement was made. And the hilarious part is that I don't even like the guy.

 

Ion made that statement a short while before demonology received a major thematic, identity and balance rework in Legion. They didn't want you to play it in WoD - as good or bad as that is - because they knew the demonology toolkit of late MoP (demon form) would soon be merged into the demon hunter. It wasn't that they wanted to create a dead spec on purpose. It was a (light-hearted) explanation of a problem that he couldn't fully get into at that time. The live stream when Ion said that was in June 2015. The video announcing Legion (and consequently the demon hunter) didn't drop until August of that year. The reason he said what he said was because he couldn't say: demonology as you know it will disappear because we're releasing the demon hunter with their demonic forms for DPS and tanking.

 

Every time - every. single. time. - this argument has been presented in bad faith. He wasn't being deliberately obtuse that time. He literally couldn't say that they are reworking it or why they were reworking it without dropping the ball on something the marketing department hadn't green-lit yet.

The point is it never should have been said at all and dude was wrong to have said it. Even if you wanted to use the “well it’s because they were working on the demon hunter and he couldn’t talk about it yet” type of argument you don’t say that kind of stuff to your playerbase. Even then that’s still giving an iconic Warlock ability away to another class. Even then you don’t say such open-ended stuff to your playerbase of “we don’t want you to play this class.” That was not light-hearted at all but dude being a class A tool. Even the PVP director guy gave him that look of “you didn’t just say that” of shock and horror.

“It wasn’t that they wanted to create a dead spec on purpose.” If that was the case they would have listened to the Warlock community saying to them “hey this sucks.” Bottom line those Warlocks had data at their back to show it was negatively impacting their class and making that spec nigh unplayable, which only grew with each change and nerf, but Hazikostas thought he knew better. The same stuff that happened in WoW is happening here, which is why the examples are valid. You can say the argument is presented in bad faith about Hazikostas, but he never should have said what he did to start with as it came off as him ignoring the entire warlock community. Some of the developers would later come out to throw him under the bus and say that yes, he did ignore feedback and kept going in spite of it. So I have a hard time believing dude wasn’t trying to be a tool. If he legitimately wasn’t, then it makes him look incredibly dense at best.

 

No, I'm not saying you're not allowed to use it. I'm saying that it is an objectively, terribly designed ability that shouldn't exist in the first place. Your emotional attachment to said abilities is none of my business, but that emotional attachment doesn't justify it's continued existence.

Oh but that’s where you’re so very very wrong. You liking/disliking an ability doesn’t make it objectively good or bad. You are NOT the sole authority on what is a good or bad ability you seem to think you are. In arguing that an ability should be removed because you think it’s bad and useless, you are absolutely saying to myself and others we shouldn’t be allowed to use it because YOU have decided that it’s bad and YOU think it should be removed. By your own logic, your dislike of the ability is not valid reason enough to remove it. If you think an ability is bad, you are under no obligation to use it. I rarely touch the Awe ability on my Guardian, but that doesn’t make it a bad ability purely because I don’t use it that often. When you try to say abilities shouldn’t exist because you think they’re objectively bad, even though it’s purely your own subjective opinion, it becomes my business. You are demanding at that point they make a change that effects the entire community including me because YOU have decided YOU don’t like something. That’s the epitome entitlement mentality.

Freezing Force is a no-brainer, especially paired with Persistent Chill. It's not that it's bad. It's that it is way to baseline and great for what it's doing. It's a free, continuous incredible movement slow that adds a DoT and a movement speed increase for yourself through the utility. It was always a bloody no-brainer to pick and it adds a permanent slow and speed boost to the Guardian for simply weaving one more ability into their rotation. The ability being badly designed has nothing to do with it being "useless."

 

Challenging Call on DPS classes is another. There are two - only two - uses for it:

• To drop aggro when you pull it in PvE
  
• To increase damage reduction in PvP
  

 

The first one shouldn't be an issue. I'm not being dishonest here - pulling aggro because you're too good at DPS has always been an annoying mechanic. Stopping DPS to manage aggro hasn't been a good mechanic ever, and no, even people I played with in Classic didn't like it. Aggro management should be designed from the ground up to work.

 

The damage reduction in PvP is a double-edged sword. It's useful, but it's also terribly to manage. Essentially, it's absolutely terrible to make out which Guardian used it if there's more than one. If Challenging Call is a defensive only utility, then the answer to that is quite simple: the guy using defensive abilities is the Guardian to focus when it goes off. When the utility is available to all Guardians and there's more than one (e.g a defense and a DPS one), it just becomes terrible to play against because information isn't readily available.

 

You're conflating multiple things. Sometimes abilities that aren't useless get re-designed or re-assigned precisely because they aren't useless.

You’ve already admitted that you lied about what I said previously so that dishonesty thing has sailed. With that said I agree with you that I don’t particularly care for the DPS pulling from the tank because of their high DPS type of mechanic, but it’s been present in MMOs for well over 20 years at this juncture. However, to have threat management there has to be the possibility of losing threat on a target. It’s one of the negative side effects of our systems today. However it’s not going to kill a DPS to have to throw an ability to threat dump once in awhile. Is it annoying, absolutely it is, but it’s not lethal.

 

I’m sorry but PVP is not a valid reason the entire game should be negatively effected by nerfs and removal of abilities when they can tailor make the solution for pvp since that’s where the problem is by your logic. If the pvp crowd is having a hard time knowing what they’re up against, this is easily solved by assigning class and spec symbols that will appear over a person’s head next to their name when they are close enough to a person. If they see a single saber wielding opponent, they can then look at the symbol and see “oh that’s a Vigilance DPS, and that’s his Defense tank buddy there.” Thus with a simple symbol you’ve given them the information they need without having to completely redesign an entire system. More often than not, less is more with game development, be it at the small time modding level, or full on studio production.

 

Again, you have literally zero numbers to understand that it was indeed because of the pruning. Also, sub numbers recovered long after the pruning in Legion for quite a while when content was good. It almost seems like pruning was something nobody really cared about while the content was good.

If you’re going to insist that there are no numbers available, then by your own logic you can’t say it wasn’t the pruning that caused those people to leave either. You try to say I’m arguing unprovable assumptions yet here you are doing the exact same thing. Unfortunately for you however we do have numbers, and we do have statements from Blizzard themselves stating that they overdid it based on feedback and sub numbers. Folks came back briefly for Legion due to the nostalgia factor of BC. For that matter I went back for about a month or so myself. After that I ducked out again. Yes their numbers may have gone back up for a bit, but it’s still nowhere near their record highs and nowhere near what it was before the Great Pruning. If the pruning wasn’t as big a deal as you claim, Blizzard never would’ve had to walk it back to the degree they did.

 

Many of the abilities they brought back for Shadowlands are functionally dead for their specs and aren't used. Nobody - absolutely freaking nobody - is using Frostbolt as a fire mage, eye of the beast for anything but lolling around in the capitol city and so on. It was largely a marketing thing. And 'lo and behold, sub numbers and content participation in Shadowlands dropped despite their attempts at unpruning.

You just said previously there was no numbers to prove what I’m saying, yet here you are trying to appeal to numbers to prove what you’re saying. Dude do you seriously hear yourself right now? You can’t seriously be trying to pull this stunt. Hypocrisy much. You can’t say to me “you don’t have numbers to prove your arguments” then try to appeal to those same numbers you claim are non-existent to prove your own arguments.

As for the abilities brought back with Shadowlands, simply because one guy isn’t using an ability does NOT and I repeat does NOT automatically make it a bad ability, the same is true for SWTOR. Get it through your head, one particular type of player not using a particular ability does NOT make it bad. I stuck my head in for the PTR over on WoW and one of the things I was glad to see they brought back to baseline for Death Knights was Lichborne. That allowed Lichborne healing via death coil in the build I tested. This was the most powerful healing combination for Death Knights until was removed previously. As for your example of frostbolt, you chose a rather pitiful example to appeal your point, because fire mage using a frost spell. Aside from possibly slowing their foe, of course they’re not going to use it. However that doesn’t make frostbolt itself a bad power. With Shadowlands and the unpruning, they’ve made progress, but there are still a ton of abilities that need to be returned still, so of course it’s still going to feel a bit weird. As for numbers still being down, that again proves my point that they’ve not fully recovered from The Great Pruning.

 

You’re entitled to your opinions but not your own facts. You’re also free to believe whatever you want about me as it makes no difference, but don’t try to strawman me and admit you “paraphrased” what I said, then try to say I’m patronizing you. That’s not how that works. Bottom line, we do in fact have numbers from others that have tried this sort of thing in World of Warcraft. Whether you want to consider those numbers a compelling argument is up to you, but it doesn’t negate those numbers from being valid, nor does it negate the statements from Blizzard either and them reversing course. The Great Pruning failed in WoW and is being undone, and will fail here in SWTOR just as hard. Aside from you and one or two other people, I’ve yet to see anyone saying this is a good idea. If you don't like certain abilities that's fine. If you disagree with certain proposals myself or others have put forth that's fine also, but propose alternatives. Don't just try to say "well that's a bad idea." Okay if it's a bad idea give us a better one that doesn't completely eviscerate classes for the sake of an unnecessary nerf.